The Curse of the Mistwraith (19 page)

As the hills steepened and the winds of increased altitude caused the company to huddle closer to the fire for warmth, more than once Felirin caught Arithon studying his hands as he played. After days of cleverly rebuffed questions Arithon’s fixation with the lyranthe was the only opening the bard had managed to discern. Inspired by a fractional movement of the dark-haired man’s fingers as a fallen log fanned up the flames, Felirin silenced his strings in mid-stanza and rubbed his knuckles on his jerkin. ‘Damn the weather,’ he said.

Dakar predictably complained. ‘You aren’t stopping, Felirin, not so soon. Better we freeze to a misplayed tune than abide our sobriety in silence.’

The bard feigned a yawn to hide his smile. ‘Arithon plays,’ he said in sly suggestion. ‘Why not ask him for a song?’

‘Arithon?’ Dakar puffed up his cheeks. ‘Play music?’ He darted a glance to either side; with Asandir off to check the picket-lines, he dared a whisper in conspiracy. ‘I’ll bet you silver he doesn’t.’

Felirin watched through peripheral vision and saw Arithon become utterly still. Lysaer sat up and took interest. ‘How much would you stake me?’ asked the bard.

The Mad Prophet laced his hands across his paunch. ‘Ten royals. Double as much if I’m wrong.’

Felirin chuckled, and still smiling, extended his instrument toward the cloaked figure to his left. ‘Indulge me. Give us a tune.’

Arithon returned a dry chuckle. ‘I’ll establish your mastery by contrast,’ he threatened. But Felirin had plotted to a nicety: after days of unmerited provocation, Arithon took his chance to humble Dakar.

His movements as he lifted the soundboard to his shoulder were recognizably reverent. Arithon poised tentative fingers, sounded a shower of practised harmonics, and found an interval off. He corrected the pitch, neatly and precisely. When he looked up, his eyes were laughing.

Dakar muttered something stinging concerning close-mouthed brigands who betrayed a comrade to wasted silver. Lysaer politely held back comment, and Felirin silently congratulated his powers of intuitive perception. Then all three of them lost track of surface thoughts as Arithon started to play.

The first chords rang across the firelit dell with a power of sheer captivation. Arithon tested and quickly found the instrument’s mettle; at once he broke his opening into an intricate theme that threaded, major to minor, in haunting sweeps across keys. By then no one remembered this magic had been instigated by an interchange of grudges and a bet.

Startled into rapt concentration, Felirin realized he had discovered a treasure. Whoever Arithon was, whatever his origins and his purpose in accompanying a sorcerer, he had been born with the natural gift to render song. There were rough patches in his fingering and fretwork that could be smoothed over with schooling; skilled guidance could ease some awkwardness in his phrasing. His voice lacked experience and tempering. But even through such flaws, the bard could appreciate his raw brilliance. With Lysaer and Dakar, his heart became transported from the discomforts of a drafty campsite and led on a soaring flight of emotion as a tale of two lovers unfolded like a jewel in the firelight.

Arithon stilled the strings at the end, and the spell shattered.

‘Young man,’ the bard demanded. ‘Play again.’

Arithon shook his head. ‘Collect your winnings from Dakar.’ If he had regrets, they stayed invisible as he slipped the instrument back into the lap of its owner. ‘Your lyranthe is very fine. She plays herself.’

‘That’s foolishness!’ Felirin reached out more demandingly than he intended, and caught hold of Arithon’s sleeve. The wrist beneath his touch was trembling. To ease what he took for self-consciousness, the bard added, ‘You’re gifted enough to apprentice.’

Arithon shook his head and moved to disengage, but Felirin’s grip tightened angrily. ‘How dare you waste such rare talent? Can’t you accept your true calling?’

Green eyes flashed up, and almost – only Lysaer could recognize it – Arithon drew breath for rebuttal in the same vicious style he had used at his trial by Amroth’s council. Then confusion seemed to flicker behind his eyes. The Master looked away. He worked gently free of the bard’s fingers. ‘Daelion turns the Wheel. One cannot always have the choice.’

He arose, quietly determined to retire, and managed to avoid Asandir, returned from his check on the horses.

The bard turned his puzzlement on the sorcerer. ‘What did the lad mean by that?’

Asandir sat on the log that the Master had just left vacant and settled his dark cloak around his knees. ‘That these are troubled times for all of us, my friend. Arithon has the gift, none can doubt. But music cannot be his first calling.’

Dakar suggested hopefully that spirits could ease the most wretched of life’s disappointments. His quip was ignored. No one inclined toward light heartedness. Felirin abandoned the fireside to pack away his lyranthe, followed by the crestfallen prophet. Only Lysaer lingered. Aware of the steel beneath Asandir’s stillness, and unwarmed by the wind-fanned embers by his feet, the s’Ilessid recalled his half-brother’s reaction to a past, insensitive query. ‘
Never to go back to Karthan
’ Arithon had said in unresponsive wish to kill the subject. Lent fresh perspective by tonight’s discovery, his half-brother shared insight into a misery that no heroic calling could assuage. Some men had no use for the responsibilities of power and renown. The coming quest to suppress the Mistwraith that restored meaning to Lysaer’s life became a curse and a care for Arithon, whose gifted love for music must be sidelined.

Morning came. Hunched against a wind that whined through tossing branches, the party passed into the foothills of Tornir Peaks. The great trees of Westwood thinned in concert with the soil, and the road wound between stripped, rock-crowned promontories sliced by stony gullies. Sleet had fallen during the night, and the slate paving was icy in patches, treacherous even at a walk. Arithon led his flighty dun by the bridle. Lysaer flanked him on foot, while Felirin took a turn in the chestnut’s saddle.

The cold and the cheerless landscape buoyed no one’s spirits, but Dakar’s irrepressible tongue stayed unaffected. ‘Damn you for a thief, Felirin, I swear you conspired against me to win that bet last night.’

The bard twisted back and checked the ties which secured his lyranthe to the saddle for the third time since he had mounted. Balked yet by Arithon’s reticence, his reply came back clipped. ‘Forget the bet. Just buy me an ale when we get to Erdane.’

‘Now there speaks a guilty man,’ the Mad Prophet pronounced. He kicked his paint forward and set the dun dancing as he drew alongside the Master. ‘Did the two of you plan to split the take?’

Jerked half off his feet as his mare skittered sideways, Arithon returned a quick laugh. ‘Why bother? As I remember, I needed no rigged wagers to part the silver from your belt.’

Reminded of his mishap in the alley in West End, Dakar turned purple. He bent over his saddlebow and spoke so that Felirin could not hear. ‘You’ll pay for that.’

‘You say?’ Arithon brought the dun under control by rubbing her ear to distract her. When she settled he slapped her fondly and added a remark concerning slipshod spells.

Dakar deflated in moody silence.

‘You’ve made a clam of him,’ Lysaer observed with a smile. ‘Thank Ath. My ears were tired.’

But the friendliness in the comment did not warm. Apart from the others, and keenly wishing an hour of solitude to sort through troubled thoughts, Arithon strode at the dun’s shoulder while a round of banter designed to bait Dakar developed between Felirin and Lysaer.

The party rounded a bend where the road snaked beneath an overhang, and the talk suddenly died. A driving clang of hoofbeats echoed down from the rise ahead. A horse approached through the mist at a headlong gallop that begged for a fatal fall. The bridleless chestnut flung up its nose and neighed.

‘Hold here!’ called Asandir.

The next instant, a riderless grey stallion thundered into view through the fog. He clattered downslope in lathered, wild-eyed terror, his reins flying, broken, from the bit rings. The smoke-dark mane was fouled and dripping blood. Dakar’s paint caught the scent first. It spun and tried to bolt. Arithon cursed with eloquent force and fought his shying dun; Lysaer stepped hurriedly to aid him.

Astride the quivering but obedient chestnut, Felirin recognized the martial style of the runaway animal’s tack. ‘Hey, that’s one of the horses from the caravan guard!’

Only the black that bore Asandir seemed immune to alarm. Under the sorcerer’s guidance it advanced in spell-wrought, nerveless calm, swung across the road and blocked the way. The riderless animal checked in a sliding scrabble of hooves, then stood with lifted tail, blowing hard and rolling white-rimmed eyes. Asandir dismounted, slowly. He held out his hand and spoke a word, and the frightened horse appeared to settle. Then, his own black left unattended, the sorcerer advanced and with perfect lack of ceremony captured the stallion’s bridle.

‘Maybe he should have a turn at Arithon’s dun,’ Lysaer suggested. But no one appeared to be listening.

Dakar had lost his impertinence and Felirin showed open alarm. As Asandir approached, leading both the black and the stallion, all could see a shallow, ragged gash in the animal’s neck. Deeper marks clawed through the seat of the saddle, and bloodstains marred the leather that had not been left by the horse.

‘Daelion Fatemaster,’ Lysaer swore. ‘What sort of predator caused that?’

‘You don’t want to hear,’ said Felirin. He raised his voice and called to Asandir. ‘There are Khadrim in the pass, yes?’

‘I fear so.’ The sorcerer halted the horses. With quick fingers he unbuckled the reins from the black’s bridle and hitched them to the caught stallion’s bit. Then he cut off the ends of the broken pair and offered the animal to the bard. ‘I want everyone mounted.’

The remark included Arithon, who looped his reins over the dun’s ears, while Felirin slid off Lysaer’s chestnut and accepted possession of the grey. The bard asked, and received permission to leave his lyranthe where it was; no sense in trusting a strange horse with an awkward and unaccustomed burden. ‘This was the guard captain’s mount,’ the bard said ruefully as he adjusted the leathers for his much longer legs. ‘This fellow is probably trained handily for war but damn, his saddle was made for a man with narrow buttocks. What little stuffing the Khadrim might have left has blown away on the wind.’

‘Sit down too hard on the armour studs and you’ll find yourself singing soprano,’ Dakar retorted smugly.

The bard shot him a dark look and dabbed at drying bloodstains before he set foot in the stirrup and mounted. ‘At the end of this day’s ride, I’ll be thankful to count only bruises.’ He settled his reins and addressed Asandir. ‘I presume we’re going to be crazy and continue on, not turn back?’

The sorcerer nodded. His gaze fixed on the half-brothers through a brief, measuring moment. ‘There could be danger, but the risk will stay manageable if nobody loses their head. Keep together, whatever happens. Arithon, when I tell you, and only when, draw your blade.’

The Mad Prophet slapped his forehead. ‘Ath!’

Asandir’s eyes went wide with incredulity. ‘Dakar! You scatterbrain, don’t tell me you’d forgotten the sword?’

‘I did.’ The Mad Prophet returned a pouting scowl. ‘Small wonder, with the rest of you conspiring to rig my bets.’

The sorcerer disgustedly turned and remounted his black. ‘Remind me never, ever, to rely on your memory in a pinch.’ He noticed and answered Arithon’s look without pause to turn his head. ‘Boy, your sword was forged ten and a half thousand years past, expressly for war against the Khadrim.’

‘War,’ interjected Lysaer. ‘Then the creatures are intelligent?’

Arithon barely heard Asandir’s affirmative reply; he ignored Felirin’s curious query and the hilt which protruded from the scabbard at his hip with absolute, icy detachment. Whatever curiosity he might once have held for his inherited weapon, he had never owned an inkling that the blade might be so ancient. That he carried spell-wrought steel was undeniable, though the nature of its powers had escaped the wisdom of Dascen Elur’s mages. The chance the sword might bind him further to a duty he wanted no part of became just another weight upon his heart.

Having lost his royal inheritance, Lysaer would treasure the chance to bear a great talisman; Arithon caught the suppressed flash of envy in his brother’s blue eyes. Yet before the Master could offer his last true possession as a gift, Asandir came back with rebuttal.

‘You can never relinquish that blade, except to your own blood heir.’

Arithon knew an inward surge of protest, a fleeting, angry impression that he had cause to take exception to the sorcerer’s words. Yet as had happened before when Felirin had pressured him over music, the Master could not quite frame the concept. As he tried, his thoughts went vague, and his perceptions scattered, disoriented. By now he had learned that if he stopped fighting back, the confusion would quickly pass; the unreliable dun distracted him sufficiently in any case. Yet each successive incident left Arithon less satisfied with Asandir’s explanation in the woodcutter’s cottage. The gaps in his memory were not natural: that Dakar watched him with predatory speculation each time he recovered lent evidence to justify suspicion. Arithon guessed some telling fact had been withheld from him. Before he could be cornered in a position he could not escape, he determined to find out what and why.

Beyond the draw where they captured the runaway horse the road steepened sharply. The crags on either side reared up to ever more jagged promontories, their lofty, looming summits lost in mist. Patches of early snow mottled the northern faces, cut by rockfalls and boulder-choked ravines where vegetation clawed desperate foothold. Here the slate paving showed the abuse of harsh winters, split and heaved crooked by frosts. The horses picked carefully over uneven footing and the air took on the reek of cinders. When they rounded a switched-back curve, they saw why.

The stud balked, snorting with alarm. Ahead, between the smoking wreckage that remained of two dozen wagons, the drovers of the caravan who had ousted Felirin lay strewn across the way like dirtied rags. Man and mount and cart-mule, there were no survivors. Corpses littered the ledge. Charred clothing clung to exposed bones and whatever flesh remained had been mauled to ribbons by something not interested in hunting for the sake of sustenance. Lysaer cupped a hand to his mouth, sickened by the sight of an eviscerated woman and a horse with half its hindquarters seared to stinking, blackened meat. Something with monstrous jaws had snapped the head off the neck.