Free Stormed Fortress by Janny Wurts

survival, his silence since suggested he was still in healing recovery. Ache though she might to touch his close presence, news of Jeynsa ' s escapade would stress him. Elaira would not shake his peace, or breach polite ethic and invade the privacy of strangers. She quested, instead, for the signature presence of Jeynsa s ' Valerient. The Fellowship ' s marked choice for a caithdein ' s inheritance, the girl ' s imprint should stand out like a brand.
    Yet no match arose to receive the sought pattern divined through the element. The essence of Water spoke across time. Had Jeynsa died, her passage would have left ranging echoes of the event. Unless she was warded. That thought raised ugly questions.
    What covert motive would drive a candidate whose duty spoke for the law as a crown prince ' s conscience?
    Uneasy, Elaira refined her approach, sweeping for the resonant wake left by the girl ' s spent emotions.
    Those residual traces emerged, one vivid imprint embedded in Daenfal Lake, stamped just after midnight at the recent dark moon. Jeynsa ' s terrified scream had distressed a young waterman and the steersman of the boat that had ferried her south towards Silvermarsh. The nightmare raised by the girl ' s Sighted talent now bled through: a vision of the realm ' s crown prince, strapped to a stone slab, his bleeding form ringed by tormented ghosts. The bound shades were young girls, wracked women, and boys, entrapped by the practice of necromancy ...
    Elaira smothered her visceral outcry. Cut free of gestalt awareness, revolted to nausea, she crouched on her knees and used merciless discipline to smother her stark bolt of fear. This event was the past! Arithon had confided his plan to bait the Kralovir to their downfall; yet his spoken word could never prepare for the impact of the horrors just witnessed. Elaira steadied her rattled nerves. Choked back springing tears for the glimpse of a suffering that defied endurance. Beyond sparing Sidir from a hideous explanation, her fierce reaction risked drawing Arithon himself into sympathetic rapport. Such carelessness could disclose Jeynsa ' s ill-starred defection and, worse, inflame the fresh scar the traumatic ordeal must have set on his spirit.
    The humid night wrapped the enchantress like a blanket. Plumed spray off the thrashing falls braced her skin. Life ' s concert of crickets still pealed from the grasses, small balms to lean on until calm returned and overwrought pulse slowed and settled. Elaira steeled herself to proceed. No way else could she hope to trace past the warding that cloaked Jeynsa ' s movement from servers. Determined, the enchantress plunged back into immersion, aligning her search south and east.
    She sounded the bogs and the turbid reed-beds that fringed the lake-shore, into Silvermarsh, and there, detected a dark thread of silence that stitched a straight course through the landscape. A talisman would soak up the natural flow of electromagnetics. Jeynsa ' s trail led into Melhalla, where she did not move alone. Elaira ' s tuned senses detected a glimmering fan of pack-focused intent closing in on the girl from behind. The pattern fitted a tracker ' s array, running dogs for the head-hunters ' league.
    Elaira wrenched out of trance, shoved erect much too fast. Her staggered step encountered Sidir, his alert courtesy charged to alarm by the sight of her stricken face.
    ' What ' s wrong? ' Just as fast, his bracing grasp steadied her. ' Has Jieret ' s daughter been killed? '
    ' No. ' The enchantress shivered. ' Not yet. She ' s endangered. ' Displaced senses still reeling, Elaira unburdened. ' Jeynsa ' s already crossed Daenfal Lake. She ' s set on the run through the game trails of Silvermarsh, pressed by a bountymen ' s ambush. '
    ' Fatemaster ' s mercy! ' Sidir pealed in anguish. His grey eyes held the urgency seen once before, that unthinkable night when he had forced the breach of his crown prince ' s intimate privacy. ' How can I tell her mother we ' ve