Curse of the Mistwraith. Janny Wurts

officer turned toward the door. ‘And by Dharkaron’s vengeance, stay on guard. The king wants this captive kept alive.’

      He departed after that, shouting for the carpenter to send hands to repair the stern window. Barely had the workmen gathered their tools when Briane plunged again into unnatural and featureless dark. A thudding crash astern set the first officer running once more for the chartroom.

      This time the shadow disintegrated like spark-singed silk before he collided with the chart table. He reached the stern cabin to find Arithon pinned beneath the breathless bulk of his guards. Gradually the men sorted themselves out, eyes darting nervously. Though standing in the presence of a senior officer, they showed no proper deference. More than a few whispered sullenly behind their hands.

      ‘Silence!’ Crisply, the first officer inclined his head to hear the report.

      ‘Glass,’ explained the mate. ‘Tried to slash his wrists, Dharkaron break his bastard skin.’

      Blood smeared the deck beneath the Master. His fine fingers glistened red, and closer examination revealed that the cord which lashed his hands was nearly severed.

      ‘Bind his fingers with wire, then.’ Provoked beyond pity, the first officer detailed a man to fetch a spool from the hold.

      Arithon recovered awareness shortly afterward. Dragged upright between the stout arms of his captors, he took a minute longer to orient himself. As green eyes lifted in recognition, the first officer fought a sharp urge to step back. Only once had he seen such a look on a man’s face, and that was the time he had witnessed a felon hanged for the rape of his own daughter.

      ‘You should have died in battle,’ he said softly.

      Arithon gave no answer. Flamelight glistened across features implacably barred against reason, and his hands dripped blood on the deck. The first officer looked away, cold with nerves and uneasiness. He had little experience with captives, and no knowledge whatever of sorcery. The Master of Shadow himself offered no inspiration, his manner icy and unfathomable as the sea itself.

      ‘Show him the king’s justice,’ the first officer commanded, in the hope a turn at violence might ease the strain on his crew.

      The seamen wrestled Arithon off his feet and pinioned him across the chart table. His body handled like a toy in their broad hands. Still the Master fought them. In anger and dread the seamen returned the bruises lately inflicted upon their own skins. They stripped the cord from the captive’s wrists and followed with all clothing that might conceal slivers of glass. But for his grunts of resistance, Arithon endured their abuse in silence.

      The first officer hid his distaste. The Master’s defiance served no gain, but only provoked the men to greater cruelty. Had the bastard cried out, even once reacted to pain as an ordinary mortal, the deckhands would have been satisfied. Yet the struggle continued until the victim was stripped of tunic and shirt and the sailhands backed off to study their prize. Arithon’s chest heaved with fast, shallow breaths. Stomach muscles quivered beneath skin that wept sweat, proof enough that his body at least had not been impervious to rough handling.

      ‘Bastard’s runt-sized, for a sorcerer.’ The most daring of the crewmen raised a fist over the splayed arch of Arithon’s ribcage. ‘A thump in the slats might slow him down some.’

      ‘That’s enough!’ snapped the first officer. Immediately sure the sailhand would ignore his command, he moved to intervene. But a newcomer in a stained white smock entered from behind and jostled him briskly aside.

      Fresh from the captain’s sickbed, the ship’s healer pushed on between sailor and pinioned prisoner. ‘Leave be, lad! Today I’ve set and splinted altogether too many bones. The thought of another could drive me to drink before sunrise.’

      The crewman subsided, muttering. As the healer set gently to work with salve and bandages, the s’Ffalenn sorcerer drew breath and finally spoke.

      ‘I curse your hands. May the next wound you treat turn putrid with maggots. Any child you deliver will sicken and die in your arms, and the mother will bleed beyond remedy. Meddle further with me and I’ll show you horrors.’

      The healer made a gesture against evil. He had heard hurt men rave, but never like this. Shaking, he resumed his work, while under his fingers, the muscles of his patient flinched taut in protest.

      ‘Have you ever known despair?’ Arithon said. ‘I’ll teach you. The eyes of your firstborn son will rot and flies suck at the sockets.’

      The seamen tightened their restraint, starting and cursing among themselves.

      ‘Hold steady!’ snapped the healer. He continued binding Arithon’s cuts with stiff-lipped determination. Such a threat might make him quail, but he had only daughters. Otherwise he might have broken his oath and caused an injured man needless pain.

      ‘By your leave,’ he said to the first officer when he finished. ‘I’ve done all I can.’

      Excused, the healer departed, and the deckhands set to work with the wire. As the first loop creased the prisoner’s flesh, Arithon turned his invective against the first officer. After the healer’s exemplary conduct, the young man dared not break. He endured with his hands locked behind his back while mother, wife and mistress were separately profaned. The insults after that turned personal. In time the first officer could not contain the anger which arose in response to the vicious phrases.

      ‘You waste yourself!’ After the cold calm of the Master’s words, the ugliness in his own voice jarred like a woman’s hysteria. He curbed his temper. ‘Cursing me and my relations will hardly change your lot. Why make things difficult? Your behaviour makes civilized treatment impossible.’

      ‘Go force your little sister,’ Arithon said.

      The first officer flushed scarlet. Not trusting himself to answer, he called orders to his seamen. ‘Bind the bastard’s mouth with a rag. When you have him well secured, lock him under guard in the sail-hold.’

      The seamen saw the order through with a roughness born of desperation. Watching, the first officer worried. He was a tired man with a terrified crew, balanced squarely on the prongs of dilemma. The least provocation would land him with a mutiny, and a sorcerer who could also bind shadow threatened trouble tantamount to ruin. No measure of prevention could be too drastic to justify. The first officer rubbed bloodshot, stinging eyes. A final review of resources left him hopeless and without alternative except to turn the problem of Arithon s’Ffalenn back to Briane’s healer.

      The first officer burst into the surgery without troubling to knock. ‘Can you mix a posset that will render a man senseless?’

      Interrupted while tending yet another wound, the healer answered with irritable reluctance. ‘I have only the herb I brew to ease pain. A heavy dose will dull the mind, but not with safety. The drug has addictive side-effects.’

      The first officer never hesitated. ‘Use it on the prisoner, and swiftly.’

      The healer straightened, shadows from the gimballed lantern sharp on his distressed face.

      The officer permitted no protest. ‘Never mind your oath of compassion. Call the blame mine, if you must, but I’ll not sail into a mutiny for the skin of any s’Ffalenn bastard. Deliver Arithon alive to the king’s dungeons, and no man can dispute we’ve done our duty.’

      Daunted by the raw look of fright on the first officer’s face, the healer called his assistant to finish bandaging his patient. Then, too wise to be hurried, he rummaged among his shelf of remedies. ‘Who will answer if the young man’s mind is damaged?’

      The first officer drew a ragged breath. ‘Dharkaron, angel of vengeance! We’ll all be executed, even to the cabin steward, if our sailors get panicked and slit the bastard’s throat. He’s crazed enough to provoke them.

      How in the name of the king can I be on hand every minute to stop disaster?’

      Jars