The Curse of the Mistwraith

‘Compassion,’ the sorcerer mused at length, his tone as apparently casual as a man counting facts on his fingers. ‘The Riathan Paravians set their wards in perfect surety. They never mistake false evidence, for theirs is the perception of Ath Creator. Kieling Tower may admit no force except unconditional love -’ Asandir broke off, his face abruptly drained colourless. ‘The lady enchantress in the hayloft at the Ravens,’ he surmised, a spike to his tone that caused Lysaer to shiver where he stood.

Now Arithon did speak, his antagonism barely held in check. ‘The Prime used her. Elaira herself was absent, and had neither knowledge nor consent. Now say to me, and mean it, that her thieving pair of seniors didn’t deserve the come-uppance they got.’

Confused by a name he could not place, Lysaer watched Asandir weigh the comment, then allow its ferocity to pass. The look he trained upon Arithon held entreaty commingled with pity. ‘You must never, ever in your life allow Elaira to indulge in her feelings where you are concerned. Her care is real enough, and generous; but to acknowledge her in any way would lead her to ruin. The Koriani creed she is bound to obey is unnaturally opposed to human nature.’

‘And yours is not?’ Arithon spun on his heel and braced his hands on Kieling’s embrasure. The mist that streamed past strung droplets in his hair, but the rigidity of his shoulders had nothing to do with its chill. ‘If I’m to be made a crowned puppet to drag this wasteland out of darkness, I’d hardly entangle a lady along with me.’

‘See you don’t,’ Asandir snapped back. ‘Where Elaira is concerned, I shall hold you to your word of honour, Prince of Rathain.’

Arithon drew a slow breath, then spun back with the brightest of smiles. ‘You’ll hold me to nothing against my will, sorcerer. Elaira is secure from my attentions, most certainly, since I’d die before I’d give your Fellowship even one chance of getting an heir.’

At this, Asandir released a bright laugh. ‘Five centuries is a very long abstinence, my prince. And if you want me to think that you hold the enchantress in light regard, you’ll need better subterfuge than lying.’

‘Touche,’ Dakar murmured from the sidelines. His quip was ignored.

For an instant Arithon looked murderous. Then his green eyes went wide, and he spoke with a candour meant only for the sorcerer. ‘What caused you to abandon the resolve you made to me after Maenalle’s banquet in Camris?’

The promise of the free will that he was persistently being hounded to abandon stayed unspoken through the gust that raked the battlements.

Already pale, Asandir turned death-white. For the first time Dakar could recall, the sorcerer looked as if he wanted to retreat. He answered instead, though he suffered for it. ‘You shared for yourself the echo of the mystery that gentles the vales at Caith-al-Caen. Could you bear to see what originated that resonance fade forever from this world? If prescience revealed such a thing might happen, could you stand aside and take no action in prevention?’

‘Oh, Ath! Not that!’ Arithon gripped the parapet as if warded stonework might steady a universe that rocked under his feet. ‘Do you say that my kingship over Rathain is connected to recovery of the Paravians?’

‘More and worse.’ Dakar could not resist his chance for vindication. ‘Refuse your crown and you seal their final disappearance.’

Asandir stayed silent; but the sorrow in his gaze denied nothing.

‘Truth or lies!’ Arithon exclaimed, suddenly savage. ‘The needs of this land are killing me, do you understand?’

The desperation to his stance caused Dakar regret for his outburst. Lysaer wished passionately to be anywhere else in Athera, but pity locked his limbs against movement.

Asandir stared down and appeared to ponder his boots, which were wet and caught with brown bits of gorse from his walk upon the hills of Daon Ramon. ‘Even so, Teir’s’Ffalenn.’ His gentleness held an implacability that damned as he added, ‘I had to choose. Now so must you.’

‘Merciful maker, you call murder a choice?’ Arithon’s anguish rejected sympathy, enough that none dared to stay him as he spun away toward the stairwell.

Dakar shuffled his feet through the poisoned, abrasive stillness that remained. ‘I’m surprised you held him to that,’ he challenged, brash enough to fly in the face of the sorcerer’s brittle mood.

But it was Lysaer this time who provoked. ‘Less than the truth would not bind him, is that it?’

Asandir stirred as if from contemplation of a topic that held ugliness personified. ‘Truth is like a gem with many facets – reflection and illusion from every outward angle.’ His damp hair blew in the wind, and his hands hung helpless as he finished, ‘The one unsplintered view can only be found from within.’

Against all natural inclination the sorcerer chose not to correct Lysaer’s misapprehension. Truth by itself would not condemn the Paravians to extinction, as Arithon had so harshly presumed; but their exile might indeed become permanent, for by the uncompromising Law of the Major Balance, the old races were not any man’s concern unless he embraced them for his own. Truth, Asandir reflected sadly, was the one principle in existence that could release the musician from blood-ties to kingly heritage; but the barbs of the trap first closed in Caith-al-Caen had set full well and deeply.

No comfort could be gained, that Arithon was physically absent throughout the struggle as his personal desires warred and lost to the burden of guilt-induced duty. Asandir sensed to the second when the Shadow Master’s aspect became set. Brooding stillness claimed the sorcerer as his mage-sight stung him with awareness: for he saw the thread of probability that held all of a gifted man’s contentment fray away into nothing. The moment passed, and the chance died, that Arithon could become the bard the strands had forepromised at Althain, a musician cherished across the continent for his generosity and warmth of perception. The legacy of a beloved master singer, whose equal had not been seen since Elshian, for need had been cancelled out. In his place walked a prince whose competence would come to be feared, and whose gifts would be whetted by adversity to a cruelly focused edge.

Arithon would not now refuse the crown that waited at Etarra.

Consolation was nonexistent; through embittered years to come, the Fellowship must hope the man whose dream they had spoiled might become reconciled to the fate he had been coerced to undertake. Paravian survival might be bought with restoration of sunlight and war; but that the old races could be returned in joy to the continent, and the Fellowship be restored back to Seven was by no means certain. The particulars of Dakar’s Black Rose Prophecy remained in question still.