Fugitive Prince - Chapter Nine - Setback
Feb. 12th, 2024 02:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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i_read_whatSo last time, we saw the Koriani spring their trap. And given that Arithon's team is now short a member, I think it was quite an effective one.
We start this chapter (still early spring 5653, by the way. I suspect we'll be staying in this time period for a while...) with some nice description of the wilderness:
Night lidded the sky over Korias Flats like a bowl of thick cobalt glass. Yesterday’s bleak weather had blown away south, chivvied out by a cutting north breeze that moaned over the barren lowland terrain with its swept slabs of calcine granite. Stands of witch hazel and thorn, and the storm-trimmed fronds of bent willows rustled and tossed in the gullies, twigs dusted in the faint light of a waning crescent. North of the river course, where ancient glaciers had plowed up a shoal of dry ground, the land fell away in a gradual slope that eventually cradled the steaming, dank pools of Mogg’s Fen. That way, alone, fared a lean rider nursing a trail-blown horse.
The rider is Mearn s'Brydion. He's still not made it back to Avenor, by the way. He's traveling north with the assistance of the "polestar", which reminds me how a great deal of Arithon's sea advantage came from being the only person trained in celestial navigation. It would make sense though for the clans to have retained some knowledge of the sky.
It's also been about fifteen years since the Mistwraith fell though, so maybe they've just observed the sky enough by now.
Anyway, while Mearn is very good at stealthy travel in general, he's not perfect and he ends up confronted by four armed men.
The men are crisp, professional, and have a "nasal ring to their speech" which identify them as being part of Lysaer's Etarran muster. This could be a problem.
Mearn doesn't have the password they want. And he really doesn't want to use his name here as it'd raise too many questions. Instead, he claims to be a courier, using exhaustion to blur his clan accent.
Even more men start to surround him. Not good.
The leader of the group wants to see the dispatches that he's presumably carrying, but ends up distracted by the "Hanshire blazon" on Mearn's gelding. And for once, faction antagonism turns out useful. The men apparently had an unpleasant experience or two with some of the city mayor's henchmen, and don't particularly care to deal with Mearn further. They give him the password and leave him alone.
Behind him, the disaffected patrol indulged their dismal opinion of Hanshiremen. “Not a trustworthy lot, never have been. Hate royalty like plague. The fish-eaters consort with witches and soothsayers, as well as abet Koriani. You knew their Lord Mayor’s high council is said to dabble in black magic?”
Faction politics are interesting. Especially as Lysaer himself is working with the Koriani.
So Mearn has a lucky escape, but he's in enemy territory and he really doesn't want to get caught. And his horse is exhausted.
Mearn weighs his option: one is to kill his horse quietly and then double back on foot. This would however leave him vulnerable for dogs and the horse's body would catch notice. His other option is to play "bullying, blue-blooded Hanshireman" - a very risky business.
But Mearn is a good dude at heart, thinking that rewarding his horse's service with murder would be an "ungrateful act of a coward". He's a gambler after all.
So the next time sentries get close, he gives the password "in the sloppy, soft vowels that centuries of affected fashion had evolved into citybred speech". And then he plays his role to the hilt:
“State your business,” the guard demanded, unsatisfied.
“Courier,” barked Mearn. “You can’t see with the two eyes Ath put in your face?” He added a phrase in the west coastal dialect that would raise a ripe flush on a galleyman.
“From Hanshire?” The flustered guard jerked up his chin, then snapped for a henchman to unshutter the light.
Slit eyed in the blinding flare of a lantern, Mearn gave his obstreperous opinion. “Fiends plague! You Etarrans always check on the obvious with the plodding stupidity of fed ticks.”
I've always liked characters with audacity.
It works though, in an interesting way. Mearn's assholishness gets a rise out of the guards. The lead officer wants to avoid a fight. So he waves him on quickly. I wish Mearn and Arithon had more time to hang out and compare notes on strategic assholery.
So Mearn gets to the camp. It's ominous:
This field troop displayed deadly, meticulous care. In sheer size alone, their presence bespoke a planned devastation, the work of trained reivers moving fast into enemy territory. Mearn disliked the unpleasant bent of his hunches, that Lord Maenol’s clan scouts were going to receive a grim retaliation for upsetting the late march into Riverton. Nor did informed hindsight applaud the decision to beard the wolf pack in its chosen lair. This strike force was seasoned by the wiles of headhunters, and likely as fast to take scalps without question if they caught wind of an infiltrator inside their camp.
It gets trickier. The field captain had been one of the mercenaries that served the s'Brydions, before changing loyalties at Vastmark. He could very well recognize Mearn.
But luck's still with him as, behind him, someone steps on a stick. It's a guardsman who had been sent to tail him - presumably to make sure that he'd report in straight away. It's the perfect opportunity to reinforce his role.
“If you’re going to follow,” he drawled in contempt, “might just as well do so up front, where you won’t take the point of my knife in mistaken belief you had thieving eyes on my purse.”
The stick-cracking rustles hitched through a pause, then resumed as a stocky, perturbed soldier elbowed his way through the prickles of a hazel copse. Despite his large build, he moved well. His balance reflected a swordsman’s neat tread, and though self-controlled, his temperament was by no means phlegmatic enough to withstand the barrage of Mearn’s baiting. If he dared not strike back at a Hanshire courier, he would settle for shedding an unwanted responsibility as fast as humanly possible. “Head groom’s still awake. He’ll care for your horse.”
“I’ll care for my horse,” Mearn shot back in distemper. He dismounted and loosened his saddle girth, running on in snide language under his breath about the ineptness of rattle-pated grooms. For sheer, stinging mischief, he added an insolent phrase in dialect he picked up by the Riverton gates, when the officer whose mantle he filched had swept in.
The guard immediately assumes that Mearn is one of the Mayor's obnoxious family, an assumption Mearn is happy to use. We get more camp description, basically it's dark, quiet and disciplined. They're using headhunter techniques, and using them well.
Mearn makes sure to obscure his face behind his horse's mane, while being too uppity to speak directly. The courier introduces him instead. There's some back and forth as to who will escort him, with Mearn choosing just the right moment to chime in dickishly. The poor sentry is dismissed back to his post.
Mearn does have to leave his sword in the watch tent, but a snide comment preserves his dagger. He's given a page boy as escort and is dispatched to the picket line.
So now, with an escort and an attitude, Mearn basically does his own full inventory of the tents and personnel. He notes no camp followers, a minimum of servants and support troops, and even the healer's armed. More infuriatingly though, there are trophy scalps, with clan braids knotted together like ropes, hanging from more than one shelter's ridgepole.
They do have nice horses though.
Mearn manipulates the page boy into boasting, giving Mearn an opportunity to catalogue "a major array of tactics used in past raids against Red-beard's clans in Rathain". He remains unimpressed.
He secures a meal and eavesdrops on more gossip, keeping his temper and collecting facts: these guys are indeed sent to hunt down Tysan's clanfolk. They're unfortunately competent and experienced, having spent five years hunting for Jieret's forces.
Mearn, as mentioned, is a gambler and, we're told "he laid down the wild card hand he had cut from the cloth of desperate courage and chance."
So what does this mean?
First, he announces that he's tired. He doesn't want to sleep under smelly canvas though. He wants a blanket and he'll find his own place out of the wind, where he won't pick up head lice.
Then he cuts and skins a green willow branch and starts exploring the brush between tents. We also learn that the headhunters, on top of being genocidal trophy keeping assholes, are also abusive to animals.
“I do have a nose, whelp.” Not to be hurried, Mearn extended his search and turned over each leaf on the ground. “One can’t be too careful. Tracking dogs might have pissed here.”
“They’re kept caged in wicker,” the page disallowed.
Since Mearn had detected neither barking nor whines, he made chill conclusion that this company practiced the headhunters’ cruelty of cutting the dogs’ vocal cords to make them run silent.
So anyway, Mearn declares he's found his spot - not far from the supply and armory, and very quickly settles in to sleep. The poor page is aghast and bored out of his mind. Eventually, hours later, the boy dozes off briefly. He also, at some point, goes to relieve himself in a bush. This is notable because, in the morning, when they come to see why the courier hadn't reported in to the watch yet...
The petty officer stroked his clipped beard. He eyed the manshaped muddle of horsecloth, saddle, and blanket with visible trepidation. Then, touched to a sudden, chill plunge of intuition, he stepped forward and stamped his booted foot with full strength onto the courier’s midriff.
Sticks snapped. The blanket collapsed, sagged in folds that revealed the form underneath to be nothing else but an artful arrangement of twigs and dry grass.
Hah, yep. Mearn's gone. They raise the alarm. There's lots of very disciplined searching, and then a report made where we find out exactly what Mearn's done.
“The man’s not in camp, though his horse, his sword, his saddle and cloth are still here. The outlook is no good. He slit the tent canvas with a dagger and crawled into the armory. All the tactical maps are taken from the locked chest. He snatched an excellent sword, then caused enough mischief to make us all choke in embarrassment.”
“Sabotage?”
The officer swallowed. “Yes sir.” He shifted huge shoulders under his mail, braced his nerve, and recited the list. “All the steel broad-heads were cut from their shafts, and the fletching stripped off the arrows. Sword blades were unwound at the tang and separated from their hilts. At the horse lines, we found all the bridles cut apart. We’d fix them with string, but no one in camp can find a damned bit for his horse, or a girth that has any buckles.”
I love you, Mearn.
There's more though. He's also somehow contaminated the dogs' meat, they're all sick. (Aw, poor things.). And finally, adding insult to injury, when the troop commander starts to write a letter to warn his fellow camps that their mission is no longer a secret, he discovers that his sunwheel seal, in order to attest crown authority, has been replaced with an old knotted root.
The poor page boy blurts out that whoever stole the seal would have had to know where it was kept.
There's EVEN MORE. Mearn, if you were just a little more melodramatically angsty, you could well become my favorite character.
He'd forged a requisition, commissioning six horses: three bridled, and the other three on lead reins. He carried orders under the commander's wax seal (hee) and then sent the horses (roped in pairs) in different directions.
He's gotten away! Go Mearn!
Of course this is a minor setback. They're still planning to head north and go a'murdering. They know it, and Mearn knows it too. He's currently out in a storm, wading shin deep in the marshes to avoid detection. We get quite a lot of description of his trek, which I'll leave out because it's not really that interesting to recap. It's a rough, unpleasant time and eventually, he's so exhausted that he can't go any further.
Eventually, he's found by a grandmother and two younger men. They see that he's out cold, but still breathing. The grandmother determines that he's "clanborn" and in trouble. They agree to give him shelter.
Mearn comes to enough to beg for help getting the cases that he's carrying to Maenol and his men. They bring him inside.
--
The second subchapter is Appeals. And fuck it all, it's a Fellowship subchapter.
So basically, Sethvir and Kharadmon are in Althain Tower. Sethvir is using his clairvoyance to see what's happening. He gives us an update on Arithon:
Sethvir shut his eyes. Unmoving, he answered, “Dakar’s warning framed an accurate judgment. Arithon eats, but his body rejects sustenance afterward. He speaks, he perseveres. He stubbornly enacts all the movements of living. But the fire, the passion, his sense of selfworth and entitlement have all been strangled by grief. Like the Paravians, who waste away in the absence of hope, our Teir’s’Ffalenn tries to endure against the grain of his born nature. He keeps the very letter of his oath to survive.”
Sounds like he's doing great! /s.
Kharadmon wants more detail. Sethvir obliges:
“Oh, the gist isn’t new.” Sethvir stabbed distraught hands through the hair at his temples, the farseeing span of his vision all bitterness. Morriel Prime had foreseen this crux years ago, that Arithon’s inheritance from two royal bloodlines created an incompatible legacy. “The gifts of s’Ahelas foresight cross-linked with s’Ffalenn compassion poisons all that he does, all that he thinks. Now he’s forced to betray the loyalties he holds sacrosanct, he has no defense against guilt and despondency.”
So how WAS this whole "program a single trait into a bloodline" thing supposed to work? Because, as we've seen with Lysaer and Arithon, justice and compassion are really fucking stupid traits to encode into a KING. Justice is an impossible ideal, and one that's too easy to misdirect or poison. Lysaer's dad wasn't cursed and he still managed to be a raging asshole, after all.
And compassion? It sounds better on paper, but how does that work when a king by nature has to make huge sweeping decisions, whereupon, inevitably SOMEONE will suffer. Obviously, we want a king who seeks to minimize said suffering, but we also need someone who won't be agonized at the impossibility.
I suppose wisdom, temperance and foresight aren't terrible traits. But then, I don't think we've ever SEEN an example of foresight/farsight that actually WORKED in this entire fucking series. Also, are Lysaer and Arithon the first cases of bloodlines intermarrying? Surely it's happened before?
So anyway, Sethvir's worried that Arithon will end up succumbing to some kind of wasting disease. Which, yeah, fair. Kharadmon suggests they find him some good news or encouragement.
It's not a terrible idea, but what exactly do you have that can balance out "your plans to save your allies have collapsed into nothing, your allies are about to be enslaved, and you mortally wounded and abandoned one of your staunchest comrades!"
I shouldn't bitch too much though. At least it's an idea!
But we can't possibly follow up on the Fellowship actually doing SOMETHING to help, right? So instead, we see that Sethvir is preoccupied again. He shows Kharadmon what he sees: a delirious and half-conscious Mearn cursing about the incoming invasion.
“Mearn s’Brydion? Taken north? But you know his warning will come far too late.” Kharadmon wheeled over the shadowy aumbries, sarcastically unimpressed, since Lysaer’s gathered forces were already present and closing upon Maenol’s clansmen. “What’s one coal raked from the flames of a building conflagration? Merciful Ath! If that’s a success, you’d better show me the failures. Or Luhaine will claim I’ve traded my bollocks for outright, shrinking faintheartedness. ”
...I mean, YOU could take the message. You're disembodied. You've traveled farther. You could HELP Arithon's allies and tell him you did!
No?
Okay then.
Next vision is Lysaer's war galleys at Corith. The place is razed and burned. The laborers trapped, killed, or captured. The survivors are now in chains. And the Cariadwin is sailing unwittingly into a trap.
Um, you could warn THEM? Please? If you warn the Cariadwin, and it gets away, that would be good news to give to Arithon?
Of course not.
The NEXT vision, we're told, occurred this afternoon: Lirenda signing extradition papers for hostages to use in her own trap for Arithon. Yay!
So anyway, things are terrible. And as for Arithon himself, things are worse. We get some insight as to what actually the curse does:
Sethvir’s library suffered another tempestuous dusting as Kharadmon seized on the gist. Neither one of the half brothers had escaped the deranging sorrows linked to the bloodshed at Tal Quorin, Minderl Bay, and Vastmark. But where Lysaer s’Ilessid became driven to self-sacrifice for morality, ennobling his losses through a public campaign of justification, Arithon s’Ffalenn more quietly bled in compassion until his solitary resilience ran dry. No need to belabor the painful necessity, that the one threatened life held the lynchpin of the Black Rose Prophecy’s resolution. All hopes for the Fellowship’s restoration back to seven still hinged upon a crowned prince for Rathain.
Yep. Justice and Compassion were great ideas, guys.
Also, really?! We're BACK on the fucking Black Rose Prophecy?!
(Thank youcopperfyre)
Look, if you want me to care about whether or not the Fellowship is restored, then it might fucking HELP if they did anything to make it happen!
Arithon has been essentially on his own for FIFTEEN YEARS. The ONLY things you assholes have done, aside from giving him some star charts admittedly, has been to saddle him with the apprentice who wanted him dead. You did not help prevent a genocide! You did not help Maenalle! You did not do SHIT for the clansfolk being enslaved!
You excommunicated Lysaer, sure, okay. And you fucking did nothing else to actually stop what he's doing. AND you let Arithon waste three years that he could have spent furthering plans BEFORE this trap bullshit!!!
Actually, wait. It looks like Kharadmon is onto something?
“You want a mitigator,” Kharadmon burst out, his mercuric impatience the springboard to seize on the direction of Sethvir’s thinking. “Someone to reforge the bond of his trust with himself? Who’s to ask? Daelion Fatemaster wept! We’re talking of Kamridian s’Ffalenn’s direct descendant, and nothing we tried in that hour of trial turned his mind to seek self-redemption.”
Ooo, we're introducing this thread here. Okay. So who the hell is Kamridian?
“I know.” Sethvir reclaimed his tea mug and sipped its cold contents as he shared consternation and the grievous past memory of a valiant s’Ffalenn high king, driven to his doom in the Maze of Davien, where the Betrayer’s insidious coils of truth spells faced a man with his own mirror image. Arithon’s ancestor had died, torn apart by the pangs of guilt-driven conscience. The thread which had seen him undone at the last was his line’s royal gift of compassion.
“We lost King Kamri despite every conscious protection, and he had no damning entanglement with the effects of s’Ahelas farsight.” A spark jumped and grounded into the stone floor as Kharadmon vented his testiness.
I am intrigued by the idea that the Fellowship was close enough with this guy to apparently call him by a nickname.
And I'm amused at yet another instance of the Fellowship fucking up here. Because Davien didn't split from the group until he led the revolution against the kings five hundred years ago. Kamridian was MUCH earlier than that.
It does however make me wonder if Ms. Wurts actually intended the whole encoded traits thing to be a mistake on the part of the Fellowship. They never explicitly say so, of course, but I've ranted about all the ways it went wrong.
Kamridian is interesting though because he got namedropped once before, as the king who received Arithon's far-too-awesome sword as a reward for valor. Meaning that this guy isn't just a tragic ancestral example, he was also one of the awesomest of them. And even HE couldn't survive against his own damn "gift".
Also, seriously, you guys managed to KILL a s'Ffalenn king in the past, and you still fuck around with Arithon this much. Fucking really?
I suppose it does explain the blood oath at least: they've lost at least one already.
Anyway, Sethvir notes that he knows two people who have the "power to lay claim to Arithon's heart." Elaira and Jieret.
Sethvir thinks Elaira could be the most effective:
Sethvir nodded, brooding over the relentless perils implied by his posited remedy. “The lady could heal Rathain’s prince the fastest. Her influence would be reliable and sure, but she must first step forward in free will and transcend the limitations the Koriani Order has imposed between her and the man she would love.”
“I can’t take that risk!” Kharadmon protested, all trace of the prankster razed off by uncoiling horror. “What if she martyrs herself as a sacrifice? She might well break her vows and accept self-destruction!” The quill pens flurried airborne and circled, caught up in the shade’s consternation. “By the Avenger’s black Spear and Chariot, Traithe already questioned her once. Luhaine also. Both met the same obstacle.” Elaira had seen no truth beyond Morriel’s binding; nor did she perceive her own power to ask help to claim back her right to free spirit.
Huh, that's interesting. I've gotten used to the idea of the Fellowship being all-knowing yet useless. But they don't seem to realize that Elaira was sent to seduce Arithon, and TECHNICALLY might not have to violate her vows to make with the comfort sex.
But just to INFURIATE me, they decide to send Kharadmon out to Araethura RIGHT NOW.
Seriously! RIGHT NOW.
When they could, you know, GO TO MAENOL AND WARN HIM OF THE INVASION. When they could GO TO THE CARIADWIN AND WARN IT OFF. I promise you guys, knowing that some of his friends are forewarned and will avoid slavery would help Arithon a LOT!
But nope, off to a whole other country to bother Elaira instead.
Sethvir notes that if Kharadmon fails with Elaira, they'll have to get Jieret:
Outside, the gusts ripped and savaged the runners of ivy latched into blunt stone. By lengths more obdurate, Sethvir laced chilled fingers under his beard, his elbows propped on the sill. His statement blurred into the dream of the earth link as he summed up his final appeal. “If you fail in Araethura, and Earl Jieret is called, his people in Rathain will be left in the hands of an infant successor. He will ask our help for safe passage. Even so, his journey will take several months. We could lose the short margin of time that is left to spare Arithon’s equanimity. Go swiftly.”
God forbid he ask them for help.
But still, unless you think Arithon would suicide tomorrow, I feel like you could DO ALL THREE THINGS!
Nope? Okay. Fuck the clans, I guess.
So anyway, Kharadmon makes it to Elaira's cottage. She's asleep, her spell crystal cupped defensively in one fist. Kharadmon decides to creepily stare at her for a bit:
Sethvir of Althain had said for years that this woman’s hands held the threads of Arithon s’Ffalenn’s future happiness. Since the fate of Athera also rode the same course, Kharadmon gave the sleeper his most exacting survey. The thin, elfin profile pillowed in waves of her deep auburn hair was serene. Her closed lips had softened from the habitual wry tilt of impertinence. Open to plain view was her heedless sensitivity, the vulnerable heart she would defend with attacking dry wit when aware.
Hey dude. Stop being a fucking creep.
But Elaira gets a quiet moment of awesome here, as he realizes that he tripped some of the small defenses that she has on the cottage, picking up his presence before he noticed them.
We get more description of surroundings:
He swept her surroundings. The tiny cottage reflected a character too large to contain it, from the fleece-lined boots flung off helter-skelter, to the clothes lopsidedly hooked on the tine of a deer antler. Her pleasures were simple. Elaira had planted jonquil bulbs in a crock. Two quilted pillows stuffed with lavender and dried catmint seemed the gift of a moorland matron. She kept a vase filled with fallen owl and crow feathers. Three slate bits with holed centers strung on a thong hung over a black bowl lined with marble for water scrying.
Hey, guys, have you thought that maybe bringing in the KORIANI sorceress to help Arithon when he's the victim of a KORIANI scheme might be a bad idea? Just because Elaira doesn't want to betray him doesn't mean they can't use her! Again!
There's even more description: lots of herbs and runes and other cool magic witchy stuff. Kharadmon notes something interesting though: some of the stones in the cottage are awake and aware.
Kharadmon found their awakened perception most piquant, since practice of earth magics ran against strict form. The peculiarity spoke volumes, that a small wisdom kept by field witches and country grandmothers should find credence here, in the dwelling of an initiate Koriani. Since he was a friend, and brazenly uninvited, he held to strict manners. Each of the stones received his polite greeting in turn, phrased from the pure tones borrowed from the grand chord that sowed form in the void when sound first conceived Ath’s creation.
“The language is lyric, but scarcely an offshoot of anyone’s local dialect,” observed the woman whose cottage he had invaded. Aroused, propped on one elbow with eyes like gray smoke fixed on the blank air by her worktable, the enchantress challenged her visitor unabashed. “Nor do herders address plain stones from thin air. If your presence is honest, please show me courtesy and reveal yourself. ”
The surprise at Elaira's foray into earth magic and country wisdom makes me wonder if anyone in the Fellowship has ever bothered to get to know this woman that they've swept up into their big schemes.
So anyway, Kharadmon reveals himself. And Elaira is, as always, pretty great.
A shiver seemed to run through the woman’s thin frame, though she masked the unease behind movement and tucked the rough wool up under her chin. “Should I thank Sethvir? Or doesn’t he usually dispatch shades to pay unannounced social calls while his victims are disadvantaged and in bed?”
Kharadmon tries some banter, but Elaira's not having it.
“Were they kind, they would have barred you from entry.” Now the tremor caught hold, let the Sorcerer read into the deep, ragged pain behind her effort of seamless composure. “If you’ve come to speak of Arithon s’Ffalenn, be warned. My Prime Matriarch is his implacable enemy, and I but a tool to her hand.”
Kharadmon flowed into pacing, carelessly letting one shin pass through an oak stool that lay in his path. “You are never a tool, lady, except by allowance or consent.” His glance darted questingly sidewards.
The enchantress had gloved both her hands in the blanket and pressed the cloth to her mouth, as if the gesture framed a bastion against her own thoughtless and desperate speech. There were tears, bright as jewels, brimming her eyelids. Yet the pride in her silence was stark iron. “I was a six-year-old fool in trouble with Morvain’s authorities,” she admitted. Her voice held its timbre through sheer stubborn strength. “Nor are four crotchety old stones from a river bottom quite proof against the might of the Skyron aquamarine. Since my vows are not revocable, why are you here?”
I've said this before, but it really is fascinating how consent is a running element throughout the magical factions and practices in this story.
Elaira "consented" to her fate, just like Arithon and Lysaer "consented" to theirs. They didn't. They had no idea what they were agreeing to. They were manipulated and ignorant and well-meaning.
Sometimes I do wonder if this is all on purpose, after all. Maybe I'm SUPPOSED to hate the Fellowship?
So Kharadmon fills her in on what happened:
Kharadmon spun into vexed agitation, the breeze of his passage gone bitingly blunt as the frost that sang through his consonants. “Your prince has just learned that Koriani spellcraft can raise Lysaer’s essence as a fetch. In fact, your Prime Senior laid a trap to ensnare him. Her minions used that cheating, uncivil trick of spellcraft at Riverton, to sad and disastrous effect. Earl Jieret’s past war captain fell to his sworn liege’s steel.”
I'd just have summarized, but there's something that bugs me about the way Kharadmon words this. Maybe it's the passive voice? I mean, admittedly, this wasn't the Fellowship's doing. I'm not even sure, for once, that they knew it was happening until it was too late. It still bugs me.
Elaira is horrified though. She knows what this means. Both for Caolle and Arithon. She asks if that's why he's here: for advice on how to "contain the Prince of Rathain's bitter conscience?"
She gives an answer: release him from the blood oath.
Kharadmon's surprised that she knows about that. But, Elaira reveals, they've been linked since Merior. That whole weird sexy-healing thing? Apparently it left some after effects.
Kharadmon suggests that she could use that bond to help him.
I rather love Elaira for this:
But Elaira shook her head. “I won’t be his crutch. He needs none of my weakness. Nor will he thrive on any feminine instinct that gives him the child’s role through mothering a grown man’s mature pain. I urge you instead, return his free will. Give back his choice to own life or death. As things stand now, the very fact his hand is forced will only add coals to his anguish.” The flex in her modulation snapped for a second, and revealed all the tenderness beneath. “Ath, I know him, none better. He has strengths and depths even he doesn’t yet acknowledge. I believe with all my heart he will endure and survive even a grievous remorse such as this.”
Kharadmon pressed her. “You could risk his life on that premise?”
Elaira stared back at him, level. “I’d let him risk his life. There was no evil done. He did not succumb to the Mistwraith by choice. Nor would he endorse a forced act of insanity by turning the craven and destroying the royal heritage Caolle sacrificed himself to preserve.”
Because Elaira actually DOES understand consent. In a way that the Fellowship, with their manipulations and geas and blood oaths never really did.
Furthermore, Elaira knows ARITHON in a way that the Fellowship never tried. They've been in his head, sure. They know his weak points and vulnerabilities. But they know him as a chess piece, not a person. Arithon isn't Kamridian. He may not suffer the same fate.
Kharadmon points out that Arithon's lost everything. And Elaira wins my heart further with this:
Elaira swallowed, fighting down the passionate need to give way, to lean on the Sorcerer’s power and presence and find ease for her own stricken heartache. “His Grace of Rathain has already lost everything twice before this. What has changed since the banks of Tal Quorin?”
It's a damn good question, isn't it?
I remember the massacre at Tal Quorin, in Strakewood Forest. I remember that the Fellowship was nowhere to be found either before, during or after the clansfolk got slaughtered.
So what's the goddamn difference?
Conceding her point, Kharadmon withdraws. Will he actually take her advice? I'm guessing not.
The subchapter ends with poor Elaira weeping in her bed, thinking about how likely it is that the next time she meets Arithon, she'll be forced to take part in his betrayal.
--
The last subchapter here is Legacy.
We're back with Mearn. As we saw in Sethvir's vision, he's in bad shape, delirious and ranting. At some point, a woman with feathers in her hair slaps his face and shoves herbs in his mouth until he passes out.
When he wakes up later, he's much more coherent. Though in nasty shape: aching, limp, and naked under a rabbit skin throw. He figures out that he's in a fenlander's hovel, and there are other injured men here too. Mearn knows a field hospital when he sees one.
And he's not alone - Maenol s'Gannley is here.
Mearn is horrified to think that he's too late, and the casualties around him came about because of those men he saw. But Maenol is reassuring: the men had been injured delaying the Alliance's initial march on Riverton.
Maenol, by the way, is looking pretty haggard himself. He's also wearing morning strips in his clan braid, for the cousins who died to warn Arithon in Riverton.
Mearn realizes that means Maenol knows their fate. He does. From Mearn, in his delirium. Mearn's pretty horrified at that, but apparently his ranting was angry enough that Maenol found some comfort in it.
It occurs to me that there's a really interesting rank dynamic here. Maenol, as caithdein of Tysan, is borderline royalty himself. The s'Brydions, though they have the unique position of being maybe the only clan stronghold that never got overthrown, actually aren't the ranking clan in Melhalla. I don't think we've met Melhalla's caithdein, which is interesting. Especially because Melhalla, I believe, is the kingdom who is without a royal family entirely.
(Basically, four heirs fled to Dascen Elur. One stayed behind, because he was too young to travel - that's Eldir of Havish's ancestor. Of the four heirs though, the s'Ellestrion heir, whose gift was wisdom, died on the way.)
Mearn isn't a direct subject of Maenol's, being from another land, but they're not of equal rank either. And some of that does come across. He's a lot more respectful and less irreverent here than we've ever seen him before.
Maenol has more happy news: he's got the maps and the tactical information. They've set up some defenses, traps to slow them down, and they think many of the women and young ones might be able to escape in the mountains.
Maenol, himself, intends to stay and fight. He gets a pretty good speech to that effect:
In the dimness, the hiss of the rushlight became the thread upon which existence loomed its firm fabric. A wounded man groaned. The wind outside bespoke more rain pending, and time stood as the comfortless enemy. Maenol regarded his interlaced fingers. His features were too grim for his twenty-five years, and the conviction that shaped the steel of his character lent his answer the grit of scaled carbon. “As Tysan’s caithdein how could I leave? We are kingless. The land’s charter, therefore, becomes mine to uphold, in line with my ancestors before me. I will not see living acreage carved up into boundaries, or trees and streams and hillsides exchanged as spiritless deeds of writ that ignorant men believe can be bought and sold without penalty. Earth’s life and town greed share no common ground, and I have no stomach for compromise.”
“Brother,” Mearn said. He fought a hand free of encumbering furs and touched Maenol’s wrist in the sympathy of their common heritage. In Third Age Year One, clanblood had been consecrated to uphold the Paravian law of unity which kept the earth’s mystery intact. The world’s bounty and heritage were the binding fiber to hold Ath’s design, and no man’s to unwind for the divisive reasons of domination and profit.
“We are not yet defeated.” Maenol shifted, straightened, the dignity knit into the blood and the bone of him like the dauntless, stilled majesty the rooted oak must show the honed axe blade. “While there is one patch of forest in Tysan still free, I stay to resist the wrong thinking that threatens the peace of the Fellowship’s compact.”
I like this because it's one of the very rare times when we get to see clan talk to clan, without our heroes or villains muddying the waters. It's good to remember what's important to them and why they're doing this.
In a way, their dynamic with Arithon isn't that different from the townsfolk with Lysaer. While some of them have personal, emotional ties to Arithon, the majority of them side with him because of what he represents: ideally a return to the days when humanity followed the compact and they weren't being persecuted.
Mearn, at heart, wants to stay and fight too, but Maenol forcefully objects. Mearn can't save them and Maenol does not want to see Lysaer's destruction turned onto the Melhallan clans too.
Mearn doesn't like it, but he gets it. He's got more bad news for Maenol though. He explains how the Koriani triggered Arithon's curse from afar and the nature of the trap. Fun news.
Maenol, by the way, spends his time tending to the other patients in the tent. Mearn thinks about the maps he read and how desperate the situation actually is. They're going to seal off the routes from Caithwood into the mountains. There's a blockade waiting at the coastline.
And here's some sobriety:
Mearn shut his eyes, too agonized to watch. Though his family was not fugitive, he knew forestborn customs too well not to shrink. In these wilds, the clan codes of survival imposed since the uprising held no space for pity or compromise. Any scout here who was unfit to walk would not be permitted to fall into the hands of the enemy. With Alliance troops marching in force on Mogg’s Fen, those wounded would ask for a mercy stroke rather than burden their hale companions.
Maenol is tending to the wounded. One way or another.
When Maenol makes it back over to Mearn, he asks him again, more formally why he's still here.
Maenol has a request, but they'll talk about it later. Mearn promises, on his clan honor, to give him whatever he needs. But right now, he's told to sleep. He thinks Maenol might be weeping, but gives him his privacy.
When he wakes up again, he sees a fenwoman stirring a cauldron. There are no more wounded patients. Maenol is gone too. There's one clansman left: a twelve year old boy. He gives Mearn two letters: one for Eldir, King of Havish. And one for Mearn.
This is actually a pretty big deal. Clans generally don't write messages as they might fall into enemy hands. Mearn is humbled.
The letter to Mearn explains that he intends to beg Eldir for sanctuary for clan refugees. This is also a big deal, symbolically. Scarcely seven years since the massive downfall at Vastmark, Prince Lysaer had succeeded in unseating a clan presence whose roots went back five thousand years. Words were inadequate to express grief and heartache, that without the trials of the Mistwaith’s curse, these same clansmen should have sworn the same man their loyalty.
Basically, if the clans flee Tysan, it will leave the townsfolk "free rein for desecration". I'm not entirely certain what that means. But it sounds bad. Very bad. The other request is that Mearn take the boy with him as a page. The boy is Ianfar s'Gannley, Maenol's uncle's son and Maenol's heir if he dies without his own children. He wants Mearn to keep the boy safe until he can be fostered and learn what he has to in order to rule after Maenol.
Mearn, emotional, burns the letter, then:
One look at Mearn’s face shocked her silent. Through the dirty orange flame that crawled up the charred missive, the brother of Duke Bransian s’Brydion met the paralyzed gaze of young Ianfar s’Gannley. “I accept both charges laid on me by your chieftain. Will you formally agree to my guardianship?”
The boy tucked his hands under his arms, too brave to show he was shivering. He knew well enough his consent entailed the unspeakable possibility that his clans might be driven to yield up their sovereign charge in Tysan. Almost, his heart seemed to fail him. The underlit shadow thrown by his lashes made his eyes seem too large and too bright.
Then the stark, gritty fiber of his people shone through. “I bow to the will of my caithdein and the demands of necessity.” His dignity far more in that moment than many men managed in a lifetime, he bowed. “In gratitude, s’Gannley gives thanks for the generosity of s’Brydion.”
Aw. Poor kid. Mearn thinks that if the kid had been younger, he might have embraced him for comfort. Instead, they have a manly wrist clamp as Mearn promises he'll have standing as a brother under his roof.
So now there's a plan: first to go back to Avenor. Mearn's still, at least in theory, spending his days in debauchery. Oh well, at least he looks peaked.
He sends the poor kid out to refil some water (and let the kid cry in private). Then he makes his own plan: once Ianfar is safe, he'll look for the man who betrayed Arithon in Riverton and get some vengeance.
--
Our sneak peek chapter is Three Moments:
The first, a middle-aged minstrel in scarlet, is playing in a tavern. His audience is larger than usual: a half company of crown soldiers has joined the usual tradesmen and farmhands. The leader doesn't seem happy with the ballads being played.
The second: Now a fortnight after Arithon escaped, his accomplices are being boarded into the newly commissioned brigs as hostages. Cattrick watches, his heart "lit with rage fit to murder".
The third: Mearn makes it back, with Ianfar at his side, to hear the announcement of Princess Talith's death.
The chapter ends here.
We start this chapter (still early spring 5653, by the way. I suspect we'll be staying in this time period for a while...) with some nice description of the wilderness:
Night lidded the sky over Korias Flats like a bowl of thick cobalt glass. Yesterday’s bleak weather had blown away south, chivvied out by a cutting north breeze that moaned over the barren lowland terrain with its swept slabs of calcine granite. Stands of witch hazel and thorn, and the storm-trimmed fronds of bent willows rustled and tossed in the gullies, twigs dusted in the faint light of a waning crescent. North of the river course, where ancient glaciers had plowed up a shoal of dry ground, the land fell away in a gradual slope that eventually cradled the steaming, dank pools of Mogg’s Fen. That way, alone, fared a lean rider nursing a trail-blown horse.
The rider is Mearn s'Brydion. He's still not made it back to Avenor, by the way. He's traveling north with the assistance of the "polestar", which reminds me how a great deal of Arithon's sea advantage came from being the only person trained in celestial navigation. It would make sense though for the clans to have retained some knowledge of the sky.
It's also been about fifteen years since the Mistwraith fell though, so maybe they've just observed the sky enough by now.
Anyway, while Mearn is very good at stealthy travel in general, he's not perfect and he ends up confronted by four armed men.
The men are crisp, professional, and have a "nasal ring to their speech" which identify them as being part of Lysaer's Etarran muster. This could be a problem.
Mearn doesn't have the password they want. And he really doesn't want to use his name here as it'd raise too many questions. Instead, he claims to be a courier, using exhaustion to blur his clan accent.
Even more men start to surround him. Not good.
The leader of the group wants to see the dispatches that he's presumably carrying, but ends up distracted by the "Hanshire blazon" on Mearn's gelding. And for once, faction antagonism turns out useful. The men apparently had an unpleasant experience or two with some of the city mayor's henchmen, and don't particularly care to deal with Mearn further. They give him the password and leave him alone.
Behind him, the disaffected patrol indulged their dismal opinion of Hanshiremen. “Not a trustworthy lot, never have been. Hate royalty like plague. The fish-eaters consort with witches and soothsayers, as well as abet Koriani. You knew their Lord Mayor’s high council is said to dabble in black magic?”
Faction politics are interesting. Especially as Lysaer himself is working with the Koriani.
So Mearn has a lucky escape, but he's in enemy territory and he really doesn't want to get caught. And his horse is exhausted.
Mearn weighs his option: one is to kill his horse quietly and then double back on foot. This would however leave him vulnerable for dogs and the horse's body would catch notice. His other option is to play "bullying, blue-blooded Hanshireman" - a very risky business.
But Mearn is a good dude at heart, thinking that rewarding his horse's service with murder would be an "ungrateful act of a coward". He's a gambler after all.
So the next time sentries get close, he gives the password "in the sloppy, soft vowels that centuries of affected fashion had evolved into citybred speech". And then he plays his role to the hilt:
“State your business,” the guard demanded, unsatisfied.
“Courier,” barked Mearn. “You can’t see with the two eyes Ath put in your face?” He added a phrase in the west coastal dialect that would raise a ripe flush on a galleyman.
“From Hanshire?” The flustered guard jerked up his chin, then snapped for a henchman to unshutter the light.
Slit eyed in the blinding flare of a lantern, Mearn gave his obstreperous opinion. “Fiends plague! You Etarrans always check on the obvious with the plodding stupidity of fed ticks.”
I've always liked characters with audacity.
It works though, in an interesting way. Mearn's assholishness gets a rise out of the guards. The lead officer wants to avoid a fight. So he waves him on quickly. I wish Mearn and Arithon had more time to hang out and compare notes on strategic assholery.
So Mearn gets to the camp. It's ominous:
This field troop displayed deadly, meticulous care. In sheer size alone, their presence bespoke a planned devastation, the work of trained reivers moving fast into enemy territory. Mearn disliked the unpleasant bent of his hunches, that Lord Maenol’s clan scouts were going to receive a grim retaliation for upsetting the late march into Riverton. Nor did informed hindsight applaud the decision to beard the wolf pack in its chosen lair. This strike force was seasoned by the wiles of headhunters, and likely as fast to take scalps without question if they caught wind of an infiltrator inside their camp.
It gets trickier. The field captain had been one of the mercenaries that served the s'Brydions, before changing loyalties at Vastmark. He could very well recognize Mearn.
But luck's still with him as, behind him, someone steps on a stick. It's a guardsman who had been sent to tail him - presumably to make sure that he'd report in straight away. It's the perfect opportunity to reinforce his role.
“If you’re going to follow,” he drawled in contempt, “might just as well do so up front, where you won’t take the point of my knife in mistaken belief you had thieving eyes on my purse.”
The stick-cracking rustles hitched through a pause, then resumed as a stocky, perturbed soldier elbowed his way through the prickles of a hazel copse. Despite his large build, he moved well. His balance reflected a swordsman’s neat tread, and though self-controlled, his temperament was by no means phlegmatic enough to withstand the barrage of Mearn’s baiting. If he dared not strike back at a Hanshire courier, he would settle for shedding an unwanted responsibility as fast as humanly possible. “Head groom’s still awake. He’ll care for your horse.”
“I’ll care for my horse,” Mearn shot back in distemper. He dismounted and loosened his saddle girth, running on in snide language under his breath about the ineptness of rattle-pated grooms. For sheer, stinging mischief, he added an insolent phrase in dialect he picked up by the Riverton gates, when the officer whose mantle he filched had swept in.
The guard immediately assumes that Mearn is one of the Mayor's obnoxious family, an assumption Mearn is happy to use. We get more camp description, basically it's dark, quiet and disciplined. They're using headhunter techniques, and using them well.
Mearn makes sure to obscure his face behind his horse's mane, while being too uppity to speak directly. The courier introduces him instead. There's some back and forth as to who will escort him, with Mearn choosing just the right moment to chime in dickishly. The poor sentry is dismissed back to his post.
Mearn does have to leave his sword in the watch tent, but a snide comment preserves his dagger. He's given a page boy as escort and is dispatched to the picket line.
So now, with an escort and an attitude, Mearn basically does his own full inventory of the tents and personnel. He notes no camp followers, a minimum of servants and support troops, and even the healer's armed. More infuriatingly though, there are trophy scalps, with clan braids knotted together like ropes, hanging from more than one shelter's ridgepole.
They do have nice horses though.
Mearn manipulates the page boy into boasting, giving Mearn an opportunity to catalogue "a major array of tactics used in past raids against Red-beard's clans in Rathain". He remains unimpressed.
He secures a meal and eavesdrops on more gossip, keeping his temper and collecting facts: these guys are indeed sent to hunt down Tysan's clanfolk. They're unfortunately competent and experienced, having spent five years hunting for Jieret's forces.
Mearn, as mentioned, is a gambler and, we're told "he laid down the wild card hand he had cut from the cloth of desperate courage and chance."
So what does this mean?
First, he announces that he's tired. He doesn't want to sleep under smelly canvas though. He wants a blanket and he'll find his own place out of the wind, where he won't pick up head lice.
Then he cuts and skins a green willow branch and starts exploring the brush between tents. We also learn that the headhunters, on top of being genocidal trophy keeping assholes, are also abusive to animals.
“I do have a nose, whelp.” Not to be hurried, Mearn extended his search and turned over each leaf on the ground. “One can’t be too careful. Tracking dogs might have pissed here.”
“They’re kept caged in wicker,” the page disallowed.
Since Mearn had detected neither barking nor whines, he made chill conclusion that this company practiced the headhunters’ cruelty of cutting the dogs’ vocal cords to make them run silent.
So anyway, Mearn declares he's found his spot - not far from the supply and armory, and very quickly settles in to sleep. The poor page is aghast and bored out of his mind. Eventually, hours later, the boy dozes off briefly. He also, at some point, goes to relieve himself in a bush. This is notable because, in the morning, when they come to see why the courier hadn't reported in to the watch yet...
The petty officer stroked his clipped beard. He eyed the manshaped muddle of horsecloth, saddle, and blanket with visible trepidation. Then, touched to a sudden, chill plunge of intuition, he stepped forward and stamped his booted foot with full strength onto the courier’s midriff.
Sticks snapped. The blanket collapsed, sagged in folds that revealed the form underneath to be nothing else but an artful arrangement of twigs and dry grass.
Hah, yep. Mearn's gone. They raise the alarm. There's lots of very disciplined searching, and then a report made where we find out exactly what Mearn's done.
“The man’s not in camp, though his horse, his sword, his saddle and cloth are still here. The outlook is no good. He slit the tent canvas with a dagger and crawled into the armory. All the tactical maps are taken from the locked chest. He snatched an excellent sword, then caused enough mischief to make us all choke in embarrassment.”
“Sabotage?”
The officer swallowed. “Yes sir.” He shifted huge shoulders under his mail, braced his nerve, and recited the list. “All the steel broad-heads were cut from their shafts, and the fletching stripped off the arrows. Sword blades were unwound at the tang and separated from their hilts. At the horse lines, we found all the bridles cut apart. We’d fix them with string, but no one in camp can find a damned bit for his horse, or a girth that has any buckles.”
I love you, Mearn.
There's more though. He's also somehow contaminated the dogs' meat, they're all sick. (Aw, poor things.). And finally, adding insult to injury, when the troop commander starts to write a letter to warn his fellow camps that their mission is no longer a secret, he discovers that his sunwheel seal, in order to attest crown authority, has been replaced with an old knotted root.
The poor page boy blurts out that whoever stole the seal would have had to know where it was kept.
There's EVEN MORE. Mearn, if you were just a little more melodramatically angsty, you could well become my favorite character.
He'd forged a requisition, commissioning six horses: three bridled, and the other three on lead reins. He carried orders under the commander's wax seal (hee) and then sent the horses (roped in pairs) in different directions.
He's gotten away! Go Mearn!
Of course this is a minor setback. They're still planning to head north and go a'murdering. They know it, and Mearn knows it too. He's currently out in a storm, wading shin deep in the marshes to avoid detection. We get quite a lot of description of his trek, which I'll leave out because it's not really that interesting to recap. It's a rough, unpleasant time and eventually, he's so exhausted that he can't go any further.
Eventually, he's found by a grandmother and two younger men. They see that he's out cold, but still breathing. The grandmother determines that he's "clanborn" and in trouble. They agree to give him shelter.
Mearn comes to enough to beg for help getting the cases that he's carrying to Maenol and his men. They bring him inside.
--
The second subchapter is Appeals. And fuck it all, it's a Fellowship subchapter.
So basically, Sethvir and Kharadmon are in Althain Tower. Sethvir is using his clairvoyance to see what's happening. He gives us an update on Arithon:
Sethvir shut his eyes. Unmoving, he answered, “Dakar’s warning framed an accurate judgment. Arithon eats, but his body rejects sustenance afterward. He speaks, he perseveres. He stubbornly enacts all the movements of living. But the fire, the passion, his sense of selfworth and entitlement have all been strangled by grief. Like the Paravians, who waste away in the absence of hope, our Teir’s’Ffalenn tries to endure against the grain of his born nature. He keeps the very letter of his oath to survive.”
Sounds like he's doing great! /s.
Kharadmon wants more detail. Sethvir obliges:
“Oh, the gist isn’t new.” Sethvir stabbed distraught hands through the hair at his temples, the farseeing span of his vision all bitterness. Morriel Prime had foreseen this crux years ago, that Arithon’s inheritance from two royal bloodlines created an incompatible legacy. “The gifts of s’Ahelas foresight cross-linked with s’Ffalenn compassion poisons all that he does, all that he thinks. Now he’s forced to betray the loyalties he holds sacrosanct, he has no defense against guilt and despondency.”
So how WAS this whole "program a single trait into a bloodline" thing supposed to work? Because, as we've seen with Lysaer and Arithon, justice and compassion are really fucking stupid traits to encode into a KING. Justice is an impossible ideal, and one that's too easy to misdirect or poison. Lysaer's dad wasn't cursed and he still managed to be a raging asshole, after all.
And compassion? It sounds better on paper, but how does that work when a king by nature has to make huge sweeping decisions, whereupon, inevitably SOMEONE will suffer. Obviously, we want a king who seeks to minimize said suffering, but we also need someone who won't be agonized at the impossibility.
I suppose wisdom, temperance and foresight aren't terrible traits. But then, I don't think we've ever SEEN an example of foresight/farsight that actually WORKED in this entire fucking series. Also, are Lysaer and Arithon the first cases of bloodlines intermarrying? Surely it's happened before?
So anyway, Sethvir's worried that Arithon will end up succumbing to some kind of wasting disease. Which, yeah, fair. Kharadmon suggests they find him some good news or encouragement.
It's not a terrible idea, but what exactly do you have that can balance out "your plans to save your allies have collapsed into nothing, your allies are about to be enslaved, and you mortally wounded and abandoned one of your staunchest comrades!"
I shouldn't bitch too much though. At least it's an idea!
But we can't possibly follow up on the Fellowship actually doing SOMETHING to help, right? So instead, we see that Sethvir is preoccupied again. He shows Kharadmon what he sees: a delirious and half-conscious Mearn cursing about the incoming invasion.
“Mearn s’Brydion? Taken north? But you know his warning will come far too late.” Kharadmon wheeled over the shadowy aumbries, sarcastically unimpressed, since Lysaer’s gathered forces were already present and closing upon Maenol’s clansmen. “What’s one coal raked from the flames of a building conflagration? Merciful Ath! If that’s a success, you’d better show me the failures. Or Luhaine will claim I’ve traded my bollocks for outright, shrinking faintheartedness. ”
...I mean, YOU could take the message. You're disembodied. You've traveled farther. You could HELP Arithon's allies and tell him you did!
No?
Okay then.
Next vision is Lysaer's war galleys at Corith. The place is razed and burned. The laborers trapped, killed, or captured. The survivors are now in chains. And the Cariadwin is sailing unwittingly into a trap.
Um, you could warn THEM? Please? If you warn the Cariadwin, and it gets away, that would be good news to give to Arithon?
Of course not.
The NEXT vision, we're told, occurred this afternoon: Lirenda signing extradition papers for hostages to use in her own trap for Arithon. Yay!
So anyway, things are terrible. And as for Arithon himself, things are worse. We get some insight as to what actually the curse does:
Sethvir’s library suffered another tempestuous dusting as Kharadmon seized on the gist. Neither one of the half brothers had escaped the deranging sorrows linked to the bloodshed at Tal Quorin, Minderl Bay, and Vastmark. But where Lysaer s’Ilessid became driven to self-sacrifice for morality, ennobling his losses through a public campaign of justification, Arithon s’Ffalenn more quietly bled in compassion until his solitary resilience ran dry. No need to belabor the painful necessity, that the one threatened life held the lynchpin of the Black Rose Prophecy’s resolution. All hopes for the Fellowship’s restoration back to seven still hinged upon a crowned prince for Rathain.
Yep. Justice and Compassion were great ideas, guys.
Also, really?! We're BACK on the fucking Black Rose Prophecy?!
(Thank you
copperfyre)Look, if you want me to care about whether or not the Fellowship is restored, then it might fucking HELP if they did anything to make it happen!
Arithon has been essentially on his own for FIFTEEN YEARS. The ONLY things you assholes have done, aside from giving him some star charts admittedly, has been to saddle him with the apprentice who wanted him dead. You did not help prevent a genocide! You did not help Maenalle! You did not do SHIT for the clansfolk being enslaved!
You excommunicated Lysaer, sure, okay. And you fucking did nothing else to actually stop what he's doing. AND you let Arithon waste three years that he could have spent furthering plans BEFORE this trap bullshit!!!
Actually, wait. It looks like Kharadmon is onto something?
“You want a mitigator,” Kharadmon burst out, his mercuric impatience the springboard to seize on the direction of Sethvir’s thinking. “Someone to reforge the bond of his trust with himself? Who’s to ask? Daelion Fatemaster wept! We’re talking of Kamridian s’Ffalenn’s direct descendant, and nothing we tried in that hour of trial turned his mind to seek self-redemption.”
Ooo, we're introducing this thread here. Okay. So who the hell is Kamridian?
“I know.” Sethvir reclaimed his tea mug and sipped its cold contents as he shared consternation and the grievous past memory of a valiant s’Ffalenn high king, driven to his doom in the Maze of Davien, where the Betrayer’s insidious coils of truth spells faced a man with his own mirror image. Arithon’s ancestor had died, torn apart by the pangs of guilt-driven conscience. The thread which had seen him undone at the last was his line’s royal gift of compassion.
“We lost King Kamri despite every conscious protection, and he had no damning entanglement with the effects of s’Ahelas farsight.” A spark jumped and grounded into the stone floor as Kharadmon vented his testiness.
I am intrigued by the idea that the Fellowship was close enough with this guy to apparently call him by a nickname.
And I'm amused at yet another instance of the Fellowship fucking up here. Because Davien didn't split from the group until he led the revolution against the kings five hundred years ago. Kamridian was MUCH earlier than that.
It does however make me wonder if Ms. Wurts actually intended the whole encoded traits thing to be a mistake on the part of the Fellowship. They never explicitly say so, of course, but I've ranted about all the ways it went wrong.
Kamridian is interesting though because he got namedropped once before, as the king who received Arithon's far-too-awesome sword as a reward for valor. Meaning that this guy isn't just a tragic ancestral example, he was also one of the awesomest of them. And even HE couldn't survive against his own damn "gift".
Also, seriously, you guys managed to KILL a s'Ffalenn king in the past, and you still fuck around with Arithon this much. Fucking really?
I suppose it does explain the blood oath at least: they've lost at least one already.
Anyway, Sethvir notes that he knows two people who have the "power to lay claim to Arithon's heart." Elaira and Jieret.
Sethvir thinks Elaira could be the most effective:
Sethvir nodded, brooding over the relentless perils implied by his posited remedy. “The lady could heal Rathain’s prince the fastest. Her influence would be reliable and sure, but she must first step forward in free will and transcend the limitations the Koriani Order has imposed between her and the man she would love.”
“I can’t take that risk!” Kharadmon protested, all trace of the prankster razed off by uncoiling horror. “What if she martyrs herself as a sacrifice? She might well break her vows and accept self-destruction!” The quill pens flurried airborne and circled, caught up in the shade’s consternation. “By the Avenger’s black Spear and Chariot, Traithe already questioned her once. Luhaine also. Both met the same obstacle.” Elaira had seen no truth beyond Morriel’s binding; nor did she perceive her own power to ask help to claim back her right to free spirit.
Huh, that's interesting. I've gotten used to the idea of the Fellowship being all-knowing yet useless. But they don't seem to realize that Elaira was sent to seduce Arithon, and TECHNICALLY might not have to violate her vows to make with the comfort sex.
But just to INFURIATE me, they decide to send Kharadmon out to Araethura RIGHT NOW.
Seriously! RIGHT NOW.
When they could, you know, GO TO MAENOL AND WARN HIM OF THE INVASION. When they could GO TO THE CARIADWIN AND WARN IT OFF. I promise you guys, knowing that some of his friends are forewarned and will avoid slavery would help Arithon a LOT!
But nope, off to a whole other country to bother Elaira instead.
Sethvir notes that if Kharadmon fails with Elaira, they'll have to get Jieret:
Outside, the gusts ripped and savaged the runners of ivy latched into blunt stone. By lengths more obdurate, Sethvir laced chilled fingers under his beard, his elbows propped on the sill. His statement blurred into the dream of the earth link as he summed up his final appeal. “If you fail in Araethura, and Earl Jieret is called, his people in Rathain will be left in the hands of an infant successor. He will ask our help for safe passage. Even so, his journey will take several months. We could lose the short margin of time that is left to spare Arithon’s equanimity. Go swiftly.”
God forbid he ask them for help.
But still, unless you think Arithon would suicide tomorrow, I feel like you could DO ALL THREE THINGS!
Nope? Okay. Fuck the clans, I guess.
So anyway, Kharadmon makes it to Elaira's cottage. She's asleep, her spell crystal cupped defensively in one fist. Kharadmon decides to creepily stare at her for a bit:
Sethvir of Althain had said for years that this woman’s hands held the threads of Arithon s’Ffalenn’s future happiness. Since the fate of Athera also rode the same course, Kharadmon gave the sleeper his most exacting survey. The thin, elfin profile pillowed in waves of her deep auburn hair was serene. Her closed lips had softened from the habitual wry tilt of impertinence. Open to plain view was her heedless sensitivity, the vulnerable heart she would defend with attacking dry wit when aware.
Hey dude. Stop being a fucking creep.
But Elaira gets a quiet moment of awesome here, as he realizes that he tripped some of the small defenses that she has on the cottage, picking up his presence before he noticed them.
We get more description of surroundings:
He swept her surroundings. The tiny cottage reflected a character too large to contain it, from the fleece-lined boots flung off helter-skelter, to the clothes lopsidedly hooked on the tine of a deer antler. Her pleasures were simple. Elaira had planted jonquil bulbs in a crock. Two quilted pillows stuffed with lavender and dried catmint seemed the gift of a moorland matron. She kept a vase filled with fallen owl and crow feathers. Three slate bits with holed centers strung on a thong hung over a black bowl lined with marble for water scrying.
Hey, guys, have you thought that maybe bringing in the KORIANI sorceress to help Arithon when he's the victim of a KORIANI scheme might be a bad idea? Just because Elaira doesn't want to betray him doesn't mean they can't use her! Again!
There's even more description: lots of herbs and runes and other cool magic witchy stuff. Kharadmon notes something interesting though: some of the stones in the cottage are awake and aware.
Kharadmon found their awakened perception most piquant, since practice of earth magics ran against strict form. The peculiarity spoke volumes, that a small wisdom kept by field witches and country grandmothers should find credence here, in the dwelling of an initiate Koriani. Since he was a friend, and brazenly uninvited, he held to strict manners. Each of the stones received his polite greeting in turn, phrased from the pure tones borrowed from the grand chord that sowed form in the void when sound first conceived Ath’s creation.
“The language is lyric, but scarcely an offshoot of anyone’s local dialect,” observed the woman whose cottage he had invaded. Aroused, propped on one elbow with eyes like gray smoke fixed on the blank air by her worktable, the enchantress challenged her visitor unabashed. “Nor do herders address plain stones from thin air. If your presence is honest, please show me courtesy and reveal yourself. ”
The surprise at Elaira's foray into earth magic and country wisdom makes me wonder if anyone in the Fellowship has ever bothered to get to know this woman that they've swept up into their big schemes.
So anyway, Kharadmon reveals himself. And Elaira is, as always, pretty great.
A shiver seemed to run through the woman’s thin frame, though she masked the unease behind movement and tucked the rough wool up under her chin. “Should I thank Sethvir? Or doesn’t he usually dispatch shades to pay unannounced social calls while his victims are disadvantaged and in bed?”
Kharadmon tries some banter, but Elaira's not having it.
“Were they kind, they would have barred you from entry.” Now the tremor caught hold, let the Sorcerer read into the deep, ragged pain behind her effort of seamless composure. “If you’ve come to speak of Arithon s’Ffalenn, be warned. My Prime Matriarch is his implacable enemy, and I but a tool to her hand.”
Kharadmon flowed into pacing, carelessly letting one shin pass through an oak stool that lay in his path. “You are never a tool, lady, except by allowance or consent.” His glance darted questingly sidewards.
The enchantress had gloved both her hands in the blanket and pressed the cloth to her mouth, as if the gesture framed a bastion against her own thoughtless and desperate speech. There were tears, bright as jewels, brimming her eyelids. Yet the pride in her silence was stark iron. “I was a six-year-old fool in trouble with Morvain’s authorities,” she admitted. Her voice held its timbre through sheer stubborn strength. “Nor are four crotchety old stones from a river bottom quite proof against the might of the Skyron aquamarine. Since my vows are not revocable, why are you here?”
I've said this before, but it really is fascinating how consent is a running element throughout the magical factions and practices in this story.
Elaira "consented" to her fate, just like Arithon and Lysaer "consented" to theirs. They didn't. They had no idea what they were agreeing to. They were manipulated and ignorant and well-meaning.
Sometimes I do wonder if this is all on purpose, after all. Maybe I'm SUPPOSED to hate the Fellowship?
So Kharadmon fills her in on what happened:
Kharadmon spun into vexed agitation, the breeze of his passage gone bitingly blunt as the frost that sang through his consonants. “Your prince has just learned that Koriani spellcraft can raise Lysaer’s essence as a fetch. In fact, your Prime Senior laid a trap to ensnare him. Her minions used that cheating, uncivil trick of spellcraft at Riverton, to sad and disastrous effect. Earl Jieret’s past war captain fell to his sworn liege’s steel.”
I'd just have summarized, but there's something that bugs me about the way Kharadmon words this. Maybe it's the passive voice? I mean, admittedly, this wasn't the Fellowship's doing. I'm not even sure, for once, that they knew it was happening until it was too late. It still bugs me.
Elaira is horrified though. She knows what this means. Both for Caolle and Arithon. She asks if that's why he's here: for advice on how to "contain the Prince of Rathain's bitter conscience?"
She gives an answer: release him from the blood oath.
Kharadmon's surprised that she knows about that. But, Elaira reveals, they've been linked since Merior. That whole weird sexy-healing thing? Apparently it left some after effects.
Kharadmon suggests that she could use that bond to help him.
I rather love Elaira for this:
But Elaira shook her head. “I won’t be his crutch. He needs none of my weakness. Nor will he thrive on any feminine instinct that gives him the child’s role through mothering a grown man’s mature pain. I urge you instead, return his free will. Give back his choice to own life or death. As things stand now, the very fact his hand is forced will only add coals to his anguish.” The flex in her modulation snapped for a second, and revealed all the tenderness beneath. “Ath, I know him, none better. He has strengths and depths even he doesn’t yet acknowledge. I believe with all my heart he will endure and survive even a grievous remorse such as this.”
Kharadmon pressed her. “You could risk his life on that premise?”
Elaira stared back at him, level. “I’d let him risk his life. There was no evil done. He did not succumb to the Mistwraith by choice. Nor would he endorse a forced act of insanity by turning the craven and destroying the royal heritage Caolle sacrificed himself to preserve.”
Because Elaira actually DOES understand consent. In a way that the Fellowship, with their manipulations and geas and blood oaths never really did.
Furthermore, Elaira knows ARITHON in a way that the Fellowship never tried. They've been in his head, sure. They know his weak points and vulnerabilities. But they know him as a chess piece, not a person. Arithon isn't Kamridian. He may not suffer the same fate.
Kharadmon points out that Arithon's lost everything. And Elaira wins my heart further with this:
Elaira swallowed, fighting down the passionate need to give way, to lean on the Sorcerer’s power and presence and find ease for her own stricken heartache. “His Grace of Rathain has already lost everything twice before this. What has changed since the banks of Tal Quorin?”
It's a damn good question, isn't it?
I remember the massacre at Tal Quorin, in Strakewood Forest. I remember that the Fellowship was nowhere to be found either before, during or after the clansfolk got slaughtered.
So what's the goddamn difference?
Conceding her point, Kharadmon withdraws. Will he actually take her advice? I'm guessing not.
The subchapter ends with poor Elaira weeping in her bed, thinking about how likely it is that the next time she meets Arithon, she'll be forced to take part in his betrayal.
--
The last subchapter here is Legacy.
We're back with Mearn. As we saw in Sethvir's vision, he's in bad shape, delirious and ranting. At some point, a woman with feathers in her hair slaps his face and shoves herbs in his mouth until he passes out.
When he wakes up later, he's much more coherent. Though in nasty shape: aching, limp, and naked under a rabbit skin throw. He figures out that he's in a fenlander's hovel, and there are other injured men here too. Mearn knows a field hospital when he sees one.
And he's not alone - Maenol s'Gannley is here.
Mearn is horrified to think that he's too late, and the casualties around him came about because of those men he saw. But Maenol is reassuring: the men had been injured delaying the Alliance's initial march on Riverton.
Maenol, by the way, is looking pretty haggard himself. He's also wearing morning strips in his clan braid, for the cousins who died to warn Arithon in Riverton.
Mearn realizes that means Maenol knows their fate. He does. From Mearn, in his delirium. Mearn's pretty horrified at that, but apparently his ranting was angry enough that Maenol found some comfort in it.
It occurs to me that there's a really interesting rank dynamic here. Maenol, as caithdein of Tysan, is borderline royalty himself. The s'Brydions, though they have the unique position of being maybe the only clan stronghold that never got overthrown, actually aren't the ranking clan in Melhalla. I don't think we've met Melhalla's caithdein, which is interesting. Especially because Melhalla, I believe, is the kingdom who is without a royal family entirely.
(Basically, four heirs fled to Dascen Elur. One stayed behind, because he was too young to travel - that's Eldir of Havish's ancestor. Of the four heirs though, the s'Ellestrion heir, whose gift was wisdom, died on the way.)
Mearn isn't a direct subject of Maenol's, being from another land, but they're not of equal rank either. And some of that does come across. He's a lot more respectful and less irreverent here than we've ever seen him before.
Maenol has more happy news: he's got the maps and the tactical information. They've set up some defenses, traps to slow them down, and they think many of the women and young ones might be able to escape in the mountains.
Maenol, himself, intends to stay and fight. He gets a pretty good speech to that effect:
In the dimness, the hiss of the rushlight became the thread upon which existence loomed its firm fabric. A wounded man groaned. The wind outside bespoke more rain pending, and time stood as the comfortless enemy. Maenol regarded his interlaced fingers. His features were too grim for his twenty-five years, and the conviction that shaped the steel of his character lent his answer the grit of scaled carbon. “As Tysan’s caithdein how could I leave? We are kingless. The land’s charter, therefore, becomes mine to uphold, in line with my ancestors before me. I will not see living acreage carved up into boundaries, or trees and streams and hillsides exchanged as spiritless deeds of writ that ignorant men believe can be bought and sold without penalty. Earth’s life and town greed share no common ground, and I have no stomach for compromise.”
“Brother,” Mearn said. He fought a hand free of encumbering furs and touched Maenol’s wrist in the sympathy of their common heritage. In Third Age Year One, clanblood had been consecrated to uphold the Paravian law of unity which kept the earth’s mystery intact. The world’s bounty and heritage were the binding fiber to hold Ath’s design, and no man’s to unwind for the divisive reasons of domination and profit.
“We are not yet defeated.” Maenol shifted, straightened, the dignity knit into the blood and the bone of him like the dauntless, stilled majesty the rooted oak must show the honed axe blade. “While there is one patch of forest in Tysan still free, I stay to resist the wrong thinking that threatens the peace of the Fellowship’s compact.”
I like this because it's one of the very rare times when we get to see clan talk to clan, without our heroes or villains muddying the waters. It's good to remember what's important to them and why they're doing this.
In a way, their dynamic with Arithon isn't that different from the townsfolk with Lysaer. While some of them have personal, emotional ties to Arithon, the majority of them side with him because of what he represents: ideally a return to the days when humanity followed the compact and they weren't being persecuted.
Mearn, at heart, wants to stay and fight too, but Maenol forcefully objects. Mearn can't save them and Maenol does not want to see Lysaer's destruction turned onto the Melhallan clans too.
Mearn doesn't like it, but he gets it. He's got more bad news for Maenol though. He explains how the Koriani triggered Arithon's curse from afar and the nature of the trap. Fun news.
Maenol, by the way, spends his time tending to the other patients in the tent. Mearn thinks about the maps he read and how desperate the situation actually is. They're going to seal off the routes from Caithwood into the mountains. There's a blockade waiting at the coastline.
And here's some sobriety:
Mearn shut his eyes, too agonized to watch. Though his family was not fugitive, he knew forestborn customs too well not to shrink. In these wilds, the clan codes of survival imposed since the uprising held no space for pity or compromise. Any scout here who was unfit to walk would not be permitted to fall into the hands of the enemy. With Alliance troops marching in force on Mogg’s Fen, those wounded would ask for a mercy stroke rather than burden their hale companions.
Maenol is tending to the wounded. One way or another.
When Maenol makes it back over to Mearn, he asks him again, more formally why he's still here.
Maenol has a request, but they'll talk about it later. Mearn promises, on his clan honor, to give him whatever he needs. But right now, he's told to sleep. He thinks Maenol might be weeping, but gives him his privacy.
When he wakes up again, he sees a fenwoman stirring a cauldron. There are no more wounded patients. Maenol is gone too. There's one clansman left: a twelve year old boy. He gives Mearn two letters: one for Eldir, King of Havish. And one for Mearn.
This is actually a pretty big deal. Clans generally don't write messages as they might fall into enemy hands. Mearn is humbled.
The letter to Mearn explains that he intends to beg Eldir for sanctuary for clan refugees. This is also a big deal, symbolically. Scarcely seven years since the massive downfall at Vastmark, Prince Lysaer had succeeded in unseating a clan presence whose roots went back five thousand years. Words were inadequate to express grief and heartache, that without the trials of the Mistwaith’s curse, these same clansmen should have sworn the same man their loyalty.
Basically, if the clans flee Tysan, it will leave the townsfolk "free rein for desecration". I'm not entirely certain what that means. But it sounds bad. Very bad. The other request is that Mearn take the boy with him as a page. The boy is Ianfar s'Gannley, Maenol's uncle's son and Maenol's heir if he dies without his own children. He wants Mearn to keep the boy safe until he can be fostered and learn what he has to in order to rule after Maenol.
Mearn, emotional, burns the letter, then:
One look at Mearn’s face shocked her silent. Through the dirty orange flame that crawled up the charred missive, the brother of Duke Bransian s’Brydion met the paralyzed gaze of young Ianfar s’Gannley. “I accept both charges laid on me by your chieftain. Will you formally agree to my guardianship?”
The boy tucked his hands under his arms, too brave to show he was shivering. He knew well enough his consent entailed the unspeakable possibility that his clans might be driven to yield up their sovereign charge in Tysan. Almost, his heart seemed to fail him. The underlit shadow thrown by his lashes made his eyes seem too large and too bright.
Then the stark, gritty fiber of his people shone through. “I bow to the will of my caithdein and the demands of necessity.” His dignity far more in that moment than many men managed in a lifetime, he bowed. “In gratitude, s’Gannley gives thanks for the generosity of s’Brydion.”
Aw. Poor kid. Mearn thinks that if the kid had been younger, he might have embraced him for comfort. Instead, they have a manly wrist clamp as Mearn promises he'll have standing as a brother under his roof.
So now there's a plan: first to go back to Avenor. Mearn's still, at least in theory, spending his days in debauchery. Oh well, at least he looks peaked.
He sends the poor kid out to refil some water (and let the kid cry in private). Then he makes his own plan: once Ianfar is safe, he'll look for the man who betrayed Arithon in Riverton and get some vengeance.
--
Our sneak peek chapter is Three Moments:
The first, a middle-aged minstrel in scarlet, is playing in a tavern. His audience is larger than usual: a half company of crown soldiers has joined the usual tradesmen and farmhands. The leader doesn't seem happy with the ballads being played.
The second: Now a fortnight after Arithon escaped, his accomplices are being boarded into the newly commissioned brigs as hostages. Cattrick watches, his heart "lit with rage fit to murder".
The third: Mearn makes it back, with Ianfar at his side, to hear the announcement of Princess Talith's death.
The chapter ends here.