The Curse of the Mistwraith (4 page)

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.

\\

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.

‘What a superb effort, for the flat of the blade,’ he managed between whistling breaths. ‘Why not try the edge?’ But Arithon’s voice missed his usual vicious note.

Jarred back to reason, and burned by a shame that left him soiled, Lysaer strove for control. In all of his life he had never struck a helpless man; the novelty left him aching. Breathing hard, the lifted edge of the sword poised over his enemy, he said, ‘You
want
me to kill you!’ Sickened to discover his hand shaking, he flung away his weapon. ‘By Ath, I deny you that satisfaction. Your father’s lust for vengeance will fall on some other head than mine.’

The blade struck crosswise against the door. As the clamour of echoes dwindled, Arithon stirred and shut his eyes. A shudder swept him. That brief instant his control slipped, to reveal tearing grief and shocking desperation. Then, his mask of indifference restored, he said, ‘I sailed as first officer on board the
Saeriat.
The brigantine was my father’s command.’

The crown prince of Amroth drew breath, wrung by terrible understanding.
Briane’s
original log entry had been correct:
Saeriat’s
captain had burned with his brigantine. The pirate king of Karthan was dead. Here, helplessly fettered and pleading to die, was his sole heir, the last s’Ffalenn left living.

Arithon did not miss the change in his half-brother’s manner. He raised himself on one elbow, head flung back. ‘Loan me your knife. As one prince to another, I promise, the feud between s’Ffalenn and s’Ilessid will end here without any more cause for bloodshed.’

‘I cannot.’ Lysaer stared down at the mauled face of the captive and qualified with sympathy that cut. ‘Your death would ruin every man on this vessel, by my father’s decree.’

Arithon responded with damning sarcasm. ‘How admirable. Don’t neglect to mention the gold which rewards the virtue of such loyalty.’ Green eyes flicked up, pinned by lamplit highlights. ‘You preserve me solely for the king of Amroth. In his hands, I become a puppet for him to torment, a target for the hatred inspired by our mother, my father, and seven generations of captains who practised piracy before me.’ Arithon lowered his gaze. ‘I beg not to be forced to that role. Let me take my life. That will spare me and your family further shame.’

The bare simplicity of the appeal caught the crown prince like a blow. Left no breath to speak, he avoided answer by retrieving his fallen sword. He rammed the blade into the scabbard with a violence born of raw nerves. The original purpose of his visit seemed tawdry, a meaningless, arrogant charade that unmasked a hypocrite player. Unable to trust his reactions, he backed out of his half-brother’s presence and shot the bolt on the door. A few short minutes of madness had nearly brought him to murder, to sacrifice the lives of loyal sailors to end the misery of a criminal. Shaking, the crown prince of Amroth gripped the companionway rail. ‘Fatemaster’s judgement, you deserve what you get,’ he murmured to the closed door behind him.

‘Your Grace? Are you all right?’
Briane’s
first officer had remained on guard in the passage, but with the lantern left in the sail-hold, darkness had hidden his presence.

Lysaer started in surprise. He had thought he was alone, and the sudden discovery of company embarrassed him. ‘I’m all right,’ he said quickly.

The first officer was too much a courtier to offer comment. Instead he fetched the light from the sail-hold, then reset both bar and lock with studied concentration.

Lysaer pushed away from the bulkhead, self-conscious in his sweat-damp silk. The sting of s’Ffalenn manipulation seemed still to pry at his thoughts. Uncertainty weakened the tenets of honour. Worse yet, he still felt pity. Arithon’s plight at the hands of the king would be unpleasant and prolonged. For the first time in his life, Lysaer fully understood his father’s deranged hatred of s’Ffalenn: to the last son left living, they were a breed of fiends.

Aware of the first officer quietly awaiting instruction, the prince raked a hand through his hair. ‘I’m all right,’ he repeated. At least his voice had stopped shaking. ‘Send down the healer, and be sharp about it. I want the prisoner drugged unconscious and this ship under sail for Port Royal before the turn of the tide.’

The first officer raised frightened eyes to his prince. ‘Your Grace, that’s not wise. Prolonged overdose of the herb is sure to cause madness.’

Lysaer raised eyes gone hard as the cut sapphires at his collar. ‘Ath’s grief, man, I know that! But insanity will surely be a mercy beside the judgement and sentence our prisoner will receive as s’Ffalenn. Let this pass beneath the Wheel be an easy one for him, for in truth, he is the last.’

The first officer looked up in surprise. ‘The pirate-king died also?’

Lysaer nodded. ‘That should please my father well enough. If the healer fears royal retribution, tell him and every man of
Briane’s
crew that I’ll sail along with them to intercede.’

Tracer

Daybreak glimmered through the arches of Rauven Tower and outlined the concerned face of the high mage in silver and deepest shadows. He had stopped pacing the floor. His tired eyes studied the listener who sat at his feet, but the tranced man’s form showed no stir of returning consciousness. The farseer’s features remained remote; fragile hands stayed folded and limp in the lap of his bordered robe as they had since sundown the day before.

The high mage wrestled extreme impatience. No sign hinted whether the images gathered by the listener’s delicate talent were terrible or benign.

‘What has happened to my grandson?’ The words escaped before the high mage realized he had spoken aloud; but worry allowed no chink for regret. The gaunt old sorcerer waited in stillness with the breath stopped in his throat.

The listener opened distant eyes. By the outburst and the expression on his master’s face, he became one of the few to discover how deeply the high mage loved his daughter’s s’Ffalenn bastard. He phrased his answer with extreme tact.

‘I see a place in constant motion, but lightless. It smells of canvas, mould and damp.’ But the listener mentioned nothing of the pain, hunger and thirst also encountered in that place. Why grieve a lonely man’s heart when for hours Arithon’s condition had not altered, except for a brief visit by a prince who wore the gold on blue of Amroth?

The listener closed his eyes once more.
What words could tell an ageing man that his beloved grandson had tried to provoke his own death? Did phrases exist that could soften the despair behind such an act; that a king’s blind hatred for a wife’s transgressions might fall upon the hapless flesh of her son
?

The listener misliked delivering ill news without a promise of hope. He slipped back into trance, braced to endure Arithon’s misery until he gleaned some small fact to lighten the grandfather’s distress. Far off, beyond the shudder of ship’s planking and the foaming splash of seawater, the high mage’s restless steps resumed.

Sunrise shone livid red through the tower windows. Gaunt as a crow in his dark robe, the high mage stopped with his heart chilled by foreboding.

The listener stiffened. Brown eyes sprang open in a face blanched like fine linen. ‘Dharkaron have mercy.’

‘The news is bad,’ said the high mage. ‘Tell me quickly.’

The listener drew a shaking breath and looked up. His hands knotted helplessly. ‘Arithon is imprisoned aboard a warship of Amroth. He tried with all his will to avoid surrender to the king’s justice alive. His effort failed. His captors have drugged him senseless. They intend to keep him passive until their ship can deliver him to Port Royal.’