Curse of the Mistwraith. Janny Wurts

the grass which grew between the bent knuckles of the tree roots never rustled; the foliage overhead hung waxy and still. Here, quiet reigned, bound by laws which made the dunes beyond seem eerily transient by comparison. Earlier, need had stilled the prince’s mistrust of enchantment. Now Arithon’s condition would wait for no doubt. The well’s healing properties might restore him.

      At the end of his strength when he drank, Lysaer had discovered that a single swallow from the marble fountain instantly banished the fatigue, thirst and bodily suffering engendered by five days of desert exposure. When the midday heat had subsided, and the thick quiver of mirage receded to reveal the profile of a ruined tower on the horizon, the prince beheld proof that Mearth existed. Though from the first the Master’s protection had been unwanted and resented, s’Ilessid justice would not permit Lysaer to abandon him to die.

      The prince knelt and turned back the cloak. A congested whisper of air established that Arithon still breathed. His skin was dry and chill to the touch, his body frighteningly still. Blood flowed in scalding drops from his nose and mouth as Lysaer propped his emaciated shoulders against the ivy-clad marble of the well.

      Silver and still as polished metal, water filled the basin to the edge of a gilt-trimmed rim. Lysaer cupped his hands, slivering the surface of the pool with ripples. He lifted his hand. A droplet splashed the Master’s dusty cheek; then water streamed from the prince’s fingers and trickled between parted lips.

      Arithon aroused instantly. His muscles tensed like bowstrings under Lysaer’s arm and his eyes opened, dark and hard as tourmaline. He gasped. A paroxysm shook his frame. Deaf to the prince’s cry of alarm, he twisted aside and laced his slender, musician’s fingers over his face.

      Lysaer caught his half-brother’s shoulder. ‘Arithon!’

      The Master’s shielding hands fell away. He straightened, his face gone deathly pale. Without pause to acknowledge his half-brother’s distress, he rolled over and stared at the well. Settled and still, the water within shone unnatural as mirror-glass between the notched foliage of the ivy.

      Arithon drew breath and the congestion in his lungs vanished as if he had never known injury. ‘There is sorcery here more powerful than the Gate.’

      Lysaer withdrew his touch as if burned. ‘It healed you, didn’t it?’

      The Master looked up in wry exasperation. ‘If that were all, I’d be grateful. But something else happened. A change more profound than surface healing.’

      Arithon rose. Brisk with concentration, he studied every tree in the grove, then moved on to the well in the centre. The prince watched, alarmed by his thoroughness, as Arithon rustled through the ivy which clung to the rim of the basin. His search ended with a barely audible blasphemy.

      Lysaer glimpsed an inscription laid bare beneath ancient tendrils of vine; but the characters were carved in the old tongue, maddeningly incomprehensible to a man with no schooling in magecraft. In a conscious effort to keep his manners, Lysaer curbed his frustration. ‘What does it say?’

      Arithon looked up. Bemused, he said, ‘If these words spell truth, Daelion Fatemaster’s going to get a fair headache over the records before the Wheel turns on us. We appear to have been granted a five hundred year lifespan by a sorcerer named Davien.’ The Master paused, swore in earnest, and ruefully sat on the grass. ‘Brother, I don’t know whether to thank you for life, or curse you for the death I’ve been denied.’

      Lysaer said nothing. Taught a hard lesson in tolerance after five days in the desert, he regarded his mother’s bastard without hatred and found he had little inclination to examine the fountain’s gift. With Dascen Elur and his heirship and family in Amroth all lost to him, the prospect of five centuries of lengthened life stretched ahead like a joyless burden.

       Transgression

      Lirenda, First Enchantress to the Prime, glared wrathfully at the junior initiate who sat across the worktable, her hands clenched and idle amid bundled herbs, glass jars and the mortar and pestle set out for the mixing of simples. In a quiet broken by the distant shouts of boys who raced to capture chickens for the butcher, the senior’s face slowly reddened beneath netted coils of black hair. ‘What misbegotten folly do you suggest now, miss?’

      Elaira, whose bronze locks perpetually escaped even the stiffest of pins, stared stubbornly aside through rainwashed glass, though fog had marred the view since centuries before her birth.

      Her senior ranted on. ‘Asandir rides the west road in haste. Every sorcerer in the Fellowship is alerted, and you tell me, “the second lane requires no watch duty.” A toad has better perception.’

      Elaira transferred her gaze from the window to Lirenda’s livid face. ‘Sithaer take the second lane watch!’ She pushed impatiently at the half-made charm between her hands, this one a shepherd’s ward to guard young stock from the lung-sickness that stunted newborn lambs. ‘That’s not what I meant.’ She need not elaborate, that Asandir on the road with Dakar in tow could well indicate the resolution of the great West Gate Prophecy. If sunshine was restored, the diseases she mixed talismans to prevent would be banished along with the fog that had fostered them. Yet Koriani enchantresses had no oracle but guesswork derived from images. Recklessly rebellious, Elaira restated in bluntness beyond any tact to forgive. ‘Why shouldn’t we ask Sethvir to locate the lost Waystone? If we recovered the great crystal the Prime Enchantress would know what was afoot without this tedious idiocy of nitpicking details.’

      Lirenda gasped and her smooth, porcelain face drained of colour. Elaira restrained a heady urge to laugh. Though she found the sight of her senior’s distress rare enough to be funny, she had already defied protocol by broaching the two most unmentionable subjects known to the Prime Circle.

      Misplaced since the chaos of the Mistwraith’s conquest, the spherical crystal known as the Waystone could encompass the powers of one hundred and eighty Koriani enchantresses and bind them into a single force. Probably Sethvir knew the gem’s location, but the sisterhood by tradition regarded the Fellowship of Seven with deep and bitter resentment. Elaira despised her seniors’ silly pride, which forbade a request for assistance; but never until now had she been brash enough to say so. Through the hush while the First Enchantress recovered her poise, Elaira wished her impulsive words unsaid.

      ‘You’ll learn prudence.’ Lirenda tilted her head with the grace of a cat stalking prey. ‘Since you daydream through the task of making hearth-cures, and disparage your order’s means of tracking news, you will stand eighteen hours of second lane watch, without relief. If I hear any complaint from the senior in charge, I’ll take the matter before the Prime.’

      Lirenda whirled and left the workroom, silk skirts rustling above the hammering fall of rain against the casement. Left alone with the fusty smells of herbs and old dust, Elaira cursed in frustration. Eighteen hours, and there would have to be a storm, she thought miserably; a pity her talents did not encompass all four of the elements or she might have performed her task in flame, warm and dry. But water minded her meagre skills best. Angrily leaving the candle alight, and the jars on the table untidied, Elaira yanked her cloak from its peg, kicked open the planked outer postern and stamped down worn steps into the chilly afternoon.

      The slate of the old earl’s courtyard gleamed like steel underfoot, marred with moss-choked cracks. Low walls that once bordered flowerbeds now leaned under hedges of burdock and a rank explosion of briars burned brown by early frost. The sunless fogs clipped short the seasons, to the waste of the earth’s rightful harvest. The hardened black stalks of spoiled berries rattled wizened fists in the wind. A crow stretched dark wings over the dripping lip of a fishpool, then took flight at Elaira’s approach. Resigned, the enchantress perched herself in the space the bird had vacated. She gazed down into brackish, leaf-lined depths.

      With trained resolution, she blocked the surface sensations of rain and chill and annoyance from her mind. The details of her surroundings receded, replaced by the poised stillness of perfect inner balance. Presently a thin, pulsating whine struck across her mind; Elaira recognized