Fugitive Prince: First Book of The Alliance of Light
Where there is light, there must always be shadow… The fourth volume in Janny Wurts’s spectacular epic fantasy.The schism began with two half-brothers empowered to subdue a Mistwraith. In revenge it cursed them to a life of perpetual conflict. Each believes absolutely in his cause, and loathes the other for opposing it…Lysaer, Prince of the Light – a charismatic leader sworn to set humanity free from sorcerous oppression. He claims divine power to safeguard his people from an enemy he is convinced will destroy them.Arithon, Master of Shadow – a trained mage who wishes for nothing but to defuse war, and search out the vanished old races who hold the key to restore the world’s shattered peace.When Koriani enchantresses join forces with Lysaer, new intrigues upset Arithon’s hard-won autonomy. Faction is set against faction, heart against heart, and the scene is set for an explosive recurrence of war. The curse of the Mistwraith echoes eternal…
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Fugitive Prince
Janny Wurts
The Wars of Light and Shadow
VOLUME 4
FIRST BOOK OF THE ALLIANCE OF LIGHT
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the authorâs imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
HarperVoyager
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by
HarperCollinsPublishers 1997
Copyright © Janny Wurts 1997
Janny Wurts asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library
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Source ISBN: 9780006482994
Ebook Edition © FEBRUARY 2010 ISBN: 9780007346929 Version: 2018-05-21
For Beth Gray, who opened the first door that has led to so many others.
Table of Contents
Map of Tysan
Map of Rathain
Map of the Isles of Min Pierens
Map of Havish
Map of Melhalla
Map of Los Lier
Map of West Shand
Map of Shand
Winter 5647
Thirty-five thousand marched to war. Their weeping widows all died poor. Swords against Darkness, reap for Light Fell Shadowâs Prince and rend false night.
âverse of a marching song from the campaign of Dier Kenton Vale Third Age 5647
Strong arms closed and locked around Elairaâs slim shoulders. Fingers strengthened by the sword and sensitized to a masterbardâs arts tightened against her back. The dark-haired, driven man who cradled her surrendered at last to his blazing crest of passion. His lips softened against hers, the restraint, the control, the terrible doubts which bound him consumed all at once in a rush of tender need. She responded, melted. Her being exploded into sensation like fire and flight. At one with the prince who had captured her heart, her spirit knew again that single, suspended moment, with its promise of inexpressible joy.
Then the fulfillment of union snapped shy of release, doomed ever to fall short of consummation by the rough intervention of fate. This time, a harried, insistent pounding snapped the dream into fragmented memory.
The small-boned enchantress entangled in threadbare quilts jerked out of her fretful sleep. A muted cry escaped her. Chilled in the drafts which flowed over the sill of an unglazed croft window, she fought to regain full awareness. Once again, she grappled the irreversible reality: Meriorâs mild sea winds and the Prince of Rathain lay two years removed in her past.
Elaira squeezed her eyes shut against the ache. Instead of the muffled boom of breakers creaming against stainless sands, the ferocious, clawing breath of winter whined over the white-mantled dales of Araethura.
Yesterdayâs blizzard had delivered a biting, cold night.
Over the open glens, through stands of scrub oak and across the rustling flats of frozen marsh, the ice whipped in driven bursts, to rattle the ill-fitted shutters of her cottage at the fringe of the moor. Crystals found the cracks, tapped at the lintels, and fanned a frosted arc of silver across the leaked bit of moonlight admitted through the same chink. While the eddies moaned and clawed past the beams of the eaves, and the spent tang of ash commingled with the fragrance of cut cedar and frost-damp miasma of moldered thatch, Elaira exhaled a deep breath. Given time, the runaway pound of her heart would subside.
She untangled the fist still clenched through a coil of auburn hair. Too many times she awakened like this, struggling against the blind urge to weep, while the ripping, slow agony of Arithonâs memory threatened to stop her will to live. In desperation, against the vows of the Koriani Order which tied her lifelong to a celibate service, her refuge from despair became the fiercely guarded shelter of her solitude.
