The Curse of the Mistwraith

by Janny Wurts

  The mist lowered, reducing the town to an outline, then a memory. Lysaer shivered, his spurt of enthusiasm dampened. ‘Did you happen to notice where the gate lets in?’

  ‘West. There was a road.’ Arithon stepped forward, pensive; as if his timing was prearranged, bells tolled below, sounding the carillon at noon. ‘Our prophet is late indeed. Are you coming?’

  Lysaer nodded, scuffed caked mud from his heel with his instep, and strode off hastily to keep up. ‘Asandir’s going to be vexed.’

  ‘Decidedly.’ Arithon’s brows rose in disingenuous innocence. ‘But hurry or we might miss the fun.’

  A cross-country trek through sheep fields and hedgerows saw the brothers to the road beneath the gates. There, instead of easier going, Lysaer received an unpleasant reminder of his reduced station. Accustomed to travelling mounted, he dodged the muck and splatter thrown up by rolling wagons with a diligence not shared by other footbound wayfarers. Ingrained to an enchanter’s preference for remaining unobtrusive, Arithon noted with relief that the clothing given them to wear seemed unremarkably common: he and his half-brother passed the guards who lounged beside the lichen-crusted gate without drawing challenge or notice.

  The streets beyond were cobbled, uneven with neglect and scattered with dank-smelling puddles. Houses pressed closely on either side, hung with dripping eaves and canting balconies, and cornices spattered with gull guano. Tarnished tin talismans, purpose unknown, jangled in the shadows of the doorways. Confused as the avenue narrowed to a three-way convergence of alleys, Lysaer dodged a pail of refuse water tossed from a window overhead. ‘Cheerless place,’ he muttered. ‘You can’t want to stop and admire the view here?’

  Arithon left off contemplation of their surroundings and said, ‘Does that mean you want the task of asking directions through this maze?’

  Lysaer pushed back his hood and listened as a pair of matrons strode by chattering. Their speech was gently slurred, some of the vowels flattened, the harder consonants rolled to a lazy burr. ‘The dialect isn’t impossible. On a good night of drinking I expect we could blend right in.’

  The crisper edges to his phrasing caused one of the women to turn. The expression half-glimpsed beneath her shawl was startled and her exclamation openly rude as she caught her companion’s elbow and hastened past into a courtyard. Rebuffed by the clank of a gate bar, Arithon grinned at the prince’s dismay. ‘Try being a touch less flamboyant,’ he suggested.

  Lysaer shut his mouth and looked offended. More practised with ladies who fawned on him, he stepped smartly past a puddle and approached a ramshackle stall that sold sausages. Sheltered under a lean-to of sewn hide, and attended by a chubby old man with wispy hair and a strikingly pretty young daughter, the fare that smoked over a dented coal brazier seemed smelly enough to scare off customers. At Lysaer’s approach, the proprietor brightened and began a singsong patter that to foreign ears sounded like nonsense.

  Caught at a loss as a laden sausage-fork was waved beneath his nose, the prince tore his glance from the girl and offered an engaging smile. ‘I’m not hungry, but in need of directions. Could your charming young daughter, or yourself, perhaps oblige?’

  The man crashed his fist on the counter, upsetting a wooden bowl of broth. Hot liquid cascaded in all directions. The fork jabbed out like a striking snake, and saved only by swordsman’s reflexes, Lysaer sprang back stupefied.

  ‘By Ath, I’ll skewer ye where ye stand!’ howled the sausageseller. ‘Ha dare ye, sly faced drifter-scum, ha dare ye stalk these streets like ye own ‘em?’

  The girl reached out, caught her father’s pumping forearm with chapped hands and flushed in matching rage. ‘Get back to the horse fair, drifter! Hurry on, before ye draw notice from the constable!’

  Lysaer stiffened to deliver a civil retort, but Arithon, light as a cutpurse, interjected his person between. He caught the sausageseller’s waving fork and flashed a hard glance at the girl. ‘No offence meant, but we happen to be lost.’

  The vendor tugged his utensil and lost grip on the handle. Arithon stabbed the greasy tines upright in the ramshackle counter, and despite penetrating stares from half a dozen passersby, folded arms unnaturally tan for the sunless climate and waited.

  The girl softened first. ‘Go right, through the Weaver’s lane, and damn ye both for bad liars.’

  Lysaer drew breath for rejoinder, cut off as Arithon jostled him forcibly away in the indicated direction. Whitely angry, the prince exploded in frustration. ‘Ath’s grace, what sort of place is this, where a man can’t compliment a girl without suffering insult out of hand!’

  ‘Must be your manners,’ the Master said.

  ‘Manners!’ Lysaer stopped dead and glared. ‘Do I act like a churl?’

  ‘Not to me.’ Arithon pointedly kept on walking, and reminded by the odd, carven doorways and curious regard of strangers that he was no longer heir to any kingdom, Lysaer swallowed his pride and continued.

  ‘What did they mean by “drifters”?’ he wondered aloud as they skirted a stinking bait-monger’s cart and turned down a lane marked by a guild stamp painted on a shuttlecock.

  Arithon did not answer. He had paused to prod what looked to be a beggar asleep and snoring in the gutter. The fellow sprawled on his back, one elbow crooked over his face. The rest of him was scattered with odd bits of garbage and potato peels, as though the leavings from the scullery had been tossed out with him as an afterthought.

  Mollified enough to be observant, Lysaer did an incredulous double-take. ‘Dakar?’

  ‘None else.’ Arithon glanced back, a wild light in his eyes. ‘Oh, luck of the sinful, we’ve been blessed.’

  ‘I fail to see why.’ Lysaer edged nervously closer, mostly to hide the fact that his half-brother had crouched among the refuse and was methodically searching the untidy folds of Dakar’s clothing. ‘You’ll have yourself in irons and branded for stealing.’

  Arithon ignored him. With recklessness that almost seemed to taunt, he thrust a hand up under the tunic hem and groped at Dakar’s well padded middle. The Mad Prophet remained comatose. After the briefest interval, the Master exclaimed on a clear note of triumph and stood, a weighty sack of coins in his fist.

  ‘Oh, you thieving pirate.’ Lysaer smiled, enticed at last to collusion. ‘Where do we go to celebrate?’

  ‘The horse fair, I think.’ Arithon tossed the silver to his companion. ‘Or was that someone else I heard cursing the mud on the road below the gatehouse?’

  Lysaer let the comment pass. Thoughtful as he fingered the unfamiliar coinage inside the purse, he said, ‘This must be a well-patrolled town, or else a very honest one, if a man can lie about in a stupor and not be troubled by theft.’

  Arithon skirted the sagging boards of a door-stoop.

  ‘But our prophet didn’t leave anything unguarded.’

  Lysaer’s fingers clenched over the coins, which all of a sudden felt cold. ‘Spells?’

  ‘Just one.’ The Master showed no smugness. ‘From the careless way the bindings were set, Dakar must have a reputation.’

  ‘For being a mage’s apprentice?’ Lysaer tucked the pouch in his doublet as they passed the front of a weaver’s shop. Samples of woollens and plaids were nailed in streamers to the signpost but the door was tightly closed and customers nowhere in evidence.

  ‘More likely for scalding the hide off the hands of any fool desperate enough to rob him.’ Arithon tucked unblemished fingers under his cloak as if the topic under discussion was blandly ordinary.

  They arrived at the end of the alley, Lysaer wondering whether he could ever feel easy with the secretive manner of mages. A glance into the square beyond the lane revealed why activity on the gateside quarter of town had seemed unnaturally subdued: West End’s autumn horse fair became the centrepiece for a festival and the stalls that normally housed the fishmarket were hung with banners and ribbon. Picketlines stretched between and haltered in every conceivable space were horses of all sizes and description. Urc
hins in fishermen’s smocks raced in play through whatever crannies remained, scolded by matrons and encouraged by a toothless old fiddler who capered about playing notes that in West End passed for a jig. To Arithon’s ear, his instrument very badly needed tuning.

  Wary since the incident with the sausageseller, the half-brothers spent a moment in observation. Except for a pair of dwarf jugglers tossing balls for coins, the folk of the town seemed an ordinary mix of fishermen, craftsmen and farm wives perched upon laden wagons. The customers who haggled to buy were not richly clothed; most were clean, and the off-duty soldiers clad in baldrics and leather brigandines seemed more inclined to share drink and talk by the wineseller’s stall than to make suspicious inquiries of strangers. Still, as the brothers ventured forward into the press, Arithon kept one arm beneath his cloak, his hand in prudent contact with his sword hilt.

  A confectioner’s child accosted them the moment they entered the fair. Though the half-brothers had eaten nothing since dawn, neither wished to tarry for sugared figs, even ones offered by a girl with smiling charm. Lysaer dodged past with a shake of his head, and in wordless accord Arithon followed past a butcher’s stall and an ox wagon haphazardly piled with potted herbs. Beyond these sat a crone surrounded by crates of bottled preserves. Tied to a post by her chair stood a glossy string of horses.

  Lysaer and Arithon poised to one side to examine the stock. Nearby, ankle-deep in straw that smelled suspiciously like yesterday’s herring catch and surrounded by a weaving flock of gulls, a farmer in a sheepskin vest haggled loudly with a hawk-nosed fellow who wore threadbare linen and a brilliantly dyed leather tunic.

  ‘Seventy ra’el?’ The farmer scratched his ear, spat and argued vigorously. ‘Fer just a hack? That’s greedy over-priced, ye crafty drifter. If our mayor hears, mark my guess, he’s sure to bar yer clan from trading next year.’

  The hag amid the jam boxes raised her chin and mumbled an obscenity, while the colourfully-dressed horse dealer ran lean hands over the crest of the bay in question. ‘The price stands,’ he finished in a clear, incisive speech only lightly touched by the local burr. ‘Seventy royals or the mare stays where she is. Just a hack she might be, but she’s young and soundly bred.’

  ‘Ath, he’s hardly got an accent,’ Lysaer murmured in Arithon’s ear.

  The Master nodded fractionally. ‘Explains a great deal about the way we were received.’ All the while his eyes roved across the animals offered for sale. His half-brother watched, amused, as his interest caught and lingered over a broad-chested, blaze-faced gelding tied slightly apart from the rest.

  ‘I like that chestnut too,’ Lysaer admitted. ‘Nice legs, and he’s built for endurance.’

  The old woman twisted her head. She stared at the half-brothers, intent as a hawk and unnoticed as the farmer departed, cursing. Before another bidder could come forward, Arithon stepped into the gap and said, ‘What price do you ask for the chestnut?’

  The horse trader half spun, his features wide with astonishment. His glance encompassed the bystanders, confused, and only after a second sweep settled on Arithon and Lysaer, who now stood isolated as the farmers on either side backed away. ‘Daelion’s hells! What clan are you from, brother, and is this some jest, you here bidding like a townsman?’

  Arithon ignored both questions and instead repeated his query. ‘How much?’

  ‘He isn’t for sale,’ snapped the trader. ‘You blind to the tassels on his halter or what?’

  That moment the crone began to shout shrilly.

  Unnerved as much as his brother had been at finding himself the target of unwarranted hostility, Arithon cast about for a way to ease the drifter’s temper.

  Before he could speak, a smooth voice interjected. ‘The tassels of ownership are obvious.’ Townsmen on either side heard and started, and hastily disappeared about their business; and the grandmother by the jam bottles stopped yelling as the sorcerer, Asandir, touched her shawl and strode briskly in from behind. To the man he added, ‘But the finer horses in the fair are sold already and my companions need reliable mounts. Will you consider an offer of three hundred royals?’

  The drifter met this development with raised eyebrows and a startled intake of breath. He took in the weathered features, steel grey eyes and implacable demeanor of the sorcerer with evident recognition. ‘To you I’ll sell, but not for bribe-price. Two-hundred royals is fair.’

  Asandir turned a glance quite stripped of tolerance upon the princes who had disobeyed his command. ‘Go,’ he said. ‘Untie the chestnut and for your life’s sake, keep your mouths shut while I settle this.’ To the drifter the sorcerer added, ‘The horse is your personal mount. Take the extra hundred to ease the inconvenience while your next foal grows to maturity.’

  The drifter looked uncomfortable, as if he might argue the sorcerer’s generosity as charity. But the grandmother forestalled him with a curt jerk of her head: Asandir produced the coin swiftly. Before the culprits who had precipitated the transaction could attract any closer scrutiny he cut the tassels of ownership from the gelding’s halter and led his purchase away. Lysaer and Arithon were swept along without ceremony.

  The sorcerer hustled them back across the square. Fishermen turned heads to glare as chickens flapped squawking from under his fast-striding boots. They passed the butcher’s stall, crammed with bawling livestock and strangely silent customers. The chestnut shied and jibbed against the rein, until a word laced with spell-craft quieted it. Dreading the moment when such knife-edged tones might be directed his way in rebuke, Lysaer maintained silence.

  Arithon perversely rejected tact. ‘You found Dakar?’

  The sorcerer flicked a look of focused displeasure over one blue-cloaked shoulder. ‘Yes. He’s been dealt with already.’ Asandir changed course without hesitation down the darker of two branching alleys. Over the ring of the chestnut’s shod hooves he added, ‘You’ve already left an impression with the drifters. Don’t cause more talk in West End, am I clear?’

  He stopped very suddenly and tossed the chestnut’s leading rein to Lysaer. ‘Stay here, speak to no one, and simply wait. I’ll return with another horse and a decent saddle. Should you feel the urge to wander again, let me add that in this place, people associated with sorcerers very often wind up roasting in chains on a pile of oiled faggots.’

  Asandir spun and left them. Watching his departure with wide and unmollified eyes, Arithon mused, ‘I wonder what fate befell Dakar?’

  That subject was one that his half-brother preferred not to contemplate. Suddenly inimical to the Master’s provocations, Lysaer turned his back and made his acquaintance with the chestnut.

  Asandir returned after the briefest delay, leading a metal-coloured dun with an odd splash of white on her neck. His own mount trailed behind, a black with one china eye that disconcertingly appeared to stare a man through to the soul. Piled across its withers was an extra saddle allotted for Lysaer’s gelding.

  ‘You brought no bridle,’ the former prince observed as he undertook a groom’s work with fleece pads and girth.

  ‘The drifters of Pasyvier are the best horse trainers in Athera, and that gelding was a clan lord’s personal mount. It won’t require a bit. If you’re careless enough to fall, that animal would likely side-step to stay underneath you.’ His say finished, the sorcerer tossed the dun’s reins to Arithon. ‘She’s not a cull, only green. Don’t trust her so much you fall asleep.’

  From an urchin by the gates, the sorcerer collected a pony laden with blankets and leather-wrapped packs of supplies. Attached to its load by a rope length was the paint mare belonging to Dakar. The Mad Prophet himself lay trussed and draped across her saddle bow. Someone had dumped a bucket of water over his tousled head, and the damp seeped rings into clothing that still reeked faintly of garbage. The wetting had been as ineffective on Dakar’s snores: he rasped on unabated as Asandir drove the cavalcade at a trot through West End’s east-facing gate.

  Once the farmlands surrounding the town
fell behind, the road proved sparsely travelled. The surface had once been paved with slate, built firm and dry on a causeway that sliced a straight course through the boglands that flanked the coast. Centuries of passing wagons had cracked the thick stone in places; the criss-crossed muck in the wheel-ruts grew rooster-tails of weed. The mists pressed down on a landscape relentlessly flat and silver with the sheen of tidal waterways edged by blighted stands of reed. The air hung sour with the smell of decomposed vegetation. The chink of bits and stirrups, and the clink of horseshoes on rock offered lonely counterpoint to the wingbeats of waterfowl explosively startled into flight.

  Reassured that the sorcerer had yet to denounce anyone for the illicit visit to the West End market, Lysaer spurred his horse abreast and dared a question: ‘Who are the drifters and why do the people dislike them?’

  Asandir glanced significantly at Arithon, who fought with every shred of his attention to keep his mare from crabbing sideways. The company of three departed the instant the half-brothers gained the saddle. Asandir led, and did not add that his choice in horses had been guided by intent; he wanted Arithon kept preoccupied. ‘Since the rebellion which threw down the high kings, the drifters have been nomads. They breed horses in the grasslands of Pasyvier and mostly keep to themselves. The townsmen are wary of them because their ancestors once ruled in West End.’

  The party crossed the moss-crusted spans of the Melor River bridge while the mare bounced and clattered and shied to a barrage of playful snorts. Masked by the antics of the dun, Asandir added, ‘There are deep antipathies remaining from times past, and much prejudice. Your accents, as you noticed, allied you with unpopular factions. My purpose in asking you to wait in the wood was to spare you from dangerous misunderstanding.’

  Lysaer drew breath to inquire further but the sorcerer forestalled him. ‘Teir’s’Ilessid,’ he said, using an old language term that the prince lacked the knowledge to translate. ‘There are better times for questions and I promise you shall be given all the answers you need. Right now I’m anxious to set distance between the town and ourselves before dark. The drifters are not fools and the folk who saw you will talk. The result might brew up a curiosity far better left to bide until later.’