Janny Wurts - Light & Shadows 3 - Warhosts Of Vastmark

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THE WARS OF LIGHT AND SHADOW
by
HOST OF VASTMARK VOLUME TWO of Ships of
HarperPrism An Imprint of HarperPaperbacks
Dedication
For Jane Johnson, for the grand leap of faith thanks is too small a
word.
Acknowledgments
My thanks to the sales force at HarperCollins, whose efforts make all
the difference: and to those who work in the bookshops, who handle
the
dreams of authors.
Author's Note
For the sake of the readers, I should like to explain that the
paperback
edition of Ships of Merior, and its companion volume, Warhost of
Vastmark, were originally conceived to be under one cover. The fact
that this volume of the story grew too large to bind into one
paperback
was in no way an effort to wring more out of a series, or to prolong
the
natural length to make the project more lucrative. On the contrary,
I
have to express grateful thanks to my editors at HarperPrism, for
making
the heroic effort to hold the book's full scope intact in producing
the
first edition hardbound under one cover as a continuous whole. For
the
paperback, this was not possible, since a binding that hefty and wide
would wear poorly and even fall apart.
The original tale falls into two halves, with a natural place for a
pause in between. The point where Ships ends and Warhost begins was
not
arbitrary, but chosen with the story's best symmetry in mind.
I can add that the concept and plotting for the Wars of Light and
Shadow
have been worked through in full in five volumes, an intense and
ongoing
labor that has spanned a twenty-year period. The story told here,
and
in subsequent books, will follow the course originally conceived from
a
fixed start, to a finale that will bring every thread to its finish.
I
have no intent, now or at any time, to produce an unending parade of
sequels.
Janny Wurts June 1995
Contents
CHAPTER 1. Second Convocation
CHAPTER 2. Ships of Merior
CHAPTER 3. Vastmark
CHAPTER 4. Third Infamy
CHAPTER 5. Three Ships
CHAPTER 6. Ostermere
CHAPTER 7. Grand Augury
CHAPTER 8. Strike at Dier Kenton
CHAPTER 9. Counterploys
Glossary
In Werpoint's wide harbor, beside Minderl Bay The Master's spun
shadow
drowned out the new day.
The Prince of the West raised his gift of white light Cry Justice!
For brave ships burned, and doomed men drowned, One shadow-binding
criminal goes unfound.
LAY FOR THE STRANDED WARHOST THIRD AGE YEAR 5645
CHAPTER 1. Second Convocation
Sethvir of Althain soaked in his hip bath those rare times when he
suffered glum spirits. Lapped like a carp in warm water, his hair
frizzled over the sculptured bones of thin shoulders, he sulked with
his
chin in his fists while the steam whorled up through the hanks of his
beard and dripped off the white combs of his brows. Misted and
half-closed with melancholy, his eyes seemed to cast their brooding
focus on his gnarled toes, now perched in a row on the tub's rim.
The nails curled in neglected need of trimming.
Of more telling concern to Sethvir, Prince Arithon's brilliant strike
at
Minderl Bay had still failed the wider scope of his intent.
If the allied northern war host recruited to hound him had been
dismantled with lightest losses, Lysaer s'llessid's misled following
had
not awakened to perceive the stark truth: that what had destroyed
their
sea fleet at Werpoint had been less a bloody ploy of the Shadow
Master's
than the mishandled force of Lysaer's own gift of light, maligned by
Desh-thiere's curse.
The one ship's captain lent the insight to know differently lay
slain,
beset in a dingy dockside alley. The footpads who knifed him had
been
hired by Avenor's Lord Commander for political expediency, Sethvir
knew
beyond doubt. As Arithon's sole witness, and a man who had viewed
the
unalloyed directive of the Mistwraith's geas firsthand, the seaman
had
been killed before he could cast any pall of public doubt upon Prince
Lysaer's judgment in defense. Remanned by a crew of less-
questionable
loyalty, his benighted brig would sail south with the tide for
Alestron,
Lysaer s'llessid and the pick of his officers on board.
The sorry conclusion weighed like a stone in the heart.
If Arithon had just demonstrated his fullest understanding of the
curse
that shackled his will, if this second encounter at Minderl Bay had
increased his respect for its fearful train of ill consequence, his
half
brother Lysaer owned no such searching self-awareness.
Misconstrued by the gift of the s'llessid royal line, which bound his
relentless pursuit of justice, Tysan's lost prince remained the sad
puppet of circumstance. To the root of his conscience, he stayed
righteously assured that he held to honorable principles. He
believed
his born cause was to hunt down and eliminate a confirmed minion of
evil.
Sethvir glowered into the soap-scummed surface of his bathwater, then
blinked, as if for the barest, fragmentary second, he had thought to
see
stars in the suds clinging about his knobby knees.
Stars; idle musing sharpened into farsight. The
muddled distance in the Sorcerer's blue-green eyes snapped into
sudden,
sharp focus. His wet skin stabbed into gooseflesh, Sethvir bolted
from
his tub. Water splashed jagged stains in his abused scarlet carpet.
He
snatched up his robe, burrowed it over his wet head, then paused
through
a drawn-out, prickling shudder as dread raked through him once again.
Grazed against the limits of his awareness, beyond the world's wind-
spun
cloak of living air, an event of chilling wrongness carved a line.
Its
fire-tailed passage jostled the harmonics of the stars into thin and
jangling discord.
Sethvir took only an instant to confirm that the upset was
bound to an associate Sorcerer's Name and signature.
Kharadmon of the Fellowship was at long last returning from the
interdicted worlds beyond South Gate, and an immediate crisis came
with
him.
The Warden of Althain rushed barefoot from his personal chambers.
He slapped wet footprints up the spiral stair to reach the library in
the tower's topmost chamber. Even as his hand tripped the latch and
flung wide the oaken door, his cry of distress rang out to summon his
disparate colleagues.
Ranged over vast distance, the call roused Luhaine from his sojourn
to
settle the ghosts drawn back across the veil of the mysteries by the
doings of a necromancer, who then abandoned them to winnow in lost
patterns over the frost-burned waste of Scarpdale.
Asandir was in Halwythwood, reconsecrating the old Paravian standing
stones that held and warded the earthforce; he would ride in driving
haste to reach the power focus at Caith-al-Caen, but not in time to
trap
the dawn sun surge for a spell transfer.
The raven which flew partnered with Traithe sailed on the air
currents
above Vastmark. Its master tested the fault lines in the slopes,
that
shepherds too poor to survive losses not pen their flocks through the
winter in valleys prone to shale slides.
The pair, bird and Sorcerer, were too distant from Atainia to help.
No
recourse existed. The sense of pending danger grew in Sethvir,
sharper
and more pressing by the second.
He needed the particulars of what was wrong, and quickly, but
Kharadmon
proved too beleaguered to send details. The door from the stairwell
at
Althain had barely slammed shut when Sethvir flung open the casement.
Autumn wind sheared fresh chill over his soggy beard and dripping
skin,
crisp with the musk of dying bracken. The Sorcerer shivered again,
hounded by urgency. Before he raised wards and grand conjury against
disaster, he could have done with a scalding mug of tea.
The speed of event left no time. An icier vortex of air laced
through
the wet tails of his beard: vexed as always by the untimely nature of
emergencies, Luhaine blew in on a huffed breeze of inquiry.
"It's Kharadmon, coming home," Sethvir explained. His attention
stayed
pinned on the white points of stars, strung between flying scraps of
cloud. "Before you ask, he's brought trouble along with him."
"That's his born nature," Luhaine snapped. "Like the dissonance in a
cracked crystal, some things in life never sweeten."
Sethvir maintained polite silence, then spoiled all pretense to
dignity
by gathering his draggled beard and wringing the soggy hanks like a
rag.
Soapy runners slid down his wrists and dampened the rucked hems of
his
sleeves. While the catspaw gusts of his colleague's irritation
riffled
the pages of his books, he held his face tipped skyward. Starshine
imprinted the glassy surface of his eyes through long and listening
minutes.
Then the last tinge of color drained from his wizened cheeks.
Luhaine's presence resolved into concentrated stillness.
"Ath have mercy, what is it?"
Sethvir whirled in an agitated squall of shed droplets, "Wards," he
cried, terse. "Two sets, concentric. We must circle all Athera for
protection, then ring this tower as haven and catchpoint for a spirit
under threat of possession."
"Kharadmon! Under siege?" Luhaine exclaimed.
Sethvir nodded, speechless. Three steps impelled him to the table's
edge. He plowed a clear space among his clutter of parchments.
Two candlestands toppled. A tea mug rocked out into air, spell-
caught
before it shattered against the stone floor by Luhaine's fussy
penchant
for tidiness.
Amid a pelting storm of flung papers, Sethvir set up the black iron
brazier and ignited its pan, cold blue with the current of the third
lane. Too pressed to trifle with marking his presence with an image,
Luhaine immersed his whole being into the lane's quickened flow, then
channeled his awareness through the old energy paths that past
Paravian
dancers had scribed across the earth to interlink the world's
magnetic
flux at each solstice. His task was made difficult by rites fallen
into
disuse. Everywhere the tracery was reduced to faint glimmers.
m any lines were snarled, or severed by obstructions where migrant
herders had unknowingly built sheepfolds, or significant trees had
been
cut, creating sharp breaks in continuity. Meadows long harrowed by
the
plowshare's cold iron contorted the energy flow. The powers Luhaine
laced in patterns across the land resisted and sought to bleed from
his
grasp, to dissipate in useless bursts of static, except in
convergence
around Jaelot, where Arithon's past meddling with music at the crux
of a
lane tide had scoured the paths to clean operancy.
Kharadmon's straits would not wait for perfection. Forced against
his
grain to rely upon hurried handiwork, Luhaine was scarcely ready as
Sethvir murmured, "Now."
Crowded to the edge of a chair already occupied by a tipsy stack of
books, Sethvir tucked his chin in cupped palms. His china-bright
eyes
glazed and went sightless as he plunged into the throes of deep
trance.
Luhaine felt the Warden's consciousness twine through the lane-spark
in
the brazier, then beyond to access the earth net.
Now interlinked with the broad-scale scope of Sethvir's specialized
vision, he, too, could sense the white-orange fireball which scored
the
black deeps toward Athera. At firsthand, he grasped the peril drawn
in
from the worlds sealed past South Gate. The measure of its virulence
lay beyond spoken language to express. Whatever fearsome, coiling
presence had become attached in pursuit of Kharadmon, it carried a
malevolence to stun thought.
Far too methodical for volatile emotion, Luhaine matched effort with
Althain's Warden and cast his whole resource into a call to raise the
earth's awareness into guard.
Not unlike the consciousness of stone, the balanced mesh of forces
which
comprised the disparate qualities of bedrock, and rich loam, and the
fiery, heartcore of magma danced to their own staid pace. Ath
Creator's
living stamp upon the land owned no concept for desperate necessity.
Sluggish to rouse, slower still to catalyze into change from within,
the
deepest dreams of the earth counted the passage of years and seasons
little more than an animal might mark the singular sum of its own
heartbeats. Seas and shore noted the trials of men and sorcerers
less
than the wild deer took stock of biting insects.
To pierce through that current of quiescence, Sethvir and Luhaine
re-wove the third lane's bright forces into a chord that framed Name.
Attuned to their effort, long leagues to the east, Asandir linked the
hoofbeats of the horse who galloped under him into a tattoo of
distress.
The rhythm struck down through topsoil and stone there, to resound
the
full length of the fourth lane.
Hours passed before the earth heeded. More minutes, before deep-laid
energies quickened in response. In paired, reckless speed, the
Fellowship Sorcerers sited at Althain conjoined the roused charge of
the
world's two dozen major power lanes.
They took small care to shield their efforts. Any outside mind
attuned
to the mysteries could not fail to overhear the cry as primal
elements
sparked awake to the play of meddled mystery. Koriani enchantresses
reached for spell crystals to gauge the pulse of change, while
mariners
shot awake as the winds whined and gusted in unnatural key through
their
rigging.
Sailors on deck cowered and gripped lucky amulets in fear, for across
the broad deeps of the oceans, flared lines the blued tinge of
lightning
sheared beneath the foam of the wavecrests.
In Halwythwood, the gray, lichened standing stones just blessed by
Asandir discharged a purple corona of wild power.
Along the old roads and on the hillcrests revered in the timelost
rites
of First Age ceremony, the spirit imprints of Paravians shone like
wisps
drawn in silver point and starlight.
The bones of forsaken ruins keened in pitched tones of harmonics.
An uprooted jumble of carved rock by the fired brick walls of Avenor
moaned aloud, though no breeze at all combed through its exposed
nooks
and crannies.
At Althain Tower, as the last of the energy paths joined, Sethvir
pushed
erect and scrabbled through his books to find a sliver of white
chalk.
Within the pooled glow from the brazier, he scribed runes in parallel
columns; in circles; in triangles; in counterlocked squares, the
symbols
of guard and of ward. He bordered the whole with a blessing of
protection.
Then he added the tracery which framed the tidal surge of life,
renewed
year to year, century to century, age to age, each thread wound and
strengthened to a brilliance of diversity on the natural loom of
storm,
disease, and calamity.
He sketched the symbols of beginning and ending that, entwined,
formed
the arc of eternity. He added the patience of stone and the
endurance
of air, that flowed through all change without resistance; then the
blind grace of trees, that reached for the light despite trials of
weather and ice.
The widening scrawl of the Warden's symbols glimmered in pale
phosphor
against the obsidian tabletop. His fingernails snapped sparks like
the
clash of flint to steel where power bled through his written
tapestry.
Minutes passed and stars turned. Nightfall silvered dew on the stems
of
wild grasses.
Sethvir felt these things and weighed them as precious, while his
labors
tuned and channeled the ozone torrent of raw force; until his wet
hair
fanned dry, then raised and crackled with static, and the tower's
slate
roof sang, each shingle in singular counterpoint.
"Hurry," Luhaine whispered through a thundering gust that swooped in
to
rattle the unlatched casements. The currents poised between him and
Sethvir were fast cresting to the cusp of explosion. To stay them in
containment for any span of time demanded more than two Sorcerers'
paired strength. Luhaine dared not slacken his grip. If his control
slipped in the slightest degree, the unbalance would trip off an
elemental backlash.
The rampage of spilled energy could unleash a cyclone of ruin to lash
up
the ire of the earth. Should natural order be cast into chaos,
storms
would run riot; whole strips of coastline would be torn into change.
Great quakes would shake the dry land and the seas. From the
volcanoes
that fumed like sleeping dragons in Northstrait to the dormant
cauldrons
crowning the clouded peaks of the Tiriacs, the great continent itself
might crack corner to corner in a seam of burst fault lines, to vent
steam and boulders, or spew lava in swaths of destruction.
Sethvir dashed sweat from the tip of his nose and scribed the last
flourish on a cipher. "Now," he whispered into air drawn so taut,
the
word seemed snapped from strung wire.
Like magma poured from a crucible, Luhaine bent the poised powers of
the
earth through the construct formed by Sethvir's rune seals. The
ancient
stone tabletop rang out like mallet-struck iron. White chalk lines
glimmered green, then blazed into light fierce enough to blast
untrained
sight into blindness.
Sethvir cried out, his outline immolated by a burn of wild radiance
too
intense for breathing flesh to encompass. He dared not succumb to
the
flood of bodily sensation. Every faculty he possessed fought to
master
the influx, then deflect its blind torrent to imprint defense wards
in
figured arcs across the heavens.
Outside the tower window, the sky flared a fleeting, raw orange.
Then lines crossed the stars, tuned in strict mirror image from the
arcane markings scribed upon the table. A spiked scent of ozone
whetted
the winds, and a thunderous report slammed and rumbled above the
frost-rimed wastes surrounding Althain.
Then the glow of grand conjury dimmed and faded.
Chalked lines of fire subsided to the dull glare of cinders, then
dissipated, febrile as blown wisps of ash. Peace remained. The land
spread quiet under untrammeled starlight; but to any with mage-sight
to
witness, the cloak of the night lay patterned across with a spidery
blue
tracery of guard spells.
Barefoot and rumpled in his water-stained robe, his hair a thatched
nest
of tangles, Sethvir of Althain regarded his handiwork and muttered a
prayer to Ath that his stopgap effort was sufficient.
Luhaine was too distressed to grumble recriminations. Already
withdrawn
from communion with the earth, he weighed the most expedient means by
which the wards over Althain Tower could be realigned to aid
Kharadmon
in his predicament.
Scant seconds remained before the problem came to roost in their
midst.
Luhaine demanded more facts. "I presume our colleague is beset by
wraiths of the same sort and origin as the ones that grant the
Mistwraith its sentience."
Sethvir grunted an assent, his knuckles latched white in his
beard. Once again, his eyes were wide open and blank as his
awareness
ranged outward to track the inbound progress of Kharadmon.
A minute passed before he voiced the worst of all possible
conclusions.
"The creatures in pursuit are free wraiths not embodied in any shell
of
mist."
Which meant a binding would be needed that was every bit as potent as
the one which sealed the jasper flask prisoned inside Rockfell Pit.
Luhaine asked a permission, then made a change to Althain's outer
wards
that crackled the air beyond the casements. He added in acerbic
disapproval, "Kharadmon shouldered an unspeakable risk to draw such
entities to Athera."
"He had no choice." Sethvir seemed suddenly as fragile as a figure
cast
in porcelain as he recovered his chalk stub and scribbled a fresh
round
of ciphers on the windowsill. "Rather, the beacon spell Asandir and
I
sent to rescue him became the turn of ill luck to force his hand."
The implications behind that admission were broad-scale and laced
with
ironies enough to seed tragedy. Wordless in his anguish, Sethvir
passed
on what he knew: that Kharadmon had heard every call, every thought,
every entreaty dispatched from Althain Tower to urge him home.
He had been unable to answer, locked as he was into conflict against
hostile entities.
These had been bent on his destruction from the instant he was
recognized for an emissary from Athera, and a Sorcerer of the
Fellowship
of Seven. The wraiths cut off beyond South Gate desired to
assimilate
his knowledge of grand conjury for their own ends. In stealth, in
patience, Kharadmon had fought to outwit them. Adversity had only
reconfirmed the gravity of his quest, to unriddle the Name of the
Mistwraith incarcerated back at Rockfell Peak, that its tormented
spirits could be redeemed and two princes be freed from its curse.
"That beacon held the signature map of all Athera," Sethvir ended in
a
stripped whisper. "We used the very trees to tie its binding."
Luhaine absorbed the ripples of wider quandary like a thunderclap.
Long years in the past, at the hour of the Mistwraith's first
incursion,
Traithe had sealed South Gate to close off its point of entry at
hideous
personal cost. Now, through the conjury sent to recall Kharadmon,
the
main body of the mists once thwarted from the crossing were offered
another means to trace Athera. Until every tree, every sapling and
seed
that had lent its vibration to the homing spell had lived out its
allotted span of days, a tenuous tie would remain, a ghost imprint of
the mighty ward dispatched across the void to recontact those
sundered
worlds. The threat remained in force, that those truncated spirits
once
a part of Desh-thiere's autonomy might seek to rejoin their fellows
still precariously sealed alive in Rockfell Pit.
"Dharkaron's black vengeance!" Luhaine burst out, a shattering
departure
for a spirit well-known to condemn his colleagues' oaths as a
mannerless
lack of imagination. The fear behind his outburst stayed unspoken,
that
the Fellowship's covenant with the Paravian races might be thrown
irredeemably into jeopardy.
"Quite," Sethvir said in sour summary. Any outside chance of renewed
conflict with the Mistwraith meant the Fellowship might need their
princes' irreplaceable talents with light and shadow once again.
The scope of fresh setback staggered thought. For as long as the
lives
of the royal half brothers lay entangled into enmity by the curse,
its
ever-tightening spiral " would drive them toward a final annihilating
conflict. The risks would but increase over time.
The Warden of Althain bent a furrowed scowl toward his sprawl of
runes
and seals. "Let us pray that Kharadmon has brought us back answers
and
a Name for this terror from the gate worlds."
Luhaine drifted in from a point poised in air beyond the window.
"Your hope is premature." Ever the pessimist, he keyed a seal into
power, and, with a flaring crack, a blue net of light enmeshed the
tower's high battlement. "First, we have to rescue the rash idiot
from
his latest tangle with calamity."
A bone-chilling gust tinged with ozone flayed a sudden gap through
the
clouds. The wards above Althain flared purple and sealed in a white
effusion of sparks. Sethvir laid down his chalk, bemused to dismay,
while disturbed breezes settled, riming the windowsill next to his
elbow
with diamond crystals of ice.
"Don't act so virtuous, Luhaine," retorted the Fellowship spirit just
returned. A peppery insouciance clipped his speech.
"I recall the days when you did little but sit about eating muffins
摘要：

THEWARSOFLIGHTANDSHADOWbyHOSTOFVASTMARKVOLUMETWOofShipsofHarperPrismAnImprintofHarperPaperbacksDedicationForJaneJohnson,forthegrandleapoffaiththanksistoosmallaword.AcknowledgmentsMythankstothesalesforceatHarperCollins,whoseeffortsmakeallthedifference:andtothosewhoworkinthebookshops,whohandlethedream...

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