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i_read_whatSo last time, we caught up with Elaira (who delivered a baby), Lysaer (who has just instituted conscript slavery) and Mearn (who is plotting.)
This time, if the somewhat redundant chapter title is any indication, we're probably going to catch up with our actual lead character. And Dakar! Am I still going to be making "get a room" jokes now that hate-sex is off the table?
Actually, though, we're not starting with Arithon. We're continuing straight off the third sneak peek section last time, with Jieret s'Valerient. Jieret, as you recall, was someone we first met at the age of twelve. He is one of the few survivors of the Strakewood massacre from Curse of the Mistwraith and is the "caithdein" of Rathain - which is Arithon's ancestral kingdom.
A caithdein, by the way, is something akin to a regent, majordomo and right-hand man. Since this is "Spring-Summer 5648", that means Jieret's about twenty-two or twenty-three years old. He also has prophetic dreams, which, when you work for a dude like Arithon, rarely go well for you.
Jieret, Teir’s’Valerient, and Earl of the North snapped awake in Rathain with the vision’s cruel vista seared into indelible memory. Unmindful of peace, deaf to the birdsong which layered the spring dawn in the woodland outside his lodge tent, he eased himself free of his wife’s tangled limbs and arose from the blankets to stand shivering. Unsettled, naked, he sucked down breath after breath of chill air. The close, familiar smells of tanned deer hide and oiled steel, and the pitchy bite of cut balsam failed to restore him to balance. “Ath keep our sons!” he gasped through locked teeth. He could not shed his Sight of the last s’Ffalenn prince, crumpled and still in the swift, welling spurt of his life’s blood.
See?
Anyway, the whole "wife" thing is new! Go Jieret!
Jieret's wife, whose name is Feithan, seems to have a pretty realistic outlook on things. When Jieret basically tells her, out of the blue, that he's got to travel very far and very fast to save their prince's life, she's just like "Okay, how much spare clothing do you need?"
Jieret, it should be noted, apparently has some game:
Jieret bent, caught her wrists, and marveled as always. The strength in her was a subtle thing, her bones like a sparrow’s in his hands, which were broad and corded beyond his youthful years from relentless seasons of fighting. Their eyes met and shared mute appeal. “I’ll take weapons and the leathers on my back, and you, first of all.” A smile turned his lips. The expression softened the fierce planes of his face, and offset the hawk bridge of his nose. “Leave the blanket.”
The whole thing about narrow wrists makes me smirk though, Wurts has a thing for that. But yeah, never let it be said that Jieret neglects his wife. He clearly knows that, if you have to go running off to parts unknown, you should always take time for some goodbye sex.
Now we get a more thorough description of Jieret:
Jieret s’Valerient, called Red-beard, was in that hour twenty-one years of age. Supple, self-reliant, clean limbed as the deer he ran down in the hunt, he was rangy and tall, a being tanned out of oak bark. War and early losses had lent his hazel eyes more than a touch of gray flint. Jieret’s inheritance of the caithdein’s title had fallen to him during childhood, both his parents and four sisters slain in one day by town troops on the banks of Tal Quorin. On his wrist, even then, his first badge of achievement: the straight, fine scar from the knife cut which bound him lifelong to the honor of blood pact with his prince.
My math is wrong! Anyway, Jieret is hot. Way too young, but hot.
And proving she's the perfect wife, Feithan just tosses him his knife and suggests that the sooner he goes, the better the chance that he'll be back to her lodge before autumn. Well now.
We also see that she has "ebony hair". Um. Jieret. Ebony hair and narrow wrists? Is she also bitchily compassionate? Because dude...
ANYWAY, Jieret's possible imprinting aside, we are told that Feithan is pregnant. Poor thing, but she's realistic. She knows what Jieret is and what his responsibilities are. And well, she has a decent set of priorities:
Feithan held no rancor. If the Teir’s’Ffalenn died, no clanborn babe in Rathain could have peace. The future would be kingless, while the townsmen continued their centuries-old practice of extirpation. Headhunters would keep sewing scalps of clan victims as trophy fringe on their saddlecloths, until at last the survivors dwindled, their irreplaceable old bloodlines too thinned by loss to sustain.
Now THIS is a good reason for Arithon to become king someday, not the fucking Black Rose Prophecy that the Fellowship goes on about.
--
So now we follow Jieret through his travels. We do learn a little about Arithon's long term plans though - because Jieret's a little worried he'll be too late. Apparently Arithon intends to seek "the fabled continent beyond the Westland Sea" in order to find out if there actually is a refuge beyond the reach of the curse.
That...seems pretty reasonable actually. I'm going to guess, on account of this series being eleven books long, that it won't end up being so easy though. Jieret's worried that now that the winter storms are abating, Arithon will have left already.
He considers going to Sethvir for help:
The Sorcerer, Sethvir, Warden of Althain could have named Prince Arithon’s location. Yet at dusk on spring equinox, when Jieret passed his tower, the Fellowship held convocation. Where Sorcerers worked, the elements paid uncanny homage. The night air seemed charged to crystalline clarity, the land lidded under a transparent sky with its winds preternaturally silenced. Ozone tinged the silvered glow which speared in beams from the keep’s topmost arrow slits, and earth itself seemed to ring to the dance of ancient arcane rhythms. Though the clans did not share the widespread fear in the towns toward the powers called from natural forces, the man was a fool who held no mortal dread of disrupting the Sorcerers’ conjury.
But as fucking usual, the Fellowship is useless. I am shocked.
Jieret makes it into Tysan. There, he gets to confer with some of Maenol's scouts, who have news about the new "let's enslave the clansfolk" edict. As we saw in the sneak peek, Maenol's response to Lysaer's ultimatum was "the black arrow".
Jieret's reaction tells us a bit more about what that means:
Lysaer’s life, among the clans who by right should grant him fealty, was now irrevocably called forfeit. Jieret had no words. The event posed a vicious and unnatural tragedy, a warping of tradition provoked at its root by the evil of the Mistwraith’s curse.
It's the clansfolk who care about tradition, so this hurts, far more than the townsfolk can comprehend. That said, there's one silver lining: since troops and supplies are depleted after Vastmark, it'll be maybe a year or two before Lysaer can really regroup. But the clansfolk are realistic, they realize that after that point, things will get bad.
The scouts urge Jieret to go back, already certain that Arithon's sailed. More than that though, they figure (likely correctly) that Skannt and his ilk will have the same sanction from Rathain's mayors to go after Jieret's people too.
Jieret gets that. Etarra was already happy to use the children of clan criminals as slave labor, remember? So yeah, they'll leap at this idea. But Jieret has to keep going. He knows that he, himself, isn't irreplaceable. Another caithdein can always be named. But he's got an augury about Arithon's life.
The scouts understand, just like Feithan does. He's wished well on his way.
--
Jieret continues traveling. He ends up having to kill some headhunters. Go Jieret. He also meets a hedge witch, who he basically robs at knife point for healing. Tsk dude. She tries to sell him an amulet for the cost of a lock of his hair. He's not into the idea. Not in the least because he's pretty sure that she'll sell the lock to the headhunters - with a tracking spell to find him.
That said:
Despite his need, the crone put a grudge in her remedies. His leg swelled and ached. Through curses of agony, he tore the dressing away and soaked off the salves in a stream. Feverish, limping, he thrashed his way south through the brush. A second pack of tracking dogs winded his scent and burst into yammering tongue. Freshly mounted, their masters tried to run him to earth against the guard spells of a grimward, which no man living might cross. There, he might have perished, inadvertently killed by Fellowship defenses set to keep trespassers from harm.
It IS probably a bad idea to threaten a healer at knifepoint, dude. But fortunately, he's found and helped by clan hunters, who take him somewhere to recover. He's been traveling for six weeks by this point. He also is met by another clan chief ("whose ancestral seat lay in ruins across silver waters") - she's got another message for him.
This one's a bit more of a problem:
Lady Kellis touched the battered satchel by her knee. “A documented accusation by Avenor, made against your sanctioned prince.” She resumed in her husked, worn alto. “My lord Maenol withheld this one writ from the packet, for your hand alone, he insisted. By your sworn duty, this becomes your legal charge as caithdein of Rathain.”
I like seeing that there are female clan chiefs. I suppose Maenalle was one too, now that I think about it. So it's not new.
Anyway, Kellis won't tell him the charge. She wants him to read it and act as his oath demands. Jieret reads and is immediately angry that there hadn't been a trial. Kellis, more realistic, notes that if there had been, the towns folk would have seen Arithon burned.
But this is an important part of the caithdein's duty - they're supposed to "test" the princes, and make sure they're worthy. We saw something like this before: when Erlien "tested" Arithon in Shand with regard to the armory incident and other stuff. But Erlien isn't ARITHON's caithdein. So Jieret's got a harder job.
On the plus side, there will at least be some witnesses? Caolle was there, as I recall. And really upset. Hm. That could be a problem.
But it does mean that Jieret's got even more reason to track down his liege lord. Yay!
So MORE travel. Three weeks to get to the Isles of Min Pierens, via a patched up fishing smack. Jieret ends up having to use sand to try to scrub mold from his leathers. Ew. But hey, there's good news: the Khetienn is still in the harbor. Jieret ends up knocking over the sand onto his leathers. Oops. But anyway, he does NOT see this as a good thing. Especially since he doesn't spot any crewmen or damage from rough weather that would explain why the ship hasn't sailed yet.
On the plus side, Jieret does encounter a familar face:
“He’s not with you!” The fat man on the beach hopped the last steps to the tidemark, shook his lard fist, and erupted, “Damn his licebrained, sow-eared, rutting stubborn mind! He’s bent on getting himself killed.”
Jieret arrived on dry shingle. “Not with me?” he echoed. Stopped erect in noon glare while salt droplets sluiced runnels down his ankles, he gazed from full height into an unkempt, round face and smoldering, cinnamon eyes.
“Turd-stupid, string-plucking goose,” said Dakar, erstwhile spellbinder to a Fellowship Sorcerer, and known far and wide as the Mad Prophet. He licked bearded lips, then clapped his mouth closed, belatedly aware that the clansman who loomed over him brimmed like dammed acid with temper. Dakar’s layers of mismatched clothing heaved as he dredged up an ingratiating shrug. “Well, maybe not a goose, exactly.”
Ah Dakar, how I've missed you.
Jieret asks if he refers to "his liege, Prince Arithon?" Oh come now, Jieret, this is how Dakar shows his love.
Dakar flounced stiff. “Nobody else drives me to fits of sick fury, and anyway, you should know best. This isn’t the first time he’s had you come chasing his shirttails the length of the continent.”
Too wary to mind insults, Jieret kept his fierce glower. Dakar for a miracle was not wallowing drunk. Though the clownish, suffused features were still slack from loose living, the spirit inside his dissipated flesh seemed transformed into change. The pouched eyes held a glint of shrewd purpose. A queer incongruity, and one at sharp odds with the Mad Prophet’s scapegrace reputation.
I think I said this before, but one of the things I really enjoy about Dakar's Merior/Vastmark story arc is how he works on self-improvement, but not in a way that turns him into someone he's not. He doesn't drink to excess as much, if at all. But he still enjoys good food and alcohol. He's still fat, albeit much more in shape than before. He still has a good time.
So. where is Arithon?
Ashore, apparently. On the mainland. That horrifies Jieret, which leads Dakar to invite him up out of the sun. Besides, he explains, they really shouldn't discuss royal matters anyway. Koriani could be watching.
Jieret is pretty lost, having missed all of Vastmark. Last he'd known, Dakar hated Arithon for one thing. Dakar fills him in on the assassination attempt, leading poor Jieret to wonder if every faction on Athera wants his liege lord dead.
"Damned near" says both Dakar and me. Hah.
There's some pretty description here, which I'll provide for a certain someone:
Cicadas buzzed amid the crumbled rock stair that jagged up the flank of the headland. The dry air scarcely stirred, thick with the resin taint of cedar. Gray lichens silted like ash in the crannies, and the only visible inhabitants were the finches, flitting in startled bursts through the vines netted over bent limbs and black needles.
From the heights, the isle was a fissured, clenched fist, the fretted shoreline worried by tides, and seamed in jagged grottos, hazed over in lavender shade. Here, in the First Age, Paravian seers had held council with dragons, who flew the world’s skies no more. Against the vicious aberrations spawned by the drakes’ wild magic, defenders from four races had languished, besieged, in the cramped, ragged bounds of the curtain wall. Now strewn like kicked block, the last ridge of foundation housed basking, gold lizards which skittered away into cracks.
The eldest living dragons had spun their dream of desperation and appeal within these baked, cratered keeps, to draw to Athera the aid of the Fellowship Sorcerers. But if any ghost presence from that past remained to haunt Corith’s ruin, the land retained no thread of dissonance. Just bare stone, tuned shrill by the blaze of summer noon, and loomed on the untrammeled song of bundled energies which underpinned all the substance of creation. Centuries of wind and battering storms had swept even the deepest, layered bedrock clean of the imprint of violent vibration.
Also a little bit of backstory there. The Fellowship had been summoned by the dragons from somewhere else. Their full backstory is complicated, but this does probably explain why they're so much more powerful than everyone else on Athera.
Anyway, Jieret's pretty alarmed at the lack of crew. But they're actually here. Dakar's got them concealed. In fact: A note of plaintive unhappiness crept through. “That’s why, Ath forgive me, I had to stay. Given the choice, I wouldn’t be here.”
Aww.
But basically, Dakar's orders are to keep everything concealed, hide the Khetienn if folks stumble across it, or set her on fire if he can't keep the concealment up.
On the plus side, Dakar can at least reassure Jieret that Arithon's not out pursuing a death wish. He explains the whole "blood oath" thing that the Fellowship forced him to take in Warhost of Vastmark (because they're so big on consent, of course.) Arithon's basically been "bound and sworn to life, whatever the cost, against future threat from the Mistwraith".
Yep. God forbid the Fellowship at any point try to make this easier for the guy or anything. You'd think they could hide him somewhere. He might even go along with it if it means no one else has to die.
Anyway, Jieret's shocked: In all Athera’s history, so strict a measure had never been asked of a crown prince.. I mean, your liege lord IS a melodramatic, self-destructive idiot. But yeah, also, the Fellowship are dicks.
So poor Jieret gets to walk through illusions, which is a little freaky, but everything's fine. And now:
The Earl of the North bit back a yelp, the steel hilts of his weapons turned hot to his hand. He blinked, wits recovered, to find himself standing in a dusty, flat compound, scattered with tents sewn from sailcloth. Nor was Corith any longer untenanted. A circle of sailhands hunkered in the shade of a gnarled cedar. The ones near at hand looked aside at him, bored, then resumed quarreling over a dice throw, the winning stakes a collection of sticks notched with tally marks. The crescent knife used to keep count flashed in the fist of a prune-skinned little desertman, who stabbed air and hurled his scathing invective at a ship’s boy for rigging the odds.
People!
Dakar gives us an explanation of how the spell works that's actually kind of cool sounding. Then we get a closer look at one of the urchins:
The urchin shot erect from amid the pack of dicers. All coltish brown limbs and angular grace, the creature had blond hair tied in a glistening, long braid. The end was cross-laced with a frippery of ribbon bleached to rust. A second glance at a body clad in scruffy sailhand’s cottons showed the first, shy curves of a girl at the threshold of maturity.
“Arithon wasn’t on that fishing craft?” she shrilled across the brassy wash of sunlight.
At Dakar’s headshake, she crowed her wild triumph. “Well then you owe me six royals! He wasn’t to embark ‘til the winds changed, and the weather’s stayed contrary this season.”
It's Feylind, of course. She's grown up some. I'm not entirely sure how old she's supposed to be now. Maybe twelve or thirteen? Time flies.
--
So anyway, we get dusk falling. Jieret doesn't tell Dakar why he's here. He does eventually ask why Arithon left. Apparently, he's gone off to Shand. He's looking for a master joiner that he once employed in Merior, named Cattrick.
Both Jieret and Dakar are pretty aghast by this:
“I already know,” Dakar supplied. “Official books of grievances have been opened on the southcoast. Lord Erlien’s clansmen sent warning. Any town citizen can make claim of injury against Arithon. No proof is required. Just a sealed statement from the plaintiff. Those women left widowed at Vastmark have wasted no time recording all manner of spurious spite. The pages are filled to the margins, and the mayors have promised to appeal for redress at Avenor.”
It's funny how Lysaer's idea of justice has gone farther and farther away from the notion of a fair trial or evidence. That said, Lysaer probably SHOULD be paying the widows of the people he recruited to invade a settlement.
So yeah, Shand is not the friendliest place right now. And god knows if this Cattrick's loyalty is secure. But Arithon seemed to think he could win back the guy's trust. Which...actually seems like a pretty big statement from him.
Apparently Arithon's doing more than that though:
A thunderclap boomed over the ocean. Echoes shook the ominous flat air, and growled through the Mad Prophet’s explanation. “Once Arithon heard that his half brother had signed formal sanction for slave labor, his temper lit off like fell sparks. No reason moved him. He would go ashore, use his Masterbard’s talent and ply the southshore taverns. He meant to recall his craftsmen and recruit those who dared on some devious scheme to stall Avenor’s injustice.”
Jieret thinks that if he'd been here, he'd have fought Arithon bloody and put him in irons. Dakar's more cynical about it. a) Death-barding is good at breaking steel apparently (!), and b) Arithon's changed since Vastmark. Apparently for the worse.
Jieret notes that his ancestors have "lived with the peril of challenging s'Ffalenn royalty head-on". He also notes that Dakar didn't mention the Havens.
Dakar IMMEDIATELY clams up, but points out that Caolle was there and saw everything. Jieret tells us that Caolle came back, resigned his post, and swore he'd lift a sword only to train the younger scouts - no more to kill.
Hm, if I recall Vastmark, that was less about the Havens and more about the death of Lysaer's right hand man, before Diegan could advise Lysaer to pull back. But obviously, Jieret doesn't have a copy of the book. He's concerned.
And Dakar's also closed mouthed:
He said softly, “If Caolle can’t speak, then neither will I. Trust my word. What went wrong between the Havens and the clash with Lysaer’s war host lies beyond spoken words to explain. Hear advice from a friend. Don’t ask your prince. I beg you, keep clear and don’t pry. Let Arithon explain if he chooses.”
Damn, did you ever think to see DAKAR trying to protect ARITHON like this. But he really really doesn't want Jieret pushing a man who is stuck with " masterbard’s empathy turned under siege by the Fellowship’s imposed royal gift of compassion. (Still a terrible idea for a king, Fellowship!!!)
Jieret doesn't have a choice though. It's his job and duty to investigate the charges. Dakar finally says he's glad it's Jieret, as Arithon would mangle anyone else who challenged his integrity this time.
Which is the perfect segue for a melodramatic bard to make an entrance!!!
“How nicely opportune,” a silvery, smooth voice issued unbidden from the rain. “I can see I’ve returned just in time to play my own part in the satire.”
Dakar gasped an oath, and Jieret, spun in one surge to his feet, faced the doorway.
Lightning flared like a rip in black silk, to limn the arrival standing there. The man was slight boned, soaked as a seal in plain cotton. Temper smoked through each stabbing vowel as he added, “I’m back from the mainland, blown in with a spate of foul weather. Don’t cheer,” said Arithon s’Ffalenn. He stepped forward, reduced once again to a voice clothed over in darkness. “Cattrick didn’t sell my killed carcass to the mayors, though assuredly, he had to be wooed.”
Oh brother.
I feel like that's not purple prosey enough though.
Black haired, green eyed, pale as if chipped from veined quartz, the Master of Shadow poised on braced feet with his crossed arms wrapped to his chest. He was shivering. Shed droplets rocked off the plastered folds of his shirt and scribed rubied flecks through the torchlight. “There’s a parchment,” he prompted, succinct. “Let me see it.”
Getting better. (Jieret by the way, kneels upon seeing Arithon.) Anyway, Arithon notes that Jieret's mission is not a secret. He's been told by pretty much every scout he's met that Jieret's carrying a writ. And he'll at least get to see why no clansman in Havish would look him in the face.
Jieret stood erect, his every movement cautious. That his prince was unarmed made no difference. The royal presence framed warning like the gleam on a lake of black ice. The pair of them were bloodbond, and yet, here stood a stranger masked in the features of a friend. This diamond-edged malice held a febrile, strung focus more volatile than Jieret remembered. While thunder boomed and shook the ancient foundations, and the rain thrashed in demented torrents, he became aware of Dakar’s tense stillness, as if even the whisper of a wrongly drawn breath might trigger the spring of a predator.
Ah, there we go.
So yeah, Arithon gets to read the writ. His reaction is, of course, dramatic.
He read. His skin went from pale to transparent, and his very heart seemed to stop. Then he stirred. A word passed his lips, the staccato lilt of consonants framed in the grace of old Paravian. He hurled down the indictment as though its mere touch burned his flesh. Then he whirled, bent, and in a move of pure fury, plucked Jieret’s quilloned knife from the stool seat.
“Caithdein of Rathain,” he intoned in chiseled, formal language. “The truth, on my word as your crown prince. If that’s not sufficient, you’ll have your sure proof through a death seal set into the lifeblood spilled from my body.”
From the corner, Dakar gasped. Before Jieret could decry the necessity, Arithon closed an unsteady hand on the blade, over steel just meticulously sharpened. Scarlet welled from his palm, spilled through lean fingers, and ribboned slick tracks down his wrist. He inclined his head to the spellbinder.
So yeah, because he's just LIKE that, he's basically just roped Dakar into casting a spell that means that "one word of deceit" will destroy him. Because of. fucking. course.
It's not like you could just tell the truth anyway, you fucking moron. Dakar was THERE and could be a fucking witness!!!
I missed you so much, you fucking idiot.
So anyway, time for the confession:
The Shadow Master said in metallic distaste, “The deaths at the Havens are all mine, every one. But this charge of dark sorcery has no ground. No spell was spun, light or dark at that inlet. There were no fell tricks. No engagement occurred beyond arrows and steel, nor even the use of my birth-born mastery of shadow.” Still trembling, he regarded the spreading, red stain on his shirt cuff and finished his venomous delivery. “What happened was simple, cold murder.”
He laughed then, wide-eyed, and spun the slicked blade. The point now angled against his own breast, its chased silver pommel a reckless invitation to serve judgment. “Are you horrified? Caolle thought treason and threatened to spit me with bared steel.”
...so yeah, Arithon's really not coping with the whole "committed a war crime for the greater good, that turned out fucking useless anyway" thing.
Arithon continues being dramatic and confrontational. Dakar on the other hand...well....
“You can’t find the gall to ask why?” pressured Arithon, still venting pain into anger. “Or are you waiting for a Fellowship Sorcerer to gainsay a testimony made under truthseals?”
“Almighty Ath, that’s enough!” Dakar launched himself across his clutter of belongings and with a competence few would have credited, snatched the knife from Arithon’s grasp. He discarded the blade and clutched the prince’s soaked shirt in both hands. To Jieret, caught aback as the Shadow Master swayed on his feet, the Mad Prophet cried in rebuke, “What more must you have? Kingdom law has been satisfied. Daelion himself! A crown prince’s blood oath alone should have satisfied that the charge of dark sorcery was false. Your duty could have demanded far less, since Caolle himself stood as witness.”
With no gap for reply, he turned his invective toward the prince braced upright in his hands. “By Sithaer, you’re freezing! Where’s Cattrick? Wasn’t anyone aboard to share the watch on your sloop? How long were you out there, manning the helm in the storm?”
...so um, hate sex is still off the table, but comfort sex seems like it might be viable? You've got a room, Dakar. We saw it. You might as well get some compensation for the fact that your life is so much harder now that you don't hate this asshole.
Anyway:
“Galleys,” said Arithon, abruptly too worn to fuel his own manic fury. “Seven, with registry flags out of Capewell. I lost them six days ago, off the shoals of Carithwyr.” Against every precedent, he failed to resist as Dakar pressed him to sit. The drum of the rain nearly canceled his speech. “Cattrick’s still on the mainland. I meant him to stay. He’s agreed to return to my employ.”
Against every precedent. It's reciprocal. Jesus.
Anyway, more description of Arithon here:
Folded on the pallet, Arithon said nothing. His face did not show, his head being bent and resting on his knees. The fire in its makeshift bracket across the drum tower had finally ignited the oiled rags. Golden light limned his appalling exhaustion. His loose, sailhand’s cottons hung off his gaunt frame, except where heavy wet had slicked the cloth to his flanks. His wrists showed each ridge of old scars and taut sinew, and the cut on his hand bled too freely.
Arithon's prose is perhaps less purple than bruise colored at the moment. That and Wurts is clearly letting her h/c kink out.
“Liege, let me help,” Jieret begged.
“Find him a blanket,” Dakar ordered, terse, then rummaged through his things, and snatched out linen strips and tied a pressure wrap over Arithon’s gashed hand. “Idiot,” he murmured. “You used that damned blade like a butcher. Got tendons laid bare. When the bleeding’s controlled, you’ll need to be sewn, or risk scarring that may mar your music.”
I need to stop excerpting all of Dakar's fussing, but oh my god. Would that this series actually had a fandom...
Eh, they'd probably ruin it for me.
Anyway, Arithon notes that his throat's not cut, so he can sing. Of course he does. He then demands to know why Jieret's really here. If he'd gotten the parchment in Rathain, Caolle could have answered them.
Jieret tries to demur, saying that the other news can wait.
“Ah, no!” Arithon shoved off the wool the Mad Prophet sought to drape over him. His eyes raked up, fever bright. “I won’t have that sleep spell you’ve slipped through the weave.” He shot to his feet, restored to command through animate, blistering irritation. “By your oath as caithdein, Jieret, speak.”
...
Okay I really am going to start SUMMARIZING now. I promise. I do love that Dakar apparently has tactics to deal with this idiot.
Anyway, Jieret does relay his vision, to Arithon's sardonic interjections. Arithon is pretty harsh about it actually.
“How splendid and trite. How predictable!” Arithon gasped back shrilling laughter. Perhaps goaded on by his caithdein’s sharp recoil, he bit back like salt in a sore, “All right, my sworn lord, your duty’s been met to the last grasping letter of the law. By kingdom charter, I’ve been properly tried and warned. Now for love of the realm, you are free. Return to Rathain. The fishing sloop that brought you sails tomorrow for Carithwyr on my personal orders. Her captain was told to expect you on board. You will cross High King Eldir’s neutral realm of Havish to reach your homeland, and avoid another tangle with Tysan’s headhunters.”
“Go,” Dakar urged, cued by a mix of dread and epiphany, since every shred of bad news out of Tysan would have emerged through that prior exchange with the fishermen. Arithon was not sanguine for very good reason, beside being too spent to cope. The Mad Prophet grabbed Jieret’s elbow, wide-eyed and imploring. “Come away. What you’re seeing’s not temper, but a mannerless plea to be alone.”
And indeed, the sub-chapter ends with Arithon basically begging Dakar to "get him out" and..
Like an obedient, fat ninepin bowling down a young oak, the Mad Prophet plowed Rathain’s young caithdein into prudent retreat through the doorway.
...I couldn't resist the description, sorry.
--
So our next subchapter is Close Confidence:
I'm really hoping I can avoid a lot of excerpts this time, but it's an Arithon subchapter again, so...
It's also Summer 5648. Basically two minutes after the last chapter ended: Arithon's asleep. Dakar's keeping watch, and we find out some of the reason that Arithon was so harsh in dismissing Jieret: apparently every time someone brings up the Havens, Arithon gets horrible nightmares that wake him up screaming.
Of course.
Anyway, it takes about an hour before..
Dakar crossed to the pallet. He murmured a cantrip to ground his inner strength in the ageless stone of the headland. Then, as Arithon moaned, twisted sidewards, and thrashed, he grasped the slighter man’s shoulder. He caught the fist that snapped up toward his chin, winced for the abuse to new bandages, then pressed down in firm restraint. The prince he resisted might be sorrowfully thin, but his struggles were inventive and difficult. Dakar required main force to prevail. He turned the sharp s’Ffalenn features into the blankets and stifled the rising, agonized groan into the muddle of bedding.
Nightmare tropes. This book is HEAVY on the hurt/comfort.
Dakar, gently, wakes him up so that he can cry into Dakar's shoulder. Aw.
There's a bit more bruise-colored prose here: Terrors of guilt and conscience dulled the green eyes that regarded Dakar through the gloom, left them lusterless as sea-battered glass. The expressive, fine bones of the Masterbard’s hand rested slack on the coverlet, bundled flesh sapped of small grace.
Anyway, now that he's back to himself, Arithon's full of guilt and self-loathing:
“Daelion Fatemaster forgive me for the way I treated Jieret,” were the first words the Shadow Master said. He looked fevered. Minutes passed as he steadied his breathing, and his high, sweating flush subsided back into pallor. “He is Rathain’s true caithdein, courage and honor to his core. So like his father, he’s become. Does he know even yet what he means to me? Should he take harm from Lysaer’s miscalled judgments, I don’t think I could stand it. Let Dharkaron Avenger redress his wronged feelings. I had to send him back to his people.”
Dakar soothes him, telling him he did right. And gosh, the character development. It makes such good sense that Dakar would be a great caretaker. But who would have ever thought he'd come so far since Merior.
We do learn a little more about Arithon's plans, as he remains cuddling with hisboyfriend - the idea is that, if they find the other continent, they might find the hiding place of the Paravians. The Paravian wards should be able to protect everyone from the Mistwraith, and Arithon can use ships obtained/built by Cattrick to take the clans away to safety.
That seems like it'd require a LOT of fucking ships.
But hey, look at this character development too. Arithon is actually telling Dakar his plans!
Dakar asks what he'll do about the new augury. Nothing, basically. Until or unless their search fails. Besides, he can't use magic, and his attempt to scry for a "sane outcome" in Vastmark ended...well, with war crimes and death.
Oh, god, look at this:
“Stop,” Dakar snapped. “You can’t let your past write the future.” Like ill omen, the fading last flame in the torch dipped to an ember and died. This moment, Dakar found no comfort in darkness. “Right now you would do best by sleeping,” he advised.
An oath ripped back in sharp, precise syllables. Bedding rustled. Arithon settled prostrate on the cot. His limbs did not move, but through mage-sight, Dakar sensed his eyes were still open. When an hour passed, and his needling conscience kept him wakeful, he loosed a soft word in resignation.
The spidered threads of the spell already prepared between Dakar’s hands enfolded his consent on a thought. The wide, tortured gaze became masked by the sweep of black lashes. Tight breathing steadied. Arithon s’Ffalenn relaxed fully at last, the unquiet gnaw of his lacerated spirit eased back into dreamless rest.
ANYWAY.
We escape the massive amount of whump and hurt-comfort tropes to join Dakar as he goes outside the room. Someone else is there:
Lord Jieret lay curled there, his great sword at hand, and his hawk features set in repose. A contradictory tautness knit through his body warned of the fact he was wakeful. Dakar chose not to speak, but stepped out, his intent to seek solitude and settle drawn nerves on the heights overlooking the sea.
Of course. He promptly tackles Dakar to the ground, pinning him face down, and pushes his blade against Dakar's throat. Eep.
Jieret's a bit mad about the being kept outside bit. That said, he doesn't really intend to hurt Dakar. He lets Dakar up. He'd been eavesdropping.
“Aye, and where else does any caithdein sleep, but across his sworn prince’s threshold?” Met by affront, the clan chieftain muffled a cough of laughter behind his wrist. “Dharkaron’s immortal bollocks, you forget. My forefathers were standing down testy s’Ffalenn princes while yours were still pissing in swaddling bands.”
Heheh. It is true though that Dakar himself is only about 500 years old. He never got to see the royal lines in their heyday. I wonder if the earlier princes were any less ridiculous as the current generation.
Anyway, Jieret has a good speech here:
“Does that even signify?” Jieret snicked his knife back home in its sheath, careful to damp the steel silent. “I sat with my liege through the night when my people died for him at Tal Quorin. Again, the time he was forced to burn the trade fleet at Minderl Bay. I’ve seen how he weeps for the nightmares. I know his fear, that the ones he’s come to love will lose their lives.” All purpose, he finished, “My place is to stand at his side. Caith d’ein, shadow behind the throne.”
Dakar notes that Arithon wants Jieret back in Rathain, and points out that he can't steward the realm from the ship. Jieret (looking away through a "tigerish pause") asks what Dakar knows that he's not saying. Dakar doesn't answer yet, he basically leads Jieret away for explanations.
What Dakar explains is primarily Fellowship crap. Sethvir, as you recall, is the Warden of Althain, and has some fancy earth sense. He apparently got it from Athera's last guardian centaur. It apparently ties his consciousness to everything on Athera. But there are blind spots. And they think one of those blind spots are where the Paravians are hiding. (Apparently there is some magical sign of their presence somewhere.)
Apparently this is what happened to the missing Fellowship sorcerer. If you ever noticed, the Fellowship have been referred to, repeatedly as "the Fellowship of the Seven". We've met five of these guys: Asandir, Sethvir, Traithe (who's lost most of his powers), Kharadmon and Luhaine, who are both "disembodied". There's a sixth who gets mentioned a fair bit, mostly for the trouble he's caused: Davien. Davien is the one who enchanted that 500 year lifespan fountain that Lysaer and Arithon drank from in the first book. He was also the one who masterminded the rebellion against the princes five hundred years ago. They call him the traitor.
There's a seventh though, Ciladis, who apparently set out on a quest to find the Paravians two hundred years ago. He's never come back.
So yeah, this is going to be a pretty dangerous voyage. Especially as the Paravians don't want to be found.
We get a reminder of how awesome the Paravians are:
He paused, choked silent by memories very few left alive could understand: of the awesome, pure grace of the unicorns dancing, that could sear sight to blindness from too terrible a surfeit of ecstasy. His very marrow ached for the deep, drowning peace of a centaur’s presence, or the lyrical harmonies in a sunchild’s song. These mysteries, once experienced, could draw mortal minds to forget food and drink, and waste away, lost, until the spirit forsook the body, lured beyond all common things of earth.
I mean, they do sound cool, I guess. But it's all very hypothetical for my taste.
Anyway, Jieret grabs Dakar by the wrists and orders him to take care of his liege, and see him "happy and secure, or bring him back whole", or Jieret will hunt him down. Aww. I feel like that's a big ask though.
Dakar returns it, telling the "barbarian wolf" that if he wants to harry Dakar for failures, he has to stay alive and free of a slave galley.
Dakar does inform him that the sleep spell isn't going to hold in full sunlight, and Arithon will want to see Jieret and be sure he's well before they sail.
Jieret thinks to himself that Dakar still hasn't said all he knew, and that he's subtly changed. Dakar plays the drunkard, after all, but he's spent five hundred years studying under the Fellowship and could have taken Jieret out at any time.
Jieret's reaction here is a little insulting, but also pretty cute nonetheless.
For Arithon’s sake, Dakar had indulged him. Whatever reason underlay the vicious slaughter at the Havens, the shifty little spellbinder had entrusted Rathain’s prince with the dubious benefits of his loyalty. From that, the realm’s caithdein must salvage what peace of mind he could; his liege would not sail westward into peril without an ally to guard his left shoulder.
--
So the last sub-chapter is Checkrein (also Summer 5648).
Happily it's a chapter about Morriel Prime, of the Koriani. This means a distinct lack of purple prose and ridiculously over the top hurt/comfort. MUCH easier to just recap.
Anyway, Morriel's still mad that her attempt to murder Arithon was thwarted by a "bungling, fat prophet" (sucks to be you, lady). We're reminded also that she's very old and withered, "reduced by years and longevity spells to a husk of sagged flesh wrapped over porcelain bones".
Anyway, what she really wants is to die. But the problem is, she needs a proven successor. There've been forty-three women who've tried the trials of succession. They died. So yeah. That's a bit of a worry. She's put a lot of years into training her current candidate, which could still go to waste.
Morriel, by the way, is more than ten centuries old. None of her predecessors have stretched their lives that far. And apparently she's had a new augury:
The augury she held as fair warning galled most for its absolute, ruthless simplicity: this last living scion of Rathain’s royal line would disrupt the Koriani destiny, destroy a body of knowledge that stretched back into history to the time before catastrophe and war had driven humanity to seek refuge on Athera.
Have you tried making friends with the guy rather than murder him? I feel like he'd be less likely to try to destroy you if you stopped trying to murder him.
...I mean, this is Arithon, so you could probably try to murder him and just be somewhat apologetic, and it'd still work.
So how IS he supposed to fuck with the Koriani? I feel like that'd be worth knowing, personally. Oh well, Morriel's got a new plot in mind.
But first, let me bitch about the Fellowship Sorcerers, who have apparently been involved in a arduous conjury for an entire year. Because it's not like everything's going to Hell, at least in part due to their own fucking machinations or anything. Isn't slavery against the fucking compact? The ones you assholes are SUPPOSED to enforce???
Anyway, because they're fucking useless, they don't notice that Morriel's decided to act. Her move involves her First Senior, Lirenda, who we've met before.
We get reminded of what she looks like:
First Senior Lirenda presented a regal figure, slender, tall, and purposeful. Groomed and graceful as a panther, she wore hair like dark satin sleeked into a single, coiled braid. Her feet kept a dancer’s light tread on stone floors. The fine, sculptured bones of her wrists were set off by the gold-banded sleeves denoting her high office, and her violet silk mantle flowed off her lithe form like water poured from a vase.
Morriel thinks about how, even as a child, Lirenda has that elegant self-posession, that bone-deep assurance lent by wealth and background that touched servants to instinctive deference.. She does apparently smell just a little of brimstone though - apparently due to some issues with crates of fiend banes.
Apparently things have become harder for the Sisterhood since Lysaer's charged Arithon with dark sorcery. There's even more mistrust for arcane practice. They're going to have to be careful.
So anyway, it's time for Lirenda to start her trials to prepare her for mastery of the Great Waystone. Yay!
We get some cool description here:
The massive, polished sphere of the Koriani Waystone stood unveiled under starlight, planed filaments of captured reflection spiked deep in its shadowy heart. Even seated, eyes shut, a full span away, First Senior Lirenda felt the amethyst’s aura soak into her stilled senses. With her mind diamond clear from an exhaustive course of ritual, the dark crystal’s presence chilled like the breath of a predator: lethal, unforgiving, and charged in pitiless peril. The stone was as ancient as the order itself. Over a thousand prime matriarchs had wielded its dire focus since the cataclysm and war which had cast an uprooted humanity from its homeworlds. The jewel’s deep lattice was said to encompass them all; their unquiet memories; the imprint of each departed prime’s experience mazed like etched knotwork beneath its stilled facets.
At times in past history such knowledge meant survival. The records in the crystal could not be replaced. Nor could they be transferred. Stones mined in Athera fell under the Fellowship’s compact with the Paravians. The knowledge from outside worlds was proscribed. Limited to those crystals brought in by the order, every Matriarch since had no choice but to adopt the fixed practice, that its original set of jewel matrixes must be maintained without cleansing.
I do like an amethyst. It's my birthstone. But really, all I'm doing is thinking about how likely Arithon is to accidently or on purposely smash this thing. Hah.
So yeah, mystic shit, yadda yadda. It's interesting, but not really worth recapping. No weird metaphors for sex or anything like that.
It does sound pretty traumatic though. Lots of vastness, silence, oblivion, eruption of energy, and so on. She can hear the screams of her predecessors that failed echo through the crystal's depths. That kind of thing.
The real lesson, of course, is that Morriel is warding the stone, and if she failed to subdue it, Lirenda would be obliterated. That's the kind of strength that Lirenda will need to succeed her. Lirenda takes the lesson to heart, appreciating Morriel's control and the Waystone's power. She will own it herself one day.
Now what they're actually doing, of course, is scrying. And who?
Who do you think?
The pattern the Prime chose was a basic scrying. Somewhere upon the world’s seas, a brigantine’s keel carved westward. A small mote; a dimple pressed into the wavecrests by a hull hand fashioned of planks and sheathed in a bottom of copper. The metal would be subject to personal resonance, stamped bright in imprint of a man’s desperation, and his all-consuming hope of escape from the geas that hounded his peace.
Arithon s’Ffalenn sailed west on the summer winds, and Morriel shaped her bidding to comb Athera’s broad oceans to tag his current location. For sheer display, the move was impressive. Water was earth’s most unbiddable element. Salt of itself balked cast conjury. The call through the Waystone arose in a tumultuous torrent, a whiplash of force before which the wide seas must bow to outright demand.
I mean, look, if you don't want the guy to smash your shit, you could just leave him alone? I'm just saying!
Lirenda, for her part, detects Fellowship interference protecting Arithon and gets all huffy:
Lirenda cried out, indignant. “So much for the Fellowship of Seven and their claim of unshakable morals! Look! They have broken the code of their own compact, even acted covertly for the sake of protecting a criminal. Did you plan to catch their hand in the act?”
I mean, the Fellowship are raging hypocrites, Lirenda. Don't you remember the bullshit Sethvir put you through to get your stupid stone back? Why are you surprised by this.
Actually, though, per Morriel, there's no resonant signature of Fellowship work. Something else is masking him. That's interesting. But also even more proof as to the Fellowship's uselessness. Hey dudes, if you need this guy alive so much to achieve your goals, you could fucking HELP more.
Yes, I am inconsistent in my criticism of the Fellowship. Bite me.
So anyway, more visiony shit. Eventually, they find an unstable region in the North Cape, full of volcanoes. The idea is that they're going to cap a vent in the Earth's crust. Okay, I have to admit, that's pretty fucking impressive.
Except, something goes wrong:
Perception overturned, kicked through an explosive cascade of change. Lirenda screamed with the upset as something spun wrong, and cognizance unraveled with the unbound, wild fury of a thunderclap. All order dissolved, then mastery and rule, leaving dark like the aftermath of carnage. Next, the slipped threads of power hurled into backlash. Chaos clapped down. For one yawning instant, natural law wrenched off course. Every sane tie to reason unhinged, as if torn from the span of creation.
Lirenda asks after Morriel, who's busy cursing up a storm. She blames the Fellowship for this, basically, since they had the Waystone in their possession for five centuries. They must have tampered with it.
Lirenda is confused: Sethvir had promised that it was untouched. And they'd tested it!
Morriel knows the Fellowship better though and explains with "bitter admiration" - he didn't disturb the stone. He just "imprinted the Waystone's signature into every cranny of the world through the earth link".
Lirenda doesn't understand.
I'll excerpt Morriel's explanation:
“You should, given more time and experience.” Morriel qualified in that etched, acid tone she used to restore equilibrium. “The key lies in the foundations of Fellowship philosophy, First Senior. The Sorcerers’ mastery keeps Paravian precepts. The Seven are bound, and must live by the Law of the Major Balance, itself a stricture of permissions. They believe earth and air, in fact, all solid matter, to be spun from animate spirit. Nothing they do, in craft or in deed, can proceed without an exchange of consent. So they have trammeled us. Our Waystone’s signature pattern has been given to all that has form in this world; and by Sethvir’s knotted conjury, all physical matter in existence has been empowered to refuse its channeled force of intervention.”
Yeah, consent.
Considering how this didn't stop the Fellowship from a) mentally tampering with Arithon so he didn't run away from heirship too early, b) bespelling Dakar so he couldn't fucking EAT if he didn't hang around with Arithon, c) forcing Arithon into a BLOOD OATH to keep himself alive, d) choosing to sacrifice Lysaer to the Mistwraith's curse because they needed Arithon on the throne to get their Fellowship back to full strength, and fucking SO ON
I think you ladies can figure out the tricks soon enough.
Oh, hey, I think we actually have an explanation of how Fellowship bullshit works here:
Before Lirenda’s outrage, Morriel ran on, her rancor fired now by the ancient sting of balked rivalry. “Oh, we’re not helpless. Our order can still tune a circle of seniors into focused unity through the stone. We can still curb disease, and even, turn armies. But only to bend influence upon conscious, living beings, and these have wills of their own. Over the earth, against even the lowliest storm, our Waystone has been robbed of power.”
Yep, it's perfectly fine to control PEOPLE. But god forbid the fucking rocks don't consent.
We do learn a little about what made the Koriani so powerful, basically, the stones of the Koriani were brought from offworld when the Koriathain first settled Athera, and thus were never subject to the Paravian earth link.
So you may notice that this section pretty much implies that the Koriani are aliens. That's actually true! If you recall what Asandir once told the s'Brydions in Merior: ALL humans are aliens to Athera. The Koriani just brought a few extra toys.
Toys that might no longer work the same way anymore.
The sub-chapter ends with Morriel declaring that the Fellowship have no right to curtail their powers, and she intends to present her demands at Althain Tower and gain back their autonomy.
Yeah, I think that's going to go very well.
Well, actually, it probably will, if there's a way to inadvertently screw Arithon over in the process.
---
So our last, sneak peek, section is Three Seasons and it takes place from Summer-Winter 1648.
So our first paragraph tells us how, in late Summer, a fellow named Cattrick bows before Lysaer s'Ilessid, to apply for the master's position at his new shipyard.
Oh dear.
In the second, the Fellowship sorcerers are sealing yet another layer of a construct that they've been working on for a year. There's some good imagery, but no clue as to what it's actually for.
Finally, in the third, we're told that the child, Fionn Areth, survives his first year. Go Fionn, I'm so sorry your life will suck.
This time, if the somewhat redundant chapter title is any indication, we're probably going to catch up with our actual lead character. And Dakar! Am I still going to be making "get a room" jokes now that hate-sex is off the table?
Actually, though, we're not starting with Arithon. We're continuing straight off the third sneak peek section last time, with Jieret s'Valerient. Jieret, as you recall, was someone we first met at the age of twelve. He is one of the few survivors of the Strakewood massacre from Curse of the Mistwraith and is the "caithdein" of Rathain - which is Arithon's ancestral kingdom.
A caithdein, by the way, is something akin to a regent, majordomo and right-hand man. Since this is "Spring-Summer 5648", that means Jieret's about twenty-two or twenty-three years old. He also has prophetic dreams, which, when you work for a dude like Arithon, rarely go well for you.
Jieret, Teir’s’Valerient, and Earl of the North snapped awake in Rathain with the vision’s cruel vista seared into indelible memory. Unmindful of peace, deaf to the birdsong which layered the spring dawn in the woodland outside his lodge tent, he eased himself free of his wife’s tangled limbs and arose from the blankets to stand shivering. Unsettled, naked, he sucked down breath after breath of chill air. The close, familiar smells of tanned deer hide and oiled steel, and the pitchy bite of cut balsam failed to restore him to balance. “Ath keep our sons!” he gasped through locked teeth. He could not shed his Sight of the last s’Ffalenn prince, crumpled and still in the swift, welling spurt of his life’s blood.
See?
Anyway, the whole "wife" thing is new! Go Jieret!
Jieret's wife, whose name is Feithan, seems to have a pretty realistic outlook on things. When Jieret basically tells her, out of the blue, that he's got to travel very far and very fast to save their prince's life, she's just like "Okay, how much spare clothing do you need?"
Jieret, it should be noted, apparently has some game:
Jieret bent, caught her wrists, and marveled as always. The strength in her was a subtle thing, her bones like a sparrow’s in his hands, which were broad and corded beyond his youthful years from relentless seasons of fighting. Their eyes met and shared mute appeal. “I’ll take weapons and the leathers on my back, and you, first of all.” A smile turned his lips. The expression softened the fierce planes of his face, and offset the hawk bridge of his nose. “Leave the blanket.”
The whole thing about narrow wrists makes me smirk though, Wurts has a thing for that. But yeah, never let it be said that Jieret neglects his wife. He clearly knows that, if you have to go running off to parts unknown, you should always take time for some goodbye sex.
Now we get a more thorough description of Jieret:
Jieret s’Valerient, called Red-beard, was in that hour twenty-one years of age. Supple, self-reliant, clean limbed as the deer he ran down in the hunt, he was rangy and tall, a being tanned out of oak bark. War and early losses had lent his hazel eyes more than a touch of gray flint. Jieret’s inheritance of the caithdein’s title had fallen to him during childhood, both his parents and four sisters slain in one day by town troops on the banks of Tal Quorin. On his wrist, even then, his first badge of achievement: the straight, fine scar from the knife cut which bound him lifelong to the honor of blood pact with his prince.
My math is wrong! Anyway, Jieret is hot. Way too young, but hot.
And proving she's the perfect wife, Feithan just tosses him his knife and suggests that the sooner he goes, the better the chance that he'll be back to her lodge before autumn. Well now.
We also see that she has "ebony hair". Um. Jieret. Ebony hair and narrow wrists? Is she also bitchily compassionate? Because dude...
ANYWAY, Jieret's possible imprinting aside, we are told that Feithan is pregnant. Poor thing, but she's realistic. She knows what Jieret is and what his responsibilities are. And well, she has a decent set of priorities:
Feithan held no rancor. If the Teir’s’Ffalenn died, no clanborn babe in Rathain could have peace. The future would be kingless, while the townsmen continued their centuries-old practice of extirpation. Headhunters would keep sewing scalps of clan victims as trophy fringe on their saddlecloths, until at last the survivors dwindled, their irreplaceable old bloodlines too thinned by loss to sustain.
Now THIS is a good reason for Arithon to become king someday, not the fucking Black Rose Prophecy that the Fellowship goes on about.
--
So now we follow Jieret through his travels. We do learn a little about Arithon's long term plans though - because Jieret's a little worried he'll be too late. Apparently Arithon intends to seek "the fabled continent beyond the Westland Sea" in order to find out if there actually is a refuge beyond the reach of the curse.
That...seems pretty reasonable actually. I'm going to guess, on account of this series being eleven books long, that it won't end up being so easy though. Jieret's worried that now that the winter storms are abating, Arithon will have left already.
He considers going to Sethvir for help:
The Sorcerer, Sethvir, Warden of Althain could have named Prince Arithon’s location. Yet at dusk on spring equinox, when Jieret passed his tower, the Fellowship held convocation. Where Sorcerers worked, the elements paid uncanny homage. The night air seemed charged to crystalline clarity, the land lidded under a transparent sky with its winds preternaturally silenced. Ozone tinged the silvered glow which speared in beams from the keep’s topmost arrow slits, and earth itself seemed to ring to the dance of ancient arcane rhythms. Though the clans did not share the widespread fear in the towns toward the powers called from natural forces, the man was a fool who held no mortal dread of disrupting the Sorcerers’ conjury.
But as fucking usual, the Fellowship is useless. I am shocked.
Jieret makes it into Tysan. There, he gets to confer with some of Maenol's scouts, who have news about the new "let's enslave the clansfolk" edict. As we saw in the sneak peek, Maenol's response to Lysaer's ultimatum was "the black arrow".
Jieret's reaction tells us a bit more about what that means:
Lysaer’s life, among the clans who by right should grant him fealty, was now irrevocably called forfeit. Jieret had no words. The event posed a vicious and unnatural tragedy, a warping of tradition provoked at its root by the evil of the Mistwraith’s curse.
It's the clansfolk who care about tradition, so this hurts, far more than the townsfolk can comprehend. That said, there's one silver lining: since troops and supplies are depleted after Vastmark, it'll be maybe a year or two before Lysaer can really regroup. But the clansfolk are realistic, they realize that after that point, things will get bad.
The scouts urge Jieret to go back, already certain that Arithon's sailed. More than that though, they figure (likely correctly) that Skannt and his ilk will have the same sanction from Rathain's mayors to go after Jieret's people too.
Jieret gets that. Etarra was already happy to use the children of clan criminals as slave labor, remember? So yeah, they'll leap at this idea. But Jieret has to keep going. He knows that he, himself, isn't irreplaceable. Another caithdein can always be named. But he's got an augury about Arithon's life.
The scouts understand, just like Feithan does. He's wished well on his way.
--
Jieret continues traveling. He ends up having to kill some headhunters. Go Jieret. He also meets a hedge witch, who he basically robs at knife point for healing. Tsk dude. She tries to sell him an amulet for the cost of a lock of his hair. He's not into the idea. Not in the least because he's pretty sure that she'll sell the lock to the headhunters - with a tracking spell to find him.
That said:
Despite his need, the crone put a grudge in her remedies. His leg swelled and ached. Through curses of agony, he tore the dressing away and soaked off the salves in a stream. Feverish, limping, he thrashed his way south through the brush. A second pack of tracking dogs winded his scent and burst into yammering tongue. Freshly mounted, their masters tried to run him to earth against the guard spells of a grimward, which no man living might cross. There, he might have perished, inadvertently killed by Fellowship defenses set to keep trespassers from harm.
It IS probably a bad idea to threaten a healer at knifepoint, dude. But fortunately, he's found and helped by clan hunters, who take him somewhere to recover. He's been traveling for six weeks by this point. He also is met by another clan chief ("whose ancestral seat lay in ruins across silver waters") - she's got another message for him.
This one's a bit more of a problem:
Lady Kellis touched the battered satchel by her knee. “A documented accusation by Avenor, made against your sanctioned prince.” She resumed in her husked, worn alto. “My lord Maenol withheld this one writ from the packet, for your hand alone, he insisted. By your sworn duty, this becomes your legal charge as caithdein of Rathain.”
I like seeing that there are female clan chiefs. I suppose Maenalle was one too, now that I think about it. So it's not new.
Anyway, Kellis won't tell him the charge. She wants him to read it and act as his oath demands. Jieret reads and is immediately angry that there hadn't been a trial. Kellis, more realistic, notes that if there had been, the towns folk would have seen Arithon burned.
But this is an important part of the caithdein's duty - they're supposed to "test" the princes, and make sure they're worthy. We saw something like this before: when Erlien "tested" Arithon in Shand with regard to the armory incident and other stuff. But Erlien isn't ARITHON's caithdein. So Jieret's got a harder job.
On the plus side, there will at least be some witnesses? Caolle was there, as I recall. And really upset. Hm. That could be a problem.
But it does mean that Jieret's got even more reason to track down his liege lord. Yay!
So MORE travel. Three weeks to get to the Isles of Min Pierens, via a patched up fishing smack. Jieret ends up having to use sand to try to scrub mold from his leathers. Ew. But hey, there's good news: the Khetienn is still in the harbor. Jieret ends up knocking over the sand onto his leathers. Oops. But anyway, he does NOT see this as a good thing. Especially since he doesn't spot any crewmen or damage from rough weather that would explain why the ship hasn't sailed yet.
On the plus side, Jieret does encounter a familar face:
“He’s not with you!” The fat man on the beach hopped the last steps to the tidemark, shook his lard fist, and erupted, “Damn his licebrained, sow-eared, rutting stubborn mind! He’s bent on getting himself killed.”
Jieret arrived on dry shingle. “Not with me?” he echoed. Stopped erect in noon glare while salt droplets sluiced runnels down his ankles, he gazed from full height into an unkempt, round face and smoldering, cinnamon eyes.
“Turd-stupid, string-plucking goose,” said Dakar, erstwhile spellbinder to a Fellowship Sorcerer, and known far and wide as the Mad Prophet. He licked bearded lips, then clapped his mouth closed, belatedly aware that the clansman who loomed over him brimmed like dammed acid with temper. Dakar’s layers of mismatched clothing heaved as he dredged up an ingratiating shrug. “Well, maybe not a goose, exactly.”
Ah Dakar, how I've missed you.
Jieret asks if he refers to "his liege, Prince Arithon?" Oh come now, Jieret, this is how Dakar shows his love.
Dakar flounced stiff. “Nobody else drives me to fits of sick fury, and anyway, you should know best. This isn’t the first time he’s had you come chasing his shirttails the length of the continent.”
Too wary to mind insults, Jieret kept his fierce glower. Dakar for a miracle was not wallowing drunk. Though the clownish, suffused features were still slack from loose living, the spirit inside his dissipated flesh seemed transformed into change. The pouched eyes held a glint of shrewd purpose. A queer incongruity, and one at sharp odds with the Mad Prophet’s scapegrace reputation.
I think I said this before, but one of the things I really enjoy about Dakar's Merior/Vastmark story arc is how he works on self-improvement, but not in a way that turns him into someone he's not. He doesn't drink to excess as much, if at all. But he still enjoys good food and alcohol. He's still fat, albeit much more in shape than before. He still has a good time.
So. where is Arithon?
Ashore, apparently. On the mainland. That horrifies Jieret, which leads Dakar to invite him up out of the sun. Besides, he explains, they really shouldn't discuss royal matters anyway. Koriani could be watching.
Jieret is pretty lost, having missed all of Vastmark. Last he'd known, Dakar hated Arithon for one thing. Dakar fills him in on the assassination attempt, leading poor Jieret to wonder if every faction on Athera wants his liege lord dead.
"Damned near" says both Dakar and me. Hah.
There's some pretty description here, which I'll provide for a certain someone:
Cicadas buzzed amid the crumbled rock stair that jagged up the flank of the headland. The dry air scarcely stirred, thick with the resin taint of cedar. Gray lichens silted like ash in the crannies, and the only visible inhabitants were the finches, flitting in startled bursts through the vines netted over bent limbs and black needles.
From the heights, the isle was a fissured, clenched fist, the fretted shoreline worried by tides, and seamed in jagged grottos, hazed over in lavender shade. Here, in the First Age, Paravian seers had held council with dragons, who flew the world’s skies no more. Against the vicious aberrations spawned by the drakes’ wild magic, defenders from four races had languished, besieged, in the cramped, ragged bounds of the curtain wall. Now strewn like kicked block, the last ridge of foundation housed basking, gold lizards which skittered away into cracks.
The eldest living dragons had spun their dream of desperation and appeal within these baked, cratered keeps, to draw to Athera the aid of the Fellowship Sorcerers. But if any ghost presence from that past remained to haunt Corith’s ruin, the land retained no thread of dissonance. Just bare stone, tuned shrill by the blaze of summer noon, and loomed on the untrammeled song of bundled energies which underpinned all the substance of creation. Centuries of wind and battering storms had swept even the deepest, layered bedrock clean of the imprint of violent vibration.
Also a little bit of backstory there. The Fellowship had been summoned by the dragons from somewhere else. Their full backstory is complicated, but this does probably explain why they're so much more powerful than everyone else on Athera.
Anyway, Jieret's pretty alarmed at the lack of crew. But they're actually here. Dakar's got them concealed. In fact: A note of plaintive unhappiness crept through. “That’s why, Ath forgive me, I had to stay. Given the choice, I wouldn’t be here.”
Aww.
But basically, Dakar's orders are to keep everything concealed, hide the Khetienn if folks stumble across it, or set her on fire if he can't keep the concealment up.
On the plus side, Dakar can at least reassure Jieret that Arithon's not out pursuing a death wish. He explains the whole "blood oath" thing that the Fellowship forced him to take in Warhost of Vastmark (because they're so big on consent, of course.) Arithon's basically been "bound and sworn to life, whatever the cost, against future threat from the Mistwraith".
Yep. God forbid the Fellowship at any point try to make this easier for the guy or anything. You'd think they could hide him somewhere. He might even go along with it if it means no one else has to die.
Anyway, Jieret's shocked: In all Athera’s history, so strict a measure had never been asked of a crown prince.. I mean, your liege lord IS a melodramatic, self-destructive idiot. But yeah, also, the Fellowship are dicks.
So poor Jieret gets to walk through illusions, which is a little freaky, but everything's fine. And now:
The Earl of the North bit back a yelp, the steel hilts of his weapons turned hot to his hand. He blinked, wits recovered, to find himself standing in a dusty, flat compound, scattered with tents sewn from sailcloth. Nor was Corith any longer untenanted. A circle of sailhands hunkered in the shade of a gnarled cedar. The ones near at hand looked aside at him, bored, then resumed quarreling over a dice throw, the winning stakes a collection of sticks notched with tally marks. The crescent knife used to keep count flashed in the fist of a prune-skinned little desertman, who stabbed air and hurled his scathing invective at a ship’s boy for rigging the odds.
People!
Dakar gives us an explanation of how the spell works that's actually kind of cool sounding. Then we get a closer look at one of the urchins:
The urchin shot erect from amid the pack of dicers. All coltish brown limbs and angular grace, the creature had blond hair tied in a glistening, long braid. The end was cross-laced with a frippery of ribbon bleached to rust. A second glance at a body clad in scruffy sailhand’s cottons showed the first, shy curves of a girl at the threshold of maturity.
“Arithon wasn’t on that fishing craft?” she shrilled across the brassy wash of sunlight.
At Dakar’s headshake, she crowed her wild triumph. “Well then you owe me six royals! He wasn’t to embark ‘til the winds changed, and the weather’s stayed contrary this season.”
It's Feylind, of course. She's grown up some. I'm not entirely sure how old she's supposed to be now. Maybe twelve or thirteen? Time flies.
--
So anyway, we get dusk falling. Jieret doesn't tell Dakar why he's here. He does eventually ask why Arithon left. Apparently, he's gone off to Shand. He's looking for a master joiner that he once employed in Merior, named Cattrick.
Both Jieret and Dakar are pretty aghast by this:
“I already know,” Dakar supplied. “Official books of grievances have been opened on the southcoast. Lord Erlien’s clansmen sent warning. Any town citizen can make claim of injury against Arithon. No proof is required. Just a sealed statement from the plaintiff. Those women left widowed at Vastmark have wasted no time recording all manner of spurious spite. The pages are filled to the margins, and the mayors have promised to appeal for redress at Avenor.”
It's funny how Lysaer's idea of justice has gone farther and farther away from the notion of a fair trial or evidence. That said, Lysaer probably SHOULD be paying the widows of the people he recruited to invade a settlement.
So yeah, Shand is not the friendliest place right now. And god knows if this Cattrick's loyalty is secure. But Arithon seemed to think he could win back the guy's trust. Which...actually seems like a pretty big statement from him.
Apparently Arithon's doing more than that though:
A thunderclap boomed over the ocean. Echoes shook the ominous flat air, and growled through the Mad Prophet’s explanation. “Once Arithon heard that his half brother had signed formal sanction for slave labor, his temper lit off like fell sparks. No reason moved him. He would go ashore, use his Masterbard’s talent and ply the southshore taverns. He meant to recall his craftsmen and recruit those who dared on some devious scheme to stall Avenor’s injustice.”
Jieret thinks that if he'd been here, he'd have fought Arithon bloody and put him in irons. Dakar's more cynical about it. a) Death-barding is good at breaking steel apparently (!), and b) Arithon's changed since Vastmark. Apparently for the worse.
Jieret notes that his ancestors have "lived with the peril of challenging s'Ffalenn royalty head-on". He also notes that Dakar didn't mention the Havens.
Dakar IMMEDIATELY clams up, but points out that Caolle was there and saw everything. Jieret tells us that Caolle came back, resigned his post, and swore he'd lift a sword only to train the younger scouts - no more to kill.
Hm, if I recall Vastmark, that was less about the Havens and more about the death of Lysaer's right hand man, before Diegan could advise Lysaer to pull back. But obviously, Jieret doesn't have a copy of the book. He's concerned.
And Dakar's also closed mouthed:
He said softly, “If Caolle can’t speak, then neither will I. Trust my word. What went wrong between the Havens and the clash with Lysaer’s war host lies beyond spoken words to explain. Hear advice from a friend. Don’t ask your prince. I beg you, keep clear and don’t pry. Let Arithon explain if he chooses.”
Damn, did you ever think to see DAKAR trying to protect ARITHON like this. But he really really doesn't want Jieret pushing a man who is stuck with " masterbard’s empathy turned under siege by the Fellowship’s imposed royal gift of compassion. (Still a terrible idea for a king, Fellowship!!!)
Jieret doesn't have a choice though. It's his job and duty to investigate the charges. Dakar finally says he's glad it's Jieret, as Arithon would mangle anyone else who challenged his integrity this time.
Which is the perfect segue for a melodramatic bard to make an entrance!!!
“How nicely opportune,” a silvery, smooth voice issued unbidden from the rain. “I can see I’ve returned just in time to play my own part in the satire.”
Dakar gasped an oath, and Jieret, spun in one surge to his feet, faced the doorway.
Lightning flared like a rip in black silk, to limn the arrival standing there. The man was slight boned, soaked as a seal in plain cotton. Temper smoked through each stabbing vowel as he added, “I’m back from the mainland, blown in with a spate of foul weather. Don’t cheer,” said Arithon s’Ffalenn. He stepped forward, reduced once again to a voice clothed over in darkness. “Cattrick didn’t sell my killed carcass to the mayors, though assuredly, he had to be wooed.”
Oh brother.
I feel like that's not purple prosey enough though.
Black haired, green eyed, pale as if chipped from veined quartz, the Master of Shadow poised on braced feet with his crossed arms wrapped to his chest. He was shivering. Shed droplets rocked off the plastered folds of his shirt and scribed rubied flecks through the torchlight. “There’s a parchment,” he prompted, succinct. “Let me see it.”
Getting better. (Jieret by the way, kneels upon seeing Arithon.) Anyway, Arithon notes that Jieret's mission is not a secret. He's been told by pretty much every scout he's met that Jieret's carrying a writ. And he'll at least get to see why no clansman in Havish would look him in the face.
Jieret stood erect, his every movement cautious. That his prince was unarmed made no difference. The royal presence framed warning like the gleam on a lake of black ice. The pair of them were bloodbond, and yet, here stood a stranger masked in the features of a friend. This diamond-edged malice held a febrile, strung focus more volatile than Jieret remembered. While thunder boomed and shook the ancient foundations, and the rain thrashed in demented torrents, he became aware of Dakar’s tense stillness, as if even the whisper of a wrongly drawn breath might trigger the spring of a predator.
Ah, there we go.
So yeah, Arithon gets to read the writ. His reaction is, of course, dramatic.
He read. His skin went from pale to transparent, and his very heart seemed to stop. Then he stirred. A word passed his lips, the staccato lilt of consonants framed in the grace of old Paravian. He hurled down the indictment as though its mere touch burned his flesh. Then he whirled, bent, and in a move of pure fury, plucked Jieret’s quilloned knife from the stool seat.
“Caithdein of Rathain,” he intoned in chiseled, formal language. “The truth, on my word as your crown prince. If that’s not sufficient, you’ll have your sure proof through a death seal set into the lifeblood spilled from my body.”
From the corner, Dakar gasped. Before Jieret could decry the necessity, Arithon closed an unsteady hand on the blade, over steel just meticulously sharpened. Scarlet welled from his palm, spilled through lean fingers, and ribboned slick tracks down his wrist. He inclined his head to the spellbinder.
So yeah, because he's just LIKE that, he's basically just roped Dakar into casting a spell that means that "one word of deceit" will destroy him. Because of. fucking. course.
It's not like you could just tell the truth anyway, you fucking moron. Dakar was THERE and could be a fucking witness!!!
I missed you so much, you fucking idiot.
So anyway, time for the confession:
The Shadow Master said in metallic distaste, “The deaths at the Havens are all mine, every one. But this charge of dark sorcery has no ground. No spell was spun, light or dark at that inlet. There were no fell tricks. No engagement occurred beyond arrows and steel, nor even the use of my birth-born mastery of shadow.” Still trembling, he regarded the spreading, red stain on his shirt cuff and finished his venomous delivery. “What happened was simple, cold murder.”
He laughed then, wide-eyed, and spun the slicked blade. The point now angled against his own breast, its chased silver pommel a reckless invitation to serve judgment. “Are you horrified? Caolle thought treason and threatened to spit me with bared steel.”
...so yeah, Arithon's really not coping with the whole "committed a war crime for the greater good, that turned out fucking useless anyway" thing.
Arithon continues being dramatic and confrontational. Dakar on the other hand...well....
“You can’t find the gall to ask why?” pressured Arithon, still venting pain into anger. “Or are you waiting for a Fellowship Sorcerer to gainsay a testimony made under truthseals?”
“Almighty Ath, that’s enough!” Dakar launched himself across his clutter of belongings and with a competence few would have credited, snatched the knife from Arithon’s grasp. He discarded the blade and clutched the prince’s soaked shirt in both hands. To Jieret, caught aback as the Shadow Master swayed on his feet, the Mad Prophet cried in rebuke, “What more must you have? Kingdom law has been satisfied. Daelion himself! A crown prince’s blood oath alone should have satisfied that the charge of dark sorcery was false. Your duty could have demanded far less, since Caolle himself stood as witness.”
With no gap for reply, he turned his invective toward the prince braced upright in his hands. “By Sithaer, you’re freezing! Where’s Cattrick? Wasn’t anyone aboard to share the watch on your sloop? How long were you out there, manning the helm in the storm?”
...so um, hate sex is still off the table, but comfort sex seems like it might be viable? You've got a room, Dakar. We saw it. You might as well get some compensation for the fact that your life is so much harder now that you don't hate this asshole.
Anyway:
“Galleys,” said Arithon, abruptly too worn to fuel his own manic fury. “Seven, with registry flags out of Capewell. I lost them six days ago, off the shoals of Carithwyr.” Against every precedent, he failed to resist as Dakar pressed him to sit. The drum of the rain nearly canceled his speech. “Cattrick’s still on the mainland. I meant him to stay. He’s agreed to return to my employ.”
Against every precedent. It's reciprocal. Jesus.
Anyway, more description of Arithon here:
Folded on the pallet, Arithon said nothing. His face did not show, his head being bent and resting on his knees. The fire in its makeshift bracket across the drum tower had finally ignited the oiled rags. Golden light limned his appalling exhaustion. His loose, sailhand’s cottons hung off his gaunt frame, except where heavy wet had slicked the cloth to his flanks. His wrists showed each ridge of old scars and taut sinew, and the cut on his hand bled too freely.
Arithon's prose is perhaps less purple than bruise colored at the moment. That and Wurts is clearly letting her h/c kink out.
“Liege, let me help,” Jieret begged.
“Find him a blanket,” Dakar ordered, terse, then rummaged through his things, and snatched out linen strips and tied a pressure wrap over Arithon’s gashed hand. “Idiot,” he murmured. “You used that damned blade like a butcher. Got tendons laid bare. When the bleeding’s controlled, you’ll need to be sewn, or risk scarring that may mar your music.”
I need to stop excerpting all of Dakar's fussing, but oh my god. Would that this series actually had a fandom...
Eh, they'd probably ruin it for me.
Anyway, Arithon notes that his throat's not cut, so he can sing. Of course he does. He then demands to know why Jieret's really here. If he'd gotten the parchment in Rathain, Caolle could have answered them.
Jieret tries to demur, saying that the other news can wait.
“Ah, no!” Arithon shoved off the wool the Mad Prophet sought to drape over him. His eyes raked up, fever bright. “I won’t have that sleep spell you’ve slipped through the weave.” He shot to his feet, restored to command through animate, blistering irritation. “By your oath as caithdein, Jieret, speak.”
...
Okay I really am going to start SUMMARIZING now. I promise. I do love that Dakar apparently has tactics to deal with this idiot.
Anyway, Jieret does relay his vision, to Arithon's sardonic interjections. Arithon is pretty harsh about it actually.
“How splendid and trite. How predictable!” Arithon gasped back shrilling laughter. Perhaps goaded on by his caithdein’s sharp recoil, he bit back like salt in a sore, “All right, my sworn lord, your duty’s been met to the last grasping letter of the law. By kingdom charter, I’ve been properly tried and warned. Now for love of the realm, you are free. Return to Rathain. The fishing sloop that brought you sails tomorrow for Carithwyr on my personal orders. Her captain was told to expect you on board. You will cross High King Eldir’s neutral realm of Havish to reach your homeland, and avoid another tangle with Tysan’s headhunters.”
“Go,” Dakar urged, cued by a mix of dread and epiphany, since every shred of bad news out of Tysan would have emerged through that prior exchange with the fishermen. Arithon was not sanguine for very good reason, beside being too spent to cope. The Mad Prophet grabbed Jieret’s elbow, wide-eyed and imploring. “Come away. What you’re seeing’s not temper, but a mannerless plea to be alone.”
And indeed, the sub-chapter ends with Arithon basically begging Dakar to "get him out" and..
Like an obedient, fat ninepin bowling down a young oak, the Mad Prophet plowed Rathain’s young caithdein into prudent retreat through the doorway.
...I couldn't resist the description, sorry.
--
So our next subchapter is Close Confidence:
I'm really hoping I can avoid a lot of excerpts this time, but it's an Arithon subchapter again, so...
It's also Summer 5648. Basically two minutes after the last chapter ended: Arithon's asleep. Dakar's keeping watch, and we find out some of the reason that Arithon was so harsh in dismissing Jieret: apparently every time someone brings up the Havens, Arithon gets horrible nightmares that wake him up screaming.
Of course.
Anyway, it takes about an hour before..
Dakar crossed to the pallet. He murmured a cantrip to ground his inner strength in the ageless stone of the headland. Then, as Arithon moaned, twisted sidewards, and thrashed, he grasped the slighter man’s shoulder. He caught the fist that snapped up toward his chin, winced for the abuse to new bandages, then pressed down in firm restraint. The prince he resisted might be sorrowfully thin, but his struggles were inventive and difficult. Dakar required main force to prevail. He turned the sharp s’Ffalenn features into the blankets and stifled the rising, agonized groan into the muddle of bedding.
Nightmare tropes. This book is HEAVY on the hurt/comfort.
Dakar, gently, wakes him up so that he can cry into Dakar's shoulder. Aw.
There's a bit more bruise-colored prose here: Terrors of guilt and conscience dulled the green eyes that regarded Dakar through the gloom, left them lusterless as sea-battered glass. The expressive, fine bones of the Masterbard’s hand rested slack on the coverlet, bundled flesh sapped of small grace.
Anyway, now that he's back to himself, Arithon's full of guilt and self-loathing:
“Daelion Fatemaster forgive me for the way I treated Jieret,” were the first words the Shadow Master said. He looked fevered. Minutes passed as he steadied his breathing, and his high, sweating flush subsided back into pallor. “He is Rathain’s true caithdein, courage and honor to his core. So like his father, he’s become. Does he know even yet what he means to me? Should he take harm from Lysaer’s miscalled judgments, I don’t think I could stand it. Let Dharkaron Avenger redress his wronged feelings. I had to send him back to his people.”
Dakar soothes him, telling him he did right. And gosh, the character development. It makes such good sense that Dakar would be a great caretaker. But who would have ever thought he'd come so far since Merior.
We do learn a little more about Arithon's plans, as he remains cuddling with his
That seems like it'd require a LOT of fucking ships.
But hey, look at this character development too. Arithon is actually telling Dakar his plans!
Dakar asks what he'll do about the new augury. Nothing, basically. Until or unless their search fails. Besides, he can't use magic, and his attempt to scry for a "sane outcome" in Vastmark ended...well, with war crimes and death.
Oh, god, look at this:
“Stop,” Dakar snapped. “You can’t let your past write the future.” Like ill omen, the fading last flame in the torch dipped to an ember and died. This moment, Dakar found no comfort in darkness. “Right now you would do best by sleeping,” he advised.
An oath ripped back in sharp, precise syllables. Bedding rustled. Arithon settled prostrate on the cot. His limbs did not move, but through mage-sight, Dakar sensed his eyes were still open. When an hour passed, and his needling conscience kept him wakeful, he loosed a soft word in resignation.
The spidered threads of the spell already prepared between Dakar’s hands enfolded his consent on a thought. The wide, tortured gaze became masked by the sweep of black lashes. Tight breathing steadied. Arithon s’Ffalenn relaxed fully at last, the unquiet gnaw of his lacerated spirit eased back into dreamless rest.
ANYWAY.
We escape the massive amount of whump and hurt-comfort tropes to join Dakar as he goes outside the room. Someone else is there:
Lord Jieret lay curled there, his great sword at hand, and his hawk features set in repose. A contradictory tautness knit through his body warned of the fact he was wakeful. Dakar chose not to speak, but stepped out, his intent to seek solitude and settle drawn nerves on the heights overlooking the sea.
Of course. He promptly tackles Dakar to the ground, pinning him face down, and pushes his blade against Dakar's throat. Eep.
Jieret's a bit mad about the being kept outside bit. That said, he doesn't really intend to hurt Dakar. He lets Dakar up. He'd been eavesdropping.
“Aye, and where else does any caithdein sleep, but across his sworn prince’s threshold?” Met by affront, the clan chieftain muffled a cough of laughter behind his wrist. “Dharkaron’s immortal bollocks, you forget. My forefathers were standing down testy s’Ffalenn princes while yours were still pissing in swaddling bands.”
Heheh. It is true though that Dakar himself is only about 500 years old. He never got to see the royal lines in their heyday. I wonder if the earlier princes were any less ridiculous as the current generation.
Anyway, Jieret has a good speech here:
“Does that even signify?” Jieret snicked his knife back home in its sheath, careful to damp the steel silent. “I sat with my liege through the night when my people died for him at Tal Quorin. Again, the time he was forced to burn the trade fleet at Minderl Bay. I’ve seen how he weeps for the nightmares. I know his fear, that the ones he’s come to love will lose their lives.” All purpose, he finished, “My place is to stand at his side. Caith d’ein, shadow behind the throne.”
Dakar notes that Arithon wants Jieret back in Rathain, and points out that he can't steward the realm from the ship. Jieret (looking away through a "tigerish pause") asks what Dakar knows that he's not saying. Dakar doesn't answer yet, he basically leads Jieret away for explanations.
What Dakar explains is primarily Fellowship crap. Sethvir, as you recall, is the Warden of Althain, and has some fancy earth sense. He apparently got it from Athera's last guardian centaur. It apparently ties his consciousness to everything on Athera. But there are blind spots. And they think one of those blind spots are where the Paravians are hiding. (Apparently there is some magical sign of their presence somewhere.)
Apparently this is what happened to the missing Fellowship sorcerer. If you ever noticed, the Fellowship have been referred to, repeatedly as "the Fellowship of the Seven". We've met five of these guys: Asandir, Sethvir, Traithe (who's lost most of his powers), Kharadmon and Luhaine, who are both "disembodied". There's a sixth who gets mentioned a fair bit, mostly for the trouble he's caused: Davien. Davien is the one who enchanted that 500 year lifespan fountain that Lysaer and Arithon drank from in the first book. He was also the one who masterminded the rebellion against the princes five hundred years ago. They call him the traitor.
There's a seventh though, Ciladis, who apparently set out on a quest to find the Paravians two hundred years ago. He's never come back.
So yeah, this is going to be a pretty dangerous voyage. Especially as the Paravians don't want to be found.
We get a reminder of how awesome the Paravians are:
He paused, choked silent by memories very few left alive could understand: of the awesome, pure grace of the unicorns dancing, that could sear sight to blindness from too terrible a surfeit of ecstasy. His very marrow ached for the deep, drowning peace of a centaur’s presence, or the lyrical harmonies in a sunchild’s song. These mysteries, once experienced, could draw mortal minds to forget food and drink, and waste away, lost, until the spirit forsook the body, lured beyond all common things of earth.
I mean, they do sound cool, I guess. But it's all very hypothetical for my taste.
Anyway, Jieret grabs Dakar by the wrists and orders him to take care of his liege, and see him "happy and secure, or bring him back whole", or Jieret will hunt him down. Aww. I feel like that's a big ask though.
Dakar returns it, telling the "barbarian wolf" that if he wants to harry Dakar for failures, he has to stay alive and free of a slave galley.
Dakar does inform him that the sleep spell isn't going to hold in full sunlight, and Arithon will want to see Jieret and be sure he's well before they sail.
Jieret thinks to himself that Dakar still hasn't said all he knew, and that he's subtly changed. Dakar plays the drunkard, after all, but he's spent five hundred years studying under the Fellowship and could have taken Jieret out at any time.
Jieret's reaction here is a little insulting, but also pretty cute nonetheless.
For Arithon’s sake, Dakar had indulged him. Whatever reason underlay the vicious slaughter at the Havens, the shifty little spellbinder had entrusted Rathain’s prince with the dubious benefits of his loyalty. From that, the realm’s caithdein must salvage what peace of mind he could; his liege would not sail westward into peril without an ally to guard his left shoulder.
--
So the last sub-chapter is Checkrein (also Summer 5648).
Happily it's a chapter about Morriel Prime, of the Koriani. This means a distinct lack of purple prose and ridiculously over the top hurt/comfort. MUCH easier to just recap.
Anyway, Morriel's still mad that her attempt to murder Arithon was thwarted by a "bungling, fat prophet" (sucks to be you, lady). We're reminded also that she's very old and withered, "reduced by years and longevity spells to a husk of sagged flesh wrapped over porcelain bones".
Anyway, what she really wants is to die. But the problem is, she needs a proven successor. There've been forty-three women who've tried the trials of succession. They died. So yeah. That's a bit of a worry. She's put a lot of years into training her current candidate, which could still go to waste.
Morriel, by the way, is more than ten centuries old. None of her predecessors have stretched their lives that far. And apparently she's had a new augury:
The augury she held as fair warning galled most for its absolute, ruthless simplicity: this last living scion of Rathain’s royal line would disrupt the Koriani destiny, destroy a body of knowledge that stretched back into history to the time before catastrophe and war had driven humanity to seek refuge on Athera.
Have you tried making friends with the guy rather than murder him? I feel like he'd be less likely to try to destroy you if you stopped trying to murder him.
...I mean, this is Arithon, so you could probably try to murder him and just be somewhat apologetic, and it'd still work.
So how IS he supposed to fuck with the Koriani? I feel like that'd be worth knowing, personally. Oh well, Morriel's got a new plot in mind.
But first, let me bitch about the Fellowship Sorcerers, who have apparently been involved in a arduous conjury for an entire year. Because it's not like everything's going to Hell, at least in part due to their own fucking machinations or anything. Isn't slavery against the fucking compact? The ones you assholes are SUPPOSED to enforce???
Anyway, because they're fucking useless, they don't notice that Morriel's decided to act. Her move involves her First Senior, Lirenda, who we've met before.
We get reminded of what she looks like:
First Senior Lirenda presented a regal figure, slender, tall, and purposeful. Groomed and graceful as a panther, she wore hair like dark satin sleeked into a single, coiled braid. Her feet kept a dancer’s light tread on stone floors. The fine, sculptured bones of her wrists were set off by the gold-banded sleeves denoting her high office, and her violet silk mantle flowed off her lithe form like water poured from a vase.
Morriel thinks about how, even as a child, Lirenda has that elegant self-posession, that bone-deep assurance lent by wealth and background that touched servants to instinctive deference.. She does apparently smell just a little of brimstone though - apparently due to some issues with crates of fiend banes.
Apparently things have become harder for the Sisterhood since Lysaer's charged Arithon with dark sorcery. There's even more mistrust for arcane practice. They're going to have to be careful.
So anyway, it's time for Lirenda to start her trials to prepare her for mastery of the Great Waystone. Yay!
We get some cool description here:
The massive, polished sphere of the Koriani Waystone stood unveiled under starlight, planed filaments of captured reflection spiked deep in its shadowy heart. Even seated, eyes shut, a full span away, First Senior Lirenda felt the amethyst’s aura soak into her stilled senses. With her mind diamond clear from an exhaustive course of ritual, the dark crystal’s presence chilled like the breath of a predator: lethal, unforgiving, and charged in pitiless peril. The stone was as ancient as the order itself. Over a thousand prime matriarchs had wielded its dire focus since the cataclysm and war which had cast an uprooted humanity from its homeworlds. The jewel’s deep lattice was said to encompass them all; their unquiet memories; the imprint of each departed prime’s experience mazed like etched knotwork beneath its stilled facets.
At times in past history such knowledge meant survival. The records in the crystal could not be replaced. Nor could they be transferred. Stones mined in Athera fell under the Fellowship’s compact with the Paravians. The knowledge from outside worlds was proscribed. Limited to those crystals brought in by the order, every Matriarch since had no choice but to adopt the fixed practice, that its original set of jewel matrixes must be maintained without cleansing.
I do like an amethyst. It's my birthstone. But really, all I'm doing is thinking about how likely Arithon is to accidently or on purposely smash this thing. Hah.
So yeah, mystic shit, yadda yadda. It's interesting, but not really worth recapping. No weird metaphors for sex or anything like that.
It does sound pretty traumatic though. Lots of vastness, silence, oblivion, eruption of energy, and so on. She can hear the screams of her predecessors that failed echo through the crystal's depths. That kind of thing.
The real lesson, of course, is that Morriel is warding the stone, and if she failed to subdue it, Lirenda would be obliterated. That's the kind of strength that Lirenda will need to succeed her. Lirenda takes the lesson to heart, appreciating Morriel's control and the Waystone's power. She will own it herself one day.
Now what they're actually doing, of course, is scrying. And who?
Who do you think?
The pattern the Prime chose was a basic scrying. Somewhere upon the world’s seas, a brigantine’s keel carved westward. A small mote; a dimple pressed into the wavecrests by a hull hand fashioned of planks and sheathed in a bottom of copper. The metal would be subject to personal resonance, stamped bright in imprint of a man’s desperation, and his all-consuming hope of escape from the geas that hounded his peace.
Arithon s’Ffalenn sailed west on the summer winds, and Morriel shaped her bidding to comb Athera’s broad oceans to tag his current location. For sheer display, the move was impressive. Water was earth’s most unbiddable element. Salt of itself balked cast conjury. The call through the Waystone arose in a tumultuous torrent, a whiplash of force before which the wide seas must bow to outright demand.
I mean, look, if you don't want the guy to smash your shit, you could just leave him alone? I'm just saying!
Lirenda, for her part, detects Fellowship interference protecting Arithon and gets all huffy:
Lirenda cried out, indignant. “So much for the Fellowship of Seven and their claim of unshakable morals! Look! They have broken the code of their own compact, even acted covertly for the sake of protecting a criminal. Did you plan to catch their hand in the act?”
I mean, the Fellowship are raging hypocrites, Lirenda. Don't you remember the bullshit Sethvir put you through to get your stupid stone back? Why are you surprised by this.
Actually, though, per Morriel, there's no resonant signature of Fellowship work. Something else is masking him. That's interesting. But also even more proof as to the Fellowship's uselessness. Hey dudes, if you need this guy alive so much to achieve your goals, you could fucking HELP more.
Yes, I am inconsistent in my criticism of the Fellowship. Bite me.
So anyway, more visiony shit. Eventually, they find an unstable region in the North Cape, full of volcanoes. The idea is that they're going to cap a vent in the Earth's crust. Okay, I have to admit, that's pretty fucking impressive.
Except, something goes wrong:
Perception overturned, kicked through an explosive cascade of change. Lirenda screamed with the upset as something spun wrong, and cognizance unraveled with the unbound, wild fury of a thunderclap. All order dissolved, then mastery and rule, leaving dark like the aftermath of carnage. Next, the slipped threads of power hurled into backlash. Chaos clapped down. For one yawning instant, natural law wrenched off course. Every sane tie to reason unhinged, as if torn from the span of creation.
Lirenda asks after Morriel, who's busy cursing up a storm. She blames the Fellowship for this, basically, since they had the Waystone in their possession for five centuries. They must have tampered with it.
Lirenda is confused: Sethvir had promised that it was untouched. And they'd tested it!
Morriel knows the Fellowship better though and explains with "bitter admiration" - he didn't disturb the stone. He just "imprinted the Waystone's signature into every cranny of the world through the earth link".
Lirenda doesn't understand.
I'll excerpt Morriel's explanation:
“You should, given more time and experience.” Morriel qualified in that etched, acid tone she used to restore equilibrium. “The key lies in the foundations of Fellowship philosophy, First Senior. The Sorcerers’ mastery keeps Paravian precepts. The Seven are bound, and must live by the Law of the Major Balance, itself a stricture of permissions. They believe earth and air, in fact, all solid matter, to be spun from animate spirit. Nothing they do, in craft or in deed, can proceed without an exchange of consent. So they have trammeled us. Our Waystone’s signature pattern has been given to all that has form in this world; and by Sethvir’s knotted conjury, all physical matter in existence has been empowered to refuse its channeled force of intervention.”
Yeah, consent.
Considering how this didn't stop the Fellowship from a) mentally tampering with Arithon so he didn't run away from heirship too early, b) bespelling Dakar so he couldn't fucking EAT if he didn't hang around with Arithon, c) forcing Arithon into a BLOOD OATH to keep himself alive, d) choosing to sacrifice Lysaer to the Mistwraith's curse because they needed Arithon on the throne to get their Fellowship back to full strength, and fucking SO ON
I think you ladies can figure out the tricks soon enough.
Oh, hey, I think we actually have an explanation of how Fellowship bullshit works here:
Before Lirenda’s outrage, Morriel ran on, her rancor fired now by the ancient sting of balked rivalry. “Oh, we’re not helpless. Our order can still tune a circle of seniors into focused unity through the stone. We can still curb disease, and even, turn armies. But only to bend influence upon conscious, living beings, and these have wills of their own. Over the earth, against even the lowliest storm, our Waystone has been robbed of power.”
Yep, it's perfectly fine to control PEOPLE. But god forbid the fucking rocks don't consent.
We do learn a little about what made the Koriani so powerful, basically, the stones of the Koriani were brought from offworld when the Koriathain first settled Athera, and thus were never subject to the Paravian earth link.
So you may notice that this section pretty much implies that the Koriani are aliens. That's actually true! If you recall what Asandir once told the s'Brydions in Merior: ALL humans are aliens to Athera. The Koriani just brought a few extra toys.
Toys that might no longer work the same way anymore.
The sub-chapter ends with Morriel declaring that the Fellowship have no right to curtail their powers, and she intends to present her demands at Althain Tower and gain back their autonomy.
Yeah, I think that's going to go very well.
Well, actually, it probably will, if there's a way to inadvertently screw Arithon over in the process.
---
So our last, sneak peek, section is Three Seasons and it takes place from Summer-Winter 1648.
So our first paragraph tells us how, in late Summer, a fellow named Cattrick bows before Lysaer s'Ilessid, to apply for the master's position at his new shipyard.
Oh dear.
In the second, the Fellowship sorcerers are sealing yet another layer of a construct that they've been working on for a year. There's some good imagery, but no clue as to what it's actually for.
Finally, in the third, we're told that the child, Fionn Areth, survives his first year. Go Fionn, I'm so sorry your life will suck.
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Date: 2023-12-19 03:53 am (UTC)