Free Grand Conspiracy by Janny Wurts Page B

steel and sorrow gritted through the admission. ‘Thirty-eight sunwheel guardsmen pursued him inside, driven on by duty and hatred. Of those, only one escaped with his life. Willful pride and rank ignorance brought the rest to their doom. Their deaths were chosen, not forced.’
    â€˜Why could you not save them?’ the fisherman pressed. ‘The power was yours.’
    â€˜The power is mine,’ Asandir affirmed. ‘But not then or ever, the arrogance to enact intervention!’ He sat sharply forward, stern as chipped granite. ‘The compact was sworn on mankind’s behalf, but its tenets were designed to guard the land. Paravians hold our vow against greed and misuse. That grants no authority to impair human freedom, however the trade guilds cry tyranny. We take no license to enact judgment on others, except as the weal of this world becomes threatened . Town councils ignore this, yet the bare facts remain. Humanity exists here on sufferance. Forget at your peril! Your race would be homeless without our sworn surety that Athera’s great mysteries stay sacrosanct.’
    â€˜You’re saying––’ began the fisherman.
    Asandir cut him off, ruthless. ‘We who are bound know better than any how a yoke chafes and how spirit can languish without the grace of free will. By Fellowship choice no child born under sky in this place is destined to live as a pawn!’
    â€˜I don’t understand,’ the fisherman whispered, mollified at last by the unsheathed pain he had aroused in the Sorcerer who confronted him.
    â€˜You couldn’t know, but our people remember.’ The gray-headed clansman stirred in the uncanny stillness that locked the air, between the lisp of turned waters and the matchless, steady breath of the wind, which even now held to the intent of Asandir’s unimaginable control. He glanced at the Sorcerer, who granted a sharp nod of leave. ‘The Fellowship of Seven were drawn here, long past, by the dreams of the dragons that no mind in creation can deny. They were charged and tied by a ritual magic wrought from drake’s blood to ensure Paravian survival. That oath taking gifted them their knowledge of longevity. Record among the clans says their lives stay the course of a service that could last to the ending of time, if need be.’
    â€˜The drakes claimed us through the flaw of our own violence, and by the stain of slaughter already on our hands,’ Asandir qualified. ‘We were called as a weapon to destroy the drake spawn that could not be weaned from unconscionable killing. Only when Paravian survival is assured will our lives be set free once again.’
    There passed an interval when only the wind spoke. The gruff, weathered fisherman could not bear to turn his head and suffer Asandir’s magnanimous acceptance. Moonlight edged the tableau in metallic, cold lines, and the lisp of the waves carried the salt tang of primordial beginnings. The Sorcerer sat, rock patient throughout, while the occupants of the sloop who still owned their mortality came to terms with the history of his Fellowship.
    â€˜I have never understood,’ the young clansman ventured, made bold by the Sorcerer’s mild tolerance. ‘When the drake spawn were contained, or put down in the wars, were you not given liberty to break the drake’s binding and reclaim your own will once again?’
    Asandir looked up, his eyes bleak with remembrance and his shoulders too straight against the moving weave of the wavecrests. ‘We had only the methuri left to attend. They posed a minor threat, and Ciladis, who hoped to transmute their warped offspring, saw no need to hasten their final disposition. We allfailed to foresee how our obligation would compound on the hour that refugee humanity discovered this world of Athera.’
    Now the fisherman looked puzzled. Perhaps out of weariness, the Sorcerer chose to unveil the depth of the