Curse of the Mistwraith. Janny Wurts

A sharp influx of force can sometimes burn one out.’

      Lysaer had no chance to ask what might have resulted had his handling of his gift failed them in defence. A pool of darkness, twin to the first, seeped from beneath a jumbled heap of masonry. After a moment, the thing was joined by a second.

      Arithon aligned mastery with will and raised a barrier against them. Green eyes intent, he watched the blots of blackness weave against his ward. Even as he strengthened his defences, another trio stole around an overturned pedestal.

      ‘Ath’s grace, the place is riddled with them.’ Lysaer glanced nervously to either side, fighting to hold the calm necessary to focus his gift. Arithon said nothing. Although the Gate lay no more than a stone’s throw away, the distance between seemed unreachable. Pressed by necessity, the prince plumbed the source of his talent and struck.

      Light cracked outward. Unexpectedly blinded by a flat sheet of radiance, Arithon cried out. Sand, barrier and shadows roared up in a holocaust of sparks. Wind clapped the surrounding ruins like a fist as hot air speared skyward in updraft. Stunned for the span of a second, Lysaer swayed on his feet.

      Hard hands caught his shoulder. ‘Keep moving.’ Arithon pushed him forward.

      Lysaer managed a stumbling step. When his senses cleared from the explosion, his eyes beheld a vista of nightmare. Arithon’s ward extended like a bubble overhead; shadows battered the border, licking and wheeling and insatiably hungry to pry through to the victims inside. The prince glanced at his half-brother. Tense, sweat-streaked features flickered as shadows crossed the afterglow of sunset. Arithon looked whitely strained. If he became pressured past his limit, Lysaer feared they might never live to reach the Gate. Second by second, the shadows thickened. At each step, his half-brother’s defences became ever more taxing to maintain.

      Lysaer gathered strength and lashed out. Light flared, blistering white, and seared the horde of shadows to oblivion. The prince trod over ground like heated metal. Determined to escape Mearth’s sorcerous threat he ran, narrowing the distance which separated him from the world portal. At his side, Arithon erected a fresh barrier. For still the shadows came. From cracks in stone and masonry, from chinks in the sand itself, the scraps of darkness poured forth. Forced back to a walk, the brothers moved within a vortex of flitting shapes.

      Breath rasped in Lysaer’s throat. ‘I think the light energy draws them.’

      ‘Without it, we’re finished.’ Stripped to bleakness by fatigue, Arithon missed stride and almost stumbled. As if his loss of balance signalled weakness, the shadows closed and battered against his barrier with inexhaustible persistence.

      Lysaer caught his brother’s wrist. He gathered himself, pressed forward, smashed back. Mearth shook with the blast. Stonework tumbled, glazed with slag. Desperation drove the prince to tap greater depths. Light hammered outwards. Sand fused into glass. Winds raised by the backlash gusted, howled, and flung Arithon like a puppet against his half-brother’s shoulder. Their next step was completed locked in mutual embrace.

      ‘Sithaer, will they never relent?’ Lysaer’s cry burst from him in an agony of exhausted hope. Though the Gate lay a scant pace ahead, his eyes discerned nothing beyond a horrible, flittering darkness. Pressed on by the awful conviction that his banishment rendered him powerless, Lysaer took a reckless step and channelled the whole of his awareness through his gift.

      Arithon caught his half-brother at the moment of release. ‘Easy, Lysaer.’ He tempered the wild attack with shadow, but not fast enough to deflect its vicious backlash.

      Light speared skyward with a report like thunder. Sand churned in the fists of a whirlwind and scoured the surrounding landscape with a shriek of tormented energy. Lysaer’s knees buckled. Arithon caught him as he fell. Barriers abandoned, he locked both arms around his half-brother and threw himself at the bright, mercurial shimmer of the Gate.

      Darkness closed like a curtain between. Conscious still, Arithon felt icy chills pierce his flesh. Then the geas snared his mind. A shrill scream left his lips, clipped short as the white-hot blaze of the Gate’s transfer wrenched him into oblivion.

       Predators

      A man traverses a misted maze of bogland; slime pools ripple into motion as he passes, and footfalls pad at his heels, yet he pays no heed, prodding the hummocks as he steps with a staff of plain, grey ash…

      Clad in leather and fur, a band of armed men lie in ambush beside a bearded captain, while a packtrain laden with silk and crystal emerges from a valley banked in fog…

      A black, winged beast narrows scarlet eyes and dives off a ledge into cloud, and a long, wailing whistle summons others into formation behind its scale-clad tail…

       IV. MISTWRAITH’S BANE

      The silvery sheen of West Gate rippled, broke and spilled two bodies into the foggy wilds of Athera. Blond hair gleamed like lost gold through the cross-hatched fronds of wet bracken.

      ‘S’Ilessid!’ Dakar’s exuberance shook raindrops from the pine boughs overhead as he swooped like an ungainly brown vulture to claim his prize.

      The sorcerer Asandir followed with more dignity but no less enthusiasm. ‘Careful. They might be hurt.’ He stopped at Dakar’s side and bent an intent gaze upon the arrivals from Dascen Elur.

      Dirty, thin and marked by cruel hardship, two young men lay sprawled on the ground unconscious. One fair-skinned profile revealed s’Ilessid descent. Though the other face was blurred by tangled hair and a dark stubble of beard, Asandir saw enough to guess the eyes, when they opened, would be green.

      When neither traveller stirred with returning life, Asandir frowned in concern. He bent and cupped long, capable fingers over the nearest sunburned forehead. Misted forest and Dakar’s chatter receded as he projected awareness into the mind of the man under his hands. Contact revealed immediate peril.

      The sorcerer straightened. Questions died on Dakar’s lips beneath the sheared steel of his glance. ‘They’ve been touched by the shadows of Mearth. We must move them to shelter at once.’

      Dakar hesitated, his tongue stilled before a thorny snarl of implications. The shadows’ geas bound the mind to madness: already Athera’s hope of renewed sunlight might be ruined. Sharp words prodded the Mad Prophet back to awareness.

      ‘Attend the prince, or your wager’s lost.’ Quickly Asandir unpinned his cloak and wrapped the dark-haired man in its midnight and silver folds.

      A pale, uncharacteristically sober Dakar did likewise for the s’Ilessid. Then he forced his fat body to run and fetch the horses from their tethers.

      Asandir had requisitioned use of a woodcutter’s cottage the day before. Since the Mistwraith’s conquest of sky and sunlight, men shunned the old places of power. West Gate proved no exception; the woodcutter’s dwelling lay five leagues from the site, seven hours’ ride on mounts doubly laden, and night fell early over the fog-shrouded forest.

      Dakar cursed the dark. Branches clawed him, wrist and knee, as his horse shouldered through trackless wilds. Rain splashed down his collar. Though chilled to the marrow, the Mad Prophet refrained from complaint, even though his cloak had been lent to another. The five-hundred-year hope of all Athera rested with the unconscious man in his arms. The s’Ilessid prince he sheltered was heir to the throne of Tysan, yet not so much as a hearthfire would welcome his arrival to the kingdom he should rule. The woodcutter was away to West End for the autumn fair; his dwelling lay vacant and dark.

      Night gave way to dawn, cut by misty reefs of pine trees. Sorcerer and prophet at last drew rein inside the gabled posts of the dooryard. The cottage inside was dry and functional, two rooms nestled beneath a steep, beamed roof. Asandir placed the refugees from the Red Desert on blankets before the hearth.