Читать книгу Curse of the Mistwraith - Janny Wurts, Janny Wurts - Страница 21

The overland journey promised by Asandir began the following morning, but not in the manner two exiles from Dascen Elur might have anticipated. Rousted from bed before daybreak and given plain tunics, hose and boots by Asandir, Lysaer and Arithon hastened through the motions of dressing. This clothing fitted better than the garments borrowed from the woodcutter; lined woollen cloaks with clasps of polished shell were suited for travel through cold and inclement weather. The half-brothers were given no explanation of where such items had been procured; in short order, they found themselves hiking in the company of their benefactors through wet and trackless wilds. In the fading cover of night, Asandir conducted them to a mistbound woodland glen at the edge of the forest and baldly commanded them to wait. Then he and the Mad Prophet mounted and rode on to the town of West End, Dakar to visit the fair to purchase additional horses, and Asandir to complete an unspecified errand of his own.

Dawn brought a grey morning that dragged interminably into tedium. Arithon settled with his back against the whorled trunk of an oak. Whether he was simply napping or engrossed in a mage’s meditation, Lysaer was unwilling to ask. Left to his own devices, the prince paced and studied his surroundings. The wood was timelessly old, dense enough to discourage undergrowth, twistedly stunted by lack of sunlight. Gnarled, overhanging trees trailed hoary mantles of fungus. Rootbeds floored in dank moss rose and fell, cleft in the hollows by rock-torn gullies. Strange birds flitted through the branches, brown and white feathers contrasting with the bright red crests of the males.

Unsettled by the taints of mould and damp-rotted bark and by the drip of moisture from leaves yellowedged with ill-health, Lysaer slapped irritably as another mosquito sampled the nape of his neck. ‘What under Daelion’s dominion keeps Dakar? Even allowing for the drag of his gut he should have returned by now.’

Arithon roused and regarded his half-brother with studied calm. ‘A visit to the autumn fair would answer your question, I think.’

Though the smothering density of the mists deadened the edge from the words, Lysaer glanced up, astonished. Asandir had specifically instructed them to await the Mad Prophet’s return before going on to make rendezvous by the Melor River bridge when the town bells sounded carillons at noon.

Arithon said in distaste, ‘Would you stay and feed insects? I’m going in any case.’

Suddenly uneasy, Lysaer regretted his complaint. ‘Surely Asandir had reasons for keeping us here.’

Arithon’s mouth twisted in a manner that caused his half-brother a pang of alarm. ‘Well I know it.’ A madcap grin followed. ‘I want to know why. Thanks to Dakar’s tardy hide, we’ve gained a perfect excuse to find out. Will you come?’

Uncertainty forgotten, Lysaer laughed aloud. After the restraint imposed by arcane training he found the unexpected prankster in his half-brother infectious. ‘Starve the mosquitoes. What will you tell the sorcerer?’

Arithon pushed away from the tree trunk. ‘Asandir?’ He hooked his knuckles in his swordbelt. ‘I’ll tell him the truth. Silver to breadcrusts we find our prophet facedown in a gutter, besotted.’

‘That’s a gift not a wager.’ Lysaer shouldered through the thicket which bounded the edge of the woodland, his mood improved to the point at which he tolerated the shower of water raining down the neck of his tunic. ‘I’d rather bet how long it takes Dakar to get his fat carcass sober.’

‘Then we’d both eat breadcrumbs,’ Arithon said cuttingly. ‘Neither of us have silver enough to wait on the streets that long.’ Enviably quick, he ducked the branch his brother released in his face and pressed ahead into the meadow.

Fog hung leaden and dank over the land but an eddy of breeze unveiled a slope that fell away to a shoreline of rock and cream flat sands. An inlet jagged inward, flanked by the jaws of a moss-grown jetty. Set hard against the sands of the seacoast, the buttressed walls of West End resembled a pile of child’s blocks abandoned to the incoming tide. Looking down from the crest, the half-brothers saw little beyond buildings of ungainly grey stone, their roofs motley with gables, turrets and high, railed balconies. The defences were crumbled and ancient except for a span of recently renovated embrasures which faced the landward side.

‘Ath,’ murmured Lysaer. ‘What a wretched collection of rock. If folk here are dour as their town no wonder Dakar took to drink.’

But where the exiled prince saw vistas of cheerless granite, Arithon observed with the eyes of a sailor and beheld a seaport gone into decline. Since the Mistwraith had repressed navigational arts, the great ships no longer made port. The merchants’ mansions were inhabited now by fishermen and the wharves held a clutter of bait barrels and cod nets.

The mist lowered, reducing the town to an outline, then a memory. Lysaer shivered, his spurt of enthusiasm dampened. ‘Did you happen to notice where the gate lets in?’

‘West. There was a road.’ Arithon stepped forward, pensive; as if his timing was prearranged, bells tolled below, sounding the carillon at noon. ‘Our prophet is late indeed. Are you coming?’

Lysaer nodded, scuffed caked mud from his heel with his instep, and strode off hastily to keep up. ‘Asandir’s going to be vexed.’

‘Decidedly.’ Arithon’s brows rose in disingenuous innocence. ‘But hurry or we might miss the fun.’

A cross-country trek through sheep fields and hedgerows saw the brothers to the road beneath the gates. There, instead of easier going, Lysaer received an unpleasant reminder of his reduced station. Accustomed to travelling mounted, he dodged the muck and splatter thrown up by rolling wagons with a diligence not shared by other footbound wayfarers. Ingrained to an enchanter’s preference for remaining unobtrusive, Arithon noted with relief that the clothing given them to wear seemed unremarkably common: he and his half-brother passed the guards who lounged beside the lichen-crusted gate without drawing challenge or notice.

The streets beyond were cobbled, uneven with neglect and scattered with dank-smelling puddles. Houses pressed closely on either side, hung with dripping eaves and canting balconies, and cornices spattered with gull guano. Tarnished tin talismans, purpose unknown, jangled in the shadows of the doorways. Confused as the avenue narrowed to a three-way convergence of alleys, Lysaer dodged a pail of refuse water tossed from a window overhead. ‘Cheerless place,’ he muttered. ‘You can’t want to stop and admire the view here?’

Arithon left off contemplation of their surroundings and said, ‘Does that mean you want the task of asking directions through this maze?’

Lysaer pushed back his hood and listened as a pair of matrons strode by chattering. Their speech was gently slurred, some of the vowels flattened, the harder consonants rolled to a lazy burr. ‘The dialect isn’t impossible. On a good night of drinking I expect we could blend right in.’

The crisper edges to his phrasing caused one of the women to turn. The expression half-glimpsed beneath her shawl was startled and her exclamation openly rude as she caught her companion’s elbow and hastened past into a courtyard. Rebuffed by the clank of a gate bar, Arithon grinned at the prince’s dismay. ‘Try being a touch less flamboyant,’ he suggested.

Lysaer shut his mouth and looked offended. More practised with ladies who fawned on him, he stepped smartly past a puddle and approached a ramshackle stall that sold sausages. Sheltered under a lean-to of sewn hide, and attended by a chubby old man with wispy hair and a strikingly pretty young daughter, the fare that smoked over a dented coal brazier seemed smelly enough to scare off customers. At Lysaer’s approach, the proprietor brightened and began a singsong patter that to foreign ears sounded like nonsense.

Caught at a loss as a laden sausage-fork was waved beneath his nose, the prince tore his glance from the girl and offered an engaging smile. ‘I’m not hungry, but in need of directions. Could your charming young daughter, or yourself, perhaps oblige?’

The man crashed his fist on the counter, upsetting a wooden bowl of broth. Hot liquid cascaded in all directions. The fork jabbed out like a striking snake, and saved only by swordsman’s reflexes, Lysaer sprang back stupefied.

‘By Ath, I’ll skewer ye where ye stand!’ howled the sausageseller. ‘Ha dare ye, sly faced drifter-scum, ha dare ye stalk these streets like ye own ‘em?’

The girl reached out, caught her father’s pumping forearm with chapped hands and flushed in matching rage. ‘Get back to the horse fair, drifter! Hurry on, before ye draw notice from the constable!’

Lysaer stiffened to deliver a civil retort, but Arithon, light as a cutpurse, interjected his person between. He caught the sausageseller’s waving fork and flashed a hard glance at the girl. ‘No offence meant, but we happen to be lost.’

The vendor tugged his utensil and lost grip on the handle. Arithon stabbed the greasy tines upright in the ramshackle counter, and despite penetrating stares from half a dozen passersby, folded arms unnaturally tan for the sunless climate and waited.

The girl softened first. ‘Go right, through the Weaver’s lane, and damn ye both for bad liars.’

Lysaer drew breath for rejoinder, cut off as Arithon jostled him forcibly away in the indicated direction. Whitely angry, the prince exploded in frustration. ‘Ath’s grace, what sort of place is this, where a man can’t compliment a girl without suffering insult out of hand!’

‘Must be your manners,’ the Master said.

‘Manners!’ Lysaer stopped dead and glared. ‘Do I act like a churl?’

‘Not to me.’ Arithon pointedly kept on walking, and reminded by the odd, carven doorways and curious regard of strangers that he was no longer heir to any kingdom, Lysaer swallowed his pride and continued.

‘What did they mean by “drifters”?’ he wondered aloud as they skirted a stinking bait-monger’s cart and turned down a lane marked by a guild stamp painted on a shuttlecock.

Arithon did not answer. He had paused to prod what looked to be a beggar asleep and snoring in the gutter. The fellow sprawled on his back, one elbow crooked over his face. The rest of him was scattered with odd bits of garbage and potato peels, as though the leavings from the scullery had been tossed out with him as an afterthought.

Mollified enough to be observant, Lysaer did an incredulous double-take. ‘Dakar?’

‘None else.’ Arithon glanced back, a wild light in his eyes. ‘Oh, luck of the sinful, we’ve been blessed.’

‘I fail to see why.’ Lysaer edged nervously closer, mostly to hide the fact that his half-brother had crouched among the refuse and was methodically searching the untidy folds of Dakar’s clothing. ‘You’ll have yourself in irons and branded for stealing.’

Arithon ignored him. With recklessness that almost seemed to taunt, he thrust a hand up under the tunic hem and groped at Dakar’s well padded middle. The Mad Prophet remained comatose. After the briefest interval, the Master exclaimed on a clear note of triumph and stood, a weighty sack of coins in his fist.

‘Oh, you thieving pirate.’ Lysaer smiled, enticed at last to collusion. ‘Where do we go to celebrate?’

‘The horse fair, I think.’ Arithon tossed the silver to his companion. ‘Or was that someone else I heard cursing the mud on the road below the gatehouse?’

Lysaer let the comment pass. Thoughtful as he fingered the unfamiliar coinage inside the purse, he said, ‘This must be a well-patrolled town, or else a very honest one, if a man can lie about in a stupor and not be troubled by theft.’

Arithon skirted the sagging boards of a door-stoop.

‘But our prophet didn’t leave anything unguarded.’

Lysaer’s fingers clenched over the coins, which all of a sudden felt cold. ‘Spells?’

‘Just one.’ The Master showed no smugness. ‘From the careless way the bindings were set, Dakar must have a reputation.’

‘For being a mage’s apprentice?’ Lysaer tucked the pouch in his doublet as they passed the front of a weaver’s shop. Samples of woollens and plaids were nailed in streamers to the signpost but the door was tightly closed and customers nowhere in evidence.

‘More likely for scalding the hide off the hands of any fool desperate enough to rob him.’ Arithon tucked unblemished fingers under his cloak as if the topic under discussion was blandly ordinary.

They arrived at the end of the alley, Lysaer wondering whether he could ever feel easy with the secretive manner of mages. A glance into the square beyond the lane revealed why activity on the gateside quarter of town had seemed unnaturally subdued: West End’s autumn horse fair became the centrepiece for a festival and the stalls that normally housed the fishmarket were hung with banners and ribbon. Picketlines stretched between and haltered in every conceivable space were horses of all sizes and description. Urchins in fishermen’s smocks raced in play through whatever crannies remained, scolded by matrons and encouraged by a toothless old fiddler who capered about playing notes that in West End passed for a jig. To Arithon’s ear, his instrument very badly needed tuning.

Wary since the incident with the sausageseller, the half-brothers spent a moment in observation. Except for a pair of dwarf jugglers tossing balls for coins, the folk of the town seemed an ordinary mix of fishermen, craftsmen and farm wives perched upon laden wagons. The customers who haggled to buy were not richly clothed; most were clean, and the off-duty soldiers clad in baldrics and leather brigandines seemed more inclined to share drink and talk by the wineseller’s stall than to make suspicious inquiries of strangers. Still, as the brothers ventured forward into the press, Arithon kept one arm beneath his cloak, his hand in prudent contact with his sword hilt.

A confectioner’s child accosted them the moment they entered the fair. Though the half-brothers had eaten nothing since dawn, neither wished to tarry for sugared figs, even ones offered by a girl with smiling charm. Lysaer dodged past with a shake of his head, and in wordless accord Arithon followed past a butcher’s stall and an ox wagon haphazardly piled with potted herbs. Beyond these sat a crone surrounded by crates of bottled preserves. Tied to a post by her chair stood a glossy string of horses.

Lysaer and Arithon poised to one side to examine the stock. Nearby, ankle-deep in straw that smelled suspiciously like yesterday’s herring catch and surrounded by a weaving flock of gulls, a farmer in a sheepskin vest haggled loudly with a hawk-nosed fellow who wore threadbare linen and a brilliantly dyed leather tunic.

‘Seventy ra’el?’ The farmer scratched his ear, spat and argued vigorously. ‘Fer just a hack? That’s greedy over-priced, ye crafty drifter. If our mayor hears, mark my guess, he’s sure to bar yer clan from trading next year.’

The hag amid the jam boxes raised her chin and mumbled an obscenity, while the colourfully-dressed horse dealer ran lean hands over the crest of the bay in question. ‘The price stands,’ he finished in a clear, incisive speech only lightly touched by the local burr. ‘Seventy royals or the mare stays where she is. Just a hack she might be, but she’s young and soundly bred.’

‘Ath, he’s hardly got an accent,’ Lysaer murmured in Arithon’s ear.

The Master nodded fractionally. ‘Explains a great deal about the way we were received.’ All the while his eyes roved across the animals offered for sale. His half-brother watched, amused, as his interest caught and lingered over a broad-chested, blaze-faced gelding tied slightly apart from the rest.

‘I like that chestnut too,’ Lysaer admitted. ‘Nice legs, and he’s built for endurance.’

The old woman twisted her head. She stared at the half-brothers, intent as a hawk and unnoticed as the farmer departed, cursing. Before another bidder could come forward, Arithon stepped into the gap and said, ‘What price do you ask for the chestnut?’

The horse trader half spun, his features wide with astonishment. His glance encompassed the bystanders, confused, and only after a second sweep settled on Arithon and Lysaer, who now stood isolated as the farmers on either side backed away. ‘Daelion’s hells! What clan are you from, brother, and is this some jest, you here bidding like a townsman?’

Arithon ignored both questions and instead repeated his query. ‘How much?’

‘He isn’t for sale,’ snapped the trader. ‘You blind to the tassels on his halter or what?’

That moment the crone began to shout shrilly.

Unnerved as much as his brother had been at finding himself the target of unwarranted hostility, Arithon cast about for a way to ease the drifter’s temper.

Before he could speak, a smooth voice interjected. ‘The tassels of ownership are obvious.’ Townsmen on either side heard and started, and hastily disappeared about their business; and the grandmother by the jam bottles stopped yelling as the sorcerer, Asandir, touched her shawl and strode briskly in from behind. To the man he added, ‘But the finer horses in the fair are sold already and my companions need reliable mounts. Will you consider an offer of three hundred royals?’

The drifter met this development with raised eyebrows and a startled intake of breath. He took in the weathered features, steel grey eyes and implacable demeanor of the sorcerer with evident recognition. ‘To you I’ll sell, but not for bribe-price. Two-hundred royals is fair.’

Asandir turned a glance quite stripped of tolerance upon the princes who had disobeyed his command. ‘Go,’ he said. ‘Untie the chestnut and for your life’s sake, keep your mouths shut while I settle this.’ To the drifter the sorcerer added, ‘The horse is your personal mount. Take the extra hundred to ease the inconvenience while your next foal grows to maturity.’

The drifter looked uncomfortable, as if he might argue the sorcerer’s generosity as charity. But the grandmother forestalled him with a curt jerk of her head: Asandir produced the coin swiftly. Before the culprits who had precipitated the transaction could attract any closer scrutiny he cut the tassels of ownership from the gelding’s halter and led his purchase away. Lysaer and Arithon were swept along without ceremony.

The sorcerer hustled them back across the square. Fishermen turned heads to glare as chickens flapped squawking from under his fast-striding boots. They passed the butcher’s stall, crammed with bawling livestock and strangely silent customers. The chestnut shied and jibbed against the rein, until a word laced with spell-craft quieted it. Dreading the moment when such knife-edged tones might be directed his way in rebuke, Lysaer maintained silence.

Arithon perversely rejected tact. ‘You found Dakar?’

The sorcerer flicked a look of focused displeasure over one blue-cloaked shoulder. ‘Yes. He’s been dealt with already.’ Asandir changed course without hesitation down the darker of two branching alleys. Over the ring of the chestnut’s shod hooves he added, ‘You’ve already left an impression with the drifters. Don’t cause more talk in West End, am I clear?’

He stopped very suddenly and tossed the chestnut’s leading rein to Lysaer. ‘Stay here, speak to no one, and simply wait. I’ll return with another horse and a decent saddle. Should you feel the urge to wander again, let me add that in this place, people associated with sorcerers very often wind up roasting in chains on a pile of oiled faggots.’

Asandir spun and left them. Watching his departure with wide and unmollified eyes, Arithon mused, ‘I wonder what fate befell Dakar?’

That subject was one that his half-brother preferred not to contemplate. Suddenly inimical to the Master’s provocations, Lysaer turned his back and made his acquaintance with the chestnut.

Asandir returned after the briefest delay, leading a metal-coloured dun with an odd splash of white on her neck. His own mount trailed behind, a black with one china eye that disconcertingly appeared to stare a man through to the soul. Piled across its withers was an extra saddle allotted for Lysaer’s gelding.

‘You brought no bridle,’ the former prince observed as he undertook a groom’s work with fleece pads and girth.

‘The drifters of Pasyvier are the best horse trainers in Athera, and that gelding was a clan lord’s personal mount. It won’t require a bit. If you’re careless enough to fall, that animal would likely side-step to stay underneath you.’ His say finished, the sorcerer tossed the dun’s reins to Arithon. ‘She’s not a cull, only green. Don’t trust her so much you fall asleep.’

From an urchin by the gates, the sorcerer collected a pony laden with blankets and leather-wrapped packs of supplies. Attached to its load by a rope length was the paint mare belonging to Dakar. The Mad Prophet himself lay trussed and draped across her saddle bow. Someone had dumped a bucket of water over his tousled head, and the damp seeped rings into clothing that still reeked faintly of garbage. The wetting had been as ineffective on Dakar’s snores: he rasped on unabated as Asandir drove the cavalcade at a trot through West End’s east-facing gate.

Once the farmlands surrounding the town fell behind, the road proved sparsely travelled. The surface had once been paved with slate, built firm and dry on a causeway that sliced a straight course through the boglands that flanked the coast. Centuries of passing wagons had cracked the thick stone in places; the criss-crossed muck in the wheel-ruts grew rooster-tails of weed. The mists pressed down on a landscape relentlessly flat and silver with the sheen of tidal waterways edged by blighted stands of reed. The air hung sour with the smell of decomposed vegetation. The chink of bits and stirrups, and the clink of horseshoes on rock offered lonely counterpoint to the wingbeats of waterfowl explosively startled into flight.

Reassured that the sorcerer had yet to denounce anyone for the illicit visit to the West End market, Lysaer spurred his horse abreast and dared a question: ‘Who are the drifters and why do the people dislike them?’

Asandir glanced significantly at Arithon, who fought with every shred of his attention to keep his mare from crabbing sideways. The company of three departed the instant the half-brothers gained the saddle. Asandir led, and did not add that his choice in horses had been guided by intent; he wanted Arithon kept preoccupied. ‘Since the rebellion which threw down the high kings, the drifters have been nomads. They breed horses in the grasslands of Pasyvier and mostly keep to themselves. The townsmen are wary of them because their ancestors once ruled in West End.’

The party crossed the moss-crusted spans of the Melor River bridge while the mare bounced and clattered and shied to a barrage of playful snorts. Masked by the antics of the dun, Asandir added, ‘There are deep antipathies remaining from times past, and much prejudice. Your accents, as you noticed, allied you with unpopular factions. My purpose in asking you to wait in the wood was to spare you from dangerous misunderstanding.’

Lysaer drew breath to inquire further but the sorcerer forestalled him. ‘Teir’s’Ilessid,’ he said, using an old language term that the prince lacked the knowledge to translate. ‘There are better times for questions and I promise you shall be given all the answers you need. Right now I’m anxious to set distance between the town and ourselves before dark. The drifters are not fools and the folk who saw you will talk. The result might brew up a curiosity far better left to bide until later.’

Lysaer considered this, his hands twisting and twisting in the chestnut’s silken mane. Less than sure of himself since the loss of his heirship, he regarded the dismal, alien landscape, and tried not to smile as his half-brother battled the flighty, scatter-minded dun through one disobedient rumpus after another.

The incessant clatter of her footfalls at first overshadowed Dakar’s moans of returned consciousness. These soon progressed to obscenities, also ignored, until a full-throated yowl of outrage brought the company to a precipitous halt.

A look back showed that the Mad Prophet’s distress was not solely caused by his hangover: tied still to the paint’s saddlebow, Dakar kicked in a red-faced, fish-flop struggle that stemmed from the fact that his cloak had somehow coiled itself around his neck and more peculiarly appeared to be strangling him.

‘Iyats,’ Asandir said shortly, but his mouth turned upward in unmistakable amusement. ‘What folk here most aptly name fiends.’

Dakar swivelled his head and eyes, and with the aggrieved determination of a bound man whose face dangled upside-down, gagged out, ‘You planned this.’

Possessed by an energy sprite native to Athera, the cloak slithered inexorably tighter around his throat. The fullness of the Mad Prophet’s cheeks deepened from red to purple. ‘Tortures of Sithaer, are you just going to watch while I choke?’

Asandir urged his black forward and drew rein with ineffable calmness. ‘I’ve warned you time and again to restrain your emotions when dealing with iyats. Your distress just goads them on to greater mischief.’

Dakar spluttered and gasped through a tightening twist of fabric. ‘That’s fine advice. You aren’t the one under attack.’

As if his sarcasm sparked suggestion, the cloak very suddenly went limp. The whoop as Dakar sucked in a starved breath quite wickedly transformed into laughter as a puddle peeled itself away from the ground and floated upward, precariously suspended in mid air.

While Lysaer and Arithon stared in astonishment, Asandir calmly regarded the churning, muddy liquid that threatened to douse his silver head. Without any change in expression he raised his hand, closed his fingers, then lowered his fist to his knee. As if dragged by invisible force, the iyat-borne puddle followed; until the sorcerer snapped his fist open, and the mass lost cohesion and exploded in a spatter of grit-laden droplets.

Well drenched by the run-off, Dakar uttered a bitten obscenity. ‘That’s unfair,’ he continued on a strained note that stemmed from the fact he was overweight, and sprawled face downward over a saddle that for some while had been galling his belly. ‘You’ve a reputation for quenching fiends and they know it. They don’t go for you in earnest.’

Asandir raised one eyebrow. ‘You make a fine mark for them. You won’t leash your temper. And they know it.’

Dakar squirmed and failed to settle his bulk into a more accommodating position. ‘Are you going to cut me free?’

‘Are you sober enough to stay mounted?’ The sorcerer fixed impervious, silver-grey eyes on his errant apprentice and shook his head. ‘I think it would be appropriate if you spent the next hour contemplating the result of your untimely binge. I found our two guests at large in the horse fair at West End.’

Dakar’s eyes widened like a hurt spaniel’s. ‘Damn, but you’re heartless. Can I be blamed because a pair of newcomers can’t follow direct instructions?’

Asandir gathered the black’s reins. Silent, he slapped the paint’s haunches and passed ahead without turning as the animal lurched into a trot that threatened to explode Dakar’s skull with the after effects of strong drink. Deaf to the moans from his apprentice, Asandir answered Lysaer’s avid question, and assured that the iyat would not be returning to plague them.

‘They feed upon natural energies – fire, falling water, temperature change – that one we left behind is presently quite drained. Unless it finds a thunderstorm, it won’t recover enough charge to cause trouble for several weeks to come.’

The riders continued westward through a damp, grey afternoon. Although they stopped once for a meal of bread and sausage from the supply pack, Dakar was given no reprieve until dusk when the horses were unsaddled and the small hide tents were unfurled from their lashings to make camp. By then exhausted by hours of pleas and imprecations, he settled in a sulk by the campfire and immediately fell asleep. Tired themselves and worn sore by unaccustomed hours in the saddle, Arithon and Lysaer crawled into blankets and listened to the calls of an unfamiliar night bird echo across the marsh.

Despite the long and wearing day, Lysaer lay wide-eyed and wakeful in the dark. Clued by the stillness that Arithon was not sleeping but seated on his bedding with his back to the tentpole, the prince rolled onto his stomach. ‘You think the sorcerer has something more in mind for us than conquest of the Mistwraith, Desh-thiere.’

Arithon turned his head, his expression unseen in the gloom. ‘I’m sure of it.’

Lysaer settled his chin on his fists. The unaccustomed prick of beard stubble made him irritable; tiredly, resignedly, he put aside wishing for his valet and considered the problems of the moment. ‘You sound quite convinced that the fate in question won’t be pleasant.’

Silence. Arithon shifted position; perhaps he shrugged.

Reflexively touched by a spasm of mistrust, Lysaer extended a hand and called on his gift. A star of light gleamed from his palm and brightened the confines of the tent.

Caught by surprise, a stripped expression of longing on his face, Arithon spun away.

Lysaer pushed upright. ‘Ath, what are you thinking about? You’ve noticed the sickly taint the fog has left on this land. In any honour and decency, could you turn away from these people’s need?’

‘No.’ Arithon returned, much too softly. ‘That’s precisely what Asandir is counting on.’

Struck by a haunted confusion not entirely concealed behind Arithon’s words, Lysaer forgot his anger. There must be friends, even family, that the Shadow Master missed beyond the World Gate. Contritely, the prince asked, ‘If you could go anywhere, be anything, do anything you wanted, what would you choose?’

‘Not to go back to Karthan,’ Arithon said obliquely, and discouraged from personal inquiry, Lysaer let the light die.

‘You know,’ the prince said to the darkness, ‘Dakar thinks you’re some sort of criminal, twisted by illicit magic and sworn to corruption of the innocent.’

Arithon laughed softly as a whisper in the night. ‘You might fare better if you believed him.’

‘Why? Wasn’t one trial on charges of piracy enough for you?’ That moment Lysaer wished his small fleck of light still burned. ‘You’re not thinking of defying Asandir, are you?’

Silence and stillness answered. Lysaer swore. Too weary to unravel the contrary conscience that gave rise to Arithon’s moodiness, his half-brother settled back in his blankets and tried not to think of home, or the beloved lady at South Isle who now must seek another suitor. Instead the former prince concentrated on the need in this world and the Mistwraith his new fate bound him to destroy. Eventually he fell asleep.

The following days passed alike, except that Dakar rode astride instead of roped like a bundled roll of clothgoods. The dun mare steadied somewhat as the leagues passed: her bucks and crabsteps and shies arose more in spirited play than from any reaction to fear. But if Arithon had earned a reprieve from her taxing demands, the reserve that had cloaked him since West End did not thaw to the point of speech. Dakar’s scowling distrust toward his presence did not ease, which left the former prince of Amroth the recipient of unending loquacious questions. Hoarse, both from laughter and too much talk, Lysaer regarded his taciturn half-brother and wondered which of them suffered more: Arithon, in his solitude, or himself, subjected to the demands of Dakar’s incessant curiosity.

The road crooked inland and the marsh pools dried up, replaced by meadows of withered wildflowers. Black birds with white-tipped feathers flashed into flight at their passing and partridge called in the thickets. When the party crossed a deep river ford and bypassed the fork that led to the port city of Karfael, Dakar took the opportunity to bemoan the lack of beer as they paused to refill their emptied water jars.

Asandir dried dripping hands and killed the complaint with mention that a merchant caravan fared ahead.

‘Which way is it bound?’ Dakar bounded upright to a gurgle and splash of jounced flasks.

‘Toward Camris, as we are,’ Asandir said. ‘We shall overtake them.’

The Mad Prophet cheerfully forgot to curse his dampened clothing. But although he badgered through the afternoon and half of the night, the sorcerer refused to elaborate.

On the fourth day the roadway swung due east and entered the forest of Westwood. Here the trees rose ancient with years, once majestic as patriarchs, but bearded and bent now under mantling snags of pallid moss. Their crowns were smothered in mist and their boles grown gnarled with vine until five men with joined hands could not have spanned their circumference. Daylight was reduced to a thick, murky twilight alive with the whispered drip of water. Oppressed by a sense of decay on the land, and the unremitting grey of misty weather, no one inclined toward talk. Even Dakar’s chatter subsided to silence.

‘This wood was a merry place once, when sunlight still shone,’ Asandir mused, as if his mage’s perception showed him something that touched off maudlin thoughts.

They passed standing stones with carvings worn until only beaded whorls of lichens held their patterns. Aware that Arithon studied these with intent curiosity, Asandir volunteered an explanation. ‘In times past, creatures who were not human tended these forests. Attuned to the deepest pulses that bind land and soil to Ath’s harmony, they left stones such as these to show what ground and which trees could be taken for man’s use, and which must stay whole to renew the mysteries. Once, the protection of sacred ground was the province of the high king’s justice. Pastures and fields were cut only where the earth could gracefully support them. But now such knowledge is scarce. The name for the guardians who dwelled here meant giants in the old tongue.’ But the huge, gentle beings Asandir described were more clearly a breed of centaurs.

When Lysaer inquired what had become of them, the sorcerer shook his head sorrowfully. ‘The last of the Ilitharis Paravians passed from the land when Desh-thiere swallowed sunlight. Not even Sethvir at Althain Tower knows where they have gone. Athera is the poorer for their loss. The last hope of redeeming their fate lies in the Mistwraith’s defeat.’

Dakar glanced aside and caught Lysaer’s attention with a wink. ‘Small wonder the old races left these parts. No taverns, no beer and wet trees make lousy company.’

Fed up with rain and nights of smoking fires and bedding down on dampened ground, the former prince could almost sympathize. He joined Dakar in questioning the existence of Asandir’s caravan, and was almost caught off-guard when they overtook the fugitive by the wayside.

The man wore brilliant scarlet, which spoiled his attempt to escape notice by the approaching riders. The hem of his garment was sewn with tassels. One of these caught on a briar and flagged the attention of Asandir, who reined up short in the roadway and called immediate reassurance. ‘We’re fellow travellers, not bandits. Why not share our fire if you’re alone?’

‘On that, I had no choice,’ came the chagrined reply. The man spoke rapidly in dialect, his accents less burred than the prevailing variety in West End. Rangy, tall and carrying what looked like a grossly misshapen pack, he stepped out from behind the moss-shagged bole of an oak. ‘A supposedly honest caravan master already relieved me of my mount, so luck has forsaken me anyway.’ He approached at a pained gait that revealed that his boots were causing blisters, and the hand left white-knuckled on his sword hilt betrayed distrust behind his amiable manner.

‘You may also share the road if you can keep up,’ Asandir offered back.

Dakar assessed the oddly bulky pack for the possible presence of spirits, and was first to announce the stranger’s trade. ‘You’re a minstrel!’ he burst out in surprise. ‘By the Wheel man, why are you starving in the wilderness when you could be singing comfortably in a tavern?’

The man did not reply. Close enough now to make out details and faces, he was engrossed by Asandir. ‘I know you,’ he murmured, half awed. He pushed back his hood and a shock of wavy hair spilled over his collar. The revealed face showed a mapwork of laughlines and a stubble of half-grown beard. The eyes were hazel and merry despite the swollen purple weals that marred him, forehead and cheek.

Asandir’s sharpness cut the forest silence like a whiplash. ‘Ath in his mercy, we are come on ill times. Who in this land has dared to abuse a free singer?’

The minstrel touched his battered skin, embarrassed. ‘I sang the wrong ballad. After being stoned from an inn on the coast I should have learned better. Tales of old kingdoms are not appreciated where mayors rule.’ He sighed in stoic dismissal. ‘This last one cost me my horse and left me stranded into the bargain.’

Asandir cast a glance toward Arithon: if argument existed in favour of shouldering responsibility for restoring this world to sun and harmony, here walked misfortune that a fellow musician must understand. Before the sorcerer could emphasize his point, the minstrel raised his trained voice in a mix of diffidence and amazement.

‘Fiend-quencher, matched by none; white-headed, grey-eyed one. Change-bringer, storm-breaker; Asandir, King-maker.’

‘You,’ the minstrel added, and his theatrical gesture encompassed Dakar. ‘You must be the Mad Prophet.’

Aware of a sudden guardedness behind Arithon’s stillness, Asandir responded carefully. ‘I won’t deny your powers of observation, Felirin the Scarlet. But I would urge that you use more caution before speaking your thoughts aloud. There were innocents burned in Karfael last harvest upon suspicion they had harboured a sorcerer.’

‘So I heard.’ The bard shrugged. ‘But I learned my repertory from barbarians and something of their wildness stayed with me.’ He looked up, his swollen face bright with interest. There must be good reason for a Fellowship sorcerer to take to the open roads.’ And his gaze shifted to the half-brothers who travelled in Asandir’s company.

Dakar opened his mouth, quickly silenced by a look from the sorcerer, who interjected, ‘This is no time to be starting rumours in the taverns. And should I be aware of another way into Camris beyond the road through Tornir Peaks?’

Felirin understood a warning when he heard one. He shifted his bundle, prepared to fall into step as the sorcerer’s black started forward; but Arithon abruptly dismounted and offered the reins of the dun.

‘You have blisters,’ he observed, ‘and I have sores from the saddle that an afternoon on foot might improve.’

The excuse was a lie. Dakar knew. He watched the Master’s face and saw the buried edge of something determined; but the shadowed green eyes held their secrets.