Curse of the Mistwraith. Janny Wurts

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СКАЧАТЬ and said, ‘The horns my mother left are galling, I’m told. Have you come down to gore, or to gloat?’

      The king struck him. The report of knuckles meeting helpless flesh startled even the guards in the corridor.

      Shocked past restraint, the healer grasped the royal sleeve. ‘The prisoner is too ill to command his actions, your Grace. Be merciful.’

      The king shook off the touch. ‘He is s’Ffalenn. And you are insolent.’

      But the sovereign lord of Amroth did not torment the prisoner further; as if Arithon had spent his strength on his opening line, the drug soon defeated his resistance. The king watched him thrash, the flushed print of his fist stark against bloodless skin. Tendons sprang into relief beneath the Master’s wrists. The slim fingers which had woven shadow with such devastating cleverness now crumpled into fists. Green eyes lost their distance, became widened and harsh with suffering.

      Avid as a jealous lover, the king watched the tremors begin. He lingered until Arithon drew a rattling breath and cried out in the extremity of agony. But his words were spoken in the old tongue, forgotten except at Rauven. Cheated of satisfaction, the king released the blanket. Wool slithered into a heap and veiled his enemy’s mindless wretchedness.

      ‘You needn’t worry,’ said his majesty as the healer reached to tidy the coverlet. ‘My court won’t have Arithon broken until he can be made to remember who he is.’

      The instant the king departed, the healer called an attendant to mix a fresh posset. The remedy was much ahead of schedule, but the prisoner’s symptoms left no option.

      ‘I can manage without, I think.’ The words came ragged from Arithon’s throat, but his eyes showed a sudden, acid clarity.

      The healer started, astonished. ‘Was that an act?’

      A spark of hilarity crossed the prisoner’s face before his bruised lids slid closed. ‘I gave his Grace a line from a very bad play,’ came the faint, but sardonic reply. For a long while afterward, Arithon lay as if asleep.

      The royal healer guessed otherwise: he called for a chair and prepared for an unpleasant vigil. He had treated officers who came to endure the secondary agony of dependence after painful injuries that required extended relief from the drug. They were men accustomed to adversity, physically fit, self contained, and tough; and like Arithon they began by fighting the restless complaint of nerve and mind with total stillness. An enchanter’s trained handling of poisons might stall the drug’s dissolution; but as hallucinations burned away reason, the end result must defeat even the sternest self-discipline. The breath came quick and fast. First one, then another muscle would flinch, until the entire body jerked in spasm. Hands cramped and knotted to rigidity, and the head thrashed. Then, as awareness became unstrung by pain, and the mind came unravelled into nightmare, the spirit at last sought voice for its agony.

      Prepared, when the pinched line of Arithon’s mouth broke and air shuddered into lungs bereft of control, the healer muffled the hoarse, pealing screams under a twist of bedlinen with the gentleness he might have shown a son. An assistant rushed to fetch a posset. In the interval before Arithon blacked out, his eyes showed profound and ragged gratitude.

      The healer smoothed the damp, rucked linens and kneaded his patient’s contorted muscles until their quivering eased into stillness. Then, bone-weary, he pushed his stiff frame erect. Informed by his assistant that the sun had long since set, he exclaimed aloud. ‘Ath’s merciful grace! That man has a will like steel wire.’

      By morning, the drug was no longer necessary. Through the final hours of withdrawal, Arithon remained in full command of his wits. Although such raw, determined courage won him the healer’s devoted admiration, no strength of character could lessen the toll on his health. Bereft of strength and depleted to the point where bone, muscle and vein stood in relief beneath bloodless skin, Arithon seemed a man more dead than alive.

      When he woke following his first period of natural sleep, the healer consulted him. ‘The king shall not be told of your recovery until absolutely necessary. You need as much time as possible for convalescence.’

      The prisoner reacted unexpectedly. Weary distaste touched the face of a man too spent to curb emotion. ‘That’s a costly risk. The king would execute you for daring such sentiment. And I will suffer precisely as long as mind and body remain whole enough to react.’ Arithon turned his head toward the wall, too fraught to frame his deepest fear: that grief and despair had unbalanced him.

      That his fragile grip on self-restraint might snap under further provocation and tempt him to an unprincipled attack through magecraft. ‘If I’m to be scapegoat before the court of Amroth, let me not last an hour. Free of the drug, I believe I can achieve that.’ He ended on a wounding note of irony. ‘If you wish to be merciful, tell the king at once.’

      The healer rose sharply. Unable to speak, he touched Arithon’s thin shoulder in sympathy. Then he left to seek audience with the king. All along he had expected to regret his dealings with the Master of Shadow; but never until the end had he guessed he might suffer out of pity.

      Resplendent in silks, fine furs and jewels, officials and courtiers alike packed the marble-pillared council hall on the day appointed for Arithon s’Ffalenn to stand trial before the king of Amroth. The crown prince was present despite the incident at the victory feast that had set him out of favour with his father. Although the ignominy stung, that his chair as the kingdom’s heir apparent would stand empty on the dais, his ingrained sense of duty prevailed. Seated in the gallery normally reserved for royal guests, Lysaer leaned anxiously forward as the bossed doors swung open. Halberdiers in royal livery entered. The prisoner walked in their midst, bracketed by the steely flash of weapons. A sigh of movement swept across the chamber as high-born heads turned to stare.

      Lysaer studied the Master of Shadow with rapt attention and a turmoil of mixed emotions. The drug had left Arithon with a deceptive air of fragility. The peasant’s tunic which replaced his torn cotton draped loosely over gaunt shoulders. Whittled down to its framework of bone, his face bore a withdrawn expression, as if the chains which dragged at wrists and ankles were no inconvenience. His graceless stride betrayed otherwise; but the hissed insults from the galleries failed to raise any response. As prisoner and escort reached the foot of the dais, Lysaer was struck by an infuriating oddity. After all this s’Ffalenn sorcerer had done to avoid his present predicament, he showed no flicker of apprehension.

      Dazzled by the tiered banks of candles after long weeks of confinement, Arithon stood blinking before the jewelled presence of the court. Stillness claimed the crowded galleries as his sea-cold gaze steadied, passed over banners and richly-dyed tapestries, swept the array of dignitaries on the dais, then fixed at last on the king.

      ‘You will kneel,’ said the sovereign lord of Amroth. He had yearned thirty years for this moment.

      At the centre of the cut-marble flooring, Arithon stood motionless. His eyes remained distant as a dreamer’s, as if no spoken word could reach him. A rustle of uneasiness swept the packed rows of courtiers. Only Lysaer frowned, troubled again by incongruity. The cold-handed manipulation he had escaped in Briane’s sail-hold had certainly been no coincidence. If a clever, controlled man who possessed a sorcerer’s talents chose a senseless act of bravado, the reason could not be trite. But the king’s gesture to the halberdiers arrested the prince’s thought.

      The ceremonial grandeur of the chamber left abundant space for free movement; banners and trappings rippled in the disturbed air as nine feet of studded beech lifted and turned in a guardsman’s fists. Steel flashed and descended, the weapon’s metal-shod butt aimed squarely at СКАЧАТЬ