The Curse of the Mistwraith (67 page)

‘Good.’ Gnudsog smiled. On his grizzled features, the expression made no improvement; the scars and chipped teeth from past scraps made him baleful enough to inspire prayers of deliverance from a headhunter. ‘For that, on my sword, he’ll have my help.’

The subject of Etarra’s adulation alone remained oblivious; Lysaer’s engagement with Arithon’s sorceries required total concentration. Even under barrage by pure light, the shadows proved stubborn to shift. Like inkstains set in pale felt, they resisted with a fierceness that at times made them seem to push back. Again, Lysaer stepped up his countermeasure. Time passed. As the light poured steadily from him, he tracked only the retreat of the dark. Blind to all else, deaf to Diegan’s encouragement, he missed the exultant moment when Etarra lay lit from wall to wall by the fiery glow of his gift. Lamps and torches brightened even the dimmest back-alleys where Gnudsog sent patrols to quell any unreformed rioters.

By afternoon, the merchants unlocked their mansions. Drawn by wild rumours and by the burning, continuous flow of light, people from all quarters of the city reemerged to pack the main square. The chanting subsided and later died into an awe-struck silence.

Locked in his private crusade against the dark, Lysaer did not stir when the city governors reawakened to discover their council hall doors were fastened closed by nothing beyond everyday bolts and latches.

At some point, unseen, the sorcerer Traithe had departed.

Humbled as they heard of the s’Ilessid prince who had shouldered their cause against monarchy, Etarra’s high officials gathered on the dais. Amid splintered laths and ripped silk, they stood in vigil at Lysaer’s side.

Lost to their presence, bathed in a blinding dazzle, Lysaer wrestled the frustration that Arithon’s greater training had defeated him. Determination held him steadfast. Etarra’s plight would be spoken for until his last strength became spent. The shadows by now were beaten back outside the walls. Beyond hearing that the bloodshed had ended: driven past the point of caring by the curse-born obsession to obliterate the works of his half-brother, Lysaer hammered out light in singleminded ferocity.

Diegan was closest when the wide-spread arms began to shudder. The light-rinsed hands finally spasmed to fists in the extremity of advanced exhaustion, and a tremor racked Lysaer’s body. He swayed on his feet, and there at his side was Etarra’s Lord Commander to lend him support as he crumpled.

Lysaer’s eyes flicked open then, agonized in abject defeat.

Moved to compassion, Lord Diegan said, ‘Lysaer, it’s all right. The riots are ended. You’ve done well enough to stop the bloodshed, and the shadows are cleared past the gates.’

‘All is not right!’ His next line a whisper of unrequited fury, Lysaer collapsed in Diegan’s arms. ‘Nothing is ended. Neither dark nor the prince of darkness shall rule in Rathain while I live.’

Spoken from the dais where a crowned king should have sworn oath to uphold the royal charter, the acoustics arranged by the Fellowship picked up the softest words. The passion in Lysaer’s promise carried clearly to the edges of the square.

Silence reigned for perhaps a dozen heartbeats. Then air itself seemed to shatter as the gathered mass of Etarra’s thousands released its pent breath and cheered in full-throated approval. The roar of the accolade shook the earth. Yet the prince who had won their reprieve from pure terror heard no sound at all, having fainted in Diegan’s embrace.

The shadows set over Etarra by Arithon s’Ffalenn cleared shortly after midnight of their own accord. By then, the populace had become enamoured of the hero in their midst; rumour attributed deliverance to the blond-haired prince from the west. The last band of looters languished in irons. Too taciturn to show satisfaction for a long day’s work well done, Gnudsog sat enthroned in the windowseat alcove of Lord Governor Morfett’s best guest suite.

He looked out of place as a botched carving amid violet and gold tassels and amber cushions. Stripped of his field gear, clad still in the sweaty fleece gambeson he preferred to wear under chainmail, he slugged wine from a huge brass tankard. His peat-bog eyes watched, brooding, as the city’s governing elect crowded the rest of the room’s furnishings and argued in overheated elegance over disposition of his troops.

Their wilted ribbons and sadly creased sarcenets lent the chamber the feel of a second rate bordello. Couched in their midst, resplendent as any in his velvets and the frost-point fire of his sapphires, Lysaer s’Ilessid lay unconscious or dead asleep in the aftermath of exhaustion. The healer who had examined
him
said to let him rest, then left without daring a prognosis.

Apt to be ambivalent over fine points, Gnudsog drank. He cracked his knuckles in impatience. The cant of the councilmen irked him. Repeated searches had established beyond doubt that every Fellowship sorcerer appeared spontaneously to have vanished; squads had turned the warehouse district inside out, to no avail. The meat knacker’s conscripts had scarpered. Little further justice could be done until one shadow-bending criminal could be traced in his flight and eventually arraigned for execution. To which end, Gnudsog ran the house steward’s pages breathless, sending dispatches to his lieutenants and to his far-flung network of scouts.

When the long-sought news came back to him, along with incontrovertible proof that Arithon’s trail had been picked up, no one heard him through the din of raised voices.

Gnudsog lost his temper.

He cracked his tankard down with such force that wine geysered over the brim. Silence fell. The governing elect of Etarra turned heads, balding, curled, and hatted with felts pearled and feathered, to glare down superior noses at the author of untimely poor manners.

Sublimely untroubled by protocol, Gnudsog wiped his stubbled chin on the back of one hirsute wrist. ‘As I said, he is found. Your shadow-meddling little sorcerer has fled down the north road. By now, he has five hours’ lead, on straight course for the clans of Deshir.’

The pronouncement launched the room into uproar. The minister of the dyers and spinners guild fired off into maundering monologue, while the mayor of the south quarter flailed his chair arm with his bonnet in a vain attempt to recall order. His thumps were overwhelmed by an excited jabber of speculation, shrilly over-cut by the governor of trade’s expostulation. ‘Ath preserve us! We are lost! Against sorcery and shadows, our best troops will be cut to bleeding dogmeat. What use are good swords, unless the Prince of Light can be convinced or coerced to give us aid?’

The heads swivelled back, belatedly covetous of the jewelled asset ensconced in their midst. Only now, the blue eyes were opened. Lysaer had wakened to their bickering.

Gnudsog chuckled at the speed with which Etarra’s high officials rearranged themselves in solicitude. The most prideful and disdainful of pedigreed high-bloods bent to their knees at the side of their intended saviour.

Amused a bit by their pandering, Lysaer sat up. Thoughtful, frowning through dishevelled gold hair, he said seriously, ‘My support was never in question.’ Declaiming voices stilled to listen. ‘You have my help, as long and as much as you need it. But Etarra must act without hesitation. There will be war, if Arithon survives to win allies. With the northern clans behind him, he could escape justice altogether.’

‘The barbarians may be troublesome but they can’t mount a serious threat,’ interjected Pesquil, sallow and lean in the sable sash that denoted top rank in the northern league of headhunters. ‘Our city garrison could wipe out the clans. That much was never at issue. For years, we’ve mapped the campaign. We know the barbarians’ campsites, their bolt-holes, even the location of their caches. What was ever and always the deterrent was allocation of funds to send troops.’

Lord Governor Morfett blotted streaming temples on the draggled lace of his cuffs. ‘After today’s display of sorcery and shadows, I much doubt the treasury will stint.’

As the minister of city finances cleared his throat to argue, Lysaer s’Ilessid arose. ‘Ath spare us the war, why wait?’ He caught Diegan’s nod of approval, and added, ‘Strike now with a mounted division, and we might need nothing more than a block and a scaffold for execution.’

‘Twenty lancers already ride.’ Across the chamber, Gnudsog was smiling as the officials again heeded his presence. ‘They left the north gate half an hour ago.’

Lysaer regarded the grizzled captain with engaging concern and respect. ‘Your city could be indebted for your foresight, but lancers might not be enough. Arithon s’Ffalenn is as wily and ruthless as the pirate who fathered him. The more time he gains, the more dangerous he becomes. If we are not to be taken unaware, we must assume now that he will evade your patrol and reach the northern barbarians. Gentlemen, for all your safety, I urge your city to muster immediately for war.’

‘We have a quorum!’ Diegan cracked out from his perch of cat-comfort amid the fur quilts. ‘Shall we take the issue to vote?’

Hands were raised, a count taken and Gnudsog’s smile became voracious. He redirected the outgoing stream of pages to scare up scribes and ink. The city seals were sent for as an afterthought. Within the hour Morfett’s ornamental tables were pressed into service as desks and Gnudsog’s horny fists became weighted with requisitions for provisions, arms and draft teams. Throughout, Lysaer paced the chamber, consumed by restless passion, haranguing reticent officials and cajoling the minister of finance to yield up the keys to the treasury. ‘Strike thoroughly and at once,’ he stressed. ‘Or I can promise you’ll have trouble on a scale your histories have never seen.’

In all of Athera, he was the sole man qualified to measure the damages that s’Ffalenn wiles could inflict. His greatest fear was in making the Etarrans understand just how perilous an enemy they had against them.

Just past dawn, Gnudsog’s troop of light cavalry clattered into the citadel’s north bailey. Tired riders dismounted amid the noisy, uprooted industry of a city arming for war. By then the governor’s council looked toward one saviour for guidance. The patrol’s weary officer was sent apace to Lysaer with news that his riders had failed in their mission to capture Arithon.

Presented across a table littered with crumb-scattered plates and charts spread helter-skelter with the inked-over marks of evolving strategy, the young lancer finished his report. ‘We could not overtake him, my lords. The Shadow Master had a wide lead already, even without Sithaer’s own darkness and a cold that dropped snow to hide his tracks. When we learned he’d snatched a remount from a caravan, we had no choice but turn back. To continue was useless, with our horses winded near to foundering.’

Sunlight slanted across creased layers of parchments that crackled as Diegan leaned on them; that sound, and the rasp as Lord Governor Morfett scratched his fleshy, stubbled jaws filled an interval of stillness. None of the men had slept or refreshed themselves throughout a night spent planning.

The lance captain shifted from foot to foot, justly nervous.

‘Why didn’t you commandeer fresh horses from the caravan’s road-master?’ Diegan demanded at length.

‘My Lord Commander, the merchant who owned the pack-train wasn’t under Etarran jurisdiction.’ Still bitter, the captain added, ‘Even so, we might have had help, had we been able to bribe his road-master a tenth as generously as the renegade.’

Lysaer frowned. Beaten pale by fatigue, long past finesse, he said, ‘But you claimed that Arithon stole the horse.’

‘He did.’ The captain clamped his teeth against frustration. ‘Your Shadow Master dared not attempt a fair offer as his speech, like yours, begging pardon, my lord, is very like the barbarians’. Rather than risk being skewered the instant he opened his mouth, he fired a supply tent for diversion, brought his shadows down and made off with a carthorse. Asked no man’s leave, mind, but left a cloak pin fixed to the picket-line set with an emerald big enough to choke on. The road-master was sick drunk on beer by the time my lancers had the story. The hired troop guarding the caravan were Sithaer bent on having a holiday, and in no mood for chasing any fugitive.’

Lysaer slammed both hands into the clutter. Crumbs bounced, and an ink-flask tottered to the chime of a disarranged butter knife. ‘How like the bastard, Dharkaron Avenger take s’Ffalenn cunning!’

At the prince’s expostulation, Lord Diegan showed the fashionable bland interest, while Governor Morfett started from the act of dabbing smeared butter from his chin. ‘I beg your pardon, my lord?’

Lysaer’s glance flashed anger. ‘Arithon is quick, innovative as a fiend, and aware of our weaknesses to a fine point. I’ve seen his family’s work before. Given any chance, he will play us one against another, until we are driven to spoil our own cause for the havoc. But this time will be different. Arithon’s twisted strategies will be turned back against him. When that happens, Daelion grant that I be on the field to break him.’

Roused from obsession by the lance captain, who cringed in his dust-streaked cloak and sweaty boots, Lysaer softened to sympathy. ‘I see you’re tired. Rest assured, your competence in this matter was never for an instant in question.’ As naturally as if loyalty were his due to praise, he finished, ‘Should all of Etarra arise against the prince of shadows with service as willing as yours, his death will be swiftly accomplished.’

Sojourns

Lane-watch report reaches Prime Enchantress Morriel, that Etarra musters for war; her summons to her First Senior is immediate, and her orders stingingly curt: ‘The Fellowship sorcerers have misplayed the s’Ffalenn succession. Arithon is in flight as a fugitive, and your guess was apt: if Elaira was forewarned of this development, her escapade at Erdane held more than infatuation. Recall her westward to Narms, and pack for travel. We shall meet her there with all speed…’

Bearing the last wraith exorcised at Etarra across the deepest wilds of Daon Ramon, Asandir and the Mad Prophet press on toward Skelseng’s Gate with intent to remove Desh-thiere to a place of better security; while across the sky at their shoulder, sunset burns angry scarlet on a snarl of storm-clouds that Kharadmon has unleashed, to close over lands to the north…