Janny Wurts - The Curse of the Mistwraith

‘If we only knew where they had fled, we might shelter them,’ Traithe said on a clear note of anguish.

‘Desh-thiere caused their disappearance from the continent,’ Luhaine pointed out. ‘If the old races allow themselves to be found at all, the Mistwraith’s fall must come first.’

The last avenue of debate became Arithon’s royal inheritance. No longer able to follow nuance, Dakar hunched in a stupor in his chair. His head was beginning to pound and his stomach tightened with the first unpleasant symptoms of tienelle withdrawal. Through a haze of mounting discomfort, he gathered the Fellowship inclined toward freeing Arithon from obligation to Rathain’s throne. If schism between the half-brothers must occur, best the powers of sovereignty were not involved. Dakar lost the thread of concentration. Words whirled in and out of his pain-laced thoughts, unheeded. Hounded by rising nausea and dripping poisoned sweat, he knew he should rise and find drinking water. His mouth was bitter with the burnt taste of tienelle; his awareness rolled like a ship on oily billows, jumbled and buffeted by after-visions. No mage in the chamber was more surprised than he when the name of the outcast sorcerer whose works had engendered the rebellion fell through his thoughts like a stone.

Davien.

Dakar shoved straight as his gummy, clogged perception broke before a cold wave of prescience and prophecy claimed his tongue. Though churning sickness tugged at his gut, his words fell in solemn clarity on a sudden, arrested silence.

‘Davien the Betrayer shall hear no reason, nor bow to the Law of the Major Balance; neither shall the Fellowship be restored to Seven until the Black Rose grows wild in the vales of Daon Ramon.’

‘Black Rose!’ Sethvir shot upright, intent as a hunting falcon. ‘But none exists.’

‘There will be one,’ Dakar gasped, slammed by a second precognizance that blazed through him like lightning etched across darkness. ‘The briar will take root on the day that Arithon s’Ffalenn embraces kingship.’

A dismayed round of glances crossed the table; for the strands had not deviated on one point: that if Arithon were left to free will, he would live and die as a bard. Only under duress would he accept the sovereignty of Rathain, and not even then with sincerity.

‘Arithon’s freedom must be sacrificed,’ Traithe said. ‘The choice is a foregone conclusion.’

That moment, amid strained and unsettled apprehension shared between Fellowship sorcerers, Dakar gave way to the sickness brought on by the tienelle. Doubled over with dry heaves, he all but tumbled from his chair. By the time his spasms eased, he retained no memory of the prophecy, and confronted by disappointment at every turn he managed a dogged apology before illness rendered him speechless.

Unlikeliest of benefactors, it was Kharadmon who moved to the Mad Prophet’s side and eased his suffering. As Asandir ushered his ailing apprentice downstairs to bed, the remaining sorcerers grappled with the new prophecy like starving dogs thrown a marrowbone. The judgement and exile of Davien had been their most tragic expedient, and the disappearance of their seventh colleague, Ciladis, in his search for the Paravians had become their most mourned loss. The prophecy entangled with Dakar’s Black Rose offered the first tangible hope that the reverses that had disrupted the Third Age might one day be righted.

Traithe, least likely advocate of individual sacrifice, had spoken rightly. Even without the fates of the two absent sorcerers thrown into jeopardy, the loss of the old races could not be risked. By the time Asandir had returned from seeing Dakar safely settled, several distasteful resolutions had become final.

For the sake of Paravian survival the princes who held Desh-thiere’s bane between them would use their gifts to restore sunlight, regardless of the wars to follow; and Arithon would be crowned High King of Rathain at the trade city of Etarra, to open the channel of probability that gave rise to Dakar’s Black Rose Prophecy.

There remained only the task of setting safeguards, where such could be done, to limit the scope of the damage. If Lysaer went on to claim sovereignty in Tysan, he would act without Fellowship sanction. The townsmen’s loyalty he might win on his own, but that of the clans must be held in reserve, leaving Tysan’s steward, Maenalle, free to safeguard her people as she could. And if the fabric of four realms was to be torn apart by conflict, the fifth must be granted firm leadership.

‘The heir to Havish must be brought out of hiding,’ said Sethvir. ‘He will need to be educated, for the day he comes of age, we must see him securely on his throne.’ In one of the kingdoms, at least, town factions and barbarian clans would not be abandoned to disunity.

Little else was exchanged in speech after that, as the sorcerers divided up the tasks at hand. Bleak as the future might become, the land would not be thrown wholesale to the bloodshed interlinked with Desh-thiere’s defeat.

The Fellowship concluded their conference well past mid-afternoon. Kharadmon was first to depart, his wild laugh and ready smile fading through the casement as he swept south on the desert breeze. Luhaine’s image dissolved in pursuit, a score left to settle concerning his colleague’s cavalier boasts.

Traithe shoved to his feet. His limp pronounced by exhaustion, he descended the stair to guard Dakar through tienelle withdrawal and to offer Lysaer when he woke the hospitality due to a prince.

Left alone with Asandir, Sethvir stood by the opened casement, his eyes veiled in contemplation. The tea mugs he had belatedly arisen to recover stayed empty as he said, ‘We have an immediate problem. The crown jewels of Rathain.’

Asandir sighed. ‘I’d not forgotten.’

The gems included in the heritage of past high kings had been cut by the Paravian artisans of Imarn Adaer, each one a power focus tuned to respond to the descendants of their respective royal lines. But the master’s training given Arithon by Dascen Elur’s mages already enabled his finer perceptions; augmented by the crown jewels’ attributes, his gifts could potentially become unmanageable.

The focusing properties of the stones would not be annulled by re-cutting; future generations would need them, even had the artisans of Imarn Adaer not been long dead, their knowledge gone to dust in the desecration brought by the Curse of Mearth. Sethvir and Asandir instead sought a ward to conceal the stones’ arcane nature from the s’Ffalenn prince who must hold them for the duration of his reign.

The project took the remainder of the day.

Dripping sweat, and tinged greenish by reflections thrown off an untidy hoard of cut emeralds, the two sorcerers locked glances as they emerged from combined trance.

‘Ath Creator,’ the Warden of Althain murmured in disgruntled vehemence. ‘You realize the Teir’s’Ffalenn and his confoundedly sensitive perception has brought us one damnable fix?’

Asandir raked silver hair from his temples. ‘Today I don’t need the reminder. I only hope we set our safeguards deep enough.’

Sethvir arose and scooped the gems into a battered coffer. ‘Take no chances. Set a geas to avert scrutiny when Arithon first sets hand to the royal regalia. If I’m any judge, he’ll notice the resonance of the wards.’

‘I had that hunch,’ Asandir confessed. ‘And I’m still concerned. The man has little vanity. Emeralds by themselves won’t impress him, and would you want to try and convince him that his jewellery shouldn’t be traded for something inherently more practical?’

Sethvir laughed. ‘I should have guessed, when we decided the latent s’Ahelas talents should be trained, that Princess Dari’s descendants might cause us a fearful set of headaches. She argued the entire time I tutored her.’ The Warden of Althain planted the coffer with its irreplaceable contents amid a clutter of unshelved books, then revived the dropped thread of inquiry. ‘I’d much rather brew tea, and challenge you to chess, than persuade any s’Ffalenn prince against his natural inclinations.’