The Curse of the Mistwraith (94 page)

In token of friendship, Caolle offered his palms and accepted the prince’s double handshake. Across their clasped grip, while the song of lamentation spiralled and dipped through the greenwood, he gave his liege a voracious appraisal. The small build and fine bones, the green eyes with their depths and veiled secrets; both harboured deceptive strengths. Nearly too late Caolle had discovered an integrity that admitted no compromise. He would never in words be forced to admit that this scion of Rathain was both perfectly suited and tragically paired with a fate that must waste his real talents. ‘One day you’ll be grateful for our support, your Grace. We lend ourselves gladly. One could say it’s not meet for Maenalle s’Gannley in Tysan to swear fealty to s’Ilessid unwarned.’ He released Arithon’s hands and stepped back. ‘Ath keep you safe from all harm.’

‘And you.’ Arithon’s mouth bent, a softening just short of warmth. ‘We’ve been adversaries. I’m not sorry. If I had my choice, your sword would go rusty for want of use. Hate me for that all you wish.’

Caolle’s chin puckered. For the sake of the mourning song still in progress, he coughed back a raw burst of laughter. ‘My sword,’ he said firmly, ‘will only get rusted when I’m dead. Dharkaron break me for idiocy, how did I come to swear fealty to a dreaming fool?’

‘You were duped.’ Arithon grinned. ‘Lord Steiven did that to both of us.’ He turned and, with quiet lack of ceremony, strode away from the riverbank.

Caolle watched him go, narrow-eyed, tightness like a fist at his throat. As Halliron struck chords for the lamentation’s final stanza, the war captain of Deshir’s clansmen whispered, ‘Go in grace, my prince.’

The song dipped and mellowed, softened through its closing bars to a brushed note that quavered and trailed away into the rustle of flame-seared leaves. By then the Teir’s’Ffalenn in his tattered black tunic had vanished from sight. Whether trees had hidden him, or some trick of shadow, Caolle found impossible to tell.

Dusk settled over Strakewood. In clear silver light, under trees like cut felt against cobalt, Arithon sat on a beech log. His tucked up knees cradled folded arms. His cuff laces dangled over hands without tension as he listened to the first, uneven chorus of frogs in the marshes. He savoured the quiet as day ebbed and softly surrendered to nightfall. The first star appeared, a scintillating pinprick between the pines; he looked on its solitary beauty without mage-sight to unlock its mystery.

Later was soon enough to decide where to go. This moment content to hang his thoughts on the sweet descending triplets of a woodthrush, he closed his eyes and lost himself in the abiding whisper of pine tassels stroked by the breeze.

He had no one to answer to. Nothing burdened him but a scorched conscience and a sword he would have given sight to have exchanged for the lyranthe left in Etarra.

Absorbed and relaxed, Arithon suspected nothing until a stick snapped loudly behind his shoulder.

He shot spinning to his feet and came face to face with a figure picked out in sparkles of gold chain and jewels.

Halliron Masterbard stood still decked out in his topaz studs, sure sign he had ended his stay with the clans. The fine buttons that fastened his cloak and hung his beautifully cut cape sleeves swung and glittered even in failing light.

Serene, his veined hands folded on the strap that slung his lyranthe, the Masterbard said, ‘It’s a poor time for solitude, your Grace.’

Arithon bridled. ‘It’s a worse hour for companionship with close to eight thousand lives done and wasted.’ Since the bard had presumed he was brooding, he would foster that impression to be rid of him. ‘I didn’t ask for sympathy. I thought I made my wishes clear to Caolle?’

Halliron clicked his tongue behind spaced front teeth. ‘No need to raise your temper.’ Unwilling to accept such short shrift, he seated himself on the log the Master of Shadow had just vacated. Against his dark doublet, his pale hair spread over his shoulders like watered silk. ‘I thought it wouldn’t hurt to ask whether you’d join me on the road. Fallowmere holds little to attract me. I’ve lingered overlong in the north.’

Nettled now deeper than artifice, Arithon recoiled backward. ‘Ah no.’ He sounded as if somebody had hit him, or as if he shied off from hidden fear. ‘I’ll be no man’s company after this. You of all men should best understand my motive.’

‘You’re not the first prince to take your oath through times of strife.’ Gold chains shivered in reflection as the bard shrugged. ‘Daelion knows you won’t be the last. And you won’t, though you try, put me off through a show of self-pity.’

Arithon stiffened. ‘I think you’ve said enough.’ The words were a warning, which Halliron ignored by remaining in unbroken tranquillity on the log. In the forest, the wood thrush had silenced. More stars burned through the branches, and the frogs sang their rasping bass chorus. The balance had fled; twilight had ebbed unnoticed, and the gloom now swallowed even the brittle spark of the topaz studs.

The veneer of peace so thinly established shattered suddenly beyond recovery. Into a silence that reproached, Arithon said in breaking anguish, ‘Ath help me, I
had
to stay. Without conjury or shadow, do you think any clansman would have survived to hear your lament for Deshir’s dead?’

‘Well, that’s now behind you,’ Halliron said placidly. ‘Guilt is no use to anybody. The only thing a man gains from his past is the power to ensure his future. You can see the same circumstances are not permitted to happen again.’

‘I was doing just that, I thought.’ Arithon’s anger intensified to a level that admitted only pain. The moment still haunted and cut him, that Lysaer’s death and an end to Desh-thiere’s geas had been balanced by Jieret’s life. His voice skinned and raw, the Master added, ‘Will you leave? I’m quite likely to survive without counsel.’

‘Well that may be. Except that
I
was the one come begging.’ The Masterbard folded his supple hands and maddeningly, solemnly regarded the ground between his boots. ‘If you’d unstop your ears and still your infernal s’Ffalenn conscience, you’d see that I’m an old man. I need a strong shoulder on the wheel when my pony cart mires in these bogs, and somebody ought to partner my rambling on the nights when cold rains drown my fire.’ A mischievous tilt to his lips, he looked up. ‘Never mind that your talents need schooling. If those fingers of yours are ever to shape more than promise, I’m offering the lowly station of minstrel’s apprentice, your royal Grace. Will you accept?’

Arithon stared at him, his rigid bearing abandoned and repudiation stupid on his face. He sat down on the deadfall, banged his elbow on a branch and tangled his calf in the sword-scabbard he had forgotten he still wore. Faintly breathless, he cursed.

Mildly amused, and also queerly tense and vulnerable, Halliron chuckled. ‘The choice is that awful? You can’t pretend to be surprised.’

‘No.’ A choke or a strangled phrase of laughter twisted in Arithon’s throat. ‘Does the minstrel Felirin have prescience?’

‘
What
?’ The Masterbard lost his composure. His heart in his eyes, and his knuckles clamped together in white knots, he radiated panicked trepidation.

Arithon looked back at him and grinned. ‘Well, it’s simple. Felirin forced me to a promise once should you ever come to offer me apprenticeship.’

‘And?’ Halliron sounded smothered. He had raised both hands to his throat as if he needed help to keep breathing. ‘And?’

‘I shall have to accept,’ Arithon said. ‘I’ve been party to all else but oath-breaking, these days. My score with the Fatemaster’s bad enough.’

‘You devil!’ Halliron shot to his feet with a force that jostled a thrum of bass protest from his soundboard. ‘You let me think you’d turn me down!’

‘Well, you let me think you’d come to lecture.’ Arithon laughed now with a bursting joy that dissolved the last of his antagonism. ‘Fiends take me, I wanted to kill you for that.’

‘Well you lost your chance. You carry the greatest blade in Athera and never once thought enough to use it.’ Halliron started walking decisively. ‘My pony and cart are hidden in a brushbrake somewhere up the Tal Quorin. Once we find them, I’m fixing a strong pot of tea.’

Then he stopped with a suddenness that caused Arithon to narrowly miss crashing into him.

‘No,’ said Halliron, his expressive voice queerly jangled. ‘No. I’m needing no tea. The truth is that’s not what I’m wanting at all.’ There and then in the darkness, he unstrapped his bundle and tugged off oiled leather coverings. ‘Play me that tune I once asked for.’ Not waiting for answer he thrust his beautiful instrument into the arms of his apprentice.

Arithon caressed the scrolled soundboard, drew a breath that smelled of wax and resins and fine wood. He could not speak. He feared to move, lest he disturb the frailty of his happiness. Halliron Masterbard had laid a lyranthe between his hands and offered his heart’s whole desire.

Unseen in the fragrant summer gloom, the shy woodthrush ventured a last, lyric arpeggio. Crickets rasped undisturbed by any approaching footstep. After a moment of fractured suspension, Arithon laid to rest his final fear. He accepted that no one would burst from the wood in appeal for a cause he could not for conscience fail to shoulder.

For this night and others he was free. He could sit, set his hands to silver strings and at long last, bend sorrow into music.

Reflections

In Mirthlvain Swamp, Asandir and Dakar join Verrain’s patrol of black pools, to check for resurgence of meth-snakes before the seasonal autumn spawning: Traithe and Kharadmon arrive in Shand; and while the Fellowship’s hope for the south centres on one last prince raised in hiding, the Warden of Althain tracks two cursed royal heirs who survive, and awaits against hope any sign that the Black Rose Prophecy might still hold valid…

In Korias the hour after sunrise, First Enchantress Lirenda presents report from the lane-watch to her mistress, Morriel Prime; and the news is unhappily received, that the initiates entrusted with scrying through fifth lane vibrations have lost track of the Master of Shadows…

In the lightless shaft of Rockfell, sealed behind triple rings of wards, the Mistwraith that once blocked sunlight from Athera languishes in confinement; and if it knows that its grand curse to destroy two half-brothers has once been tested and thwarted, it endures in unquiet hatred…

Glossary

ADON – statue of centaur king, one of the twins who founded the Ilitharis Paravian royal line in the First Age. The carving forms one side of the arch of Standing Gate on the road leading east into the Pass of Orlan, Camris, Tysan.

pronounced: a-don, rhymes with ‘hay don’

root meaning:
daon
– gold

ALATHWYR TOWER – one of five towers built by Paravians in the middle of the First Age at Ithamon, principality of Daon Ramon, Rathain. Its stonework of white alabaster is warded by the virtue, Wisdom. It stands North, of the four towers that remain standing in the Third Age; hence the common name used by men, being Compass Point Towers, or Sun Towers.

pronounced: ah-lath-weer (a’s to rhyme with as) emphasis on middle syllable

root meaning: wisdom:
alath
– to know;
wyr
– all, sum

ALITHIEL – one of twelve Blades of Isaer, forged by centaur Ffereton s’Darian in the Second Age from metal taken from a meteorite. Passed through Paravian possession, acquired the secondary name Dael Farenn, or Kingmaker, since its owners tended to succeed the end of a royal line. Eventually was awarded to Kamridian s’Ffalenn for his valour in defence of the princess Taliennse, early Third Age.

pronounced: ah-lith-ee-el

root meaning:
alith
– star;
iel
– light/ray

ALTHAIN TOWER – spire built at the edge of the Bittern Desert, beginning of the Second Age, to house records of Paravian histories. Third Age, became repository for the archives of all five royal houses of men after rebellion, overseen by Sethvir, Warden of Althain and Fellowship sorcerer.

pronounced: al like all, thain to rhyme with main

root meaning:
alt
– last;
them
– tower, sanctuary

original Paravian pronunciation: alt-thein (thein as in ‘the end’)

AMROTH – kingdom on West Gate splinter world, Dascen Elur, ruled by s’Ilessid descendants of the prince exiled through the Worldsend Gate at the time of the rebellion, Third Age just after the Mistwraith’s conquest.

pronounced: am-roth (rhyme with sloth)

root meaning:
am
– state of being;
roth
– brother ‘brotherhood’

ANGLEFEN – swampland located in Deshir, Rathain. Town of same name at the river mouth with port to Stormwell Gulf. One of the six port towns that link sea trade-routes with Etarra.

pronounced: angle-fen

root meaning is not Paravian

ARAETHURA-grass plains in southwest Rathain; principality of the same name in that location. Largely inhabited by Riathan Paravians in the Second Age. Third Age, used as pastureland by widely scattered nomadic shepherds.