The Curse of the Mistwraith

again. You promised a scathing show of temper after Althain Tower. Now I’m left to wonder which of you is the more devious: Arithon, for an act that would fool a saint, or you, for a lying diversion to escape getting dressed down for rudeness.’

Dakar’s ebullience died. Rather than admit to his own bafflement at Arithon’s contrary manner, he hunkered down by his cooking-pot like a disgruntled broody hen. ‘Wait,’ he muttered morosely to the fair-haired and smiling prince. ‘Just wait till we get to Ithamon.’

After five days’ journey the hills of Daon Ramon lost their rocky crowns and became clothed and gentled by heather. Valleys that until now had been channelled with dried gullies and stunted stands of scrub-oak smoothed over into vales half hidden in fog. If the view had once been beautiful, Desh-thiere rendered everything bleak; the winds that never stilled gained the bitten edge of frost. For league upon league there seemed no living thing but grey-coated deer, rabbits furred in winter- white and the lonely, dissonant calls of hawks that sailed like shadows through the mist in search of prey.

The horses grew lean and tough, nourished more by the grain carried in by wagon than on the rank brown grass. Lysaer wearied of venison but was careful to keep the fact from his half-brother, who spent as many hours hunting as playing upon his lyranthe. As always fed up with abstinence, Dakar seized upon every opening to bemoan the dearth of beer.

Asandir kept his own counsel, forbidding as northfacing rock.

The closer the party drew to the heartland of Daon Ramon, the less the sorcerer bothered to chastise his spellbinder for whining. Well warned that such silence boded trouble, Lysaer noticed the moment when the Mad Prophet abandoned complaint. More sensitive than before to nuance, he watched for any circumstance that might find the Shadow Master discomfited.

But snow fell and the days passed in anticlimax. Arithon did not oblige Dakar’s expectations and grow darkly moody. He asked companionable questions of Asandir and spent hours regarding ice-scabbed trees, stunted brush and the white-clothed shoulders of the hills as though his mage-trained sight showed him wonders.

‘The Riathan Paravians,’ Dakar whispered, upon Lysaer’s puzzled inquiry. ‘Unicorns ran in these hills and bore young in the meadows here. The mystery of their presence lingers, even now.’

Wide-eyed, sceptical, Lysaer peered through dripping bangs. An unseasonal thaw had softened the trail to muck, and slush seeped rivulets of wet down slopes like rucked old burlap. As far as the mist would allow, nothing met his gaze but bleak landscape that lacked the redeeming comfort of a single man-made structure.

Perched on the dray’s hard buckboard, Dakar slapped the reins over the paint’s steaming back and jogged her abreast of the chestnut gelding. Swaddled like a vegetable in wet cloaks, a derisive grin splitting his beard, he called over the rumble of rolling wheels, ‘Don’t try to look with your eyes – use your feelings.’

‘To find what?’ Lysaer shrugged to vent frustration. ‘Every morning I wake up as though eyes are on my back, watching me, and each night I step away from the campfire, I get chills that have nothing to do with the cold. This place is unpleasantly deserted, as far as I can tell.’

‘That’s the point.’ Dakar puffed up his cheeks and looked smug. ‘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.

At noon riders and wagon paused for a cold meal beside a spring whose waters rose bubbling through a cleft in milk quartz rocks. Snow rendered the site grey on white, slashed by the arched-over stems of dead briars.

Sent down to the pebbled edge of the pool to refill water flasks, Arithon returned whitely shaken. ‘You might have warned me,’ he lashed at Asandir in tones dragged flat by upset.

The sorcerer did not answer but accepted the dripping flasks to stow back into the wagon. Then he turned eyes as chilly as the weather upon the s’Ilessid prince who watched the exchange. ‘A centaur was beset during the rebellion and pulled down here. Moss does not grow where his blood spilled. The sunchildren sang a lament to commemorate his passage and the words and the melody still ring upon the wind, to any with sensitivity enough to listen.’

Stung by what felt like rebuke, Lysaer straightened in affront, then doubled over with a gasp, robbed of his royal dignity by an elbow in the ribs from the Mad Prophet. Finished graining the horses, Dakar thrust himself headlong between sorcerer and s’Ilessid with oat chaff bristling from his hood.

‘What was that for?’ Lysaer demanded, outraged.

‘To quiet your foolish tongue, prince.’ As Asandir turned away about his business the Mad Prophet winked sidelong in conspiracy. ‘For a sorcerer this place is hurtful to walk past, let alone stop and linger.’

‘That Fellowship mage has feelings?’ Lysaer shot back, his eyes following Asandir’s hands as they laced and jerked tight the lashings that secured the oiled canvas over the supplies in the wagon bed.

Dakar picked a seed-head from his sleeve and looked thoughtful. ‘My ever-so-powerful master is doing his best at this moment to keep from weeping outright.’

‘You say.’ A billow of mist rolled past, rendering horses, men and dray as featureless as silhouette. Lysaer raised his eyebrows.

‘Well,’ the Mad Prophet amended. ‘I’ve lived with Asandir for centuries, my friend. I know this place bothers him, and I’d wager one thing further. He stopped here on purpose, to use its effect as a weapon. If you think I’m lying, look at your half-brother.’

The prince forgot pique and did so.

Still dead pale, his eyebrows snarled into a frown, Arithon had remounted his dun mare. He hunched against the wind as if he were wounded and bleeding and tears traced silver down his face.

Embarrassed as if caught eavesdropping, Lysaer spun back to face Dakar. ‘Why don’t you feel anything? Why don’t I?’

The Mad Prophet clawed back an untidy lock of hair. Cold had reddened the tip of his nose and his eyes looked