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Authors: Janny Wurts
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to make sure she wields her feal office from the safety of Halwythwood! '
Such blistering courage deserved better grace. ' I don ' t like the need, ' Sidir allowed. ' But I can ' t drop my role as the diligent sentry '
' Don ' t neglect the cold fact you ' re my enemy? ' This time, Elaira ' s sarcasm bit. ' Then stay at my back. Keep your guard with drawn steel for as long as you think I lack basic human integrity '
' Your heart ' s intent was never distrusted, ' Sidir corrected with stickling firmness. ' The truth grants no quarter. ' Oathsworn over crystal, the enchantress could not enforce any claim to free will.
' Let me enlarge on your view-point, ' she said. ' If not me, you would have another Koriathain appointed to your prince ' s fate. She would be a huntress, ruled by vicious hate. This was the choice I was given, at Highscarp. When the Prime ' s bidding was laid before me, I claimed the burden upon the belief that the precepts of love would not hasten defeat, but instead seek a way to find triumph. '
' A queen of the realm would be as courageous. ' Sidir swept her a bow, moved despite himself. ' Consider my sword at your back as a friend. Let my stroke fall as Dharkaron ' s own Spear and be welcomed, if ever your Prime tries to twist your resolve and enact my liege ' s destruction. '
The tears rose too suddenly. Throughout the brutal rip tide of release, Sidir did not try the demeaning palliative of soothing her anguish. Wise man, he knew which wracking griefs could be tempered and which must abide, unconsoled.
Nothing was left, except to move on. Elaira turned from the Companion ' s staunch calm. Too desolate to indulge her deep sorrows, she knelt on the jumbled rock by the river-course, then rallied her adamant discipline.
* * *
Water with fast-flowing current was never easy to tap in rapport. Most impressionable of the four elements, in liquid state tumbling with gravity, its bonding properties unravelled as bursts of electromagnetics. Such whirlpool turbulence rejected all pattern. Yet that same effervescence, harnessed with skill, might key a scrying that could not be traced. Elaira ' s affinity was an inborn gift. She let her active awareness dissolve into the flow of the Arwent.
An ephemeral thrill raced over her skin, leaving her momentarily deafened and blinded. Then her dissociate senses cleared: she became the black pool, scribed with whirling eddies, and the exuberant splash, necklaced with foam under starlight. She was the rampaging gush through the gorge, then the broad, placid sheet of Daenfal Lake, wind-ruffled and hemmed with plumed reed-beds. The expansion rushed through her, tingling her nerves, as near shore to far, she traced the meandering loops of the outflow, winding away towards the sea.
Elaira declared her bounds of intent before her reach encompassed the bay, and dispersed in the salt deeps of the ocean. Poised, she became the essence of water, inside a radius of one hundred leagues.
And water, an impressionably volatile medium, reflected the flows of the lanes, receptive as an echo to the harmonics struck off by human emotion. Awake to such whispers, Elaira could plumb the dreams of sleepers in Daenfal. She sensed the lampsmen and sentries on watch at the walls, and the individual moods of the goatherds encamped in Araethura. The scout patrols and the clan hunters of Halwythwood also were made known to her. Each living presence moved as liquid light, stamped into the streamlets and marshes, with exchanged conversation a subliminal resonance, laced through the underground springs.
At the cusp where earthly form bordered the mysteries, the innate cry of her hampered spirit burned for sweet return to the linked empathy only Arithon could partner. Elaira checked that yearning flame short. Since his late mission to curb the deadly cult at Etarra, she had promised him solitude for safety ' s sake. Though a Sorcerer wearing the form of an eagle had brought word of his triumphant
Such blistering courage deserved better grace. ' I don ' t like the need, ' Sidir allowed. ' But I can ' t drop my role as the diligent sentry '
' Don ' t neglect the cold fact you ' re my enemy? ' This time, Elaira ' s sarcasm bit. ' Then stay at my back. Keep your guard with drawn steel for as long as you think I lack basic human integrity '
' Your heart ' s intent was never distrusted, ' Sidir corrected with stickling firmness. ' The truth grants no quarter. ' Oathsworn over crystal, the enchantress could not enforce any claim to free will.
' Let me enlarge on your view-point, ' she said. ' If not me, you would have another Koriathain appointed to your prince ' s fate. She would be a huntress, ruled by vicious hate. This was the choice I was given, at Highscarp. When the Prime ' s bidding was laid before me, I claimed the burden upon the belief that the precepts of love would not hasten defeat, but instead seek a way to find triumph. '
' A queen of the realm would be as courageous. ' Sidir swept her a bow, moved despite himself. ' Consider my sword at your back as a friend. Let my stroke fall as Dharkaron ' s own Spear and be welcomed, if ever your Prime tries to twist your resolve and enact my liege ' s destruction. '
The tears rose too suddenly. Throughout the brutal rip tide of release, Sidir did not try the demeaning palliative of soothing her anguish. Wise man, he knew which wracking griefs could be tempered and which must abide, unconsoled.
Nothing was left, except to move on. Elaira turned from the Companion ' s staunch calm. Too desolate to indulge her deep sorrows, she knelt on the jumbled rock by the river-course, then rallied her adamant discipline.
* * *
Water with fast-flowing current was never easy to tap in rapport. Most impressionable of the four elements, in liquid state tumbling with gravity, its bonding properties unravelled as bursts of electromagnetics. Such whirlpool turbulence rejected all pattern. Yet that same effervescence, harnessed with skill, might key a scrying that could not be traced. Elaira ' s affinity was an inborn gift. She let her active awareness dissolve into the flow of the Arwent.
An ephemeral thrill raced over her skin, leaving her momentarily deafened and blinded. Then her dissociate senses cleared: she became the black pool, scribed with whirling eddies, and the exuberant splash, necklaced with foam under starlight. She was the rampaging gush through the gorge, then the broad, placid sheet of Daenfal Lake, wind-ruffled and hemmed with plumed reed-beds. The expansion rushed through her, tingling her nerves, as near shore to far, she traced the meandering loops of the outflow, winding away towards the sea.
Elaira declared her bounds of intent before her reach encompassed the bay, and dispersed in the salt deeps of the ocean. Poised, she became the essence of water, inside a radius of one hundred leagues.
And water, an impressionably volatile medium, reflected the flows of the lanes, receptive as an echo to the harmonics struck off by human emotion. Awake to such whispers, Elaira could plumb the dreams of sleepers in Daenfal. She sensed the lampsmen and sentries on watch at the walls, and the individual moods of the goatherds encamped in Araethura. The scout patrols and the clan hunters of Halwythwood also were made known to her. Each living presence moved as liquid light, stamped into the streamlets and marshes, with exchanged conversation a subliminal resonance, laced through the underground springs.
At the cusp where earthly form bordered the mysteries, the innate cry of her hampered spirit burned for sweet return to the linked empathy only Arithon could partner. Elaira checked that yearning flame short. Since his late mission to curb the deadly cult at Etarra, she had promised him solitude for safety ' s sake. Though a Sorcerer wearing the form of an eagle had brought word of his triumphant
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