Janny Wurts - The Curse of the Mistwraith

Plunging through woods toward the grotto where the women and young hide for safety, Arithon, Jieret and eleven clansmen hear screams and male shouting cut off as a burst of light shears through the trees; lost in a ground-shaking report of fell thunder is Arithon’s abject denial, ‘ Lysaer, oh Ath, Lysaer, no !’

In the vale to the west of Tal Quorin, a shadow-wrought barrier ward shatters and lifts, which leaves half a company of Etarra’s beleaguered garrison fighting mad and unimpeded to regroup and engage the handful of clan enemies who no longer can shelter behind sorceries to inflict damages and death with impunity…

XVIII. CULMINATION

‘She went not to wed,

nor to comfort or rest,

But to free the dazed dead,

and to reclothe cold flesh

in fair flowers.’

Last stanza,

ballad of the Princess of Falmuir

Thunder cracked the air to whirlwinds as bolts of light ripped the grotto in sheets that immolated trees to flayed skeletons. On protected ground some distance from the rimrocks, checked by flares etched like lightning through gaps in forest greenery, Arithon caught the back of Jieret’s brigandine. In a despair too horrorstruck for expression, he yanked the boy cold from his run and bundled him into an embrace. Around their locked forms, the coruscation flared and died. Gusts spent themselves to a fall of unmoored leaves, while echoes raged on in vibrations that slapped and slammed through Tal Quorin’s chain of ravines. Arithon pressed his cheek to red hair, while under his tight hands the orphan he had sworn bloodpact to protect convulsed into sobs against his shoulder.

As clansmen they had outstripped in their rush caught back up, nothing could be done except end their hope quickly. ‘It’s over. We’re too late. Stay here.’

The reverberations from the blast rumbled and faded into quiet. Arithon stared unseeing as three older men caught back a teenager whose berserk rage impelled him to plunge ahead toward the grotto regardless.

Held arm locked and struggling, the young scout pealed wild protest to his prince. ‘They can’t all be killed, some were sword-trained.’

Arithon, icy, cut him off. ‘They are dead, every one. You can’t help them.’

No one could: the brutality of Jieret’s vision had been graphic, of bodies tossed and charred, flash-burned in an instant to flaked carbon and bones crisped beyond all recognition. To the scout still driven to argue, Arithon said baldly, ‘It’s your clansmen we’ll have to save now.’

Against him, Jieret moved impatiently. ‘Our liege speaks truth.’ Though muffled by the cloth of his prince’s sleeve, the boy’s dull pronouncement was still clear enough to be heard. ‘I had Sight. None in the grotto survived.’

The scout subsided to stunned quiet and guarded companions let him go. In response to Jieret’s push, Arithon also loosened his arms. He cupped the boy’s chin in the hand not burdened by Alithiel and gave him a searching study.

Jieret had seen, in merciless, involuntary prescience; three sisters burned and one forced, and a mother lying bloody in dead leaves. The dream’s memory stamped his child’s face with a hardness that might not, now, ever leave him.

‘I would have spared you, if I could,’ Arithon said in a voice so racked, not a man in the company overheard him.

Jieret looked up into green eyes that held no barriers against him. Offered depths and mysteries whose difficulties were beyond him, he could answer just one shared pain. ‘My liege lord, behold, you have done so.’

Arithon’s touch jerked away. ‘Ath,’ he said on a strangled note of pure rage. ‘Just don’t let me close with my half-brother.’

To the scouts who saw only rebuff, uncomprehending in scope and viciousness just how far Desh-thiere’s curse might turn him, the Master of Shadow said plainly, ‘Run. Back downstream and find Caolle. Keep the men out of the canyons.’

‘I’ll go.’ The younger scout pushed forward, desperate to distance grief with action. ‘On the way, I can recall the boys.’

Jieret made a sound in protest; pressed past tact, Arithon shook his head. ‘Forget them. Just go straight to your captain.’

‘ Forget them !’ Raw with emotion, the scout rushed him. ‘What are you saying?’

‘That they’re beyond help.’ Not a quiver of reflex changed Arithon’s stance. Weariness tautened his face, and he seemed not to care whether or not he was assaulted. He said, ‘I’m sorry. Just go now and stop thinking.’

The scout drew up short of striking him because Jieret interposed himself between. Shamed by the boy’s stiff loyalty, and by the disbelief that paralysed his fellows, he regarded his prince, who had drawn, as he warned, the might of Etarra to the clans. ‘Sorry! Sorry isn’t enough.’ He spun away and blindly sprinted.

‘Don’t mind him.’ White-haired and scarred to stoic toughness, the scout Madreigh offered brusque sympathy. ‘That boy’s not badhearted, only sore. Next month he was to marry.’ The others were content to leave him as spokesman as he tactfully fingered his sword edge. ‘We should send another runner after Steiven?’

Arithon moved not at all, but only closed tortured eyes.

‘Ath!’ said Madreigh. ‘Forget I ever asked.’ Then, in a queer catch of breath he caught Arithon’s wrist and clamped down. ‘Trouble’s here.’

A metallic click cut the quiet. The scout just sent off reached a distance of fifty paces then pitched in a spinning fall, a crossbow bolt through his neck.

Arithon broke free and flung Jieret violently behind him. ‘Boy, stay out of this, as your sovereign, I command you.’ His sword whistled up to guard-point, while he backed behind the thickest tree to hand, an old beech raked rough where bucks had shed their summer velvet. He pinned Steiven’s heir with his body as shield, while the clan scouts fell in around him to enclose the boy.

Their rush to reach the beleaguered women could have drawn them to spring the perfect trap. Hidden troops could lie anywhere in ambush. The crossbows were their greatest liability; shadows their surest defence. But Arithon dared not try his gift openly lest he pinpoint his presence to Lysaer, and invite an uncontrolled confrontation with the compulsions of Desh-thiere’s curse.

Three clansmen armed with recurves and full quivers began to climb the tree to snipe for the crossbowman. Arithon gave the shortest one a boost. Fast and furiously thinking, he said, ‘They have quarrels, why wait? Why don’t they drop us where we stand?’

‘They’re bounty-men.’ Madreigh showed a grim flash of teeth. ‘Arrow kills make fights over scalp claims.’

Quite probably the headhunters’ best marksmen would still be stationed on the rimrocks, or deep in the chasms of the grotto, where orders would shortly recall them.

‘The bolt had red fletching,’ Jieret added.

‘It’s Pesquil’s league that’s against us,’ another scout picked up explanation. ‘We’ll be surrounded already. They’ll attack us with numbers, hand to hand.’ He jerked his stubbled chin toward the exquisite weapon held steady in his liege lord’s grip. ‘I hope you’re good with that.’

‘We’ll know in a moment.’ Arithon withheld encouragement that his sorceries might offer them salvation. Any ward against combined assailants required time and concentration to arrange. No moment was given for response. From the glen that led toward the rimrocks, shadows flitted, and occasional chance gleams of metal. These fits and starts of movement resolved into a wave of charging foes. The instant before they closed, Arithon noticed worse: shouts, then the distant clash of steel as a skirmish broke out in the river gully farther downstream.