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i_read_whatSo here we are. The last chapter of Curse of the Mistwraith. This has been probably the most ambitious project I've done for this blog. At least in terms of single books. The mass market paperback is 830 pages! I'm proud of myself!
But I'm also getting ahead of myself. I have to finish the book first. And given that we left off with a genocide in progress, this is going to hurt. So let's get started.
Interestingly, this chapter starts with a verse. Usually I don't include these in my reviews, but I will here as it becomes narratively significant.
‘She went not to wed,
nor to comfort or rest,
But to free the dazed dead,
and to reclothe cold flesh
in fair flowers.’
Last stanza,
ballad of the Princess of Falmuir
We start off with thunder in the sky. Arithon knows what this means and he quickly grabs Jieret and pulls him into an embrace while "Around their locked forms, the coruscation flared and died."
They're too late.
One of the scouts with them, a teenager, charges forward in berserk rage, but the others stop him. Poor Jieret actually has to help calm him down, asserting that he has the Sight and no one in the grotto survived. His mother and sisters were there, if you recall:
Jieret had seen, in merciless, involuntary prescience; three sisters burned and one forced, and a mother lying bloody in dead leaves. The dream’s memory stamped his child’s face with a hardness that might not, now, ever leave him.
‘I would have spared you, if I could,’ Arithon said in a voice so racked, not a man in the company overheard him.
Jieret looked up into green eyes that held no barriers against him. Offered depths and mysteries whose difficulties were beyond him, he could answer just one shared pain. ‘My liege lord, behold, you have done so.’
Jieret is twelve years old.
Arithon reminds them not to let him get close to Lysaer, and orders the others back to Caolle. One offers to go fetch the boys.
You remember, the boys that Lysaer's men murdered before coming to the grotto. Yeah. Arithon remembers too. He tells the man that the boys are beyond help, go and stop thinking. The dude reacts about as well as can be expected, but the others in the group keep a clearer head.
‘Don’t mind him.’ White-haired and scarred to stoic toughness, the scout Madreigh offered brusque sympathy. ‘That boy’s not badhearted, only sore. Next month he was to marry.’ The others were content to leave him as spokesman as he tactfully fingered his sword edge. ‘We should send another runner after Steiven?’
Arithon moved not at all, but only closed tortured eyes.
‘Ath!’ said Madreigh. ‘Forget I ever asked.’
Not to take away from the tragedy of this, but I'm suddenly reminded of Men in Tights. "My goldfish, Goldie?" "Eaten by the cat." "My cat?!" "Choked on the goldfish."
There's trouble though: a crossbow bolt kills one of the scouts, and Arithon immediately flings Jieret behind him and commands him, as sovereign, to stay out of this. They realize they've sprung a trap. Not too far away, they can hear Caolle's men fighting openly, enraged by the discovery of the boys' bodies.
So now, fighting. Arithon vindicates Halliron, who'd bet he was good with a sword. There's even some gallows humor banter between Arithon and the scouts. Arithon has never gotten along with anyone so well. Anyway, their collective goal is to keep Jieret safe.
They're outnumbered though, which means Arithon has to use his magic to kill. And he does, basically breaking every single rule of magic to do so. It's actually a little difficult to follow what he does, lots of the magical equivalent of technobabble about the Major Balance and unmaking.
It starts with unmaking a crossbow bolt, and ends with:
Splinters and wound wire and metal burst like shrapnel and flayed the headhunter’s face. He dropped, choking, holes torn through his chest and his abdomen, and blood spattered like thrown ink across the bleached trees. The only bit of his weapon not fragmented was the trigger latch, the first steel to contact the spell and engage its limited safeward.
...ew.
It's not done though. He does something with the trees. The clansmen, with their backs to them, are safe, but the attackers become spellbound, put to sleep, and thus easily cut down. I have trouble feeling bad about that at this point.
There's a difference between using magic and using shadow, apparently. He only risks using the latter when the others are out of range. He creates the illusion of reinforcements. Exhausted, he collapses next to a dying Madreigh. Madreigh urges him to go protect Jieret, and Arithon decides to give him a bit of mercy and comfort:
Arithon spread the clansman’s limp fingers and pressed them, already chilled, against the bole of the beech tree. He closed his own hands over the top. Then with a gesture that lanced blackness and sparks through his mind, he wrenched back the fast-fading glimmer of his spellcraft and let it flow like a mercy-stroke over the clansman’s consciousness.
Sleep took Madreigh’s tortured frame. His face under its grit and grey hair gentled, all sorrows eased into the sundrenched serenity of ancient trees.
Arithon maybe isn't dealing with any of this very well at this point. And while this really isn't the best time to make fun of overblown angst, there are some nice overwrought turns of phrase here. Mostly though, the overwhelming feeling is shock and despair. Yeah dude, I feel you.
Eventually, he gets to his feet, gets his sword and goes back to the fight, kind of mindlessly at this point. And then...he sees Lysaer:
His gaze caught instead on a clustered squad of headhunters led by a pockscarred man in muddy mail; then another, tall, straight, of elegant carriage in a ripped blue surcoat, gold-blazoned and bright as his hair.
Lysaer.
They saw each other the same instant.
Arithon felt the breath leave his chest as if impelled by a blow. Then Desh-thiere’s curse eclipsed reason. He was running, the air at his neck prickling his raised hair like the charge of an incoming storm. Sword upheld, lips peeled back in atavistic hatred, he closed to take his half-brother without heed for what lay between.
A baleful flash brightened the trees. Lysaer, as curse-bound as he, had called on his given gift of light.
So now, shadow vs. light. Arithon's got the advantage here, with mage training, he has far more finesse. It's a good balance against Lysaer's men. He tricks them into firing wildly, and laughs as the bolts are destroyed by Lysaer's own fire.
Neither character is recognizable at this point and it's actually pretty fascinating:
‘Will you fight?’ he called to Lysaer, derisive. ‘Or will you stand out of reach and play at fireworks just to waste time and show off?’
‘Defiler!’ Lysaer screamed back. His handsome face twisted. Cuts and bruises made his expression seem deranged. ‘Weaver of darkness and despoiler of children, your crimes have renounced claim to honour!’
Arithon invites him to cross swords, Lysaer asks why cross blades with a bastard and uses light instead. Which is a little bit stupid, since this is, as mentioned before, Arithon's wheelhouse. We're told Arithon's sword is silent now, since it's pointed "with the grain of ill geas and enmity".
Arithon gets his own bit of purple prose here:
Opposite him, a wind-whipped silhouette with a hand lightly gripped to a sword’s hilt, Arithon faced him in challenge. Unarmoured, clad in the same spattered deerhides as any of Steiven’s scouts, he seemed a figure diminished; until, half-seen through lashed tangles of black hair, an expression bent his lips that held no regret but only derisive impatience.
The flaring brilliance lit the s’Ffalenn features to inescapable clarity. The detached assurance, the sheer nerveless arrogance on that face slapped back remembrance of the manipulation that had undone Amroth’s king and councilmen. Swept by a countersurge of antipathy, Lysaer shrieked his ultimatum. ‘By Ath, you unprincipled bastard, your wiles shall cause no more damage. This time, not counting for cost, the justice of my people will be served!’
And this bit, for Lysaer, is interesting:
If such justice was wholly subverted by the workings of Desh-thiere’s curse, Lysaer endorsed usage with consent. He screamed and surrendered to his passion, and something inside him snapped. That instant he hurled his bolt.
I think there's always going to be an open question here, when it comes to Lysaer's culpability for his crimes while under the Mistwraith's geas. Certainly, those crimes wouldn't have happened without the geas. The man we'd gotten to know through two-thirds of this book would never have done these things.
But he's also not trying to fight it either. And we've seen that it IS possible to try. Even if Lysaer doesn't truly understand the nature of the Mistwraith's curse, he should be able to realize something was wrong when he started murdering children! Right?
Well, right now, he's going all in. He's channeling enough of his will into his light magic that it's going to immolate him and the forest with him.
Arithon gets this. And he LIKES the irony. He throws his arms wide and taunts Lysaer to come and take him, to be destroyed by his own magic. And then...someone catches his arm. It's Jieret, who reminds him of his oath, and has come back to keep Arithon from Lysaer as he was asked.
This snaps Arithon out of it. Well, mostly, it actually kind of sends him into a tailspin. He can save Jieret, but that would also stop Lysaer from being consumed by his magic. If he betrays Jieret, Lysaer will die and Arithon will be free of the curse.
Of course, Arithon pulls himself together enough to fight the curse. And basically ensures that we're going to have a really fucking long series:
For ill or for folly, the paradox would be permitted to renew itself; Lysaer had no training to understand or control how Desh-thiere’s meddling had twisted him. Assured of his righteousness, avowed to bring justice, he would use his survival to labour until this day’s atrocities were repeated. That colossal futility made a mockery of will, that perhaps reprieve came too late. One victim’s lamed effort at compassion might buy only failure at the end.
They get the fuck out of there. For his part, Lysaer has keeled over, and his men are getting him out of there too. Arithon ends up keeling over too, once they rendezvous with the Deshan survivors.
-
Arithon wakes up and a scout, surprisingly kind, fills him in. The forest is still standing. Some of the clan survived. Arithon has the same thought I do: which is that the clans are pretty fucked without their women and children. He weeps.
Jieret is okay though. He's resting at Arithon's side. He gets filled in on what happened to Steiven: he'd ordered Caolle and three hundred hand-picked young men back (Caolle was NOT happy about this), and charged with the rest. He was among the first to fall. Mercifully, he never knew what happened to his wife and daughters.
Jieret is now the earl of Deshir, and the caithdein of Rathain. At twelve years old. What a beginning.
Caolle did eventually break orders, which is how Arithon, Jieret, and what's left of the scouts (two) were able to reach safety.
Anyway, the headhunters league is mostly destroyed (yay!) and the Etarrans retreated outside the forest. The scout thinks they intend to poison springs and game to starve the clansmen out, but the clansmen are leaving anyway. They're going to join another earl's band in Fallowmere.
Oh. Thank god. There are still other clans. There's some hope after all. Both Arithon and I needed to hear that.
Anyway, Arithon's been treated physically, but mentally, well, he's fucked himself up kind of good. As the scout realizes as he gets to his feet and quotes the last line of that ballad that we saw at the beginning of the chapter.
-
The scene shifts to Caolle. He's joined by the bard, Halliron. Caolle's not dealing well with this, understandably. He should have listened, he admits. Halliron doesn't think that would have saved them, though. The men would have died and the children executed in Etarra.
They're walking through the battlefield and spy something odd: one of the dead Etarran pikemen has been laid to rest: his weapon moved aside, his helm removed, his eyes are closed and facing the sky, and his hands crossed on his chest.
They find others: both pikemen and clansmen arranged the same way.
Halliron understands first and explains the ballad of Falmuir to Caolle and to us:
‘That two cities took arms over marriage rights to an heiress.’ Halliron slowed to negotiate a wash of dry river pebbles where a misstep could easily turn an ankle. ‘The girl,’ he resumed, ‘had a seer’s gift. She begged her guardian to allow her to wed an uninvolved suitor as compromise, and to forfeit her rights of inheritance. For greed and for power her wishes were refused. A war resulted, with losses very like this one.’
...this isn't very subtle, Ms. Wurts. But I am interested in the way the Fellowship is essentially playing the role of those too hungry for greed or power. It's true, but I wasn't really expecting an acknowledgment of that.
Anyway, Caolle isn't inclined to be sympathetic to the Etarrans. They didn't have to come after all. Yeah, I hear you. He thinks this is a trick of some kind.
It's not, eventually they catch up with the person doing this: Arithon, of course. Caolle is pissed that he's wasting time with the dead when the wounded are suffering and lost. And again, fair. But Halliron understands both Caolle's pain and Arithon's.
He plays the song.
We don't get to hear it, but the imagery of the bloody siege, and a princess walking alone on a battlefield where defenders and abductors lay slain...
Again, it's not subtle. But it is a little magical:
Even as a princess had once done in grief and total loss, the Shadow Master poised amid the burned remains of clan kindred. His fine-boned hands were filmed with black ash for each of the corpses he had settled. His hollowed cheeks glittered with the tracings left scoured by tears. He was speaking. Each syllable rang with compassion, and each word he spun formed a name. He summoned in love, and they came to him, the shades of tiny babes and silent women, of girls and grandmothers and daughters and wives, sundered from life in such violence hat their spirits were homeless and dazed. They formed around him a webwork of subliminal light, not burned, but whole; no more aggrieved, but joyous, as he added words in lyric Paravian that distanced the violence that had claimed them.
Arithon gave back their deaths, redeemed from the horror of murder. One by one he cherished their memories. In an unconditional mercy that disallowed grief, they were fully and finally freed to the peace of Ath’s deepest mystery.
Caolle backs down, gruffly, pointing out that Arithon also is injured and exhausted, and if he keels over, he'll hit his head on a rock. But he leaves him be. Halliron stays, for a while, but eventually he can't watch anymore.
While I think Caolle's growing empathy in this scene is good, Wurts goes a BIT too far for me by having Caolle say that Arithon is greater than Steiven. I don't think that's a comparison that he would ever make. It's not even that I think Caolle would consider Steiven the greater man, they're just not comparable.
But there is something:
Arithon reaches one more body. Madreigh the scout. Open eyed and with a hole in his chest. And he's still fucking breathing. It's the spell. It accidently saved his life. Arithon is overcome by this and passes out.
--
The next subchapter is First Resolution.
And we start with a parallel:
Wrapped in the tatters of his surcoat, his camp blanket long since given up to alleviate the shortage of bandaging, Prince Lysaer s’Ilessid knelt to hold the hand of yet another lancer who shivered and thrashed in mindless suffering.
The garrison forces are in tatters, and Lysaer is trying to comfort the dying. Mostly, he's using this time to think.
He is, of course, heroic. He's been up all night, compiling lists of losses with Pesquil, standing at the riverbank, encouraging survivors as they emerged from the forest, walking beside litters, breaking up disputes, and helping to clean and staunch wounds.
He still has the power of purple prose too:
To find his ragged magnificence still among them in the cheerless grey of the morning made men break their hearts to meet his wishes. That Etarra’s concerns were foremost in his mind, no town survivor ever questioned. Without Lysaer’s light to stay the shadows, many more would have died by the grottos or been abandoned to the mindless distress induced by Arithon’s maze wards that had ensorcelled the troop in the west valley.
There are so many wounded and dead that they won't be able to bring the bodies back to Etarra. Lysaer vows to avenge the one he's comforting.
And we get a contrast too:
Raised to rule, well hardened for the trials of leadership, Lysaer shared the burden where he could. He spoke and touched shoulders, and once faced down a man who had wildly drawn a dagger and raved to anyone who would listen that he intended to lead a foray to go reiving back into Strakewood. Sympathetic to the men but possessed of a cool self-containment the s’Ilessid prince reviewed the wreck of Etarra’s garrison with no incapacitating pang of conscience.
What does he think about what he's done?
Where he passed, his unassailable assurance touched the men and left them silent with awe. His equilibrium could encompass seven thousand casualties. He could feel haunted and sad that Arithon had engaged in unscrupulous use of little children but not have lasting regrets that the wholesale elimination of barbarian women and young had been necessary to guard town security. No city could recoup from a defeat as terrible as this, were they left with belief such casualties could recur again.
...that's...a justification, I guess.
And that's Lysaer. Noble and considerate, but cold and monstrous at the same time.
Lysaer thinks about how he'd nearly killed himself to destroy Arithon. He realizes now that it was idiocy. There was no guarantee that Arithon would have died there. And this is interesting:
The stalking uncertainty lingered, that the inspiration to risk martyrdom for the cause might not have been Lysaer’s own.
Once in Briane’s sail-hold, and another day in the Red Desert, Arithon had used mage craft to turn his half-brother’s mind. Plagued by doubts, Lysaer wondered. Had the bastard plotted the same way in Strakewood? For if mockery and goading had been paired with sorceries to eliminate the only man with powers over light that might threaten him, the evil inherent in such design upheld a frightening conclusion.
Lysaer is capable of determining an outside cause to his actions. Just the wrong one.
And here we go again, Arithon is incapable of doing anything that won't somehow backfire in his face in the near or far future.
Anyway, Lysaer realizes that if he died there, Arithon would have been free to wreak far more havoc than seven thousand dead Etarrans.
His thoughts are interrupted by the announcement that Diegan is awake and asking for him.
Diegan is fuzzy and drugged, but pathetically happy to see Lysaer. He informs him of Gnudsog's death and is informed that Pesquil has taken charge. Apparently, Pesquil still has twenty men to instruct on tactics. And indeed, Lysaer tells us, the springs are going to be poisoned and the game killed.
The long term plan though is that Diegan will marshal a new campaign. But not yet. They need years of preparation, training and recruitment of allies first. Diegan formally (and desperately) invites Lysaer to stay and help.
Lysaer also promises that he'll be seeing Diegan's sister, Lady Talith soon. No Master of Shadow with his darkness shall be permitted to keep [them] apart.
--
The last subsection is Last Resolution.
We're back to the clans. There'd been nine hundred and sixty people in the Deshir clan. Now there are two hundred men alive. Half are wounded. And there are fourteen boys of Jieret's generation who survived the battle.
Arithon is putting a stone on the cairn that marks Steiven's grave. Dania's buried with him. He tells Jieret that they were fine people and apologizes for not being able to match up. He helps Jieret carve runes of blessing on the cairn.
They share a moment, in which Arithon promises to swear the full caithdein oath with Jieret when the boy's of age, and Jieret expresses how neither he nor his father have regrets.
We learn that Arithon hasn't made it through the battle unscathed, magically speaking. His mage sight had grown erratic after the battle and is gone now. He's lost his ability to work formal magic. This is a considerable emotional blow, and he feels like he's missing a limb.
He's not completely helpless though, he still has his ability to use shadow. Suddenly that distinction is significant.
Anyway, the clanfolk begin their own funeral rites. Arithon asks to keep Jieret's whittling knife, and Jieret realizes that this means Arithon is leaving. He accepts this. Besides, he doesn't need the knife anymore. He's got a sword strapped to his belt.
Oh Jieret.
Caolle is angrier about Arithon leaving. They really do have an interesting dynamic. Arithon explains his reasoning: basically, Lysaer's armies will basically be chasing after him forever, and he doesn't want the clans to be exterminated for his sake. He asks Caolle's leave to depart, alone, until such time as he can return and fulfill their hopes for him (rebuilding a city of peace on Ithamon's foundations).
Caolle admits he misjuded Arithon, but asks something for himself: he wants to raise the clans of Fallowmere, and then the continent.
Arithon doesn't like the idea at all, but he admits that they've lost a lot more than he has, so he won't tell them no. He grants his blessing, if not his approval.
We get some flowery sentiment that might amuse:
In token of friendship, Caolle offered his palms and accepted the prince’s double handshake. Across their clasped grip, while the song of lamentation spiralled and dipped through the greenwood, he gave his liege a voracious appraisal. The small build and fine bones, the green eyes with their depths and veiled secrets; both harboured deceptive strengths. Nearly too late Caolle had discovered an integrity that admitted no compromise. He would never in words be forced to admit that this scion of Rathain was both perfectly suited and tragically paired with a fate that must waste his real talents.
Fortunately, the mood is broken with some banter about Arithon being a dreamy fool and they part ways.
-
So now we join Arithon, who doesn't seem to know what to do now. For the first time in this book, he's free. No burdens, no responsibilities. Nothing to answer to.
So now what?
Halliron has an idea. He invites Arithon on the road with him. Arithon balks at the idea of company, and starts slipping back into self-castigation. He starts defending himself against accusations that Halliron's not making. Halliron is patient though, and waits him out.
He explains that as an old man, he could use someone young and strong to help. And Arithon is a talent who needs schooling. He's offering an apprenticeship.
It's the only thing Arithon's ever wanted, and fuck, he really has no reason not to accept. And he promised that Fellirin dude, like a hundred chapters ago. The chapter ends here, with Halliron telling Arithon to play.
--
There is one more snippet section to close us out. Reflections
1. Asandir and Dakar are hunting for meth-snakes. Traithe and Kharadmon are heading off to Shand, where there's still one more prince in hiding. And Sethvir is keeping an eye on the brothers, hoping for signs that the Black Rose Prophecy might still be valid.
Fuck that prophecy, dude. And try not to fuck up this poor kid like you did the last two.
2. Lirenda is reporting to Morriel that they've lost track of "the Master of Shadows".
3. The Mistwraith waits and endures in "the lightless shaft of Rockfell".
And holy fuck, I've reached the end of this book.
Stay tuned for the verdict.
--
OH! There's also a glossary in the back of the book, with character name pronunciations and what their names mean in Paravian. Arithon, for example, ALMOST rhymes with "marathon", and means "fate-forger". Lysaer is pronounced "lie-say-er" and comes the root words "lia" (blond/yellow/light) and "saer" (circle).
Gnudsog has a silent G and rhymes with wood log. Root: "Gianud" (tough), "sog" (ugly). Which is kind of a mean name for child!
Anyway, if there's a character whose pronunciation and/or name meaning you want to know, drop me a line.
But I'm also getting ahead of myself. I have to finish the book first. And given that we left off with a genocide in progress, this is going to hurt. So let's get started.
Interestingly, this chapter starts with a verse. Usually I don't include these in my reviews, but I will here as it becomes narratively significant.
‘She went not to wed,
nor to comfort or rest,
But to free the dazed dead,
and to reclothe cold flesh
in fair flowers.’
Last stanza,
ballad of the Princess of Falmuir
We start off with thunder in the sky. Arithon knows what this means and he quickly grabs Jieret and pulls him into an embrace while "Around their locked forms, the coruscation flared and died."
They're too late.
One of the scouts with them, a teenager, charges forward in berserk rage, but the others stop him. Poor Jieret actually has to help calm him down, asserting that he has the Sight and no one in the grotto survived. His mother and sisters were there, if you recall:
Jieret had seen, in merciless, involuntary prescience; three sisters burned and one forced, and a mother lying bloody in dead leaves. The dream’s memory stamped his child’s face with a hardness that might not, now, ever leave him.
‘I would have spared you, if I could,’ Arithon said in a voice so racked, not a man in the company overheard him.
Jieret looked up into green eyes that held no barriers against him. Offered depths and mysteries whose difficulties were beyond him, he could answer just one shared pain. ‘My liege lord, behold, you have done so.’
Jieret is twelve years old.
Arithon reminds them not to let him get close to Lysaer, and orders the others back to Caolle. One offers to go fetch the boys.
You remember, the boys that Lysaer's men murdered before coming to the grotto. Yeah. Arithon remembers too. He tells the man that the boys are beyond help, go and stop thinking. The dude reacts about as well as can be expected, but the others in the group keep a clearer head.
‘Don’t mind him.’ White-haired and scarred to stoic toughness, the scout Madreigh offered brusque sympathy. ‘That boy’s not badhearted, only sore. Next month he was to marry.’ The others were content to leave him as spokesman as he tactfully fingered his sword edge. ‘We should send another runner after Steiven?’
Arithon moved not at all, but only closed tortured eyes.
‘Ath!’ said Madreigh. ‘Forget I ever asked.’
Not to take away from the tragedy of this, but I'm suddenly reminded of Men in Tights. "My goldfish, Goldie?" "Eaten by the cat." "My cat?!" "Choked on the goldfish."
There's trouble though: a crossbow bolt kills one of the scouts, and Arithon immediately flings Jieret behind him and commands him, as sovereign, to stay out of this. They realize they've sprung a trap. Not too far away, they can hear Caolle's men fighting openly, enraged by the discovery of the boys' bodies.
So now, fighting. Arithon vindicates Halliron, who'd bet he was good with a sword. There's even some gallows humor banter between Arithon and the scouts. Arithon has never gotten along with anyone so well. Anyway, their collective goal is to keep Jieret safe.
They're outnumbered though, which means Arithon has to use his magic to kill. And he does, basically breaking every single rule of magic to do so. It's actually a little difficult to follow what he does, lots of the magical equivalent of technobabble about the Major Balance and unmaking.
It starts with unmaking a crossbow bolt, and ends with:
Splinters and wound wire and metal burst like shrapnel and flayed the headhunter’s face. He dropped, choking, holes torn through his chest and his abdomen, and blood spattered like thrown ink across the bleached trees. The only bit of his weapon not fragmented was the trigger latch, the first steel to contact the spell and engage its limited safeward.
...ew.
It's not done though. He does something with the trees. The clansmen, with their backs to them, are safe, but the attackers become spellbound, put to sleep, and thus easily cut down. I have trouble feeling bad about that at this point.
There's a difference between using magic and using shadow, apparently. He only risks using the latter when the others are out of range. He creates the illusion of reinforcements. Exhausted, he collapses next to a dying Madreigh. Madreigh urges him to go protect Jieret, and Arithon decides to give him a bit of mercy and comfort:
Arithon spread the clansman’s limp fingers and pressed them, already chilled, against the bole of the beech tree. He closed his own hands over the top. Then with a gesture that lanced blackness and sparks through his mind, he wrenched back the fast-fading glimmer of his spellcraft and let it flow like a mercy-stroke over the clansman’s consciousness.
Sleep took Madreigh’s tortured frame. His face under its grit and grey hair gentled, all sorrows eased into the sundrenched serenity of ancient trees.
Arithon maybe isn't dealing with any of this very well at this point. And while this really isn't the best time to make fun of overblown angst, there are some nice overwrought turns of phrase here. Mostly though, the overwhelming feeling is shock and despair. Yeah dude, I feel you.
Eventually, he gets to his feet, gets his sword and goes back to the fight, kind of mindlessly at this point. And then...he sees Lysaer:
His gaze caught instead on a clustered squad of headhunters led by a pockscarred man in muddy mail; then another, tall, straight, of elegant carriage in a ripped blue surcoat, gold-blazoned and bright as his hair.
Lysaer.
They saw each other the same instant.
Arithon felt the breath leave his chest as if impelled by a blow. Then Desh-thiere’s curse eclipsed reason. He was running, the air at his neck prickling his raised hair like the charge of an incoming storm. Sword upheld, lips peeled back in atavistic hatred, he closed to take his half-brother without heed for what lay between.
A baleful flash brightened the trees. Lysaer, as curse-bound as he, had called on his given gift of light.
So now, shadow vs. light. Arithon's got the advantage here, with mage training, he has far more finesse. It's a good balance against Lysaer's men. He tricks them into firing wildly, and laughs as the bolts are destroyed by Lysaer's own fire.
Neither character is recognizable at this point and it's actually pretty fascinating:
‘Will you fight?’ he called to Lysaer, derisive. ‘Or will you stand out of reach and play at fireworks just to waste time and show off?’
‘Defiler!’ Lysaer screamed back. His handsome face twisted. Cuts and bruises made his expression seem deranged. ‘Weaver of darkness and despoiler of children, your crimes have renounced claim to honour!’
Arithon invites him to cross swords, Lysaer asks why cross blades with a bastard and uses light instead. Which is a little bit stupid, since this is, as mentioned before, Arithon's wheelhouse. We're told Arithon's sword is silent now, since it's pointed "with the grain of ill geas and enmity".
Arithon gets his own bit of purple prose here:
Opposite him, a wind-whipped silhouette with a hand lightly gripped to a sword’s hilt, Arithon faced him in challenge. Unarmoured, clad in the same spattered deerhides as any of Steiven’s scouts, he seemed a figure diminished; until, half-seen through lashed tangles of black hair, an expression bent his lips that held no regret but only derisive impatience.
The flaring brilliance lit the s’Ffalenn features to inescapable clarity. The detached assurance, the sheer nerveless arrogance on that face slapped back remembrance of the manipulation that had undone Amroth’s king and councilmen. Swept by a countersurge of antipathy, Lysaer shrieked his ultimatum. ‘By Ath, you unprincipled bastard, your wiles shall cause no more damage. This time, not counting for cost, the justice of my people will be served!’
And this bit, for Lysaer, is interesting:
If such justice was wholly subverted by the workings of Desh-thiere’s curse, Lysaer endorsed usage with consent. He screamed and surrendered to his passion, and something inside him snapped. That instant he hurled his bolt.
I think there's always going to be an open question here, when it comes to Lysaer's culpability for his crimes while under the Mistwraith's geas. Certainly, those crimes wouldn't have happened without the geas. The man we'd gotten to know through two-thirds of this book would never have done these things.
But he's also not trying to fight it either. And we've seen that it IS possible to try. Even if Lysaer doesn't truly understand the nature of the Mistwraith's curse, he should be able to realize something was wrong when he started murdering children! Right?
Well, right now, he's going all in. He's channeling enough of his will into his light magic that it's going to immolate him and the forest with him.
Arithon gets this. And he LIKES the irony. He throws his arms wide and taunts Lysaer to come and take him, to be destroyed by his own magic. And then...someone catches his arm. It's Jieret, who reminds him of his oath, and has come back to keep Arithon from Lysaer as he was asked.
This snaps Arithon out of it. Well, mostly, it actually kind of sends him into a tailspin. He can save Jieret, but that would also stop Lysaer from being consumed by his magic. If he betrays Jieret, Lysaer will die and Arithon will be free of the curse.
Of course, Arithon pulls himself together enough to fight the curse. And basically ensures that we're going to have a really fucking long series:
For ill or for folly, the paradox would be permitted to renew itself; Lysaer had no training to understand or control how Desh-thiere’s meddling had twisted him. Assured of his righteousness, avowed to bring justice, he would use his survival to labour until this day’s atrocities were repeated. That colossal futility made a mockery of will, that perhaps reprieve came too late. One victim’s lamed effort at compassion might buy only failure at the end.
They get the fuck out of there. For his part, Lysaer has keeled over, and his men are getting him out of there too. Arithon ends up keeling over too, once they rendezvous with the Deshan survivors.
-
Arithon wakes up and a scout, surprisingly kind, fills him in. The forest is still standing. Some of the clan survived. Arithon has the same thought I do: which is that the clans are pretty fucked without their women and children. He weeps.
Jieret is okay though. He's resting at Arithon's side. He gets filled in on what happened to Steiven: he'd ordered Caolle and three hundred hand-picked young men back (Caolle was NOT happy about this), and charged with the rest. He was among the first to fall. Mercifully, he never knew what happened to his wife and daughters.
Jieret is now the earl of Deshir, and the caithdein of Rathain. At twelve years old. What a beginning.
Caolle did eventually break orders, which is how Arithon, Jieret, and what's left of the scouts (two) were able to reach safety.
Anyway, the headhunters league is mostly destroyed (yay!) and the Etarrans retreated outside the forest. The scout thinks they intend to poison springs and game to starve the clansmen out, but the clansmen are leaving anyway. They're going to join another earl's band in Fallowmere.
Oh. Thank god. There are still other clans. There's some hope after all. Both Arithon and I needed to hear that.
Anyway, Arithon's been treated physically, but mentally, well, he's fucked himself up kind of good. As the scout realizes as he gets to his feet and quotes the last line of that ballad that we saw at the beginning of the chapter.
-
The scene shifts to Caolle. He's joined by the bard, Halliron. Caolle's not dealing well with this, understandably. He should have listened, he admits. Halliron doesn't think that would have saved them, though. The men would have died and the children executed in Etarra.
They're walking through the battlefield and spy something odd: one of the dead Etarran pikemen has been laid to rest: his weapon moved aside, his helm removed, his eyes are closed and facing the sky, and his hands crossed on his chest.
They find others: both pikemen and clansmen arranged the same way.
Halliron understands first and explains the ballad of Falmuir to Caolle and to us:
‘That two cities took arms over marriage rights to an heiress.’ Halliron slowed to negotiate a wash of dry river pebbles where a misstep could easily turn an ankle. ‘The girl,’ he resumed, ‘had a seer’s gift. She begged her guardian to allow her to wed an uninvolved suitor as compromise, and to forfeit her rights of inheritance. For greed and for power her wishes were refused. A war resulted, with losses very like this one.’
...this isn't very subtle, Ms. Wurts. But I am interested in the way the Fellowship is essentially playing the role of those too hungry for greed or power. It's true, but I wasn't really expecting an acknowledgment of that.
Anyway, Caolle isn't inclined to be sympathetic to the Etarrans. They didn't have to come after all. Yeah, I hear you. He thinks this is a trick of some kind.
It's not, eventually they catch up with the person doing this: Arithon, of course. Caolle is pissed that he's wasting time with the dead when the wounded are suffering and lost. And again, fair. But Halliron understands both Caolle's pain and Arithon's.
He plays the song.
We don't get to hear it, but the imagery of the bloody siege, and a princess walking alone on a battlefield where defenders and abductors lay slain...
Again, it's not subtle. But it is a little magical:
Even as a princess had once done in grief and total loss, the Shadow Master poised amid the burned remains of clan kindred. His fine-boned hands were filmed with black ash for each of the corpses he had settled. His hollowed cheeks glittered with the tracings left scoured by tears. He was speaking. Each syllable rang with compassion, and each word he spun formed a name. He summoned in love, and they came to him, the shades of tiny babes and silent women, of girls and grandmothers and daughters and wives, sundered from life in such violence hat their spirits were homeless and dazed. They formed around him a webwork of subliminal light, not burned, but whole; no more aggrieved, but joyous, as he added words in lyric Paravian that distanced the violence that had claimed them.
Arithon gave back their deaths, redeemed from the horror of murder. One by one he cherished their memories. In an unconditional mercy that disallowed grief, they were fully and finally freed to the peace of Ath’s deepest mystery.
Caolle backs down, gruffly, pointing out that Arithon also is injured and exhausted, and if he keels over, he'll hit his head on a rock. But he leaves him be. Halliron stays, for a while, but eventually he can't watch anymore.
While I think Caolle's growing empathy in this scene is good, Wurts goes a BIT too far for me by having Caolle say that Arithon is greater than Steiven. I don't think that's a comparison that he would ever make. It's not even that I think Caolle would consider Steiven the greater man, they're just not comparable.
But there is something:
Arithon reaches one more body. Madreigh the scout. Open eyed and with a hole in his chest. And he's still fucking breathing. It's the spell. It accidently saved his life. Arithon is overcome by this and passes out.
--
The next subchapter is First Resolution.
And we start with a parallel:
Wrapped in the tatters of his surcoat, his camp blanket long since given up to alleviate the shortage of bandaging, Prince Lysaer s’Ilessid knelt to hold the hand of yet another lancer who shivered and thrashed in mindless suffering.
The garrison forces are in tatters, and Lysaer is trying to comfort the dying. Mostly, he's using this time to think.
He is, of course, heroic. He's been up all night, compiling lists of losses with Pesquil, standing at the riverbank, encouraging survivors as they emerged from the forest, walking beside litters, breaking up disputes, and helping to clean and staunch wounds.
He still has the power of purple prose too:
To find his ragged magnificence still among them in the cheerless grey of the morning made men break their hearts to meet his wishes. That Etarra’s concerns were foremost in his mind, no town survivor ever questioned. Without Lysaer’s light to stay the shadows, many more would have died by the grottos or been abandoned to the mindless distress induced by Arithon’s maze wards that had ensorcelled the troop in the west valley.
There are so many wounded and dead that they won't be able to bring the bodies back to Etarra. Lysaer vows to avenge the one he's comforting.
And we get a contrast too:
Raised to rule, well hardened for the trials of leadership, Lysaer shared the burden where he could. He spoke and touched shoulders, and once faced down a man who had wildly drawn a dagger and raved to anyone who would listen that he intended to lead a foray to go reiving back into Strakewood. Sympathetic to the men but possessed of a cool self-containment the s’Ilessid prince reviewed the wreck of Etarra’s garrison with no incapacitating pang of conscience.
What does he think about what he's done?
Where he passed, his unassailable assurance touched the men and left them silent with awe. His equilibrium could encompass seven thousand casualties. He could feel haunted and sad that Arithon had engaged in unscrupulous use of little children but not have lasting regrets that the wholesale elimination of barbarian women and young had been necessary to guard town security. No city could recoup from a defeat as terrible as this, were they left with belief such casualties could recur again.
...that's...a justification, I guess.
And that's Lysaer. Noble and considerate, but cold and monstrous at the same time.
Lysaer thinks about how he'd nearly killed himself to destroy Arithon. He realizes now that it was idiocy. There was no guarantee that Arithon would have died there. And this is interesting:
The stalking uncertainty lingered, that the inspiration to risk martyrdom for the cause might not have been Lysaer’s own.
Once in Briane’s sail-hold, and another day in the Red Desert, Arithon had used mage craft to turn his half-brother’s mind. Plagued by doubts, Lysaer wondered. Had the bastard plotted the same way in Strakewood? For if mockery and goading had been paired with sorceries to eliminate the only man with powers over light that might threaten him, the evil inherent in such design upheld a frightening conclusion.
Lysaer is capable of determining an outside cause to his actions. Just the wrong one.
And here we go again, Arithon is incapable of doing anything that won't somehow backfire in his face in the near or far future.
Anyway, Lysaer realizes that if he died there, Arithon would have been free to wreak far more havoc than seven thousand dead Etarrans.
His thoughts are interrupted by the announcement that Diegan is awake and asking for him.
Diegan is fuzzy and drugged, but pathetically happy to see Lysaer. He informs him of Gnudsog's death and is informed that Pesquil has taken charge. Apparently, Pesquil still has twenty men to instruct on tactics. And indeed, Lysaer tells us, the springs are going to be poisoned and the game killed.
The long term plan though is that Diegan will marshal a new campaign. But not yet. They need years of preparation, training and recruitment of allies first. Diegan formally (and desperately) invites Lysaer to stay and help.
Lysaer also promises that he'll be seeing Diegan's sister, Lady Talith soon. No Master of Shadow with his darkness shall be permitted to keep [them] apart.
--
The last subsection is Last Resolution.
We're back to the clans. There'd been nine hundred and sixty people in the Deshir clan. Now there are two hundred men alive. Half are wounded. And there are fourteen boys of Jieret's generation who survived the battle.
Arithon is putting a stone on the cairn that marks Steiven's grave. Dania's buried with him. He tells Jieret that they were fine people and apologizes for not being able to match up. He helps Jieret carve runes of blessing on the cairn.
They share a moment, in which Arithon promises to swear the full caithdein oath with Jieret when the boy's of age, and Jieret expresses how neither he nor his father have regrets.
We learn that Arithon hasn't made it through the battle unscathed, magically speaking. His mage sight had grown erratic after the battle and is gone now. He's lost his ability to work formal magic. This is a considerable emotional blow, and he feels like he's missing a limb.
He's not completely helpless though, he still has his ability to use shadow. Suddenly that distinction is significant.
Anyway, the clanfolk begin their own funeral rites. Arithon asks to keep Jieret's whittling knife, and Jieret realizes that this means Arithon is leaving. He accepts this. Besides, he doesn't need the knife anymore. He's got a sword strapped to his belt.
Oh Jieret.
Caolle is angrier about Arithon leaving. They really do have an interesting dynamic. Arithon explains his reasoning: basically, Lysaer's armies will basically be chasing after him forever, and he doesn't want the clans to be exterminated for his sake. He asks Caolle's leave to depart, alone, until such time as he can return and fulfill their hopes for him (rebuilding a city of peace on Ithamon's foundations).
Caolle admits he misjuded Arithon, but asks something for himself: he wants to raise the clans of Fallowmere, and then the continent.
Arithon doesn't like the idea at all, but he admits that they've lost a lot more than he has, so he won't tell them no. He grants his blessing, if not his approval.
We get some flowery sentiment that might amuse:
In token of friendship, Caolle offered his palms and accepted the prince’s double handshake. Across their clasped grip, while the song of lamentation spiralled and dipped through the greenwood, he gave his liege a voracious appraisal. The small build and fine bones, the green eyes with their depths and veiled secrets; both harboured deceptive strengths. Nearly too late Caolle had discovered an integrity that admitted no compromise. He would never in words be forced to admit that this scion of Rathain was both perfectly suited and tragically paired with a fate that must waste his real talents.
Fortunately, the mood is broken with some banter about Arithon being a dreamy fool and they part ways.
-
So now we join Arithon, who doesn't seem to know what to do now. For the first time in this book, he's free. No burdens, no responsibilities. Nothing to answer to.
So now what?
Halliron has an idea. He invites Arithon on the road with him. Arithon balks at the idea of company, and starts slipping back into self-castigation. He starts defending himself against accusations that Halliron's not making. Halliron is patient though, and waits him out.
He explains that as an old man, he could use someone young and strong to help. And Arithon is a talent who needs schooling. He's offering an apprenticeship.
It's the only thing Arithon's ever wanted, and fuck, he really has no reason not to accept. And he promised that Fellirin dude, like a hundred chapters ago. The chapter ends here, with Halliron telling Arithon to play.
--
There is one more snippet section to close us out. Reflections
1. Asandir and Dakar are hunting for meth-snakes. Traithe and Kharadmon are heading off to Shand, where there's still one more prince in hiding. And Sethvir is keeping an eye on the brothers, hoping for signs that the Black Rose Prophecy might still be valid.
Fuck that prophecy, dude. And try not to fuck up this poor kid like you did the last two.
2. Lirenda is reporting to Morriel that they've lost track of "the Master of Shadows".
3. The Mistwraith waits and endures in "the lightless shaft of Rockfell".
And holy fuck, I've reached the end of this book.
Stay tuned for the verdict.
--
OH! There's also a glossary in the back of the book, with character name pronunciations and what their names mean in Paravian. Arithon, for example, ALMOST rhymes with "marathon", and means "fate-forger". Lysaer is pronounced "lie-say-er" and comes the root words "lia" (blond/yellow/light) and "saer" (circle).
Gnudsog has a silent G and rhymes with wood log. Root: "Gianud" (tough), "sog" (ugly). Which is kind of a mean name for child!
Anyway, if there's a character whose pronunciation and/or name meaning you want to know, drop me a line.