The Curse of the Mistwraith (30 page)

North and west, under a hide tent pitched in misty forest, a scar-faced barbarian chieftain tosses in sweat-soaked furs; yet before his lady can waken him from the grip of prescient dreams, he has seen the face of his king, and the blood of his own certain death…

In a wild stretch of grasslands, on the crest of a windswept scarp, four tall towers loom above a ruined city, while rainfall gentle as tears rinses the shattered foundations of a fifth…

VIII. CLANS OF CAMRIS

Lysaer awoke at dusk to strangely carved walls, a warm fire and blankets of softest angora that wrapped his sweating limbs in clinging, suffocating heat. He tossed away the coverlets, rose naked from the feather mattress and paced across fine carpet to a casement paned with glass. Outside, clustered around a snow-trampled compound spread the tents, stone huts and rough, log-timbered buildings that comprised the permanent mountain outpost maintained by the clans of Camris. Amid falling gloom, the descendants of Tysan’s aristocracy set about their evening chores as they had through five centuries of exile. They carried cressets, because lanterns were scarce. Most wore the leathers and furs of wilderness scouts. Grim in aspect as occupants of a war camp, or a settlement too long under siege, no one walked without arms, even those few who were women. If any of the tents housed families, Lysaer sighted no children, though he lingered unseen at the window to study his new subjects while they were yet unaware.

Shouts arose from two hunters who dragged in the carcass of a deer. A woman called back in derision, and laughter dissolved into banter that coarsely disallowed even token respect for her gender. Lysaer rested his coin-bright head on his wrists. He did not feel refreshed. Nightmares had dogged his sleep and the expensive scents of sandalwood oil and rare spices upon his skin left him faintly queasy. The beautifully appointed furnishings at his back gave no comfort: gold-embossed chests and patterned carpets were far too much an anomaly in this bleakest of mountain settings.

‘
We give you the King’s Chamber
,’ Maenalle had said matter-of-factly as she opened a door to a room that held the atmosphere of a lovingly maintained shrine. The manservant who brought water for the royal bath had explained that every clan encampment in Tysan kept similar quarters, perpetually held in readiness for the day of their sovereign’s return.

Deferentially left to his privacy, unused to being worshipped as a legend come to life, Lysaer badly needed to speak with Asandir.

But the sorcerer had gone off with the clan chiefs while he, as acknowledged royal heir, had been spirited off for food and rest. Where Arithon might be was difficult to guess; presumably, Dakar would have found oblivion in some ale barrel by now. Lysaer scrubbed clammy palms across his face, distressed to be left at a loss in a land where civilized merchants would slit the royal throat, and barbarians who preyed on the trade roads welcomed their prince with open arms.

‘Your Grace?’ said a youthful voice by the doorway.

Lysaer started, spun and only then noticed the page-boy who hovered past the edge of the candlelight.

‘I’m Maenalle’s grandson, Maenol s’Gannley, your Grace.’ Barely eleven, his livery too large over breeches of cross-gartered hide, the boy bowed with a confidence that any senior courtier might have envied. ‘I’ve been sent to assist with your dressing.’

Unable to foist his bleak thoughts on a child, Lysaer returned the charm that had endeared him to other footpages back in Amroth. ‘What have you brought, master Maenol?’

The boy grinned, showing a broken front tooth. ‘People call me Maien, which means mouse in the old tongue, your Grace.’ His grin widened and his small, tabarded shoulders straightened with pride. ‘What else would I bring but your hose, surcoat and arms?’

The boy stepped toward a stool and chest where an array of courtly clothing had been laid out. The sword in its sapphire scabbard was gilded steel, adorned by blue silk tassels, and in its way as venerable as Alithiel.

‘Daeltiri,’ Maien said in response to his prince’s admiring glance. ‘The blade of the kings of Tysan. When the city of Avenor was desecrated, one part of the royal regalia was entrusted to each clan lord for safekeeping. Until today, the Earls of Camris have faithfully held your sword.’ The boy crossed the chamber, impatience reflected in the toss of his ash-brown hair. ‘But hurry, your Grace. The banquet in the main hall cannot begin until you’re ready.’

Lysaer slipped into the silken hose, lawn shirt and finely-embroidered tabard with a relief that bordered on shame. He had not appreciated the comforts of rich clothing until he had been made to do without. Humbled by the honest recognition that he desired the throne these clansmen offered at least as desperately as their disunited realm needed sound rule, he laced gold-tipped points and fastened mother-of-pearl buttons and tried to dismiss his suspicion such luxuries might have been dishonestly procured. As Maien buckled the sword Daeltiri at his side and handed him the matching chased dagger, Lysaer, Prince of Tysan, felt whole for the first time since exile through Worldsend.

He quieted his creeping doubts over the lifestyle of the realm’s subjects until he could know them better. Under fair consideration, he might find the differences between Athera’s wild clansmen and Amroth’s more sophisticated courtiers were just reflections of profoundly changed perception. He was no longer the pampered prince who had been haplessly tossed through the Worldsend Gate. In a rakingly perverse turn of conscience, he wondered which promised the sounder reign: the cosseted and idealistic royal heir he had been before banishment, or the more self-sufficient man who needed a crown to feel complete.

Outside, the temperature had fallen severely. Chilled through his fine velvets, Lysaer followed Maien’s lead across the compound and through the midst of brisk activity as a company muffled in furs and armed with bows and javelins prepared to depart on patrol. Faces seamed by weather and scars lit at the sight of their prince. The men and two women offered him brisk salute while they checked laces and shouldered javelins, then slipped quietly away into the gathering mountain dusk.

‘Where are they going?’ Lysaer asked.

Maien regarded his prince slantwise. ‘Out to the pass on night watch, your Grace.’

‘To raid caravans?’ Almost, Lysaer let slip the contempt he held for such thievery.

‘Partly,’ said the grandson of Tysan’s steward, brazenly unabashed. ‘They guard the camp, as well.’

The pair skirted the blood-spattered snow where the deer carcass had lately been butchered. The prince received a smile and a wave from another sword-bearing woman who carried yoke buckets toward the horse pickets. Past the tied-back flap of a tent, a man whistled over the scrape of a blade on a whetstone. Maien turned down a much-trampled path that led through a final stand of cabins, threaded into a steep-sided defile, and deadended before the shadowed double arch of a gateway cut into the mountain. The doors were armoured. Stonework barbicans built against the rocks on either side lent the impregnability of a fortress. If the place had ever seen battle, any scars had been painstakingly repaired; four fur-clad sentries stood duty, the leather-wound grips of their javelins worn shiny from hard use. They dressed weapons in smart salute at the approach of their liege.

Maien spoke a password at a niche. Lysaer heard the clank of a windlass and a dismal rattle of chain; then the great portals ground on their hinges and cracked open.

Asandir strode from the gap. ‘Good, you’ve arrived.’ He dismissed the prince’s young escort with a smile. Maien darted ahead to alert the herald as the sorcerer ushered Lysaer from the cold into the torch-lit vault of an outer hall. Walls and floor of rough-hewn stone sheared his voice into echoes as he said, ‘Maenalle awaits you.’

Above the din as the defenceworks were laboriously cranked closed, Lysaer said, ‘You might have given me warning.’

‘I might have done the same for Grithen’s clansmen,’ Asandir returned. ‘I chose not to.’

Stonewalled, and for no apparent cause, Lysaer reined back annoyance. ‘Is this a kingdom that encourages lawlessness?’

Asandir regarded the prince with eyes like unmarked slate. ‘This is a land afflicted by mismanagement, greed and vicious misunderstanding. The clans rob caravans to ease a harsh existence, and the mayors pay headhunters to exterminate as a means to ease their terror. Your task is not to judge but to set right. Your royal Grace, justice must be tempered by sympathy if the unity of the realm is to be restored. So I did not explain, because words cannot substitute for experience.’

The heavy doors boomed shut, leaving a ponderous quiet.

Asandir gestured toward the light and warmth that spilled through a second set of arches. ‘Go in,’ he urged, while ahead, in cultured accents, Maenalle’s appointed herald announced the royal presence. ‘For these people you are the living embodiment of hope. Listen to their woes and understand what they’ve sacrificed to preserve their lives and heritage.’

Lysaer squared his shoulders under his exquisitely embroidered tabard. What Asandir expected of him was a great deal more than tolerance: he could return no less than his best.

‘You are favoured with the gifts of your ancestors,’ Asandir reassured as they walked side by side into a chamber transformed since afternoon. ‘If the Seven believed you incapable, you would never have stood before these clans as a candidate fit to rule.’

The drab rock walls beyond the threshold were covered over by tapestries, masterful weaving and bright dyes depicting a kingly procession that celebrated the first greening of spring. Lysaer stared in delight. For an instant, he seemed to view through a window into a prior age, when Paravian habitation had graced hills unsullied by Deshthiere’s mists. Here in shining glory lay the centaurs’ fire-maned majesty, spritely dancers wreathed in flowers who were the fair-formed sunchildren, and mystical as moonlight on water, the snowy grace of unicorns. Entranced, caught into thrall by emotion, Lysaer blinked; and the spell snapped. The weaving on the wall became just a fabric of ordinary thread, worked with extraordinary artistry. Dazed by split-second bewilderment, Lysaer shook off gooseflesh and continued after Asandir and Maien, over patterned carpets imported from far-off Narms. Torches were replaced by tiers of wax candles, and glittering in their smokeless light were the clanborn of the west outpost, descendants of Camris’s aristocracy.

They looked the part, Lysaer thought in astonishment. Divested of furs and weapons, reclothed in velvets, dyed suedes and jewelled brocades, one could almost forget that most of the women carried sword scars, or that the wrists of young and old alike were lean as braided sinew from the hunt.

Maenalle waited at the head of a delegation of clan lords. Regally gowned in black and adorned with silver interlace, she wore only a badge of rank to denote her office. ‘Colours are never worn in the royal presence,’ she explained in response to Lysaer’s compliment that a brighter wardrobe would become her. ‘By tradition, the Steward of the Realm wears sable, since the true power of governance lies in the crown. Before the rebellion my office was sometimes called
caithdein
, or shadow behind the throne.’ She regarded the prince at her side, her tawny eyes fierce in a face too weathered from outdoor living. ‘Liege, I am proud to become so once again.’

There was no envy in her, Lysaer observed, while she steered him through introductions to the officers and elders of her council currently in residence at the outpost. As she guided him past a bowing honour-guard and rows of candle-lit, damask-covered trestles toward the dais at the head of the hall, he watched with a ruler’s perception. Maenalle did not resent yielding leadership to a younger, unknown man; in steady, unquestioned and understated confidence, she placed absolute faith in the s’Ilessid name.

Prepared for the eventual trial of winning loyalty from these fierce and independent clansmen, of proving his fitness to rule, Lysaer found the gift of her trust unnerving.

He was shown to the seat of honour at the centre of a trestle covered by fine linen and set with an earl’s ransom in crested silver and crystal. Asandir was placed on his right, Arithon and Dakar to the left, while Maenalle and the elder clan chiefs assumed the places opposite, between their prince and the lower hall as surety for their hospitality. Since potential threat must first pass through their ranks, any retainer who sought harm to a guest must first commit public treason and strike his sworn lord in the back. Visitor’s rights had not been forgotten in the wildest reaches of Camris, although in the towns, old ways had been replaced by the fashion of placing important persons at the head of the boards.

‘Insult as well as folly,’ Maenalle admitted sadly. ‘A guest seated there is isolated, a target for foul play should a turncoat defile the lord’s house. What respect can a host claim, who would expose another in place of himself?’

Hiding discomfort, Lysaer watched Maien pour the wine. Amroth’s court had kept no such elaborate custom, and rather than risk insult out of ignorance, the prince forbore to comment.

A touch on his forearm recalled his thoughts; Asandir, with reminder that the hall expected guest-oath. That ritual at least was familiar. Lysaer rose to his feet. The glittering array of gathered clansfolk stilled deferentially before him as he raised his goblet in fingers too proud to tremble.

‘To this house, its lady and her sworn companions, I pledge friendship. Ath’s blessing upon family and kin, strength to your heirs, and honour to the name of s’Gannley. Beneath this roof and before Ath, I share fortune and sorrow as your brother, my service as steadfast as blood kin.’

Maenalle arose, smiling, to complete the ancient reply. ‘Your presence is our grace.’ She raised her calloused hands, took the prince’s goblet and drank a half portion of the wine.

Lysaer accepted the cup back from her, drained it and laid it rim downward on the table between. ‘Dharkaron witness,’ he finished clearly.

Maenalle faced around toward her following. ‘Honour and welcome to s’Ilessid!’