The Curse of the Mistwraith (39 page)

The odour of leather and parchment immediately identified the contents: document scrolls looped in musty ribbons, and books with illuminated bindings and titles inscribed in the old tongue. The covers were not jewelled or clasped with gold, but darkened and scuffed with age. Regretful the words between lay beyond his schooling, Lysaer fingered the pages in fascination.

‘The packages we’re looking for won’t seem very interesting,’ Traithe said, his features eclipsed by the dome of the adjacent trunk. ‘You’d best check beneath those journals before you go any further.’

Lysaer closed a rust flocked cover. ‘What are these?’

‘Ancestral records that trace the line of the kings of Havish back to the founder, Bwin Evoc s’Lommein.’ Yet if the sorcerer meant to elucidate, a shuffling step and a carping voice interrupted from outside the doorway.

‘Did you
have
to set that raven loose to rampage through the butter?’ Green-faced and suffering what looked to be a punishing hangover, the Mad Prophet traipsed into the storeroom.

Traithe barely spared him a glance. ‘I’m encouraged to see you’ve recovered enough to have an appetite.’

‘I
woke up
because I was starving.’ Dakar fumbled with the strap of his belt, which was buckled but not tucked in its keepers, and immediately resumed accusations. ‘Sethvir’s too lazy to stock much beyond plain tea.’ The Mad Prophet winced, abandoned the particulars of his clothing and cradled his brow as the echoes of his own vehemence played havoc with his sore head. ‘And olives preserved in oil sit poorly on a queasy stomach.’

Busy unfurling an object swathed in linen, Traithe was cheerfully unsympathetic. ‘That didn’t keep you from eating them, I see.’

Dakar clammed up rather than admit culpability. Neither did the misery of his bellyache stop him from quartering the chamber, randomly fingering the varied contents of the shelves. ‘Sethvir chose like a ragpicker, when he decided what should be salvaged.’ A bored gesture encompassed a lumpish bundle wrapped in leather tied with twine.

‘I wouldn’t handle that,’ Traithe warned, already too late.

The Mad Prophet’s meddlesome fingers triggered a burst of blue-violet light. A crack shocked the air, capped by Dakar’s yell of pain. He recoiled, still howling, while the bundle he had disarranged rolled precipitately off the shelf.

It struck the floor with a note like sheared glass and another blinding flash seared away the leather wrappings. Blinking through a veil of afterimage and an acrid puff of ash, Lysaer saw a melon-sized violet jewel bounce and roll across the flags. The facets blazed and fountained sparks at each contact with the stone.

‘Fiends plague it!’ Dakar licked smarting knuckles and turned a baleful glare upon Traithe. ‘That’s the Waystone of the Koriathain!’

‘Obviously so.’ Shadows swooped in the flamelight as the sorcerer pushed aside his opened chest, leaned down and matter-of-factly fielded the rolling crystal. The sparks died. No punitive sting met his touch.

‘Morriel would sell her virginity to know where that thing went!’ Mollified, Dakar added, ‘She and her pack of witches have been searching for centuries, and Sethvir’s kept her Waystone here,
hidden all this time
?’

Traithe turned the huge amethyst in his hands, absorbed by the captured light that spiked through its purple-black depths. ‘Since nobody asked your crude opinion, I shall tell you once: the Prime Enchantress had only to inquire after the Waystone’s location.’ His eyes flicked up, piercingly sharp. ‘Naught but Morriel’s stubborn pride kept the jewel at Althain.’

But nuance was wasted upon Dakar, who loosed a boyish whistle. ‘The bitches will be hot, when they learn.’

The prospect of a scandal none but a fool would precipitate spurred Traithe to reproach. ‘We would all be better served if you would go and ask Sethvir for scrap leather that would do for replacement wrappings.’

Too wily to cross a sorcerer who used that tone of voice, Dakar departed grumbling obscenities. Left in the company of an undesirably curious prince, Traithe made an end of the matter. ‘The Waystone was mislaid during the rebellion. As you observed, it is perilously warded. The Koriani Senior Circle was negligent to leave so powerful a talisman unguarded.’

Traithe did not add that the loss of their great focus had also curtailed the order’s propensity for interfering in affairs beyond their understanding. Sethvir was unlikely to volunteer the Waystone’s location to the Prime Circle that craved its recovery. The Warden of Althain could be guileful as Davien the Betrayer when he chose; never mind that he appeared as honest as a clear glass of water.

Traithe fixed Lysaer with a gaze impenetrable as ink. ‘If you’ll finish unwrapping this bundle, I think you’ll find what we came for.’ He set aside the Great Waystone and tossed across one of two items half-swaddled on the lid of the trunk.

Lysaer caught the packet and stripped off the final layers of linen to bare a thin gold circlet, unornamented beyond a thready, age-worn line of runes. The smaller item undone by Traithe proved to be a hexagonal tortoiseshell box. Inside, nested in sheepskin, sparkled a matched collection of rubies.

At least a dozen in number, the set was cut to a perfection beyond reach of mortal artisans. The gems required no setting to impress; their depth of colour glinted like live fire in the flare of the torch by the doorway. Lysaer gasped, dazzled by the legacy that awaited the dyer’s lad soon to be unveiled as the crown prince of Havish.

‘The regalia was melted down for bounty gold,’ Traithe remarked sadly. For an instant he seemed less than wizard, and more a lame, very worn old sword-captain lost in reminiscence of ill times. ‘The desecration was a great pity. But Telmandir was the first of the royal seats to be sacked and set to the torch. Only the jewels and the king’s youngest child could be saved.’

Lysaer noted the sorcerer’s regret, but only distantly. Stark though the circlet in his hands might be it was
old
; its nicks and dents bespoke modest origins. Diminished to realize how very ancient were the high kingdoms of Athera, and given sense of the wide span of generations the blood lines hand-picked by the Fellowship must have ruled, Lysaer was moved to awe.

The battered circlet of the Princes of Havish, and the rubies torn at need from a regalia whose magnificence could only be imagined implied a stability shattered wholesale; and sacrifice akin to the straits that had caused the Paravians to build Althain Tower in the bleak hills of a wilderness to safeguard an irreplaceable tradition. Lysaer felt humbled.

His inheritance as s’Ilessid on Athera was vast in comparison to the tiny island kingdom left behind on the world of his birth.

The pomp, the wealth, every ceremonial pageantry that had seemed part and parcel of kingship was abruptly rendered meaningless: he perceived how narrow was his experience and how limited his vision. The presumption shamed him, that he had dared to set judgement on the lives of the Camris barbarians. Their plight must be better understood to be fairly handled; a stricture that must start with rebuilding trust with his half-brother. Brought to painful self-honesty, Lysaer realized that to do right by the kingdom of Tysan, he must embrace a new concept of justice. The tinker’s workmanship in the old circlet and the uncanny loveliness of Havish’s crown jewels compelled a cold and difficult review of his mortal strengths and talent.

Lysaer returned the artifact to Traithe, gentled by diffidence he had shown no one living. ‘I’m thankful for your offer to school my gift of light. But I see very clearly: a mage’s training is not my course to pursue. My part in confronting the Mistwraith is but the prelude to healing the rift between townborn and clansman. The greater good of Tysan must demand my total dedication.’

Struck by the depths of sincerity that prompted this prince’s self-sacrifice, Traithe closed his hands, quenching the blood-fire of the rubies. His sorrows as sorcerer compounded with fierce foreboding for the future spelled out by the strands. Like the Great Waystone the Koriani enchantresses ached to recover, the cache of sapphires that were the crown jewels of Tysan must remain in Sethvir’s trust at Althain. That this gently-reared descendant of Tysan’s kings, whose shining talent was inspired rule, should one day through the Mistwraith’s machination refute the fine intentions that now moved his mind and heart seemed an impossibly cruel twist of fate.

Harbingers

In the cold light of dawn, a dark horse with a black-clad rider canters south, for Ghent in the kingdom of Havish; beneath the hunting bow and traplines of a forester’s trade, he bears a concealed set of rubies and a circlet, while a raven swoops on a following breeze over his silver-banded hat…

High above land, outside even the coiling fogs of Desh-thiere, the discorporate sorcerer Kharadmon arrows east on the winds of high altitude, his intent to measure and map the power base of the governor’s council of Etarra…

Too obdurately frugal to hurry, Luhaine drifts west into Camris, bearing tidings and grave portents for Maenalle, Steward of Tysan…

X. DAON RAMON BARRENS

For a confirmed hedonist and established late riser, Dakar climbed Althain Tower’s central stair in suspiciously buoyant spirits. Enjoying the early hour without a hangover, he barged into the room where the half-brothers slept with a clang of the bar, and a shove that swung the oaken door to a thunderous boom against the stops.

The racket rivalled the impact of a siege-engine.

Accustomed to solicitude, courtly deference and a chamber valet selected for quiet habits, Lysaer squinted through a hurtful flare of torch-flame. He buried his face in his pillow, nettled enough to curse when rude hands grasped his shoulder and shook him.

The assault on his person ended with a raw hoot of laughter. Lysaer faced around. He endured the ache until his eyes adjusted to the sudden fullness of light and made out the form of his tormentor. Bent double and gripping his belly as if he hurt, Dakar wore a shirt that needed washing, a leather tunic ripped ragged at the hem and a plaid sash so sunfaded the only recognizable colour was grey. The glare of princely displeasure left his paroxysms unfazed.

Lysaer propped himself on one elbow. Made aware as he flicked back tangled hair that the view beyond the shutter was night black, he said, ‘I don’t see any humour in being wakened before dawn by a maniac.’

Dakar sat on the adjacent cot. The frame gave a squeal of leather and wood at the load, and the mattress canted. Its slumbering occupant slid like a dropped puppet in the direction gravity dictated. Blocked from tumbling to the floor by the planted bulk of Dakar, Arithon showed no sign of awakening.

‘Well?’ Lysaer fixed glacial eyes upon the Mad Prophet. ‘Are you going to share your joke?’

‘Joke?’ Dakar hiccuped and looked aggrieved. ‘I made none. But I’ll bet you never used that many filthy words in one breath before.’

‘Meaning I forgot my manners.’ Recovered enough to find tolerance, Lysaer gave back a wicked grin. ‘My reputation’s hardly spoiled. You don’t look to me like a lady I need to impress.’ Before Dakar could throw back rejoinder, he added, ‘Try that last move on the Master and see what sort of words
he
uses.’

‘Oh?’ Dakar twisted, reached out and pinched Arithon’s cheek, but failed to raise any response. Arithon never twitched an eyelid. Prosaically, the Mad Prophet said, ‘Won’t be waking up this morning, not at all. Too used up still, and better so. Asandir wants him napping.’

Warned by a hint of recalcitrance that purpose underlay Dakar’s remark, Lysaer got up and reached for his breeches and shirt. ‘We’re leaving Althain today?’

‘Tonight. The sun’s not up yet.’ All cow-eyed innocence, Dakar heaved off the cot. He regarded his knuckles, still nicked with scabs since his encounter with the door panel stuck shut by Kharadmon. ‘We go within the hour. But against any natural inclination, we won’t be making passage across Instrell Bay by boat. The sorcerers have decided we’re in a rush.’

Lysaer measured his shirt laces against each other to even them up for tying. ‘Why?’

Transparently reluctant to answer, Dakar crooked a finger in an end of his tangled beard and shrugged. ‘Daelion Fatemaster himself couldn’t fathom ways of the Fellowship.’ Impelled to neglected duty, he abandoned his affectations and launched off toward a nearby chest and scooped up Arithon’s clothing. Onto the heap, he tossed boots, hose, cloak, and belatedly, the sword Alithiel, which still lay naked against the table. ‘Didn’t this come with a scabbard?’

Lysaer unhooked the Master’s baldric, which hung in plain sight from a chair back, and handed it over without comment.

Still grumbling, Dakar shed his armload of garments onto Arithon’s chest. He then sheathed the blade, dumped that on top, and announced, ‘Right now I’ve got other problems, like lugging your bastard brother down five courses of stairs.’

‘Half-brother,’ Lysaer corrected. Regarding the Mad Prophet’s ministrations askance, he retrieved his weapons and cloak from the armoire. ‘I’m not so befuddled I don’t recall we’re only four flights above ground level.’

Nonplussed, Dakar said, ‘I can count properly when I’m sober. We aren’t leaving by the gate. Sethvir’s got a third lane focus pattern in his dungeon, and Asandir’s of a mind to hurry.’

By now acquainted with Athera’s geography through Sethvir’s collection of charts, Lysaer paused in the act of fastening his baldric: the distance inferred was well over two hundred leagues, with a span of open water in between. ‘We’re travelling on to Daon Ramon Barrens by sorcery?’

Dakar smiled, mooncalf features all innocence. ‘You’re going to witness wonders. That is, unless you get disoriented and lose your breakfast on the way. Personally, I find lane transfers across latitude nearly as dismal as sailing. But then my stomach tries to get seasick in a bathtub.’ A last, hasty inspection showed nothing indispensable had been forgotten from his collection of Arithon’s things; the Mad Prophet in prosaic efficiency rolled both Shadow Master and belongings up in the blankets he slept on.