Curse of the Mistwraith. Janny Wurts

steel held an edge that time nor battle could blunt.’

      Here, the sorcerer paused and asked Arithon to bare his blade from the scabbard. ‘You’ll see there are no nicks, no flaws from hard usage. Yet Alithiel has known the blows of two ages of strife.’ Asandir turned the quillons between his hands and firelight flashed on the inlay which twined the dark length of the blade.

      ‘The swords were given over to the fair folk, called sunchildren, for finishing. It was they who made the hilts and chased the channels for the inlay, no two patterns the same. But perhaps the greatest wonder is the metal set into the runes themselves.’ Asandir ran a finger over the inscriptions and as an answering flare of silver traced his touch, his voice softened into reverence. ‘Riathan, the unicorns, sang the great spells of defence. Masters of the lost art of name-binding, they infused the alloy with harmonics tuned to the primal chord of vibration used by Ath Creator to kindle the first stars with light. Legend holds that twenty-one masters took a decade to endow Alithiel alone.’

      Asandir slipped the sword back in the scabbard with a soft sigh of sound. ‘The enchantment was balanced to peak in defence of the sword’s true bearer, dazzling the eyes of his enemy, but only if the engagement was just. Very few causes that drive a man to kill are righteous ones. Probably Arithon’s father never knew the nature of the weapon he left to his son.

      Arithon confirmed this with a nod but did not speak. Haunted by his encounter with the sword’s arcane powers, he feared to betray the dread that partnered such mystery: that some role waited to be asked of him to match such a grand weight of history. Determined to control his own fate, the Shadow Master sat with locked hands while, with the skilled resonance of a storyteller, Asandir continued: ‘The Isaervian blades were crafted for the hands of six great Lords of the Ilitharis and the six exalted lines of the sunchildren. Alithiel was the oddity. She was forged for Ffereton’s son, Durmaenir, a centaur born undersized. The blade was tailored to match his proportions, from the length to the balance of the grip. In the wars that followed thousands of Khadrim died, their last memory the flaring brilliance of an Isaervian sword’s enchantment. Sadly, Durmaenir was one of the fallen. His grieving father passed Alithiel to the king’s heir.’

      Arithon heard this and restrained a forcible wish to stop his ears, walk away, even shout nonsense; any reaction to halt this brilliant, weighty tapestry of names and sorrows far more comfortably left to the ghosts of forgotten heroes. Yet the stilled powers in the sword by their nature commanded his respect; he could not bring himself to interrupt.

      If Asandir noticed Arithon’s distress, he held back nothing.

      ‘The prince at that time was a sunchild, and true to type for his kind, he stood just one span in height. The sword’s length reached nearly to his chin. He had a shoulder scabbard fashioned for ceremonial appearances and took up the traditional king’s blade upon accession at his predecessor’s death. Alithiel was given over to the line of Perhedral. They too were sunchildren, ill-suited to the weight of a large weapon. When King Enastir died childless the Teir’s’Perhedral claimed the kingship. Since another sword accompanied the crown, Alithiel remained in the treasury until another rise of Khadrim threatened peace. A centaur lord wielded her through the war that followed, but the blade handled like a toy in his huge grip. Afterwards, the sword Alithiel changed owners again, this time becoming the property of the high king’s cousin by marriage. It passed through his heirs to Cianor, who earned the honorific of Sunlord.’

      This drew a gasp from Felirin who knew at least a dozen ballads made in praise of the Sunlord’s long reign.

      Asandir smiled. ‘May the memory of those days never fade. Yet Cianor Sunlord did little but possess the sword. He assumed the Paravian crown in Second Age 2545, and as others before him, took up the king’s blade out of preference. By then Alithiel carried a second name, Dael Farenn, or kingmaker, because three of her bearers had succeeded the end of a royal line.

      ‘But if the sword brought kingship to her wielder, she never became a cherished possession. Awkward size made her handling a burden and though the Isaervian blades that survived the mishaps of time were coveted, no Paravian lord cared to claim one that carried a tragic reputation.

      ‘Cianor eventually awarded Alithiel to a man, for valour in defence of his sister, Princess Taliennse. Her Grace was rescued from assault by Khadrim in the very pass we just crossed.’ Here Asandir nodded in deference to Arithon. ‘The emerald in your sword was cut by a sunchild’s spells. The initial in the leopard crest changes with the name of the bearer, and since the blade fits the hand of a man to perfection, each heir in your family has carried her since.’

      Asandir folded long hands. ‘Arithon, yours is the only Isaervian blade to pass from Paravian possession. To my knowledge, she is the last of her kind on the continent.’

      Lysaer regarded the polished quillons with rueful appreciation. ‘Small wonder the armourers of Dascen Elur were impressed. They held that sword to be the bane of their craft, because no man could hope to forge its equal.’

      Asandir rose and stretched like a cat. ‘The centaur Ffereton himself could not repeat the labour. If, in truth, he still lives.’

      Felirin raised dubious eyebrows. ‘Did I hear right? Could a centaur be expected to survive for eighteen thousand years?’

      The sorcerer fixed the bard with a bright and imperious sadness. ‘The old races were not mortal, not as a man might define. The loss of the sun touched them sorely, and even my colleagues in the Fellowship can’t say whether they can ever be brought to return. The tragedy in that cannot be measured.’

      A stillness descended by the fireside, broken by Asandir’s suggestion that all of them turn into their blankets. The weather was shortly going to turn, and he wished an early start on the morrow. Arithon alone remained seated, the sword handed down by his ancestors braced in its sheath across his knees. The flames flickered and burned low and subsided at last to red embers. Hours later, when the others seemed settled into sleep, he put the blade aside and slipped out.

      Mist clung in heavy, dank layers beneath the evergreens, and the darkness beyond the cave was total. Yet Arithon was Master of Shadow: from him, the night held no secrets. He walked over rocks and roots with a catsure step and paused by the rails that penned the horses.

      ‘Tishealdi,’ he called softly in the old tongue. ‘Splash.’

      The name fell quiet as a whisper, but movement answered. An irregular patch of white moved closer and a muzzle nosed at his hand; the dun, come begging for grain. Arithon reached out and traced the odd marking on the mare’s neck. Her damp coat warmed his cold hands and the uncomplicated animal nearness of her helped quiet the turmoil in his mind. ‘We can’t leave, you and I, not just yet. But I have a feeling we should, all the same.’

      For he had noticed a thing throughout Asandir’s recitation: while in the presence of the bard, the sorcerer took care to avoid any mention of his, or Lysaer’s surname.

      The mare shook her head, dusting his face with wet mane. Arithon pushed her off with a playful phrase that died at the snap of a stick. He spun, prepared for retreat. If Dakar or the sorceror had followed him, he wanted no part of their inquiries.

      But the accents that maligned the roots and the dark in breathless fragments of verse were the bard’s. A bump and another snapped stick ended the loftier language. ‘Daelion’s judgement, man! You’ve a miserable and perverse nature to bring me thrashing about after you and never a thought to carry a brand.’

      Arithon loosened taut muscles with an effort concealed by the night. ‘I don’t recall asking for company.’

      Felirin tripped and stumbled the last few yards down the trail and fetched against the fence with a thud that made the boards rattle. The dun shied back into the snorting mill of geldings, and the grey, confined separately, nickered after her.

      The bard looked askance at the much-too-still shadow that was Arithon. ‘You’re almost as secretive as the sorcerer.’

      Which was the nature of a spirit trained to power, not to volunteer the