Gone now, the ebullience which had won him the tribes’ easy friendship; the lingering play with herdsmen and sheep stood replaced by unswerving competence. Steady as fine steel in drills with the archers, Arithon did his brooding in solitude. Dakar would see him walk the ridges in the silver fall of twilight, wrapped in deep quiet that masked thoughts. One attempt to follow was repulsed, first by words, then, when spoken daggers proved insufficient for the task, by the incontestable, bared length of a sword.
On the steep, dusty spurs that serried like knives above the meadows of Dier Kenton Vale, Arithon paced out the night alone, while the stars wheeled their high arcs across black Vastmark sky, and the sheep flocks pebbled the valley in fitful currents of movement. In the grey, dew-drenched dawn, Dakar retraced the same route. His dogged search discerned no trace signature of spellcraft. The layered, faulted beds of Vastmark shale remained as they ought, laced over in tough grasses and the tall, wind-combed stems of summer asters.
Unwilling to bow before gnawing frustration, Dakar twisted gut bowstrings until his fingers gained another set of blisters. Against his grain as a hedonist, he made no complaint of plain rations. He bided the hours as the adder waits, tight laced into stillness, while other nights in close company Arithon laid his case before the tribal elders gathered in yet another circle for counsel. The plans he laid out for the gold he would gain from Talith’s ransom included scholars and books. Children would have learning, and their parents, new stock to breed surefooted ponies. If the herdsmen could cover more territory, they could tend a much larger flock.
‘We’ll have a post courier,’ Arithon proposed, ‘then a trade wharf downcoast from Ithish. No more city factors and brokers to skim off their cut from your wool yield.’
At times acting as Arithon’s secretary, his lines scratched out with a nib of the whippy, thin bone split from a wyvern’s wing leather, Dakar could not help but admire the method. War would come to Vastmark and claim the lives of young men, but their tribes would be compensated, the grinding poverty of nomadic existence eased over by permanent change and improvement.
The bad years might cease to be remarked for their tragedies, the future set free from killing hardship. Babes would no longer grow stunted from malnourishment, nor lambs die from salt shortage, nor injuries mend badly for lack of sound treatment and healers. Dakar penned notations and pledges of agreement, unable to decide if the move stemmed from clemency or genius.
‘Your lowland pastures could support blooded horses,’ Arithon suggested. Thrown into relief by the crawling flames of tallow dips scattered on the rugs in clay bowls, his shoulders mantled in coarse saffron wool, he qualified in detail. ‘The drifters in Tysan breed the best stock. I’ve already sent letters of inquiry. Choice studs can be imported, and the knowledge of husbandry brought in.’ He scarcely need add that an ongoing climate of war must increase the demand for fine destriers.
The meeting broke up under starlight. When confronted by a snow-haired elder with sharp reservations, Arithon gave way to a moment of naked uncertainty. ‘Your fears are all justified, grandmother. For the gains I have promised, the campaign must be won. No valley in Vastmark will be free from armed threat until Lysaer’s warhost is vanquished.’
‘Our tribes could be scattered,’ the beldame said, her reproof rasped through the scrapes of night insects, and her gaze upon Arithon as keen as Dharkaron’s last judgment.
Rathain’s prince gave her truth, unflinching as rock, and strive as Dakar might, no flaw in the grain could be found in his masterbard’s sincerity.
‘We could lose.’ Arithon clasped the woman’s withered fingers, his entreaty mingled with humility. ‘If that comes to pass, I can promise I’ll be dead. Not only your tribes in Vastmark will suffer. The peril behind this curse is the Mistwraith’s latent threat, which I’m bound by blood oath to answer. I must make my stand somewhere. The mountains here are too formidable for outright conquest. Of all peoples, yours are most needful of change, and through hardihood, the likeliest to survive.’
An interval passed, filled by the distant whistle of a wyvern pair. Then the grandmother worked free of his grasp. She arranged her layered shawls to close out the prying wind, but did not speak.
‘Support me, or not,’ Arithon finished before a censure that held htm in contempt. ‘I won’t force you. If this warhost can be broken, the best I can hope is to win back a year’s respite to seek the haven I’d hoped to find offshore.’
He gave no false assurance, Dakar took sour note, that the conflict would end here in Vastmark.
Eight weeks before summer solstice, Arithon consulted with Caolle to measure the state of their progress. Never empty-handed, the war captain hunched by an outdoor fire, burnishing rust from his byrnie. ‘These are good people. They’ll be ready to fight when you need them.’
The veteran campaigner was wont to hoard dissatisfaction as a weapon to ambush complacence; too clever to be victimized, Arithon waited.
‘You’ll need experienced men to bolster the ranks.’ The mail chimed a querulous, jingled refrain as Caolle turned its bulk in broad hands. ‘These troops are untried and wars are damned messy business. Shooting down wyverns is all well enough. Quite another matter when your target’s a man who screams in bloody pain and pleads mercy.’
‘You want to bring in clansmen,’ Arithon surmised, his reluctance like flint struck to steel.
Caolle flicked out his polishing rag, methodical, then dipped up a clean dollop of river sand. ‘Well, without them, I won’t bet my second-best bootlace we can hold off the least of Skannt’s headhunters. He’s not Pesquil’s equal for cunning, but the pair ran cheek by jowl for sheer, bone-headed persistence.’
‘I’ll hire in mercenaries, first,’ Arithon said.
Caolle laughed. ‘Erlien’s clans will take issue with that, liege.’
To which Arithon had no choice but bend to plain truth; the Vastmark territory was a principality under Shandian sovereignty. If the caithdein of the realm elected to nose into his affairs, no scion of Rathain could deny the High Earl his given right.
Through the rasp of wet grit against worn links of metal, the familiar stillness stretched between Rathain’s grizzled war captain and his liege lord, stiff with cutthroat pride and dissent. ‘Caolle,’ Arithon broke in at firm length, ‘you’ll send no appeal to Lord Erlien.’
‘Don’t need to,’ came the bitten retort. ‘The caithdein’s own scouts are scarcely blind. They’ve seen what I have. Lysaer’s been recruiting in Shand. Headhunters’ leagues from Forthmark and Ganish have added themselves to his ranks.’
The quality to Arithon’s silence changed character, a subtlety Caolle at long last had learned not to miss. ‘Liege,’ he said in odd gentleness, ‘this won’t be the same sort of fight as Tal Quorin. This time, you’re going to win.’
‘To what use?’ Arithon burst out in bitterness, and stopped. Too much thought would engender despair. For no matter what happened at Vastmark, regardless whose men were left standing, unless he or Lysaer fell as a casualty, the Mistwraith’s curse would remain.
The Master of Shadow departed for the low country the next morning, Dakar puffing at his heels like a fat brown badger, a wilful bent to his stride. Under sunlight that blinded, while the gliding dart of wyverns flickered dappled shade over the rock-snagged folds of the fells, the pair left behind the raw design to break a warhost.
Ahead, in the roisterous care of a delegation of clan scouts, the fruits of the past year’s livestock raids milled like a muddied river beneath the flanks of the crags. Driven in bunches from Orvandir and Alland, the four-legged booty reflected its forced trek across the steppe-lands of Shand. Angular hipbones and the sprung curves of ribs pressed through staring, bleached hides. Clouds of ochre dust churned up by sharp hooves silted unkempt coats in bleak monochrome.
Sun-browned, clear-eyed, as seethingly disgruntled as their charges, the force of young scouts from Selkwood had spent their spring in thirsty watches, turning wil
d-eyed stampedes, and swearing fell oaths over foaling mares and balked cattle. They had survived the full gamut of scrapes and escapes from harem-conscious bulls. Bound to their task by clan loyalty to a chieftain two hundred leagues distant, their continued adherence to the herder’s role was fever pitched to last until that celebrated but unfamiliar stranger, the Prince of Rathain, should arrive to relieve them of duty.
As well for Arithon s’Ffalenn that he made his rendezvous three days early. A cry from the mounted sentries posted at the rims of the valley drew the riders from the herds at a gallop. In a flurry of noise and commotion, they drew rein and ringed the arrivals. Dakar had the instinctive good sense to step clear as the young clansmen eyed the prince like quarry closed on by wolves.
On foot, clad in a wide sash, knee breeches and a shepherd’s shirt with tailored cuffs that Dalwyn had woven from wild flax, Arithon lent a disarming appearance of frailty. Beneath wind-flicked tangles of dark hair, his expression reflected the careless ennui of high breeding, the features, sharp-faceted marble. Disadvantaged by the glare, his gaze on the circle of herdsmen looked half-lidded and lazy.
Wide-eyed, peeling, and raffishly unshaven beside his immaculate detachment, the riders gave him their voracious study in return.
‘Daelion’s Wheel,’ swore one in soft reverence. Black-eyed and lounging, muscled as an alley cat, astride a hammer-headed dun, he gave a low whistle. ‘I’ve a small brother could span that pretty wrist with naught but one finger and a thumb.’
Alight with pure mischief, Arithon inclined his head. The glance he awarded rider and horse was brief to the point of insult. From his vantage on the sidelines, the Mad Prophet winced, his teeth set unpleasantly on edge.
‘Your brother’s not present?’ Arithon asked, his politeness dipped to acid clarity.
The man who had challenged gave back a slow grin. ‘He’s not.’
‘Well then,’ invited Arithon, ‘since you’re no small fellow, why not show me in his stead?’ He extended his forearm.
The clansman bent with a whoop of delight. Knuckles grey rimed with horse reached to snatch the limb in its immaculate, fitted ivory sleeve.
The moment of contact dissolved in a blur of fast movement and a wrench. Square, dirty fingers convulsed upon air. While Arithon stepped clear with apologetic grace, his victim yelped in surprise and toppled headlong from his saddle.
Arithon loosed his hold. The scout struck earth still extended, randy oaths bitten off to a grunt. There he coughed up dust and struggled to rise, until a kick buckled his arm at the elbow. Dropped prone in the dirt, this time he stayed down. The prince who had felled him set foot between his shoulder blades and vaulted into his vacated saddle.
The sidling dun flung its nose once and settled to its new master. Then green eyes raked over the waiting ring of scouts in that scathing, distasteful directness which men learned fast not to question. ‘I want the beef herds and the horses culled and sorted by sunset,’ said Arithon s’Ffalenn.
His following strings of instructions reordered milling chaos to an oiled, brisk efficiency Dakar found detestably familiar. Companionable in sympathy, he crossed to the felled rider and helped him back to his feet.
Hawking up grit between curses, the man blotted a scraped chin. ‘Fiends plague!’ He grimaced in wry admiration. ‘How was I to know I was set to shake hands with a snake?’ He worked his jaw, discovered his lip split, and spat out the metallic taste of blood. ‘Dharkaron’s pity on me if that one treasures his grudges.’
‘He doesn’t,’ Dakar volunteered.
The clansman stared, pity in his dark eyes. ‘The claim of hard experience? Poor man! What binds you to his service?’
But the root of that question had grown tangled and deep beyond the pull of a sorcerer’s geas. Caught without ready answer, Dakar retreated into silence.
By eventide, the horses grazed in three divisions, and the cattle in two, the herds held separate by hills and minded by those few unfortunates Arithon had caught slacking. The other clansmen gathered around Dakar’s campfire, laughing, bone weary, and noisy with exuberant pride. They had all laboured like animals. The prince who had driven them sat in their midst, his elegant linen silted with dust and his voice burred hoarse from shouting. If he had broken their rebellion through merciless work, he had spared himself least of all.
Exhausted as they were, the clansmen were reluctant to retire. They sat picking shreds of hare stew from their teeth, and swapped stories of four-legged mishaps. More than one jaundiced glance was rolled toward the cooking pot, filled now with a bubbling concoction of urine, bark, and dried berries. Squat as a hedgehog in his frayed layers of tunics, the Mad Prophet stirred the ill-smelling brew intended for use as a dye.
‘We’ll need to mark the culls,’ Arithon was saying. ‘My archers need field rations to carry them through the winter, and your high earl’s share of the spoils won’t improve if the breeding stock’s butchered for jerky.’
Across the fire, someone called a derisive comment. A log fell. The coals fanned up flame in a flying leap of sparks that lit the s’Ffalenn profile bloody red.
The sight caused Dakar to stiffen. A horrible prickle doused through his flesh, chased by a chill like needled ice. Stark sober, no kindly veil of alcohol to blur his awareness, he had no means at hand to evade the onset of his spurious talent for prescience.
A shudder rolled through him. Before he could make outcry, the next wave bent him double in a gasping fit of racked air.
The stick he used to stir up the dyepot toppled from his slack fingers. He felt his knees buckle. The vague impression grazed him, of someone’s grasp on his forearm and a yank that spun him clear of the embers.
Then his senses overturned into vision.
He saw no fire, no clan scouts, no stewpot. His flesh stung and his ears roared. He beheld the sweep of a wintry hillside razed brown by bitter frost; and felled in dead bracken, that same royal profile, racked by the agony of a death wound. The place was Vastmark. The season wept a dismal cold rain on the scene, and the water splashed lichened ground, stained from the blood that welled between Arithon’s fingers. Around his prostrate, shuddering form, a fast-fading tracery of phosphor.
Dakar’s captive senses strained after the phantom glimmer of what might have been a dissolving chain of spell seals.
Then the place where Arithon lay dying folded and spun into itself. Darkness followed, ripped through by another strand of augury: he received a whirled glimpse of Morriel Prime, matriarch of the Koriani Order, hunched like a web-making spider above the amethyst gleam of the Great Waystone.
Then fey sight burst asunder, torn into sparks and white-hot, glass-edged pain. Dakar returned to himself with a choked-off cry. He lay on his side, hammered helpless by cramps and a nausea that ripped him like tissue. Somebody’s hands supported him; the same fine fingers that had worried at a bloodied arrow a scant second before in prophetic vision.
‘Ath forfend!’ Dakar ground out. He coughed back bile and squeezed his eyes shut.
‘Steady,’ Arithon said above him. Another touch smoothed back the ruck of hair sucked against his locked teeth by his gasping. ‘Steady. You’re back with us now.’
Dakar mewled through another wave of sickness. Helpless as a baby, mauled by the aftermath of a talent he detested, he struggled for command of his dignity, and lost. ‘Morriel Prime’s no friend of yours,’ he managed by way of crude warning, though in truth, the paired auguries might not be connected.
A soft burst of laughter came back. ‘Well, that’s no surprise. Can you sit? I’ve brought herbs. A tisane might settle your stomach.’
Undone by wretchedness, Dakar allowed himself to be shepherded back upright and propped with his shoulders against a rock. Someone’s blanket flicked over his shivering limbs. Above him, limned in the fire’s glow, he saw Arithon’s face trained upon him in a sympathy that confounded all hatred.
That sight made Dakar weep curses. Pity he had no use for; all his life, his
wretched fits had felled him as they chose, ever to the ruin of his happiness. At seven years of age, when he had foretold the fever that would come to kill his mother, his family had rejected him from fear. Maturity had brought him no succour. He had no way to avert the vision’s burning grip, but could only flee into dissolute habits that blunted the impact and the pain.
At least while drunk to incapacity, he could escape the vice of moral dilemma that prescience ceded to his conscience.
Dakar flinched again for the future that awaited on that lonely, Vastmark hillside, where fate would resolve into happenstance.
Arithon dead, with no mind beyond his in all Athera to glean warning of the time and the place. The posited event framed a precedence. Somewhere, an enemy existed, who would spell-turn an arrow with the power to negate the longevity binding engendered by Davien’s Five Centuries Fountain.
The Mad Prophet clamped his arms to his chest to still the waves of his shuddering. Not even Althain’s Warden would expect the threat unearthed in the surge of tonight’s surprise augury. Through fear and discomfort, a wicked thought bloomed: Dakar could have smiled through his sickness. For once in his born life, his wretched gift of prophecy had lent him an advantage he could act on. The power he had longed for, the means to escape an unwanted service, had been dropped at his very feet.
The life of the s’Ffalenn prince he was spell-charged to partner lay in his hands, to cast off or spare as he chose.
At a stroke, Desh-thiere’s curse could be sundered. Another royal friend could be redeemed, his spirit won back from the meddling inflicted in the course of the Mistwraith’s confinement. The tragedy of that hour could be reversed, when the Fellowship had chosen Lysaer s’Ilessid for the sacrifice to buy the fell creatures’ captivity.