The Curse of the Mistwraith Read online

  The king shifted impatiently. ‘Would you speak for your freedom?’

  Poised between guardsmen, unmercifully lit by the massive bronze candelabra, Arithon remained unresponsive. Not an eyelash moved, even as the royal fingers clenched and slowly whitened.

  ‘Jog his memory,’ said the king. Sapphires sparked blue in the candleflame as he let the sceptre fall.

  This time the captive tried no last-minute trick of evasion. The halberdiers bashed him headlong onto his side. Arithon struck the floor rolling and managed to avoid the step. But after that he might have been a puppet mauled by dogs, so little effort did he make to spare himself. The guardsmen’s blows tumbled his unresisting flesh over and over before the dais, raising a counter-strophe of protest from the chain. Not yet ready to see his enemy ruined by chance injury, the king put a stop to the abuse.

  Arithon lay on his back adjacent to the carpeted aisle that led back through the crowd to the antechamber. His undyed cotton tunic hid any marks of the halberdier’s ministrations. The guards had been careful to avoid crippling damage; which perhaps was a mistake, Lysaer thought. The bastard’s insufferably remote expression remained unchanged.

  Except to glance at the king, Arithon spoke without altering position. ‘The same sages also wrote that violence is the habit of the weak, the impotent and the fool.’ His final word was torn short as a guardsman kicked his ribs.

  The king laughed. ‘Then why did you leave Rauven, bastard? To become impotent, weak and foolish? Or did you blind and burn seven ships and their crews for sheer sport?’

  Again Arithon said nothing. Lysaer restrained an urge to curse. Something about the prisoner’s defiance rang false, as if, somehow, he sought to tune the king’s emotions to some unguessed at, deliberate purpose.

  ‘Speak!’ The king’s bearded features flushed in warning. ‘Shall I call the healer? Perhaps a second course of drugs would improve your manners.’

  Arithon spread his hands in a gesture that might have suppressed impatience. But Lysaer’s spurious hope that the prisoner’s control might be weakened died as Arithon dragged himself to his feet. His upturned face sticky with blood, he confronted the king. ‘I could talk the fish from the sea, your royal Grace. You would hear nothing but the reflection of your own spite.’ Forced to lift his voice over swelling anger from the galleries, Arithon finished. ‘Still, you would remain impotent, weak and a fool.’

  The king succumbed to fury. He shouted to the guardsmen, and mailed fists smashed Arithon to his knees. More blood spattered the tiles, while Amroth’s aristocracy vented its approval with cheers.

  Lysaer sat frozen through the uproar. Unsettled by the turn of events, his thoughts churned like a millrace. A halberd spun. Arithon’s head snapped with the impact. Black hair fanned over the toe of a guardsman’s boot. The man-at-arms laughed and pinned it beneath his heel. The next blow fell full on the prisoner’s exposed face, while onlookers howled their approval.

  Sickened by the violence, Lysaer was arrested by the sight of the prisoner’s outflung arm. The fine fingers were limp, relaxed. Memory of that same hand all splayed and stiffened with agony rose in the prince’s mind. Revelation followed. The odd calm which had puzzled Lysaer throughout was nothing else but indifference. Quite likely, Rauven’s training enabled Arithon to divorce his mind from his body; certainly now he felt no pain at all.

  The conclusion followed that the halberdiers might kill him. If death was the goal Arithon had striven with such cunning to achieve, this time no man could be blamed but the king. The feud would be ended in a messy, honourless tangle of animal savagery. Shamed to find himself alone with the decency for regret, the crown prince of Amroth rose sharply to leave. Yet before he could duck through a side door, a deafening crackle of sorcery exploded over the dais steps.

  A shadow appeared in the empty air. The blot darkened, then resolved into the image of a woman robed in the deep purple and grey worn by the Rauven sorcerers. With a horrible twist, Lysaer made out the fair features of his mother under the cowled hood. If Arithon chose to repeat his tactics from the sail-hold in full public view of the court, his malice had passed beyond limit. Alarmed for the integrity of the king, and this time in command enough to remember that his gift of light could banish such shadows, the crown prince reversed his retreat and shoved through the press of stupefied courtiers. Yet his dash for the throne was obstructed.

  Around him, the council members shook off surprise. A yammering cry erupted from the galleries. The king drove to his feet. The sceptre hurtled from his hand, passed clean through the apparition’s breast, and struck tile with a ringing scream of sound. The halberdiers abandoned Arithon; with levelled weapons they converged at a run to surround the ghostly image of the queen.

  ‘She’s only a sorcerer’s sending!’ From his pose of prostration on the floor, Arithon pitched his voice cleanly through the clamour. ‘An illusion threatens no one with harm. Neither can it be dispelled by armed force.’

  Lysaer was blocked by a well-meaning guard; slowly the panic subsided. Silence blanketed the chamber. The bastard rolled and pushed himself upright, while the king glared at the image of his wife, his face stamped with alarming and dangerous animosity.

  Arithon reached his feet. No guard restrained him as he moved against the drag of his chains to the base of the dais. Before the spectre of the queen, he stopped and spoke a phrase in the ancient language used still on Rauven. When the woman did not respond, Arithon tried again, his tone fiercely commanding.

  The image remained immobile. Taut with uncertainty, Lysaer watched as Arithon shifted his regard to the king. Wearily, the Master said, ‘The spell’s binding is keyed to another. I cannot unlock its message.’

  The king sat down abruptly. With an irritable word, he dispatched a page to retrieve his sceptre; and the sound of the royal voice brought the apparition to life.

  The queen tossed back her grey-bordered hood and spoke words that carried to the furthest recesses of the galleries. ‘To his Grace of Amroth, I bring word from Rauven. Flesh, bone, blood and mind, you are warned to treat my two sons as one.’

  The king stopped breathing. His florid features paled against the gold-stitched hanging at his back, and his ringed hands tightened into fists. He ignored the sceptre offered by the page as if the subjects who crowded his hall had suddenly ceased to exist. At length, his chest heaved and he replied, ‘What does Rauven threaten if I refuse?’

  The queen returned the quiet, secretive smile which even now haunted her husband’s dreams at night. ‘You should learn regret, my liege. Kill Arithon, and you murder Lysaer. Maim him, and you cripple your own heir likewise.’

  Chilled by apprehension, the crown prince ducked past the guard. He leaped the dais stair in a rush and knelt by his father’s knee. ‘This sorcery might be no threat from Rauven, but a ruse designed by the bastard.’

  His words went unregarded. The king acknowledged no advice, but answered only his past wife in words that smouldered with hatred. ‘And if your accursed offspring remains unblemished?’

  ‘Then the crown prince of Amroth will prosper also.’ Like a shadow excised by clean sunlight, the queen’s image vanished.

  The king’s brows knotted into a scowl. He snatched his sceptre from the page with unwarranted force, while an ominous mutter of anger arose from the assembled courtiers. Lysaer stood stunned through the uproar, his attention arrested by the sight of Arithon s’Ffalenn, all subterfuge gone from him. Surprise, and an emotion Lysaer could not place showed briefly on the prisoner’s battered face. Then a halberdier seized the Master’s bruised shoulder. Arithon started, rudely recalled to his circumstance.

  ‘Turn and hear your sentence, bastard,’ the guard said unpleasantly.

  Now frantic, Lysaer had no choice but to stand down. No advisor cared to question whether the sending was a wile of the Master’s, or a genuine ultimatum from Rauven; most showed deep disappointment that a vendetta which had raged through seven generations could be abando
ned in a few short seconds.

  The king leaned forward to speak. ‘Arithon s’Ffalenn, for the crime of piracy, in reprisal for seven ships and the lives of the men who crewed them, you will suffer exile through the Gate on the isle of Worldsend.’ The king clapped his hands, lips drawn taut with rage. ‘Return the bastard to confinement until escort and a ship can be arranged. Let me not set eyes on him again.’

  Halberdiers closed in, eclipsing Arithon’s dark head. Weapons held at the ready, they hurried the prisoner away through the tense, resentful stillness of a crowd whose hungers remained unsatisfied. Lysaer stood torn with uneasiness. Reprieve of any sort had seemed inconceivable, just a scant moment before. Afraid, suddenly, that events had turned precisely to the whim of the Master, the prince braced his composure and touched his father’s sleeve.

  ‘Was that wise?’ His blue eyes searched the face of the king, as he begged to be heard without prejudice. Whatever passed the Worldsend Gate’s luminescent portal never returned; not even the sorcerers could answer the enigma, and Rauven’s power was great. ‘What if Arithon’s exile becomes my own as well?’

  The king turned venomous eyes toward his eldest, fair-haired son, who right now bore unbearable resemblance to the traitorous sorceress who had borne him. ‘But I thought this sending was a ploy, engineered by the cunning of s’Ffalenn?’

  The prince stepped back in dismay. His warning had been heard; yet the moment was past, the sentence read. Little gain would result if he qualified what had already been ignored. In silence, the prince bowed and took his leave.

  The king’s bitter words echoed after him. ‘You worry for nothing, my prince. Rauven’s terms will be held to the letter. The s’Ffalenn bastard will go free without harm.’

  Ocean world Dascen Elur Left unwatched for five score years

  Shall shape from High Kings of Men Untried arts in unborn hands.

  These shall bring the Mistwraith’s bane, Free Athera’s sun again.

  Dakar’s prophecy of West Gate

  Third Age 5061

  Prelude

  On a high, windswept terrace at Rauven a robed man stirred from trance and opened troubled eyes.

  ‘The King of Amroth has chosen to banish Arithon through the Worldsend Gate,’ the listener announced to the high mage. Neither knew his words were overheard by a second mind incomprehensibly distant…

  In a world of fog-bound skies another sorcerer in maroon robes paused between dusty tiers of books. Misty, distracted eyes turned sharp and immediate as a falcon’s. Sethvir of the Fellowship had kept records at Althain Tower since the Mistwraith had overturned all order and banished sunlight five centuries earlier. Events sifted past his isolation like snowflakes beyond glass; as the fancy struck him, he penned them into manuscript and catalogued them for the archives. Although the listener’s phrase was one of thousands which intruded upon his thoughts hourly, the sorcerer focused his attention instantly to prove its origin.

  Power great enough to shatter mountains answered Sethvir’s will. Faultlessly directed, it bridged the unimaginable gulf between worlds and retrieved the vision of the starlit embrasure where a mage sat with a sword of unearthly beauty clenched between his hands. The blade bore patterns of silver inlay, and a spindle of green light blazed in a gem set at the hilt. The mage regarded the weapon with a raw expression of grief, while the clairvoyant tried vainly to comfort him.

  Sethvir recognized that blade. Memories of past events aligned like compass needles, pairing fact with circumstance whose significance shattered a calm that was legendary. Sethvir of the Fellowship whooped like a boy. In the time before the Mistwraith’s curse, that same weapon had been carried by an Atherian prince through the Worldsend Gates to the west. Three other royal heirs had fled with him, seeking sanctuary from a rebellion which threatened their lives. Then the Mistwraith’s conquest banished all sunlight; the Gates were directionally sealed on the promise of a madman’s prophecy, and the princes’ exile became permanent. Yet if the royal heirs had been abandoned to their fate, they had not been forgotten. At last, Sethvir beheld the first sign that the princes’ betrayal had not been in vain.

  The sorcerer released the image. Blue-green eyes softened with a reverie that masked keen thought. The mage who held the sword had also seemed no stranger; Sethvir himself had trained the man’s ancestor in the foundational arts of power. Only one possible interpretation fitted such coincidence: the sorcerer witnessed the birthpangs of the great West Gate Prophecy, the one which forecast the defeat of the Mistwraith and the return of Athera’s banished sunlight.

  Sethvir’s exuberance drove him to run from the library. Disturbed air raised dust from the shelves as he banged through the door and raced up the stairwell beyond; but his thought moved faster still, spanning a distance of leagues to deliver the news to his colleagues in the Fellowship of Seven.

  Interlude

  In another place, amid the weedy tangle of a fog-shrouded field, water dripped sullenly down the stems of last summer’s bracken.

  ‘I bring news of Dascen Elur,’ said an intrusive, familiar voice.

  Dakar the Mad Prophet started in surprise where he sat, drunk and soaked to the skin. A sigh escaped his bearded lips. Luck was a witch, to have abandoned him with the ale jug barely emptied. Dakar rolled sour, cinnamon eyes toward the sorcerer who approached. He tried to forestall the inevitable. ‘The prince who returns will be s’Ilessid, or I drink only water for the next five years,’ he announced with slurred finality.

  The sorcerer, who was Asandir of the Fellowship of Seven, stopped still in his grey tunic and blue cloak. Wind ruffled silver hair over features that split with amusement. ‘You speak of the West Gate Prophecy?’ His tone was deceptively polite.

  Dakar felt his stomach heave, and cursed silently. Either he was too sober to handle fear of the reprimand he knew must come, or he was too drunk to master the urge to be sick. Asandir was seldom lenient with his apprentices. Nevertheless, Dakar managed a sloppy grin. ‘“Ocean world Dascen Elur, Left unwatched for five score years…”’ he recited, obligingly quoting himself.

  Crisply, Asandir stole the following lines. ‘“Shall shape from High Kings of Men, Untried arts in unborn hands.”’ Hands capable of restoring order to a world that had known barbarous dissolution, decadence and blighted, misty weather for half an age. Asandir smiled, tolerant still. ‘But the foreordained hands are unborn no longer, my prophet. The time of deliverance is at hand.’

  The reference took a muddled moment to sink in. When Dakar caught on, he crowed and flopped backwards into a milkweed thicket. Pods exploded, winnowing a flurry of seeds. These were not fluffy white with clean health, but musted with the mildews of sunless damp endlessly fostered. ‘Where?’ demanded Dakar, and followed immediately with, ‘Who? s’Ahelas, s’Ellestrion, s’Ffalenn, or better, because I’ve a whopping wager, s’Ilessid?’

  But Asandir’s lapse into levity ended. ‘Up with you. We leave for West Gate at once.’

  Dakar inhaled milkweed seeds and sneezed. ‘Who? I’ve a right to know. It’s my prophecy,’ and he grunted as Asandir’s boot prodded his ribs.

  ‘Come with me and see, my sotted seer. I just heard from Sethvir. The Worldsend Gate out of Dascen Elur was breached only this morning. If your s’Ilessid is on his way, he currently suffers the ninety and nine discomforts of the Red Desert. Assuming he survives, that leaves us five days to reach West Gate.’

  Dakar moaned. ‘No liquor, no ladies, and a long nasty ride with a headache.’ He scrambled awkwardly to his feet, a short, plump man with a clever face and seed-down snagged like feathers in his stiff red beard.

  Asandir appraised him with a stare that raised sweat on cheek and temple. ‘No s’Ilessid, and you’re pledged to five years’ sobriety.’

  ‘Next time remind me to swallow my tongue with my ale,’ murmured Dakar. But the phrase held no rancour. Behind heavy lids, his cinnamon eyes gleamed with excitement. At last the wait would end. Through West Gate would come a desce
ndant of Athera’s royal houses, and with him wild, unknown talents. ‘“These shall bring the Mistwraith’s bane, Free Athera’s sun again.”’ Grapes would sweeten again under a cleared sky and the vintner’s vats would no longer turn spoiled and sour…Dakar chuckled and hastened toward the dripping eaves of the tavern stables.

  Agelessly sure, Asandir fell into step beside him. The austere fall of his cloak and bordered tunic offered sharp contrast to the stained russet which swathed Dakar’s rotund bulk.

  ‘Prudence, my prophet,’ the sorcerer rebuked. ‘The results of prophecies often resolve through strangely twisted circumstance.’ But if Asandir was yet aware that the promised talents were split between princes who were enemies with blood debts of seven generations, he said nothing.

  Three Worlds

  At Amroth Castle, a king celebrates the exile of his most bitterly hated enemy, but fails to notice the absence of his own heir until too late…

  In a dusty hollow between dunes of rust-coloured sand, twisted trees shade the ivy-choked basin of a fountain from the heat of a scarlet sun…

  A world away from fountain and wasteland, an enchantress observes an image of a sorcerer and a prophet who ride in haste through fog, and droplets fly from the bracken crushed beneath galloping hooves…

  III. EXILE

  Who drinks this water

  Shall cease to age five hundred years

  Yet suffer lengthened youth with tears

  Through grief, death’s daughter.

  inscription, Five Century Fountain