Curse of the Mistwraith. Janny Wurts

lay on his back adjacent to the carpeted aisle that led back through the crowd to the antechamber. His undyed cotton tunic hid any marks of the halberdier’s ministrations. The guards had been careful to avoid crippling damage; which perhaps was a mistake, Lysaer thought. The bastard’s insufferably remote expression remained unchanged.

      Except to glance at the king, Arithon spoke without altering position. ‘The same sages also wrote that violence is the habit of the weak, the impotent and the fool.’ His final word was torn short as a guardsman kicked his ribs.

      The king laughed. ‘Then why did you leave Rauven, bastard? To become impotent, weak and foolish? Or did you blind and burn seven ships and their crews for sheer sport?’

      Again Arithon said nothing. Lysaer restrained an urge to curse. Something about the prisoner’s defiance rang false, as if, somehow, he sought to tune the king’s emotions to some unguessed at, deliberate purpose.

      ‘Speak!’ The king’s bearded features flushed in warning. ‘Shall I call the healer? Perhaps a second course of drugs would improve your manners.’

      Arithon spread his hands in a gesture that might have suppressed impatience. But Lysaer’s spurious hope that the prisoner’s control might be weakened died as Arithon dragged himself to his feet. His upturned face sticky with blood, he confronted the king. ‘I could talk the fish from the sea, your royal Grace. You would hear nothing but the reflection of your own spite.’ Forced to lift his voice over swelling anger from the galleries, Arithon finished. ‘Still, you would remain impotent, weak and a fool.’

      The king succumbed to fury. He shouted to the guardsmen, and mailed fists smashed Arithon to his knees. More blood spattered the tiles, while Amroth’s aristocracy vented its approval with cheers.

      Lysaer sat frozen through the uproar. Unsettled by the turn of events, his thoughts churned like a millrace. A halberd spun. Arithon’s head snapped with the impact. Black hair fanned over the toe of a guardsman’s boot. The man-at-arms laughed and pinned it beneath his heel. The next blow fell full on the prisoner’s exposed face, while onlookers howled their approval.

      Sickened by the violence, Lysaer was arrested by the sight of the prisoner’s outflung arm. The fine fingers were limp, relaxed. Memory of that same hand all splayed and stiffened with agony rose in the prince’s mind. Revelation followed. The odd calm which had puzzled Lysaer throughout was nothing else but indifference. Quite likely, Rauven’s training enabled Arithon to divorce his mind from his body; certainly now he felt no pain at all.

      The conclusion followed that the halberdiers might kill him. If death was the goal Arithon had striven with such cunning to achieve, this time no man could be blamed but the king. The feud would be ended in a messy, honourless tangle of animal savagery. Shamed to find himself alone with the decency for regret, the crown prince of Amroth rose sharply to leave. Yet before he could duck through a side door, a deafening crackle of sorcery exploded over the dais steps.

      A shadow appeared in the empty air. The blot darkened, then resolved into the image of a woman robed in the deep purple and grey worn by the Rauven sorcerers. With a horrible twist, Lysaer made out the fair features of his mother under the cowled hood. If Arithon chose to repeat his tactics from the sail-hold in full public view of the court, his malice had passed beyond limit. Alarmed for the integrity of the king, and this time in command enough to remember that his gift of light could banish such shadows, the crown prince reversed his retreat and shoved through the press of stupefied courtiers. Yet his dash for the throne was obstructed.

      Around him, the council members shook off surprise. A yammering cry erupted from the galleries. The king drove to his feet. The sceptre hurtled from his hand, passed clean through the apparition’s breast, and struck tile with a ringing scream of sound. The halberdiers abandoned Arithon; with levelled weapons they converged at a run to surround the ghostly image of the queen.

      ‘She’s only a sorcerer’s sending!’ From his pose of prostration on the floor, Arithon pitched his voice cleanly through the clamour. ‘An illusion threatens no one with harm. Neither can it be dispelled by armed force.’

      Lysaer was blocked by a well-meaning guard; slowly the panic subsided. Silence blanketed the chamber. The bastard rolled and pushed himself upright, while the king glared at the image of his wife, his face stamped with alarming and dangerous animosity.

      Arithon reached his feet. No guard restrained him as he moved against the drag of his chains to the base of the dais. Before the spectre of the queen, he stopped and spoke a phrase in the ancient language used still on Rauven. When the woman did not respond, Arithon tried again, his tone fiercely commanding.

      The image remained immobile. Taut with uncertainty, Lysaer watched as Arithon shifted his regard to the king. Wearily, the Master said, ‘The spell’s binding is keyed to another. I cannot unlock its message.’

      The king sat down abruptly. With an irritable word, he dispatched a page to retrieve his sceptre; and the sound of the royal voice brought the apparition to life.

      The queen tossed back her grey-bordered hood and spoke words that carried to the furthest recesses of the galleries. ‘To his Grace of Amroth, I bring word from Rauven. Flesh, bone, blood and mind, you are warned to treat my two sons as one.’

      The king stopped breathing. His florid features paled against the gold-stitched hanging at his back, and his ringed hands tightened into fists. He ignored the sceptre offered by the page as if the subjects who crowded his hall had suddenly ceased to exist. At length, his chest heaved and he replied, ‘What does Rauven threaten if I refuse?’

      The queen returned the quiet, secretive smile which even now haunted her husband’s dreams at night. ‘You should learn regret, my liege. Kill Arithon, and you murder Lysaer. Maim him, and you cripple your own heir likewise.’

      Chilled by apprehension, the crown prince ducked past the guard. He leaped the dais stair in a rush and knelt by his father’s knee. ‘This sorcery might be no threat from Rauven, but a ruse designed by the bastard.’

      His words went unregarded. The king acknowledged no advice, but answered only his past wife in words that smouldered with hatred. ‘And if your accursed offspring remains unblemished?’

      ‘Then the crown prince of Amroth will prosper also.’ Like a shadow excised by clean sunlight, the queen’s image vanished.

      The king’s brows knotted into a scowl. He snatched his sceptre from the page with unwarranted force, while an ominous mutter of anger arose from the assembled courtiers. Lysaer stood stunned through the uproar, his attention arrested by the sight of Arithon s’Ffalenn, all subterfuge gone from him. Surprise, and an emotion Lysaer could not place showed briefly on the prisoner’s battered face. Then a halberdier seized the Master’s bruised shoulder. Arithon started, rudely recalled to his circumstance.

      ‘Turn and hear your sentence, bastard,’ the guard said unpleasantly.

      Now frantic, Lysaer had no choice but to stand down. No advisor cared to question whether the sending was a wile of the Master’s, or a genuine ultimatum from Rauven; most showed deep disappointment that a vendetta which had raged through seven generations could be abandoned in a few short seconds.

      The king leaned forward to speak. ‘Arithon s’Ffalenn, for the crime of piracy, in reprisal for seven ships and the lives of the men who crewed them, you will suffer exile through the Gate on the isle of Worldsend.’ The king clapped his hands, lips drawn taut with rage. ‘Return the bastard to confinement until escort and a ship can be arranged. Let me not set eyes on him again.’

      Halberdiers closed in, eclipsing Arithon’s dark head. Weapons held at the ready, they hurried the prisoner away through the tense, resentful stillness of a crowd whose hungers remained unsatisfied. Lysaer stood torn with uneasiness. Reprieve of any sort had seemed inconceivable, just a scant moment before. Afraid, suddenly, that events had turned precisely to the whim of the Master, the prince braced his composure and touched his father’s sleeve.

      ‘Was that wise?’ His blue eyes searched