Kitabı oku: «The Curse of the Mistwraith», sayfa 5
Prelude
On a high, windswept terrace at Rauven a robed man stirred from trance and opened troubled eyes.
‘The King of Amroth has chosen to banish Arithon through the Worldsend Gate,’ the listener announced to the high mage. Neither knew his words were overheard by a second mind incomprehensibly distant…
In a world of fog-bound skies another sorcerer in maroon robes paused between dusty tiers of books. Misty, distracted eyes turned sharp and immediate as a falcon’s. Sethvir of the Fellowship had kept records at Althain Tower since the Mistwraith had overturned all order and banished sunlight five centuries earlier. Events sifted past his isolation like snowflakes beyond glass; as the fancy struck him, he penned them into manuscript and catalogued them for the archives. Although the listener’s phrase was one of thousands which intruded upon his thoughts hourly, the sorcerer focused his attention instantly to prove its origin.
Power great enough to shatter mountains answered Sethvir’s will. Faultlessly directed, it bridged the unimaginable gulf between worlds and retrieved the vision of the starlit embrasure where a mage sat with a sword of unearthly beauty clenched between his hands. The blade bore patterns of silver inlay, and a spindle of green light blazed in a gem set at the hilt. The mage regarded the weapon with a raw expression of grief, while the clairvoyant tried vainly to comfort him.
Sethvir recognized that blade. Memories of past events aligned like compass needles, pairing fact with circumstance whose significance shattered a calm that was legendary. Sethvir of the Fellowship whooped like a boy. In the time before the Mistwraith’s curse, that same weapon had been carried by an Atherian prince through the Worldsend Gates to the west. Three other royal heirs had fled with him, seeking sanctuary from a rebellion which threatened their lives. Then the Mistwraith’s conquest banished all sunlight; the Gates were directionally sealed on the promise of a madman’s prophecy, and the princes’ exile became permanent. Yet if the royal heirs had been abandoned to their fate, they had not been forgotten. At last, Sethvir beheld the first sign that the princes’ betrayal had not been in vain.
The sorcerer released the image. Blue-green eyes softened with a reverie that masked keen thought. The mage who held the sword had also seemed no stranger; Sethvir himself had trained the man’s ancestor in the foundational arts of power. Only one possible interpretation fitted such coincidence: the sorcerer witnessed the birthpangs of the great West Gate Prophecy, the one which forecast the defeat of the Mistwraith and the return of Athera’s banished sunlight.
Sethvir’s exuberance drove him to run from the library. Disturbed air raised dust from the shelves as he banged through the door and raced up the stairwell beyond; but his thought moved faster still, spanning a distance of leagues to deliver the news to his colleagues in the Fellowship of Seven.
Interlude
In another place, amid the weedy tangle of a fog-shrouded field, water dripped sullenly down the stems of last summer’s bracken.
‘I bring news of Dascen Elur,’ said an intrusive, familiar voice.
Dakar the Mad Prophet started in surprise where he sat, drunk and soaked to the skin. A sigh escaped his bearded lips. Luck was a witch, to have abandoned him with the ale jug barely emptied. Dakar rolled sour, cinnamon eyes toward the sorcerer who approached. He tried to forestall the inevitable. ‘The prince who returns will be s’Ilessid, or I drink only water for the next five years,’ he announced with slurred finality.
The sorcerer, who was Asandir of the Fellowship of Seven, stopped still in his grey tunic and blue cloak. Wind ruffled silver hair over features that split with amusement. ‘You speak of the West Gate Prophecy?’ His tone was deceptively polite.
Dakar felt his stomach heave, and cursed silently. Either he was too sober to handle fear of the reprimand he knew must come, or he was too drunk to master the urge to be sick. Asandir was seldom lenient with his apprentices. Nevertheless, Dakar managed a sloppy grin. ‘“Ocean world Dascen Elur, Left unwatched for five score years…”’ he recited, obligingly quoting himself.
Crisply, Asandir stole the following lines. ‘“Shall shape from High Kings of Men, Untried arts in unborn hands.”’ Hands capable of restoring order to a world that had known barbarous dissolution, decadence and blighted, misty weather for half an age. Asandir smiled, tolerant still. ‘But the foreordained hands are unborn no longer, my prophet. The time of deliverance is at hand.’
The reference took a muddled moment to sink in. When Dakar caught on, he crowed and flopped backwards into a milkweed thicket. Pods exploded, winnowing a flurry of seeds. These were not fluffy white with clean health, but musted with the mildews of sunless damp endlessly fostered. ‘Where?’ demanded Dakar, and followed immediately with, ‘Who? s’Ahelas, s’Ellestrion, s’Ffalenn, or better, because I’ve a whopping wager, s’Ilessid?’
But Asandir’s lapse into levity ended. ‘Up with you. We leave for West Gate at once.’
Dakar inhaled milkweed seeds and sneezed. ‘Who? I’ve a right to know. It’s my prophecy,’ and he grunted as Asandir’s boot prodded his ribs.
‘Come with me and see, my sotted seer. I just heard from Sethvir. The Worldsend Gate out of Dascen Elur was breached only this morning. If your s’Ilessid is on his way, he currently suffers the ninety and nine discomforts of the Red Desert. Assuming he survives, that leaves us five days to reach West Gate.’
Dakar moaned. ‘No liquor, no ladies, and a long nasty ride with a headache.’ He scrambled awkwardly to his feet, a short, plump man with a clever face and seed-down snagged like feathers in his stiff red beard.
Asandir appraised him with a stare that raised sweat on cheek and temple. ‘No s’Ilessid, and you’re pledged to five years’ sobriety.’
‘Next time remind me to swallow my tongue with my ale,’ murmured Dakar. But the phrase held no rancour. Behind heavy lids, his cinnamon eyes gleamed with excitement. At last the wait would end. Through West Gate would come a descendant of Athera’s royal houses, and with him wild, unknown talents. ‘“These shall bring the Mistwraith’s bane, Free Athera’s sun again.”’ Grapes would sweeten again under a cleared sky and the vintner’s vats would no longer turn spoiled and sour…Dakar chuckled and hastened toward the dripping eaves of the tavern stables.
Agelessly sure, Asandir fell into step beside him. The austere fall of his cloak and bordered tunic offered sharp contrast to the stained russet which swathed Dakar’s rotund bulk.
‘Prudence, my prophet,’ the sorcerer rebuked. ‘The results of prophecies often resolve through strangely twisted circumstance.’ But if Asandir was yet aware that the promised talents were split between princes who were enemies with blood debts of seven generations, he said nothing.
Three Worlds
At Amroth Castle, a king celebrates the exile of his most bitterly hated enemy, but fails to notice the absence of his own heir until too late…
In a dusty hollow between dunes of rust-coloured sand, twisted trees shade the ivy-choked basin of a fountain from the heat of a scarlet sun…
A world away from fountain and wasteland, an enchantress observes an image of a sorcerer and a prophet who ride in haste through fog, and droplets fly from the bracken crushed beneath galloping hooves…
III. EXILE
Who drinks this water
Shall cease to age five hundred years
Yet suffer lengthened youth with tears
Through grief, death’s daughter.
inscription, Five Century Fountain
Davien, Third Age 3140
The crown prince of Amroth awoke to a nightmare of buffeting surf. Muddled, disoriented and unaccountably dizzy, he discovered that he lay face-down on the floorboards of an open boat. The fact distressed him: he retained no memory of boarding such a craft. Through an interval of preoccupied thought, he failed to uncover a reason for an ocean voyage of any kind.
Lysaer licked his lips, tasted the bitter tang of salt. He felt wretched. His muscles ached and shivered and his memories seemed wrapped in fog. The bilge which sloshed beneath his shoulder stank of fish; constellations tilted crazily overhead as the boat careened shoreward on the fist of a wave.
The prince shut his teeth against nausea. Frustrated by the realization that something had gone amiss, he tried to push himself upright. A look over the thwart might at least identify his location. But movement of any kind proved surprisingly difficult; after two attempts, he managed to catch hold of the gunwale. The boat lurched under him. A stranger’s muscled arm bashed his fingers from the wood, and he tumbled backward into darkness…
The prince roused again as the boat grounded. Gravel grated against planking and voices called in the night. The craft slewed, caught by the drag of a breaker. Lysaer banged his head on the sharp edge of a rib. Shouts punched through the roar of the waves. Wet hands caught the boat, dragged her through the shallows and over firm sand to the tidemark. The bearded features of a fisherman eclipsed the stars. Then, callously impatient, two hands reached down and clamped the royal wrists in a grip that bruised. Limp as a netted fish, Lysaer felt himself hauled upright.
‘D’ye think the Rauven mage would care if we kept the jewels on ‘im?’ said a coarse male voice.
The prince made a sound in protest. His head whirled unpleasantly and his stomach cramped, obscuring an unseen accomplice’s reply. The grip on him shifted, then tightened, crushing the breath from his lungs. Lysaer blacked out once more as his captors dragged him from the boat.
His next lucid impression was an inverted view of cliffs silhouetted against the sea. Breakers and sky gleamed leaden with dawn. Slung like a sack across a back clad in oilskins, Lysaer shut his eyes. He tried desperately to think. Facts slipped his grasp like spilled beads, and his train of thought drifted; yet one fragment of memory emerged and yielded a reason for his confusion. Whatever drug his abductors had used to subdue him had not entirely worn off. Although the effects were not crippling, the prince felt inept as a newborn.
His captor slipped. A bony shoulder jarred Lysaer’s stomach. Consciousness wavered like water-drowned light. Shale rattled down a weedy slope as the man recovered his footing. Then his accomplice gripped the prince, and the sky spun right side up with a sickening wrench. Hefted like baled cargo, Lysaer felt himself bundled into a cloak of rancid, oiled wool. He twisted, managed to keep his face uncovered. But clear sight afforded no advantage. High overhead rose the chipped arch of an ancient stone portal; between the span swirled a silvery film, opaque as hot oil spilled on glass. The proximity of unnatural forces raised gooseflesh on Lysaer’s skin. Shocked to fear and dread, the prince recognized the Worldsend Gate.
He struggled violently. Too late he grasped the need to escape. His enemies raised him with merciless force, cast him headlong into mother-of-pearl whose touch was ice and agony. Lysaer screamed. Then the shock of the Gate’s forces ripped his mind to fragments. He plunged into fathomless dark.
The crown prince of Amroth roused to the sting of unbearable heat. Bitter dust dried the tissues of his nostrils at each breath and strange fingers searched his person, quick and furtive as rats’ feet. Lysaer stirred. The invading hands paused, then retreated as the prince opened his eyes.
Light stabbed his pupils. He blinked, squinted and through a spike of cruel reflection, made out the blade of his own dagger. Above, the eyes of Arithon s’Ffalenn appraised him from a face outlined in glare.
‘We’re better matched this time, brother.’ The bastard’s voice was rough, as though with disuse. Face, hands and the shoulder underneath his torn shirt showed flesh frayed with scabs and congested still with the purpled marks of abuse.
Sharply aroused from his lethargy, Lysaer scrambled upright. ‘What are you waiting for? Or did you hope to see me beg before you cut my throat?’
The blade remained still in Arithon’s hand. ‘Would you have me draw a brother’s blood? That’s unlucky.’
The words themselves were a mockery. A wasteland of dunes extended to an empty horizon. Devoid of landmark or dwelling, red, flinty sands buckled under shimmering curtains of heat. No living scrub or cactus relieved the unrelenting fall of white sunlight. The Gate’s legacy looked bleak enough to kill. Stabbed by grief that his royal father’s passion for vengeance had eclipsed any care for his firstborn, Lysaer clung wretchedly to dignity. Shaken to think that Amroth, his betrothed, every friend, and all of the royal honour that bound his pride and ambition might be forever reft from him, he drew breath in icy denial. ‘Brother? I don’t spring from pirate stock.’
The dagger jumped. Blistering sunlight glanced off the blade; but Arithon’s tone stayed inhumanly detached. ‘The differences in our parentage make small difference, now. Neither of us can return to Dascen Elur.’
‘That’s a lie!’ Rejecting the concept that his exile might be permanent, Lysaer gave way to hostility. ‘The Rauven sorcerers would never permit a favoured grandson to wither in a desert. They’ll reverse the Gate.’
‘No. Look again.’ Arithon jerked his head at the iron portal which arched behind. No curtain of living force shimmered there: the flaking, pitted posts framed only desert. Certainty wavered. This gate might truly be dead, sealed ages past against a forgotten threat, and beyond any power of the Rauven mages to restore. Lysaer battled shattering panic. The only living human who remained to take the blame was the s’Ffalenn bastard who crouched behind a knife in studied wariness.
‘You don’t convince me. Rauven spared you from execution.’ He paused, struck cold by another thought. ‘Or did you weave your shadows to shape that sending of the queen as a plot to seek your own vengeance?’
The blade hung like a mirror in the grip of dirty fingers; inflectionless, Arithon said, ‘The appearance of the lady and your presence here were not of my making.’ He shrugged to throw off wry bitterness. ‘Your drug and your chains left small room for personal scores.’
But the baiting of the king had been too bloodlessly thorough to inspire s’Ilessid trust. ‘I dare not believe you.’
‘We’re both the victims of bloodfeud,’ Arithon said. ‘What’s past can’t be changed. But if we set aside differences, we have a chance to escape from this wasteland. ’
As crown prince, Lysaer was unaccustomed to orders or bluntness; from a s’Ffalenn whose wretched misfortune might have been arranged to deprive a kingdom of its rightful heir, the prospect of further manipulation became too vicious to bear. Methods existed to disarm a man with a dagger. Sand warmed the prince’s bootsoles as he dug a foothold in the ground. ‘I don’t have to accept your company.’
‘You will.’ Arithon managed a thin smile. ‘I hold the knife.’
Lysaer sprang. Never for an instant off his guard, Arithon fended clear. He ducked the fingers which raked to twist his collar into a garrotte. Lysaer changed tack, closed his fist in black hair and delivered a well-placed kick. The Master twisted with the blow and spun the dagger. He struck the prince’s wristbone with the jewelled pommel. Numbed to the elbow by a shooting flare of pain, Lysaer lost his grip. Cat-quick in his footwork, Arithon melted clear.
‘I could easily kill you,’ said the hated s’Ffalenn voice from behind. ‘Next time remember that I didn’t.’
Lysaer whirled, consumed by a blind drive to murder. Arithon evaded his lunge with chill poise. Leary of the restraint which had undone Amroth’s council, the prince at once curbed his aggression. Despite his light build, the bastard was well trained and fast; his guileful cleverness was not going to be bested tactlessly.
‘Lysaer, a gate to another world exists in this desert,’ the Master insisted with bold authority. ‘Rauven’s archives held a record. But neither of us will survive if we waste ourselves on quarrelling.’
Caught short by irony, the prince struck back with honesty. ‘Seven generations of unforgiven atrocities stand between us. Why should I trust you?’
Arithon glanced down. ‘You’ll have to take the risk. Have you any other alternative?’
Alien sunlight blazed down on dark head and fair through a wary interval of silence. Then a sudden disturbance pelted sand against the back of Lysaer’s knees. He whirled, startled, while a brown cloth sack bounced to rest scarcely an arm’s reach from him. The purple wax that sealed the tie strings had been fixed with the sigil of Rauven.
‘Don’t touch that,’ Arithon said quickly.
Lysaer ignored him. If the sorcerers had sent supplies through the Gate, he intended to claim them himself. He bent and hooked up the sack’s drawstring. A flash of sorcery met his touch. Staggered by blinding pain, the prince recoiled.
Enemy hands caught and steadied him. ‘I warned you, didn’t I?’ said Arithon briskly. ‘Those knots are warded by sorcery.’
Riled by intense discomfort, the prince shoved to break free.
‘Stay still!’ Arithon’s hold tightened. ‘Movement will just prolong your misery.’
But dizzied, humiliated and agonized by losses far more cutting than the burns inflicted by the ward, Lysaer rejected sympathy. He stamped his heel full-force on Arithon’s bare instep. A gasped curse rewarded him. The offending hands retreated.
Lysaer crouched, cradling his arm while the needling pains subsided. Envy galled him for the arcane knowledge he had been denied as his enemy loosened the knots with impunity. The sack contained provisions. Acutely conscious of the oven-dry air against his skin, the prince counted five bundles of food and four water flasks. Lastly, Arithon withdrew a beautifully-crafted longsword. Sunlight caught in the depths of an emerald pommel, flicking green highlights over features arrested in a moment of unguarded grief.
Resentfully, Lysaer interrupted. ‘Let me take my share of the rations now. Then our chances stand equal.’
Arithon’s expression hardened as he looked up. ‘Do they?’ His glance drifted over his half-brother’s court clothing, embroidered velvets and fine lawn cuffs sadly marred with grit and sweat. ‘What do you know of hardship?’
The prince straightened, furious in his own self-defence. ‘What right have you to rule my fate?’
‘No right.’ Arithon tossed the inventoried supplies back into the sack and lifted his sword. ‘But I once survived the effects of heat and thirst on a ship’s company when the water casks broke in a storm. The experience wasn’t very noble.’
‘I’d rather take my chances than live on an enemy’s sufferance.’ Despising the diabolical sincerity of this latest s’Ffalenn wile, Lysaer was bitter.
‘No, brother.’ With unhurried calm, Arithon slung the sack across his shoulders. He buckled on the sword which once had been his father’s. ‘You’ll have to trust me. Let this prove my good faith.’ He reversed the knife neatly and tossed it at the prince’s feet. The jewelled handle struck earth, pattering sand over gold-stitched boots.
Lysaer bent. He retrieved his weapon. Impelled by antagonism too powerful to deny, he straightened with a flick of his wrist and flung the blade back at his enemy.
Arithon dropped beneath the dagger’s glittering arc. He landed rolling, shed the cumbersome sack, and was halfway back to his feet again at the moment Lysaer crashed into him. Black hair whipped under the impact of the prince’s ringed fist.
Arithon retaliated with his knee and returned a breathless plea. ‘Desist. My word is good.’
Lysaer cursed and struck again. Blood ran, spattering droplets over the sand. His enemy’s sword hilt jabbed his ribs as he grappled. Harried in close quarters he snatched, but could not clear the weapon from the sheath. Hatred burned through him like lust as he gouged s’Ffalenn flesh with his fingers. Shortly, the Master of Shadow would trouble no man further, Lysaer vowed; he tightened his hold for the kill.
An explosion of movement flung him back. Knuckles cracked the prince’s jaw, followed by the chop of a hand in his groin. He doubled over, gasping, as Arithon wrested clear. Lysaer clawed for a counterhold. Met by fierce resistance and a grip he could not break, he felt the tendons of his wrist twist with unbearable force. He lashed with his boot, felt the blow connect. The Master’s grasp fell away.
Lysaer lunged to seize the sword. Arithon kicked loose sand, and a shower of grit stung the prince’s eyes. Blinded, shocked to hesitation by dirty tactics, Lysaer felt his enemy’s hands lock over both of his forearms. Then a terrific wrench threw him down. Before he could recover, a hail of blows tumbled him across the ground.
Through a dizzy haze of pain, Lysaer discovered that he lay on his back. Sweat dripped down his temples. Through a nasty, unspeakable interval, he could do nothing at all but lie back in misery and pant. He looked up at last, forced to squint against the light which jumped along the sword held poised above his heart.
Blood snaked streaks through the sand on Arithon’s cheek. His expression flat with anger, he said, ‘Get up. Try another move like that and I’ll truss you like a pig.’
‘Do it now,’ the prince said viciously. ‘I hate the air you breathe.’
The blade quivered. Lysaer waited, braced for death. But the sword only flickered and stilled in the air. Seconds passed, oppressive with heat and desert silence.
‘Get up,’ the Master repeated finally. ‘Move now, or by Ath, I’ll drive you to your feet with sorcery.’ He stepped back. Steel rang dissonant as a fallen harp as he rammed the sword into his scabbard. ‘I intend to see you out of this wasteland alive. After that, you need never set eyes on me again.’
Blue eyes met green with a flash of open antagonism. Then, with irritating abandon, Arithon laughed. ‘Proud as a prize bull. You are your father’s son, to the last insufferable detail.’ The Master’s mirth turned brittle. Soon afterward, the sand began to prickle, then unpleasantly to burn the prince’s prone body.
Accepting the risk that the sensation was born of illusion, Lysaer resisted the urge to rise. The air in his nostrils seared like a blast from a furnace, and his hair and clothing clung with sticky sweat. Wrung by the heat and the unaccustomed throes of raw pain, the prince shut his eyes. Arithon left him to retrieve the thrown dagger. He gathered the fisherman’s cloak which had muffled Lysaer through his passage of the Gate and stowed that along with the provisions. Then the Master walked back. He discovered the prince still supine on the sand and the last of his patience snapped.
Lysaer felt his mind clamped by remorseless force. Overcome by the brilliant, needle-point focus in the touch which pinned him, he lost his chance to resist. The blow which followed struck only his mind, but a scream of agony ripped from his throat.
‘Get up!’ Sweat ploughed furrows through the dirt on Arithon’s face. He attacked again without compunction. The prince knew pain that seared away reason; left nothing beyond an animal’s instinct to survive, he screamed again. Peal after peal of anguish curdled the desert silence before the punishment ended. Lysaer lay curled in the sand, shaking, gasping and angered beyond all forgiveness.
‘Get up.’
Balked to speechless frustration, Lysaer complied. But wedged like a knot in his heart was a vow to end the life of the sorcerer who had forced his inner will.
The half-brothers from Dascen Elur travelled east. Red as the embers of a blacksmith’s forge the sun swung overhead, heating sand to temperatures that seared exposed flesh. Arithon bound his naked feet with strips torn from his shirt and urged the prince on through hills which shimmered and swam in the still air. By midday the dunes near at hand shattered under a wavering screen of mirage. The Master tapped his gift and wove shadow to provide shade. Lysaer expressed no gratitude. Poisoned through by distrust, he alternated between silence and insults until the desert sapped his fresh energy.
Arithon drove on without comment. The prince grew to hate beyond reason the tireless step at his heel. In time, the Master’s assumption that he was his father’s son became only partially true; the rage which consumed Lysaer’s thoughts burned patient and cold as his mother’s.
The heat of day peaked and waned and the sun dipped like a demon’s lamp toward an empty horizon. Lysaer hiked through a haze of exhaustion, his mouth bitter with dust. The flinty chafe of grit in his boots made each step a separate burden. Yet Arithon permitted no rest until the desert lay darkened under a purple mantle of twilight. The prince sat at once on a wind-scoured rock and removed his boots. Blood throbbed painfully through heels scraped raw with blisters, but Lysaer preferred discomfort to the prospect of appealing to the mercy of his enemy. If he could not walk, the Master could damned well carry him.
‘Put your hands behind your back,’ Arithon said sharply.
Lysaer glanced up. The Master stood with his sword unsheathed in one hand and an opened waterflask in the other. His expression remained unreadable beneath clinging dust and dried blood. ‘You won’t like the outcome if I have to repeat myself.’
The prince complied slowly. Steel moved with a fitful gleam in the Master’s hand. Lysaer recoiled.
‘Stay still!’ Arithon’s command jarred like a blow. ‘I’m not planning to kill you.’
Angered enough to throttle the words in his enemy’s throat, Lysaer forced himself to wait while smoke-dark steel rose and rested like a thin line of ice against his neck.
Arithon raised the flask to Lysaer’s lips. ‘Take three swallows, no more.’
The prince considered refusing but the wet against his mouth aggravated his craving past bearing; reason argued that only the s’Ffalenn bastard would benefit from water refused out of pride. Lysaer drank. The liquid ran bitter across his tongue. Parched as he was, the sword made each swallow seem an act of animal greed. Although Arithon rationed himself equally, the prince found neither comfort nor forbearance in the fact.
Moved by the hatred in the eyes which tracked his smallest move, Arithon made his first unnecessary statement since morning. ‘The virtues of s’Ilessid have been justice and loyalty since time before memory. Reflect your father’s strengths, your Grace. Don’t cling to his faults.’
With a slice of his sword, the Master parted the twine which bound a wrapped package of food. His weapon moved again, dividing the contents into halves before his battered scabbard extinguished the dull gleam of the blade. Arithon looked askance, his face shadowed in failing light. ‘Show me a rational mind, Prince of Amroth. Then I’ll grant you the respect due your birthright.’
Lysaer hardened his heart against truce; s’Ffalenn guile had seduced s’Ilessid trust too often to admit any pardon. With nothing of royal birthright left beyond integrity, self-respect demanded he endure his plight without shaming the family honour. Lysaer accepted cheese and journey-biscuit from Arithon’s hand in silence, his mind bent on thoughts of revenge in the moment his enemy chose to sleep.
But the Master’s intentions included no rest. The moment their meagre meal was finished, he ordered the prince to his feet.
Lysaer wasted no resentment over what he could not immediately hope to change. Driven outside impulsive passion, he well understood that opportunity would happen soonest if Arithon could be lulled to relax his guard. With feigned resignation the prince reached for his boots only to find his way blocked by a fence of drawn steel.
Sword in hand, Arithon spoke. ‘Leave the boots. They’ll make your feet worse. Blame your vanity for the loss. You should have spoken before you got blistered.’
Lysaer bit back his impulse to retort and stood up. Arithon seemed edgy as a fox boxed in a wolf’s den; perhaps his sorcerer’s self-discipline was finally wearing thin. Sapping heat and exertion would exact cruel toll on the heels of a brutal confinement. Possibly Arithon was weak and unsure of himself, Lysaer realized. The thought roused a predator’s inward smile. The roles of hunter and hunted might soon be reversed. His enemy had been foolish to keep him alive.
At nightfall, the sky above the Red Desert became a thief’s hoard of diamonds strewn across black velvet; but like a beauty bewitched, such magnificence proved short-lived. The mild breeze of twilight sharpened after dusk, swelling into gusts which ripped the dry crests of the dunes. Chased sand hissed into herringbone patterns and the alien constellations smouldered through haloes of airborne dust.
Lysaer and Arithon walked half-bent with their faces swathed in rags. Wind-whipped particles drove through gaps at sleeve and collar, stinging bare flesh to rawness. Isolated by hatred and exhaustion, Lysaer endured with his mouth clamped against curses. His eyes wept gritty tears. At every hour his misery grew, until the shriek of sand and wind seemed the only sound he had ever known. Memories of court life in Amroth receded, lost and distant and insubstantial as the movements of ghosts. The sweet beauty of a lady left at South Isle seemed a pleasure invented by delirium as reality was defined and limited by the agony of each single step.
