Lysaer felt emptied, a brittle husk. The demands of the attack were insatiable. No oath could prepare for a harrowing such as this, that exhausted reserves and cut past, to the uttermost unravelling of spirit. The mists battled viciously back. The lessons of survival imposed by the Red Desert became as a mere inconvenience before the suffering required to fuel his gift.
‘There,’ shouted Asandir. ‘It’s retreating!’
A dull ache suffused Lysaer’s inner being. The light that left his hands seemed force bought in blood, fuelled at cruel cost to mortal flesh. Impersonal no longer, Kharadmon’s presence hammered into him, viciously taking to keep the light coming in torrents.
But Desh-thiere was at last giving way.
Eyes stung by salt, or maybe tears, Lysaer discerned a brightening in the air about the tower. Arithon’s barriers of shadow showed clearly now, skeined about with purple interlace that were spells lent his efforts by Asandir. Into a cone fashioned out of darkness and suspended over the mouth of the flask, Desh-thiere’s coils were chased and burned and funnelled onward by flailing tails of light.
Lysaer had no spark left for exultation, that the Mistwraith verged on defeat. He could only heave air into lungs that felt scorched, and obey the rapacious demand of Kharadmon, who whipped him past endurance to shape light.
The mist-wrought wisps whipped and darted in retreat past the spelled maw of shadow. Lysaer felt drained to his core. Wholly under duress, the summoned force sprang from his hands, screaming through air like rage given over to pure malice. A blinding flash sheared the murk, to lash the possessed mists inside the barriers.
Arithon’s net of shadows wavered in recoil. The outlines blurred, softened, distended, as the trapped vapours inside thrashed to escape. The desperate strength of two mortal men and three Fellowship mages shrank to a pittance before the rage of thousands of meshed entities. Lysaer saw the ward shadows bulge, thin and threaten at a stress-point to crack.
One leak and Desh-thiere would burst loose all over again; only now mortal limitations had reached an irreversible crux. Lysaer understood that a second assault could not be mounted. Played out, undone by weariness, the defenders found themselves beleaguered as Desh-thiere’s uncountable wraiths recoiled at bay and attacked.
To lose grip on the barriers above the flask was to die, and leave Kieling Tower forever defiled.
Arithon knew. Or perhaps the controlling essence of Luhaine compelled his hoarse shout to his half-brother, to fire off another blast of light. Asandir had no encouragement to offer, besieged as he was within coil upon coil of defence seals. Though Lysaer desired with all his heart to respond, he found his spirit beaten listless by the overextended forces of his gift. Only Kharadmon’s iron grip bore him upright and lent him the grace to respond.
Lysaer raised his hands and called light. The effort sheared through him as agony, leaving trembling that would not ease. His hands flared white then dazzled. His palms stung to the rush of raw power as, ruled unequivocally by a sorcerer, he bent to his knees before the flask.
In the moment he lifted his arms, he felt himself released to free choice. Gloved in fiery light, Lysaer fell back on a fibre he never knew he possessed. Driven by need to the sacrifice, he reached to smother the impending break in the shadow wards with the incandescent flesh of his hands.
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.
Light answered, a hedging dazzle of wards thrown up by Kharadmon. Trailing half a beat behind, the sorcerer’s protections failed to guard. Lysaer suffered jumbled impressions that overwhelmed the hurt to his hands. The tumult within him screeled to a whirlwind, scattering memories like debris. Through a ripped up jumble of impressions, he sensed Fellowship spellcraft flash lines of fire through past and future, hounding the Mistwraith’s assault.
The chase re-echoed down every channel of Lysaer’s being. Impressions surged and recoiled, his own mixed with others too alien for comprehension. Past moments snapped out of recall with edged clarity: the Lady of South Isle’s lips on his, and her warm fingers twined in his hair…a night from early childhood when he had sat on the palace battlement with the chancellor’s arm around his waist, as he recited the names of winter stars.
Then, in punishing detail, a later experience wrought of harsh sun and burning winds, and a thirst in his throat like torture.
Dissociated wholly from the present, cut off from joined conflict with the Mistwraith, Lysaer tumbled face-down once again in the scorching sand of the Red Desert. Arithon s’Ffalenn stood over him, blood-streaked features contorted with unforgotten antagonism.
‘
‘
Then himself, a prince born royal, broken and screaming as personal dignity was trampled down and violated by the bastard half-brother
Lysaer shuddered, racked once again by annihilating hatred for the s’Ffalenn born to mastery of shadows. Only now, in forced reliving, righteous s’Ilessid fury was shared and fanned hotter by a ravening horde of demon spirits.
The pain this time raged redoubled as sorcery flared and sparked in an effort to hack the wraiths away.
The psyche in torment turned to tricks. Spiralled down a tunnel like delirium, Lysaer glimpsed another place, a railed wooden gallery atop an outdoor staircase that overlooked a vast public square. The space between brick- faced halls and mansions was packed with a seething mob; and amid that multitude, one face:
The scene folded in on itself and vanished. Fire blistered Lysaer’s hands. He screamed for a torment more terrible still, of sorcery scourging his inner mind. The invading hordes of wraiths shrieked and gibbered inside his skull. Their cries stormed together, tangled then merged to a mindless blast of noise. Raw force answered their wail and a barrage of sparks as thick as scalding rain. The spirits broke and threshed into spinning flight like singed
