The Curse of the Mistwraith (66 page)

From a side-alley too squalid for lanterns a woman cried entreaties. A man’s bellowed curses ended with the sound of a smack against flesh, and a cur with raised hackles raced into the vanguard ranks, caught a boot in the flank, and tumbled yelping. The advance guard turned another corner in their progress toward the town hall, and Lysaer stepped over the crippled dog with barely the flicker of a glance.

Diegan fastened his braided cloak ties against a shiver of discomfort. ‘Is it true?’ he asked softly.

That splintered sapphire gaze disconcertingly turned on him. ‘What?’ Lysaer blinked, and seemed partially to come back to himself. ‘Is what true?’

Cold eyes, warm voice; Diegan steeled himself. No coward despite his dandy looks, he forced the necessary enquiry. ‘Your lineage. Are you royal? Does that sorcerer’s upstart really share your blood as half-brother?’

Lysaer’s look went straight through him. ‘Would you claim kinship with a byblow forced upon a queen by abduction and rape?’ The little falsehood came easily, that his mother’s flight to embrace her s’Ffalenn paramour had never extended through a year of willing dalliance. A frown marred Lysaer’s features as he wondered upon the memory that, he would once have spoken differently; that he had in some other time challenged his royal father to intercede for the pirate bastard’s comfort.

That event seemed distant, as cut off as a stranger’s memory. Brave, Lysaer had seen himself then; honourable and just. Now, his past pity seemed the puling naivete of a fool, to have invited his own downfall and thrown away heirship in Amroth for adherence to one painful truth. A lie cost so little, in comparison; and by today’s outcome, his losses being permanent and Arithon having shown his true nature, the fib to Diegan might as well have been the plain truth. Feeling giddy and light, as if the burden of heaven’s arch had been unyoked from his shoulders, Lysaer almost laughed.

‘You’re royal as he, then,’ Diegan murmured in dark conclusion. He caught Lysaer’s fierce flare of mirth and reassessed: both hysteria and the queer lack of emotion were quite likely the effects of profound shock. Moved to sympathy, the Lord Commander softened his accusation. ‘That’s difficult. Most awkward.’

‘Not at all.’ The next lie came easily to Lysaer’s tongue. ‘I may be a king’s son, and legitimate, but not on Athera’s soil. What inheritance I could claim by birthright lies beyond the span of a worldgate, unreachable, reft from me by the doings of s’Ffalenn.’

‘A prince in exile, then?’ pressed Diegan.

Lysaer’s smile was sudden as spring-thaw. ‘No prince at all, friend. I was formally disinherited, a victim of sorcerer’s wiles, as you are. Etarra’s people shall have my help for their own sake. Rest content. I find just vengeance sufficient.’

They passed the juncture of another alley; Diegan scanned the cross-street out of ingrained habit: such sites were prime places for high-bred officials to be ambushed. ‘Then your mother was not s’Ffalenn?’

‘No, can’t you guess?’ Lysaer grimaced on an edge of pain deep buried from childhood. ‘My mother, may Dharkaron Ath’s Avenger visit judgement on the seed of her shame, was the sadly ravished queen.’

Ahead loomed the market square, its arched entry ghost-lit by the lamps. In the strange and strangled light, the luck-shrines tucked under carven gables were grotesquely clotted with wax from the candles left lit by ambitious merchants. The little tin talismans that should have jangled to warn of iyats hung silent, gripped fast in the windless dark.

The mob pressed thicker, where farmers won over to the cause of restored monarchy hurled insults and loose bricks at guild tradesmen. Now and again the crossfire of debris would clang off the face of a targe. More soldiers had bolstered Diegan’s escort. These newcomers brought the fire-caught glint of gilt trappings and the weapons they brandished were still streamered with ceremonial colours. Drawn from the squads originally posted to keep order through the coronation processional, their splendid appointments lent Gnudsog with his scars and nicked field-gear the hard-bitten look of a felon.

Disturbance ruffled the ranked columns. A messenger in governor’s livery burst through, breathing hard, his cheek disfigured by a bruise. He cried above the din for Lord Diegan.

‘Here’s news!’ bellowed Gnudsog to his commander. ‘You can’t want it now, lord. Better to hear inside sanctuary, after we reach the council hall.’

‘No!’ The courier’s voice cracked in terror. ‘Not there! The hall’s been locked fast by fell sorcery.’

‘Traithe,’ Lysaer said tersely. At Diegan’s taut-jawed flare of outrage, he raised a placating hand. ‘The ministers inside won’t be harmed.’

Amethysts and diamonds spat glints through murk as the commander of the guard spun around. ‘Send the man through. I’ll hear him now.’

Soldiers gave way to admit the courier. His shirt was torn at the shoulder, and the knuckles of one hand were skinned raw. ‘I’m lucky to have reached you at all, lord. Looters have kicked down the lamp-posts for quarterstaves, with three city aldermen battered dead.’

‘You have news?’ Diegan yanked the man up by his collar.

Just then aware of who attended his Lord Commander, the messenger gasped and flung away. ‘But my lord! That blond man is lackey for the sorcerers!’

High tempered, about to hail Gnudsog to end the fool’s dithering by blows, Diegan started at a touch upon his arm. He swung, restrained by the steady gaze of Lysaer.

The prince who had abjured all rights to royal rank said gently, ‘No. After Arithon’s betrayal, any man’s enmity is fair. Let me prove myself worthy of trust, his, yours, and Etarra’s.’ The prince in his tinsel velvets showed a proud, unpractised majesty, and the result of unprepossessing humbleness clothed in grace and shining wealth combined to powerful effect.

The messenger was moved to stand down. ‘Your pardon, great lord.’ He bent to touch his forelock and stopped, aghast at his dripping knuckles.

Lysaer startled him from embarrassment with a kindly clap on the shoulder. ‘Forget titles. Against the Master of Shadow, we are equal in station, you and I.’ Then, as if screaming, rampaging mobs were not being thumped by Gnudsog’s soldiers, as if no darkness choked sight, he probed with gentle questions for information.

Diegan watched, awed, as the messenger stopped quaking and answered. Very quickly they learned that Traithe’s spells disbarred the council lords from action. Surly as an old, scarred tiger, Gnudsog allowed that while his squads could batter down doorpanels well enough, wards of sorcery were another matter.

‘Then we won’t use force,’ Lysaer said equably. To the courier, he added, ‘You’ve crossed the main square by the council hall. What’s become of the grand dais built for the s’Ffalenn pretender’s speeches?’

The courier rolled his eyes. ‘Rioters been having at it, sure enough. A pack o’ guild apprentices came with prybars and staves to tear it down, but farmers with drays blocked it off, flying leopard banners and swearing they’ll enforce the crown charter for their land rights.’

‘Extremists from both factions?’ Lysaer grinned. ‘That’s perfect.’ He laughed and turned shining, exultant eyes toward Diegan, who remained mystified, and Gnudsog, who kneaded the scars on his sword arm in fixed and unholy irritation. ‘Since your councilmen cannot act to calm their city, here is how we’ll do it for them.’

They marched briskly and gained the square. Gnudsog formed his men into a flying wedge and bashed through the rioting apprentices from the rear. Swords and steel-shod halberd butts made short work of wooden staves; the dray with its spilled crates of melons and string-tied half-trampled chickens afforded only minimal delay. Gnudsog’s men used polearms for levers and had the vehicle set upright in a trice. By then, combatants on both sides screamed curses, united in common cause against the soldiers.

While the fighting shifted focus, Lysaer mounted the unguarded stair, littered with torn-down snarls of bunting, and leopard banners that beleaguered torchlight re-rendered from s’Ffalenn green and silver to funereal black. Fired by righteous purpose, he paused to comfort a farm lad who knelt with his gashed cheek compressed with the wadded-up tail of a streamer. A word, a touch, a light joke, and the boy was induced to smile. Today’s ripped face would leave a scar that would win him no endearments from the tavernmaids. Another bit of ruin to swell an already vicious score. Unmindful that a curse drove his enmity, Lysaer reached the upper platform where a s’Ffalenn turned traitor to his birthright should have pledged Etarra his protection.

The Fellowship had chosen a site of favourable visibility and acoustics. Lysaer paused between the stripped and splintered awning poles, given vantage to every corner of the square.

Before him spread the city’s tragic turmoil. Picked out in pallid lanternlight, small episodes stood out: the screaming craftsmen who brandished tools and uprooted stakes from the awning ties; the drunken laughter and gyrating celebration of a raggedy band of looters; a woman clutching a torn dress. And an elderly burgher beset in extremity, his cane struck away, the rim of a broken flowerpot his last weapon to fend off his attackers.

Misgiving for their plights dispelled the disorientation that lingered since Lysaer’s reawakening. Desh-thiere’s realignment of his loyalties was irrevocably complete.

His hour under the wraith’s possession he now blamed on spells laid to daze and confuse him; that the Fellowship would act to abet Arithon’s escape was a foregone conclusion, since they had persistently refused to lend credence to any of his past crimes of piracy. That fallacy must no longer be allowed to hinder mercy. Neither could widespread riots be stopped through hard-edged action. Restored to compassionate perception, Lysaer saw he had been callous to presume that he could loose the full might of his gift and crack the pall of shadow from the sky.

A populace driven by mass panic might well mistake a violent counterstrike for an attack by enemy sorcery; no act, however well-intentioned, must lend further impetus to panic. A subtle approach would encourage reason; light must flow gently as a balm over a city whose loyalties were ripped open like bleeding wounds.

Lysaer raised his hands.

His gift had become more malleable to his will through the months of battle against Desh-thiere; further, the hours spent working in partnership with Arithon lent Lysaer every confidence that he could plumb any weaving of shadow.

The shouts, the screams, the crack of wood against steel as roisterers harried Gnudsog’s line of soldiers faded before deep concentration as Lysaer sent a subliminal tracer glow aloft. Quietly, subtly he tested the bindings of darkness the Shadow Master had set over the city.

The probe was swallowed utterly. A dark inexhaustible as ocean, as seamlessly wrapped as a death caul seemed to make mockery of his effort. Lysaer clamped down on fresh anger. No pall could be infinite. Not even the Fellowship commanded limitless power. Lysaer turned reason and objectivity against the heat of his enmity. His next probe picked up the thread of magecraft cleverly intermeshed with the shadows. Not only had the illusion tricked him to assume the night had no boundaries, Lysaer exposed a second error of presumption, that Arithon must be inside city walls.

Stay-spells anchored these shadows. A sorcerer’s training allowed the Master’s spun darkness to abide outside of his presence.

Very likely the daylight had been banished to cover a bolt to escape. Lysaer found no cause to forgive, that the attack had not been turned in direct malice against Etarra’s citizens. Riots had arisen from the upset. By royal duty, the man who should have been first to keep peace had without scruple seized the most damaging means at hand to duck his responsibility.

Justice would be served, Lysaer vowed. For each life lost, for each hurt caused by negligence, Arithon s’Ffalenn would be brought to account.

The dark-ward must be lifted straightaway. Lysaer extended his arms. A glow bloomed upward. Golden as late-day sunlight on an autumn meadow, the halo he cast from his person could never be mistaken for torchlight.

Across the rush and tumult in the square, through the barricade of raised polearms wielded by Gnudsog’s guard, eyes turned toward that source of indefinable illumination. Etarra’s traumatized citizens saw one man casting brave challenge against the dark.

Someone shouted. Hands raised in the press, pointing toward the glow that spread from the lone blond figure on the dais. The fighting nearest Gnudsog’s embattled lines faltered. Farmers stared, bricks and cart-axles torn out for bludgeons dangling forgotten in their hands as belligerence gave way to wonder. Rough men who prowled to steal and pillage spun from doorways suddenly rinsed clean of shadow. Stripped of their cover, they dodged away into side-streets to avoid arrest by the watch. Guild bands of more directed hatreds paused on their way to disadvantage rival factions. Least brazen, the craftsmen and the shopkeepers clustered in their fearful bands cried out at the rebirth of the light that would spare their property and livelihood. ‘We are saved!’

Lord Diegan answered from the dais stair. ‘By the grace of Lysaer of the Light, our city shall recover prosperity!’

‘Lysaer of the Light!’ hailed a mason with roughened hands. His chant was taken up, until the central square of Etarra rang to a thousand raised voices.

The golden circle widened, waxed brighter. Lysaer’s hands seemed bathed in a fountainhead of gilt sparks. Light burnished his hair like fine metal and glanced off the tinsel stitching banding his lace cuffs and pourpoint. The face tipped upward under that swathe of illumination showed no change at the clamour of the crowd. Fine-chiselled in concentration, the lord from the west who wrought miracles seemed an angel sent down into squalor from the exalted hosts of Athlieria.

Even Gnudsog was inspired from dourness. ‘He has the look on him, like a prince.’ Eyes dark as swamp-peat swivelled and fixed on Lord Diegan. ‘Don’t let your ninnies in the council be handing him a crown in silly gratitude.’

Not entirely mollified as the chanting swelled to rattle the farthest windows of the square, Etarra’s Lord Commander gave back a grim grin. ‘What Lysaer wants for his service is the head of the prince of Rathain.’