The Curse of the Mistwraith

by Janny Wurts

  Curled in the windowseat with his lyranthe lying silent across his knees, Arithon regarded the spilled velvets and silks, shot through each fold with costly metallic threadwork. Dead sober, if a touch haggard from lack of sleep, he made a study of Dakar and grinned. ‘Silver to broom-straws your master’s orders were directed toward you as well. Anyway, you don’t deck out in pearl buttons and brocades by any choice I ever saw.’

  Dakar scowled, ashamed to discover that his offering also held garments of brown broadcloth too generously cut for anybody’s frame except his own. ‘Get on with this.’ He folded his arms across his chest, ‘or by Dharkaron’s vengeance, I swear I’ll call Morfett’s valets in to help!’

  Arithon raised his cheek off the curve of his lyranthe and said, ‘You couldn’t get them. The entire household is too busy keeping the master from falling prostrate into his breakfast plate.’

  ‘Well, let’s say your accession to Rathain’s throne isn’t a balm to anybody’s temper!’ Still distressed over Lysaer’s endangerment at the time of the Mistwraith’s confinement, Dakar vented his resentment upon the prince at hand. ‘Where were you last night?’

  ‘Not drinking, nor with a woman.’ Lightly, lovingly, Arithon dusted a finger across his strings. A haunting minor chord sighed forth; then, since even that slight sound galled like salt in an open sore, he laid his instrument aside. The eyes he turned upon Dakar were sharp and terrible for their emptiness. ‘Is there anything else?’

  But the Mad Prophet refused to be baited. ‘If you were gallivanting again in the poor quarter you’d better have taken a bath.’

  ‘What? The velvets aren’t perfumed?’ Arithon arose and stretched linked hands above his head. The linen he wore was plain, not dirty. He advanced through the flare of sunlight that fell through the amber lozenged windows and Dakar saw in relief that the hair at his collar was in fact still damp.

  Arithon stripped off his shirt. Marked yet by the physical scars from his past failed effort at sovereignty, he surveyed the array of kingly trappings in bright-eyed, self-mocking distaste. ‘Let’s have this over with.’

  He dressed himself while Dakar passed garments in roughly the appropriate order: silver-grey hose, white silk shirt, black tunic with leopard-fur edging. Next, the ceremonial accessories that symbolized a sovereign’s tie to the land: the belt of wooden discs inlaid with royal seals in abalone; the deer-hide boots studded with river stone and tied with feather-tipped thongs; the cabochon emerald set in silver that he pinned above his heart. The fabrics held no scent beyond a hint of sweetgrass that lingered from the ritual blessing worked an hour earlier by the Fellowship. The fine-stitched tracery of interlace borders, the ribboned cuffs and hems bespoke tailoring unmatched in Etarra. When and where such masterwork had been done, Arithon refused to ask.

  Dakar volunteered, just to needle him. ‘Sethvir sews superbly, don’t you think?’

  ‘Ath,’ said Arithon in flat vehemence. ‘Not this, I hope.’ He raked through the garments still left and hooked out the ugly bit that jarred: a heavy, lacquer-worked sword-sheath, hung from a baldric bossed with carbuncles.

  Dakar looked sourly on. ‘Not that.’

  ‘The stones look heavy enough to sink a four-days bloated carcass.’ Arithon dangled the item aloft, his combativeness blunted by resignation. ‘This wasn’t, by chance, a gift from the ladies of Etarra?’

  ‘Bang on.’ Dakar stifled a chortle. ‘Asandir said wear it anyway.’

  Arithon glanced suspiciously back. He raised the jewel-encrusted leather to his nostrils and immediately laughed. ‘Damn you! It doesn’t smell of sweetgrass. Is this your prank, to curse me with an ill-wish in addition to this joy-forsaken realm?’

  ‘Well,’ said Dakar, shrugging. ‘Leave it out and the ladies will be offended for sure. How could they know they’d made their contribution too late for the Fellowship’s blessing? No ward I’ve heard of could make that thing look less hideous.’ Philosophically, he added, ‘Bear up. You’ve got the tabard and sash yet to go before you need concern yourself with weapons.’

  ‘That thing is a fit weapon, to strike a man blind at first sight.’ Arithon discarded the atrocity and at Dakar’s urging took the damask-lined velvet of the tabard.

  The heraldic leopard sparkled as he pulled it over his head. Its weight of rich cloth seemed to burden his shoulders, while Dakar bound on the black sash with its silver wire wrapping. As if to delay the moment when he must gird on the tasteless scabbard, Arithon took up the circlet that Asandir’s spellcraft had fashioned from Rathain’s earth. Symbol of an unwanted succession, he gripped the cool metal with a tension that whitened his knuckles. Regret played across his expression. Then, firmly silent, he raised the fillet and pressed it over his black hair. It rested with deceptive lightness across his brow, as a crown yet to come never would.

  Dakar chose that moment to look up. Imprinted against the amber casement, he saw Arithon’s face crossed by the shining band that preceded Rathain’s vested sovereignty. Chills roughened the Mad Prophet’s flesh. One split-second of vertigo was all the forewarning he received.

  Then in a rush, his seer’s talent claimed him wholly as instrument.

  Trance shocked through him with such force that his mind became emptied. Dakar dropped to his knees.

  A vision burned through: of a square milling with people, among them Arithon, who drove in heedless, driven panic between tight-packed factions of Etarra merchants. The image formed fully and shattered, buried by a static blast of whiteness as a second shock slammed Dakar’s innermind.

  Vaguely aware that his voice shouted meaningless phrases, the Mad Prophet felt himself falling. His downward rush into darkness was suddenly and sickeningly arrested by a hand that caught and yanked him back.

  He returned to himself with a wrench that left him disoriented. His face dripped sweat. Released to a welter of dizziness, he waited, panting, until orderless colour resolved into the orange and purple tiles that floored the Lord Governor’s guest-chamber. Arithon had an arm around his shoulders. That support was all that held Dakar upright as he swayed, helplessly unbalanced.

  ‘Ath,’ the Mad Prophet gasped as vertigo progressed into nausea. ‘Whoever named farsight a gift had the warped inclinations of a torturer.’

  ‘You should lie down.’ Arithon strove to lift him toward the divan.

  Powerless to assist as his frame was shaken by spasms, Dakar doubled over. His breakfast stayed down, barely; the accomplishment seemed moot. He felt wretched. As Arithon helped him to straighten, he saw his morning’s work wasted.

  The royal tabard was rucked askew. Both of the prince’s silk sleeves were blotched with perspiration. Whatever slight tolerance Arithon had attained toward kingship appeared to have fled in a moment. Against skin shocked to pallor, the hair dragged flat beneath the circlet crossed his forehead like penstrokes scribbled upon parchment. Wild-eyed as any cornered animal, the Shadow Master half-forced, half-propelled Dakar across the floor.

  Too miserable to resist, the Mad Prophet collapsed across the divan. He had no strength to care for crushed velvets. That the scabbard with its carbuncles gouged his backside mattered less: the ugly gift from the dignitaries’ wives now seemed some poor jest from a nightmare. ‘What happened?’ he gasped; but the gut-sick aftermath of major prophecy was much too familiar to support pretence. ‘For Ath’s sake, tell me what I said.’

  Arithon withdrew his hands, which were shaking. ‘You foretold disaster.’

  Terror hit Dakar in the pit of his unsettled stomach. He fought another twisting cramp as every formless uncertainty that had agonized his imagination since Ithamon replayed as a possible reality. ‘Lysaer. Desh-thiere has some hold on him, doesn’t it?’

  Mere supposition drove Arithon to an explosive step back. ‘Would that were all.’ He snatched up the sword which rested unsheathed near the regalia he had not yet put on. ‘Where’s the sorcerer who should be here on guard?’

  But a search of the dimmest alcoves where
a discorporate mage was wont to lurk showed Luhaine nowhere in evidence. In dread that some dire facet of Dakar’s prophecy had compelled the Fellowship guardian to abandon him, Arithon spun back toward the divan. ‘Where’s Asandir!’

  Dakar pressed his hands to his temples. Still trapped on the cusp of major prophecy, he cradled a skull on fire with headache. His thoughts dragged, too dim to keep pace with events, far less attach meaning to questions. Dully he repeated, ‘What in Daelion’s province did I predict?’

  Fast movement blurred his eyesight. The next second he was slapped by a blow that seemed to come out of nowhere. He crashed backward into the folds of the royal mantle. Over him towered Arithon, so consumed by dread he seemed possessed. The black and silver length of Alithiel pressed enpointe against the Mad Prophet’s throat.

  Shielded from bared steel by nothing beyond his shirt collar, Dakar shrank back. ‘Have you gone crazy?’

  ‘Not yet.’ The words seemed lucid; but the insouciance Arithon usually flaunted in the face of trouble was swept away by his ragged fast breaths. ‘Where can I find Asandir? I have no moment to waste!’

  Dakar measured the steel, then the terror that racked the man behind the swordgrip. ‘Asandir’s in the council hall. Keeping the city ministers from revolt before your processional.’

  The weight of the weapon lifted. Arithon spun on his heel, stopped; came back. The heraldic leopard worked into his tabard flashed as if tainted by unclean light as he jerked the plain cloak intended for Dakar from under its owner’s supine bulk. He cast the garment over his finery as he bolted headlong for the doorway.

  ‘Arithon!’ Dakar shoved up on one elbow. ‘What did I see in that trance?’

  For a split second it seemed Rathain’s prince would not stem his frantic rush. But as the latch wrenched open under his hand, he threw back in anguished haste, ‘Dakar, as you love peace, if you care for my half-brother, keep him from me! For if we’re brought face to face the terms of your prophecy shall be met. The result will end in a bloodbath.’

  ‘What’s happened?’ Dakar exploded off the couch. The black-lacquered scabbard hooked on his knuckles and fell in a clattering spin across the floor. He rushed forward, caught his toe on a carbuncle and crashed shoulder down into an armchair. Too winded to curse, he pressed on, though the backlash and dizziness from prescience had yet to fully release him.

  ‘It’s not what’s happened, but what will. Desperate steps must be taken.’ Arithon ducked out.

  Dakar gained the entry just as the door panel slammed in his face.

  ‘Fiends take you!’ He hammered unyielding wood until his fists bruised before reason caught up with the obvious: that if Arithon had dispatched him to protect Lysaer, the outside latch would not be braced.

  The next thought hit with more significance, that Luhaine had neither answered, nor intervened to curb Arithon’s distress.

  Dakar kicked open the door and abruptly ran out of energy. Pinned by another wave of faintness, he thumped to rest against the doorframe and sweated over implications he had no fit way to assess. His second spontaneous prophecy now entangled with the conditional forecast made earlier, the Black Rose Prophecy that tied all the threads of future hope to the event of Arithon’s accession. Luhaine’s absence meant much more than the half-brothers’ safety that had been cast to the four winds and jeopardy.

  The vaulted council hall of Etarra was no longer stuffy and cavernously curtained as it had been kept throughout Morfett’s clandestine councils to thwart the return of Rathain’s monarchy. Bedecked now for the coronation, the lofty chamber with its white marble friezework and gilt pillars stood transformed. The faded, dusty trade-guilds’ banners stood jostled aside on their rods, overshadowed by the leopard blazon of s’Ffalenn. Lancet windows once darkened behind dagged scarlet drapes were flung open to the morning air. Light rinsed floors freshly sweetened with wax; sunbeams warmed the graining of maple parquet, and sparked reflections in the gems and tinselled silks donned for the occasion by the city’s ranking ministers, who clustered whispering in their cadres, and cast nervous glances to all sides.

  But the Fellowship sorcerer in attendance for once had no care for overhearing their seditious talk. Bleak as storm in dark velvets, Asandir presided over the aisle before the raised dais.

  Morfett measured his stillness as he would have stalked an asp through his grape arbour. Let Arithon s’Ffalenn but once be caught unguarded and the interfering sorcerers who sheltered him would find a knife in his royal ribs.

  ‘Where’s Lord Diegan, anyway?’ the minister of justice complained. ‘Odd, that he should be late.’

  ‘Not at all.’ Morfett twitched at his cuffs, which were buttoned with pearls and too snug. Snappish with venom, he said, ‘Our Commander of the Guard invited that fair-haired flunky, Lysaer, for an after-breakfast social. His sister’s infatuation with the man has delayed them both, no doubt.’

  Sourly, the Lord Governor eyed the damask-draped chair set up to enthrone the coming prince. Such panoply would hardly matter; any more than a white-gold crown set with emeralds could shield against mortality. Today, tomorrow or next year the Teir’s’Ffalenn would be overthrown. Etarra would never bow to royal rule. Never. Wishing ill on the day’s proceedings, Morfett saw Asandir spin around. The sorcerer gave no nod to smooth over the officials left gaping in offence at the abrupt presentation of his back.

  Morfett smiled. Trouble, the Lord Governor wished fervently; upon the heads of the Fellowship, most ruinous, plan befouling bad luck.

  Asandir offered no apology, but turned on his heel again and pressed in visible agitation through the councilmen still clustered in shared outrage. His rush to reach the doorway left a moil of rankled dignitaries whose robes were raked askew by his passage.

  Morfett sailed into the gap left opened in the sorcerer’s wake. He arrived in the foyer just after Asandir passed the outer door, caught the ring pulls as the panels swung closed and shamelessly pressed an eye to the crack.

  On the marble stair outside the entry he saw Asandir flag down Traithe.

  ‘Call your raven,’ the sorcerer instructed his colleague. ‘The bird may be needed to relay messages.’

  The shorter mage in black and silver replied too low to overhear.

  Asandir returned a slight nod. ‘Go inside. Smooth tempers, avert uneasiness and above all, let nobody hear we have problems. Sethvir’s just now sent warning: Lysaer’s in serious trouble. The pattern that encompasses his Name has drifted. Worse: Luhaine reports that Dakar’s been alarmed by premonition. Both events indicate that our s’Ilessid heir may harbour one of Desh-thiere’s wraiths, picked up through the moment of confinement. If so, the crisis forecast by the strands is upon us. One mistimed judgement and we’ll have no crowned king, nor a restored Fellowship, just panic and bloodshed in the streets.’

  ‘Ath speed you.’ Denied by impaired faculties to share further details through magecraft, Traithe touched his colleague’s shoulder before both went their separate ways.

  Morfett straightened up from his eavesdropping and faced around. Prepared to announce the Fellowship’s quandary to every official within earshot, his excitement overshadowed small discrepancies: that the doors at his back failed to latch; and that his rush of elation overwhelmed him to the point where his utterance choked in his throat. He hopped forward a step and filled his lungs to shout.

  His effort emerged as a gargle, since Traithe slipped through the cracked doorpanel, clamped a gloved hand from behind and gagged his mouth.

  ‘Ah, but you won’t,’ the mildest mannered of the sorcerers murmured into Morfett’s left ear.

  The Lord Governor moaned. His eyes bulged out and he ground out a smothered growl. He elbowed and kicked backward at his assailant, but managed to strike only air.

  He bit down next on black glove leather, and got back a dig that shot paralysing pain through his larynx.

  Traithe called out cheerfully to those bystanders just turned to stare openmouthed at the scuffle.
‘Could I beg your help?’

  The stir widened; polite conversation faltered. Before Morfett’s wheezes and moaned curses could impact the fast-spreading stillness, Traithe carried on in blithe chatter. ‘Your Lord Governor seems overcome. Is he prone to fits? Maybe he’s prostrate from the heat. Anybody might faint under such fashionable layers of heavy velvet.’

  Pulled off balance, then downed by an ungentlemanly jab at the back of his knees, Morfett collapsed, mutely struggling, to the floor. A raven flapped down and lit on his chest. At least, that was the last thing his eyes recorded before he sank, dropped senseless by spells, upon carpets laid down for Arithon to tread in formal procession to the dais.

  Invited for wine after breakfast in the richly appointed parlour of Etarra’s commander of the guard, Lysaer suddenly flushed. A wave of heat swept through him, followed by bone-deep chill. Quickly, he set down his goblet, before his unsteady hand sloshed the contents. Alarmed that he might have succumbed to sudden fever, Lysaer touched his forehead. A second wave of disorientation passed through him. He stiffened, transfixed by fear; for an instant he felt as if his mind spun to blankness, his self-awareness overturned by a will other than his own.

  The sensation cleared a heartbeat later. Lysaer shivered in silly relief. He was just tired, not quite himself. Arithon’s coronation presented no crisis; his momentary faintness surely had been due to nerves and imagination, a residual distress left by the nightmares that had plagued him off and on since Ithamon. As the patterned brocade chair that supported him swam clearly back into focus, Lysaer looked up.

  Lady Talith’s ringed hands had stilled in the curled fur of her terrier. She, her brother Diegan and the beribboned lapdog all regarded him in polite and expectant silence.

  What had he just said? Lysaer struggled to recapture the thread of conversation. A gap seemed torn from his memory. Inattention could not explain this. Embarrassed for a lapse that in hindsight seemed faintly ridiculous, he stumbled to fill in with banality.