Janny Wurts - The Curse of the Mistwraith

His command allowed no loophole for refusal; afraid to provoke an explosion, Elaira chose not to try. ‘The five northeastern principalities on this continent were territories in vassalage to Rathain, whose liege lord once ruled at Ithamon.’ She shrugged wretchedly. ‘Since sovereignty of Athera passed from Paravians to men, the high king crowned there by the Fellowship has always, without exception, been s’Ffalenn.’

Arithon moved, not fast enough to mask a flinch. He ripped the rag from his head as though it were metal and heavy, and an anguish he could not bury needled his reply to sarcasm. ‘Don’t tell me. The people of Rathain are subject to misery and strife and Ithamon is a ruin in a wasteland.’

In point of fact he was correct; but even rattled to shaking, Elaira was not fool enough to say so. There had to be a reason why Asandir had kept knowledge of this prince’s inheritance a close secret.

Arithon arose from the hay. He paced in agitated strides across the loft and barely a board creaked to his passing. At length he spun about, his desperation sharp as unsheathed steel. ‘What about Lysaer?’

Elaira tried for humour. ‘Oh well, there’s a kingdom waiting for him too. In fact, we’re sitting in the middle of it.’

‘Ah.’ Arithon’s brows tipped up. ‘The banner in the Ravens. And perhaps such unloving royal subjects were the reason for Asandir’s reticence?’

Careful to suppress other more volatile suppositions, the enchantress nodded placating agreement. She watched the s’Ffalenn prince absorb this and wondered what enormity she had caused, what balance had shifted while Arithon went from tense to perceptively crafty.

‘I can keep this fiasco from Asandir,’ he said in answer to the very thought that had made her bite her lip.

Elaira widened her eyes. ‘You?’ Merciful Ath, had he failed to perceive the awful strength in the ward she had accidentally lent him leverage to unbind? ‘How? Are you crazy?’

Arithon inclined his head in the precise direction of the Ravens, though the barn wall before him had no window. ‘Lady, how did you get across the taproom?’

Elaira reached up and smothered the light of her jewel in time to hide her expression. In the taproom, diverted by fighting, he could not have seen through her glamour.

A breath of air brushed her face out of darkness: Arithon was moving again, restless, and his words came turbulently fast. ‘Asandir won’t have expected me to break through a block of that magnitude.’ Hay rustled as he gestured, perhaps with remembered impatience. ‘Sithaer’s furies, I’d been trying to achieve its release for long enough. Trouble was, if I pushed too hard, I went unconscious.’

Elaira turned white as she connected that the banner in the taproom had initiated Arithon’s compulsive moment of unsteadiness. ‘I wonder why the sorcerer didn’t tell you?’

Hands caught her wrists; deceptively and dangerously gentle they pulled her fingers away from the jewel. Light sprang back and revealed Arithon on one knee before her, his expression determinedly furious. ‘Because I happen not to wish the burdens that go with a throne!’

He let her go, shoved away as though he sensed her Koriani perceptions might draw advantage from his stillness. ‘Kings all too often get their hands tied. And for what? To keep food in the mouths of the hungry? Hardly that, because the starving will feed themselves, if left alone. No. A bad king revels in his importance. A good one hates his office. He spends himself into infirmity quashing deadly little plots to make power the tool of the greedy.’

Elaira looked up into green eyes, frightened by the depth of their vehemence. She argued anyway. ‘Your friend Lysaer would say that satisfaction can be found in true justice.’

Arithon stood up and made a gesture of wounding appeal. ‘Platitudes offer no succour, my lady. There’s very little beauty in satisfaction and justice rewards nobody with joy.’ He lowered his hands and his voice dropped almost to a whisper. ‘As Felirin the Scarlet would tell you.’

He referred to the minstrel in the Ravens who had abetted his narrow escape. Not the least bit taken in by his show of surface excuses, Elaira drew her own conclusion. Arithon had slipped his sorcerer chaperone and ventured abroad in Erdane looking expressly to provoke. He might not have known the townsmen’s pitch of antagonism; or he might have simply not cared. His wildness made him contorted as knot-work to decipher.

In a typically rapid shift of mood, he managed a civilized recovery. ‘I owe you, lady enchantress. You spared me some rather unpleasant handling, and for that you have my thanks. Someday I hope to show my gratitude.’

Which was prettily done, and sincere, but hardly near the point. ‘I saved your life,’ Elaira said in bald effort to shake his complacency.

He just looked at her, his clothing in disarray and his face a bit worn, and his reticence underhandedly reproachful. He had not been defenceless. The pot-hook was only a diversion, since he had both training and shadow-mastery carefully held in reserve. Touched by revelation, Elaira saw that indeed he had not been backed against the passage to the pantry by any accident but design.

Beginning to appreciate his obstinacy, Elaira choked back a snort of laughter. ‘You were on course for the midden in any case?’

Arithon smiled. ‘As the possibility presented itself, yes. Have you lodgings? I’d like to see you back safely.’

‘Oh, that’s priceless,’ Elaira gasped. Her eyes were watering. She hoped it was only the dust. ‘You’re a damned liability in this town.’

‘In any town.’ The Shadow Master paid her tribute with a bow. ‘You shouldn’t worry over things that I’m too lazy to bother with.’

‘That’s the problem exactly.’ Elaira allowed him to take her hand and draw her up to her feet. His strength was indeed deceptive, and he seemed to release her fingers with reluctance. She said, ‘I can find my way just fine. The question is, can you?’

She did not refer to the wards that concealed the location of the seeress’s house where he lodged.

Her deliberately oblique reference did not escape him. ‘Asandir knows I went out for air.’ Arithon made a rueful face at the odoriferous stains on his clothing. ‘There are several suitably smelly puddles in the alley near Enithen Tuer’s. And dozens of hazardous obstacles. A man prone to odd fits of dizziness might be quite likely to trip.’

He reached out and began with light hands to pluck the loose hay from her hair. That moment, when all care for pretence was abandoned, the junior initiate on lane watch stumbled clumsily across Elaira’s presence.

The enchantress stiffened as the energies of her distant colleague passed across her, identified her and responded with a jab of self-righteous indignation. The backlash hurt. ‘Sithaer’s furies, not now!’ Elaira capped her dismay with a fittingly filthy word.

Taken aback, Arithon stepped away. ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘You did nothing,’ Elaira assured, her mind only half on apology. Apparently there were worse offences than visiting sorcerers of the Fellowship, or even engaging in card games with disreputable apprentice prophets: by the repercussions sensed in the background, Elaira understood that speaking with princes in haylofts after midnight was undeniably one of them. Yet to explain the particulars of her crisis would take by far too much time. ‘I have a scrape of my own to work out of – my personal version of Asandir.’

Arithon grinned and melted unobtrusively into the shadows. ‘Then I commend you to subterfuge and a fast, soft landing in a midden.’

She heard his soft step reach the ladder.