by Janny Wurts
‘Dharkaron, avenging angel,’ Felirin swore in falsetto. ‘Who is that man, to pass unscathed through living flame, and what in Sithaer made that sword?’
Asandir turned bland eyes upon the much-shaken minstrel. ‘He is Arithon, Master of Shadows, and if you’ll help raise a cairn over the unfortunate dead from your caravan, I’ll give you explanation for the sword.’
Dakar the Mad Prophet raised a hand and touched the shoulder of Arithon’s utterly crestfallen half-brother. In a voice of conspiratorial conciliation he said, ‘Lysaer, don’t feel slighted. Your moment will come in due time.’
Alithiel’s Story
The five riders bound for Camris suffered no second attack by Khadrim, though for safety’s sake through several of the narrower defiles, Asandir asked Arithon to ride with his sword unsheathed in his hand. The blade evinced no glow of warning, and then the pass fell behind. The pitch of the road became less rugged and the jagged crags rounded to hills. At twilight the company made camp in a cave on the far slopes of Tornir Peaks.
The shelter was often used by summer caravans, and passing generations of wagoneers had built in some comforts over time. Benches of split logs surrounded a rock-lined fire-pit and a crude stand of fencing had been erected beneath the underhang of a natural outcrop. In places, moss-grown remnants of stone walls showed where sheds and an earlier inn had been levelled in some forgotten past conflict. Once the horses were unsaddled, and Dakar sent off to gather wood, Asandir crouched down with kindling and chips and began clearing away the ashes left by last season’s travellers. He gestured through the failing light as Lysaer knelt to help. ‘If the mist were to lift off the valley you could see lights from here, wayside inns on the plain of Karmak. The roads of north Korias might have gone wild, but the trade-routes from Atainia cross Camris. The lands are better travelled there, and on the east shore ships still ply the bay.’
Lysaer stared out into gathering darkness but his eyes saw only mist. Descended from an island culture, he could not imagine the vast spread of continent described by the sorcerer’s words. ‘It must have been hard, seeing your civilization shrink to a shadow of its former greatness. ’
Asandir paused, his hands quiet on his knees. His eyes turned piercing into distance. ‘Harder than you know, young s’Ilessid: But the sun will shine over us again.’
Felirin and Arithon entered, adding the smells of healing herbs and wet leaves to the dusky scent of dry charcoal. The wound on the grey stallion’s neck had been washed and cared for. The bard carried a handsome, silver-bossed saddle, his own, recovered that day from the corpse of his former palfrey. Asandir had retained a replacement set of reins, but the rest of the wagons and goods they had burned, lest unwitting passersby linger for salvage and tempt the Khadrim to further massacre.
Outside the cave the wind picked up, moaning through a stand of stunted pines. ‘Winter’s coming early,’ Felirin observed. ‘Seems to move in a little sooner every year.’
Unaware that such shifts in the seasons were the ongoing effects of Desh-thiere, he dumped his saddle over a log bench and sat, the skirt-flap a welcome backrest after exhausting hours astride. As Asandir’s efforts graced the cave with a curl of pale flame, the bard inspected his hands and cursed. The fingernails he needed to pluck his strings were split to the quick from shifting rocks. Arithon’s were no whit better and made bold by shared commiseration, Felirin gathered nerve and made inquiry.
‘I don’t recall any stanzas that mention a Master of Shadow.’
Asandir settled back, his face washed gold by flamelight. ‘That song has yet to be written.’ Gently as an afterthought, he added, ‘Felirin, it would not do to speak of this yet in the taverns. But you could see stars and sun within your lifetime.’
The bard gaped in astonishment, his glibness at a loss for reply. Asandir allowed the import of his words a moment to sink in. Then he said, ‘Lysaer and Arithon are the potential of a restored sky made real, the Mistwraith’s bane promised five centuries ago by Dakar’s Prophecy of West Gate.’
Caught dumbfounded, Felirin struggled to recover something resembling equanimity. He swore once, hoarsely. Then, left only his performer’s dignity, he said, ‘How many of the old ballads are not myth, but true history?’
‘Most of them.’ Asandir waited, his look gravely steady, as this became assimilated through another shaken interval of silence. ‘You are one of a chosen few who know.’
Dakar picked that moment to return, puffing under an armload of damp faggots. He had not bothered to shear off the dead branches, and his laziness had torn his better shirt. The ordinary intensity of his irritation became an anchor upon which Felirin hung sanity. Informed that his whole world stood poised on the brink of upheaval and change, the bard caught a shivering breath. ‘For the sake of one commonplace mortal, save the rest until after we’ve had supper. I’m hungry enough to hallucinate, and hearing the impossible doesn’t help.’
Later, warmed by leek stew and the coals of a generous bonfire, the sorcerer gave the history of Arithon’s sword. The tale was lengthy, beginning over eighteen thousand years in the past when twelve blades were forged at Isaer by the Paravian armourer, Ffereton s’Darien, from the cinder of a fallen star.
‘Ffereton was Ilitharis, a centaur,’ Asandir began. ‘The Isaervian swords were his finest, most famed creation, wrought at need to battle the vast packs of Khadrim that were the scourge of the Second Age. The histories that survive claim each blade took five years’ labour, a full decade if one were to count the sorceries that went into the sharpening. When Ffereton finished, the steel held an edge that time nor battle could blunt.’
Here, the sorcerer paused and asked Arithon to bare his blade from the scabbard. ‘You’ll see there are no nicks, no flaws from hard usage. Yet Alithiel has known the blows of two ages of strife.’ Asandir turned the quillons between his hands and firelight flashed on the inlay which twined the dark length of the blade.
‘The swords were given over to the fair folk, called sunchildren, for finishing. It was they who made the hilts and chased the channels for the inlay, no two patterns the same. But perhaps the greatest wonder is the metal set into the runes themselves.’ Asandir ran a finger over the inscriptions and as an answering flare of silver traced his touch, his voice softened into reverence. ‘Riathan, the unicorns, sang the great spells of defence. Masters of the lost art of name-binding, they infused the alloy with harmonics tuned to the primal chord of vibration used by Ath Creator to kindle the first stars with light. Legend holds that twenty-one masters took a decade to endow Alithiel alone.’
Asandir slipped the sword back in the scabbard with a soft sigh of sound. ‘The enchantment was balanced to peak in defence of the sword’s true bearer, dazzling the eyes of his enemy, but only if the engagement was just. Very few causes that drive a man to kill are righteous ones. Probably Arithon’s father never knew the nature of the weapon he left to his son.
Arithon confirmed this with a nod but did not speak. Haunted by his encounter with the sword’s arcane powers, he feared to betray the dread that partnered such mystery: that some role waited to be asked of him to match such a grand weight of history. Determined to control his own fate, the Shadow Master sat with locked hands while, with the skilled resonance of a storyteller, Asandir continued: ‘The Isaervian blades were crafted for the hands of six great Lords of the Ilitharis and the six exalted lines of the sunchildren. Alithiel was the oddity. She was forged for Ffereton’s son, Durmaenir, a centaur born undersized. The blade was tailored to match his proportions, from the length to the balance of the grip. In the wars that followed thousands of Khadrim died, their last memory the flaring brilliance of an Isaervian sword’s enchantment. Sadly, Durmaenir was one of the fallen. His grieving father passed Alithiel to the king’s heir.’
Arithon heard this and restrained a forcible wish to stop his ears, walk away, even shout nonsense; any reaction to halt this brilliant, weighty tapestry of names and sorrows far more comfortably le
ft to the ghosts of forgotten heroes. Yet the stilled powers in the sword by their nature commanded his respect; he could not bring himself to interrupt.
If Asandir noticed Arithon’s distress, he held back nothing.
‘The prince at that time was a sunchild, and true to type for his kind, he stood just one span in height. The sword’s length reached nearly to his chin. He had a shoulder scabbard fashioned for ceremonial appearances and took up the traditional king’s blade upon accession at his predecessor’s death. Alithiel was given over to the line of Perhedral. They too were sunchildren, ill-suited to the weight of a large weapon. When King Enastir died childless the Teir’s’Perhedral claimed the kingship. Since another sword accompanied the crown, Alithiel remained in the treasury until another rise of Khadrim threatened peace. A centaur lord wielded her through the war that followed, but the blade handled like a toy in his huge grip. Afterwards, the sword Alithiel changed owners again, this time becoming the property of the high king’s cousin by marriage. It passed through his heirs to Cianor, who earned the honorific of Sunlord.’
This drew a gasp from Felirin who knew at least a dozen ballads made in praise of the Sunlord’s long reign.
Asandir smiled. ‘May the memory of those days never fade. Yet Cianor Sunlord did little but possess the sword. He assumed the Paravian crown in Second Age 2545, and as others before him, took up the king’s blade out of preference. By then Alithiel carried a second name, Dael Farenn, or kingmaker, because three of her bearers had succeeded the end of a royal line.
‘But if the sword brought kingship to her wielder, she never became a cherished possession. Awkward size made her handling a burden and though the Isaervian blades that survived the mishaps of time were coveted, no Paravian lord cared to claim one that carried a tragic reputation.
‘Cianor eventually awarded Alithiel to a man, for valour in defence of his sister, Princess Taliennse. Her Grace was rescued from assault by Khadrim in the very pass we just crossed.’ Here Asandir nodded in deference to Arithon. ‘The emerald in your sword was cut by a sunchild’s spells. The initial in the leopard crest changes with the name of the bearer, and since the blade fits the hand of a man to perfection, each heir in your family has carried her since.’
Asandir folded long hands. ‘Arithon, yours is the only Isaervian blade to pass from Paravian possession. To my knowledge, she is the last of her kind on the continent.’
Lysaer regarded the polished quillons with rueful appreciation. ‘Small wonder the armourers of Dascen Elur were impressed. They held that sword to be the bane of their craft, because no man could hope to forge its equal.’
Asandir rose and stretched like a cat. ‘The centaur Ffereton himself could not repeat the labour. If, in truth, he still lives.’
Felirin raised dubious eyebrows. ‘Did I hear right? Could a centaur be expected to survive for eighteen thousand years?’
The sorcerer fixed the bard with a bright and imperious sadness. ‘The old races were not mortal, not as a man might define. The loss of the sun touched them sorely, and even my colleagues in the Fellowship can’t say whether they can ever be brought to return. The tragedy in that cannot be measured.’
A stillness descended by the fireside, broken by Asandir’s suggestion that all of them turn into their blankets. The weather was shortly going to turn, and he wished an early start on the morrow. Arithon alone remained seated, the sword handed down by his ancestors braced in its sheath across his knees. The flames flickered and burned low and subsided at last to red embers. Hours later, when the others seemed settled into sleep, he put the blade aside and slipped out.
Mist clung in heavy, dank layers beneath the evergreens, and the darkness beyond the cave was total. Yet Arithon was Master of Shadow: from him, the night held no secrets. He walked over rocks and roots with a catsure step and paused by the rails that penned the horses.
‘Tishealdi,’ he called softly in the old tongue. ‘Splash.’
The name fell quiet as a whisper, but movement answered. An irregular patch of white moved closer and a muzzle nosed at his hand; the dun, come begging for grain. Arithon reached out and traced the odd marking on the mare’s neck. Her damp coat warmed his cold hands and the uncomplicated animal nearness of her helped quiet the turmoil in his mind. ‘We can’t leave, you and I, not just yet. But I have a feeling we should, all the same.’
For he had noticed a thing throughout Asandir’s recitation: while in the presence of the bard, the sorcerer took care to avoid any mention of his, or Lysaer’s surname.
The mare shook her head, dusting his face with wet mane. Arithon pushed her off with a playful phrase that died at the snap of a stick. He spun, prepared for retreat. If Dakar or the sorceror had followed him, he wanted no part of their inquiries.
But the accents that maligned the roots and the dark in breathless fragments of verse were the bard’s. A bump and another snapped stick ended the loftier language. ‘Daelion’s judgement, man! You’ve a miserable and perverse nature to bring me thrashing about after you and never a thought to carry a brand.’
Arithon loosened taut muscles with an effort concealed by the night. ‘I don’t recall asking for company.’
Felirin tripped and stumbled the last few yards down the trail and fetched against the fence with a thud that made the boards rattle. The dun shied back into the snorting mill of geldings, and the grey, confined separately, nickered after her.
The bard looked askance at the much-too-still shadow that was Arithon. ‘You’re almost as secretive as the sorcerer.’
Which was the nature of a spirit trained to power, not to volunteer the unnecessary; but Arithon would not say so. ‘Why did you come out?’
Felirin returned a dry chuckle. ‘Don’t change the subject. You can’t hide your angst behind questions.’
Arithon said nothing for an interval. Then with clear and deliberate sting he said, ‘Why not? You know the ballads. Show me a hero and I’ll show you a man enslaved by his competence.’
The bard took a long, slow breath. A difficult man to annoy, he had neatly and nearly been goaded to forget that Arithon’s mettlesome nature defended a frustrated talent. ‘Listen to me,’ Felirin said quickly. An honest desperation in his entreaty made Arithon ease off and give him space. ‘Promise me something for my foolishness. There’s a singer, a Masterbard, named Halliron. If you meet him, I beg you to play for him. Should he offer you an apprenticeship, I ask for your oath you’ll accept.’
Silence; the footfalls as curious horses advanced from the far side of the corral. Then a chilly gust of air rattled through the trees. Arithon pushed off from the fenceboards and cursed in an unfamiliar language through his teeth. ‘Like sharks, you all want a part of me.’ His voice shook; not with fury, but with longing.
Felirin smiled, his relief mixed with guilt-tinged triumph. ‘Your oath,’ he pressured gently. ‘Let me hear it.’
‘Damn you,’ said Arithon. In a shattering change of mood, he was laughing. ‘You have it. But what’s my word against the grandiloquent predictions of a maudlin and drunken prophet?’
‘Maybe everything,’ Felirin finished gently. ‘You’re too young to live without dreams.’
‘I wasn’t aware that I didn’t.’ Lightly firm in his irony, Arithon added, ‘Right now, I wish to go to bed.’ He walked away, left the bard to thwarted curiosity and the crowding attentions of the horses.
Backtrail
On the downs of Pasyvier, by the flames of a drifter’s fire, a seer speaks sharply to a grande dame returned from the autumn horse fair. ‘Say again, you saw a sorcerer? And with him a blond-haired stranger who spoke the speech of the true-born? I tell you, if you did, there will be war…
In the hall of judgement in West End, seated on his chair of carved oak and carnelian, a town mayor listens, sweating, to a similar description from the half-wit who played fiddle in the square…
Under mist in the Peaks of Tornir, a wild, screeling wail calls Khadrim in retreat back to spell-war
ded sanctuary; and the harmonics ring of death by spell-cursed steel not seen for a thousand years…
VI. ERDANE
The walls of Erdane had been raised at the crossroads two ages before the uprising which threw down the high kings had bloodied its maze of narrow streets. Now, five centuries later, the city wore change like a tattered, overdressed prostitute. Guild flags and a mayor’s blazon fluttered over the Grand West Gate, built by Paravian hands of seamless, rose-veined quartz. The stone at street level was left pitted and scarred by siege-weapons, and greyed by the passage of uncounted generations of inhabitants. Had the sentries in the mayor’s guard been as vigilant as their counterparts in times past, they would have challenged the woman in the shepherd’s cloak who passed the gatehouse, hooded. Boots of sewn sealhide showed beneath her ankle-length skirts, but their soles were not made for walking. Her hands were calloused from the bridle-rein, and her eyes a clear and disturbing grey.
But the captain of the watch barely glanced up from his dice game and the teenaged soldier who lounged on his javelin stayed absorbed by a whore, who paraded her bedizened attractions for the eyes of a loud-voiced drover.
Elaira, Koriani enchantress and message-bearer for the Prime, entered Erdane unremarked between a wagon bearing three sows and the rumbling wheels of an aleseller’s dray. She was the first of her kind to pass the city gates for close to four hundred years and the only one to try without any sanction from her seniors. Had she been recognized for what she was, she would have been stripped and publicly burned after barely a pretence of a trial.
Other women had suffered that sentence inside the past half-decade. If the mayor of Erdane suspected the charges against those accused were false, his conscience never bothered his sleep. What troubled his guildmasters and council to cold sweats was the fear that powers from the past might arise out of legend and claim vengeance. For unlike the commoners and the craftsmen, the Lord Elect of Erdane had access to archives that detailed a history of conspiracy and murder. To him, to his council and his general of armies, the sun was no myth, but a harbinger of sorcery and certain doom.