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i_read_whatSo last time, we saw an old friend. Also the Fellowship might have been almost useful. For a moment. Before being utterly useless again.
So we start off this chapter with our heroes heading into a "grimward". Weird magic environmental stuff. We got something of an explanation earlier, but this chapter will provide a better one.
It starts off pretty well:
Inside the shimmering, mercurial barrier which bounded the Paravian grimward, the natural progression of time dissolved. As spellbinder, Dakar noticed the alarming development when his subliminal connection to sun, moon, and stars became cut off like snipped thread. Footsore, exhausted, and snappish from hunger, he shut his eyes and milked his recalcitrant memory. He retained a shamefully sparse store of facts for his years spent in Asandir’s tutelage. What fragments he gleaned could be counted on three fingers, jumbled as trivia between detailed reminiscence of his past trysts and wistful hours spent wenching.
By contrast, each one of his two-silver harlots stood out with a jewel’s exotic clarity. The quirk moved him to teeth-grinding worry, that the fragment of lore that might key their survival would stay obscured by the decadent pursuits of his past.
“Well how was a drunk to know what his life might come to depend on?” Dakar snapped to Felirin’s sensible inquiry.
I really do love Dakar.
We're told that he's "distempered and soaked in cowardly sweat", but it's not like anyone's enthusiastic about this trip. Fellirin, we're told, is "reduced to a petrified silence", while Arithon's completely out of it.
The Mad Prophet wished in jangled irritation that Arithon’s wits were not scattered. This once, the other man’s unmerciful perception would have posed an indisputable advantage. For his own part, the spellbinder found such exactitude wearing. Escape into thoughts of a lush woman’s favors seemed resounding good sense beside the outright insanity of braving the perils now at hand.
Aw, look at him being all crankily worried.
So usually the Fellowship handles these things. They have "ruthlessly potent" protections that misdirect travelers. Asandir or Sethvir keep them up, while the more discorporate colleagues might assist with misdirecting game or trespassers but otherwise keep their distance. Dakar gets the impression that grimwards are really dangerous for spirits who are left "unshielded by mortal flesh."
And dying here means being "struck from the Fatemaster's Wheel for all time." Yikes.
Things are starting to get unpleasant:
Ten paces ahead, his unsettled senses ripped back into clarity. As if an eyeblink had remade the landscape, the vista ahead showed seared trees and sterile dust, charged in a flat tang of ozone. Currents of wild energy flicked over riled nerves. The Mad Prophet found his teeth set on edge, and his vitals clawed with unease. The interlaced spells which defended this border threw off a debilitating resonance. Leaves shriveled as they unfolded from the bud, and trees became stunted, shedding skeletons. The blight on the land fed Dakar’s disquiet; he knew of the Fellowship’s aversion to cause harm to anything growing.
Yet in this place, that dearly held tenet had been broken with stark and appalling violence. As if this circle of spelled seals confined something unworldly that would not respond to the kindlier magics wrought out of natural forces.
Fellirin is talking to his horse, comforting it. Arithon's also come out of it a little, though he can't perceive much without magesight. Dakar's riding point. He doesn't like it but the others really can't handle it. Also, drawing the awesome sword in a place like this would be really really bad.
There's some nice imagery when the ground gives way to an expanse of polished granit, veined in obsidian and milky quartz, with arcs and figures scribed with paravian runes.
Dakar and a slightly more alert Arithon discuss the runes a bit. Dakar can identify a few, as can Arithon, a fact that surprises Dakar. Arithon can also hear the "resonant harmonics" of the wards. They're not reassuring.
Nor is this:
Then, with no warning, the paved expanse ended. The horses crabstepped off a razed edge in the stone and into a rustling growth of forest. One heartbeat before, no trees had been anywhere in evidence. To the rear, the rune ring had vanished away into shadowed, random avenues of oaks. The spellbinder took that for an ominous sign. The guarding sigils at the portal had sealed the way closed behind them. No return course was possible by the path they had entered. If another safe exit to known territory existed, they must endure whatever perils lay ahead and unriddle the grimward’s dire mysteries.
So it SOUNDS like the grimward is taking them through all sorts of interesting environments in a very short amount of time. Feliirin notes that the wood they're seeing is much too big for the Korias Flats. Dakar notes they're clearly not in the Korias Flats anymore. Fun!
Eventually, Fellirin notes that they're traveling in a circle. Arithon corrects them: it's a spiral. He can hear it. By the way, he sound drunk, And his accent's regressed "to the antique dialect of the splinter world of his birth." That can't be good.
But that IS an interesting note. After five hundred years, Dascen Elur WOULD have developed its own accents. Mistwraith never really mentioned it, except when the townsfolk mistook them for clan barbarians. Which makes sense, given that the clan were the original nobility.
I wonder if it's like an English vs. a South African or Australian accent. To an American, the accents can sound somewhat similar, though obviously each of those folks can tell the difference.
Fellirin's impressed. He can't hear the difference. Arithon is still primarily out of it, but he eventually manages to communicate his real observation: the landscape is "unstable" and reality warped. He's in really bad shape though, and when Dakar is snarkily grateful:
But this time, the victim was too spent to counter that lame attack of sarcasm. His painstaking effort to order plain thought became a trial to witness. Felirin politely averted his gaze, while Arithon sought to translate impressions with comprehensible clarity.
An Arithon who can't bicker back is an Arithon in REALLY bad shape.
So basically, they're LITERALLY walking through a dream, which freaks Dakar out a bit because that might mean there's an actual LIVING dragon out there, still alive to have this dream. That's probably not good.
So the thing about a spiral is that it leads somewhere: into a center. This is ominous.
Eventually, the changes in environment gets more dramatic. Seasons outright change: autumn to winter. The stars are completely unfamiliar...to anyone but Arithon. He recognizes the constellations as the ones used for navigation on Dascen Elur. He wonders if their thoughts are affecting the dream.
He doesn't recognize the ground though. It's too desolate, even for Karthan's awful climate. And his flat, lifeless expression is worrying Dakar. But when Dakar tries for Significant Eye Contact, he is rebuffed.
Dakar starts to worry that either one of his partners: the clinically depressed curse victim or the newly traumatized would be execution victim might end up in some kind of really bad reality-emotion spiral. He urges Arithon to use his mage training to keep his mind wrapped to silence.
The Master of Shadow opened tortured green eyes. “Ath save us all, I’ve already done so.” He cast a weighted glance toward Felirin’s turned back.
I added this just for "tortured green eyes". There's a lot of little bits of Arithon's condition in this subchapter. Definitely food for any whump fans.
So yeah, Felirin doesn't have any mental defenses. Dakar considers the necessity of forcing it on him. It's a moral quandary as it would break the Law of Major Balance. (And yet again, we see an example of Dakar being far more concerned about consent than his teachers.) He seems about to cross that line when...
“Don’t, Dakar,” said Arithon s’Ffalenn. His shackling grasp did not loosen. “I thought the same once on the banks of Tal Quorin. Believe me, no stakes are worth such a cost. I’ve lost direct access to my mage talent as a penalty, and would give any price in my power to reverse that decision.”
Dakar swallowed, undone by the leveling force of an honesty he could not match. Nor could he restate the horrid, cold fact, that the harmonious continuity of Athera yet hung on the thread of Prince Arithon’s life. “If need warrants, even you cannot stop me,” he said finally.
The hold on him released in an unspeakable surrender. That act, and the numbing silence that followed ran against every tenet of fight in Arithon’s character. An ominous sign, with no joy in the victory, that Dakar held such sway over a friend whose innate strength had always outmatched him. “I’ll hold my decision,” he temporized, to no avail.
I ship it and all its uncomfortable ethical quandaries.
Anyway, bad winter weather distracts them all. Dakar ends up making Felirin and Arithon ride double under his cloak for warmth.
A new fear comes up when, in a new, desolate but warmer environment, Dakar spots a predator's clawed tracks. He identifies it as a Seardluin. Apparently it was a "monstrous killer" that the Fellowship battled to extinction. And that's probably a big deal considering the Fellowship are all about preservation of life and shit. Supposedly.
Arithon, by the way, is completely out cold now. They shift horses again, literally tying Arithon to his horse by wrists and ankles. Then we actually get to SEE some of these Seardluin:
There were four of them, coats like rippling sable, and horned heads burnished to polished gold under the harsh desert sunlight. The powerful, maned shoulders stood high as an ox. The forefeet bore fearsome talons. The muzzles extended into jaws with scaled plates, and fangs that were cruelly poisonous. The eyes were pale as poured oil, and slitted like a snake’s. Dakar was aware through the hammer of his pulse that nothing alive looked more lethal. While at large on Athera, Seardluin had outrun the gazelles of Sanpashir, which took bounding flight like racing shadows over parched grass and flint sands.
Arithon groans at this point and Dakar has to muffle it with his hand. Fortunately, though, the Seardluin end up passing by. Dakar thinks they must not be visible to the Seardluin in "this spectrum of the dream". Or they'd have been torn apart.
They keep going. Eventually, they're overtaken by five horsemen with Hanshire's blazon sewen on their clothes. It's the Alliance pursuit. Now THEY are being chased by the Seardluin. And it looks bad.
The lead creature sprang with sinuous speed. It overtook the trailing rider, closed a stride and a half lead in one bound, its thick, plated tail streamed behind. One snap of armored jaws decapitated the horse. The animal pinwheeled, fountaining blood. Its rider catapulted ahead. He crashed in a rolling spray of sand, but never came to rest before the predator pinned him. One goring swipe of its horn left him a disemboweled carcass.
Eek.
The Seardluin continue to attack, and it's pretty fucking gory. I suppose the one mercy is that none of these guardsmen or horses live long enough to suffer. Egads. The verb "scissoring" comes up.
The guardsmen may or may not have been transformed into something once they entered the grimward. It probably doesn't matter now, but Dakar's still a little freaked out. As is Felirin, who had actually KNOWN some of those men. Again, it probably doesn't matter. Except that Dakar, Felirin and Arithon are so far safe from the predators in a way those guardsmen aren't.
Dakar does have a theory:
“I can’t know for certain.” The mare plunged ahead, yanked short yet again by Dakar’s iron hold on the reins. Swearing, he lost another patch of raw skin before he resumed his snagged thought. “Those men must have interfered with the dream in some way. Dragons are unruly and powerful beings, a law unto themselves. Their conscious minds could seed life. Why not the reverse? If a man in careless ignorance killed game in the wood, or lit a small fire for comfort, then a thread of continuity would be torn by his act. A kinetic balance would become inadvertently upset. In forfeit, the drake might well bleed off the offender’s life aura, and knit the repossessed magnetic energies into the dream’s fabric to restore the gap.”
It makes as much sense as anything. Asandir's advice was possibly somewhat useful after all.
There are more Seardluin in the distance. There's a hacked and gutted corpse of a young dragon. Disturbing.
They end up in an orchard, Dakar warns quickly not to pick any fruit. He's wondering now if something isn't influencing things to their benefit - keeping things from going completely wrong. But it's still pretty bad. The horses are exhaustion. Arithon's still unconscious and even the True Name equivalent of a sternum rub isn't bringing him out of it. And they're going to need water. Dragons don't like water so anything they find here probably won't be good.
But at least there are some cool sights?
Dakar stared also, amazed and gaping. High over the beaten-brass furrows of the plain, a mated pair of dragons cavorted, sleek as shot quarrels as they closed leathered wings and swooped from the zenith to the horizon. Sun-caught scales flashed fire like tipped gold, and tails streamed and snapped like armored ribbon. No legend, no awed description, even from Sethvir’s keen memory, could do justice to the searing, unworldly grace of the great drakes at their prime strength. Before their vast size, the Khadrim were as toys, and the wyverns of Vastmark no more than petty and quarrelsome vermin.
Dragons.
The environment changes again to volcanic rock and a clogged sky. Possibly the dragons' preferred habitat. Apparently they liked rolling in molten rock. The fumes are poison. Arithon's mare stumbles, but they can't really stop. It's unpleasant.
There's a dragon skeleton. Awesome. It's fucking huge.
Dakar as well felt his flesh bathed in chills. As a child, he had seen living Paravians, whom none could encounter without change. This behemoth wreckage was long dead, and yet, it commanded a presence which rankled his nerves into shivers. No feat of mortal imagination could capture the monumental grandeur of what was scribed in these glyphs of naked bone.
Braced in arched rows, such ribs could have served as the vaults of a palace; and had, Dakar recalled through a vague flick of memory. Melhalla’s last high kings had convened court and served judgment under just such a buttressed hall. The domed, copper roofs had been shingled in drake scales, a legend even before the great uprising, when the ruling seat at Tirans had been gutted by fire and cast down into ruins.
That's kind of awesome.
Actually, this is all really awesome. I want to excerpt it all. But I can't.
Finally though, they end up meeting someone: a dark robed figure on a black horse shouting at them. It's Asandir! Actually being useful for once!
No Fellowship Sorcerer ever burned reckless power without cause. By the singing charge that lashed his awareness, Dakar understood the danger loomed too vast to grapple. Only once before had he seen Asandir unleash his full strength, and that on the hour the Mistwraith had attacked Lysaer and Arithon at Ithamon.
Then as now, the power streamed outward in crackling rays, no brute stab of force, but the unbridled might of fine energies called down by a spirit schooled into peerless unity with every facet of Ath’s creation. The result ranged harmonics like a hammer blow to bronze, showering light in waves of continuous vibration.
Wooo.
Gandalf it up, Sandy!
Asandir even gives Dakar and Felirin a moment of praise ("Well-done, but hurry".) Dakar had been assuming that this was all Arithon's mind's despair trying to kill them, but Asandir denies that. Instead, Arithon's out cold because his own mage defenses are killing him. Oops.
Dakar asks about the dragon. Actually, the dragon's dead. This is all from her GHOST's dreaming. A living one's dream could reweave the known fabric of creation.
So, to leave, they have to enter the dragon skeleton's skull. Which is hardcore awesome, let's be real here. Asandir notes that it won't be a fun passage, but they'll emerge "unmarked", he's sticking behind to try to save the Alliance guardsmen. Twenty-eight are dead already, but there are some that might still be able to be saved.
And for once, for once, we're actually seeing a Fellowship sorcerer get up off his ass and save people. Keep this up, Asandir, and I might stop despising you with every fiber of my being!
He warns Dakar to caution "[his] prince": the guardsmen are probably going to blame Arithon for this. Because Asandir can't not make things harder for the guy. I mean. You could try EXPLAINING to the people as or after you rescue them???
Oh well.
Dakar grouses:
“Tell my prince,” Dakar grumbled. He resisted the craven urge to shut his eyes and ignore the forbidding cavern which yawned ahead of his quaking steps. “Since when did I ever swear fealty to a madman wanted dead by half the townsmen on the continent?”
Sorry Dakar, we all ship it.
But, eventually, they do make the passage. It sounds really unpleasant! Woo!
--
The next subchapter is Recall
We're in the Caithwood. It's late spring 5653 still. There's some lovely imagery:
ust before solstice, the nights in Caithwood held a soft, breathing warmth, the air thick as milk in the pearlescent moonlight which streamed through the dense crowns of old oak trees. These ancient groves had never tasted the axe blade. Nor had black soil known the bite of the plow, or the turned iron rim of the cart wheel. The pale, whorled bark of ancient copper beeches wore mottles like coin silver where the strung-floss motes speared the darkness. Rolling combers off Mainmere Bay lisped through, sea and earth joined in dialogue by the whisper of the leaves that stirred to the tireless breezes. The mockingbird’s song and the whistles of nightjars spilled liquid notes through the stillness, much as they had in Paravian times when centaur guardians had reigned, and the sunchild dancers had called down the mysteries that moved, incarnate, with the wild grace of the unicorns.
Anyway, Maenol's scouts are keeping watch. They've been warned of the blockade and the conspiracy. But they're grimly determined to keep the coastline open, so that the families can escape to Havish. They know that they're likely to die here. They don't have the strength.
They're not going to desert though.
That said, they might be in for a surprise. The dory that's coming in has two men, one in a brimmed hat that obscures his face. He moves funny - old scars or injuries and his hands are bent and gnarled.
We know who this is! Especially when a raven flaps down to settle on the dude's wrist. It's TRAITHE!
He's looking for Jieret!
Jieret is nearby in a glen. Traithe will go find him. One of the scouts tries to press for info about the Alliance, he doesn't realize that Fellowship sorcerers are useless. And indeed, the only news Traithe has is that Arithon went into a Grimward.
Everyone's pretty horrified. Traithe tries to reassure them:
Before her aghast fear, the Sorcerer used what logic he had to feed hope. “Rathain’s prince was well trained by a master at magecraft. He survived the dangerous passage well enough, but his conscience is troubled. He required more than self-discipline to keep his despair in check. Now those defenses have driven him far beyond waking consciousness. He will stay lost between dimensional realities unless Jieret s’Valerient can reach past the veil and find him.”
Sounds easy! Let's go!
Traithe has a sense of restraint, so we save our melodrama for the narrative monologue:
He did not speak of the dire hurdles to be crossed, nor mention the unconscionable intensity of Arithon’s grief, or the mind-stripping, ingrained misery which might come to thwart his best effort. The prospect of failure was too real, too immediate. Arithon’s downfall might lie at hand despite all his help, and Earl Jieret’s willing duty to be called to shoulder the sacrifice.
It'll be FINE. I'm sure!
I'm skipping a fair bit here. Traithe's trek through the Caithwood. It's nice to see what the scouts are up to, but it's not really plot relevant. They're anxious and nervous and apparently no one is going to bother to let them know about Caolle's victories.
Maenol's still kicking, by the way. He's in the marshes, trapped there on the run.
The scouts are also not stupid, they realize from the way Traithe talks about needing Jieret that there's a chance that Arithon won't be saved. Traithe doesn't deny that. But he has faith in Jieret's courage.
And here we are: Jieret!
The arrival himself made almost no sound as he strode into the encampment. Jieret s’Valerient was clad in laced deer hide with fringes that accentuated his firm breadth of shoulder. He smelled of bruised greenery and overheated horse, underlain with the tang of oil from the well-kept weapons at his waist. Adverse to language where actions would serve, he raked a glance over the seated forms of the scouts, then fixed on the Fellowship Sorcerer.
No hesitation marked his greeting as he sank before Traithe on bent knee.
Ugh. Don't do that, please. But anyway, Traithe fills him in, in the most dramatic way possible. Which leads Jieret to believe the worst.
Jieret flinched. Force of will held him steady for a running string of heartbeats. Then his hands clamped, and he tipped back his face. “How my father would weep.” Eyes shut in agony, he swore until he ran out of breath.
Aw.
But he gets reassurance. Arithon had sealed his mind away, to protect everyone from his guilt over Caolle. But now he's kind stuck in there, behind very strong mental protections. Apparently even Sethvir can't get in there now. Jieret might.
So Jieret's in, of course, and they have to use some kind of magic passage. Because Traithe's powers are not whole, he has to use "blood magic" to do it. Jieret still consents.
So they go to a very beautifully described clearing, where Jieret is urged to "loosen the laces" of any tight clothing and lay comfortably. He lays his weapons alongside. His body will be asleep, his mind will not.
So cool magic time.
There's herbs and bowls and Paravian language. It sounds pretty cool. I'm not sure where the blood comes in. It's very ritualistic though!
Oh, hey, Tienelle is involved. Gotta love the death herb. It's how Jieret's going to be slightly disconnected from his body. Traithe offers Jieret the chance to back out, but Jieret's not about to do that.
Everything gets a bit trippy and disorienting from here. Jieret ends up having quite a trip.
Jieret blinked, while the earth turned, the majesty of her dance a vibration that thrummed through his bones. The stars paled, then burst into pearlescent sparks that burned through the backdrop of daybreak. Then the clouds ignited also, their drifting serenity shot into fire-opal patterns. Nesting thrushes sang out a chord that knitted the air into ecstasy. Jieret felt warm fingers clasp his right hand, then bear down, pinning his forearm. The textures of cold dew and mossy stones screamed detail like etched light down the trackways of overstimulated flesh.
See? Lots of that.
Ah, here's the blood. It's not a lot. But it's the whole blood bond thing. Woo.
I'm not sure what the hell Traithe is doing right now. He's sitting next to Jieret's body while the latter is vision questing. Apparently if any of this gets disrupted any of them could die. Okay.
I'm not going to bitch, the Fellowship sorcerers are actually being USEFUL.
--
The third subchapter is Discovery.
Aw. Rather than continue with Jieret, Dakar or Arithon, we're back in Capewell, with Morriel. How's she doing?
The Koriani Prime Matriarch harbored no such soft sentiment through her tedious days of convalescence. Imprisoned by her debilitating weakness, and fed on the brew of yet another bitter defeat, she lay swathed in thin coverlets. Her eggshell flesh showed each blue track of vein. Bones pressed against skin seamed and worn to translucency, the joints like knobbed pearl beneath. Through the weeks since the spell construct’s release had roused her from coma, her glistening black eyes lent the sole spark of life to her visage.
Eh, she's Morriel. She never really has fun.
It's possibly worth noting that the time period note for this chapter is Early Summer 5653.
Last subchapter was still spring. Not sure what THAT means. But maybe that's why there was the whole vision quest, whatsits. Because right now, a seeress is telling Morriel that she can't find Arithon's presence on Athera.
...oh, I SEE. That's what the cryptic bit at the end of the chapter meant. Arithon/Dakar/Felirin haven't made it back from the Grimward yet. They're using Jieret to try to track them down. I think. We'll find out next week.
Morriel notes that Arithon's too clever by far and calls it the bane of his mother's lineage. And there's some interesting thoughts there.
Rauven Tower is a really interesting entity when compared with the magical traditions available on Athera itself. It's definitely more advanced than the basic practices of hedge-witches. It doesn't seem to be tied to religion though, in the way of the Brotherhood of Ath. It's not Koriani or Fellowship. It's something else entirely.
If Talera had been born on Athera, would she have been Koriani? She was a mage after all. Or would princesses have been exempt from that? (IS she a princess. We never hear about the King of Rauven, so I kind of assumed that the High Mage was the equivalent. Certainly they ARE of the royal line. Hm.)
I would not however have called Talera clever. Ever. There's a reason I think foresight is a fucking joke after all.
Anyway, it sounds like Morriel's losing some influence in the Koriani. They're wondering if she's "lapsed in her dotage". But unfortunately, with Lirenda out of reach, there's not much anyone can do anyway.
The seeress looks for Lirenda, and this time...finds something:
Darkness and blinding sunlight interfaced at random as the viewpoint swirled and jounced through a packed mass of bodies clad in the plain fringe of forest clansmen. A voice filtered through, distinct above others. “Ath, be careful! That trinket’s no booty to send to your sweetheart, but the spell crystal of a Koriani witch, and bound for another hand than yours.”
Ah, there we are.
So Morriel finally gets some news about how her plan went wrong.
Eyes closed, hands cupped light as a butterfly’s shut wings around the warmed sphere of quartz, the seeress at last captured one angle of contact. She framed another sigil of control and froze the vision in place, then engaged the trained logic of observation to assess the stilled scene by its content. “I see a beach where clansmen weep, run, and shout in celebration. They are hunters or scouts, to judge by the carved-bone talismans laced into the cuffs of their boots. One is a chieftain, the son of a duchess by the four stranded knots in his braid. In the cove, at anchor, ride two blue-water brigs. They’re not under command of Lysaer’s Alliance of Light. The banner flying at their masthead is no sunwheel, but a crude rendition in dark colors.” She paused, tipped the crystal, but failed to extract any further helpful detail.
Morriel asks if Lirenda's a prisoner. The seeress doesn't know. She just sensed the crystal. Separation of crystal and sorceress is a pretty horrifying "desecration" in Morriel's eyes. But at least they know that Lirenda's alive. They can tell that much.
They do manage to work some seer magic to find out how the stone was separated from Lirenda: it was Caolle.
Morriel's pretty enraged by this because, as planned, Caolle was supposed to be dead of blood loss from getting stabbed with a sword in Riverton. SOMETHING changed the plan.
They track the stone: it's in Maenol's clan's hands. It's to be delivered to Arithon directly. They have no opportunity to save it. And everyone is really happy to hear that the ships have been retaken. ALL of Arithon's condemned henchmen have escaped.
YAY.
So now, it's time to find Lirenda. She needs to use this seeress to do it, and it...doesn't sound good.
The seeress swallowed. Sweat trickled at her throat. Though she knew her free will was demanded in sacrifice, her vows left no recourse to refuse. Her talents were at the command of her order to spend for the greater good of humanity.
Damn, being a Koriani who isn't one of the highest ranks SUCKS. Morriel does say she'll come to no harm.
But um..
She flinched in recoil. The crystal’s transmission released a shearing sting of heat against her cradling palms. Engulfed by vertigo, she was unable to move as Morriel Prime pronounced the guttural words to key mastery. The sigil fired and took form. Its barbed force claimed thought and mind, then erased the last imprint of individuality. The resonance of subjugation shattered the frail web of the seeress’s consciousness. Will, self, and senses sucked away into vacuum, first dashed to powder, then whirled into void by a tide of cyclonic intervention.
Oblivion remained.
I think Morriel might have been lying.
Anyway, Morriel now gets to see through Lirenda's eyes, which leads us to a scene shift.
-
At Corinth, the Lance drops anchor. Lirenda and the original captain are on board. Lirenda's unhappy, because whether or not Lysaer actually agrees to some kind of hostage exchange - her crystal's still gone. Not good for her.
We're told that the Lance had made landfall in Havish, where the crew boarded a "mannerless cohort of fortune-seeking mercenaries". They did leave Lirenda alone, but she resents her "reduction to female uncertainty" about her fate with these guys.
I'm reminded of the point made many times in Merior/Vastmark, that for all that Lysaer was the one who ruled by adoration rather than fear, he was the one who could not control the behavior of his men. It's not harped upon here. But the subtle reinforcement is effective. Arithon's men do NOT abuse prisoners.
But Lirenda's still focused on her crystal, rather understandably. We saw what happened to the healer after all. And yeah, this sounds unpleasant:
A moment’s inept handling might plunge the stone into the sea. Saltwater cleansing would follow, a gentle dissolution of the wards that would span the course of several days. The first symptom might bloom with a nagging, dull headache. Weakness would follow. Then a fumbling loss of reflex, which would progress into fits of sick trembling and convulsions, until she died at last of paralysis, as her internal organs failed and ruptured, torn apart by the unleashed backlash of stayed time.
The slap of raw winds made her feel her mortality, and the unblemished hand held clenched to the rail only mocked her: she could wake any morning and find herself trapped in the witless, shriveled body of a hag.
Being a Koriani kind of sucks.
I'm not sure how old Lirenda is supposed to be. I'd thought she was around fifty or so. I'm old enough not to think a fifty year old body is a "hag". But then, Koriani magic might do more than just restore her to natural age.
So the plan had initially been to send someone to talk to Lysaer's men about a hostage exchange. But apparently Lysaer wants LIRENDA to be the one to speak for the hostages instead. She reluctantly agrees.
Oh, hey, apparently the seeress is okay! She ends up disentangling from Lirenda's mind, reeling from her "appalling disgrace". Now she gets to tell Morriel the bad news. Eek.
But it seems like Morriel's aware. The seeress ends up dismissed, ordered not to speak of Lirenda's disgrace. That's something Morriel will follow up with Lirenda directly, later.
--
Our sneak peek section is Reprieves. (Summer 5653).
The first paragraph shows us Asandir trying to save the soldiers. More of them are dying. Only three are left at this point, including Sulfin Evend, their captain.
The second shows us Jieret, spirit-riding the winds, guiding Traithe's raven and Sethvir's tracking presence, hopefully to effect a rescue.
The third shows us Maenol and his scouts, still unaware that two brigs have made landfall flying the leopard of Rathain.
To be continued next week!
So we start off this chapter with our heroes heading into a "grimward". Weird magic environmental stuff. We got something of an explanation earlier, but this chapter will provide a better one.
It starts off pretty well:
Inside the shimmering, mercurial barrier which bounded the Paravian grimward, the natural progression of time dissolved. As spellbinder, Dakar noticed the alarming development when his subliminal connection to sun, moon, and stars became cut off like snipped thread. Footsore, exhausted, and snappish from hunger, he shut his eyes and milked his recalcitrant memory. He retained a shamefully sparse store of facts for his years spent in Asandir’s tutelage. What fragments he gleaned could be counted on three fingers, jumbled as trivia between detailed reminiscence of his past trysts and wistful hours spent wenching.
By contrast, each one of his two-silver harlots stood out with a jewel’s exotic clarity. The quirk moved him to teeth-grinding worry, that the fragment of lore that might key their survival would stay obscured by the decadent pursuits of his past.
“Well how was a drunk to know what his life might come to depend on?” Dakar snapped to Felirin’s sensible inquiry.
I really do love Dakar.
We're told that he's "distempered and soaked in cowardly sweat", but it's not like anyone's enthusiastic about this trip. Fellirin, we're told, is "reduced to a petrified silence", while Arithon's completely out of it.
The Mad Prophet wished in jangled irritation that Arithon’s wits were not scattered. This once, the other man’s unmerciful perception would have posed an indisputable advantage. For his own part, the spellbinder found such exactitude wearing. Escape into thoughts of a lush woman’s favors seemed resounding good sense beside the outright insanity of braving the perils now at hand.
Aw, look at him being all crankily worried.
So usually the Fellowship handles these things. They have "ruthlessly potent" protections that misdirect travelers. Asandir or Sethvir keep them up, while the more discorporate colleagues might assist with misdirecting game or trespassers but otherwise keep their distance. Dakar gets the impression that grimwards are really dangerous for spirits who are left "unshielded by mortal flesh."
And dying here means being "struck from the Fatemaster's Wheel for all time." Yikes.
Things are starting to get unpleasant:
Ten paces ahead, his unsettled senses ripped back into clarity. As if an eyeblink had remade the landscape, the vista ahead showed seared trees and sterile dust, charged in a flat tang of ozone. Currents of wild energy flicked over riled nerves. The Mad Prophet found his teeth set on edge, and his vitals clawed with unease. The interlaced spells which defended this border threw off a debilitating resonance. Leaves shriveled as they unfolded from the bud, and trees became stunted, shedding skeletons. The blight on the land fed Dakar’s disquiet; he knew of the Fellowship’s aversion to cause harm to anything growing.
Yet in this place, that dearly held tenet had been broken with stark and appalling violence. As if this circle of spelled seals confined something unworldly that would not respond to the kindlier magics wrought out of natural forces.
Fellirin is talking to his horse, comforting it. Arithon's also come out of it a little, though he can't perceive much without magesight. Dakar's riding point. He doesn't like it but the others really can't handle it. Also, drawing the awesome sword in a place like this would be really really bad.
There's some nice imagery when the ground gives way to an expanse of polished granit, veined in obsidian and milky quartz, with arcs and figures scribed with paravian runes.
Dakar and a slightly more alert Arithon discuss the runes a bit. Dakar can identify a few, as can Arithon, a fact that surprises Dakar. Arithon can also hear the "resonant harmonics" of the wards. They're not reassuring.
Nor is this:
Then, with no warning, the paved expanse ended. The horses crabstepped off a razed edge in the stone and into a rustling growth of forest. One heartbeat before, no trees had been anywhere in evidence. To the rear, the rune ring had vanished away into shadowed, random avenues of oaks. The spellbinder took that for an ominous sign. The guarding sigils at the portal had sealed the way closed behind them. No return course was possible by the path they had entered. If another safe exit to known territory existed, they must endure whatever perils lay ahead and unriddle the grimward’s dire mysteries.
So it SOUNDS like the grimward is taking them through all sorts of interesting environments in a very short amount of time. Feliirin notes that the wood they're seeing is much too big for the Korias Flats. Dakar notes they're clearly not in the Korias Flats anymore. Fun!
Eventually, Fellirin notes that they're traveling in a circle. Arithon corrects them: it's a spiral. He can hear it. By the way, he sound drunk, And his accent's regressed "to the antique dialect of the splinter world of his birth." That can't be good.
But that IS an interesting note. After five hundred years, Dascen Elur WOULD have developed its own accents. Mistwraith never really mentioned it, except when the townsfolk mistook them for clan barbarians. Which makes sense, given that the clan were the original nobility.
I wonder if it's like an English vs. a South African or Australian accent. To an American, the accents can sound somewhat similar, though obviously each of those folks can tell the difference.
Fellirin's impressed. He can't hear the difference. Arithon is still primarily out of it, but he eventually manages to communicate his real observation: the landscape is "unstable" and reality warped. He's in really bad shape though, and when Dakar is snarkily grateful:
But this time, the victim was too spent to counter that lame attack of sarcasm. His painstaking effort to order plain thought became a trial to witness. Felirin politely averted his gaze, while Arithon sought to translate impressions with comprehensible clarity.
An Arithon who can't bicker back is an Arithon in REALLY bad shape.
So basically, they're LITERALLY walking through a dream, which freaks Dakar out a bit because that might mean there's an actual LIVING dragon out there, still alive to have this dream. That's probably not good.
So the thing about a spiral is that it leads somewhere: into a center. This is ominous.
Eventually, the changes in environment gets more dramatic. Seasons outright change: autumn to winter. The stars are completely unfamiliar...to anyone but Arithon. He recognizes the constellations as the ones used for navigation on Dascen Elur. He wonders if their thoughts are affecting the dream.
He doesn't recognize the ground though. It's too desolate, even for Karthan's awful climate. And his flat, lifeless expression is worrying Dakar. But when Dakar tries for Significant Eye Contact, he is rebuffed.
Dakar starts to worry that either one of his partners: the clinically depressed curse victim or the newly traumatized would be execution victim might end up in some kind of really bad reality-emotion spiral. He urges Arithon to use his mage training to keep his mind wrapped to silence.
The Master of Shadow opened tortured green eyes. “Ath save us all, I’ve already done so.” He cast a weighted glance toward Felirin’s turned back.
I added this just for "tortured green eyes". There's a lot of little bits of Arithon's condition in this subchapter. Definitely food for any whump fans.
So yeah, Felirin doesn't have any mental defenses. Dakar considers the necessity of forcing it on him. It's a moral quandary as it would break the Law of Major Balance. (And yet again, we see an example of Dakar being far more concerned about consent than his teachers.) He seems about to cross that line when...
“Don’t, Dakar,” said Arithon s’Ffalenn. His shackling grasp did not loosen. “I thought the same once on the banks of Tal Quorin. Believe me, no stakes are worth such a cost. I’ve lost direct access to my mage talent as a penalty, and would give any price in my power to reverse that decision.”
Dakar swallowed, undone by the leveling force of an honesty he could not match. Nor could he restate the horrid, cold fact, that the harmonious continuity of Athera yet hung on the thread of Prince Arithon’s life. “If need warrants, even you cannot stop me,” he said finally.
The hold on him released in an unspeakable surrender. That act, and the numbing silence that followed ran against every tenet of fight in Arithon’s character. An ominous sign, with no joy in the victory, that Dakar held such sway over a friend whose innate strength had always outmatched him. “I’ll hold my decision,” he temporized, to no avail.
I ship it and all its uncomfortable ethical quandaries.
Anyway, bad winter weather distracts them all. Dakar ends up making Felirin and Arithon ride double under his cloak for warmth.
A new fear comes up when, in a new, desolate but warmer environment, Dakar spots a predator's clawed tracks. He identifies it as a Seardluin. Apparently it was a "monstrous killer" that the Fellowship battled to extinction. And that's probably a big deal considering the Fellowship are all about preservation of life and shit. Supposedly.
Arithon, by the way, is completely out cold now. They shift horses again, literally tying Arithon to his horse by wrists and ankles. Then we actually get to SEE some of these Seardluin:
There were four of them, coats like rippling sable, and horned heads burnished to polished gold under the harsh desert sunlight. The powerful, maned shoulders stood high as an ox. The forefeet bore fearsome talons. The muzzles extended into jaws with scaled plates, and fangs that were cruelly poisonous. The eyes were pale as poured oil, and slitted like a snake’s. Dakar was aware through the hammer of his pulse that nothing alive looked more lethal. While at large on Athera, Seardluin had outrun the gazelles of Sanpashir, which took bounding flight like racing shadows over parched grass and flint sands.
Arithon groans at this point and Dakar has to muffle it with his hand. Fortunately, though, the Seardluin end up passing by. Dakar thinks they must not be visible to the Seardluin in "this spectrum of the dream". Or they'd have been torn apart.
They keep going. Eventually, they're overtaken by five horsemen with Hanshire's blazon sewen on their clothes. It's the Alliance pursuit. Now THEY are being chased by the Seardluin. And it looks bad.
The lead creature sprang with sinuous speed. It overtook the trailing rider, closed a stride and a half lead in one bound, its thick, plated tail streamed behind. One snap of armored jaws decapitated the horse. The animal pinwheeled, fountaining blood. Its rider catapulted ahead. He crashed in a rolling spray of sand, but never came to rest before the predator pinned him. One goring swipe of its horn left him a disemboweled carcass.
Eek.
The Seardluin continue to attack, and it's pretty fucking gory. I suppose the one mercy is that none of these guardsmen or horses live long enough to suffer. Egads. The verb "scissoring" comes up.
The guardsmen may or may not have been transformed into something once they entered the grimward. It probably doesn't matter now, but Dakar's still a little freaked out. As is Felirin, who had actually KNOWN some of those men. Again, it probably doesn't matter. Except that Dakar, Felirin and Arithon are so far safe from the predators in a way those guardsmen aren't.
Dakar does have a theory:
“I can’t know for certain.” The mare plunged ahead, yanked short yet again by Dakar’s iron hold on the reins. Swearing, he lost another patch of raw skin before he resumed his snagged thought. “Those men must have interfered with the dream in some way. Dragons are unruly and powerful beings, a law unto themselves. Their conscious minds could seed life. Why not the reverse? If a man in careless ignorance killed game in the wood, or lit a small fire for comfort, then a thread of continuity would be torn by his act. A kinetic balance would become inadvertently upset. In forfeit, the drake might well bleed off the offender’s life aura, and knit the repossessed magnetic energies into the dream’s fabric to restore the gap.”
It makes as much sense as anything. Asandir's advice was possibly somewhat useful after all.
There are more Seardluin in the distance. There's a hacked and gutted corpse of a young dragon. Disturbing.
They end up in an orchard, Dakar warns quickly not to pick any fruit. He's wondering now if something isn't influencing things to their benefit - keeping things from going completely wrong. But it's still pretty bad. The horses are exhaustion. Arithon's still unconscious and even the True Name equivalent of a sternum rub isn't bringing him out of it. And they're going to need water. Dragons don't like water so anything they find here probably won't be good.
But at least there are some cool sights?
Dakar stared also, amazed and gaping. High over the beaten-brass furrows of the plain, a mated pair of dragons cavorted, sleek as shot quarrels as they closed leathered wings and swooped from the zenith to the horizon. Sun-caught scales flashed fire like tipped gold, and tails streamed and snapped like armored ribbon. No legend, no awed description, even from Sethvir’s keen memory, could do justice to the searing, unworldly grace of the great drakes at their prime strength. Before their vast size, the Khadrim were as toys, and the wyverns of Vastmark no more than petty and quarrelsome vermin.
Dragons.
The environment changes again to volcanic rock and a clogged sky. Possibly the dragons' preferred habitat. Apparently they liked rolling in molten rock. The fumes are poison. Arithon's mare stumbles, but they can't really stop. It's unpleasant.
There's a dragon skeleton. Awesome. It's fucking huge.
Dakar as well felt his flesh bathed in chills. As a child, he had seen living Paravians, whom none could encounter without change. This behemoth wreckage was long dead, and yet, it commanded a presence which rankled his nerves into shivers. No feat of mortal imagination could capture the monumental grandeur of what was scribed in these glyphs of naked bone.
Braced in arched rows, such ribs could have served as the vaults of a palace; and had, Dakar recalled through a vague flick of memory. Melhalla’s last high kings had convened court and served judgment under just such a buttressed hall. The domed, copper roofs had been shingled in drake scales, a legend even before the great uprising, when the ruling seat at Tirans had been gutted by fire and cast down into ruins.
That's kind of awesome.
Actually, this is all really awesome. I want to excerpt it all. But I can't.
Finally though, they end up meeting someone: a dark robed figure on a black horse shouting at them. It's Asandir! Actually being useful for once!
No Fellowship Sorcerer ever burned reckless power without cause. By the singing charge that lashed his awareness, Dakar understood the danger loomed too vast to grapple. Only once before had he seen Asandir unleash his full strength, and that on the hour the Mistwraith had attacked Lysaer and Arithon at Ithamon.
Then as now, the power streamed outward in crackling rays, no brute stab of force, but the unbridled might of fine energies called down by a spirit schooled into peerless unity with every facet of Ath’s creation. The result ranged harmonics like a hammer blow to bronze, showering light in waves of continuous vibration.
Wooo.
Gandalf it up, Sandy!
Asandir even gives Dakar and Felirin a moment of praise ("Well-done, but hurry".) Dakar had been assuming that this was all Arithon's mind's despair trying to kill them, but Asandir denies that. Instead, Arithon's out cold because his own mage defenses are killing him. Oops.
Dakar asks about the dragon. Actually, the dragon's dead. This is all from her GHOST's dreaming. A living one's dream could reweave the known fabric of creation.
So, to leave, they have to enter the dragon skeleton's skull. Which is hardcore awesome, let's be real here. Asandir notes that it won't be a fun passage, but they'll emerge "unmarked", he's sticking behind to try to save the Alliance guardsmen. Twenty-eight are dead already, but there are some that might still be able to be saved.
And for once, for once, we're actually seeing a Fellowship sorcerer get up off his ass and save people. Keep this up, Asandir, and I might stop despising you with every fiber of my being!
He warns Dakar to caution "[his] prince": the guardsmen are probably going to blame Arithon for this. Because Asandir can't not make things harder for the guy. I mean. You could try EXPLAINING to the people as or after you rescue them???
Oh well.
Dakar grouses:
“Tell my prince,” Dakar grumbled. He resisted the craven urge to shut his eyes and ignore the forbidding cavern which yawned ahead of his quaking steps. “Since when did I ever swear fealty to a madman wanted dead by half the townsmen on the continent?”
Sorry Dakar, we all ship it.
But, eventually, they do make the passage. It sounds really unpleasant! Woo!
--
The next subchapter is Recall
We're in the Caithwood. It's late spring 5653 still. There's some lovely imagery:
ust before solstice, the nights in Caithwood held a soft, breathing warmth, the air thick as milk in the pearlescent moonlight which streamed through the dense crowns of old oak trees. These ancient groves had never tasted the axe blade. Nor had black soil known the bite of the plow, or the turned iron rim of the cart wheel. The pale, whorled bark of ancient copper beeches wore mottles like coin silver where the strung-floss motes speared the darkness. Rolling combers off Mainmere Bay lisped through, sea and earth joined in dialogue by the whisper of the leaves that stirred to the tireless breezes. The mockingbird’s song and the whistles of nightjars spilled liquid notes through the stillness, much as they had in Paravian times when centaur guardians had reigned, and the sunchild dancers had called down the mysteries that moved, incarnate, with the wild grace of the unicorns.
Anyway, Maenol's scouts are keeping watch. They've been warned of the blockade and the conspiracy. But they're grimly determined to keep the coastline open, so that the families can escape to Havish. They know that they're likely to die here. They don't have the strength.
They're not going to desert though.
That said, they might be in for a surprise. The dory that's coming in has two men, one in a brimmed hat that obscures his face. He moves funny - old scars or injuries and his hands are bent and gnarled.
We know who this is! Especially when a raven flaps down to settle on the dude's wrist. It's TRAITHE!
He's looking for Jieret!
Jieret is nearby in a glen. Traithe will go find him. One of the scouts tries to press for info about the Alliance, he doesn't realize that Fellowship sorcerers are useless. And indeed, the only news Traithe has is that Arithon went into a Grimward.
Everyone's pretty horrified. Traithe tries to reassure them:
Before her aghast fear, the Sorcerer used what logic he had to feed hope. “Rathain’s prince was well trained by a master at magecraft. He survived the dangerous passage well enough, but his conscience is troubled. He required more than self-discipline to keep his despair in check. Now those defenses have driven him far beyond waking consciousness. He will stay lost between dimensional realities unless Jieret s’Valerient can reach past the veil and find him.”
Sounds easy! Let's go!
Traithe has a sense of restraint, so we save our melodrama for the narrative monologue:
He did not speak of the dire hurdles to be crossed, nor mention the unconscionable intensity of Arithon’s grief, or the mind-stripping, ingrained misery which might come to thwart his best effort. The prospect of failure was too real, too immediate. Arithon’s downfall might lie at hand despite all his help, and Earl Jieret’s willing duty to be called to shoulder the sacrifice.
It'll be FINE. I'm sure!
I'm skipping a fair bit here. Traithe's trek through the Caithwood. It's nice to see what the scouts are up to, but it's not really plot relevant. They're anxious and nervous and apparently no one is going to bother to let them know about Caolle's victories.
Maenol's still kicking, by the way. He's in the marshes, trapped there on the run.
The scouts are also not stupid, they realize from the way Traithe talks about needing Jieret that there's a chance that Arithon won't be saved. Traithe doesn't deny that. But he has faith in Jieret's courage.
And here we are: Jieret!
The arrival himself made almost no sound as he strode into the encampment. Jieret s’Valerient was clad in laced deer hide with fringes that accentuated his firm breadth of shoulder. He smelled of bruised greenery and overheated horse, underlain with the tang of oil from the well-kept weapons at his waist. Adverse to language where actions would serve, he raked a glance over the seated forms of the scouts, then fixed on the Fellowship Sorcerer.
No hesitation marked his greeting as he sank before Traithe on bent knee.
Ugh. Don't do that, please. But anyway, Traithe fills him in, in the most dramatic way possible. Which leads Jieret to believe the worst.
Jieret flinched. Force of will held him steady for a running string of heartbeats. Then his hands clamped, and he tipped back his face. “How my father would weep.” Eyes shut in agony, he swore until he ran out of breath.
Aw.
But he gets reassurance. Arithon had sealed his mind away, to protect everyone from his guilt over Caolle. But now he's kind stuck in there, behind very strong mental protections. Apparently even Sethvir can't get in there now. Jieret might.
So Jieret's in, of course, and they have to use some kind of magic passage. Because Traithe's powers are not whole, he has to use "blood magic" to do it. Jieret still consents.
So they go to a very beautifully described clearing, where Jieret is urged to "loosen the laces" of any tight clothing and lay comfortably. He lays his weapons alongside. His body will be asleep, his mind will not.
So cool magic time.
There's herbs and bowls and Paravian language. It sounds pretty cool. I'm not sure where the blood comes in. It's very ritualistic though!
Oh, hey, Tienelle is involved. Gotta love the death herb. It's how Jieret's going to be slightly disconnected from his body. Traithe offers Jieret the chance to back out, but Jieret's not about to do that.
Everything gets a bit trippy and disorienting from here. Jieret ends up having quite a trip.
Jieret blinked, while the earth turned, the majesty of her dance a vibration that thrummed through his bones. The stars paled, then burst into pearlescent sparks that burned through the backdrop of daybreak. Then the clouds ignited also, their drifting serenity shot into fire-opal patterns. Nesting thrushes sang out a chord that knitted the air into ecstasy. Jieret felt warm fingers clasp his right hand, then bear down, pinning his forearm. The textures of cold dew and mossy stones screamed detail like etched light down the trackways of overstimulated flesh.
See? Lots of that.
Ah, here's the blood. It's not a lot. But it's the whole blood bond thing. Woo.
I'm not sure what the hell Traithe is doing right now. He's sitting next to Jieret's body while the latter is vision questing. Apparently if any of this gets disrupted any of them could die. Okay.
I'm not going to bitch, the Fellowship sorcerers are actually being USEFUL.
--
The third subchapter is Discovery.
Aw. Rather than continue with Jieret, Dakar or Arithon, we're back in Capewell, with Morriel. How's she doing?
The Koriani Prime Matriarch harbored no such soft sentiment through her tedious days of convalescence. Imprisoned by her debilitating weakness, and fed on the brew of yet another bitter defeat, she lay swathed in thin coverlets. Her eggshell flesh showed each blue track of vein. Bones pressed against skin seamed and worn to translucency, the joints like knobbed pearl beneath. Through the weeks since the spell construct’s release had roused her from coma, her glistening black eyes lent the sole spark of life to her visage.
Eh, she's Morriel. She never really has fun.
It's possibly worth noting that the time period note for this chapter is Early Summer 5653.
Last subchapter was still spring. Not sure what THAT means. But maybe that's why there was the whole vision quest, whatsits. Because right now, a seeress is telling Morriel that she can't find Arithon's presence on Athera.
...oh, I SEE. That's what the cryptic bit at the end of the chapter meant. Arithon/Dakar/Felirin haven't made it back from the Grimward yet. They're using Jieret to try to track them down. I think. We'll find out next week.
Morriel notes that Arithon's too clever by far and calls it the bane of his mother's lineage. And there's some interesting thoughts there.
Rauven Tower is a really interesting entity when compared with the magical traditions available on Athera itself. It's definitely more advanced than the basic practices of hedge-witches. It doesn't seem to be tied to religion though, in the way of the Brotherhood of Ath. It's not Koriani or Fellowship. It's something else entirely.
If Talera had been born on Athera, would she have been Koriani? She was a mage after all. Or would princesses have been exempt from that? (IS she a princess. We never hear about the King of Rauven, so I kind of assumed that the High Mage was the equivalent. Certainly they ARE of the royal line. Hm.)
I would not however have called Talera clever. Ever. There's a reason I think foresight is a fucking joke after all.
Anyway, it sounds like Morriel's losing some influence in the Koriani. They're wondering if she's "lapsed in her dotage". But unfortunately, with Lirenda out of reach, there's not much anyone can do anyway.
The seeress looks for Lirenda, and this time...finds something:
Darkness and blinding sunlight interfaced at random as the viewpoint swirled and jounced through a packed mass of bodies clad in the plain fringe of forest clansmen. A voice filtered through, distinct above others. “Ath, be careful! That trinket’s no booty to send to your sweetheart, but the spell crystal of a Koriani witch, and bound for another hand than yours.”
Ah, there we are.
So Morriel finally gets some news about how her plan went wrong.
Eyes closed, hands cupped light as a butterfly’s shut wings around the warmed sphere of quartz, the seeress at last captured one angle of contact. She framed another sigil of control and froze the vision in place, then engaged the trained logic of observation to assess the stilled scene by its content. “I see a beach where clansmen weep, run, and shout in celebration. They are hunters or scouts, to judge by the carved-bone talismans laced into the cuffs of their boots. One is a chieftain, the son of a duchess by the four stranded knots in his braid. In the cove, at anchor, ride two blue-water brigs. They’re not under command of Lysaer’s Alliance of Light. The banner flying at their masthead is no sunwheel, but a crude rendition in dark colors.” She paused, tipped the crystal, but failed to extract any further helpful detail.
Morriel asks if Lirenda's a prisoner. The seeress doesn't know. She just sensed the crystal. Separation of crystal and sorceress is a pretty horrifying "desecration" in Morriel's eyes. But at least they know that Lirenda's alive. They can tell that much.
They do manage to work some seer magic to find out how the stone was separated from Lirenda: it was Caolle.
Morriel's pretty enraged by this because, as planned, Caolle was supposed to be dead of blood loss from getting stabbed with a sword in Riverton. SOMETHING changed the plan.
They track the stone: it's in Maenol's clan's hands. It's to be delivered to Arithon directly. They have no opportunity to save it. And everyone is really happy to hear that the ships have been retaken. ALL of Arithon's condemned henchmen have escaped.
YAY.
So now, it's time to find Lirenda. She needs to use this seeress to do it, and it...doesn't sound good.
The seeress swallowed. Sweat trickled at her throat. Though she knew her free will was demanded in sacrifice, her vows left no recourse to refuse. Her talents were at the command of her order to spend for the greater good of humanity.
Damn, being a Koriani who isn't one of the highest ranks SUCKS. Morriel does say she'll come to no harm.
But um..
She flinched in recoil. The crystal’s transmission released a shearing sting of heat against her cradling palms. Engulfed by vertigo, she was unable to move as Morriel Prime pronounced the guttural words to key mastery. The sigil fired and took form. Its barbed force claimed thought and mind, then erased the last imprint of individuality. The resonance of subjugation shattered the frail web of the seeress’s consciousness. Will, self, and senses sucked away into vacuum, first dashed to powder, then whirled into void by a tide of cyclonic intervention.
Oblivion remained.
I think Morriel might have been lying.
Anyway, Morriel now gets to see through Lirenda's eyes, which leads us to a scene shift.
-
At Corinth, the Lance drops anchor. Lirenda and the original captain are on board. Lirenda's unhappy, because whether or not Lysaer actually agrees to some kind of hostage exchange - her crystal's still gone. Not good for her.
We're told that the Lance had made landfall in Havish, where the crew boarded a "mannerless cohort of fortune-seeking mercenaries". They did leave Lirenda alone, but she resents her "reduction to female uncertainty" about her fate with these guys.
I'm reminded of the point made many times in Merior/Vastmark, that for all that Lysaer was the one who ruled by adoration rather than fear, he was the one who could not control the behavior of his men. It's not harped upon here. But the subtle reinforcement is effective. Arithon's men do NOT abuse prisoners.
But Lirenda's still focused on her crystal, rather understandably. We saw what happened to the healer after all. And yeah, this sounds unpleasant:
A moment’s inept handling might plunge the stone into the sea. Saltwater cleansing would follow, a gentle dissolution of the wards that would span the course of several days. The first symptom might bloom with a nagging, dull headache. Weakness would follow. Then a fumbling loss of reflex, which would progress into fits of sick trembling and convulsions, until she died at last of paralysis, as her internal organs failed and ruptured, torn apart by the unleashed backlash of stayed time.
The slap of raw winds made her feel her mortality, and the unblemished hand held clenched to the rail only mocked her: she could wake any morning and find herself trapped in the witless, shriveled body of a hag.
Being a Koriani kind of sucks.
I'm not sure how old Lirenda is supposed to be. I'd thought she was around fifty or so. I'm old enough not to think a fifty year old body is a "hag". But then, Koriani magic might do more than just restore her to natural age.
So the plan had initially been to send someone to talk to Lysaer's men about a hostage exchange. But apparently Lysaer wants LIRENDA to be the one to speak for the hostages instead. She reluctantly agrees.
Oh, hey, apparently the seeress is okay! She ends up disentangling from Lirenda's mind, reeling from her "appalling disgrace". Now she gets to tell Morriel the bad news. Eek.
But it seems like Morriel's aware. The seeress ends up dismissed, ordered not to speak of Lirenda's disgrace. That's something Morriel will follow up with Lirenda directly, later.
--
Our sneak peek section is Reprieves. (Summer 5653).
The first paragraph shows us Asandir trying to save the soldiers. More of them are dying. Only three are left at this point, including Sulfin Evend, their captain.
The second shows us Jieret, spirit-riding the winds, guiding Traithe's raven and Sethvir's tracking presence, hopefully to effect a rescue.
The third shows us Maenol and his scouts, still unaware that two brigs have made landfall flying the leopard of Rathain.
To be continued next week!