The Curse of the Mistwraith (65 page)

Sethvir’s draw spells sharpened. Stress-points flared cold blue, and the lines over Lysaer’s body blurred and spiked where they dragged one against another like entangled wires pried to separation.

The wraith clung, obdurate.

Sorcery peaked to compensate. On the litter, Lysaer spasmed taut. The pain of the forced unbinding cut even through unconsciousness and a harrowing wail tore from him.

The cry as well had been Asandir’s, for the prince’s torment became shared. No resource could be spared for small healing, absorbed as the sorcerer was in holding spirit united with flesh. Even as powers twisted and flashed at his directive, he could not shed the feeling that this exorcism was going too hard. As if the wraith had sunk fangs into some part of Lysaer, it seemed intent upon ripping him asunder rather than relinquish its possession.

And then on the heels of that uncertainty, the wraith came unravelled from Lysaer’s being so abruptly that recoil hit like a slap. Spellcraft sheared last connections and pinned the creature down in mid-air. For good or ill the deed was done. The trapped wraith froze, burning in malice like a marsh candle; the freed man lay dazed senseless on the litter. The sorcerers braced at his side regarded each other, beaten and drained from their labours. Between them passed understanding: that cost had been set upon this unbinding. The s’Ilessid gift of true justice, bent to ill usage by the wraith, had suffered untold further damage.

Asandir ventured hoarsely, ‘The curse that sets Lysaer against Arithon had sullied the s’Ilessid gift in any case.’

Hunched with his chin on clasped knuckles, Sethvir sighed. They dared correct nothing now. Not without risk of disturbing Desh-thiere’s binding and chancing the s’Ilessid prince’s life. ‘There’s always the next generation,’ he said sadly. ‘The wraith, at least, is defeated.’

The barest hitch to Sethvir’s statement snapped Asandir to keen scrutiny. The Warden of Althain avoided contact, his mind held shuttered and dark. His eyes stayed stubbornly averted. Asandir said, ‘There’s more. You’ve got Name for the ill-starred being, haven’t you?’

Now Sethvir did look up, bleak as ice on spring blossoms in the sickly glimmer shed by the wraith. ‘Once, the creature was human.’

Stunned by cascading implications, scraped raw by a forced reassessment of the countless doomed spirits imprisoned under wards at Skelseng’s Gate, Asandir lost speech. Dread burdened him, as each wraith’s disfigured humanity set his Fellowship too bleak a quandary. A sorcerer’s judgement was not Ath’s authority, to trap unconsenting spirits in a limbo of indefinite imprisonment. Neither could the riddle of Desh-thiere’s nature be unwound to free those damned thousands, until the Fellowship stood at full strength, their number restored back to Seven.

All and more swung in pivot upon one chancy cipher: the life of the last s’Ffalenn prince.

As Sethvir and Asandir shared this final, most vivid disclosure compounded of miscalculated risks and urgency, immediate troubles returned to roost.

The bar on the armoury door clanged up. A stay-spell flared dead and steel hinges wailed open as, bemoaning a headache in a carping counterpoint, Dakar pitched sideways into the breach. The shoulder that hit against the lintel was all that kept him upright.

‘It’s dark!’ Diegan’s complaint shivered the still air with echoes. ‘Dharkaron take your drunken whimsy, I heard no screams. Nobody’s in here.’

‘Oh yes.’ Dakar launched off and rocked two tipsy steps across the threshold. ‘They’re here. Trust me. Sethvir just forgets to light candles.’

Suspicious, still bristling from the force required to stand down Gnudsog and his squad at the ram, Diegan sniffed. An acridity like cinders yet lingered, as if a torch had gone out not long since.

‘There.’ Dakar swayed on braced feet, forgetful that darkness masked the area where he pointed.

The space proved not to be empty. Clipped and grainily hoarse, Asandir said in ghostly rebuke, ‘You call
this
keeping Etarra’s captain of the guard under house-arrest?’

Diegan nearly started out of his jewelled doublet.

Dakar lost his balance and sat. ‘The wine,’ he admitted on the tail of a soulful grunt. ‘We drank both flagons, and Diegan pleaded. Where’s Lysaer?’ Then, as muddled wits or his eyesight recovered, he noticed the nearly subliminal glow fixed under ward before Sethvir. Dakar squinted, identified the configurations for a seal of imprisonment and inside, a whirling, twisted light that made his stomach heave. Not the after-effect of indulgence, this sickness, nor the clench of impending prophecy: his nausea stemmed instead from reaction to something warped outside of nature.

Dakar’s stupor cleared. ‘You knew!’ he accused.

Asandir’s correction was instant. ‘Suspected. Without command of Name we had no means to foresee how Desh-thiere’s harm would choose to manifest. And with your second bout of prophecy made in conflict with the first, we had no clear path to choose.’

‘I don’t even
know
my second prophecy.’ Deflected by personal injury, Dakar looked down as if to make sure of the floor. That led him to cast about for something solid to lean on, until sight of Lysaer on the pallet refuelled his disrupted train of enquiry. ‘So you did nothing,’ he berated his Fellowship masters, and rage bled away into a sorry, drunken grizzle. ‘Ah, Ath, like us all, Lysaer trusted you.’

Through the cracked-open panels of two siege-doors beat the roar of an enraged populace, cut across by Gnudsog’s bellowed orders. Words carried faintly, reviling mages and royalty. The rabble had begun to chant.

Against that backdrop of ugliness, Diegan confronted the two sorcerers. ‘So, will you also do nothing now?’

Sethvir arose. At his wave, flames burst afresh from the torch stub. Hot light flooded across the armoury, snagged to sparks on the metal filings scattered in swathes from the sharpening wheel; on the racked gleam of blades that soon would run dull with new blood; and on the amethysts and diamonds sewn on Diegan’s doublet, which jerked to his passionate breaths.

Mild as sunfaded velvet before the whetted weapons that ringed him round, the Warden of Althain blinked. ‘Do you wish our help?’

‘I wish Dharkaron’s curse upon you all, never more fervently than now!’ Diegan shoved briskly forward; bullion fringes snapped at his boot cuffs as he stopped and stared down at Lysaer. ‘What have you done to him? Killed him? Because he spoke out against your prince?’

‘They wouldn’t harm him,’ Dakar interrupted. ‘Lysaer’s gift of light will be needed to lift off Arithon’s blight of shadows.’

‘So, it’s true!’ Diegan’s black eyes flicked from Sethvir to Asandir. ‘The king you tried to foist on us is one of you, a sorcerer born and trained. You forced our governors to stand down, on threat of riots. Well, we have them now regardless. Guild houses are afire. The minister’s palace and governor’s hall are being stormed this moment by the rabble.’

To every appearance unruffled by Diegan’s accusations, Sethvir fingered his beard. Of Lysaer he said to his colleague, ‘I do regret releasing him before we know Arithon’s fate.’

‘We don’t have any choice.’ Asandir set his hands upon the blond head of the prince on the litter and engaged a gentle call to wake. Sethvir’s appalling disclosure of one wraith’s botched humanity had overturned every priority. The disposition of Desh-thiere to safer captivity at Rockfell perforce must take precedence, and Etarra survive its own course. The Lord Governor’s standing had been undermined past the point where his authority could be salvaged. Lysaer alone could burn off Arithon’s stranglehold of shadows and stop the spread of panic and misdirected bloodshed; even if afterward Desh-thiere’s curse would drive him to turn the city garrison as a weapon against his half-brother.

The strands, after all, had converged in this forecast of war.

‘You shall have what you asked for.’ Asandir met Diegan’s rancour with a calm made terrible by perception. ‘Battle, misunderstanding and a cause to perpetuate bitter hatred.’

Under his ministrations, Lysaer stirred and moaned.

Diegan knelt quickly and shook the s’Ilessid prince’s arm. ‘Are you all right? Friend, did they hurt you?’

Lysaer opened his eyes. He looked lost for a moment. Then he turned his head, frowned, and focused clearly upon Asandir.’ Ath forgive me,’ he whispered. ‘I had a nightmare. Or is it true, that I smashed Elshian’s lyranthe?’

Asandir all but flinched; his glance of inquiry hardened to misery as, from the sidelines, Sethvir gave sad affirmation.

Pity roughened his words as he said, ‘Whatever you recall was no dream. Etarra has been driven to riot. Since your actions have discredited Rathain’s prince, your talents are needed immediately to restore the city to order.’

Only then did the grinding noise of the mob reach Lysaer’s notice. He sat up, saw Diegan, then flushed as other memories flooded back. ‘Arithon. Whatever I said, he’s caused mayhem, set shadows and terror in the streets.’ Then, his inflection so changed that it jarred, he added, ‘
Where is he?
’

‘You speak of your half-brother,’ Sethvir rebuked, hoping against chance to shock back some buried spark of conscience.

But Desh-thiere’s curse had imbedded irrevocably deep, and old malice resurfaced in force. ‘He’s bastard-born, and no relation of mine.’

‘Ill-feeling cannot alter fact, Teir’s’Ilessid,’ Asandir cracked back. ‘You go to spill a kinsman’s blood.’

Lysaer was unmoved. ‘I go to redress an injustice. Mark this. When I find your lying get of a s’Ffalenn pirate, I’ll see him dead and thrown in pieces to the headhunters’ pack of tracking dogs!’

‘Then we have no more to say.’ Asandir arose, cold to his core. He stepped over Dakar, who drowsed in an inebriated heap.

Lord Diegan, commander of Etarra’s garrison was first to move toward the door the sorcerer swung open. Tight-lipped in vindication, he said to Lysaer, ‘I admire your ambition. But first, my friend, we have to hunt down this prince of shadows.’

‘He’s prince of nothing! And finding him should be simple.’ Lysaer matched step beside the elegant Lord Commander. Urgently speaking, he departed without a backward glance.

From the wardroom, Lord Diegan’s shout cast back echoes. ‘Gnudsog! Forget about the spare arms. Assemble a patrol double-quick! Dispatch them to the warehouse district to scour the alleys. If fortune favours, the Master of Shadows will be there. Hustle, and we’ll take him in the act of freeing convicts!’

The wardroom doors boomed closed. Shut off from the din in the streets, a contrary draught eddied between bowstaves and halberds and showered red sparks from the torchflame. Left amid crawling shadows and the slow-falling dust of the armoury, Asandir sat on a shot cask. The glance he cast after the vagrant breeze was balefully focused and grim. ‘Arithon’s been and gone from the warehouse quarter, I trust.’

Luhaine’s staid tones answered. ‘I couldn’t be sure. The child convicts were released within the hour. The locksmith and the waggoners hired to free them were paid off with gold acquired from pawning a crown emerald. The gem took some trouble to recover.’

‘The children?’ Sethvir cut in. For a fast check into the district had revealed the same wagons overturned by the fury of the mob.

‘Dispersed. They’ll hide like rabbits, then bolt for open country as they can.’ Luhaine resumed his report. ‘Arithon’s horse is gone from the stables. A half-canister of the narcotic herb tienelle was taken from Sethvir’s saddle-packs.’

The Warden of Althain brightened. ‘Let Arithon keep it. He’s not unschooled in its use, and against Etarra’s armed garrison he’s going to need every advantage.’

‘So I thought, also.’ Luhaine paused. ‘I contacted Kharadmon.’

‘To reverse the storm?’ Sethvir sucked in his cheeks to stifle a harried, madcap smile. ‘But that’s brilliant! If Diegan’s going to roust out the garrison, let his search-parties rust their gear to a fare-thee-well in a cold northeasterly downpour.’ Next moment, his expression distanced into self-satisfied relief. ‘Bless Ath, he’s shown sense.’

‘Arithon?’ Asandir cut in. ‘You found him?’

No small bit irked, Luhaine said, ‘How? Where?’

Long used to untwisting the myriad affairs of five kingdoms, the Warden of Althain tugged out a tangle he found in his beard. ‘There’s but one dun mare in this region with a white splash marked on her neck.’ Then, in delight undimmed by the reproof of expectant colleagues, he answered the original question. ‘She’s past the main gate, and driving at speed down the north road. Which means Arithon eventually must ride into the patrols of Steiven, regent of Rathain.’

‘That’s no good news,’ Dakar grumbled from his pose of flat-out prostration.

Luhaine was swift in agreement. ‘Steiven has just one ambition, and that’s to collect every Etarran guildmaster’s severed head.’

Sethvir threw up his hands. ‘Bloody war’s a fine sight better than the s’Ffalenn royal line cut dead by a sword in an alley!’ He subsided in belated recollection that Luhaine was yet uninformed; the renewed priorities forced on them by the Mistwraith’s warped ties to humanity had yet to realign his opinion.

While Asandir in tart chastisement jabbed a toe in the ribs of his apprentice, who seemed inclined to drop off snoring. ‘Arithon dead, don’t forget, would doom your Black Rose Prophecy to failure.’

‘You
want
Davien back?’ The Mad Prophet opened drink-glazed eyes in martyred affront. That’s fool rotten logic, when his betrayals were what dethroned your high kings in the first place!’

Muster

Shadow lay thick over Etarra’s streets, the torches in their rusted brackets smothered to haloes of murky orange. The strife, the cries, the clash of steel weaponry and Gnudsog’s gruff oaths sounded eerily muffled; as if the unnatural darkness lent the heavy air a texture like wet batting. Kept insulated from the jostle of the mobs, embedded like fine treasure amid the fast-striding tramp of armed escort, Diegan regarded the ally but lately forsworn from the Fellowship sorcerers’ grand cause.

Lysaer looked angry-pale: white skin, gold hair, bloodless lips. His expression remained remote as smoothed marble as they passed some rich man’s door-page being bullied by ruffians from the shanties. The curve of Lysaer’s nostrils did not flare at the stench of spilled sewage that slimed the cobbles. His wide, light brows never rose at the measures the guard escort took to clear a rampaging gang of masons who had smashed a butcher’s door to steal cleavers. Torches and halberds reflected in those eyes; but their gem-stone hardness stayed untouched.