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i_read_whatI've realized that since the chapter titles are actually relevant for this book, if nothing else then to keep the damn thing straight when we start getting the subchapters, I should actually include them in my own post titles. I'll go back and fix the earlier ones eventually. It's not like it's the second to last chapter of the book or anything... Shit...
So now we've made it to the penultimate chapter of the book. It's kind of funny that both Mistwraith and Lifeblood will end in the same week, given that Mistwraith is a fucking gigantic book and Lifeblood really is not. I have no idea what I'll pick next!
Anyway, where we left off: the brothers are preparing for war. Arithon got high, and it was a terrible experience, because of course it was. Elaira got something resembling an explanation, which is a pretty fucking rare thing in this book. And the fellowship sorcerers finally finished stashing the Mistwraith somewhere safe. So maybe they can now get back to their little pet project and stop this fiasco before it goes too far?
The content warning that I need to give for this chapter would say no. Be warned. This is going to be fucking horrible.
So here, we rejoin Lysaer. And he definitely knows how to work the dramatic imagery:
Dressed out in clean tunics edged in city colours of scarlet and gold, gleaming under polished helms and smart trappings; and bearing on their backs and in their scabbards the newly wrought arms and chain-mail purchased by the merchants’ treasury at cost of eight hundred thousand coin-weight, fine gold, the men of Etarra’s garrison formed up and marched just past dawn. Set like a sapphire in their midst, Lysaer sat his bridleless chestnut. Lord Commander Diegan and Captain Gnudsog were positioned at either flank, while the bannerbearers of the greater trade houses, and message riders on their lean-flanked mounts clustered in formation just behind. Four companies of standing army and reserves paraded after, in disciplined units twenty-four hundred strong.
If that's not enough, we're also told that Lysaer is [g]roomed as befitted his past stature, every inch the princely image of restrained pride. He's thinking about how some of these men in their "brilliance and finery" are marching to their deaths.
Well. They don't HAVE to be. And okay, I get that Lysaer's been cursed and he's no longer thinking clearly, but I can't help but think that a straight on attack on a sorcerer is a bad idea. But it is what it is.
We get some nice description of Strakewood:
Sunlight pricked the horizon, edged to the east by the black trees that rimmed Strakewood Forest. For a time as the air warmed, the companies marched knee-deep through mists that swathed the meadows in blue-grey. These dispersed last from the hollows, to bare rolling hills and the dew-spangled grass of early summer, bespattered and dappled with patches of red brushbloom and weathered rock. A craggier landscape than Daon Ramon, the plain of Araithe wore the season like a cloak of rippling new silk, lush and sweet with flowers, overwhelming the senses in living green.
Lysaer thinks about how, in Amroth, the rich forage would have been graved short by sheep and promised himself that if barbarian predation were to blame for the lack of shepherds, his campaign against Arithon would amend this. Then, in belated reassessment, he realized that had these hills been used once as pastures they should be crisscrossed by the remains of stone fences and sheepfolds.
And of course, there aren't. But I think this is an interesting look at the curse at work. He has a swift emotional reaction based on his own (inapplicable) experience. Immediately he equates the cause of this to his brother. (Rationally speaking, even if this forest HAD once been sheep land, it would have had to have been transformed long before the brothers came to Athera.) He IS able to assert some logic and rationality with some thought though.
Lysaer does wonder why such "obviously prime pastureland" should go wasted. Well, you could ask? It's also not your kingdom, dude.
Oh. And here we come to an interesting bit.
Lysaer's scouts report six barbarian children practicing with javelins across the river. Diegan thinks it's a stroke of luck, but Captain Gnudsog thinks that the clans are never so careless. And Pesquil, the dude that popped up in Arithon's vision weighs in too:
‘Barbarians don’t play at odds,’ came a querulous interruption from the sidelines. ‘In these parts, they prefer pits lined with sharpened stakes and spring-traps that rip out a man’s guts, or tear the axles off wagons.’
Smart in a black and white surcoat over chain-mail dulled with grease and years of polishing, Pesquil rode up to determine the cause of the delay. At the head of the column, he jerked short his brush-scarred gelding that he liked best for its toughness. ‘So you chase those children thinking to find an encampment of scouts you can surprise, eh? Well, try that. Then find yourselves bloody.’
Lysaer shows us again the downside of his gift of justice when he asks if Pesquil would send his own ten year old son out as a gambit before a war host. Lysaer's definition of right and wrong come from his own Amrothian upbringing, and that's the framework he puts on anything. By Lysaer's definition of justice, no one would ever put a child at risk like this.
Pesquil would, though. If the stakes were in his favor. And I kind of love that. He urges caution. Diegan doesn't listen, sending a small troop of light riders to see where the children flee. Lysaer agrees, saying that if it IS a trap, they should spring it with the fewest riders. I'm sure the riders appreciate that.
But this is also interesting:
‘You don’t think it’s a trap.’ Diegan soothed his restive destrier. Then, his regard in speculation upon Lysaer, he raised a gauntlet chased in glittering gold to signal the columns to rest at ease. ‘Why?’
‘Because I saw Arithon in a back alley with a band of knacker’s conscripts once when he didn’t think he was being watched.’ Fair-skinned as an ice figure in the early sunlight, the prince stroked the black-handled sword newly forged for his use in the field. Rumour held that the blade had been engraved with Arithon’s name in reverse runes, which may have been at the armourer’s insistence, for shaping a blade to kill a sorcerer. Lysaer did not look superstitious or afraid, but only pragmatic as he said, ‘The Shadow Master has few scruples. But I know him well enough to hedge that he’d sanction no ambush that involved any use of small children.’
It is curious to see Lysaer giving Arithon the benefit of the doubt here, given the nature of the curse and how it works. Is it weakening?
Or is it being sneaky?
Even Gnudsog agrees with Lysaer's logic. Apparently, he'd tried to find the kids that Arithon had freed from servitude, and the people who'd assisted with that had been given very lavish bribes to stay quiet. (It sounds like they failed, ultimately.)
So they send forty riders out, much to Pesquil's irritation. He calls Lysaer and Diegan "lordly fops" which earns him something resembling affection from me. Well, except for how he's a genocidal slave trader Maybe amusement instead.
Pesquil does send the army after though, reasoning that the traps will be sprung before the bulk of the force gets there and that even Steiven's "dirty tactics" can't murder ten thousand troops without exposure.
And there we go. The army goes after the boys, with orders to rout them rather than to kill. They're meant to be hounded into the Strakewood, then the pursuers would appear to give up while trackers followed them home.
We're told that the forty men were carefully chosen from men who were fathers, who would condone what the headhunters do, but wouldn't want to slaughter children themselves. And well:
Intent on keeping him in sight, the lead rider never saw the wooden javelin left braced at an angle in the path. His mount gathered stride and cleared a rotten log, then crashed, shoulder down, impaled. Its scream of mortal agony harrowed the dawn-damp wood, while the rider, thrown headlong, struck a bough at an angle and broke his neck.
First casualty of the Deshir barbarians, he died with his eyes still open and the taste of blood on his tongue.
Go clansfolk!
Anyway, this actually serves to convince the men that this ISN'T a trap, because the kids wouldn't stop and murder someone ahead of time.
Meanwhile, the army still follows. Time passes without an ambush, something that makes Gnudsog uneasy. It's too easy. Diegan is still a fucking moron, asking if everything has to be difficult. I don't know, brainiac, you're up against people who are fighting to save themselves from a genocide?
Lysaer's point is better, but also wrong as we know. He points out Steiven might not be in charge. Gnudsog grants that Arithon's probably clever enough to take over, if what Lysaer had said is true. It's darkly amusing, of course, because we know that Arithon did the exact opposite. And Lysaer, in his right mind, would probably remember how his brother runs screaming from anything resembling a leadership position.
But he's not. Alas.
Anyway, Lysaer is cautious, which causes Diegan to warn that his sister would call Lysaer fainthearted. God, Diegan is the stupidest. Lysaer just says better that than to have her weep over him when he's dead.
Gnudsog finds he admires Lysaer:
‘Dresses like a daisy, like they all do who sport pedigree,’ he confided to the sergeant who awaited the order to march. ‘But yon royal puppy is canny at handling men. He might be a priss at his swordplay, still I don’t think I’d want him for my enemy.’
Unable to find an appropriate reply to criticism involving his betters, the sergeant complained instead about the gnats.
I think I love the sergeant.
So Gnudsog loses patience and finally orders the advance. And of course, this (and a viewpoint change) signals the ambush. We get to watch as Caolle gives the order, and signals are passed to teamsters upriver, who use their horses to break a dam and send torrents of water to flood the army.
NICE.
And indeed:
Men, mounts, and bright pennons crumpled as if struck by the log-mailed fist of doom. Horses screamed, upended, their cries as one with their riders who were crushed, and scythed under, and drowned. The foaming jaws that crested over Tal Quorin’s banks thrashed on in a welter of chaos, to cut down everything standing; to smash living flesh without quarter and to turn the snapped shafts of the lances against those maimed, to impale and gut, and club unconscious with a force more furious than man’s.
Now I don't really intend to recap every single part of the battle. It's not my strong suit. I'll tell the important parts though.
Diegan is given warning, he tries to order men to take Lysaer to safety, but Lysaer's not about to leave. And to give him some credit, Diegan wasn't going to abandon the men either, but he's not given the choice as he's dragged away. Oh, but this is funny:
As Lord Diegan was dragged up the rise toward the forest, his last, venomous thought was that no man alive should be blessed all at once, with looks, toughness and such surpassing talent for leadership; grudging resignation followed that perhaps this was why the Fellowship had insisted on restoring royal rule to start with.
And of course, men are weeping as they watch Lysaer on his horse struggle to hold his ground. Of course they are.
So anyway, Diegan musters the men and fights on. Lysaer disappears.
--
Downstream, Lysaer washed up, to be found by Captain Mayor Pesquil. He's a bit rough looking: bruised, pale, and his eyes are "bright and empty as his jewels" He's apparently broken his collarbone. He beats himself up for his "idealistic folly".
But it was not the barbarians’ touch at warfare that had splintered Lysaer’s heart into rage; it was the knowledge, delivered on two companies’ ruthlessly massacred bodies, that he had been masterfully deceived.
Arithon was a trickster to make his s’Ffalenn forbears in Karthan seem as mere simpletons in comparison. For this trap to have been baited with children, meant the scene over the shadow brigantine in Etarra’s back alleys, had all been a sham, most carefully engineered, most exactingly executed. Here, over the corpse of a horse, amid a riverbed swollen still in carnage, Lysaer understood that the joy, the compassion, the agonized self-sacrifice Arithon had shown toward the brats conscripted to the knackers’ yards had been nothing, nothing at all. Just another ruse, another play of diabolical sleight-of-hand and seamless guile.
This man, this bastard of shadows, had no scruple, but only an unholy passion for lies of a stripe that could cajole human sympathy, and then turn and without conscience rend all decency.
And this is why I wondered if the curse was just being sneaky. Lysaer was allowed one moment to give his brother the benefit of the doubt, and now he's even MORE fixated on the idea of Arithon's evil.
Is the curse aware?
Anyway, this ends up being yet another example of how Arithon can only make decisions that screw him over later. Because we know that this wasn't Arithon's intention or desire, but he lost that fight with Caolle. If Arithon hadn't spent so long trying to get them to dislike and disrespect him, might he have had better luck?
It's hard to say of course, because we're also dealing with a culture of people who have been plagued by genocide and terror for generations. They already bent by keeping the women and girls out of the battle. They wouldn't have wanted to give up any other perceived weapon they can use.
Also, I'd like to think the real Lysaer wouldn't call enslaved children "brats".
Quite aside from Desh-thiere’s curse, Lysaer rededicated himself to moral purpose. His half-brother, so gifted in magecraft and so superior in unprincipled cunning, was a blight and a threat to society. With a continent riddled with encampments of barbarians, each one a ready weapon for his hands, no bound existed to the havoc Arithon might choose to create.
Lysaer crisply tells his men he'll need a new horse as his is dead, then he apologizes to Pesquil and...oh...
‘This was my mistake. Since my ignorance has led to disaster, I’m ready to listen. But in one thing, I will not be swayed. Arithon s’Ffalenn will be stopped. And killed. And if you deem it necessary to slay children to keep a weapon such as Steiven’s clansmen from his hands, I shall no longer obstruct you.’
"Murder children if you want" is a really fucking interesting definition of a "moral purpose", Lysaer.
Lysaer and Pesquil exchange some barbed banter about how Lysaer sent Diegan out of danger, and the advantages to being born and raised a king's heir: namely the "nasty minded sort of arrogance that stops a man being gainsaid."
...I'm uncomfortable by this comment because I remember saying something similar in a previous chapter. How royal upbringing was actually an advantage to both princes in a place like Etarra, because it allowed them a certain immunity to the social attacks.
Lysaer asks how many might have survived the flood. Pesquil thinks none, Steiven would have set up pits, spring traps and deadfalls. This means Gnudsog is probably dead. Pesquil gives Lysaer a bit of backstory as comfort (while being irked that Lysaer was "listening sincerely, as no scion of fine pedigree would deign to do."): Gnudsog had lost a brother and son to barbarians, and basically would happily have thrown every soldier into the Atheran version of Hell to kill a few more barbarians.
Anyway, Pesquil asserts that now they hunt the barbarians his way.
There's more news. The divisions intending to flank the main force have been waylaid by traps and shadows. Though there are still enough to fight. Lysaer's curse kicks in a bit:
Arithon was here. Confirmation triggered in Lysaer a tumultuous anticipation.
In a vice of self control tighter than anything he had needed previously, the prince stayed his sword-hand from ripping blade from scabbard in a curse-driven lust to rend and kill. Etarra’s troops were still dying of his mistakes. Their needs claimed his first responsibility. ‘Up this valley there were living men left, just a bit ago.’
So Lysaer can fight the curse. If motivated. Maybe he'd have been more motivated if he understood what the curse was?
But it's too late now.
So there's a lot of walking through dead bodies, so Lysaer can be horrified anew. There are very very few dead barbarians at the moment. Pesquil notes that the barbarians never fight when they can ambush, because you know, fair fighting is always a thing to do when people are trying to massacre your people.
(I'm not complaining about the writing. Pesquil is very well-written, I hate him. As I should.)
Oh dear. Lysaer hears a wounded man and is about to help, only to be pulled back by Pesquil. He ends up witnessing something admittedly pretty awful:
Through a lattice of birches and black firs, a light-footed squad of boys busied themselves among Etarra’s fallen. Clad in deerskin, furtive in movement as wild creatures, they were there to pilfer weapons, Lysaer presumed; until his eye was arrested by a telltale glimmer of steel. Horrified incredulity shook him. The shaded depths of the thickets no longer masked the fact the boys’ hands were bathed scarlet to the wrists. Small fingers and sharp daggers ensured that town-bred wounded never rose. Before his stunned eyes he saw a son of Deshir’s clans end a man pleading for mercy with a practised slash across the windpipe. Other victims who sprawled unconscious, or moaned face down in their agony died as fast, of a well placed stab in the neck. The butchery was done in speed and silence, and ruthless efficiency without parallel.
But Lysaer's gift is "justice" not "compassion". So he's horrified but without any need or interest to understand what drives these children and these people to such acts.
Pesquil notes that this is the opportunity for vengeance. There won't be another trap waiting.
Etarra’s league of headhunters deployed with oiled care, and at length the little rise lay triply ringed with poised men. When Pesquil signalled the attack, only the inner rank charged. They cut directly for the kill and did not mind if a child or two slipped past. The outer lines would mop up any fugitives.
At the forefront of the strike-force, Lysaer thrust his sword inside the guard of youngsters’ daggers with no more hesitation than a man might feel who stabbed rats. This was not war, but execution, the lives he destroyed of tainted stock. Royal requisites inured a man to cruel decisions; if they sickened him, it must not show, and if they softened him, he was no fit vessel to rule.
If Arithon s’Ffalenn used children for his battles, the scar upon the conscience must be his.
One has to love the hypocrisy here. Arithon is evil for using children, so it's only right then to murder those same children.
Oh, Lysaer, what have you become?
--
The next section is called First Quarry:
We rejoin Arithon now, as he sits alongside five of Steiven's archers. Jieret is with him, wielding a bow "with a nervous prowess the equal of any grown man". Arithon himself is unarmed. Well. Physically.
The curse is a factor for Arithon too:
The burning urge of Desh-thiere’s curse continued insidiously to gnaw at Arithon’s inner will. He felt it always, a tireless pressure against reason, an ache that pried between every thought and desire. The knowledge of Lysaer’s presence played on his nerves like a craving, volatile as a spark fanned dangerously close to dry tinder.
The nightmare was too substantial, that he could not encounter his half-brother alive and retain his grip on self-will. Had Deshir’s clans not relied upon his gifts for survival, he should have been far from this place.
If you recall, Arithon contracted the curse as a lightning bolt STD when Lysaer attacked him in Etarra.
We're told that poor Jieret is having a rough time since his terrible prophetic dream. Arithon can't help him either, since he's busy "broadcasting his finer vision across a field of war". Something no mage would do willingly. But well, killing soldiers takes a lot of concentration.
He'd done a lot of preparation the night before, walking the valley barefoot and laying spell and counter spell, anchored into compass points. I have no idea what this means, but magic technobabble is magic technobabble. It sounds convincing.
And actually, he's not KILLING people outright, sort of. Maybe.
By his hand, the neat ranks of Etarra’s right flanking division blundered abruptly into darkness. The rocks, the mires, the twisted stands of runt maples broke their advance into chaos. Calls of inquiry rebounded between distressed soldiers, while the orders of officers to rally split to untrustworthy echoes and sent whole cohorts stumbling awry through rock-sided ravines and marshy dells.
The shadows themselves defied nature. A townsman who spun round to backtrack would see his path open to clear sunshine. If he yielded to fright and instinct and fled that way in retreat, he encountered no further hindrance. But any Etarran soldiers high-hearted enough to use that reprieve to recover their bearings at next step became swallowed by darkness. Blinded and lost to direction, they thrashed through branches and bogs, twisted ankles and bruised shins on an unkindness of rocks and crooked roots. The terrain funnelled them north, where they floundered, battered and disoriented, into a dazzling brilliance of sudden sunlight.
Arrows met them in whispered, even flights loosed off by hidden clan marksmen. Soldiers screamed, and crumpled and died; others warned of ambush by the cries of their fallen ducked back toward the cover of the shadows, to be cut down in turn by companions too rattled to distinguish town colours from the deerskins of enemies.
Even the flowery narrative admits that Arithon might not be actually killing people directly, the distinction is "narrowly made".
Now if only it'd admit that lies of omission are still fucking lies, ASANDIR.
Thing is, magic + murder is a very very bad combination. There's a lot of bad mojo bouncing back and forth, and Arithon's concentrating completely on that.
Jieret senses something else though: a girl named Teynie is about to betray "them all". This pulls Arithon out of his trance, because they have that blood-oath. Unfortunately, he's too late to stop Jieret from running off. Arithon goes after him. (He does admit that this might be bad. Arithon's sorcerous interference was the only thing that prevented basically total slaughter in his vision. He doesn't know if they fucked that up, but he does know that "[i]f Deshir's clans were beyond saving, he had vowed that Steiven's son be spared."
He manages to catch up to Jieret, guiding him back into better concealment. He asks what's wrong, and tells Jieret to just think about his dream and imagine that he can see it too.
And shit.
…of torn earthworks and slaughtered bodies, where Pesquil’s advance troop of headhunters tracked prints across blood-rinsed earth. In swift, efficient silence they exchanged swords for daggers and cut scalps to claim bounty for their kills.
The corpses raised by the hair for the knife-cut were small, the faces smudged in leaf mould and gore unlined by life and years…
Goddamnit, Lysaer. Even if I understood why you feel like it's okay to kill them (AND I DO NOT), you're really going to let these people SCALP CHILDREN?!
Boys, Arithon realized with a choke that all but stopped his heart. He tripped hard on a stone, felt the tug of Jieret’s grip save his balance. Present awareness slapped back, along with anguished recognition of total helplessness. The deed was done: the sons of Deshir dead. All hacked and disfigured, were the little ones Caolle had insisted be sent to dispatch the enemy wounded because men for that task could ill be spared; amid whose company Jieret would have been, if not for a bloodpact of friendship.
It gets worse. Because the girl Teynie isn't in that vision.
Arithon gets a bit of melodrama here, but well, it's hard to blame him necessarily right now:
At what point does the strong mind falter, Arithon wondered in a cascade of renewed despair. The feud between Karthan and Amroth had inspired atrocities enough to wring from him all tolerance for suffering. Between town born and clan, the hate ran more poisonous still.
There's a bit more of that ilk, but what results is that Arithon reaches out with his own magesight to see Pesquil giving orders, the men cramming "dripping trophies" in their gamebags. And Jesus.
It's at this point where the curse hits Arithon in full, a geas-driven impulse to attack and cut them all down. But Jieret is there, and that helps him get control of himself. But yeah, even indirect scrying on Lysaer is a Very Bad Idea.
Some more clansmen have caught up with Arithon, who wants to send them packing, but doesn't. He acknowledges that if the women and girls are still in danger, the men deserve the chance to protect them if he can figure out how.
Which means another scrying. He orders them to bind his ankles and tie his wrists behind his back. The clansmen are understandably bewildered by their prince's sudden inclination toward shibari bondage. But Arithon doesn't really have the time to explain. He tells Jieret that he's going to use magic, but Jieret has to be ready. If he starts having a fit, Jieret is to call his name and if that doesn't work or the restraints break, Jieret needs to cut him deeply enough to bleed.
Because the poor kid isn't traumatized enough. But well, it probably would be a Very Bad Thing if BOTH brothers gave into the curse. Jieret promises.
Scrying number two:
Back to the slaughter. They hear a retching cough in the bushes: it's a child who escaped the massacre. About seven years old. When her hat falls off, they realize it's a little girl who had followed her brother. Pesquil's happy because scalps aren't valued by sex. And she's about to lead them back to camp.
Arithon's back to himself, screaming in crazed frustration. And then worse from the sudden influx of Paravian magic: Jieret's cut him with the sword. It brings Arithon back to himself. He realizes from the clansmen's embarrassment that he'd been screaming like an animal and had managed to flip and wrench against his bonds. But he's in control now, so long as he avoids mage sight, he can fight the urge that coursed through him, driving, needling, hounding him to rise and to run: to find his half-brother and call challenge and fight until one or both of them lay dead.
He gets them to let him out, and sends instructions for Caolle. The clansmen are pretty awed and horrified, as expected. But things are about to be a lot worse. Arithon orders them to run to the grotto where the women and girls are hidden, with the knowledge that there's probably no way to get there in time.
--
The last section of the chapter is "Last Quarry"
Pesquil, Lysaer and the headhunters chase the little girl. And when they finally get close enough, Pesquil orders her shot. They try to make it look like she tripped, but it doesn't quite work. Doesn't really matter though. A female clan scout comes to get her. Pesquil orders her shot too: Messier this time, and with the intention that she die yelling.
Oh god.
They end up deploying. And it's terrible. It's a slight blessing that we follow Lysaer for this, and he's in the back. By the time he gets there, the attack is nearly wrapped up.
There are still a lot of bodies "bloody and hacked beyond anything recognizably female".
He feels sick. But...let's see how:
Half-sick from his hurts, too spent for strong emotion, the prince felt wretched and maudlin. For the first time in life he understood his royal father, who also had been provoked to require annihilating attacks on villages allied to the s’Ffalenn. That such forays had mostly come to nothing drove his sire to lifelong frustration. Lysaer, who in distant lands and exile had not failed, looked upon his dead with flat eyes and tried not to fret whether any of the corpses had been pregnant.
That's...not the right reaction, Lysaer. It's really fucking not.
The able-bodied fighters are down. So now they fire the tents. There's a cry of an infant in one, swiftly muffled. It really doesn't matter at this point.
The tents burn, there is screaming, archers aim and kill infants.
Lysaer maybe has a shred of humanity left:
Lysaer pushed straight and forced his eyes back to clear focus. In fact, there was a lot of screaming, in pitch and timbre quite different from hand to hand battle had caused earlier; neither were these the incomprehending cries of newborns. Sickness fled before anger.
‘You aren’t killing them cleanly,’ Lysaer accused. He shoved hard away from the tree.
‘Killing them?’ Pesquil grinned, startled to savage delight. ‘That wasn’t quite the idea. Not for the pretty women, anyway. My men accomplished what Etarra’s garrison couldn’t. Do you think they haven’t earned their bit of sport?’
He calls them off. Pesquil's very resistant, claiming this is a time-proven tactic, but Lysaer is insistant. And finally he demonstrates this:
The s’Ilessid prince laid no hand on his sword in dispute. He weighed his case and made judgement in the solitary arrogance of a king. Then he turned his back on the silver crescent blade and called upon his birthborn gift of light.
His bolt sheared the grotto like bladed lightning and slammed in bursting brilliance through the charred and blackened leather of the tents. Flash-fire exploded. Sparks flew and a barrage of deep-throated thunder smote the air. Where hides had flamed, nothing burned any longer. If no one had been harmed by the blast, still, the ground showed a black, seared circle, while toppled kingposts flaked with ash trailed sullen smoke over the previously broken bodies of little children.
From the grotto, the screaming had ended. Men in the act of lust felt engorged flesh shrivel from the heat of ravished girls, while in stunned terror they scrambled back and took stock of wisped hair and blisters and outer clothing lightly singed upon their bodies.
He then orders the townsmen who are still dressed to form a shield-ring and herd every girl and women inside. He's not going to let them go, no. He's just going to murder them. "Cleanly". Fucking hell.
Thank god, we don't see it. But Lysaer does express his intent to draw the clan barbarians in, and he knows Arithon won't be able to NOT come with them.
--
The snippet section is "Three Valleys".
1. Arithon's messenger makes it to Caolle and the other men, telling them to inform Steiven that the forseen disaster is NOT stopped.
2. Arithon, Jieret, and the eleven clansmen with them are running for the grotto. And they're too late. Arithon echoes us, or at least me, by saying ‘Lysaer, oh Ath, Lysaer, no!’
3. West of Tal Quorin, a shadow barrier shatters, releasing half a company of Etarran men ready to regroup, while the clan enemies can no longer hide behind shadows.
--
Fuck. So. Yeah. That happened. Would the girls have still died if they'd been with the men as originally planned? Probably. They were going to have the role that the boys had, after all.
But I don't see how the Deshir clans come back from it. Even if the men survive. The women, the children. The Etarrans finally succeeded in their genocide.
And Lysaer...
I don't know how a character can come back from this. If he can. If I'd even want him to. While it's true that the Lysaer we knew through most of the book was a decent man, and that this would not have happened without the Mistwraith curse, it's also true that Lysaer isn't even TRYING to fight it. What happens when the curse is lifted? Will Lysaer come back to himself? How would he live with what he's done?
I don't know, but I feel the need to watch something light and fluffy, which requires no thought at all. See you soon.
So now we've made it to the penultimate chapter of the book. It's kind of funny that both Mistwraith and Lifeblood will end in the same week, given that Mistwraith is a fucking gigantic book and Lifeblood really is not. I have no idea what I'll pick next!
Anyway, where we left off: the brothers are preparing for war. Arithon got high, and it was a terrible experience, because of course it was. Elaira got something resembling an explanation, which is a pretty fucking rare thing in this book. And the fellowship sorcerers finally finished stashing the Mistwraith somewhere safe. So maybe they can now get back to their little pet project and stop this fiasco before it goes too far?
The content warning that I need to give for this chapter would say no. Be warned. This is going to be fucking horrible.
So here, we rejoin Lysaer. And he definitely knows how to work the dramatic imagery:
Dressed out in clean tunics edged in city colours of scarlet and gold, gleaming under polished helms and smart trappings; and bearing on their backs and in their scabbards the newly wrought arms and chain-mail purchased by the merchants’ treasury at cost of eight hundred thousand coin-weight, fine gold, the men of Etarra’s garrison formed up and marched just past dawn. Set like a sapphire in their midst, Lysaer sat his bridleless chestnut. Lord Commander Diegan and Captain Gnudsog were positioned at either flank, while the bannerbearers of the greater trade houses, and message riders on their lean-flanked mounts clustered in formation just behind. Four companies of standing army and reserves paraded after, in disciplined units twenty-four hundred strong.
If that's not enough, we're also told that Lysaer is [g]roomed as befitted his past stature, every inch the princely image of restrained pride. He's thinking about how some of these men in their "brilliance and finery" are marching to their deaths.
Well. They don't HAVE to be. And okay, I get that Lysaer's been cursed and he's no longer thinking clearly, but I can't help but think that a straight on attack on a sorcerer is a bad idea. But it is what it is.
We get some nice description of Strakewood:
Sunlight pricked the horizon, edged to the east by the black trees that rimmed Strakewood Forest. For a time as the air warmed, the companies marched knee-deep through mists that swathed the meadows in blue-grey. These dispersed last from the hollows, to bare rolling hills and the dew-spangled grass of early summer, bespattered and dappled with patches of red brushbloom and weathered rock. A craggier landscape than Daon Ramon, the plain of Araithe wore the season like a cloak of rippling new silk, lush and sweet with flowers, overwhelming the senses in living green.
Lysaer thinks about how, in Amroth, the rich forage would have been graved short by sheep and promised himself that if barbarian predation were to blame for the lack of shepherds, his campaign against Arithon would amend this. Then, in belated reassessment, he realized that had these hills been used once as pastures they should be crisscrossed by the remains of stone fences and sheepfolds.
And of course, there aren't. But I think this is an interesting look at the curse at work. He has a swift emotional reaction based on his own (inapplicable) experience. Immediately he equates the cause of this to his brother. (Rationally speaking, even if this forest HAD once been sheep land, it would have had to have been transformed long before the brothers came to Athera.) He IS able to assert some logic and rationality with some thought though.
Lysaer does wonder why such "obviously prime pastureland" should go wasted. Well, you could ask? It's also not your kingdom, dude.
Oh. And here we come to an interesting bit.
Lysaer's scouts report six barbarian children practicing with javelins across the river. Diegan thinks it's a stroke of luck, but Captain Gnudsog thinks that the clans are never so careless. And Pesquil, the dude that popped up in Arithon's vision weighs in too:
‘Barbarians don’t play at odds,’ came a querulous interruption from the sidelines. ‘In these parts, they prefer pits lined with sharpened stakes and spring-traps that rip out a man’s guts, or tear the axles off wagons.’
Smart in a black and white surcoat over chain-mail dulled with grease and years of polishing, Pesquil rode up to determine the cause of the delay. At the head of the column, he jerked short his brush-scarred gelding that he liked best for its toughness. ‘So you chase those children thinking to find an encampment of scouts you can surprise, eh? Well, try that. Then find yourselves bloody.’
Lysaer shows us again the downside of his gift of justice when he asks if Pesquil would send his own ten year old son out as a gambit before a war host. Lysaer's definition of right and wrong come from his own Amrothian upbringing, and that's the framework he puts on anything. By Lysaer's definition of justice, no one would ever put a child at risk like this.
Pesquil would, though. If the stakes were in his favor. And I kind of love that. He urges caution. Diegan doesn't listen, sending a small troop of light riders to see where the children flee. Lysaer agrees, saying that if it IS a trap, they should spring it with the fewest riders. I'm sure the riders appreciate that.
But this is also interesting:
‘You don’t think it’s a trap.’ Diegan soothed his restive destrier. Then, his regard in speculation upon Lysaer, he raised a gauntlet chased in glittering gold to signal the columns to rest at ease. ‘Why?’
‘Because I saw Arithon in a back alley with a band of knacker’s conscripts once when he didn’t think he was being watched.’ Fair-skinned as an ice figure in the early sunlight, the prince stroked the black-handled sword newly forged for his use in the field. Rumour held that the blade had been engraved with Arithon’s name in reverse runes, which may have been at the armourer’s insistence, for shaping a blade to kill a sorcerer. Lysaer did not look superstitious or afraid, but only pragmatic as he said, ‘The Shadow Master has few scruples. But I know him well enough to hedge that he’d sanction no ambush that involved any use of small children.’
It is curious to see Lysaer giving Arithon the benefit of the doubt here, given the nature of the curse and how it works. Is it weakening?
Or is it being sneaky?
Even Gnudsog agrees with Lysaer's logic. Apparently, he'd tried to find the kids that Arithon had freed from servitude, and the people who'd assisted with that had been given very lavish bribes to stay quiet. (It sounds like they failed, ultimately.)
So they send forty riders out, much to Pesquil's irritation. He calls Lysaer and Diegan "lordly fops" which earns him something resembling affection from me. Well, except for how he's a genocidal slave trader Maybe amusement instead.
Pesquil does send the army after though, reasoning that the traps will be sprung before the bulk of the force gets there and that even Steiven's "dirty tactics" can't murder ten thousand troops without exposure.
And there we go. The army goes after the boys, with orders to rout them rather than to kill. They're meant to be hounded into the Strakewood, then the pursuers would appear to give up while trackers followed them home.
We're told that the forty men were carefully chosen from men who were fathers, who would condone what the headhunters do, but wouldn't want to slaughter children themselves. And well:
Intent on keeping him in sight, the lead rider never saw the wooden javelin left braced at an angle in the path. His mount gathered stride and cleared a rotten log, then crashed, shoulder down, impaled. Its scream of mortal agony harrowed the dawn-damp wood, while the rider, thrown headlong, struck a bough at an angle and broke his neck.
First casualty of the Deshir barbarians, he died with his eyes still open and the taste of blood on his tongue.
Go clansfolk!
Anyway, this actually serves to convince the men that this ISN'T a trap, because the kids wouldn't stop and murder someone ahead of time.
Meanwhile, the army still follows. Time passes without an ambush, something that makes Gnudsog uneasy. It's too easy. Diegan is still a fucking moron, asking if everything has to be difficult. I don't know, brainiac, you're up against people who are fighting to save themselves from a genocide?
Lysaer's point is better, but also wrong as we know. He points out Steiven might not be in charge. Gnudsog grants that Arithon's probably clever enough to take over, if what Lysaer had said is true. It's darkly amusing, of course, because we know that Arithon did the exact opposite. And Lysaer, in his right mind, would probably remember how his brother runs screaming from anything resembling a leadership position.
But he's not. Alas.
Anyway, Lysaer is cautious, which causes Diegan to warn that his sister would call Lysaer fainthearted. God, Diegan is the stupidest. Lysaer just says better that than to have her weep over him when he's dead.
Gnudsog finds he admires Lysaer:
‘Dresses like a daisy, like they all do who sport pedigree,’ he confided to the sergeant who awaited the order to march. ‘But yon royal puppy is canny at handling men. He might be a priss at his swordplay, still I don’t think I’d want him for my enemy.’
Unable to find an appropriate reply to criticism involving his betters, the sergeant complained instead about the gnats.
I think I love the sergeant.
So Gnudsog loses patience and finally orders the advance. And of course, this (and a viewpoint change) signals the ambush. We get to watch as Caolle gives the order, and signals are passed to teamsters upriver, who use their horses to break a dam and send torrents of water to flood the army.
NICE.
And indeed:
Men, mounts, and bright pennons crumpled as if struck by the log-mailed fist of doom. Horses screamed, upended, their cries as one with their riders who were crushed, and scythed under, and drowned. The foaming jaws that crested over Tal Quorin’s banks thrashed on in a welter of chaos, to cut down everything standing; to smash living flesh without quarter and to turn the snapped shafts of the lances against those maimed, to impale and gut, and club unconscious with a force more furious than man’s.
Now I don't really intend to recap every single part of the battle. It's not my strong suit. I'll tell the important parts though.
Diegan is given warning, he tries to order men to take Lysaer to safety, but Lysaer's not about to leave. And to give him some credit, Diegan wasn't going to abandon the men either, but he's not given the choice as he's dragged away. Oh, but this is funny:
As Lord Diegan was dragged up the rise toward the forest, his last, venomous thought was that no man alive should be blessed all at once, with looks, toughness and such surpassing talent for leadership; grudging resignation followed that perhaps this was why the Fellowship had insisted on restoring royal rule to start with.
And of course, men are weeping as they watch Lysaer on his horse struggle to hold his ground. Of course they are.
So anyway, Diegan musters the men and fights on. Lysaer disappears.
--
Downstream, Lysaer washed up, to be found by Captain Mayor Pesquil. He's a bit rough looking: bruised, pale, and his eyes are "bright and empty as his jewels" He's apparently broken his collarbone. He beats himself up for his "idealistic folly".
But it was not the barbarians’ touch at warfare that had splintered Lysaer’s heart into rage; it was the knowledge, delivered on two companies’ ruthlessly massacred bodies, that he had been masterfully deceived.
Arithon was a trickster to make his s’Ffalenn forbears in Karthan seem as mere simpletons in comparison. For this trap to have been baited with children, meant the scene over the shadow brigantine in Etarra’s back alleys, had all been a sham, most carefully engineered, most exactingly executed. Here, over the corpse of a horse, amid a riverbed swollen still in carnage, Lysaer understood that the joy, the compassion, the agonized self-sacrifice Arithon had shown toward the brats conscripted to the knackers’ yards had been nothing, nothing at all. Just another ruse, another play of diabolical sleight-of-hand and seamless guile.
This man, this bastard of shadows, had no scruple, but only an unholy passion for lies of a stripe that could cajole human sympathy, and then turn and without conscience rend all decency.
And this is why I wondered if the curse was just being sneaky. Lysaer was allowed one moment to give his brother the benefit of the doubt, and now he's even MORE fixated on the idea of Arithon's evil.
Is the curse aware?
Anyway, this ends up being yet another example of how Arithon can only make decisions that screw him over later. Because we know that this wasn't Arithon's intention or desire, but he lost that fight with Caolle. If Arithon hadn't spent so long trying to get them to dislike and disrespect him, might he have had better luck?
It's hard to say of course, because we're also dealing with a culture of people who have been plagued by genocide and terror for generations. They already bent by keeping the women and girls out of the battle. They wouldn't have wanted to give up any other perceived weapon they can use.
Also, I'd like to think the real Lysaer wouldn't call enslaved children "brats".
Quite aside from Desh-thiere’s curse, Lysaer rededicated himself to moral purpose. His half-brother, so gifted in magecraft and so superior in unprincipled cunning, was a blight and a threat to society. With a continent riddled with encampments of barbarians, each one a ready weapon for his hands, no bound existed to the havoc Arithon might choose to create.
Lysaer crisply tells his men he'll need a new horse as his is dead, then he apologizes to Pesquil and...oh...
‘This was my mistake. Since my ignorance has led to disaster, I’m ready to listen. But in one thing, I will not be swayed. Arithon s’Ffalenn will be stopped. And killed. And if you deem it necessary to slay children to keep a weapon such as Steiven’s clansmen from his hands, I shall no longer obstruct you.’
"Murder children if you want" is a really fucking interesting definition of a "moral purpose", Lysaer.
Lysaer and Pesquil exchange some barbed banter about how Lysaer sent Diegan out of danger, and the advantages to being born and raised a king's heir: namely the "nasty minded sort of arrogance that stops a man being gainsaid."
...I'm uncomfortable by this comment because I remember saying something similar in a previous chapter. How royal upbringing was actually an advantage to both princes in a place like Etarra, because it allowed them a certain immunity to the social attacks.
Lysaer asks how many might have survived the flood. Pesquil thinks none, Steiven would have set up pits, spring traps and deadfalls. This means Gnudsog is probably dead. Pesquil gives Lysaer a bit of backstory as comfort (while being irked that Lysaer was "listening sincerely, as no scion of fine pedigree would deign to do."): Gnudsog had lost a brother and son to barbarians, and basically would happily have thrown every soldier into the Atheran version of Hell to kill a few more barbarians.
Anyway, Pesquil asserts that now they hunt the barbarians his way.
There's more news. The divisions intending to flank the main force have been waylaid by traps and shadows. Though there are still enough to fight. Lysaer's curse kicks in a bit:
Arithon was here. Confirmation triggered in Lysaer a tumultuous anticipation.
In a vice of self control tighter than anything he had needed previously, the prince stayed his sword-hand from ripping blade from scabbard in a curse-driven lust to rend and kill. Etarra’s troops were still dying of his mistakes. Their needs claimed his first responsibility. ‘Up this valley there were living men left, just a bit ago.’
So Lysaer can fight the curse. If motivated. Maybe he'd have been more motivated if he understood what the curse was?
But it's too late now.
So there's a lot of walking through dead bodies, so Lysaer can be horrified anew. There are very very few dead barbarians at the moment. Pesquil notes that the barbarians never fight when they can ambush, because you know, fair fighting is always a thing to do when people are trying to massacre your people.
(I'm not complaining about the writing. Pesquil is very well-written, I hate him. As I should.)
Oh dear. Lysaer hears a wounded man and is about to help, only to be pulled back by Pesquil. He ends up witnessing something admittedly pretty awful:
Through a lattice of birches and black firs, a light-footed squad of boys busied themselves among Etarra’s fallen. Clad in deerskin, furtive in movement as wild creatures, they were there to pilfer weapons, Lysaer presumed; until his eye was arrested by a telltale glimmer of steel. Horrified incredulity shook him. The shaded depths of the thickets no longer masked the fact the boys’ hands were bathed scarlet to the wrists. Small fingers and sharp daggers ensured that town-bred wounded never rose. Before his stunned eyes he saw a son of Deshir’s clans end a man pleading for mercy with a practised slash across the windpipe. Other victims who sprawled unconscious, or moaned face down in their agony died as fast, of a well placed stab in the neck. The butchery was done in speed and silence, and ruthless efficiency without parallel.
But Lysaer's gift is "justice" not "compassion". So he's horrified but without any need or interest to understand what drives these children and these people to such acts.
Pesquil notes that this is the opportunity for vengeance. There won't be another trap waiting.
Etarra’s league of headhunters deployed with oiled care, and at length the little rise lay triply ringed with poised men. When Pesquil signalled the attack, only the inner rank charged. They cut directly for the kill and did not mind if a child or two slipped past. The outer lines would mop up any fugitives.
At the forefront of the strike-force, Lysaer thrust his sword inside the guard of youngsters’ daggers with no more hesitation than a man might feel who stabbed rats. This was not war, but execution, the lives he destroyed of tainted stock. Royal requisites inured a man to cruel decisions; if they sickened him, it must not show, and if they softened him, he was no fit vessel to rule.
If Arithon s’Ffalenn used children for his battles, the scar upon the conscience must be his.
One has to love the hypocrisy here. Arithon is evil for using children, so it's only right then to murder those same children.
Oh, Lysaer, what have you become?
--
The next section is called First Quarry:
We rejoin Arithon now, as he sits alongside five of Steiven's archers. Jieret is with him, wielding a bow "with a nervous prowess the equal of any grown man". Arithon himself is unarmed. Well. Physically.
The curse is a factor for Arithon too:
The burning urge of Desh-thiere’s curse continued insidiously to gnaw at Arithon’s inner will. He felt it always, a tireless pressure against reason, an ache that pried between every thought and desire. The knowledge of Lysaer’s presence played on his nerves like a craving, volatile as a spark fanned dangerously close to dry tinder.
The nightmare was too substantial, that he could not encounter his half-brother alive and retain his grip on self-will. Had Deshir’s clans not relied upon his gifts for survival, he should have been far from this place.
If you recall, Arithon contracted the curse as a lightning bolt STD when Lysaer attacked him in Etarra.
We're told that poor Jieret is having a rough time since his terrible prophetic dream. Arithon can't help him either, since he's busy "broadcasting his finer vision across a field of war". Something no mage would do willingly. But well, killing soldiers takes a lot of concentration.
He'd done a lot of preparation the night before, walking the valley barefoot and laying spell and counter spell, anchored into compass points. I have no idea what this means, but magic technobabble is magic technobabble. It sounds convincing.
And actually, he's not KILLING people outright, sort of. Maybe.
By his hand, the neat ranks of Etarra’s right flanking division blundered abruptly into darkness. The rocks, the mires, the twisted stands of runt maples broke their advance into chaos. Calls of inquiry rebounded between distressed soldiers, while the orders of officers to rally split to untrustworthy echoes and sent whole cohorts stumbling awry through rock-sided ravines and marshy dells.
The shadows themselves defied nature. A townsman who spun round to backtrack would see his path open to clear sunshine. If he yielded to fright and instinct and fled that way in retreat, he encountered no further hindrance. But any Etarran soldiers high-hearted enough to use that reprieve to recover their bearings at next step became swallowed by darkness. Blinded and lost to direction, they thrashed through branches and bogs, twisted ankles and bruised shins on an unkindness of rocks and crooked roots. The terrain funnelled them north, where they floundered, battered and disoriented, into a dazzling brilliance of sudden sunlight.
Arrows met them in whispered, even flights loosed off by hidden clan marksmen. Soldiers screamed, and crumpled and died; others warned of ambush by the cries of their fallen ducked back toward the cover of the shadows, to be cut down in turn by companions too rattled to distinguish town colours from the deerskins of enemies.
Even the flowery narrative admits that Arithon might not be actually killing people directly, the distinction is "narrowly made".
Now if only it'd admit that lies of omission are still fucking lies, ASANDIR.
Thing is, magic + murder is a very very bad combination. There's a lot of bad mojo bouncing back and forth, and Arithon's concentrating completely on that.
Jieret senses something else though: a girl named Teynie is about to betray "them all". This pulls Arithon out of his trance, because they have that blood-oath. Unfortunately, he's too late to stop Jieret from running off. Arithon goes after him. (He does admit that this might be bad. Arithon's sorcerous interference was the only thing that prevented basically total slaughter in his vision. He doesn't know if they fucked that up, but he does know that "[i]f Deshir's clans were beyond saving, he had vowed that Steiven's son be spared."
He manages to catch up to Jieret, guiding him back into better concealment. He asks what's wrong, and tells Jieret to just think about his dream and imagine that he can see it too.
And shit.
…of torn earthworks and slaughtered bodies, where Pesquil’s advance troop of headhunters tracked prints across blood-rinsed earth. In swift, efficient silence they exchanged swords for daggers and cut scalps to claim bounty for their kills.
The corpses raised by the hair for the knife-cut were small, the faces smudged in leaf mould and gore unlined by life and years…
Goddamnit, Lysaer. Even if I understood why you feel like it's okay to kill them (AND I DO NOT), you're really going to let these people SCALP CHILDREN?!
Boys, Arithon realized with a choke that all but stopped his heart. He tripped hard on a stone, felt the tug of Jieret’s grip save his balance. Present awareness slapped back, along with anguished recognition of total helplessness. The deed was done: the sons of Deshir dead. All hacked and disfigured, were the little ones Caolle had insisted be sent to dispatch the enemy wounded because men for that task could ill be spared; amid whose company Jieret would have been, if not for a bloodpact of friendship.
It gets worse. Because the girl Teynie isn't in that vision.
Arithon gets a bit of melodrama here, but well, it's hard to blame him necessarily right now:
At what point does the strong mind falter, Arithon wondered in a cascade of renewed despair. The feud between Karthan and Amroth had inspired atrocities enough to wring from him all tolerance for suffering. Between town born and clan, the hate ran more poisonous still.
There's a bit more of that ilk, but what results is that Arithon reaches out with his own magesight to see Pesquil giving orders, the men cramming "dripping trophies" in their gamebags. And Jesus.
It's at this point where the curse hits Arithon in full, a geas-driven impulse to attack and cut them all down. But Jieret is there, and that helps him get control of himself. But yeah, even indirect scrying on Lysaer is a Very Bad Idea.
Some more clansmen have caught up with Arithon, who wants to send them packing, but doesn't. He acknowledges that if the women and girls are still in danger, the men deserve the chance to protect them if he can figure out how.
Which means another scrying. He orders them to bind his ankles and tie his wrists behind his back. The clansmen are understandably bewildered by their prince's sudden inclination toward shibari bondage. But Arithon doesn't really have the time to explain. He tells Jieret that he's going to use magic, but Jieret has to be ready. If he starts having a fit, Jieret is to call his name and if that doesn't work or the restraints break, Jieret needs to cut him deeply enough to bleed.
Because the poor kid isn't traumatized enough. But well, it probably would be a Very Bad Thing if BOTH brothers gave into the curse. Jieret promises.
Scrying number two:
Back to the slaughter. They hear a retching cough in the bushes: it's a child who escaped the massacre. About seven years old. When her hat falls off, they realize it's a little girl who had followed her brother. Pesquil's happy because scalps aren't valued by sex. And she's about to lead them back to camp.
Arithon's back to himself, screaming in crazed frustration. And then worse from the sudden influx of Paravian magic: Jieret's cut him with the sword. It brings Arithon back to himself. He realizes from the clansmen's embarrassment that he'd been screaming like an animal and had managed to flip and wrench against his bonds. But he's in control now, so long as he avoids mage sight, he can fight the urge that coursed through him, driving, needling, hounding him to rise and to run: to find his half-brother and call challenge and fight until one or both of them lay dead.
He gets them to let him out, and sends instructions for Caolle. The clansmen are pretty awed and horrified, as expected. But things are about to be a lot worse. Arithon orders them to run to the grotto where the women and girls are hidden, with the knowledge that there's probably no way to get there in time.
--
The last section of the chapter is "Last Quarry"
Pesquil, Lysaer and the headhunters chase the little girl. And when they finally get close enough, Pesquil orders her shot. They try to make it look like she tripped, but it doesn't quite work. Doesn't really matter though. A female clan scout comes to get her. Pesquil orders her shot too: Messier this time, and with the intention that she die yelling.
Oh god.
They end up deploying. And it's terrible. It's a slight blessing that we follow Lysaer for this, and he's in the back. By the time he gets there, the attack is nearly wrapped up.
There are still a lot of bodies "bloody and hacked beyond anything recognizably female".
He feels sick. But...let's see how:
Half-sick from his hurts, too spent for strong emotion, the prince felt wretched and maudlin. For the first time in life he understood his royal father, who also had been provoked to require annihilating attacks on villages allied to the s’Ffalenn. That such forays had mostly come to nothing drove his sire to lifelong frustration. Lysaer, who in distant lands and exile had not failed, looked upon his dead with flat eyes and tried not to fret whether any of the corpses had been pregnant.
That's...not the right reaction, Lysaer. It's really fucking not.
The able-bodied fighters are down. So now they fire the tents. There's a cry of an infant in one, swiftly muffled. It really doesn't matter at this point.
The tents burn, there is screaming, archers aim and kill infants.
Lysaer maybe has a shred of humanity left:
Lysaer pushed straight and forced his eyes back to clear focus. In fact, there was a lot of screaming, in pitch and timbre quite different from hand to hand battle had caused earlier; neither were these the incomprehending cries of newborns. Sickness fled before anger.
‘You aren’t killing them cleanly,’ Lysaer accused. He shoved hard away from the tree.
‘Killing them?’ Pesquil grinned, startled to savage delight. ‘That wasn’t quite the idea. Not for the pretty women, anyway. My men accomplished what Etarra’s garrison couldn’t. Do you think they haven’t earned their bit of sport?’
He calls them off. Pesquil's very resistant, claiming this is a time-proven tactic, but Lysaer is insistant. And finally he demonstrates this:
The s’Ilessid prince laid no hand on his sword in dispute. He weighed his case and made judgement in the solitary arrogance of a king. Then he turned his back on the silver crescent blade and called upon his birthborn gift of light.
His bolt sheared the grotto like bladed lightning and slammed in bursting brilliance through the charred and blackened leather of the tents. Flash-fire exploded. Sparks flew and a barrage of deep-throated thunder smote the air. Where hides had flamed, nothing burned any longer. If no one had been harmed by the blast, still, the ground showed a black, seared circle, while toppled kingposts flaked with ash trailed sullen smoke over the previously broken bodies of little children.
From the grotto, the screaming had ended. Men in the act of lust felt engorged flesh shrivel from the heat of ravished girls, while in stunned terror they scrambled back and took stock of wisped hair and blisters and outer clothing lightly singed upon their bodies.
He then orders the townsmen who are still dressed to form a shield-ring and herd every girl and women inside. He's not going to let them go, no. He's just going to murder them. "Cleanly". Fucking hell.
Thank god, we don't see it. But Lysaer does express his intent to draw the clan barbarians in, and he knows Arithon won't be able to NOT come with them.
--
The snippet section is "Three Valleys".
1. Arithon's messenger makes it to Caolle and the other men, telling them to inform Steiven that the forseen disaster is NOT stopped.
2. Arithon, Jieret, and the eleven clansmen with them are running for the grotto. And they're too late. Arithon echoes us, or at least me, by saying ‘Lysaer, oh Ath, Lysaer, no!’
3. West of Tal Quorin, a shadow barrier shatters, releasing half a company of Etarran men ready to regroup, while the clan enemies can no longer hide behind shadows.
--
Fuck. So. Yeah. That happened. Would the girls have still died if they'd been with the men as originally planned? Probably. They were going to have the role that the boys had, after all.
But I don't see how the Deshir clans come back from it. Even if the men survive. The women, the children. The Etarrans finally succeeded in their genocide.
And Lysaer...
I don't know how a character can come back from this. If he can. If I'd even want him to. While it's true that the Lysaer we knew through most of the book was a decent man, and that this would not have happened without the Mistwraith curse, it's also true that Lysaer isn't even TRYING to fight it. What happens when the curse is lifted? Will Lysaer come back to himself? How would he live with what he's done?
I don't know, but I feel the need to watch something light and fluffy, which requires no thought at all. See you soon.