Janny Wurts - Light & Shadows 1 - Curse of the Mistwraith

CURSE OF THE MISTWRAITH

The Wars of Light and Shadow

By JanNY Worts

Prologue

The Wars of Light and Shadow were fought during the Third Age of

Athera, the most troubled and strife-filled era recorded in all of

history. At that time Arithon, called Master of Shadows, battled the

Lord of Light through five centuries of bloody and bitter conflict. If

the canons of the religion founded during that period are reliable, the

Lord of Light was divinity incarnate, and the Master of Shadows a

servant of evil, spinner of dark powers. Temple archives attest with

grandiloquent force to be the sole arbiters of truth.

Yet contrary evidence supports a claim that the Master was unjustly

aligned with evil. Fragments of manuscript survive which expose the

entire religion of Light as fraud and award Arithon the attributes of

saint and mystic instead.

Because the factual account lay hopelessly entangled between legend

and theology, sages in the Seventh Age meditated upon the ancient past,

and recalled through visions the events as they happened.

Contrary to all expectation, the conflict did not begin on the

council stair of Etarra, or even on the soil of Athera itself; instead

the visions started upon the wide oceans of the splinter world, Dascen

Elur.

This is the chronicle the sages recovered. Let each who reads

determine the good and the evil for himself.

All for the waste of Karthan's lands the Leopard sailed the main.

s'llessid King then cursed s'Ffalenn, who robbed him, gold and grain.

-stanza from a ballad of Dascen Elur

Captive

The longboat cleaved waters stained blood red by sunset, far

beyond sight of any shore. A league distant from her parent ship, at

the limit of her designated patrol, she rose on the crest of a swell.

The bosun in command shouted hoarsely from the stern. "Hold stroke!"

Beaten with exhaustion and the aftermath of battle, his crewmen

responded. Four sets of oars lifted, dripping above waters fouled by

oil and the steaming timbers of burned warships.

"Survivors to starboard." The bosun pointed toward two figures who

clung to a snarl of drifting spars. "Quick, take a bearing."

A man shipped his looms to grab a hand compass. As the longboat

dipped into the following trough, the remaining sailors bent to resume

stroke. Oar shafts bit raggedly into the sea as they swung the heavy

bow against the wind.

The bosun drew breath to reprimand their sloppy timing, then held his

tongue. The men were tired as he was; though well seasoned to war

through the feud which ran deadly and deep between Amroth and Karthan's

pirates, this had been no ordinary skirmish. Seven fully rigged

warships in A fleet of seventeen had fallen before a single brigantine

under the hated leopard banner. The bosun swore. He resisted a morbid

urge to brood over losses; lucky, they were, to have the victory at

all. The defeated brigantine's captain had been none other than

Arithon s'Ffalenn, called sorcerer and Master of Shadow.

The next swell rolled beneath the keel. Heaved and lifted on its

crest, the longboat's peaked prow momentarily eclipsed the castaways

who struggled in the water. Afraid to lose sight of them, the bosun

set the compass man as observer in the bow. Then he called

encouragement while his oarsmen picked an erratic course through the

splintered clots of planking and cordage which wallowed, treacherous as

reefs upon the sea. The crew labored in dead-faced silence.

Not even the scraping bump of the corpse which passed beneath the

keel caused them to alter their stroke. Horror had numbed every man

left alive after the nightmare of fire, sorcery, and darkness that

Arithon had unleashed before the end.

The boat drew abreast of the survivors. Overtaken by a drift of

wind-borne smoke, the bosun squinted through burning eyes. Only one

victim looked to be conscious. He clung with whitened fingers to the

nearer end of the spar, while at his back, another sailor lay lashed

against the heaving pull of the waves. The knots at this one's waist

were half loosened, as if, seeing help on the way, his companion had

clumsily tried to free him.

"Ship oars!" Gruffly the bosun addressed the man in the water.

"Is your friend wounded?"

The wreck victim raised listless, glassy eyes, but said nothing.

Quite likely cold water had dulled the fellow's wits.

Weary of senseless ruin and the rescue of ravaged men, the bosun

snapped impatiently, "Bring him in. We'll get the other second, if he

still breathes."

A crewman hooked the spar with his oar shaft to steady the boat.

Others leaned over the thwart to lift the halfdrowned sailhand

aboard.

The victim reacted with vengeful speed and doused his rescuers with

seawater.

Stung nearly blind by the salt, the nearer oarsman yelled and lunged.

His hand closed over a drenched mat of hair.

The man in the water twisted against the restraint. He kicked clear

of the spar, ducked, and resurfaced, a flash of bare steel in one fist.

The oarsman recoiled from him with a

scream

bone. of pain and surprise, his wrist opened stark to the "Ath, he's

Karthan's," someone shouted.

The longboat's crew erupted in confusion. Portside, those seamen

within reach raised oars like clubs and retaliated.

One blow, then another struck the enemy sailor's head.

Blood spilled from his nose and mouth. Chopped viciously on the

shoulder, he floundered. His grasp loosened and the dagger dropped

winking into the depths. Without even a curse of malediction, the

Karthish sailor thrashed under, battered and finally drowned by the

murderous hatred of enemies.

"Man the oars!" The bosun's bellow restored order to the wildly

rocking longboat. Men sank down at their benches, muttering epithets,

while seawater lapped tendrils of scarlet from the blades of the

portside looms . Too tired even to curse, the officer tossed a scarf

to his wounded oarsman.

Then he pointed at the unconscious survivor who drifted still lashed

to the spar. By now the smoke had cleared enough to see the Karthish

dog still breathed. "Fetch that one aboard.

The king will want him for questioning, so mind you handle him

wisely."

Sailors sworn to the pirate king's service seldom permitted

themselves to be taken alive. With one casualty wrapping his wrist in

the stern, no man rushed the task. Amroth's seamen recovered the last

crewman of Karthan's brigantine from the sea with wary caution and

dumped him face down on the floorboards. The bosun regarded his prize

with distaste. Barefoot, slightly built, and clad in a sailhand's

patched tunic, the man seemed no one important. Only the silver ring

on his left hand occasioned any notice at all; after hours of thankless

labor, the oarsmen deserved reward for their efforts.

"Beer booty," invited the bosun. He bent, caught the captive's

wrist, and tugged to pry the ring from a finger still swollen from the

sea.

"Cuter free," suggested the crewman who nursed his slashed forearm.

Feud left no space for niceties. The bosun drew his rigging knife.

He braced the captive's hand palm upward against the stern seat, and

lifted his blade to cut. At that moment the longboat rocked.

Dying sunlight caught and splintered in the depths of an emerald

setting.

The bosun gasped. He snatched back his knife as if burned, for the

ring he would steal was not silver but white gold. The gem was carved

with a leopard device, hatefully familiar.

"Fate witness, he's s'Ffalenn!" Shocked and uncertain, the bosun

straightened up. He had watched the enemy brigantine burn, her captain

sprawled dead on her quarterdeck; but a glance at the black hair which

dripped ignominiously in the bilge now belied that observation.

Suddenly hand and ring were tugged from his grasp as an oarsman

reached out and jerked the captive onto his back.

Bared to the fading light, the steeply angled features and upswept

brow line of s'Ffalenn stood clear as struck bronze.

There could be no mistake. Amroth's seamen had taken, alive, the

Master of Shadow himself.

The sailors fell back in fear. Several made signs against evil, and

someone near the fore drew a dagger.

"Hold!" The bosun turned to logic to ease his own frayed nerves.

"The sorcerer's harmless, just now, or we'd already be dead.

Alive, don't forget, he'll bring a bounty."

The men made no response. Tense, uneasy, they shifted their feet.

Someone uttered a charm against demons, and a second knife sang from

its sheath.

The bosun grabbed an oar and slammed it across the thwarts between

sailors and captive. "Fools! Would you spit on good fortune? Kill

him, and our liege won't give us a copper."

That reached them. Arithon s'Ffalenn was the illegitimate son of

Amroth's own queen, who in years past had spurned the kingdom's honor

for adultery with her husband's most infamous enemy. The pirate king's

bastard carried a price on his head that would ransom an earl, and a

dukedom awaited the man who could deliver him to Port Royal in chains.

Won over by greed, the sailors put up their knives.

The bosun stepped back and rapped orders, and men jumped to obey.

Before the s'Ffalenn bastard regained his wits, his captors bound his

wrists and legs with cord cut from the painter. Then, trussed like a

calf for slaughter, Arithon, Master of Shadows and heir apparent of

Karthan, was rowed back to the warship Briane. Hauled aboard by the

boisterous crew of the longboat, he was dumped in a dripping sprawl on

the quarterdeck, at the feet of the officer in command.

A man barely past his teens, the first officer had come to his post

through wealth and royal connections rather than merit or experience.

But with the captain unconscious from an arrow wound and the ranking

brass of Briane's fighting company dead, none remained to dispute the

chain of command. The first officer coped, though shouldered with

responsibility for three hundred and forty-two men left living, and a

warship too crippled to carry sail. The bosun's agitated words took a

moment to pierce through tired and overburdened thoughts.

The name finally mustered attention.

"Arithon s'Ffalenn!" Shocked to disbelief, the first officer stared

at the parcel of flesh on his deck. This man was small, sea-tanned,

and dark; nothing like the half-brother in line for Amroth's crown. A

drenched spill of hair plastered an angular forehead. Spare,

unremarkable limbs were clothed in rough, much mended linen that was

belted with a plain twist of rope. But his sailhand's appearance was

deceptive. The jewel in the signet bore the leopard of s'Ffalenn,

undeniable symbol of royal heirship.

"It's him, I say," said the bosun excitedly.

The crew from the longboat and every deckhand within earshot edged

closer.

Jostled by raffish, excitable men, the first officer recalled his

position. "Back to your duties," he snapped. "And have that longboat

winched back on board. Lively!"

"Aye, sir." The bosun departed, contrite. The sailhands dispersed

more slowly, clearing the quarterdeck with many a backward glance.

Left alone to determine the fate of Amroth's bitterest enemy, the

first officer shifted his weight in distress. How should he confine a

man who could bind illusion of shadow with the ease of thought, and

whose capture had been achieved at a cost of seven ships? In Amroth,

the king would certainly hold Arithon's imprisonment worth such

devastating losses. But aboard the warship Briane, upon decks still

laced with dead and debris, men wanted vengeance for murdered crewmen.

The sailhands would never forget: Arithon was a sorcerer, and safest

of all as a corpse.

The solution seemed simple as a sword thrust, but the first officer

knew differently. He repressed his first, wild impulse to kill, and

instead prodded the captive's shoulder with his boot. Black hair

spilled away from a profile as keen as a knife. A tracery of scarlet

flowed across temple and cheek from a hidden scalp wound; bruises

mottled the skin of throat and chin. Sorcerer though he was, Arithon

was human enough to require the services of a healer. The first

officer cursed misfortune that this bastard had not also been mortal

enough to die. The king of Amroth knew neither temperance nor reason

on the subject of his wife's betrayal. No matter that men might get

killed or maimed in the course of the long passage home; on pain of

court-martial, Briane's crewmen must deliver the Master of Shadows

alive.

"What's to be done with him, sir?" The man promoted to fill the dead

mate's berth stopped at his senior's side, his uniform almost

unrecognizable beneath the soot and stains of battle.

The first officer swallowed, his throat dry with nerves.

"Lock him up in the chart room."

The mate narrowed faded eyes and spat. "That's a damned fool place

to stow a such a dangerous prisoner! D'ye want us all broken?

He's clever enough to escape."

"Silence!" The first officer clenched his teeth, sensitive to the

eyes that watched from every quarter of the ship. The mate's complaint

was just, but no officer could long maintain command if he backed down

before the entire crew. The order would have to stand.

"The prisoner needs a healer," the first officer justified firmly.

"I'll have him moved and set in irons at the earliest opportunity."

The mate grunted, bent, and easily lifted the Shadow Master from the

deck. "What a slight little dog, for all his killer's reputation," he

commented. Then, cocky to conceal his apprehension, he sauntered the

length of the quarterdeck with the captive slung like a duffel across

his shoulder.

The pair vanished down the companionway, Arithon's knuckles haplessly

banging each rung of the ladder-steep stair. The first officer shut

his eyes. The harbor at Port Royal lay over seventeen days' sail on

the best winds and fair weather. Every jack tar of Briane's company

would be a rich man, if any of them survived to make port. Impatient,

inexperienced, and sorely worried, the first officer shouted to the

carpenter to hurry his work on the mainmast.

Night fell before Briane was repaired enough to carry canvas.

Clouds had obscured the stars by the time the first officer ordered

the ship under way. The bosun relayed his commands, since the mate was

too hoarse to make himself heard over the pounding of hammers under the

forecastle.

Bone weary, the crew swung themselves aloft with appalling lack of

agility. Unbrailed canvas billowed from the yards; on deck, sailhands

stumbled to man the braces. Sail slammed taut with a crash and a

rattle of blocks, and the bow shouldered east through the swell. Staid

as a weathered carving, the quartermaster laid Briane on course for

Amroth. If the wind held, the ship would reach home only slightly

behind the main fleet.

Relieved to be back under sail, the first officer excused all but six

hands under the bosun on watch. Then he called for running lamps to be

lit. The cabin boy made rounds with flint and striker. Briane's

routine passed uninterrupted until the flame in the aft lantern flicked

out, soundlessly, as if touched by the breath of Dharkaron. Inside the

space of a heartbeat, the entire ship became locked in darkness as

bleak as the void before creation. The rhythm of the joiners' hammers

wavered and died, replaced abruptly by shouting.

The first officer leaped for the companionway. His boots barely

grazed the steps. Half sliding down the rail, he heard the shrill

crash of glass as the panes in the stern window burst. The instant his

feet slapped deck, he rammed shoulder first into the chart room door.

Teak panels exploded into slivers. The first officer carried forward

into blackness dense as calligrapher's ink. Sounds of a furious

struggle issued from the direction of the broken window.

"Stop him!" The first officer's shout became a grunt as his ribs

bashed the edge of the chart table. He blundered past. A body tripped

him. He stumbled, slammed painfully against someone's elbow, then

shoved forward into a battering press of bodies. The hiss of the wake

beneath the counter sounded near enough to touch. Spattered by

needlefine droplets of spray, the first officer realized in distress

that Arithon might already be half over the sill. Once overboard, the

sorcerer could bind illusion, shape shadow, and blend invisibly with

the waves. No search would find him.

The first officer dived to intervene, hit a locked mass of men, and

felt himself dashed brutally aside. Someone, cursed. A whirl of

unseen motion cut through the drafts front the window. Struck across

the chest by a hard, contorted body, the first officer groped blindly

and two-handedly hooked cloth still damp from the sea. Aware of whom

he held, he locked his arms and clung obstinately. His prisoner

twisted, wrenching every tendon in his wrists. Flung sideward into a

bulkhead, the first officer gasped. He felt as if he handled a

careening maelstrom of fury. A thigh sledgehammered one wrist,

breaking his grasp. Then someone crashed like an axed oak across his

chest. Torn loose from the captive, the first officer went down,

flattened to the deck under a mass of sweaty flesh.

The battle raged on over his head, marked in darkness by the grunt of

drawn breaths and the smack of knuckles, elbows, and knees battering

into muscle. Nearby, a seaman retched, felled by a kick in the belly.

The first officer struggled against the crush to rise. Any blow that

connected in that ensorcelled dark had to be ruled by luck. If

Arithon's hands remained bound, force and numbers must ultimately

prevail as his guardsmen found grips he could not break.

"Bastard!" somebody said. Boots scuffled and a fist smacked flesh.

Arithon's resistance abated slightly.

The first officer regained his feet when a low, clear voice cut

through the strife.

"Let go. Or your fingers will burn to the bone."

"Don't listen!" The first officer pushed forward. "The threat's an

illusion."

A man screamed in agony, counterpointed by splintering wood.

Desperate, the first officer shot a blow in the approximate direction

of the speaker. His knuckles cracked into bone. As if cued by the

impact, the sorcerer's web of darkness wavered and lifted.

Light from the aft running lamp spilled through the ruptured stern

window, touching gilt edges to a litter of glass and smashed

furnishings. Arithon hung limp in the arms of three deckhands. Their

faces were white and their chests heaved like runners just finished

with a marathon. Another man groaned by the chart locker, hands

clenched around a dripping shin; while against the starboard bulkhead,

the mate stood scowling, his color high and the pulse angry and fast

behind his ripped collar. The first officer avoided the accusation in

the older seaman's eyes. If it was unnatural that a prisoner so

recently injured and unconscious should prove capable of such fight, to

make an issue of the fact invited trouble.

Anxious to take charge before the crew recovered enough to talk, the

first officer snapped to the moaning crewman, "Fetch a light."

The man quieted, scuffled to his feet, and hastily limped off to find

a lantern. As a rustle of returned movement stirred through the

beleaguered crew in the chart room, the first officer pointed to a

clear space between the glitter of slivered glass. "Set the s'Ffalenn

there. And you, find a set of shackles to bind his feet."

Seamen jumped to comply. The man returned with the lantern as they

lowered Arithon to the deck. Flame light shot copper reflections

across the blood which streaked his cheek and shoulder; dark patches

had already soaked into the torn shirt beneath.

"Sir, I warned you. Chart room's not secure." The mate insisted,

low-voiced, "Have the sorcerer moved to a safer place."

The first officer bristled. "When I wish your advice, I'll ask.

You'll stand guard here until the healer comes. That should not be

much longer."

But the ship's healer labored yet with the task of removing the broad

head of an enemy arrow from the captain's lower abdomen. Since he was

bound to be occupied for some time yet to come, the mate clamped his

jaw and did not belabor the obvious: that Arithon's presence endangered

the ship in far more ways than one. Fear of his sorceries could drive

even the staunchest crew to mutiny.

That moment one of the seaman exclaimed and flung back. The first

officer swung in time to see the captive stir and awaken. Eyes the

color of new spring grass opened and fixed on the men who crowded the

chart room. The steep s'Ffalenn features showed no expression, though

surely pain alone prevented a second assault with shadow. Briane's

first officer searched his enemy's face for a sign of human emotion and

found no trace.

"You were unwise to try that," he said, at a loss for other opening.

That the same mother had borne this creature and Amroth's well-beloved

crown prince defied all reasonable credibility.

Where his grace, Lysaer, might have won his captors' sympathy with

glib and entertaining satire, Arithon of Karthan refused answer. His

gaze never wavered, and his manner stayed stark as a carving. The

creak of timberland rigging filled an unpleasant silence. Crewmen

shifted uneasily until a clink of steel beyond the companionway

heralded the entrance of the crewman sent to bring shackles.

"Secure his ankles." The first officer turned toward the door.

"And by Dharkaron's vengeance, stay on guard. The king wants this

captive kept alive."

He departed after that, shouting for the carpenter to send hands to

repair the stern window. Barely had the workmen gathered their tools

when Briane plunged again into unnatural and featureless dark. A

thudding crash astern set the first officer running once more for the

chart room.

This time the shadow disintegrated like spark-singed silk before he

collided with the chart table. He reached the stern cabin to find

Arithon pinned beneath the breathless bulk of his guards. Gradually

the men sorted themselves out, eyes darting nervously. Though standing

in the presence of a senior officer, they showed no proper deference.

More than a few whispered sullenly behind their hands.

"Silence!" Crisply the first officer inclined his head to hear the

report.

"Glass," explained the mate. "Tried to slash his wrists, Dharkaron

break his bastard skin."

Blood smeared the deck beneath the Master. His fine fingers

glistened red, and closer examination revealed that the cord which

lashed his hands was nearly severed.

"Bind his fingers with wire, then." Provoked beyond pity, the first

officer detailed a man to fetch a spool from the hold.

Arithon recovered awareness shortly afterward. Dragged upright

between the stout arms of his captors, he took a minute longer to

orient himself. As green eyes lifted in recognition, the first officer

fought a sharp urge to step back. Only once had he seen such a look on

a man's face, and that time he had witnessed a felon hanged for the

rape of his own daughter.

"You should have died in battle," he said softly.

Arithon gave no answer. Flame light 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

Janny Wurts - Light & Shadows 1 - Curse of the Mistwraith

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