The Curse of the Mistwraith (81 page)

‘Well,’ said Traithe. Less solemn in his ways than Asandir, he was smiling. ‘For one thing, you need not warn us of an event that Sethvir already knows. Morriel doesn’t breathe, these days, without some sort of surveillance from Luhaine.’

‘You shouldn’t confide in me,’ Elaira said in a gasp of smothered surprise.

As if she had piqued him with a riddle, Traithe’s brows rose. ‘Morriel’s aware of the fact. It’s a sore point she won’t tell Lirenda, so I doubt she’ll challenge you to make it public.’ He went on, his manner as piquant as any matron sharing gossip at a well. ‘Furthermore, if your Prime has chosen to meddle with Arithon s’Ffalenn…’ The gleam in his eyes hot with mischief, the sorcerer shrugged ruefully. ‘Let’s by all means stay plain. I’m not saying she’s resolved on such an action. But if she should, her pack of conniving seniors will be richly entitled to the consequences.’

‘You imply that Arithon is defended?’ Intrigued despite her better judgement, Elaira edged closer to the fire.

Traithe tucked back a flap of her cloak that the breeze pushed dangerously near the sparks. ‘I’m saying the Teir’s’Ffalenn himself is well able to guard his own interests. ‘ When Elaira looked dubious, he gave back a look that happily embraced shared conspiracy. ‘Fatemaster’s judgement, lady, the Fellowship itself had a tough time trying to shepherd that spirit! Let me tell you what happened once, when Morriel tried a scrying on Arithon.’

His hands stuck out to warm near the fire like any innocuous old man’s, the sorcerer went on to describe in satirical detail exactly what transpired the day the wards over Kieling Tower had been breached during conflict with the Mistwraith.

Traithe gave the telling no embellishment, but used humour and bluntness like scalpels to bare a rotten truth. He spared nothing. Not Lirenda’s furious humility, nor Morriel’s arrogant overconfidence. Least of all did he avoid Arithon’s vicious reaction to the fact that Elaira’s private feelings had been used as a tool for unscrupulous prying.

Choking and spluttering through a mirth just shy of a seizure, Elaira tried and failed to picture Lirenda upended in her own tangled skirts. ‘A worthy prank.’ She caught her breath finally, stung from her laughter by real grief. ‘I’m a game piece.’ She, who most questioned Koriani tenets and practices, had unwittingly become their most indispensable cipher in the course of the coming conflict.

‘Arithon knows that,’ Traithe said, equally serious and plain. ‘He doesn’t like it. Should Morriel cross him again on those grounds, he’s going to hit her back with far more than a harmless warning. Have you access to the histories of the high kings?’

As she nodded, he said, ‘Good. Read them and see what happens when past scions of s’Ffalenn were pressed to embrace open enmity. Make no mistake when I tell you Arithon has inherited all of his line’s rugged loyalty. He’s got Torbrand’s temper too, intact as I’ve ever seen it.’

The scanty bits of fuel had burned now to a scarlet nest of embers. Across a rising puff of smoke, Elaira looked at the sorcerer whose forthcoming nature came and went like broken clouds across sunlight. Traithe had turned reticent again. Though his eyes never shied from her regard, and his kindly air of listener remained intact, his stillness invited her to question him on her own. ‘You’re asking me to trust Arithon’s judgement?’

‘I ask nothing,’ Traithe amended gently. ‘I offer only the observation that Arithon is qualified to defend himself from any Koriani interference that originates through you. And he will do so, never asking your preference on the matter.’

Hands clasped hard beneath her cloak, Elaira chuckled. ‘I see. He breaks none of my vows in the process and therefore I won’t get hurt. Very neat. I shall allow him to act as my protector and endeavour to be the dutiful initiate.’ She gathered her skirts to rise, a lump in her throat brought by surety: that this time, the Fellowship’s intervention had diverted her from breaking Koriani mores. But in fact, the measure was stopgap. Traithe’s concerns had the more firmly grounded her self-knowledge, that the vows of her order were as unsuited to her nature as crown and kingdom were to the music that fate had forced Arithon to stifle.

Which of the pair of them would be first to break, she wondered, as she watched Traithe douse the sparks of their fire with effortless spellcraft. The incoming tide would sweep off the ashes and leave sands smoothed clean of footprints.

Traithe stood and roused his raven, which croaked like a drunk with a hangover and hopped sullenly to its master’s wrist. Never so absorbed by his bird as he appeared, the sorcerer said suddenly, ‘You’re not alone, brave lady. Nor are you entirely Morriel’s plaything. Not since the day you chose to seek out Asandir in Erdane.’

‘Ath,’ said Elaira in a futile effort to bury her anguish behind toughness. ‘Now didn’t I think that one escapade touched off my troubles in the first place?’

The sorcerer returned a look that drilled her through and gave no quarter. ‘Never sell yourself so short!’

‘Take care of him,’ she blurted, in heartfelt reference to the s’Ffalenn prince.

Poised to leave, unobtrusive as the beggar she first had mistaken him for, Traithe reached out and stroked her cheek, as the father she had never known might have done to reassure a cherished daughter. As his hand fell away, she cupped the place he had caressed; and now the tears fell and blinded her.

‘Lady, great heart.’ He sighed gently. ‘The love within you is no shame. And since you fear to ask, I’ll tell you: there is no secret to be kept. The Fellowship stepped back at Etarra because the grace of spirit we know as life lay in danger of permanent imbalance. Asandir urged, but never forced your beloved. Arithon chose his kingdom ahead of music, by his own free will.’

‘What?’ Elaira stared back in ice-hard fury and disbelief. ‘Why would he?’

Suddenly bleak as the clearest winter starfield, Traithe said, ‘Because he would not be the one man to stand in the path of the Paravians’ return to this continent.’

‘Well,’ said Elaira wretchedly. ‘For his sake, I hope the creatures prove worth it!’

‘That you must judge for yourself.’ A wistfulness haunted Traithe’s manner. ‘I can tell you as fact, that the Riathan Paravians are the only unsullied connection we have to Ath Creator and that their return is the cornerstone for the future harmony of this world. But words impart meaning without wisdom. To understand, you and Arithon must both survive to experience a unicorn’s living presence.’ A wave broke. Driven on by rising tide, salt spray showered down, mixed in coarser drops with the drizzle that never for an instant ceased to fall. ‘I must leave you now, brave lady. The fire is out, and the wards on this place will soon dissipate.’

Elaira blotted a dripping nose and tried through resentment to recover courtesy. ‘I owe you thanks.’

Seamed features lost beneath cloth that the raven sidled under to take shelter, Traithe shook his head. ‘Take instead my blessing. You need the consolation, I suspect. I was sent to you because an augury showed the Warden of Althain that, for good or ill you’re the one spirit alive in this world who will come to know Arithon best. Should your Master of Shadow fail you, or you fail him, the outcome will call down disaster.’

Elaira resisted an ugly, burning urge to stop her ears. ‘And if neither of us fails?’

Traithe soothed his bird with his fingers, that being the only comfort he could offer to any breathing creature at this juncture. ‘Ah, lady, we’ve been entrusted with this world and free will, which certainly cancels guarantees.’ He touched her hand in aggrieved farewell. ‘Never doubt. At the Ravens, your action was right and fitting.’

He turned and departed, while wind and thin rain reduced him to a fast-striding shadow against smothering fog and white sea. Elaira stayed on alone until the waves that surged with flood-tide encroached on the rocks and soaked her feet. Dragging wet skirts above her ankles, she felt ready to return to her colleagues. The depression that had weighed on her earlier had lifted, replaced by milder sadness shot through by the bold and heady challenge of exhilaration.

Morriel might command her to Koriani loyalty and obedience; but where Elaira chose to give her heart was a choice reclaimed for her own.

Eventide

His hook-nosed profile hard-lined in shadows and torchlight, Gnudsog of the Etarran guard brings word from the war council held at the border of Strakewood Forest: ‘Diegan and Lysaer are reconciled,’ he informs his captains who wait in the meadow. ‘We take the sure route tomorrow, poison the river and the springs to kill the game, then methodically starve out each campsite. Pesquil’s plan is best. Children are the future of the clans, and without women the wretched breed will die…‘

Deep under the eaves of the forest, in a valley riddled with traps, clansmen under Steiven s’Valerient sharpen their swords and their knives, and for the last time wax their bowstrings; while on a lyranthe the last of its kind, Halliron Masterbard plays ballads and bright songs from better days, to inspire their hearts to a valour he grieves will be futile…

Returned to his post at Althain Tower, Sethvir bends his regard toward Rockfell Peak to check the wards which bind the Mistwraith. He finds no flaws, and a small ease of mind, for though Arithon could build on his training and possibly unravel those securities, having suffered to subdue such an evil, Rathain’s prince was least likely to meddle in foolishness…

XVII. MARCH UPON STRAKEWOOD FOREST

Dressed out in clean tunics edged in city colours of scarlet and gold, gleaming under polished helms and smart trappings; and bearing on their backs and in their scabbards the newly wrought arms and chain-mail purchased by the merchants’ treasury at cost of eight hundred thousand coin-weight, fine gold, the men of Etarra’s garrison formed up and marched just past dawn. Set like a sapphire in their midst, Lysaer sat his bridleless chestnut. Lord Commander Diegan and Captain Gnudsog were positioned at either flank, while the bannerbearers of the greater trade houses, and message riders on their lean-flanked mounts clustered in formation just behind. Four companies of standing army and reserves paraded after, in disciplined units twenty-four hundred strong.

Lysaer made no conversation. Groomed as befitted his past stature, every inch the princely image of restrained pride, he was disinclined to trivialize his first foray against the s’Ffalenn who had demolished a fleet on Dascen Elur. Fighting was ugly business. No pennons, no style and no fanfares could mask that these men in their brilliance and finery marched, some to die in blood and suffering. Still, a heart not made of stone must thrill to the muffled thunder of war destriers. Each tight square of troops boasted ninety mounted lancers, four hundred crossbowmen and archers, and a perimeter of pikemen numbering nearly two thousand. Deep within their protection rolled the supply wagons and support troops and rearwards the additional thousand light cavalry under the black kite standard of the northern league of headhunters.

Weather was also in their favour. The last spring rains had finally lifted; the rivers ran placid and shallow.

Sunlight pricked the horizon, edged to the east by the black trees that rimmed Strakewood Forest. For a time as the air warmed, the companies marched knee-deep through mists that swathed the meadows in blue-grey. These dispersed last from the hollows, to bare rolling hills and the dew-spangled grass of early summer, bespattered and dappled with patches of red brushbloom and weathered rock. A craggier landscape than Daon Ramon, the plain of Araithe wore the season like a cloak of rippling new silk, lush and sweet with flowers, overwhelming the senses in living green.

Lysaer gazed across the vista, untrampled yet by the advancing mass of his army. In his birthland of Amroth, such rich forage would have been grazed short by sheep. He promised himself that if barbarian predation were to blame for the lack of shepherds, his campaign against Arithon would amend this. Then, in belated reassessment, he realized that had these hills been used once as pastures they should be crisscrossed by the remains of stone fences and sheepfolds.

There were none, nor any foundations of ruined cottages.

These acres had possibly stayed untouched by man’s industry through the ages since Ath’s first creation. Why such obviously prime pastureland should go wasted puzzled Lysaer, until his thought was broken off by the hoofbeats of an outrider returning at a gallop.

The scout wheeled his mud-splashed mount and reined into step beside Gnudsog. ‘Lord,’ he saluted to Diegan, and then his commanding field officer, ‘Captain.’ But he looked at Lysaer as he delivered his report, which was startling enough to call a halt to the advance.

Six barbarian children had been spotted, practising javelin casts in a glen just upriver of the ford across the Tal Quorin.

‘A stroke of luck, your Grace,’ Diegan said. To avoid embarrassment, he allowed Lysaer the titular courtesy due his birthright. Since no honorific at all implied a labourer’s stature and thus demeaned both parties in conversation only socially acceptable between equals, other Etarran officials had followed suit. ‘To find barbarians so easily, and they, overtaken unaware.’

Stolid on his horse as a figurehead, Gnudsog scowled his annoyance. ‘Clan scouts are never so careless!’

‘Elders, surely,’ Lysaer agreed. His clear gaze swung toward the scout. ‘But children? What would you guess were their ages?’

The answer held no hesitation: the largest had looked no more than twelve.

‘Rat’s get all, and bad cess to them.’ Gnudsog slapped a fly that landed, but had no chance to bite his horse. ‘They’ll know every inch of this country, Deshir’s scouts. Likely as not, they’re part of a camp that’s laid in an ambush farther on.’

‘Against an army?’ Diegan grinned, the gilt scrollwork on his helmet and the plumes on his bridle and harness the fashion of the daredevil gallant. ‘The odds would hardly be sporting.’

‘Barbarians don’t play at odds,’ came a querulous interruption from the sidelines. ‘In these parts, they prefer pits lined with sharpened stakes and spring-traps that rip out a man’s guts, or tear the axles off wagons.’