The Curse of the Mistwraith (Wars of Light and Shadow, #1)

by Janny Wurts

This is the chronicle the sages recovered. Let each who reads determine the good and the evil for himself.

The vendetta had threaded discord and grief through his earliest memories; an altercation before his birth had killed the realm’s first queen and a daughter no one near the king dared to mention. All Lysaer’s life the court had lived in dread of his father’s rages, and always they were caused by s’Ffalenn. Still, the prince fought the irrational hatred the name reflexively inspired. The prisoner in Briane’s hold was his half-brother. Whether he was also a criminal deserving of the cruelty and death that the royal obsession for vengeance would demand was a distinction no man of honour dared ignore.

Arithon spoke first. ‘We are well met, brother.’ The crown prince ignored the sarcasm. A blood-feud could continue only as long as both sides were sworn to antipathy. ‘Kinship cannot pardon the charges against you, if it’s true that you summoned shadow and sorcery, then blinded and attacked and murdered the companies of seven vessels. No rational purpose can justify the slaughter of hapless sailors.’ ‘They happened to be crewing royal warships.’ Arithon straightened with a jangle of chain. His clear, expressive voice lifted above the echoes. ‘Show me a man who’s harmless, and I’ll show you one stone dead.’

‘If I’m to be scapegoat before the court of Amroth, let me not last an hour. Free of the drug, I believe I can achieve that.’ He ended on a wounding note of irony. ‘If you wish to be merciful, tell the king at once.’ The healer rose sharply. Unable to speak, he touched Arithon’s thin shoulder in sympathy. Then he left to seek audience with the king. All along he had expected to regret his dealings with the Master of Shadow; but never until the end had he guessed he might suffer out of pity.

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.’

In the time before the Mistwraith’s curse, that same weapon had been carried by an Atherian prince through the Worldsend Gates to the west. Three other royal heirs had fled with him, seeking sanctuary from a rebellion which threatened their lives. Then the Mistwraith’s conquest banished all sunlight; the Gates were directionally sealed on the promise of a madman’s prophecy, and the princes’ exile became permanent.

At Amroth Castle, a king celebrates the exile of his most bitterly hated enemy, but fails to notice the absence of his own heir until too late…

‘We’re both the victims of bloodfeud,’ Arithon said. ‘What’s past can’t be changed. But if we set aside differences, we have a chance to escape from this wasteland. ’

Arithon drove on without comment. The prince grew to hate beyond reason the tireless step at his heel. In time, the Master’s assumption that he was his father’s son became only partially true; the rage which consumed Lysaer’s thoughts burned patient and cold as his mother’s.

‘Did Ath’s grace, or pity bring you back?’ ‘Neither.’ With clinical efficiency, Lysaer began to work the fisherman’s cloak into a sling. ‘There had better be a gate.’ Arithon stared up into eyes of cold blue. ‘Leave me. I didn’t ask the attentions of your conscience.’ Lysaer ignored the plea. ‘I’ve found water.’ He pulled the sword from the ruined flask and restored it to the scabbard at Arithon’s belt. ‘Your life is your own affair, but I refuse responsibility for your death.’

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.’

Arithon; the word brought Asandir to sharp attention. Whoever had named this prince had known what they were about, for the Paravian root of meaning was ‘forger’, not of metals, but of destiny.

‘Which elements?’ ‘Light,’ said Asandir, ‘and shadow, granted intact upon conception. That’s enough to destroy the Mistwraith, but only if the half-brothers work jointly. I’ll add that our princes are opposites with a heritage of blood feud between them.’ Sensitized to the cold, deadly burden of the weapon in his lap, Dakar shivered. ‘Do the princes understand their gifts?’ ‘One does.’ A log fell. Sparks flurried across an acid silence. Then Asandir reached down and tested the sword’s cruel edge with his finger. ‘Athera’s sunlight might be perilously bought.’

‘They’ll come to odds, half- brothers or not.’ Asandir’s response cut through a spitting shower of sparks. ‘Is that prophecy?’ ‘Maybe.’ Dakar laid the poker aside, propped his chin on plump knuckles and sighed. ‘I’m not certain. Earlier, when I held the sword, I had a strong premonition. But I couldn’t bear to see five centuries of hope destroyed on the day of fulfilment.’

Felirin returned a dry chuckle. ‘Don’t change the subject. You can’t hide your angst behind questions.’ Arithon said nothing for an interval. Then with clear and deliberate sting he said, ‘Why not? You know the ballads. Show me a hero and I’ll show you a man enslaved by his competence.’

‘Maybe I just want my fortune told.’ The crone grunted. ‘Not you. And anyway, you don’t need a seer to tell your future’s just branched into darkness.’ ‘Sithaer,’ Elaira sucked an unsteady breath. ‘So soon?’ She fumbled at the ties of her wraps and caught sight of two young men who watched her, interested, over a half-completed game of chess.

‘In the times of the rebellion, when four of the high kings’ heirs were sent to safety through West Gate, the Fellowship granted foundational training to the Teir’s’Ahelas to increase her line’s chances of survival. Her descendants on Dascen Elur continued her tradition but forgot certain of the guidelines. In the course of five centuries of isolation, the mages there achieved what the Seven could not.’ ‘Is that possible?’ Elaira interjected. Asandir’s silvered brows tipped up. ‘What is possible does not always coincide with what is wise.’

Elaira felt her heart bang hard against her ribs. ‘Do you mean to tell me, that you don’t know who you are?’ His response came back mocking. ‘I thought I did. Has something changed?’ ‘No.’ Elaira gripped both hands in front of her shins: two could play his game. ‘Your Grace, you are Teir’s’Ffalenn, prince and heir-apparent of the crown of Rathain. All that pompous rhetoric means true-born son of an old-blood high king. Every able man in this city, as well as the surrounding countryside, would give his eldest child to be first to draw and quarter you.’

‘What about Lysaer?’ Elaira tried for humour. ‘Oh well, there’s a kingdom waiting for him too. In fact, we’re sitting in the middle of it.’

‘Perhaps you’ll find your way back to her.’ The wind whined mournfully through the cracks in the shutters and a draft stole through the small room; touched by the chill, Lysaer shrugged. ‘At least, we could ask Asandir to return us to Dascen Elur once we’ve defeated the Mistwraith.’ ‘No.’ Arithon rolled over, his face turned unreadably to the wall. ‘Depend on the fact that he won’t.’ ‘You found out something in Erdane, didn’t you,’ Lysaer said. But his accusation dangled unanswered.

‘When we reach the next town, might I sell my jewels to buy a sword?’ The sorcerer returned a look like blank glass, his cragged brow sprinkled with settled snow. ‘We’ll cross no more towns before arrival at Althain Tower.’ More forthright than his half-brother, Lysaer persevered. ‘Perhaps we could find a tavern keeper with a spare blade available for purchase then.’ Asandir’s vagueness crystallized to piercing irritation. ‘When you have need of a weapon, you shall be given one.’

Poor Lysaer

Obstinate the Master of Shadow might be, and most times maddeningly reticent; yet as Lysaer combed through wind-whipped snow for a man perhaps fallen and injured, he did not dwell on past crimes or piracy. However cross-grained, no matter how secretive or odd a childhood among mages had made him, Arithon’s motives before exile had likely not been founded in malice. He was kin, and the only other in this mist-cursed world who recalled that Lysaer had been born a prince.

‘Lysaer, come forward and remove your hood.’ The barbarian gave way to blind outrage. ‘The next man who speaks or moves will wind up butchered on my signal!’ ‘Not so easily,’ rebutted the one who stepped forth, a figure muffled in ordinary wool, whose fingers bore neither ring nor ornament as he slipped off his gloves and raised his hands; but a man so unconsciously sure of his position that every clansman present paused to stare. Dark cloth slipped back to reveal honey-gold hair, blue eyes still glacial with fury and features that reflected a bloodline not seen in Camris for centuries, but recognizable to every clan along the Valendale.

Lysaer slipped into the silken hose, lawn shirt and finely-embroidered tabard with a relief that bordered on shame. He had not appreciated the comforts of rich clothing until he had been made to do without. Humbled by the honest recognition that he desired the throne these clansmen offered at least as desperately as their disunited realm needed sound rule, he laced gold-tipped points and fastened mother-of-pearl buttons and tried to dismiss his suspicion such luxuries might have been dishonestly procured. As Maien buckled the sword Daeltiri at his side and handed him the matching chased dagger, Lysaer, Prince of Tysan, felt whole for the first time since exile through Worldsend. He quieted his creeping doubts over the lifestyle of the realm’s subjects until he could know them better. Under fair consideration, he might find the differences between Athera’s wild clansmen and Amroth’s more sophisticated courtiers were just reflections of profoundly changed perception. He was no longer the pampered prince who had been haplessly tossed through the Worldsend Gate. In a rakingly perverse turn of conscience, he wondered which promised the sounder reign: the cosseted and idealistic royal heir he had been before banishment, or the more self-sufficient man who needed a crown to feel complete.

Lysaer hid unsettled thoughts by toying with the meat on his plate. Land-owning, an inalienable tradition on Dascen Elur, appeared to be bloodletting violation in Tysan. The prince held the concept daunting and uncivilized that he might one day be expected to punish a man for laying claim to the farmland he tilled. If Tysan’s charter of governance denied the security of home and hearth-rights, small wonder the townsmen had let sedition from a spiteful sorcerer incite them to bloody rebellion.

‘Lady Maenalle,’ he said, in his voice a jar like heartbreak. ‘This lyranthe is too fine for me. Let me play this one night and return her for your masterbards in the lowlands.’ But the Steward of Tysan dismissed his conscience with an imperious lift of her chin. ‘I don’t begrudge you my bracelet,’ she called across the quiet. ‘And our bards, every one of them, passed over that instrument for another of prettier appearance. Since they chose by their eyes and not their ears, I call their claim forfeit.’ Arithon’s hand remained frozen against glittering bands of new strings. ‘If the word of a prince carries weight, I stand by Maenalle’s judgement.’ Lysaer chose a seat and by example all in the chamber followed suit. ‘Brother,’ he said on a strange edge of exasperation, ‘will you have done with moping and play?’

‘Much can change in the course of five centuries.’ Arithon at this moment preferred to forget the legacy left him by Davien’s enchanted fountain: he shrugged. ‘Quite a lot has not changed at all in the course of five centuries.’

‘Let me tell you a thing, Teir’s’Ffalenn. You were left to your devices because the mindblock I set was never intended to bend your will.’ ‘Was it not?’ Arithon retaliated fast and hard as a blow. ‘Then why bother setting any ward at all?’

Maenalle’s features stayed hard. ‘Tysan’s scouts do not act for personal vengeance. No matter what the provocation, they are forbidden to take hostages. We are not like Rathain’s clans, to extort coin and cattle for human lives. For breaking honour, Grithen must answer. The fact he was invited into his temptation, and that his action also threatened his liege bears very little on his punishment. The code that condemns him is one that upholds clan survival.’

Lysaer, Dakar perceived in wide surprise. The s’Ilessid prince would one day unite the towns, make war to claim all the wildlands for the mayors, and subdue and finally eradicate the barbarian clans. Arithon’s part appeared, not in Rathain, but as a figure of self-contained elegance that flowed from place to place, dedicated wholly to music. Yet the art he created was framed by a backdrop of unprecedented persecution.

‘Never in memory have the patterns converged so strongly to a path of alternatives this narrow. We are forced to unpleasant choices.’ The strands foretold, unequivocally, that Lysaer and Arithon would oppose, with full and bitter consequences. To strip them of their inborn powers as a deterrent in all cases yielded Desh-thiere’s continued dominance. That in itself promised changes in natural order, none of them to the good; but to deny the vanished Paravians a return to natural sunlight was to take the role of executioner.

‘Davien the Betrayer shall hear no reason, nor bow to the Law of the Major Balance; neither shall the Fellowship be restored to Seven until the Black Rose grows wild in the vales of Daon Ramon.’

The raven chose that moment to try a furtive sidle toward the butter. Traithe batted it aside without ceremony. Through its outraged croak and the breeze fanned up by its wing beats, he said, ‘Has no one ever thought to school you to understand your birth-given gift of light?’ Touched on a life-long source of bitterness, Lysaer spoke fast to keep from hitting something. ‘No one considered it necessary.’ The raven retreated to the top of the door jamb and alit on a gargoyle crownpiece. ‘Ah.’ Traithe set his chin on his fist. ‘For a prince in direct line for a crown, such judgement was probably sound. But you’ve been brought here to battle a Mistwraith. That alters the outlook somewhat.’

Lysaer returned the artifact to Traithe, gentled by diffidence he had shown no one living. ‘I’m thankful for your offer to school my gift of light. But I see very clearly: a mage’s training is not my course to pursue. My part in confronting the Mistwraith is but the prelude to healing the rift between townborn and clansman. The greater good of Tysan must demand my total dedication.’ Struck by the depths of sincerity that prompted this prince’s self-sacrifice, Traithe closed his hands, quenching the blood-fire of the rubies. His sorrows as sorcerer compounded with fierce foreboding for the future spelled out by the strands. Like the Great Waystone the Koriani enchantresses ached to recover, the cache of sapphires that were the crown jewels of Tysan must remain in Sethvir’s trust at Althain. That this gently-reared descendant of Tysan’s kings, whose shining talent was inspired rule, should one day through the Mistwraith’s machination refute the fine intentions that now moved his mind and heart seemed an impossibly cruel twist of fate.

‘Asandir and Arithon might appreciate what’s missing from this Ath-forsaken wasteland, but I suspect like me you’d rather be in a crowded tavern knocking back mugs of spiced ale.’ Although Lysaer did not precisely share Dakar’s sentiment, he would have welcomed any human presence to allay the aching, hollow something that tugged at his nerves like pain. At each bend in the road, behind every storm-stunted bush, he seemed to see the lady he was to have married, her eyes liquid with tears, and her hands held out in entreaty. He remembered how her auburn hair had blown in the sea-breeze off South Isle and echoes of her lost laughter ached his heart. No noble dedication to purpose could ease his longing for home in this wilderness. His suffering stayed silent out of pride; and until the Mad Prophet had spoken, he had not guessed that his depression might arise from a source outside himself.

‘Do you feel nothing?’ The Mad Prophet slapped the straw from his cloak with sudden, biting sharpness. ‘I’d venture not. I’d say this place moves you as deeply as the rest of us.’ Lysaer looked back, unflinching. However this spirit-cursed place afflicted others, his ingrained sense of fairness forced honesty. ‘My true heart stayed behind in Port Royal, I see, with my love, and my family, and my people. If that is a failing, it’s at least no more than human. The problems that beset this land are not mine. Yet I will do my best to help right them.’ The prince’s conviction was so far at odds with the future forecast by the strands that Dakar shied back, baffled.

‘What have you come here to tell me, sorcerer?’ Luhaine’s deep eyes turned frosty. ‘Dire portents, lady. After the Mistwraith’s conquest will come war. Lysaer s’Ilessid will cast his lot with townsmen, to the detriment of the loyal clans.’ Maenalle’s hands recoiled into fists and fine linen crumpled unheeded as she shoved her weight forward in her chair. ‘Why?’ Her voice came out a tortured whisper. ‘Our own prince will betray us?’ Never had the sorcerer regretted his status as a disembodied spirit more than now; his mild face twisted in anguish akin to Maenalle’s own, that he could not soften the impact of his words with the warmth of a comforting touch. ‘Caithdein,’ he murmured in compassion, ‘I cannot help. The Seven cast strands. We see the evil that will set s’Ilessid prince against s’Ffalenn will be prompted by the Mistwraith. But how such schism will come to pass is beyond our powers to know.’

On a faraway isle, amid waters never charted, a unicorn stands sentinel as Desh-thiere’s mists part; and yet she does not dance for joy under the lucent sky – a horn-toss of inquiry displays her puzzlement as tree-filtered sunshine glances across a cave mouth and a weakened shimmer of ward-light fades back to quiescence without rousing the sorcerer sealed under sleep spells within…

The Mistwraith was more than just aware. It was intelligent and bent on retaliation against the princes who were its sure bane. But how it had hidden its multiply faceted nature, even from the Fellowship of Seven, Arithon lacked resource to determine.

Arithon found himself weeping. Not only for himself, and the deadness of his senses, but for the beauty of common weeds, and the unendurable complexity of the shed husk of a beetle’s wing. He saw again, through finer eyes, the resonance of Paravian presence, and saw also that the coarseness in a clod of horse dung was held into balance by the same singing bands of pure energy. In Asandir’s pass across the ruins of Ithamon, Arithon realized just how shallow was his own knowledge, and how inadequate. In punishing clarity, he understood the scope of just what he had abandoned when he had left Rauven, and yielded himself to another will, another fate, another calling; now, most bitterly, the loss would repeat and compound, as he assumed a second unwanted crown.

In a pass made savage by sorrow, Sethvir waved away his conjured image. ‘We are warned too late. Last night in Ithamon, Desh-thiere’s aspects did not challenge Asandir’s wards. Neither did they retreat; they simply passed elsewhen. Into another time. That implies their purpose was complete. My guess is our Teir’s’Ilessid shows no sign of disparate change because the moment when tonight’s damage shall manifest is still yet to come, and of a surety chosen most carefully.’

His eyes joylessly reticent, Luhaine measured the blond prince whose dignity made light of unpleasantness. Given Lysaer’s staunchness of character, it seemed unnatural that the strands should unremittingly forecast war.

‘The risk must be taken.’ Lysaer came forward. ‘Of us all, I’m the least fit to weigh risks. Yet I cannot set my life above the need to confine this monster. Kieling’s protections will not fail the land. Though we all were to die here, sunlight for Athera would be secured.’ His hair like drowned gold in the gloom, he deferred to Asandir. ‘I prefer to trust you can protect us from the wraiths, as you did on the night my half-brother and I were attacked.’ That mishap had occurred well before Desh-thiere’s teeming entities had been crowded inside shrunken boundaries; yet Asandir kept dread to himself as he switched his most merciless regard back to the Teir’s’Ilessid. ‘So be it, Lysaer. But let your heart not falter. When I call, you will act, and do so without question, to the utter dregs of your strength. Your gift of light will partner Arithon’s shadows, and burn mist until all of Desh-thiere’s entities are driven inside of ward boundaries.’ The words and their depth of commitment struck Lysaer with strange force and finality, as if magic would be bound to his consent. Though warned he must forfeit any later change of will, he scraped up a ragged smile. ‘What resources I have are freely yours.’ Wary though he remained, Asandir showed sincere respect. ‘Ath’s blessing on you, s’Ilessid prince. You do seem to understand the stakes.’

And still the light ripped from him, in crackling, searing white torrents. His disorientation tripped off panic. While instinct screamed that he was being immolated, consumed by a scintillant spellcraft pressured outside of sane control, he clung in desperation to his willing consent to the Fellowship, and the honour that bound his given oath: to battle the Mistwraith for as long as he held to life. Yet his endurance was only mortal. Undercut by sharp anguish, that royal blood, and pride, and heart-felt integrity of purpose were not enough by themselves to sustain him, Lysaer lost grip on dignity and wept.

He touched no moment too soon. The barrier underneath unravelled and the wraiths ripped hungrily through. Mist met light with a virulent shriek. Unwarded, the illumination his inadequate protection, Lysaer cupped his hands to cap the breach. A raging sting blistered his palms. Then the wraiths were on him, inside him, a legion of needles in his brain.

‘Desh-thiere,’ Lysaer croaked. ‘It’s banished.’ His handsome, weary face showed the grace of relief before he crumpled in exhaustion against Asandir. For a moment the sorcerer who supported him showed an expression of unalloyed sorrow.

‘The Fellowship chose three men and two women to found Athera’s royal lines. They were selected, each one, for a dominant trait that would resist corruption and other pressures that power brings to bear on human nature. It is a grave thing to alter or to influence unborn life. Yet that is what the sorcerers did, to ensure fair rule through generations of dynastic succession. They set a geas ward that would fix those chosen virtues in direct line of inheritance. Your ancestor gave them consent, for all the good that does you.’

‘Torbrand s’Ffalenn was a man of natural empathy, a master statesman, because he could sense what motivated his enemies. He ruled as duke in Daon Ramon, and the compassion of the Riathan Paravians formed the guiding light of his policies. Which means, my friend, that Arithon will forgive the knife that kills him. He cannot do otherwise. To understand and to sympathize with the needs of every living thing is his inborn nature, the forced gift of the s’Ffalenn line as bequeathed by the Fellowship of Seven.’

‘And s’Ilessid? What gift from my ancestor do I carry?’ Morose, Dakar said, ‘You will always seek justice, even where none can be found.’

Dakar shut his eyes, before the stars his prophecy had seen restored could blur through a welling flow of tears. ‘Daelion Fatemaster take pity! Why, Lysaer my friend, did you have to be the one used to block the Mistwraith’s assault bare-handed?’ But Asandir on that point had been unequivocally clear: in the hour of final conflict, when Desh-thiere had threatened to break free, Lysaer had been Kharadmon’s selection for the sacrifice. Dakar still agonized over Asandir’s heartless assessment, after the irrevocable event: ‘Dharkaron, Ath’s Angel of Vengeance may damn us for the act, but Dakar, what else could be done? Of us all, Lysaer was least trained to the mysteries. If contact with the flesh allowed Desh-thiere’s wraiths to access the mind, which of worse evil could we allow? To let such beings touch knowledge of true power might have led them to threaten all the universe. Sad as it is, tragic as the future must become, Lysaer’s exposure offered the lesser risk. Weep with us all, the decision was never made unmourned.’