Curse of the Mistwraith. Janny Wurts

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СКАЧАТЬ the mind of the man under his hands. Contact revealed immediate peril.

      The sorcerer straightened. Questions died on Dakar’s lips beneath the sheared steel of his glance. ‘They’ve been touched by the shadows of Mearth. We must move them to shelter at once.’

      Dakar hesitated, his tongue stilled before a thorny snarl of implications. The shadows’ geas bound the mind to madness: already Athera’s hope of renewed sunlight might be ruined. Sharp words prodded the Mad Prophet back to awareness.

      ‘Attend the prince, or your wager’s lost.’ Quickly Asandir unpinned his cloak and wrapped the dark-haired man in its midnight and silver folds.

      A pale, uncharacteristically sober Dakar did likewise for the s’Ilessid. Then he forced his fat body to run and fetch the horses from their tethers.

      Asandir had requisitioned use of a woodcutter’s cottage the day before. Since the Mistwraith’s conquest of sky and sunlight, men shunned the old places of power. West Gate proved no exception; the woodcutter’s dwelling lay five leagues from the site, seven hours’ ride on mounts doubly laden, and night fell early over the fog-shrouded forest.

      Dakar cursed the dark. Branches clawed him, wrist and knee, as his horse shouldered through trackless wilds. Rain splashed down his collar. Though chilled to the marrow, the Mad Prophet refrained from complaint, even though his cloak had been lent to another. The five-hundred-year hope of all Athera rested with the unconscious man in his arms. The s’Ilessid prince he sheltered was heir to the throne of Tysan, yet not so much as a hearthfire would welcome his arrival to the kingdom he should rule. The woodcutter was away to West End for the autumn fair; his dwelling lay vacant and dark.

      Night gave way to dawn, cut by misty reefs of pine trees. Sorcerer and prophet at last drew rein inside the gabled posts of the dooryard. The cottage inside was dry and functional, two rooms nestled beneath a steep, beamed roof. Asandir placed the refugees from the Red Desert on blankets before the hearth. When he had a fire lit and water set heating in an iron kettle over the flames, he knelt and began stripping sodden clothing from the nearest body.

      The door banged. Finished with bedding the horses in the shed, Dakar entered, his arms weighed down with a dripping load of tack. ‘Why didn’t you start with the Prince of Tysan?’

      Asandir did not look up. ‘I chose according to need.’ Tattered cloth parted under his hands, revealing a chest marred across by an ugly scab. Older weals glistened by flamelight, and scarred wrists showed evidence of recent and brutal captivity.

      ‘Ath’s mercy!’ Bits jingled against stirrups as Dakar dumped his burden on the settle. ‘Why? Is he outcast or criminal, to have been punished like that?’

      ‘Neither.’ The sorcerer’s brisk tone discouraged questions.

      Concerned, Dakar bent over the s’Ilessid. To his immediate relief, the prince had suffered nothing worse than desert exposure. With a feverish efficiency quite outside his usual manner, Dakar saw his charge bathed and moved to the comfort of a pallet in the next room. When he returned to the hearth, he found Asandir still preoccupied.

      Dakar pitched his bulk into the nearest chair and grimaced at the twinge of stiffened muscles. Chilled, damp and wearied through, he failed to appreciate why Asandir wasted time with a servant when the West Gate Prophecy in all probability stood completed by the s’Ilessid heir in the other room. After a brief struggle, impatience triumphed over prudence; Dakar interrupted. ‘Is he truly worth such pains?’

      The sorcerer’s glance returned warning like ice-water. Apt to be maddeningly oblique, he said, ‘Did you notice the blade he carries?’

      Dakar extended a foot and prodded the discarded heap of clothing by Asandir’s elbow. Frayed cloth tumbled to expose the smoky gleam of a sword hilt. Above the graceful curve of quillon and guard, an emerald glimmered in a setting too fine to be mistaken for anything crafted by man. Dakar frowned, more puzzled than enlightened. Why would a peasant carry a blade wrought by Paravian hands?

      ‘Why indeed, my Prophet?’ Asandir said aloud.

      Dakar swore in exasperation. His mind was clumsy from lack of sleep. All three Paravian races, unicorns, centaurs and sun children, had vanished since the Mistwraith’s foggy conquest. The sword was an impossible paradox. With a sizeable wager and his most coveted prediction as yet uncertainly resolved, the Mad Prophet succumbed to annoyance. ‘Dharkaron take you, I’m tired of being baited. Can’t you tell me straight just once in a century?’

      Incredibly, his outburst drew only silence. Cautiously, Dakar looked up and saw his master’s head still bent over the renegade from Dascen Elur. Firelight bronzed both figures like statuary. Shown all the signs of a long wait, Dakar settled back with a sigh and stretched aching feet toward the hearth. Practicality yielded better reward than prophecy and time, and since Asandir had chosen quarters of reasonable comfort for a change, Dakar refused to waste time fretting. With hedonistic simplicity, he nodded in his chair and slept.

      When the first reedy snore escaped the Mad Prophet’s lips, Asandir’s forbidding manner softened. His fingers smoothed black hair from a profile all too familiar, and his smile widened with amusement. ’So, our Prophet thinks you a servant, does he?’

      Sadness weighted the sorcerer’s phrase, even through his humour. How had a royal son of s’Ffalenn come by the abuse so cruelly marked into youthful flesh? The sight was an offence. Dascen Elur must have changed drastically in the years since the Fellowship sealed the Worldsend Gate for the cause of Athera’s drowned sunlight.

      Asandir studied burned, peeling features and silently asked forgiveness for the past. Then he shut his eyes and focused his awareness to know the mind beneath. Swift, direct and deft as a surgeon’s cut, his probe should have pierced the surface layers of memory undetected by the will within. But against all expectation, the s’Ffalenn cried out. His body twisted against the sorcerer’s hold and his eyes opened blindly.

      Asandir withdrew, startled. ‘Peace,’ he said in the old tongue. The word closed like a snare, blanketing all sensation of roused awareness. Intent as a falcon, the sorcerer waited until eyes as green as the promise of a sword’s emerald misted over and closed.

      Calculation framed Asandir’s thoughts. Somewhere, this prince had received training in the arts of power: his mind was barriered, and his strength considerable if his defences extended beyond waking perception. Gently, the sorcerer straightened the scarred limbs. He had no choice but to break through, and not only to heal the damage wrought by the curse of Mearth. Upon this man, and the s’Ilessid heir with him, rested the hope of an age.

      Asandir steadied himself and began again. He blended shallowly with the mind beneath his hands, as water might soak dry felt. Despite his subtlety, the s’Ffalenn scion noticed. Uneasiness transmitted across the link, and the sorcerer felt the skin under his touch roughen with gooseflesh.

      ‘Easy.’ Asandir kept his contact fluid, melting away whenever the mind he explored tried to grapple his hold. He did not possess, but waited, patient as stone. Eventually the man raised his own identity against intrusion of the unknown. Arithon; the word brought Asandir to sharp attention. Whoever had named this prince had known what they were about, for the Paravian root of meaning was ‘forger’, not of metals, but of destiny.

      The sorcerer’s surprise roused opposition. Asandir dodged his charge’s challenge, shaped his will as a mirror and deflected Arithon’s defence back upon itself. The Master countered. Before the sorcerer could lose his awareness in a maze of reflected selfhood, he yielded СКАЧАТЬ