The Curse of the Mistwraith

A dry palm cracked her cheek. The sting to her flesh and her dignity negated any lingering after-image of Elaira’s tender sympathies.

Limp as rags on the floor, the First Enchantress recovered her rightful sense of outrage. Her vision swam back into focus, marred by embarrassing tears. Through their blur and the wan light that seeped through slashed drapes, she beheld a chamber that looked to have suffered the brunt of an earthquake. Wreckage lay everywhere. The page-boys crouched beneath the tumbled splinters of the armoire, holding each other and shaking.

Lirenda could not have eased their terror, even had she been of a mind to.

Morriel Prime towered over her, lividly displeased, the Skyron focus clutched in her claw-like grasp. ‘Were you blind and witless not to see? The s’Ffalenn bastard’s been trained to power! However else could he and Dakar have collaborated to upset our scrying? Mischief and misery! What unconscionable recklessness prompted the Fellowship to loose this abomination upon our world?’

Lirenda propped herself upright, then pressed scratched and bleeding fingers to her pounding temples. She felt hollow as a drum and strangely reft: the banished intensity of Elaira’s susceptibilities left her drab and spiritless in spaces she had never known existed. She distanced such discomfort in a show of self-righteous propriety. ‘Elaira may have known of the Fellowship’s intent beforetime. That would account for her stubbornness throughout our probe into her escapade in Erdane.’

But Morriel’s priorities were wholly concerned with the future. ‘Recall the girl! Do it now! For pity us all, we’re going to need analysis of both these princes’ characters. If there’s any hope of setting a counterbalance to the trouble they’re bound to create, Elaira must find us an opening.’

First Enchantress Lirenda arose, bowed stiffly to the Prime, then departed to fulfil her directive. Joylessly intent, she took no pleasure in the miracle revealed by the scrying: that the princes promised by prophecy did battle against Desh-thiere from Kieling Tower.

In the remotest reaches of Athera, the Mistwraith no longer ruled the sky. Sunlight touched earth and ocean for the first time in five long centuries.

Triad

In Erdane, drowsing in her chair over knitting, the seer Enithen Tuer snaps awake with a cry, for dreams have shown her stars and moon against a backdrop of indigo darkness…

Caught treed like a monkey in an orchard where she prunes dead growth, Elaira stiffens as Lirenda’s arcane summons slices her awareness like a whip; that Morriel should demand her presence on the heels of last season’s disgrace means trouble, she knows, and she curses in language that draws grins from the boy wards who gather her cuttings up for firewood…

On a faraway isle, amid waters never charted, a unicorn stands sentinel as Desh-thiere’s mists part; and yet she does not dance for joy under the lucent sky – a horn-toss of inquiry displays her puzzlement as tree-filtered sunshine glances across a cave mouth and a weakened shimmer of ward-light fades back to quiescence without rousing the sorcerer sealed under sleep spells within…

XI. DESH-THIERE

In Daon Ramon’s heartland, atop the battlements of the tower Kieling, the ongoing battle to reduce the Mistwraith suffered an unscheduled interruption as rapport between the royal half-brothers frayed away into nothing. Lysaer broke concentration with a quizzical expression. His hands fell slack, and the last surge of energy he held poised to send a light bolt skyward dissipated as a harmless dance of sparks. He snapped a tangle of hair from his eyes and said irritably, ‘Will one of you please share the fun?’

No one answered.

Dakar remained curled on his knees, doubled helpless in a fit of laughter. Arithon seemed no more capable, close as he was to choking as he stifled an explosive whoop in the crumpled cloth of his cloak. Neither Shadow Master nor prophet recovered sobriety, even when Asandir emerged at a run from the stairwell. His brows were drawn down at an angle that should have been forbidding, had his eyes not held a glint of amused sympathy.

‘I heard,’ he addressed without preamble. ‘Sethvir informed me from Althain that you two have upset the Koriani Prime and her First Senior. Tell me what prank you pulled, and quickly, since we may now anticipate a round of angry repercussions.’

Although Arithon was quickest to rally, Dakar answered, through tears and outbursts of chuckles that he manfully strangled back to wheezes. ‘Damned witches tried meddling.’ He mopped streaming eyes, slapped his knees, and started again. ‘Morriel sought another scrying on the princes, through Lirenda and the Skyron focus. It was too obvious –’ Here speech failed and the Mad Prophet relapsed into a paralysing spasm of hiccups.

The sorcerer shifted hopefully to Arithon. ‘So you hooked into the Koriani scrying, and allowed their matrix to absorb the energies you had gathered against Deshthiere?’

Wiser to his limits than Dakar, the Master of Shadow simply nodded.

‘Ath!’ Lysaer interrupted, mortified by his half-brother’s baldfaced confession. ‘You redirected our gifts at the enchantresses? You reckless fool! Somebody could have been killed!’

Arithon raised hands in denial, still grinning. ‘Not likely. The ladies had wards up. Nobody got hurt. Only curtains were shredded, and a lot of old stonework went flying to bits where their shields couldn’t dampen the counterforce.’

‘Dakar!’ cracked the sorcerer across the schoolboyish mood of jubilation. ‘Tell me now! However did the Koriani Prime gain foothold to scry across Kieling’s wards?’

The Mad Prophet shot straight as if smacked. ‘I haven’t a clue. Ask your prince.’

Arithon’s exuberance vanished, his mien abruptly blank and implacable as a wall. The strained relations between himself and Asandir returned suddenly and in force, and knowing any query the Fellowship might pose would get rebuffed, the sorcerer abandoned further questions.

His mage-sight offered means to find clear answers. Not even the murk of Desh-thiere could dim the abrupt unshielding of his will as he scrutinized the Master’s taut stance. The effect was as merciless to the victim as a field surgery performed with cut glass. Out of stubborn, irate pride, Arithon neither flinched nor hid his face. This despite the shame that even to an uninvolved witness, the feelings bared to view were revealingly personal. Watching avidly, Dakar sweated outright; Lysaer found himself discomforted to the point where honour compelled him to avert his eyes rather than witness a violation of his half-brother’s privacy.

But neither sorcerer nor Master of Shadow had notice to spare for any onlookers, locked as they were in the absolute intimacy of their conflict.