Janny Wurts - Curse of the Mistwraith

As the hills steepened and the winds of increased altitude caused the company to huddle closer to the fire for warmth, more than once Felirin caught Arithon studying his hands as he played. After days of cleverly rebuffed questions Arithon’s fixation with the lyranthe was the only opening the bard had managed to discern. Inspired by a fractional movement of the dark-haired man’s fingers as a fallen log fanned up the flames, Felirin silenced his strings in mid-stanza and rubbed his knuckles on his jerkin. ‘Damn the weather,’ he said.

Dakar predictably complained. ‘You aren’t stopping, Felirin, not so soon. Better we freeze to a misplayed tune than abide our sobriety in silence.’

The bard feigned a yawn to hide his smile. ‘Arithon plays,’ he said in sly suggestion. ‘Why not ask him for a song?’

‘Arithon?’ Dakar puffed up his cheeks. ‘Play music?’ He darted a glance to either side; with Asandir off to check the picket-lines, he dared a whisper in conspiracy. ‘I’ll bet you silver he doesn’t.’

Felirin watched through peripheral vision and saw Arithon become utterly still. Lysaer sat up and took interest. ‘How much would you stake me?’ asked the bard.

The Mad Prophet laced his hands across his paunch. ‘Ten royals. Double as much if I’m wrong.’

Felirin chuckled, and still smiling, extended his instrument toward the cloaked figure to his left. ‘Indulge me. Give us a tune.’

Arithon returned a dry chuckle. ‘I’ll establish your mastery by contrast,’ he threatened. But Felirin had plotted to a nicety: after days of unmerited provocation, Arithon took his chance to humble Dakar.

His movements as he lifted the soundboard to his shoulder were recognizably reverent. Arithon poised tentative fingers, sounded a shower of practised harmonics, and found an interval off. He corrected the pitch, neatly and precisely. When he looked up, his eyes were laughing.

Dakar muttered something stinging concerning close-mouthed brigands who betrayed a comrade to wasted silver. Lysaer politely held back comment, and Felirin silently congratulated his powers of intuitive perception. Then all three of them lost track of surface thoughts as Arithon started to play.

The first chords rang across the firelit dell with a power of sheer captivation. Arithon tested and quickly found the instrument’s mettle; at once he broke his opening into an intricate theme that threaded, major to minor, in haunting sweeps across keys. By then no one remembered this magic had been instigated by an interchange of grudges and a bet.

Startled into rapt concentration, Felirin realized he had discovered a treasure. Whoever Arithon was, whatever his origins and his purpose in accompanying a sorcerer, he had been born with the natural gift to render song. There were rough patches in his fingering and fretwork that could be smoothed over with schooling; skilled guidance could ease some awkwardness in his phrasing. His voice lacked experience and tempering. But even through such flaws, the bard could appreciate his raw brilliance. With Lysaer and Dakar, his heart became transported from the discomforts of a drafty campsite and led on a soaring flight of emotion as a tale of two lovers unfolded like a jewel in the firelight.

Arithon stilled the strings at the end, and the spell shattered.

‘Young man,’ the bard demanded. ‘Play again.’

Arithon shook his head. ‘Collect your winnings from Dakar.’ If he had regrets, they stayed invisible as he slipped the instrument back into the lap of its owner. ‘Your lyranthe is very fine. She plays herself.’

‘That’s foolishness!’ Felirin reached out more demandingly than he intended, and caught hold of Arithon’s sleeve. The wrist beneath his touch was trembling. To ease what he took for self-consciousness, the bard added, ‘You’re gifted enough to apprentice.’

Arithon shook his head and moved to disengage, but Felirin’s grip tightened angrily. ‘How dare you waste such rare talent? Can’t you accept your true calling?’

Green eyes flashed up, and almost – only Lysaer could recognize it – Arithon drew breath for rebuttal in the same vicious style he had used at his trial by Amroth’s council. Then confusion seemed to flicker behind his eyes. The Master looked away. He worked gently free of the bard’s fingers. ‘Daelion turns the Wheel. One cannot always have the choice.’

He arose, quietly determined to retire, and managed to avoid Asandir, returned from his check on the horses.

The bard turned his puzzlement on the sorcerer. ‘What did the lad mean by that?’

Asandir sat on the log that the Master had just left vacant and settled his dark cloak around his knees. ‘That these are troubled times for all of us, my friend. Arithon has the gift, none can doubt. But music cannot be his first calling.’

Dakar suggested hopefully that spirits could ease the most wretched of life’s disappointments. His quip was ignored. No one inclined toward light heartedness. Felirin abandoned the fireside to pack away his lyranthe, followed by the crestfallen prophet. Only Lysaer lingered. Aware of the steel beneath Asandir’s stillness, and unwarmed by the wind-fanned embers by his feet, the s’Ilessid recalled his half-brother’s reaction to a past, insensitive query. ‘ Never to go back to Karthan ’ Arithon had said in unresponsive wish to kill the subject. Lent fresh perspective by tonight’s discovery, his half-brother shared insight into a misery that no heroic calling could assuage. Some men had no use for the responsibilities of power and renown. The coming quest to suppress the Mistwraith that restored meaning to Lysaer’s life became a curse and a care for Arithon, whose gifted love for music must be sidelined.

Morning came. Hunched against a wind that whined through tossing branches, the party passed into the foothills of Tornir Peaks. The great trees of Westwood thinned in concert with the soil, and the road wound between stripped, rock-crowned promontories sliced by stony gullies. Sleet had fallen during the night, and the slate paving was icy in patches, treacherous even at a walk. Arithon led his flighty dun by the bridle. Lysaer flanked him on foot, while Felirin took a turn in the chestnut’s saddle.

The cold and the cheerless landscape buoyed no one’s spirits, but Dakar’s irrepressible tongue stayed unaffected. ‘Damn you for a thief, Felirin, I swear you conspired against me to win that bet last night.’

The bard twisted back and checked the ties which secured his lyranthe to the saddle for the third time since he had mounted. Balked yet by Arithon’s reticence, his reply came back clipped. ‘Forget the bet. Just buy me an ale when we get to Erdane.’

‘Now there speaks a guilty man,’ the Mad Prophet pronounced. He kicked his paint forward and set the dun dancing as he drew alongside the Master. ‘Did the two of you plan to split the take?’

Jerked half off his feet as his mare skittered sideways, Arithon returned a quick laugh. ‘Why bother? As I remember, I needed no rigged wagers to part the silver from your belt.’

Reminded of his mishap in the alley in West End, Dakar turned purple. He bent over his saddlebow and spoke so that Felirin could not hear. ‘You’ll pay for that.’

‘You say?’ Arithon brought the dun under control by rubbing her ear to distract her. When she settled he slapped her fondly and added a remark concerning slipshod spells.

Dakar deflated in moody silence.

‘You’ve made a clam of him,’ Lysaer observed with a smile. ‘Thank Ath. My ears were tired.’

But the friendliness in the comment did not warm. Apart from the others, and keenly wishing an hour of solitude to sort through troubled thoughts, Arithon strode at the dun’s shoulder while a round of banter designed to bait Dakar developed between Felirin and Lysaer.