The Curse of the Mistwraith

fragment of the victim to splinter off, an amputation of the soul more permanent than the most devastating bodily mutilation. Yet without Name to compel the invasive spirit out of its entrenched possession, the Fellowship had no other recourse. The risk of error widened with the taint of the spell-curse that bound the half-brothers into enmity. Firsthand, Asandir was forced to share the anguish of Sethvir’s prior assessment. For the hatred instilled into Lysaer for his half-brother was so thoroughly intermeshed with his life-force that it defeated outside help to unravel. The geas to take down Arithon both was and was not a part of the s’Ilessid prince’s essence. To miscall just one twist of its bindings would be to condemn Lysaer to death.

Sweating, frustrated, intermeshed in life-threads complex enough to fray reason to the bittermost edge of bewilderment, Asandir grasped why Sethvir had met his last statement with silence.

More likely their attempted exorcism would go awry and kill the victim, than any aspect of an unnamed wraith be left at large to require an execution.

Time lost meaning. The paired sorcerers submerged in the immensity of their task made countless agonized choices. Near the end, in ragged exhaustion, they examined their respective progress.

The patterns that comprised the known wraith were layered too thinly to be credible.

‘That can’t be all of it,’ Sethvir sent in ringing despair. ‘Where in Ath’s name can it be hiding?’

They began afresh, untangled Lysaer’s memories strand for strand. Some rang false; far too few. The wraith’s entirety yet escaped them. Sick with trepidation, Asandir said, ‘We had better re-examine what was artificial at the outset.’

Sethvir’s grief came back barbed with white anger. That Desh-thiere’s aspect might attach its possession to the given gift of the s’Ilessid royal line was unthinkable. And yet, there it was: the rest of its meddling essence enmeshed so subtly with Fellowship sorcery that their own review had missed it out.

‘Dharkaron, Angel of Vengeance!’ Sethvir all but wept. ‘No wonder the ill creature had him! It gained entry through the one avenue of conscience he was spell-charged never to question! ’ The fault and the weakness were never Lysaer’s but the Fellowship’s own, for sorrowful lack of foresight.

That moment a key rattled in the outside lock to the wardroom. Gnudsog’s bass shout cut off on somebody’s testy command, this followed by a mortal yelp of pain.

Dakar said, his diction slurred and quarrelsome, ‘Well, I warned you there’d be wards. Let me.’

Sethvir sighed. ‘Company. We had better finish this quickly.’

The rush sat poorly with Asandir. But if the panic driven bloodshed in Etarra’s streets was to be curbed, Lysaer’s talents would be needed to dissolve Arithon’s barrier of shadows. Crisis allowed no time to triple-check steps that at best were uncertain business anyway. Asandir steadied the defences set to shelter Lysaer’s spirit. Then, braced as if for a cataclysm, he said, ‘Go.’

Sethvir unleashed counter-bindings like a trap over the parasitic wraith. Light crackled over Lysaer’s body. A convoluted mesh traced like fire upon the air, reflected in swordsteel and polearms. Asandir felt a burn of force tear against his wards as the wraith interlaced through its victim’s being thrashed to maintain its hold. The pull increased, terrible as the tug of a rip-tide or the wrench of barbed grapples from seasoned oak. Asandir resisted. To lose grasp on even one strand of the pattern was to cede a bit of Lysaer with the wraith.

Sethvir’s draw spells sharpened. Stress-points flared cold blue, and the lines over Lysaer’s body blurred and spiked where they dragged one against another like entangled wires pried to separation.

The wraith clung, obdurate.

Sorcery peaked to compensate. On the litter, Lysaer spasmed taut. The pain of the forced unbinding cut even through unconsciousness and a harrowing wail tore from him.

The cry as well had been Asandir’s, for the prince’s torment became shared. No resource could be spared for small healing, absorbed as the sorcerer was in holding spirit united with flesh. Even as powers twisted and flashed at his directive, he could not shed the feeling that this exorcism was going too hard. As if the wraith had sunk fangs into some part of Lysaer, it seemed intent upon ripping him asunder rather than relinquish its possession.

And then on the heels of that uncertainty, the wraith came unravelled from Lysaer’s being so abruptly that recoil hit like a slap. Spellcraft sheared last connections and pinned the creature down in mid-air. For good or ill the deed was done. The trapped wraith froze, burning in malice like a marsh candle; the freed man lay dazed senseless on the litter. The sorcerers braced at his side regarded each other, beaten and drained from their labours. Between them passed understanding: that cost had been set upon this unbinding. The s’Ilessid gift of true justice, bent to ill usage by the wraith, had suffered untold further damage.

Asandir ventured hoarsely, ‘The curse that sets Lysaer against Arithon had sullied the s’Ilessid gift in any case.’

Hunched with his chin on clasped knuckles, Sethvir sighed. They dared correct nothing now. Not without risk of disturbing Desh-thiere’s binding and chancing the s’Ilessid prince’s life. ‘There’s always the next generation,’ he said sadly. ‘The wraith, at least, is defeated.’

The barest hitch to Sethvir’s statement snapped Asandir to keen scrutiny. The Warden of Althain avoided contact, his mind held shuttered and dark. His eyes stayed stubbornly averted. Asandir said, ‘There’s more. You’ve got Name for the ill-starred being, haven’t you?’

Now Sethvir did look up, bleak as ice on spring blossoms in the sickly glimmer shed by the wraith. ‘Once, the creature was human.’

Stunned by cascading implications, scraped raw by a forced reassessment of the countless doomed spirits imprisoned under wards at Skelseng’s Gate, Asandir lost speech. Dread burdened him, as each wraith’s disfigured humanity set his Fellowship too bleak a quandary. A sorcerer’s judgement was not Ath’s authority, to trap unconsenting spirits in a limbo of indefinite imprisonment. Neither could the riddle of Desh-thiere’s nature be unwound to free those damned thousands, until the Fellowship stood at full strength, their number restored back to Seven.

All and more swung in pivot upon one chancy cipher: the life of the last s’Ffalenn prince.

As Sethvir and Asandir shared this final, most vivid disclosure compounded of miscalculated risks and urgency, immediate troubles returned to roost.