Warhost of Vastmark

by Janny Wurts

  Too late, they sensed the hook and trap the Warden had set in his subtlety, which tied the broken pebble with its whole twin, thrown to rest inside Luhaine’s container. When Sethvir called on that binding and knit the flung fragments of his awareness back into one cohesive whole, the wraiths were pulled with him. Attached, all nine, to a split portion of himself, but not yet allowed full possession to inflict total mastery over him, they found themselves upended and sucked without volition to home with their victim’s conscious will. The spell-forged link to the second pebble, where the Sorcerer now fled, drew the entities to follow in blind compulsion through the neck of the slate flask.

  Their collective cry seemed to harrow the air and shiver the books on the shelves.

  ‘Now!’ Kharadmon’s shout melded with Luhaine’s response. Incandescent spells bathed the cylinder on the table, searing its outline seamless white.

  Tired as he was, worn to a shadow of his strength, Kharadmon etched the first seal over the wraiths to imprison them.

  ‘Let be,’ Luhaine chided. ‘Would you waste yourself to a mute shade?’ Since Kharadmon was ever the sort to spurn sense, he balanced his energies and joined in.

  Night mist beyond the casements blazed like spilled oil to the out-flood of light from sparked power. The raised aura of Fellowship spellcraft flung off a mighty corona until the chamber keened in shared tension, and the slates in the floor hummed in stressed resonance to the flux of tempered force.

  With time the lights died, leaving the lane-spark in the brazier a needle of blue light in velvet darkness. Draught through the opened shutters stirred through a faint stench of sulphur, tainted with ozone and an ashy miasma of singed dust. The wraiths’ prison rested on the dimpled slab of the tabletop, an obsidian cylinder that tapped and pinged through the stresses of natural cooling.

  On the floor, wax still, limp flesh devoid of spirit, Sethvir’s body sprawled in the blood-dark puddle of his robes. The white curve of his lashes never flickered. He did not dream; his breathing was shallow and imperceptibly slow, except to the eyes of another mage.

  Across heavy silence, through sorrowful, shared awareness and a stillness that presaged false peace, two discorporate Fellowship Sorcerers steeled themselves to wait. They exchanged no speech. Their fear loomed wide as sky itself. For although the wraiths lay safely contained, the spirit of their colleague was trapped also.

  Inside the flask, alone against nine, Sethvir now battled for his life.

  ‘We cannot abandon him in there,’ Luhaine said at last in a slow, careful phrase of masked pain.

  Kharadmon swirled from his place by the casement, to his colleague’s sight a moiled patch of shade that wore spirit light in flecks like fogged stars. ‘No, we can’t. The wraiths will devour his identity.’ A sigh of breeze raised frost on the book spines as he roved in restless currents through the chamber. ‘That’s what became of the people who inhabited the worlds beyond South Gate. The same tragedy would have repeated itself here, had Traithe not spared us all by checking Desh-thiere’s invasion at the outset.’

  Had Luhaine still worn flesh, he would have swallowed back the coppery taste of fear. ‘You’re saying the fell mists held intent to enslave our whole world?’

  ‘They still could,’ Kharadmon pronounced in bleak fact. ‘Were its two sundered portions ever to be rejoined, there’s no doubt left of its strength. All Athera would be laid to waste.’ He need not repeat that the beacon spell set on the solstice had seeded the opening to admit just such a horrid possibility. Forewarned at the time of the danger, he had unwound the spell sent to call him, even exposed himself to attack in the doing. But the clean, fine signature of Fellowship power could not fully be erased without imprint.

  A tracery leading back to the spell’s point of origin would linger for several centuries to be tracked. The stakes of the nightmare had widened. Now the wraiths confined at Rockfell Peak were just the bitter edge of a greater peril.

  But for now future worries must defer to the weight of present crisis. Inside the sealed flask the battle still raged. Mage-sight could cross the ward boundaries to trace Sethvir’s tactics as he twisted and zigzagged like a hunted hare through the maze of the river pebble’s structure. Attached to him were the wraiths, striving ever to complete their possession.

  To aid him, the two colleagues left free must build spells of frightful complexity.

  In partnered concentration, they embraced the contours that comprised the black flagon, then softened the bonding of its structure. The wailing resonance of the wraiths inside dragged at the Sorcerers’ focus and struck hurtful harmonics through their auras. They stood fast. Of necessity, they ignored even the rending awareness of Sethvir’s tortured flight. In care, with infinite patience, they crooned a litany to the river pebble and coaxed its solid, round contour to meld its structure with that of the flask.

  Like a teardrop in a puddle, the grained bit of granite ceded its separate nature to pool into the obsidian’s denser matrix. Kharadmon and Luhaine paused in slack silence, their rivalry stilled into listening. If luck held and Sethvir had not weakened, he could have preserved his tie to inanimate stone and followed the river pebble’s transmutation. The way had been opened for him to fly in retreat. He could attempt to sieve his beleaguered consciousness through the guard spells borrowed from Althain’s grand warding that Luhaine had affixed in the flask. The conjury itself was a welded amalgamation of Paravian magics and his own wary knitting of defences. Theory held that the pattern of the Warden’s spirit Name should be recognized, mazed as it was with the stamp of the Ilitharis Paravians’ own blessing. The great centaurs themselves had ceded the earth link to Sethvir’s care in the hour when the last of their race had abandoned their post at Althain Tower.

  But fear and guessed odds made small footing for hope as the seconds sang by, and Kharadmon and Luhaine held in wait for their fellow to seize his chance.

  Sethvir had no reprieve to test his hunches, no moment to hesitate and think. If his choice stood in error, the effects would become irreversible.

  His first step was made unsupported and alone, with his two colleagues helpless to lend him guidance. In his passage through the coiled sigils which cross-linked to form the guard spells’ mighty seals, the Warden would hope that the parasitic wraiths would be strained away. Only then could his self-awareness emerge whole and unsullied.

  If he misjudged, he could be annihilated by the countersurge of his own defences; or he might be held as the prisoner of his very tower’s fell guard spells, trapped inside a pebble and smothered for all time inside a tomb of warded slate. Worse, perhaps, and most frightening, the wraiths could seize upon some clever delusion, might turn some trick to corrupt the wards and slip by. Should this transpire, the Sorcerer who awakened would be changed from the dear colleague who had entered, an evil too ruinous to contemplate.

  Distress drove Kharadmon to unwonted sympathy. ‘Sethvir is most wise and clever enough in his ways to fool even Daelion Fatemaster. An ugly truth will not deter him. He would disperse his very spirit to oblivion before ever he let such a risk walk abroad to harm Athera.’

  Luhaine for once had no words. Coiled into tight worry, he maintained a tortured stillness, as if to acknowledge his colleague’s restless movement might cause him to abandon his dignity and fidget.

  Hours passed without sign. Breezes off the desert funnelled through the casement, sharp with the bite of autumn frost. The unlatched shutters swung to the gusts and thumped odd tattoos on the window jambs. On a floor gritted with the shattered remains of what had been a blameless river pebble, moonlight sliced oblate patterns.

  In time the new dawn masked the stars in leaden grey. The stilled form sprawled upon the chill flagstone regained a flush of rose about the nostrils. One wiry, veined hand curled closed.

  ‘Tea,’ Sethvir sighed in a wistful, weak whisper. ‘Kharadmon, do you think you might dredge up a spark to kindle the fire? If my memory isn’t damaged, I believe the cauldron’s filled
and ready.’

  The Warden of Althain was himself; two colleagues withdrew from close inspection of his aura pattern, while a fired ray of sun lit the clouds and etched a blush of leaf gold against the lichened stone of the east casement.

  In response to Luhaine’s furious and silent burst of censure, Sethvir propped himself on one elbow and scrubbed at wisps of beard that had hung themselves up in his eyebrows. ‘What else could we do?’ He said in cold conclusion, ‘I couldn’t let these free wraiths come to be mewed up in Rockfell alongside Desh-thiere’s captive consciousness.’ If mishap occurred and the two halves of this monster should ever chance to recombine, there could be no end to the world’s suffering. ‘It’s all right,’ he added, then looked up and blinked, a smear of dust on his nose. Unshed tears glistened in his eyes. ‘At least through the course of a partial possession I’ve recovered true Name for these nine. It’s a pitiful start. But we now have the means to unravel the wickedness that binds them. Shall we not make an end and restore their lost path to Ath’s peace?’

  By noon, restored by hot tea and a catnap, Sethvir sat huddled in furled robes in the windy niche of a window seat. Daylight mapped the whorled distortion in the grain of the tabletop where Luhaine had reconfigured the stone to create the warded flask.

  The container itself stood empty beside a porcelain mug with spiderwork cracks through the glaze.

  After harrowing labour, the nine enchained spirits had been given their redemption and release. The books had been tidied, the ink flasks set right, but Sethvir had not bothered with sweeping. His library floor still lay scattered with river sand, the cobwebs in the corners caught with small twists of parchment last pressed into use as his pagemarks.

  Luhaine’s groomed image inhabited the apron by the hearth, unstirred by the draughts from the chimney. Kharadmon appeared as a wan, slender form perched on the stuffing of a chair. His posture was all dapper angles and elegant, attenuated bones. His spade point beard and piebald hair and narrow nose appeared as foxy as ever, but his green cloak with its ruddy orange lining tended to drift through intervals of transparency. Despite a clear outline, the force of him seemed washed and faded.

  In pared, quiet phrases, the discorporate Sorcerer related what befell on his quest to the splinter worlds cut away from their link to Athera. ‘On the other side, Desh-thiere’s essence is stronger than our most dismal estimate,’ he said. ‘I’m left humbled by the power Traithe faced, to his ruin, on the day he sealed off the South Gate. I say now with certainty that he spared all life on Athera.’

  Kharadmon went on to tell of Marak, where the Fellowship had once exiled those people whose curiosity prompted them to pursue the knowledge proscribed by the compact between mankind and the Paravians. In a lightless search, through a suffocating mist that shrouded that far place into darkness and an ice-ridden, desolate wasteland, no living thing had breathed or moved.

  ‘I narrowed my search in the gutted shells of the libraries,’ Kharadmon resumed. ‘I found records there, fearful maps of what was done.’ His image chafed its thin fingers as if to bring warmth to lost flesh. ‘As we guessed, Desh-thiere was created by frightened minds as a weapon of mass destruction. A faction on Marak built on the laws of physical science, then meddled in theories that came to unbalance the axis of prime life force. The intent was to interweave spirit with machine. These men desired to create the ultimate synergy between the human mind and a physical construct, and transcend the limits of the flesh. Well, their works went wrong. The ionized fields of mists that contained the captive spirits over time drifted their awareness out of self-alignment. The experiment turned on its creators. I can only conclude that those sorry entities tied outside of Daelion’s Wheel became warped and vicious and insane.’

  The result laid two entire worlds to white waste; then the hundreds of thousands of dead from that carnage, subverted and entrapped in brutal turn.

  ‘I have failed in my mission,’ Kharadmon summed up in drawn sorrow. ‘No roll list of Names could I find for the original set of wraiths that comprised Desh-thiere’s first sentience. And now, those prime spirits have been joined by every other casualty they have caused. They react as a body, their mad purpose to devour life. The strength of them is deadly and far too vast for our Fellowship to grapple without help.’

  Sethvir tapped the knuckle of his thumb against his teeth. ‘We’ll need the aid of the Paravians,’ he ventured. ‘Their resonance with prime power could perhaps turn those lost entities to recall their forgotten humanity.’

  ‘A masterbard’s talents might do the same, had we the means to isolate each individual victim from the pull of collective consciousness,’ Luhaine said.

  The Warden of Althain was silent. His turquoise eyes locked on Kharadmon in recognition of the annihilating truth left unmentioned. ‘The mist sublimates away under vacuum,’ he surmised.

  ‘Exactly.’ Kharadmon shot upright and stalked a soundless circuit of the chamber. ‘Free wraiths result, as you saw. If the ones still fogbound on Marak can unriddle the guidance traces left by that beacon spell of summoning, we could find ourselves beset beyond all recourse.’

  Silence ate the seconds as the three mages pondered. The quandary of the Mistwraith had expanded to fearful dimensions. Its threat would not end with the creatures mewed up under wards in Rockfell Pit. Indeed, Athera would never be safe from predation until the trapped, damned spirits from both worlds beyond South Gate could be drawn under bindings, then redeemed.

  The royal half-brothers already set in jeopardy by the curse might yet be needed to right the balance.

  Recent events at Minderl Bay had effectively shown that Lysaer held no vestige of control over Desh-thiere’s aberrant geas.

  Which left Arithon once again at the critical crux of responsibility.

  Sethvir sighed, his crown tipped back against the tower’s chisel-cut window. In tones hammered blank by a burden just extended through trials enough to stop the heart, he said, ‘Asandir will reach the focus at Caith-al-Caen by the advent of tonight’s sundown. He can transfer to Athir’s ruin on the east shore and flag down the sloop Talliarthe. He will treat with the Shadow Master there and charge him, for the world’s sake, to stay alive. At any cost, by whaever means, the Prince of Rathain must survive until this threat beyond South Gate can be resolved.’

  Beside the table, thinned to wan imprint against the varnished tiers of the bookshelves, Kharadmon blinked like a cat. ‘Not enough,’ he said in his old, stinging curtness. ‘Have Asandir bind our crown prince to his promise by blood oath.’

  Luhaine stiffened to indignance and Sethvir looked aghast. ‘He is s’Ffalenn and compelled by his birth line to compassion,’ they protested in clashing chorus.

  The Warden of Althain finished. ‘Since Torbrand, no scion of Rathain has ever required more than his royal promise!’

  Kharadmon’s image vanished into a wisp of gloom that fanned a chill through the chamber. ‘You didn’t experience what lies behind South Gate. Heed my warning. Who can say what lengths may be necessary to save us all before this disaster is played out.’

  Tharrick

  Dakar the Mad Prophet snapped awake from the tail of a nightmare that involved the loss of his best spirits into the gawping jaws of a fish. The lap of wavelets against wood reminded him that he inhabited a musty berth aboard Talliarthe. He cracked open one eye and immediately groaned as light speared into his pupil from a scald of reflection which danced on the deck beams overhead.

  ‘Is it sunset or daybreak?’ he bellowed, then stuffed his face like a turtle back into the dark refuge of his blankets.

  From his place by the stays in the stern, Arithon merely kept whistling a threnody with an odd, glancing dissonance that went ill with the aches of a hangover.

  ‘Ath,’ Dakar grumped. He shrugged off the suffocating layers of salt-damp wool, his pudgy hands stretched to cover his eyes and his ears, and successfully managing neither. ‘Your tune sounds like a damned fiend bane.’

  A
rithon nodded. His screeling measures stayed unbroken. He had seen iyats in the waves at the turn of the tide and preferred to keep his rigging unmolested. He had yet to change the ripped shirt he had worn through the affray at Minderl Bay. Bathed in the ruddy gold light that washed the misted shoreline at Athir, where his little sloop lay at anchor, he twisted the cork from the neck of another flask, then upended it over the stern rail.

  Dakar screamed and shot upright as a stream of neat whisky splashed with a gurgle into the brine. The nightmare that had wakened him had been no prank of imagination, after all. ‘Dharkaron rip off your cursed bollocks!’ he howled, and added a damning string of epithets that curdled the quiet of new morning. ‘You’re dumping my last stock of spirits into the Ath-forsaken sea!’

  Arithon never paused in his pursuit. ‘I wondered how long you’d take to notice.’ That icy note of warning in his tone was unmistakable to anyone who knew him.

  Dakar paused in the companionway to catch his breath, take stock, and indulge in a long, thoughtful scratch at his crotch. ‘What’s changed?’

  In the days since the discharge of his hired seamen, then Earl Jieret’s landing ashore for return to Caolle and his clans, the Shadow Master’s brittle temper had seemed to ease. With Lysaer’s warhost disbanded, the intolerable mood he had affected since the massive strike at Werpoint had settled out. Left to his preferred state of solitude, the Shadow Master plied the helm and set Talliarthe’s course gently south.

  By the drilling intensity his green eyes held now, something had happened since last night’s sunset to upset his plans yet again.

  Too sore for subtlety before balking silence, Dakar repeated his question a plaintive half pitch higher.

  Arithon stabbed the cork back into the emptied crock, teeth bared in a wince as the movement troubled some hurt beneath a bandage on his forearm. The injury had not existed the day before. ‘We’re going on to Perdith to visit the forges, and here forward you’ll need to stay sober.’