Curse of the Mistwraith
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‘You should have died in battle,’ he said softly.
Arithon gave no answer. Flamelight glistened across features implacably barred against reason, and his hands dripped blood on the deck. The first officer looked away, cold with nerves and uneasiness. He had little experience with captives, and no knowledge whatever of sorcery. The Master of Shadow himself offered no inspiration, his manner icy and unfathomable as the sea itself.
‘Show him the king’s justice,’ the first officer commanded, in the hope a turn at violence might ease the strain on his crew.
The seamen wrestled Arithon off his feet and pinioned him across the chart table. His body handled like a toy in their broad hands. Still the Master fought them. In anger and dread the seamen returned the bruises lately inflicted upon their own skins. They stripped the cord from the captive’s wrists and followed with all clothing that might conceal slivers of glass. But for his grunts of resistance, Arithon endured their abuse in silence.
The first officer hid his distaste. The Master’s defiance served no gain, but only provoked the men to greater cruelty. Had the bastard cried out, even once reacted to pain as an ordinary mortal, the deckhands would have been satisfied. Yet the struggle continued until the victim was stripped of tunic and shirt and the sailhands backed off to study their prize. Arithon’s chest heaved with fast, shallow breaths. Stomach muscles quivered beneath skin that wept sweat, proof enough that his body at least had not been impervious to rough handling.
‘Bastard’s runt-sized, for a sorcerer.’ The most daring of the crewmen raised a fist over the splayed arch of Arithon’s ribcage. ‘A thump in the slats might slow him down some.’
‘That’s enough!’ snapped the first officer. Immediately sure the sailhand would ignore his command, he moved to intervene. But a newcomer in a stained white smock entered from behind and jostled him briskly aside.
Fresh from the captain’s sickbed, the ship’s healer pushed on between sailor and pinioned prisoner. ‘Leave be, lad! Today I’ve set and splinted altogether too many bones. The thought of another could drive me to drink before sunrise.’
The crewman subsided, muttering. As the healer set gently to work with salve and bandages, the s’Ffalenn sorcerer drew breath and finally spoke.
‘I curse your hands. May the next wound you treat turn putrid with maggots. Any child you deliver will sicken and die in your arms, and the mother will bleed beyond remedy. Meddle further with me and I’ll show you horrors.’
The healer made a gesture against evil. He had heard hurt men rave, but never like this. Shaking, he resumed his work, while under his fingers, the muscles of his patient flinched taut in protest.
‘Have you ever known despair?’ Arithon said. ‘I’ll teach you. The eyes of your firstborn son will rot and flies suck at the sockets.’
The seamen tightened their restraint, starting and cursing among themselves.
‘Hold steady!’ snapped the healer. He continued binding Arithon’s cuts with stiff-lipped determination. Such a threat might make him quail, but he had only daughters. Otherwise he might have broken his oath and caused an injured man needless pain.
‘By your leave,’ he said to the first officer when he finished. ‘I’ve done all I can.’
Excused, the healer departed, and the deckhands set to work with the wire. As the first loop creased the prisoner’s flesh, Arithon turned his invective against the first officer. After the healer’s exemplary conduct, the young man dared not break. He endured with his hands locked behind his back while mother, wife and mistress were separately profaned. The insults after that turned personal. In time the first officer could not contain the anger which arose in response to the vicious phrases.
‘You waste yourself!’ After the cold calm of the Master’s words, the ugliness in his own voice jarred like a woman’s hysteria. He curbed his temper. ‘Cursing me and my relations will hardly change your lot. Why make things difficult? Your behaviour makes civilized treatment impossible.’
‘Go force your little sister,’ Arithon said.
The first officer flushed scarlet. Not trusting himself to answer, he called orders to his seamen. ‘Bind the bastard’s mouth with a rag. When you have him well secured, lock him under guard in the sail-hold.’
The seamen saw the order through with a roughness born of desperation. Watching, the first officer worried. He was a tired man with a terrified crew, balanced squarely on the prongs of dilemma. The least provocation would land him with a mutiny, and a sorcerer who could also bind shadow threatened trouble tantamount to ruin. No measure of prevention could be too drastic to justify. The first officer rubbed bloodshot, stinging eyes. A final review of resources left him hopeless and without alternative except to turn the problem of Arithon s’Ffalenn back to Briane’s healer.
The first officer burst into the surgery without troubling to knock. ‘Can you mix a posset that will render a man senseless?’
Interrupted while tending yet another wound, the healer answered with irritable reluctance. ‘I have only the herb I brew to ease pain. A heavy dose will dull the mind, but not with safety. The drug has addictive side-effects.’
The first officer never hesitated. ‘Use it on the prisoner, and swiftly.’
The healer straightened, shadows from the gimballed lantern sharp on his distressed face.
The officer permitted no protest. ‘Never mind your oath of compassion. Call the blame mine, if you must, but I’ll not sail into a mutiny for the skin of any s’Ffalenn bastard. Deliver Arithon alive to the king’s dungeons, and no man can dispute we’ve done our duty.’
Daunted by the raw look of fright on the first officer’s face, the healer called his assistant to finish bandaging his patient. Then, too wise to be hurried, he rummaged among his shelf of remedies. ‘Who will answer if the young man’s mind is damaged?’
The first officer drew a ragged breath. ‘Dharkaron, angel of vengeance! We’ll all be executed, even to the cabin steward, if our sailors get panicked and slit the bastard’s throat. He’s crazed enough to provoke them.
How in the name of the king can I be on hand every minute to stop disaster?’
Jars rattled under the older man’s hand. He selected one, adjusted his spectacles to read the label, then said, ‘We’re twenty days’ sail from Port Royal, given weather and luck. No man can be drugged into a coma that long without serious risk of insanity. I’ve read texts which claim that mages possess training to transmute certain poisons. To make sure of your Shadow Master would call for a dose of dangerous potency.’
‘We’ll land at South Island harbour, then.’ Saved by sudden inspiration, the first officer blotted his flushed and sweating brow. ‘The crown prince is there for the summer, to court the earl’s daughter. That’s only five days’ sail, given just middling wind. Drug Arithon only until then, and let his Grace shoulder the task of getting his mother’s bastard presented to the king.’
The healer sighed and reached for his satchel, forced to accede to the plan. Five days of strong possets would cause discomfort, but no permanent harm; and Prince Lysaer’s custody was perhaps the wisest alternative for the pirate heir of Karthan. His Grace’s inborn gift of light was a match for sorcery and shadows, and his judgement, even in matters of blood-feud, was dependably, exactingly fair.
Crown Prince
The tap and clang of swordplay rang from the sun-washed sand of the earl’s practice yard. The courier sent up from the harbour heard the sound and slowed his pace to a walk. Lysaer, crown prince of Amroth, had guested at South Isle often enough that even the servants knew: a man did not interrupt his Grace at sparring if the weapon of choice was steel. Accordingly, the messenger paused in the shaded archway of the portico. He waited, though the news he carried was urgent enough that delay might earn him ill-favour.
The prince noticed the man’s arrival immediately. Sword engaged in a parry, he flung back coin-bright hair, then winked in friendly acknowledgement. He did not seem distracted. Yet on the next lunge his opponent executed an entirely predictable disengage that somehow managed to disarm him. The royal sword drove a glittering arc in the sunlight and landed, scattering sand.
Laughing, generous, handsome enough to make maidens weep, the prince flung up his hands. He turned the dagger he yet held en gauche and flung it, point first, into the soil beside the sword. ‘There’s silver won for your lady, my lord, Ath bless the heir she carries.’
Unexpectedly presented the victory, the dark-haired nobleman straightened on the field in astonishment. ‘Highness, the Fatemaster himself doesn’t know so much of my affairs. Who told you?’
The prince laughed again. ‘About which, the bet or the baby?’ He reached up to tidy his shirt laces, then started for the courier in the portico.
The nobleman suspiciously regarded the sword and the still quivering dagger. ‘You cheated to give me the honour, curse me if you didn’t.’
Lysaer, first son of the king of Amroth, stopped dead between strides. He widened surprised blue eyes. ‘Did I? Well then, I’ll buy your lady a pearl and we’ll fight on the morrow to decide who pays for the setting.’ Then, the smile still on his face, the prince acknowledged the courier. ‘You bring news?’
The runner in the earl’s livery bowed and pointedly glanced at the servant who attended the prince from the sidelines. ‘For your ears, only, your Grace.’
The prince sent the servant to retrieve his discarded weapons, then stepped into the shadow of the arch, his manner immediately sober. ‘My pathetic cripple of an auntie hasn’t fallen from her bed and died, now has she?’
The jest was too graceless to amuse, but the prince had gauged the effect to a nicety. The courier visibly relaxed. ‘That Lady is well, your Grace. The first officer of his majesty’s warship Briane sends compliments instead. I’m advised to tell you that he has in his custody the pirate-king’s bastard, Arithon s’Ffalenn.’
Lysaer stopped as if struck. The flush of recent exertion drained from his face and his hands clenched white at his sides. ‘Alive,’ he said softly.
Seven generations of bloodshed between Amroth and Karthan’s pirates had never seen a moment to match this. Lysaer suppressed a primal surge of triumph. The vendetta had threaded discord and grief through his earliest memories; an altercation before his birth had killed the realm’s first queen and a daughter no one near the king dared to mention. All Lysaer’s life the court had lived in dread of his father’s rages, and always they were caused by s’Ffalenn. Still, the prince fought the irrational hatred the name reflexively inspired. The prisoner in Briane’s hold was his half-brother. Whether he was also a criminal deserving of the cruelty and death that the royal obsession for vengeance would demand was a distinction no man of honour dared ignore.
Trapped in an awkward silence, the courier held his breath; as if his discomfort were a catalyst, the prince tossed off dark thoughts. He touched the fellow’s shoulder to reassure. ‘You need not worry. The fate of my mother’s bastard is a problem too weighty for any but the king’s justice. The commander of Briane’s company was quite right to entrust his custody to me.’
The courier bowed with evident relief.
‘The kitchen staff will give you refreshment,’ the prince insisted. ‘A page from my retinue can run down to Briane to inform that I wish to see the prisoner.’
Excused with more grace than a man with difficult news might expect, the courier bowed again and departed. The prince lingered briefly in the corridor. His blue eyes stayed deep and intense, even as his sparring partner stepped to his side in curiosity.
‘Your Grace? What has passed?’
The crown prince of Amroth started as if from a trance. ‘Trouble,’ he said briefly. His frown changed to chagrin as he recalled his dusty, sweat-damp clothes.
Anxious to please, the nobleman snapped his fingers at the servant who waited with the swords. ‘Send for the prince’s valet.’
‘And the captain of the earl’s guard,’ Lysaer added quickly. ‘Admit him to my private chambers. If he curses the rush, tell him directly that I’ll pour him another beer.’ The key turned stiffly in the lock. Greeted from within by the acid-sharp consonants of a curse, the first officer pushed wide the wooden door. He hung his lantern from a spike in the beam overhead, then gestured for his prince to pass ahead of him.
Briane’s sail-hold was stifling in the noon heat. The air reeked of mildew and damp; though the ship rode at anchor, the hatch overhead was battened down as if for a gale. The lantern threw long, starred shadows which swung with each roll of the swell.
Nervous to the point of jumpiness, the first officer pointed to the darkest corner of the room. ‘There, your Grace. And be careful, he’s roused from the drug, and dangerous.’
Resplendent in gold silk and brocade, glittering with the sapphires of royal rank, Lysaer of Amroth stepped forward. ‘Leave us,’ he said gently to the officer. Then, as the door creaked shut at his heels, he forced back a tangle of emotional turmoil and waited for his eyes to adjust.
Dead still in the uncertain light, Arithon s’Ffalenn sat propped against a towering pile of spare sail. Biscuit and water lay untouched by his elbow. A livid swelling on the side of his jaw accentuated rather than blurred the angled arrogance of features which decidedly favoured his father. His eyes were open, focused and bright with malice.
The look chilled Lysaer to the heart. Hampered and unsettled by the dimness, he lifted the lantern down. The light shifted, mercilessly exposed details that up until now had stayed hidden. The queen’s bastard was small, the prince saw with a shock of surprise. But that slight stature was muscled like a cat, and endowed with a temper to match; the flesh at wrists and ankles had been repeatedly torn on the fetters, leaving bruises congested with scabs. The hands were wrapped with wire and crusted with blood. The prince felt a surge of pity. He had heard the first officer’s report; the fright of the sailors was understandable, yet after fetters and chain the added restraint of the wire seemed a needless cruelty.
Embarrassed, Lysaer replaced the lantern on its hook. He drew breath to call for the bosun, a sailhand, any ship’s officer who could bring cutters and ease the prisoner’s discomfort.
But Arithon spoke first. ‘We are well met, brother.’
The crown prince ignored the sarcasm. A blood-feud could continue only as long as both sides were sworn to antipathy. ‘Kinship cannot pardon the charges against you, if it’s true that you summoned shadow and sorcery, then blinded and attacked and murdered the companies of seven vessels. No rational purpose can justify the slaughter of hapless sailors.’
‘They happened to be crewing royal warships.’ Arithon straightened with a jangle of chain. His clear, expressive voice lifted above the echoes. ‘Show me a man who’s harmless, and I’ll show you one stone dead.’
Lysaer stepped back, set his shoulders against the closed door to mask a shiver of dismay. The first officer had not exaggerated to justify the severity of his actions. In silence, the crown prince regarded a face whose humanity lay sealed behind ungoverned viciousness.
‘“Kill thou me, and I shall helpless be.”’ Arithon capped his quote with a taunting smile. ‘Or perhaps you’re too squeamish to try?’
The crown prince clamped his jaw, unsettled by the depths of antagonism such simple words could provoke.
Arithon pressured like gall on a sore spot, his accent a flawless rendition of high court style. ‘By the rotted bones of our mother, what a dazzle of jewels and lace. Impressive, surely. And the sword. Do you wear that for vanity also?’
‘You’ll gain nothing by baiting me.’ Determined to learn what inspired the prisoner’s unprincipled attacks, Lysaer held his temper. ‘Except, perhaps, a wretched death I’d be ashamed to give a dog.’
‘But you offer a dog’s life,’ Arithon shot back. He twisted suddenly, and wire-bound fingers knocked over the water bowl. Cheap crockery rattled across the boards and a trail of puddles spilled and widened with the motion of the ship. ‘I chose not to lap like an animal from a dish. And bait you? Innocent, I haven’t begun.’
Arithon’s eyes sharpened. A sudden sting of sorcery pierced the prince’s awareness. Too late, he recoiled. In one unguarded instant the Master of Shadow smashed through his defences. A probe like hot wire flashed through the prince’s mind, sorting, gathering, discarding in an instant all the fine intentions that acted for fairness and compassion. The s’Ffalenn bastard repudiated honour. He ransacked his brother’s past to barb his insatiable malice, and into his grasp like a weapon fell the recall of a childhood memory far better left forgotten…
The young prince was much too lively to sleep. Overindulged with sweets, and stirred to nervous excitement by the festivities in celebration of his birthday, he ran on short legs and tumbled, laughing, on the carpet. ‘Want to see mama!’ he shouted to the chamberlain, who looked steadily more rumpled and weary. A day spent managing an over-exuberant three-year-old had taxed his dignity sorely.
The royal nursemaid lifted the child from the floor. Deft as she was with the little ones, still the boy managed to twist in her arms and tangle his nightshirt around his neck. ‘Here,’ she scolded. ‘Want to choke yourself to death?’
The prince crowed with laughter. ‘Want to see mama.’
Exasperated, the nursemaid set his mussed clothing to rights. ‘If I say yes and you stay only long enough for a kiss, will you close your eyes and lie still until you fall asleep?’
The boy smiled in the way that never failed to melt the hearts of his attendants. ‘I promise.’
‘Now, a prince never breaks his word,’ warned the nurse.
Young Lysaer returned a solemn nod.
‘Well, see that you don’t, young man.’ The nurse ruffled his gold hair, then returned him to the long-suffering arms of the chamberlain. ‘Take him down, sir. He’s a good boy, usually, and on his birthday the queen won’t mind.’
The prince chattered all the way down three flights of stairs. Though an elderly man, the chamberlain’s hearing was excellent. His ears rang by the time he reached the royal apartments, and with the prince squirming in energetic anticipation against his neck, he missed the warning gesture of the guard.
Beyond the embroidered hanging, the Lady Talera’s anteroom lay ominously deserted; chests and jewelled tapestries glittered in candlelight abnormally dim for the hour. The chamberlain hesitated. Warned of something amiss, he set the prince down; but the child, too young to notice nuance, tugged his hand free and ran ahead.
The moment Lysaer crossed the threshold to his mother’s chambers, he sensed something wrong. His father sat with the queen, and both of them were angry.
‘You’ll use no child of mine as an axe in your feud with s’Ffalenn,’ said his mother in a tone Lysaer had never heard before. His bare feet made no sound as he shrank in the shadows, uncertain. Trapped helplessly in the foyer, the chamberlain dared not risk the king’s temper. He knotted his hands in white hair, and prayed the young prince had sense enough to withdraw.
But Lysaer was frightened, and too small to understand arguments. He stayed still as a rabbit in the corner, while the queen spoke again. The lilt of her Rauven dialect lent her words raw force. ‘Our son’s gift is no weapon. Dare you abuse him? By Ath, I swear if you try, you’ll get no second child from me.’
Lysaer frowned, tried to sort meaning from the adult words. He knew they spoke of him and the sparkling lights he could make in the air whenever he wished, or dreamed of the sun.
The king rose abruptly from his chair. His shadow swooped in the candlelight as he bent and seized the queen’s wrists. ‘Woman, defy me, and I’ll make you wretched with childbearing. Blame your father. He should have made your dowry more accessible. Sorcery and babies made a misfortunate mix.’
Bracelets clashed as the queen wrenched free. Her elbow struck a side table and a crystal bowl toppled, scattering the carpet with glass and sugared nuts. Lysaer whimpered, unnoticed by the doorway. He wanted to run, but the chamberlain was nowhere in sight.
The king jerked the queen to her feet. ‘You’ve been indisposed long enough, you royal witch. I’ll bed you now, and every night afterward until you conceive the Master of Shadow I was promised.’
Gems sparkled on the king’s sleeves as he locked his arms around his consort. She fought him. He crushed her roughly against his doublet. Silk tore like the scream of a small animal between his hands, baring her slim back in the firelight.
The king laughed. ‘The s’Ffalenn will curse your lovely, gifted children from the bottom of the sea.’
The queen struggled. Blonde hair tumbled from diamond pins and snagged on the man’s rough fingers. From the doorway, Lysaer saw tears in his mother’s eyes, but her voice stayed ringingly steady. ‘Force me, and by the stones of Rauven Tower, I’ll even the stakes. The s’Ffalenn pirates will share my bride gift to s’Ilessid, and grief and sorrow will come of it.’
‘Curse me, will you? Dharkaron witness, you’ll regret this.’ The king struck her. Flung off balance, the queen crashed backwards across a table. Linen rumpled under her weight and a carafe toppled, flooding wine like blood across the cloth.
Traumatized by the violence, Lysaer at last cried out. ‘Father! Don’t hurt her any more!’
The king started, spun, and saw his son in the entry. His face contorted like a stranger’s. ‘Get out of here!’
‘No!’ The queen pushed herself erect and extended a trembling hand. ‘Lysaer?’
The frightened, hysterical child ran to his mother and buried his face in her warmth. He felt her shaking as she held him. Muffled by the cloth of her gown, the prince heard the king say something. Then the door slammed. The queen lifted Lysaer and stroked hair as bright and fair as her own.
She kissed his cheek. ‘It’s all over, little one.’
But Lysaer knew she lied. That very night she left Amroth, never again to return…
With a crack like a split in crystal the sail-hold spun back into focus. Lysaer shuddered in shock at the change. Tears wet his face. Whipped into fury by the pain of childhood betrayal, he forgot two decades of maturity. Into that breach, that long-forgotten maelstrom of suffering, Arithon s’Ffalenn cast shadow.
An image pooled on the deck before the prince. Sanded wood transformed to a drift of silken sheets, upon which two figures twined, naked. Lysaer felt the breath tear like fire in his throat. The man was dark-haired and sword-scarred, unmistakably Avar s’Ffalenn; beneath him, couched in a glory of gold hair, lay Talera, Queen of Amroth. Her face was radiant with joy.
Abruptly, Arithon withdrew from the prince’s mind. He smirked toward the couple on the floor. ‘Shall I show you the rest of the collection?’
Lysaer’s hand closed hard on his sword. His mother and her illicit lover blinked out like blown candles and left, like an after-image, the face of the bastard’s shameless scorn. Seared by rage like white fire, Lysaer saw nothing in the son but the fornicating features of the father. The lantern swung, echoed his motion in a frenzy of shadows as he drew and struck a blow to the side of the prisoner’s head.
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The impact slammed Arithon over backwards. Wired wrists screeched across sail hanks as he toppled and crashed to the deck. Loose as an unstrung puppet, he lay on his side, while blood twined in ribbons across his jaw.