The container itself stood empty beside a porcelain mug with spiderwork cracks through the glaze.
After harrowing labour, the nine enchained spirits had been given their redemption and release. The books had been tidied, the ink flasks set right, but Sethvir had not bothered with sweeping. His library floor still lay scattered with river sand, the cobwebs in the corners caught with small twists of parchment last pressed into use as his pagemarks.
Luhaine’s groomed image inhabited the apron by the hearth, unstirred by the draughts from the chimney. Kharadmon appeared as a wan, slender form perched on the stuffing of a chair. His posture was all dapper angles and elegant, attenuated bones. His spade point beard and piebald hair and narrow nose appeared as foxy as ever, but his green cloak with its ruddy orange lining tended to drift through intervals of transparency. Despite a clear outline, the force of him seemed washed and faded.
In pared, quiet phrases, the discorporate Sorcerer related what befell on his quest to the splinter worlds cut away from their link to Athera. ‘On the other side, Desh-thiere’s essence is stronger than our most dismal estimate,’ he said. ‘I’m left humbled by the power Traithe faced, to his ruin, on the day he sealed off the South Gate. I say now with certainty that he spared all life on Athera.’
Kharadmon went on to tell of Marak, where the Fellowship had once exiled those people whose curiosity prompted them to pursue the knowledge proscribed by the compact between mankind and the Paravians. In a lightless search, through a suffocating mist that shrouded that far place into darkness and an ice-ridden, desolate wasteland, no living thing had breathed or moved.
‘I narrowed my search in the gutted shells of the libraries,’ Kharadmon resumed. ‘I found records there, fearful maps of what was done.’ His image chafed its thin fingers as if to bring warmth to lost flesh. ‘As we guessed, Desh-thiere was created by frightened minds as a weapon of mass destruction. A faction on Marak built on the laws of physical science, then meddled in theories that came to unbalance the axis of prime life force. The intent was to interweave spirit with machine. These men desired to create the ultimate synergy between the human mind and a physical construct, and transcend the limits of the flesh. Well, their works went wrong. The ionized fields of mists that contained the captive spirits over time drifted their awareness out of self-alignment. The experiment turned on its creators. I can only conclude that those sorry entities tied outside of Daelion’s Wheel became warped and vicious and insane.’
The result laid two entire worlds to white waste; then the hundreds of thousands of dead from that carnage, subverted and entrapped in brutal turn.
‘I have failed in my mission,’ Kharadmon summed up in drawn sorrow. ‘No roll list of Names could I find for the original set of wraiths that comprised Desh-thiere’s first sentience. And now, those prime spirits have been joined by every other casualty they have caused. They react as a body, their mad purpose to devour life. The strength of them is deadly and far too vast for our Fellowship to grapple without help.’
Sethvir tapped the knuckle of his thumb against his teeth. ‘We’ll need the aid of the Paravians,’ he ventured. ‘Their resonance with prime power could perhaps turn those lost entities to recall their forgotten humanity.’
‘A masterbard’s talents might do the same, had we the means to isolate each individual victim from the pull of collective consciousness,’ Luhaine said.
The Warden of Althain was silent. His turquoise eyes locked on Kharadmon in recognition of the annihilating truth left unmentioned. ‘The mist sublimates away under vacuum,’ he surmised.
‘Exactly.’ Kharadmon shot upright and stalked a soundless circuit of the chamber. ‘Free wraiths result, as you saw. If the ones still fogbound on Marak can unriddle the guidance traces left by that beacon spell of summoning, we could find ourselves beset beyond all recourse.’
Silence ate the seconds as the three mages pondered. The quandary of the Mistwraith had expanded to fearful dimensions. Its threat would not end with the creatures mewed up under wards in Rockfell Pit. Indeed, Athera would never be safe from predation until the trapped, damned spirits from both worlds beyond South Gate could be drawn under bindings, then redeemed.
The royal half-brothers already set in jeopardy by the curse might yet be needed to right the balance.
Recent events at Minderl Bay had effectively shown that Lysaer held no vestige of control over Desh-thiere’s aberrant geas.
Which left Arithon once again at the critical crux of responsibility.
Sethvir sighed, his crown tipped back against the tower’s chisel-cut window. In tones hammered blank by a burden just extended through trials enough to stop the heart, he said, ‘Asandir will reach the focus at Caith-al-Caen by the advent of tonight’s sundown. He can transfer to Athir’s ruin on the east shore and flag down the sloop Talliarthe. He will treat with the Shadow Master there and charge him, for the world’s sake, to stay alive. At any cost, by whatever means, the Prince of Rathain must survive until this threat beyond South Gate can be resolved.’
Beside the table, thinned to wan imprint against the varnished tiers of the bookshelves, Kharadmon blinked like a cat. ‘Not enough,’ he said in his old, stinging curtness. ‘Have Asandir bind our crown prince to his promise by blood oath.’
Luhaine stiffened to indignance and Sethvir looked aghast. ‘He is s’Ffalenn and compelled by his birth line to compassion,’ they protested in clashing chorus.
The Warden of Althain finished. ‘Since Torbrand, no scion of Rathain has ever required more than his royal promise!’
Kharadmon’s image vanished into a wisp of gloom that fanned a chill through the chamber. ‘You didn’t experience what lies behind South Gate. Heed my warning. Who can say what lengths may be necessary to save us all before this disaster is played out.’
Tharrick
Dakar the Mad Prophet snapped awake from the tail of a nightmare that involved the loss of his best spirits into the gawping jaws of a fish. The lap of wavelets against wood reminded him that he inhabited a musty berth aboard Talliarthe. He cracked open one eye and immediately groaned as light speared into his pupil from a scald of reflection which danced on the deck beams overhead.
‘Is it sunset or daybreak?’ he bellowed, then stuffed his face like a turtle back into the dark refuge of his blankets.
From his place by the stays in the stern, Arithon merely kept whistling a threnody with an odd, glancing dissonance that went ill with the aches of a hangover.
‘Ath,’ Dakar grumped. He shrugged off the suffocating layers of salt-damp wool, his pudgy hands stretched to cover his eyes and his ears, and successfully managing neither. ‘Your tune sounds like a damned fiend bane.’
Arithon nodded. His screeling measures stayed unbroken. He had seen iyats in the waves at the turn of the tide and preferred to keep his rigging unmolested. He had yet to change the ripped shirt he had worn through the affray at Minderl Bay. Bathed in the ruddy gold light that washed the misted shoreline at Athir, where his little sloop lay at anchor, he twisted the cork from the neck of another flask, then upended it over the stern rail.
Dakar screamed and shot upright as a stream of neat whisky splashed with a gurgle into the brine. The nightmare that had wakened him had been no prank of imagination, after all. ‘Dharkaron rip off your cursed bollocks!’ he howled, and added a damning string of epithets that curdled the quiet of new morning. ‘You’re dumping my last stock of spirits into the Ath-forsaken sea!’
Arithon never paused in his pursuit. ‘I wondered how long you’d take to notice.’ That icy note of warning in his tone was unmistakable to anyone who knew him.
Dakar paused in the companionway to catch his breath, take stock,