Kharadmon raised tapered fingers and flipped back his hood. Streaked piebald locks tumbled over his caped cloak as he swept through a courtier’s bow. ‘My prince, we are colleagues of the Fellowship, members in spirit since the day that flesh suffered mishap.’ And he arose, confronting Lysaer with cat-pale eyes that studied in sardonic provocation.
Luhaine tucked his thumbs into a belt stout enough to halter a yearling bull. As flesh, he had always been careful to regale his portliness with restraint; as spirit, he forwent adornment as a frivolous waste of conjury. Against an appearance unrelentingly prim, his words seemed weighed like insult as he said, ‘The buffoon who speaks is Kharadmon, your Grace of Tysan.’
‘Buffoon?’ Kharadmon curled his lip. ‘Luhaine! Can your wit be that tired, to find you floundering for epithets?’
‘After two ages suffering your lame taste, such failing would carry no shame.’ 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. Aggrieved that such beautifully trained poise might come to be channelled toward deceit, Luhaine turned sharp. ‘You think we should get on with defeating Desh-thiere?’ He flicked a thick finger in reproach. ‘I say it’s a fool who would rush to meet danger.’
Taken aback, Lysaer flushed. Asandir set a hand on his shoulder and spared him from further embarrassment. ‘Kharadmon and Luhaine have worked nightlong to establish protections.’ He shot a pained look at both spirits. ‘Excuse their rudeness, please. Their labours have left them disagreeable.’
Motionless up until now, Arithon abruptly stood. He did not speak and Lysaer, unsmiling, found grit to ignore Kharadmon’s challenging regard. ‘Since the last attack by Desh-thiere’s aspects, I thought your Fellowship determined its hostilities couldn’t be warded?’
Asandir said in honest discomfort, ‘We can’t be sure.’
Lysaer glanced at his half-brother. But Arithon stayed quiet as Luhaine shed his disapproval to explain.
‘Permit me. What spirits the Mistwraith embodies cannot pass the tower safe-wards. Should your efforts with shadow and light drive its vapours to final extinction inside Paravian protections, the self-aware essence would become sundered from the bounds of the fog that enshrouds it. In brief, its wraiths would be winnowed separate, even as kernel from chaff.’ Warmed to his topic, Luhaine raised spread palms. ‘After that, our Fellowship cannot be sure whether natural death would banish such spirits. Should the entities have ways to evade Ath’s law and continue existence as free wraiths, they might go on to possess our world’s creatures with dire and damaging results.’
‘The methuri that plague Mirthlvain Swamp were created by a similar calamity,’ Asandir pointed out. ‘That might lend you perspective.’
‘Indeed yes.’ Now set for a scholarly diatribe, Luhaine opened his mouth, then caught a glare from Kharadmon. Nettled, he said, ‘I must sum up.’
Kharadmon hitched up an eyebrow. ‘Do go on.’ He tipped his palm in invitation as a courtier might, to defer to a lady in a doorway.
Luhaine stiffly turned his back and resumed with his speech to the half-brothers. ‘To counter the risk of loosing free wraiths, you must drive Desh-thiere to captivity outside of arcane protections. The wards set over Ithamon must serve as your bastion, and also as defence for the land in case of mishap.’
‘Brief, did you say?’ accosted Kharadmon. Despite an image that stayed fixed in serenity as a painting, his impatience was plain as he said, ‘We waste time.’
Unperturbed, Asandir gave the half-brothers his quiet reassurance. ‘The perils are not insurmountable. On faith, we have Dakar’s prophecy, and the strands’ further augury that the Mistwraith can be conquered. Yet there won’t be satisfaction if we stall over details until sundown.’ He tipped his head at Lysaer. ‘Prince?’
Relieved to be excused from the friction between a ghost pair of sorcerers who deeply unsettled him anyway, Lysaer called power through his gift. Light sheeted from his raised fist, a crackling, broad-banded flash that shocked through the murk overhead. Desh-thiere hissed in recoil. A backwash of steam fanned Kieling Tower, torn short as Arithon’s shadow-wrought counterthrust sliced across the breach. Dark flicked the air and the temperature plunged. Snow flurried over the battlement, struck gold by filtered sunlight as the mist layer seared nearly through. The heavens moiled like dirtied water as Desh-thiere surged to choke the gap. Barriers of wrought shadow razed it short, and ice dusted the hollow before the crenels where the image forms of Luhaine and Kharadmon had vanished away, unremarked.
The half-brothers broke off the first stage assault, breathing hard; and as always, the moment they snatched in recovery cost them.
The mist massed in upon itself. Purple-grey and sinister as thunderheads, Desh-thiere battened the winds in dank darkness and settled over the patch of true sky. Lysaer’s fair nature turned grim. Always the fog became thicker and more troublesome to manage after the initial attack. Charged to resentful revenge, grown adept at shaping his craft as a weapon, Lysaer hammered killing power into the gloom that oppressed the landscape.
The grease-thick miasma above the tower flared white, then burned to incandescence as the charge struck. Shadow ripped out in reply, and snow crystals scoured by the gusts slashed across the exposed stone parapet. The mists bulked, denser, poisonously thick as poured oil. Lysaer’s tunic dampened with sweat, and Arithon’s hair whipped to tangles against dripping temples.
The half-brothers fought, while morning gave way to afternoon. Slowly, grudgingly, the Mistwraith’s bounds were harried inward. Sunlight speared down and silvered Ithamon’s knoll with its interlocked stubble of foundations. Notched battlements and broken walls drowned the next minute under yet another countersurge of fog. Light and then shadow punched back. Again a ragged hole appeared. Sky appeared over Kieling Tower, besieged at once by rolling curtains of murk. Arithon cried out as the wraith-driven mists burst his barriers. Stonework shook to a thunderous report as Lysaer extended to heroic lengths to shock back the break in the attack line.
His light slashed into gloom that churned, congested as a blood-gorged bruise. Shadow answered him strongly. Snowfall snatched up into whirlwinds as stress-heated air snapped and shrieked through pocketed blizzards of ice.
And then a sudden and peculiar twist of change: interwoven through the violent play of energies, something tugged subtly out of balance. Across the concussive boom of backlash and a gale like a rising scream, Arithon shouted to Asandir, ‘We’re in trouble!’
Less trained to nuance, Lysaer saw no cause to pinpoint. A third charge gathered in his hands, his sight congested by a darkness dense enough to suffocate, he groped to define his uneasiness. Aware of voices, but cut
