Janny Wurts - Light & Shadows 2 - The Ships of Merior

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The Wars of Light and Shadows: VOLUME 2

Two princes, dark and fair

Cursed by the Mistwraith, Desh-thiere

Hate bound them

Blood crowned them

'Til cold death, war must hound them:

Vie for the shadows and the light

Die blind in shadows, burned in light

Cry, 'Down the shadows, hail the light!'

verse from a children's game

Fourth Age 1220

I. MISCREANT

On the morning the Fellowship sorcerer who had crowned the King at

Ostermere fared northward on the old disused road, the five years of peace

precariously re-established since the carnage that followed the Mist-

wraith's defeat as yet showed no sign of breaking.

The moment seemed unlikely for happenstance to intrude and shape a

spiralling succession of events to upend loyalties and kingdoms. Havish's

coastal landscape with its jagged, shady valleys wore the mottled greens

of late spring. Dew still spangled the leaf-tips, touched brilliant by early

sunlight. Asandir rode in his shirtsleeves, the dark, silver-banded mantle

lately worn for the royal coronation folded inside his saddle pack. Hair

of the same fine silver blew uncovered in the gusts that whipped off the

sea; that tossed the clumped bracken on the hill crests and fanned gorse

against lichened outcrops of quartz rock. The black stud who bore him

strode hock-deep in grass, alone beneath cloudless sky. Wildflowers

thrashed by its passage sweetened the air with perfume and the jagging

flight of disturbed bees.

For the first time in centuries of service, Asandir was solitary, and on

an errand of no pressing urgency. The ruthless war, the upsets to rule

and to trade that had savaged the north in the wake of the Mistwraith's

imprisonment had settled, if not into the well-governed order secured for

Havish, then at least into patterns that confined latent hatreds to the

avenues of statecraft and politics. Better than most, Asandir knew the

respite was fated not to last. His memories were bitter and hurtful, of

the great curse cast by the Mistwraith to set both its captors at odds; the

land's restoration to clear sky bought at a cost of two mortal destinies

and the land's lasting peace.

Unless the Fellowship sorcerers could find means to break

Desh-thiere's geas of hatred against the royal half-brothers whose gifts

brought its bane, the freed sunlight that warmed the growing eart

yet be paid for in blood. With the restored throne of Havish firml'

its crowned heir, Asandir at last rode to join his colleagues in thei

to unbind the Mistwraith's two victims from the vicious throe

vengeance.

Relaxed in rare contentment, too recently delivered from cent~

sunless damp to take the hale spring earth for granted, he let hi

soar with the winds. The road he had chosen was years overgrow:

more than a crease that meandered through thorn and brushb

re-emerge where the growth was browsed close by deer. Desl:

banished mists, the townsmen still held uneasy fears of open spac~

the sites of forgotten mysteries. Northbound travellers innately p~

to book their passage by ship.

Untroubled by the after-presence of Paravian spirits, not at all di:

by the foundations of ancient ruins that underlay the hammocks

roses, the sorcerer rode with his reins looped. He followed the wa

out misstep, guided by memories that predated the most we~

broken wall. His appearance of reverie was deceptive. At each n

mage-heightened senses resonated with the natural energies tl~

rounded him. The sun on his shoulders became a benedictio~

counterpoint and celebration to the ringing reverberation that w~

striking shadow off edges of wild stone.

When a dissonance snagged in the weave, reflex and habit s

Asandir's complaisance. His powers of perception tightened to tr

immediate cause.

Whatever bad news approached from the south, his mount'

senses caught no sign. The stallion snorted, shook out his mane,

Asandir rein him over to the verge of the trail. Long minutes

drum roll of galloping hooves startled the larks to songless flight

the messenger on his labouring mount hove into view, the sorc~

his saddle, frowning; while the stud, bored with waiting, cropper

The courier wore royal colours, the distinctive scarlet tabard a~

hawk blazon of the king's personal service snapped into creases

the breeze. No common message bearer, he owned the carriage of -~

pion fighter. But the battle-brash courage that graced his reputati

missing as he hauled his horse to a prancing, head-shaking halt.

The man was a fool, who eagerly brought trouble to the ear of a i

ship sorcerer.

Briskly annoyed, Asandir spoke before the king's rider could

his uncertainty. 'I know you were sent by your liege. If my spel

Dakar is cause and root of some problem, I say now, as I told his ~

and the realm's steward on my departure: there is no possible di~

that might stem from an apprentice's misdeeds that your High

justice cannot handle.'

The messenger nursed lathered reins to divert his eye-rolling

from her sidewards crabsteps through the bracken. 'Begging pardon, Sor-

cerer. But Dakar got himself drunk. There was a fight.' Sweating pale

before Asandir's displeasure, he finished in a crisp rush. 'Your spell-

binder's got himself knifed and King Eldit's healers say he'll bleed to

death.'

'Oh, indeed?' The words bit the quiet like sheared metal. Asandir's

brows cocked up. Features laced over with creases showed a moment of

fierce surprise. Then he started his black up from a mouthful of grass

and spun him thundering back toward the city.

Alone in the derelict roadway on a sidling, race-bred horse, the royal

courier had no mind to linger. He was not clan kindred, to feel at ease

in the wild places where the old stones lay carved with uncanny patterns

to snag and bewitch a man's thoughts. The instant his over-strung mare

quit her tussle with the bit, he nursed her along at a trot, relieved to be

spared the company of a sorcerer any right-thinking mortal knew better

than to presume not to fear.

The city known as the jewel of the southwest coast flung an ungainly

sprawl of battlements across the crown of a cove. Built over warrens of

limestone caves once used as a smuggler's haven, the architecture

reflected twelve centuries of changing tastes, battered as much by storms

as by war, and bearing like layers in sediment the mismatched masonry of

refortifications and repairs. Sea trade provided the marrow of Ostermere's

wealth. Walls of tawny brick abutted bulwarks of native limestone, scab-

rous with moss and smothered in lee-facing crannies by salt-stunted run-

ners of wild ivy. The whole overlooked a series of weathered ledges that

commanded a west-facing inlet, each tier crusted with half-timber shops

and slate-roofed mansions still gay with bunting and gold streamers from

celebration of the king's accession. If the merchant galleys docked along

the seaside gates no longer flew banners at their mastheads, if the guards

by the harbourmaster's office had shed ceremonial accoutrements for

boiled leather hauberks and plain steel, a charge of excitement yet

lingered.

In all the realm, this city had been honoured as the royal seat until the

walls at Telmandir could be raised out of ruin and restored to the splen-

dours of years past. An alertness like frost clung to the men hand-picked

for the royal guard. Out of pride for their youthful sovereign, they had

the unused north postern winched open and the shanty market that

encroached upon its bailey cleared of beggars and squatters' stalls when

Asandir's stallion clattered through.

In a courtyard still gloomy under overhanging tenements, the sorcerer

dismounted. He tossed his reins to a barefoot boy groom grown familiar

with the stud through the months of change as town governance

had been replaced by sovereign monarchy. Without pause for greeting,

Asandir strode off, scattering geese and a loose pig from the pud

run-off by the wash house. He dodged through men in sweaty tunics

unloaded tuns from an ale dray, avoided a bucket-bearing scullion

crossed without mishap through the tumbling brown melee of a ~

hound bitch's cavorting pups.

Just arrived, all but brushed aside with the same brisk lack of cerem

the captain of Ostermere's garrison pumped on fat legs to join the

cerer. A capricious gust snatched his unbelted surcoat. Clutching sc:

broadcloth with both hands to escape getting muffled by his clothin~

relayed facts with a directness at odds with his untidy turnout.

'It was a damnfool accident, the Mad Prophet so drunken he c,

barely stand upright. He'd visited the kitchens to meet a maid he clai

he'd an assignation with. Muddled as he was, he kissed the wrong d

Her husband came in at just the right time to lose his temper.' The

captain gave a one-handed shrug, his brows beetled over his beefy r~

'The knife was handy on the butchef's block, and the wound-'

Asandir cut him off. 'The details won't matter.' He reached the

vants' postern, flung it open fast enough to whistle air, and added, '~

gate guards are missing their gold buttons.'

Ostermere's ranking captain swore. An unlikely, swordsman's ag

allowed him to nip through the fast-closing panel. 'The meatbrain~

themselves fleeced at dice. Not a man of them will own up, but s

you ask, there were bystanders who fingered Dakar as the instigato~

'I thought so.' Light through an ancient arrow-slit sliced ac

Asandir's shoulders as he traversed the corridor behind the pantries

began in long strides to climb stairs. Instructions trailed echoing be]

him. 'Inform your royal liege I'm here. Ask if he'll please attend m

once in Dakar's bedchamber.'

Dismissed with one foot raised to mount an empty landing, the

captain spun about. 'Ask my liege, indeed! I know a command wh

hear one. And I'd beg on my knees for Dharkaron Avenger's own ju

ment before I'd shift places with Dakar.'

From far above, Asandir's voice cracked back in crisp reverbera1

'For the Mad Prophet's transgressions this time, Dharkaron's judgen

would be too merciful.'

High-browed, intelligent, and shrewdly even*tempered for a lad of ~

teen years, King Eldir arrived in a state of disarray as striking as

ranking captain's. Swiping back tousled brown hair, sweat-damp fro

running ascent of several flights of tower stairs, he heaved off cloak,

and tabard, and shed a gold-trimmed load of state velvets without apo

onto a bench in a lover's nook. In just dread of Asandir's inquiry, he je~

down the tails of an undertunic threadbare enough to have belonge

an apprentice labourer and mouthed exasperated excuses to himself.

sorry. But the drawers the tailors' guild sent had enough ties and eyelets

to corset a whore, and too much lace makes me itch.'

Eldir broke off, embarrassed. The sorcerer he hastened to meet was not

attending his injured charge, but standing stone-still in the hallway, one

shoulder braced against the doorjamb and his face bent into shadow.

The young king paled in dismay. 'Ath's mercy! We reached you too

late to help.'

Asandir glanced up, eyes bright. 'Certainly not.' He inclined his head

toward the door. Muffled voices issued from the other side, one male

and laboured, another one female, bewailing misfortune in lisping

sympathy.

Eldir's interest quickened. Even in extremis, it appeared the infamous

Mad Prophet had pursued his ill-starred assignation. Then, practical

enough to restrain his wild thoughts, Havish's sovereign sighed in dis-

appointment. 'You've healed him already, I see.'

The sorcerer shook his head. Dire as oncoming storm, he spun in the

corridor, tripped the latch without noise and barged into Dakar's bed-

chamber.

The panel opened to reveal a pleasant, sunwashed alcove, cushioned

chairs carved with grape clusters, and a feather mattress piled with quilts.

The casement admitted a flood of ocean air lightly tainted by the tar the

chandlers sold to black rigging. Swathed like a sausage in eiderdown, a

chubby man lay with a face wan as bread dough and a beard like the

curled fringe on a water-spaniel. Caught leaning over to kiss him, the

pretty blonde kitchen maid with the knife-wielding husband murmured

into his ear, 'I will grieve for you and pray to Ath to preserve your undying

memory.'

'Which won't be the least bit necessary!' Asandir cracked from his

planted stance by the doorway.

At his shoulder, Eldir started.

The maid snapped erect with a squeal and the quilts jerked, the victim

beneath galvanized to a fish-flop start of surprise. A fondling hand recoiled

from under a froth of lace petticoats as Dakar swivelled cinnamon eyes,

widened now to rolling rings of white.

The tableau endured a frozen moment. Already pale, the sorcerer's

wounded apprentice gasped a bitten-off curse, then to outward appearance

fell comatose.

'Out!' Asandir jerked his chin toward the girl, who cast aside dignity,

gathered her skirts above her knees and fled trailing unlaced furbelows.

As her footsteps dwindled down the corridor, the sorcerer kicked the

door closed. A paralysed stillness descended, against which the rumble

of ale tuns over cobbles seemed to thunder off the courtyard walls outside.

Beyond the opened shutter, the call of the changing watch drifted off the

wall walks, mingled with the bellow of the baker's oaths as he collared

a laggard scullion. The yap of gambolling puppies, the grind of wagons

across Ostermere market and the screeling cries of scavenging gulls

seemed unreal, even dreamlike, before the stark tension in the room.

Asandir first addressed the king, who waited, frowning thoughtfully.

'Although I ask that the secrets of mages be kept from common know-

ledge in your court, I would have you understand just how far my appren-

tice has misled you.' He stepped to Dakar's bedside and with no shred of

solicitude, ripped away quilting and sheets.

Dakar bit his lip, poker stiff, while his master yanked off the sodden

dressing that swaddled the side the baking girl's husband had punctured.

The linen came free, gory as any bandage might be if pulled untimely

from a mortal wound. Except the flesh beneath was unmarked.

King Eldir gaped in surprise.

'Dakar,' Asandir informed, 'is this day five hundred and eighty-seven

years old. He has longevity training. As you see, the suffering of wounds

and illness is entirely within his powers to mend.'

'He was in no danger,' Eldir stated in rising, incredulous fury. He folded

his arms, head tipped sidewards, while skin smudged with the first shaved

trace of a beard deepened to a violent, fresh flush. That moment, he

needed no crown to lend him majesty. 'For whim, the realm's champion

was sent out and told to run my fastest mare to death to fetch your

master?'

Naked and pink and far too corpulent to cower into a feather mattress,

Dakar shoved stubby hands in the hair at his temples. He licked dry

lips, flinched from Asandir and squirmed. 'I'm sorry.' His shrug was less

charming than desperate.

'Were you my subject, I'd have your life.' Eldir flicked a glance at the

sorcerer, whose eyes were like butcher's steel fresh from the whetstone.

'Since you're not my feal man, regretfully, I can't offer that kindness.'

Sweat rolled through Dakar's fingers and snaked across his plump

wrists. His breathing came now in jerks, while lard at his knees jumped

and quivered.

Eldir inclined his head toward Asandir. 'Perhaps I should wait for you

without?' Mindful of his dignity, he side-stepped toward the door.

Alone and defenceless before his master, Dakar covered his face.

Through his palms, he said, 'Ath! If it's to be tracing mazes through sand

grains again, for mercy, get on with your traps and be done with me.'

'That wasn't what I had in mind.' Asandir advanced to the bedside. He

said something almost too soft to hear, cut by a wild, ragged cry from

Dakar that trailed off to snivelling, then silence.

Eldir rushed his step to shut the door. But the panel was caught short

before it slammed, and Asandir stepped through. He set the latch with

steady fingers, turned around to regard the King of Havish, and said suc-

cinctly, 'Nightmares. They should occupy the Mad Prophet at least until

sundown. He'll emerge hungry, and I sadly fear, not in the least bit

chastened.' Between one breath and the next, the sorcerer recovered his

humour. 'Do I owe you for more than your guardsmen's allotment of

gold buttons?'

'Not me.' Eldir sighed, strain and uncertainty returned to pull at the

corners of his mouth. 'The oldest son of the town seneschal staked his

mother's jewellery on bad cards, and I'm not sure exactly who started

the dare. But the cook's fattened hog escaped its pen. The creature wound

up in a warehouse and spoiled the raw wool consigned for the dyers at

Natres. Truth to tell, the guild master's council of Ostermere is howling

for Dakar's blood. My guard captain held orders to clap him in chains

when the fight broke out in the kitchen.'

'I leave my apprentice to protect you for one day and find you exhausted

by a hard lesson in diplomacy.' Asandir's grin flashed like a burst of

sudden sunlight. He laid a steering hand on the royal shoulder and started

off down the corridor. 'From this moment, consider my apprentice

removed from the realm's concerns. Your steward Machiel should be able

to guard your safety well enough, since you've managed to hold Havish

secure through Dakar's irresponsible worst. I've decided exactly what I

shall do with our errant prophet and I doubt he takes it well.'

'You'd punish him further?' The habits of an unassuming boyhood still

with him, Eldir paused by the windowseat to gather his discarded state

finery. 'What could be worse than harrowing the man with uninterrupted

bad dreams?'

'Very little.' Asandir's eyes gleamed with sharp irony. 'When Dakar

awakens, you will send him from court on a travelling allowance

I'll leave for his reassignment. Tell him his task is to keep Prince

Arithon of Rathain from getting murdered by Etarra's new division of

field troops.'

Eldir stopped cold in the corridor. After five years, accounts were still

repeated of the bloody war that had slaughtered two thirds of Etarra's

garrison and left the northern clansmen real to Arithon nearly decimated

in the cause of defending his life. Motivated by a feud between half-

brothers embroiled in bitter enmity; lent deadly stakes by the same

powers of sorcery that had once defeated the Mistwraith; and fanned

hotter by age-old friction still standing elsewhere between clanborn and

townsman, the conflict had since brought the unified opposition of every

merchant city in Rathain. The prince with blood-right to rule there was

a marked and hunted man. Every trade guild within his own borders was

eager to skewer him in cold blood.

Havish's emphatically neutral sovereign made a sound between a cough

and a grunt as he considered Dakar's penchant for trouble appended to

the man called Master of Shadow, that half of the north wanted dead. 'I

shouldn't presume to advise, but isn't that fairly begging fate to get

Rathain a killed prince?'

'So one might think,' Asandir mused, not in the least bit concerned.

'Except Arithon s'Ffalenn needs none of Dakar's help just now. On the

contrary, he's perhaps the one man alive who may be capable of holding

the Mad Prophet to heel. The match should prove engagingly fascinating

Each man holds the other in the utmost of scorn and contempt.'

Petition

The next event in the widening chain of happenstance provoked by the

Mistwraith's bane arose at full summer, when visitors from Rathain's

clan survivors sought audience with another high chieftain in the neigh-

bouring realm to the west. Hailed as she knelt on damp pine needles in

the midst of dressing out a deer, Lady Maenalle bent a hawk-sharp gaze

on the breathless messenger.

'Fatemaster's justice, why now?' Bloodied to the wrists, her knife

poised over a welter of steaming entrails, the woman who also shouldered

the power of Tysan's regency shoved up from her knees with a quickness

that belied her sixty years. Feet straddled over the half-gutted carcass,

the man's leathers she preferred for daily wear belted to a waist still

whipcord trim, Maenalle pushed back close-cropped hair with the

back of her least sticky wrist. She said to the boy who had jogged up a

mountainside to fetch her, 'Speak clearly. These aren't the usual clan

spokesmen we've received from Rathain before?'

'Lady, not this time.' Sure her displeasure boded ill for the scouts,

whose advance word now seemed negligently scant on facts, the boy

answered fast. 'The company numbers fifteen, led by a tall man named

Red-beard. His war captain Caolle travels with him.'

'fieret Red-beard? The young s'Valerient heir?' Grim in dismay,

Maenalle cast a bothered glance over her gore-spattered leathers. 'But

he's Deshir's chieftain, and Earl of the North!'

A state delegation from across the water, no less; and led by Prince

Arithon's blood-pacted liegeman, who happened also to be caithdein, or

'shadow behind the throne', hereditary warden of Rathain. Maenalle let

fly a blistering oath.

Then, infected by spurious, private triumph, for she despised formality

and skirts, she burst into dee,p-throated laughter. 'Well, they'll just have

to take me as I am,' she ended with a lift of dark eyebrows. 'I've got time

to find a stream to sluice off ? Good. The hunting party's off down the

gorge. Somebody ought to go after them and let my grandson know what's

afoot.' She bit her lip, recalled to the deer, too sorely needed to abandon

for scavengers to pick.

The young messenger offered to take the knife in her stead. 'Lady, 1

can finish up the butchering.'

Maenalle smiled. 'Good lad. I thought so, but really, this should be

Maien's problem.'

Her moods were fair-minded enough to let the boy relax. 'Lady, if you

both meet Prince Arithon's delegation reeking of offal, s'Gannley might

be called out for insult.'

'Imp.' Maenalle relinquished her fouled blade and took a swipe at the

child's ear, which he ducked before he got blood-smeared. 'Titles aside,

Rathain's warden is very little older than you are. If he cries insult, I'll

ask his war captain to cut down a birch switch and thrash him.'

Which words seemed a fine and suitable retort, until Maenalle's

descent from the forested plateau forced an interval for sober thought.

Chilled by the premature twilight of an afternoon cut off from sunlight,

she entered the hidden ravine that held her clans' summer refuge. In

silence, she numbered the years that had slipped past, all unnoticed.

Red-beard was not a childish nickname. Jieret s'Valerient in sober fact

was but one season older than Maien; no boy any more, if not yet fully

a man.

Small wonder the young scout had stifled his smile at her mention ot

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摘要：

TheWarsofLightandShadows:VOLUME2Twoprinces,darkandfairCursedbytheMistwraith,Desh-thiereHateboundthemBloodcrownedthem'Tilcolddeath,warmusthoundthem:ViefortheshadowsandthelightDieblindinshadows,burnedinlightCry,'Downtheshadows,hailthelight!'versefromachildren'sgameFourthAge1220I.MISCREANTOnthemorningt...

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