The Curse of the Mistwraith

The bar on the armoury door clanged up. A stay-spell flared dead and steel hinges wailed open as, bemoaning a headache in a carping counterpoint, Dakar pitched sideways into the breach. The shoulder that hit against the lintel was all that kept him upright.

‘It’s dark!’ Diegan’s complaint shivered the still air with echoes. ‘Dharkaron take your drunken whimsy, I heard no screams. Nobody’s in here.’

‘Oh yes.’ Dakar launched off and rocked two tipsy steps across the threshold. ‘They’re here. Trust me. Sethvir just forgets to light candles.’

Suspicious, still bristling from the force required to stand down Gnudsog and his squad at the ram, Diegan sniffed. An acridity like cinders yet lingered, as if a torch had gone out not long since.

‘There.’ Dakar swayed on braced feet, forgetful that darkness masked the area where he pointed.

The space proved not to be empty. Clipped and grainily hoarse, Asandir said in ghostly rebuke, ‘You call this keeping Etarra’s captain of the guard under house-arrest?’

Diegan nearly started out of his jewelled doublet.

Dakar lost his balance and sat. ‘The wine,’ he admitted on the tail of a soulful grunt. ‘We drank both flagons, and Diegan pleaded. Where’s Lysaer?’ Then, as muddled wits or his eyesight recovered, he noticed the nearly subliminal glow fixed under ward before Sethvir. Dakar squinted, identified the configurations for a seal of imprisonment and inside, a whirling, twisted light that made his stomach heave. Not the after-effect of indulgence, this sickness, nor the clench of impending prophecy: his nausea stemmed instead from reaction to something warped outside of nature.

Dakar’s stupor cleared. ‘You knew!’ he accused.

Asandir’s correction was instant. ‘Suspected. Without command of Name we had no means to foresee how Desh-thiere’s harm would choose to manifest. And with your second bout of prophecy made in conflict with the first, we had no clear path to choose.’

‘I don’t even know my second prophecy.’ Deflected by personal injury, Dakar looked down as if to make sure of the floor. That led him to cast about for something solid to lean on, until sight of Lysaer on the pallet refuelled his disrupted train of enquiry. ‘So you did nothing,’ he berated his Fellowship masters, and rage bled away into a sorry, drunken grizzle. ‘Ah, Ath, like us all, Lysaer trusted you.’

Through the cracked-open panels of two siege-doors beat the roar of an enraged populace, cut across by Gnudsog’s bellowed orders. Words carried faintly, reviling mages and royalty. The rabble had begun to chant.

Against that backdrop of ugliness, Diegan confronted the two sorcerers. ‘So, will you also do nothing now?’

Sethvir arose. At his wave, flames burst afresh from the torch stub. Hot light flooded across the armoury, snagged to sparks on the metal filings scattered in swathes from the sharpening wheel; on the racked gleam of blades that soon would run dull with new blood; and on the amethysts and diamonds sewn on Diegan’s doublet, which jerked to his passionate breaths.

Mild as sunfaded velvet before the whetted weapons that ringed him round, the Warden of Althain blinked. ‘Do you wish our help?’

‘I wish Dharkaron’s curse upon you all, never more fervently than now!’ Diegan shoved briskly forward; bullion fringes snapped at his boot cuffs as he stopped and stared down at Lysaer. ‘What have you done to him? Killed him? Because he spoke out against your prince?’

‘They wouldn’t harm him,’ Dakar interrupted. ‘Lysaer’s gift of light will be needed to lift off Arithon’s blight of shadows.’

‘So, it’s true!’ Diegan’s black eyes flicked from Sethvir to Asandir. ‘The king you tried to foist on us is one of you, a sorcerer born and trained. You forced our governors to stand down, on threat of riots. Well, we have them now regardless. Guild houses are afire. The minister’s palace and governor’s hall are being stormed this moment by the rabble.’

To every appearance unruffled by Diegan’s accusations, Sethvir fingered his beard. Of Lysaer he said to his colleague, ‘I do regret releasing him before we know Arithon’s fate.’

‘We don’t have any choice.’ Asandir set his hands upon the blond head of the prince on the litter and engaged a gentle call to wake. Sethvir’s appalling disclosure of one wraith’s botched humanity had overturned every priority. The disposition of Desh-thiere to safer captivity at Rockfell perforce must take precedence, and Etarra survive its own course. The Lord Governor’s standing had been undermined past the point where his authority could be salvaged. Lysaer alone could burn off Arithon’s stranglehold of shadows and stop the spread of panic and misdirected bloodshed; even if afterward Desh-thiere’s curse would drive him to turn the city garrison as a weapon against his half-brother.

The strands, after all, had converged in this forecast of war.

‘You shall have what you asked for.’ Asandir met Diegan’s rancour with a calm made terrible by perception. ‘Battle, misunderstanding and a cause to perpetuate bitter hatred.’

Under his ministrations, Lysaer stirred and moaned.

Diegan knelt quickly and shook the s’Ilessid prince’s arm. ‘Are you all right? Friend, did they hurt you?’

Lysaer opened his eyes. He looked lost for a moment. Then he turned his head, frowned, and focused clearly upon Asandir.’ Ath forgive me,’ he whispered. ‘I had a nightmare. Or is it true, that I smashed Elshian’s lyranthe?’

Asandir all but flinched; his glance of inquiry hardened to misery as, from the sidelines, Sethvir gave sad affirmation.

Pity roughened his words as he said, ‘Whatever you recall was no dream. Etarra has been driven to riot. Since your actions have discredited Rathain’s prince, your talents are needed immediately to restore the city to order.’

Only then did the grinding noise of the mob reach Lysaer’s notice. He sat up, saw Diegan, then flushed as other memories flooded back. ‘Arithon. Whatever I said, he’s caused mayhem, set shadows and terror in the streets.’ Then, his inflection so changed that it jarred, he added, ‘Where is he?’