Janny Wurts - Curse of the Mistwraith

The party rounded a bend where the road snaked beneath an overhang, and the talk suddenly died. A driving clang of hoofbeats echoed down from the rise ahead. A horse approached through the mist at a headlong gallop that begged for a fatal fall. The bridleless chestnut flung up its nose and neighed.

‘Hold here!’ called Asandir.

The next instant, a riderless grey stallion thundered into view through the fog. He clattered downslope in lathered, wild-eyed terror, his reins flying, broken, from the bit rings. The smoke-dark mane was fouled and dripping blood. Dakar’s paint caught the scent first. It spun and tried to bolt. Arithon cursed with eloquent force and fought his shying dun; Lysaer stepped hurriedly to aid him.

Astride the quivering but obedient chestnut, Felirin recognized the martial style of the runaway animal’s tack. ‘Hey, that’s one of the horses from the caravan guard!’

Only the black that bore Asandir seemed immune to alarm. Under the sorcerer’s guidance it advanced in spell-wrought, nerveless calm, swung across the road and blocked the way. The riderless animal checked in a sliding scrabble of hooves, then stood with lifted tail, blowing hard and rolling white-rimmed eyes. Asandir dismounted, slowly. He held out his hand and spoke a word, and the frightened horse appeared to settle. Then, his own black left unattended, the sorcerer advanced and with perfect lack of ceremony captured the stallion’s bridle.

‘Maybe he should have a turn at Arithon’s dun,’ Lysaer suggested. But no one appeared to be listening.

Dakar had lost his impertinence and Felirin showed open alarm. As Asandir approached, leading both the black and the stallion, all could see a shallow, ragged gash in the animal’s neck. Deeper marks clawed through the seat of the saddle, and bloodstains marred the leather that had not been left by the horse.

‘Daelion Fatemaster,’ Lysaer swore. ‘What sort of predator caused that?’

‘You don’t want to hear,’ said Felirin. He raised his voice and called to Asandir. ‘There are Khadrim in the pass, yes?’

‘I fear so.’ The sorcerer halted the horses. With quick fingers he unbuckled the reins from the black’s bridle and hitched them to the caught stallion’s bit. Then he cut off the ends of the broken pair and offered the animal to the bard. ‘I want everyone mounted.’

The remark included Arithon, who looped his reins over the dun’s ears, while Felirin slid off Lysaer’s chestnut and accepted possession of the grey. The bard asked, and received permission to leave his lyranthe where it was; no sense in trusting a strange horse with an awkward and unaccustomed burden. ‘This was the guard captain’s mount,’ the bard said ruefully as he adjusted the leathers for his much longer legs. ‘This fellow is probably trained handily for war but damn, his saddle was made for a man with narrow buttocks. What little stuffing the Khadrim might have left has blown away on the wind.’

‘Sit down too hard on the armour studs and you’ll find yourself singing soprano,’ Dakar retorted smugly.

The bard shot him a dark look and dabbed at drying bloodstains before he set foot in the stirrup and mounted. ‘At the end of this day’s ride, I’ll be thankful to count only bruises.’ He settled his reins and addressed Asandir. ‘I presume we’re going to be crazy and continue on, not turn back?’

The sorcerer nodded. His gaze fixed on the half-brothers through a brief, measuring moment. ‘There could be danger, but the risk will stay manageable if nobody loses their head. Keep together, whatever happens. Arithon, when I tell you, and only when, draw your blade.’

The Mad Prophet slapped his forehead. ‘Ath!’

Asandir’s eyes went wide with incredulity. ‘Dakar! You scatterbrain, don’t tell me you’d forgotten the sword?’

‘I did.’ The Mad Prophet returned a pouting scowl. ‘Small wonder, with the rest of you conspiring to rig my bets.’

The sorcerer disgustedly turned and remounted his black. ‘Remind me never, ever, to rely on your memory in a pinch.’ He noticed and answered Arithon’s look without pause to turn his head. ‘Boy, your sword was forged ten and a half thousand years past, expressly for war against the Khadrim.’

‘War,’ interjected Lysaer. ‘Then the creatures are intelligent?’

Arithon barely heard Asandir’s affirmative reply; he ignored Felirin’s curious query and the hilt which protruded from the scabbard at his hip with absolute, icy detachment. Whatever curiosity he might once have held for his inherited weapon, he had never owned an inkling that the blade might be so ancient. That he carried spell-wrought steel was undeniable, though the nature of its powers had escaped the wisdom of Dascen Elur’s mages. The chance the sword might bind him further to a duty he wanted no part of became just another weight upon his heart.

Having lost his royal inheritance, Lysaer would treasure the chance to bear a great talisman; Arithon caught the suppressed flash of envy in his brother’s blue eyes. Yet before the Master could offer his last true possession as a gift, Asandir came back with rebuttal.

‘You can never relinquish that blade, except to your own blood heir.’

Arithon knew an inward surge of protest, a fleeting, angry impression that he had cause to take exception to the sorcerer’s words. Yet as had happened before when Felirin had pressured him over music, the Master could not quite frame the concept. As he tried, his thoughts went vague, and his perceptions scattered, disoriented. By now he had learned that if he stopped fighting back, the confusion would quickly pass; the unreliable dun distracted him sufficiently in any case. Yet each successive incident left Arithon less satisfied with Asandir’s explanation in the woodcutter’s cottage. The gaps in his memory were not natural: that Dakar watched him with predatory speculation each time he recovered lent evidence to justify suspicion. Arithon guessed some telling fact had been withheld from him. Before he could be cornered in a position he could not escape, he determined to find out what and why.

Beyond the draw where they captured the runaway horse the road steepened sharply. The crags on either side reared up to ever more jagged promontories, their lofty, looming summits lost in mist. Patches of early snow mottled the northern faces, cut by rockfalls and boulder-choked ravines where vegetation clawed desperate foothold. Here the slate paving showed the abuse of harsh winters, split and heaved crooked by frosts. The horses picked carefully over uneven footing and the air took on the reek of cinders. When they rounded a switched-back curve, they saw why.

The stud balked, snorting with alarm. Ahead, between the smoking wreckage that remained of two dozen wagons, the drovers of the caravan who had ousted Felirin lay strewn across the way like dirtied rags. Man and mount and cart-mule, there were no survivors. Corpses littered the ledge. Charred clothing clung to exposed bones and whatever flesh remained had been mauled to ribbons by something not interested in hunting for the sake of sustenance. Lysaer cupped a hand to his mouth, sickened by the sight of an eviscerated woman and a horse with half its hindquarters seared to stinking, blackened meat. Something with monstrous jaws had snapped the head off the neck.

Stung into memories of strife and battle by the bodies of so many slain, Arithon looked quickly beyond. What drained the blood from his face was something black and scaled that lurked, half-glimpsed in the mist: a creature straight out of legend, with silvery, leathered wings that extended an impossible sixteen spans from the ridge of the armoured breastbone to each outstretched, claw-spurred tip.

‘Stay close,’ commanded Asandir. He reached across one-handed and calmed Felirin’s sidling grey with a touch, then scanned the sky with worried eyes.