Janny Wurts - The Curse of the Mistwraith

Lysaer took his leave early, pleading weariness. He retired to the small chamber with all its comforts, but hours passed before he undressed and went to bed, and the peace of sound sleep did not visit him.

Confrontation

The hour grew late. Candles burned low in the hall by the time Arithon plucked the closing bars to his last dance jig of the evening. Although admiring listeners still surrounded him and the exultant flush remained high on his face, he silenced the rich tones of Elshian’s instrument with something very near to relief.

‘Another drinking song!’ called a roisterer from the back.

Arithon shook his head and set the lyranthe gently down on the boards of an empty trestle. ‘My fingers are shot, my voice long gone and I’ve a kink in my back from too much sitting.’

‘Have a beer then,’ a younger woman invited.

‘What, and spoil my head for clear thought?’ Arithon rose, grinning with the abandon of a thief. ‘I’ve swallowed enough to ruin me already. Too much praise has done the rest. Have some mercy and let me retire while I still have the wits to find my bed.’

‘She’d likely show you to hers,’ somebody quipped from the sidelines.

But the admirers nearest at hand perceived the musician’s weariness. Reluctantly they parted to give him passage between the bare trestles, the last few occupied chairs and the boys who cleared away goblets and gathered up the linens from the feast. Though the clansmen of Camris had entertained lavishly, there were no drunks on the floors. The celebrants who lingered in the late hours were alert enough that an alarm from a messenger could see their finery exchanged for weapons at short notice. Quietly, unobtrusively, Arithon crossed the expanse before the arch. He disappeared into the gloom of the outer hallway without drawing Maenalle’s notice; but slumped in a heap with one hand still curled around an ale mug, Dakar opened one eye. He saw Asandir break off his discourse with a clan chieftain and take purposeful strides toward the door.

‘I thought so,’ the Mad Prophet mumbled through his knuckles. ‘Our Master of Shadow is going to catch an ungodly dressing down.’ Dakar licked his lips and smiled before he slipped back into stupor; but his self-righteous prediction proved slightly premature.

Asandir did not follow Arithon immediately, but visited the quarters of Tysan’s prince for a lengthy interval first. Afterward, as the winds sang cold off the heights and the mists of Desh-thiere obscured the early blush of coming dawn, the sorcerer let himself out to find Arithon.

The Teir’s’Ffalenn was alone at the horse-pens, his back to the inside rails and his hands busy working tangles from the black forelock of the dun. Asandir approached without sound across the compound of trampled snow. For all his care, he was noticed. Arithon spoke as the sorcerer paused behind his shoulder.

‘Elshian’s lyranthe should remain here.’ Pain threaded a voice worn rough by extended hours of performance. Too spent for nuance, Arithon added, ‘Better than I, you know how little she will be played.’

Asandir folded his arms on the top rail of the fence. Cloakless and hoodless in the cold, the wind stirred his silver hair and the night-darkened fabric of his tunic. ‘Much can change in the course of five centuries.’

Arithon at this moment preferred to forget the legacy left him by Davien’s enchanted fountain: he shrugged. ‘Quite a lot has not changed at all in the course of five centuries.’

At which point, directly confronted with the purpose of his visit, Asandir abandoned tolerance. ‘Did you believe me unaware of what happened in the loft of the Ravens’ stableyard? Or that, the other day in the pass of Orlan, you baited Grithen and his scouts with intent to force my hand and expose your half-brother’s inheritance?’

‘Lysaer has what he longs for: a crown and the cause of truth and justice.’ The dun blew softly through her nostrils, stepped back, and left Arithon’s hands empty. The cold made him wish he had his gloves.

Asandir seemed impervious to the wind’s cruel bite. ‘Let me tell you a thing, Teir’s’Ffalenn. You were left to your devices because the mindblock I set was never intended to bend your will.’

‘Was it not?’ Arithon retaliated fast and hard as a blow. ‘Then why bother setting any ward at all?’

The sorcerer did not rise to anger. Measured and wholly mild, he said, ‘Would you warm a man just tortured by fire before an open hearth? The memories of your failures in Karthan were all too hurtfully recent.’

Arithon flinched. The sorcerer pressed on, remorseless, though he never once sharpened his voice. ‘Maenalle was to receive the Prince of Tysan today. The Fellowship had already decided. She would have been informed of his lineage in private, that Lysaer not learn of his heritage until he had experienced the atrocity of the mayors firsthand. Except that your meddling with events caused your half-brother an unpardonable shock, and Grithen has been sent in shame to the camps in the low country. He may be denied his inheritance.’

Now Arithon went still as fire-hardened stone.

Asandir resumed, quietly precise as the tap a gemcutter might use to shear diamond. ‘Grithen is the last living heir to the late Earl of Erdane. Since his two siblings died on a headhunter’s spears, yesterday’s affray in the pass could disrupt a succession that has endured since the years before the uprising.’

Arithon did not leap to claim the implied responsibility. Inflectionless as the windborne scrape of loose ice, he said, ‘You’re telling me things that might all have been prevented.’

‘If the Fellowship were to use power to compromise a man’s destiny, yes.’ Asandir regarded the knuckles left at rest on the midnight cloth of his sleeves while Arithon absorbed implications: that his fate was neither absolute nor proscribed. That he might cross the corral, saddle the dun mare, ride out and not be pursued, except by townsmen who mistook him for a clanborn barbarian. Or he might take up the superlative lyranthe given him by Maenalle and study under her bards in the lowlands to the advanced senility of old age.

Arithon faced around and met the sorcerer’s eyes, which were clear as mirrors and as matchlessly serene. ‘You would let me go that simply?’

‘I would.’ The sorcerer added, ‘But let us be accurate. Would you let yourself?’

Struck on a nerve left raw since Dascen Elur, Arithon could no longer curb bitterness. ‘Dharkaron, Ath’s Avenger might show more mercy.’

‘Who will speak for the clansfolk of Rathain?’ Asandir said, a dark and terrible weight of sorrow behind his words. ‘For them, what mercy will there be when the sun returns, and the townsmen order killings caused by fear of a king who is not there?’

Arithon made a sound halfway between a sob and a curse. The biting sarcasm he used to deflect unwanted inquiries would not serve, but only drive through Asandir’s tranquillity like a spear cast through seawater: passion dispersed without trace by the infinite. The sorcerer watched his struggle with neither cruelty nor challenge, but only an understanding as steady and deathless as sunlight.

Through a throat racked by tears he refused to acknowledge, Arithon said, ‘You give me Karthan, all over again.’

‘ The man would not stand here, who did not choose Karthan first. ’

‘Oh, Ath,’ Arithon let go a twisted laugh. ‘The bitterest enemy is myself, then.’ For the open-handed freedom set before him was no choice at all: just the repeat of a fate poisoned through by an unasked for burden of human suffering.

‘I asked only that you travel with me to Althain Tower,’ Asandir said. ‘Wherever else will you find the guidance to reconcile your powers as a mage with the responsibilities of your birthright?’ The compassion in his tone was a terrible thing, a whip and a scourge upon a mind already mauled by the quandaries of duty. Arithon spun away, weeping regardless, and cursing the light hand of his tormentor. One threat, one compulsion, one word spoken with intent to bind would have given him opening to escape.