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The Curse of the Mistwraith
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Curse of the Mistwraith chapter summaries/highlights
Before we begin please note: This series as it opens up will have enormous depth and complexity - it will not sprawl, but continue to redefine itself, over the course of the Five story Arcs. So be aware that 'behind' and beneath the straightforward action in these pages - a whole lot more will come to be 'unpacked' later on. The reveals are going to alter what you think and perceive here - so be ready to have your assumptions upended as you get deeper into the story and with each subsequent arc.
Or as Janny said it on the Q&A thread: “EVERYTHING you think you know is going to be stood on its head, so get ready to watch all of your assumptions kick you in the butt.”
Here is a rough 'over view' of the series layout, given by Janny on the Q&A thread:
The series is parsed into 5 Arcs - each encompassing another level.
Note: there are NO cliffhangers, each book has the same format (opening, halfpoint convergency, finale at finish) and each ARC will carry the same format in 'overview.' So each volume that opens an arc will 'gear back' to lay foundation to build the unveilings, and each subsequent volume delivers faster and faster, to an explosive finish. Arc Finishes will have the Full Punch, they are nearly all denouement.
Arc I: Curse of the Mistwraith (one vol/sets the 'stage) and introduces you to Basic characters/Basic opening of the world. It will 'look' very classical until the finish.
Arc II - two volumes.
Ships of Merior/Warhost of Vastmark - this will 'deepen' and enrich the characters tremendously/add a few secondary characters, and temper what you saw in Vol I - there will be surprises. These books were originally written as ONE VOLUME, so really, the finish of Merior is the 'halfpoint' peak, and Warhost contains the massive denouement. Please read them together if you can.
Arc III, subtitled Alliance of LIght
Five volumes long - this sequence will further characters and conflict but LIFT your vantage to 'world view' - you will START to see and understand the various factions and it will totally shift what you thought about Volume I. (this is not Earth, this is not feudal rule or 'monarchy' - the factions are NOT what you thought, as you discover their moral high ground and foundational purpose - what drives the factions CHANGES what you imagined they were about. You start to grasp that Charter Law is not anything like 'here' on earth.
Fugitive Prince opens the arc
Grand Conspiracy picks up speed
Peril's Gate is the arc tipping point (and also SERIES tipping point, all action speeds up from here forward)
Traitor's Knot slides into speed at convergency
Stormed Fortress is the Arc Finish and finale.
Arc IV, Sword of the Canon is the subtitle
Initiate's Trial opens the arc and starts STAGING for the Mysteries/planetary view (this is not earth)
Destiny's Conflict is the Arc Finale
Arc V is titled Song of the Mysteries - it is in progress; it is one volume to finish the series. HERE is the full play - all the levels, it will 'carry' everything forward, AND open the struggle to Epoch level, and also, unveil the part of the Elder Powers/deliver the finale and finish.
Each Arc - expect the characters to undergo a stage of development, reach a conclusive point or crisis in their lives, after which they CHANGE - and the next arc will reflect that impact and introduce another phase, until events impact them again at finale, and they evolve AGAIN.
Nothing is window dressing; nothing shown is for no purpose. All will get built on, later, even if at first, where the story is 'steering you' may not be apparent - it will be/and likely not in the direction you think it was heading. Wait for it.
If you have read Malazan and would like to know what to expect compared to it, here is a heads up given by Janny.
The Curse of the Mistwraith (WoLaS) vs Gardens of the Moon (Malazan)
Neither one of these is a 'simple' series, so this is not a 'simple' question, but I will try to make the answer as clear as possible - inviting readers (also) who've read both to chime in if they wish to add a comment from their point of view.
The obvious differences: Malazan's world was developed by gamers/more than one mind, and game campaigns that developed it were done at 'different' time periods with various characters at 'different' levels of power.
Athera was never a gamer's world, it was never a 'mass mind' creatiion: only me/over years and decades of development.
Therefore: expect there will not be this immense/sprawl across epochs and civilizations that you find in Malazan; nor will there be a gigantic cast of characters....Light and Shadows will be 'narrower' due to the world and its origins having Restrictions that you cannot (at first) grasp...they are all there for 'reasons' and those reasons will unveil, often dramatically. Where Malazan throws you in, head first/with Light and Shadows, you will learn the 'scape and scope by EVENTS/as the characters learn and develop and realize. So the story will not sprawl or widen across levels, but Spiral over the layers and levels - your perception of what you see will heighten and deepen - HUGE.
The interlocking perception of WHAT you see, the unveiling of the scope and depth and the re-ordering of your plot priorities - the two series will be similar in complexity and in parsing moral gray areas.
Where Erikson plainly states (if you read his interviews or listen to his panels) he is writing about CATHARSIS - and his readers note that he is writing about COMPASSION in Malazen....
Light and Shadows will have Catharsis and it IS indeed about Compassion and Empathy vs Justice and Logic (the POV that parses a single vantage vs ruling from the vantage of 'the many' - it will revise what this means, over and over again. The characters in Malazan who are broken due to their warfaring past - in Light and Shadows you will SEE the breaking and the mending and the rebuild.
Where Malazan looks broadscope at WAR/and huge conflict, and often pulp views of strange beings and doings and elder powers - Light and Shadows will take you there inside the characters' experience - it IS that experience, but a lot more character driven, a lot more into the experiential heads of those involved.
Oh, there are 'elder powers' and HUGE history at stake - but this will unwind a LOT more carefully - you won't see the truly powerful or the truly ancient ramificaitons until they are ready to unveil THEMSELVES - or - your reader comprehension through the characters' eyes are ready to SEE them. And your own assumptions as a reader will blind you, just as much as your characters' assumptions do.
So the Action in Light and Shadows takes longer to deliver (every single book is explosive at the FINISH/with convergency starting at halfway through each volume and arc) the set up to that action is more intricately laid down.
Where Malazan, you don't KNOW - in Light and Shadows it's in plain sight but between the lines.
Ursula LeGuin once laid down a 'challenge' to authors to come up with 'alternate systems' to our own here on earth. Light and Shadows picks up that gauntlet - but with a delicacy that allows you to KEEP your prejudices if you absolutely do not want to be moved...those who persist in 'knowing' what they are 'seeing' or those who skim past will certainly miss the experiential development of a lot of very complex ideas that are tackled layer by layer, through the characters' eyes.
Both series deal with the ruin and impact of violence used in conflict - and point to the futility of that solution - but they handle it very differently.
The 'philosophical' moments are not going to be told or stated straight up in the narrative as they are in Malazan, but will emerge or be shown in character interactions and dialogue.
The narrative (as opposed to character insight) in Light and Shadows will always tell you straight, always be 'accurate;' but you may (read definitely) not (yet) have the vantage to SEE the depths and the heights shown....where the character vantage will most always be wrong, and your reader vantage, too, get ready for the moment of denouement where all will 'click' into place, revealing an entirely different scenario.
One last contrast: Malazan's tone is overall pretty 'dark'. Light and Shadows is both Light and Dark - it will not pull punches at the harsh moments, but equally, there will be a balance and a triumph - it is full spectrum/both ends pushed to the max/No punches pulled.
Flexibility of your own view must be fluid; because the assumptions are gonna get busted, sometimes with spectacular twists. Attention to detail and thinking about what you see will matter a lot. If you miss it, don't worry (no need to be obsessive)- the ongoing story will correct your vantage as you go.
One more important point to note:
This series WILL NOT TELL YOU THE SYSTEM(S) OF RULE OR OF MAGIC - it will not 'explain' the rules and laws - it will SHOW THEM. So if the character whose POV you are sharing doesn't KNOW, then, you won't. If the character observing is not only ignorant, but NOT OBSERVANT, what you will 'see' will be their blind spot. The NARRATIVE (not character introspection or dialogue) will be accurate - but it will NEVER spell it out. You will have to be doubly OBSERVANT yourself, as reader, to pick up what the character is missing. The clues and hints in plain sight will be subtle, because: your own assumptions (as a reader of fantasy) will also trip you...until the 'unveiling' moments of character or narrative experience that shove that shift into the forefront of action and you cannot possibly ignore it.
The same goes for the 'philosophy' in the book....it will NOT BE TOLD TO YOU as in 'life is this' as so many male written novels like to do - it will be twined into the DIALOGUE or the CHARACTERS' experience very tightly - again in plain sight, but the NARRATIVE voice will not TELL YOU what to think. The experience will. Look for the 'quotable quotes' in the dialogue and character interactions - particularly where the power interface between the characters is NOT EQUAL.
PROLOGUEMost of the sentences here draw our attention to what will follow and what direction the story will take.
(view spoiler)[I’m going to take them in turn:
1. “The Wars of Light and Shadow were fought during the third age of Athera” – there are ages, each one important in a way or another
2. “Arithon, called Master of Shadow battled the Lord of the Light through five centuries of bitter conflict” – the series spans over 5 centuries of conflict
3. According to the canons of the religion founded during that period, “the Lord of Light was divinity incarnate, and the Master of Shadow a servant of evil, spinner of dark powers.” – temple archives vouch for this truth
4. Fragments of manuscripts offer contrary evidence exposing “the entire religion of Light as fraud” and awarding “Arithon the attributes of saint and mystic instead” – 2 contrary claims that highlight the main purpose of the series - to invite the reader to distinguish the truth and perhaps take a side? “Let each who reads determine the good and the evil for himself.”
5. The conflict “did not begin on the soil of Athera itself”, but “upon the wide oceans of the splinter world Dascen Elur”.
A bit of information about the worlds:
ATHERA
Athera is a higher resonance world, a planet with a steeper axial tilt than our Earth; it is slightly smaller in circumference; it has a bigger iron core, and a stronger magnetic field.
The steeper axial tilt implies more extreme shifts in season, north to south and therefore more extreme climate shifts.
The scale of Athera is in leagues (3 miles to one league) Los Lier to Corith is about 850 leagues distance. (Crow fly measure)
It is a 'higher resonance' world - which is going to have huge implications as the story goes on - certain things (like entropy) run differently here. There are also areas of higher electromagnetics - and this will affect things regionally. The story won't 'open' these areas in the first book - or you may see things but not realize how the underpinnings work; there will be a little more 'surface' view detail in the Second Arc, but you really won't see into this with far reaching awareness until the Third Arc, and it will open up HUGE in the fourth arc - so you may have to be content to figure it out as the characters do.
There are certain 'classic' seeming elements that won't be stripped of their masks in volume one. This is NOT a feudal society....nor Earth....not Medieval, either - nor a whole lot of things; but the mask is left in place early on, because tackling everything with all the layers unveiled would be way too much and it would have dragged the story down. It's much easier to parse those things as assumptions until the right time to throw it all upside down.
There are reasons and restrictions going on (due to the nature of the world, it's very deep and rich history, and other powers at play that you won't be aware of -- yet -- or, when you do see a power at play - you will not know how that faction fits - this all gets unveiled and it's part of the fun.
The Kingdoms of Athera
They are 5 as follows:
• Kingdom of Tysan - NW
• Kingdom of Rathain – N-NE
• Kingdom of Melhalla - Centre East (bordering Rathain in N-NE, Melhalla in the West and Shand in the South)
• Kingdom of Havish - Centre West (bordering Tysan in NW, Melhalla in the East and Shand in the South)
• The High Kingdom of Shand (divided into West Shand and East Shand) – taking up the whole South
We’ll return to this list later on and keep adding a little something for each of them.
DASCEN ELUR
Dascen Elur is a world of oceans with a far flung set of islands and widely scattered volcanic archipelagos. Population is small in number but of varied set of cultures. Communication is slow and difficult with all goods carried by ship. With no major continents to break up the wind, weather patterns were dangerous, quick to change and with fierce storms that could cause widespread damage. Major staple was fishing, the soil being too stony and crops often subject to storm damage.
Kingdoms of Dascen Elur:
• Kingdom of Amroth – the major trading centre - ruled by the s’Ilessid royal line
• Kingdom of Karthan – more like a gathering of islands - ruled by the s’Ffalenn royal line (hide spoiler)]
Chapter Set 1I. CAPTIVE
(view spoiler)[The chapter opens with the aftermath of a naval battle. 17 full-rigged warships of Amroth had tried to destroy a single brigantine from Karthan. And they succeeded but at the high cost of 7 warships destroyed through shadow and sorcery by the brigantine before it went under.
Looking for survivors among the wreckage, the sailors from Amroth’s warship Brianne rescue a young Karthan pirate who turns out to be none other than Arithon s’Ffalenn, the crown prince of Karthan.
Arithon s’Ffalenn, was the illegitimate son of Amroth’s own Queen who had betrayed Amroth and ran straight into the arms of his archenemy – the Pirate King of Karthan. Captured alive, he is a great prize to offer to the Amroth king, especially as
'Sailors sworn to the pirate king's service seldom permitted themselves to be taken alive.'
Now that should tell us something about the relationship between the 2 kingdoms and the treatment the prisoners may expect.
Locked in the chartroom of the ship, Arithon wakes up, plunges the ship into darkness and tries to escape. He is knocked out cold by a fist to the head and the darkness lifts. His captors decide to tie him up to prevent further escape attempts, but Arithon tries it again as soon as he regains consciousness, earning himself another knock out.
To prevent him from cutting up his bonds again, he is tied up with wire and a healer is summoned to attend to his wounds, both from the wreckage and inflicted by crew members. Arithon curses the healer, raves and insults everyone, until the first officer is forced to gag him and toss him in the sail-hold to prevent his crew members from lynching him.
The crew is terrified of the prisoner and the first officer fears a mutiny, so he orders the healer to administer Arithon a posset that will render him senseless until the ship reaches port. The posset is not safe and has addictive side effects that may even damage the mind and cause insanity if administered for a longer period of time. And the ship would take 20 days to reach the Royal Port where the prisoner can be delivered to the king. Afraid that he may reach the destination with an insane or dead prisoner, the first officer decides to head to South Island Harbour instead, which would take only 5 days sail, and deliver the prisoner into the custody of Lysaer s’Illesid, the crown prince of Amroth, who happens to be there for the summer and whose judgement is known to be “dependably exactingly fair”. – Important! (hide spoiler)]
Crown Prince
(view spoiler)[Lysaer s’Illesid, crown prince of Amroth, wielder of the inborn gift of light and thus “a match for sorcery and shadows”, is in the earl’s practice yard sparring with a nobleman when the news of his half-brother’s capture is delivered.
Here, the sparring bout provides a subtle insight to the prince’s character:
Lysaer (probably, the nobleman suspects) forfeited the match on purpose to curry favor/and 'end' it smoothly with no ruffled feelings -- He threw in the dagger not as a gift, but as a gesture of concession. He also demonstrates his astute grasp of others' affaris: he knew the nobleman had a quiet bet on the side (on the outcome of the practice match) AND he knew about the nobleman's wife's pregnancy....he uses that knowledge to 'offbalance' just a little - but it is all done in such a suave and charming manner, it's impossible for the 'victim' (the noble) to take any offense.
So Lysaer throws the match/demonstrates his piercing awareness of others' personal lives AND is magnanimous enough to 'pay' the silver the noble will have lost, since, evidently, Lysaer knew the noble expected to fight and LOSE (possibly to curry royal favor, who knows) - it shows the first glimpse of Lysaer's adept statesmanship/ability to swing people and politics to his side - effortlessly. – Important highlight for his character build-up!
7 generations of bloodshed stand between Amroth and Karthan’s pirates and the High King of Amroth, Lysaer’s father, often flies into terrible rages always caused by a s’Ffalenn. Is there any wonder then, that Lysaer himself has to fight an irrational hatred towards the s’Ffalenn prince at the bare mention of his name? But he does fight it and is determined to distinguish between hatred and justice because the man is after all his half-brother. Note that he goes to meet him with that decision in mind.
The brothers see each other for the first time in Brianne’s sail-hold.
Please note the emotions both brothers go through here. They are pivotal for their character build-up.
First one to speak, Arithon purposefully uses the word “brother”.
Irked at its mention, Lysaer accuses his half-brother of murdering hapless sailors and informs him that he has no hope of pardon. In turn, the accused counters by calling the sailors “crew of royal warships”.
'Show me a man who's harmless, and I'll show you one stone dead.' – Note: What does he mean?
Arithon’s humanity seems “sealed behind ungoverned viciousness” and he doesn’t hold back from taunting Lysaer to the extreme. But he does it with a warning:
“Kill thou me, and I shall helpless be. Or perhaps you’re too squeamish to try?" - WHAT does he mean by this, beyond the obvious provocation? (Is he perhaps scared of the CONSEQUENCES of exerting his power - and if SO, why? Or is he protecting someone?) This is what Janny wants the reader to discover or determine.
As soon as the provocation was let loose, Arithon attacks Lysaer with sorcery. He rifles through his memories and brings front the one of Lysaer’s last day with his mother, Lady Talera, Queen of Amroth.
That whole dialogue in between the king and queen is vital to determine the real reason for Talera’s betrayal and Arithon’s existence.
“You’ll use no child of mine as an axe with your feud with s’Ffalenn.”
”Our son’s gift is no weapon. Dare you abuse him? By Ath I swear if you try, you’ll get no second child from me.”
“Woman defy me and I’ll make you wretched with childbearing. Blame your father. He should have made your dowry more accessible. Sorcery and babies made a misfortunate mix. I’ll bed you now and every night afterward until you conceive the Master of Shadow I was promised.”
They fight and Talera vows:
“Force me and by the stones of Rauven Tower, I’ll even the stakes. The s’Ffalenn pirates will share my bride gift to s’Ilessid and grief and sorrow will come of it.”
In a nutshell: - Talera has brought to the marriage as brides gift the ability to give birth to 2 gifted children, one to wield the power of light and the other to master the shadow. Lysaer had already been born and had the power of light but that didn’t satisfy the king who wanted control over the shadow. He desired it for the purpose of using it against the s’Ffalenn and destroying them. Talera didn’t want to allow it so she fled and ‘evened’ the balance by birthing the child with powers over shadow to the s’Ffalenn king.
If you’d like to know the entire story and find out the reasons behind Talera’s decision, it will be posted under BONUS MATERIAL at the end.
Back to our 2 princes, after Arithon lets go of the memory Lysaer flies into a hot rage and strikes Arithon, belatedly realising what his half-brother’s attitude was about.
“You want me to kill you!”
And there we have it revealed – behind Arithon’s mask of mad violence, ”a tearing grief and shocking desperation”! - Why?
Because the captain of the brigantine who had burned with his ship was the pirate king of Karthan himself and Arithon’s father! Arithon was now the last living s’Ffallen heir. – Note that this is again very important in justifying Arithon’s future actions. Why the grief and despair? Is it just the death of a parent or something else? And we’ll come back to it later.
Arithon begs Lysaer for a knife to kill himself but his request is denied.
Ashamed of having lost control of himself and his emotions, ashamed of having almost given it to the prisoner’s request, Lysaer orders Arithon to be drugged to sleep and taken to Port Royal to his father. He is warned that the drug will probably cause Arithon to go mad from such a prolonged overdose, but considers insanity a fate preferable to that awaiting him in Amroth and insists on it. To protect the sailors from the king’s retribution at delivering a damaged prisoner, Lysaer decides to sail with them. (hide spoiler)]
Tracer
(view spoiler)[The High Mage of Rauven is pacing anxiously in his tower and demands to know what happened to his grandson; “his daughter’s s’Ffalenn bastard whom he deeply loved.”
A listener scryes and keeps watch, trying to find a promise of hope to attach to the bad news he must deliver the distressed grandfather.
After a full night of pacing, the High Mage is told that Arithon is imprisoned and drugged and about to be delivered to the king of Amroth.
A memory surfaces in the grandfather’s mind, of a little black haired boy who just mastered his first magic lesson.
“But it works like music!” – Very important! This is how we will explain magic on Athera. In a way, just like music.
The grandfather is angry and in his anger he exclaims: "Do you know what that boy renounced when he left to accept his father's inheritance?" – again important. What does he mean? Is Arithon special? If yes, how? – we’ll come back to it later.
In his grief and despair, the grandfather makes a vow: “If Arithon suffers harm, Amroth’s king will wish Fate’s Wheel could turn backward, and past actions be revoked. I will repay every cruelty, in kind, on the mind and body of his firstborn.”
And he makes the vow disregarding the fact that said first born is also his grandson.
The High Mage of Rauven is Talera’s father. (hide spoiler)]
Fragments
(view spoiler)[You need to pay attention to these triplets. Given at the end of each chapter, they offer clues and important details about things to come.
One this page, perhaps the most important is the last one:
“Under misty skies, in another place, a world awaits with a prophecy five centuries old, and not even its most wise yet know that a prince and a prisoner hold all hope for deliverance between them…” (hide spoiler)]
Chapter Set 2II. SENTENCE
(view spoiler)[After 20 days of sail, the warship Briane drops anchor in the harbour of Amroth’s capital and the word of the s’Ffalenn’s capture causes the nobles to start celebrating. Briane’s first officer is rewarded generously with jewels and a dukedom and “the bastard sorcerer” is taken to the south keep’s dungeons.
Arithon regains consciousness in the dungeon, as the drug he had been given for over two fortnights gradually weakens and he is overwhelmed by pain. Having received a master’s training under the sorcerers at Rauven, he automatically reaches inward to assess his condition.
And here we are given a few details about a mage’s training and the way magecraft is engaged.
“Even small tricks of illusion required perfect integration of body and mind; a sorcerer held influence only over forces of lesser self-awareness.”
And
“A mage who attempted to manipulate a superior force would incur backlash upon himself at the closing moment of contact.” – important details for our understanding of magecraft engaged in the future.
In his self-assessment, Arithon realises with horror that despite the fact he had sought to die, he has been brought to Amroth alive. “Instead of granting death, his captors had poisoned him, drugged him with a herb that ruined body and mind just to salve their king’s demand for vengeance.”
Making use of the training received at Rauven, he tries to dissolve the poison from his bloodstream, but the quantity is too high and Arithon collapses under the bodily torment of drug withdrawal and his thoughts unravel into delirium, engulfing him into past memories.
The first memory – five years prior to the present moment – the day the High Mage of Rauven, informed him that his father, Avar, King of Karthan, asked leave to name Arithon his successor. With a boy’s exuberance and wild ambitions, Arithon dreams that day of going to Karthan and using magecraft to free the waters beneath the sand and help the land be green again, thus putting an end to the feud between the s’Ffallen and s’Ilessid. Because, “with grain growing in the fields, the need for piracy and bloodshed will be ended.”
The grandfather commends the boy’s worthy ambition but warns him too. “Your talents are music and sorcery. Consider these for you have great potential. A king has no time for such arts. As a man who holds judgement over others, his life belongs wholly to his subjects.”
And all the while the raving Arithon rages at his younger self: “Fool!...you’ll go only to fail.”
The second memory – three years prior to the present moment – the day Arithon knelt before his grandfather’s feet and renounced the mage training and the only home he had known and loved for 20 years, in favour of kingship and his father’s inheritance. The boy’s exuberance had toned down and wisdom was starting to grace the young man. This time he didn’t really want to leave but HAD TO. “How dare I ignore such need? I might bring Karthan hope of lasting peace”.
“Heed your heart, his present drug-tortured awareness pleaded. Karthan might be made fertile from shore to shore but Amroth will never be weaned from hatred. Would you suffer s’Ilessid vengeance for your mother’s broken marriage vows?”
The third memory – same time three years prior – when Arithon accepted Aver’s sword as token for his heirship and laid it down at the High Mage’s feet pledging to go and restore peace in Kathan. And his granfather’s last parting words: “My grandson, you chose responsibility above your inner talents. That is a difficult turning. Although men might be inspired by a bard or enchanter, they cannot be led by one. The master’s mysteries you have learned at Rauven must never be used for political expedience, however pressing the temptation…”
And in the end, the last – the memory of Karthan’s spoiled farmlands that were transformed much too slow and a last voyage undertaken to Rauven to beg the aid of another mage. The final battle that claimed King Avor’s life and took Arithon’s freedom and on the heels of it, the wrenching guilt because: “I used sorcery, as Ath is my witness. But never directly to murder. Not even to spare my liege lord.”
This last scream of Arithon, in the throes of delirium, we can connect to the question in Chapter Set 1 (the discussion between the brothers in the sail hold - the provocation) and perhaps get an answer. – What guilt? For not using sorcery to kill even to save his father? For using sorcery and killing even if indirectly? We’ll come back to it.
These memories are all important! They stand at the core of Arithon’s behaviour and development as a character. And they are very easy to miss because the story in itself will make you want to rush reading. I missed them too at first read, and that did affect my understanding. There will come a time, in the future chapters, when Arithon’s behaviour may seem to not make sense. At that time, you may need to return here.
The prison guards notice Arithon is raving and summon the king’s healer. The healer realises the prisoner’s life is in grave danger because of severe drug addiction and extremely high overdose and interrupts the King’s banquet to inform his majesty. Angry because he may be cheated of the long-awaited revenge, the King demands the head of the one responsible for the administration of the drug.
Lysaer assumes responsibility arguing that the drug was the only way to prevent the prisoner from using his gift and, as the King cannot have the head of his own firstborn, he orders the healer to cure the prisoner’s drug addiction and preserve his mind intact within a fortnight or answer with his life as well as that of Briane’s healer, for the failure.
For 2 days the healer and his apprentices struggle to wean Arithon from the drug. After 2 days of suffering and agony, the drug is no longer necessary and Arithon, despite looking more dead than alive, is out of danger. From the drug that is, but not from the King’s need of vengeance!
When Arithon triumphs over the drug and wakes, the healer, impressed with his patient’s strength of character and resilience, wants to grant him TIME before the trial so that he can restore his strength as much as possible. But Arithon refuses and points out that if he's healed, it will only give the king more - he will be resilient enough to suffer longer. Weak, just out of his addiction - he can make an end of it faster. And here we get the answer to the previous questions (Arithon’s scream, in the throes of delirium as well as that in Chapter Set 1)
“Arithon turned his head towards the wall, too fraught to frame his deepest fear: that grief and despair had unbalanced him. That his fragile grip on self-restraint might snap under further provocation and tempt him to an unprincipled attack through magecraft.”
He is terrified of slipping and using his greater abilities to cause harm! He'd rather perish than live with that. This terror of causing harm is again another stone at the base of Arithon’s build-up as a character. It will be better explained later on and we’ll come back to it several times over during the series.
On the day appointed for his trial, Arithon is taken in front of the king. Despite being chained and almost skin and bones, Arithon taunts the king from the very first moment he faces him. He refuses to kneel and despite being beaten by guards he openly calls him a coward and reminds him about the wife that had deserted him in favour of his enemy. As the king’s rage grows, so do the blows of the guardsmen on Arithon’s already abused body increase in both number and ferocity. And Arithon doesn’t defend himself. When asked why, he gives the reason: "I could talk the fish from the sea, your Royal Grace. You would hear nothing but the reflection of your own spite."
As the guards’ mistreatment turns particularly cruel, Lysaer, who was observing from the margins, realises that Arithon was likely using his Rauven training to separate his mind from his body, which meant he must have felt no pain at all. Ashamed of the animal savagery exhibited in the court, Lysaer wants to leave. But just before he can duck through the door, a shadow appears in the empty air, in the middle of the court. A sending from Rauven, in the form of Talera, the king’s former wife. Through her, the king is informed that, the same fate that befalls Arithon will be given in kind to Lysaer. Kill one and murder the other. Maim one and cripple the other.
Enraged, to appease Rauven and still get his revenge, the king sentences Arithon to exile through the Gate on the isle of Worldsend and brushes off the worry of his first-born son who suddenly fears that he may have to share the ordered exile. (hide spoiler)]
Chapter Set 2- Part 2Prelude
(view spoiler)[Do not miss the intro:
Ocean World Dascen Elur
Left unwatched for five score years
Shall shape from High Kings of Men
Untried arts in unborn hands.
This shall bring the Mistwraith’s bane,
Free Athera’s sun again.
Dakar’s Prophecy of the West Gate - is revealing the beginning of our story. It is not a spoiler for the end because in this case, the end is only the beginning.
At Rauven, the clairvoyant informs the High Mage that the King of Amroth has chosen to banish Arithon through the Worldsend Gate. The High Mage is clutching Avar’s sword in his hands filled with inconsolable grief.
On Athera, a world far away, Sethvir of the Fellowship keeps the records at Althain tower, listening to pretty much everything happening on Athera and beyond (thoughts, images, facts and occurrences) and penning stuff down, as the fancy strikes him, into documents to be archived.
He hears the clairvoyant’s report and instantly focuses his attention on Rauven. “Power great enough to shatter mountains answered Sethvir’s will. Faultlessly directed, it bridged the unimaginable gulf between worlds and retrieved the vision” of the High Mage clutching the sword. – That should tell us the kind of power Sethvir has at his disposal and may easily wield.
Sethvir knows the blade and remembers past events; pairs fact with circumstance and reaches a conclusion that makes him whoop like a boy and race to deliver it to his colleagues in the Fellowship of the Seven. Note that he does it by thought, not pen and paper.
In the time before the Mistwraith’s curse, three royal heirs from Athera had fled through the Worldsend Gates through the west, seeking sanctuary from a rebellion which threatened their lives. That blade had been carried by one of the princes, who had been abandoned to their fate as their exile became permanent. After their flight, the Mistwraith’s conquest banished all sunlight, covering the skies in fog, and the gates were directionally sealed on the promise of a madman’s prophecy (see intro).
Sethvir recognised the High Mage of Rauven. He himself had trained the man’s ancestor in the foundational arts of power. So he kept two and two together and reached the conclusion that Dakar’s Prophecy of the West Gate was just being born. (hide spoiler)]
Interlude
(view spoiler)[Meet Dakar everyone! Dakar the Mad Prophet and author of the West Gate Prophecy, delivered 500 years before the present day events.
A mixture between Kruppe and Pust with a lot more extra to top it off, Dakar is one of the most controversial characters ever written. I don’t think you’ll find 2 readers that share the same opinion when this particular character is involved. The only question is how you will feel about him.
Drunk and soaked to the skin, Dakar is collected in tow for a swift departure by Asandir of the Fellowship of the Seven. Asandir informs him that the prophecy is about to bear fruit, and they must reach the West Gate in time for the arrival of the prince(s – implied, since no number is specified, Dakar jumps to a hasty conslusion) destined to be the Mistwraith’s bane.
The prophesied prince was sent through the Worldsend Gate on Dascen Elur that very morning and was expected to pass through the West Gate on Athera in 5 days time, after crossing the Red Desert, the buffer world for this particular gate.
For a better understanding, here are a few details about the Worldsend gates:
There are 4 gates on Athera:
The West Gate – in Tysan, next to Avenor – buffer: Red Desert - destination: Dascen Elur
The Northgate in Northwest Rathain – in the ruins of Penstair
The East Gate – in East Rathain
The South Gate – South-West of West Shand – destination: Marak
Each gate is a two-way portal to another world but the travel will be done in 2 stages, through a sort of “buffer world”: Origin world – buffer world – destination world.
To explain: once you step through the origin gate, you reach the "first" world, which acts as a buffer. That buffer world will have another gate, a correspondent of the one on the original world, and you need to take your second step through that, to reach the destination world.
Dakar is wondering which of the royal princes is bound to arrive and bets on s’Ilessid. So now is the time to fill in the details regarding Athera’s royal lines.
• For the Kingdom of Tysan – stands the s’Ilessid royal line
• For the Kingdom of Rathain – stands the s’Ffalenn royal line
• For the Kingdom of Melhalla - stands the s’Ellestrion royal line
• For the Kingdom of Havish - stands the s’Lornmain royal line
• For the High Kingdom of Shand (divided into West Shand and East Shand) – stands the s’Ahelas royal line (hide spoiler)]
Three Worlds
(view spoiler)[In this triplet again pay attention:
1. The King of Amroth celebrates the exile of Arithon but fails to notice the absence of his own son
2. A fountain in a desert
3. An enchantress watching (hide spoiler)]
Chapter Set 3III. EXILE
(view spoiler)[Lysaer, crown prince of Amroth is kidnapped by order of the High Mage of Rauven and hurled head-first through the Worldsend Gate. He wakes up in the middle of the Red Desert, under the sting of unbearable heat to discover that he has no way to return back home and is stuck in exile with only Arithon for companion.
Stabbed by grief that his royal father didn’t care enough for him and disregarded Rauven’s warning to satisfy his vengeance, shaken because he had suddenly lost everyone that bound his pride and ambition and terrified of an unknown future away from everything he’s ever known, Lysaer looks for a scapegoat to blame and assigns the role to Arithon (“the only living human who remained to take the blame”)
Arithon tries to convince him he is blameless but the way he had baited the King during the trial prevents Lysaer from believing him. So he chooses to dismiss Arithon’s offer of setting differences aside and working together to survive and attacks.
“Seven generations of unforgiven atrocities stand between them” and that is reason enough for Lysaer to want to hate and kill. Humiliated, defeated for the moment by Arithon and agonized by wounds and envy, Lysaer wants to set off by himself but Arithon refuses to allow it.
A prince knows nothing of hardship, while the pirate son has already endured a fair share of it. But Lysaer refuses to acknowledge it and, when faced with the need to trust his “enemy”, he turns bitter angry and full of hatred and attacks again. He’d rather die than depend on his “hated bastard-brother”! But Arithon will not allow it. Determined to keep “his brother” alive at any cost, he uses sorcery to drive Lysaer to his feet and manipulates his hate to keep him walking. They both set out for Mearth, where the ancient scrolls at Rauven mentioned the Gate that might get them out of the Red Desert.
After 5 days of traveling through the scorching heat of the Red Desert, Arithon’s strength fails and he falls asleep. Throughout the entire journey till now he had drawn on the resources of his mage training to stay awake and keep Lysaer going, but after the ordeal in Amroth and the divided rations, he succumbs to exhaustion. Lysaer pounces on the chance and lets his hate and anger loose, almost killing Arithon. Before he gets to deliver the final blow, Arithon urges him to head on to Mearth and beware the curse mentioned by the Rauven records. “You’ve a chance at life. Don’t waste it.”
Arithon’s behaviour makes Lysaer falter and let go of his fury. With a clear head he realises that his brother had used sorcery against him to inflame his hatred and keep him going. Torn between hatred of s’Ffalenn and distrust of his own motives, he decides to let fate and the desert be the judge of Arithon and hurls the sword away with the intent of collecting his share of the supplies and set off on his own. Unfortunately, the thrown sword had pierced the last waterflask. The prospect of being left with no water horrifies Lysaer and drives home the guilt of leaving a half-brother badly wounded under the pitiless sun “with the marks of injustice on his throat”.
It may be easy to pass over all these emotional stages Lysaer goes through now, but they are important comparison measures for what will come next. How Lysaer develops as a character, how much of that development is due to innate characteristics or outside influence, these stages Lysaer goes through now should help you get a clearer idea.
Arithon wakes up later, after Lysaer had left. He is weak and dying, but relieved that his brother has a chance at survival and that he doesn’t have to bear the burden of responsibility for his life anymore. But then he realises the waterflask had been cut and believes Lysaer had rejected the chance to live. So he succumbs to torment and delirium.
The past decision of taking up the mantle of his father and leaving his hopes and dreams behind at Rauven, only to fail and leave just death behind comes back to haunt him.
The lyrante abandoned at Rauven along with a bright future in magecraft. – His hopes had gone silent just as his music.Another piece of the puzzle to add to the the foundation of Arithon’s character. Renouncing something that he loved deeply, only to fail in the purpose he chose above it.
An image of Lysaer dead – because he “failed to save him!”
An image of his dead father, shot by an arrow and licked in a rising rush of flame. – this one accompanied by agony because Arithon may have been able to save his father if he had used sorcery to destroy the Amroth fleet! Instead of doing that he had just used shadow and blinded them so that they turned on each other until 7 were destroyed.
And here is where we get to the core of Arithon’s inner torment. “How could I twist the deep mysteries? Was I wrong not to fabricate wholesale murder for the sake of just one life?” – This question is what will drive him and we’ll come back to it at the end of the book.
Lysaer returns just when Arithon’s torment is at its peak, and drags his half-dead brother to a fountain he had discovered in the desert. “Your life is your own affair but I refuse responsibility for your death.” – Is it guilt that drove him back? Or something else?
The fountain Lysaer discovered is the one mentioned in the chapter intro: The Five Centuries Fountain built by the sorcerer Davien. The brothers are healed and refreshed as soon as they drink from the fountain’s water but now they are destined to cease to age for 500 years as well as to suffer those lengthened 500 years with tears and through grief. (hide spoiler)]
Transgression
(view spoiler)[Meet Lirenda, First Enchantress to the Prime Matriarch of the Koriathain, and Elaira, junior initiate of the same Order.
After being ordered to keep watch over the Second Line, Elaira defies protocol by retorting and breaching two of the most unmentionable subjects known to the Prime Circle of the Koriani: the Fellowship of the Seven and The Lost Waystone.
Elaira states that “the second lane requires no watch duty”. But Why? We’ll come back to it.
First:- The Koriani and the Lanes
There are 12 energy lanes throughout Athera, channels of electro-magnetic force that array Athera’s world. They span the circumference of the planet, intersecting at the north and south poles, and standing waves formed into bands of energy flow/current.
The Koriani are an ancient Order of Enchantresses whose interests on Athera will be revealed later in the series. They are ruled by the Prime Matriarch or Prime Enchantress who is assisted by the First Enchantress and the Prime Circle, a circle of twelve of the oldest and most experienced/powerful enchantresses. They have the ability to manipulate the elements: water, fire, earth and air (one element being predominant for each of them) and are well known for their healing skills.
By tuning their consciousness into harmony with one of Athera’s lanes, the Koriani can build a connection between their mind and the lane, using their predominant element as a bridge. As a result, they can literally ‘see’ what happens within the entire area covered by the lane.
Ex.: Elaira used water, her predominant element, and a picture of Asandir and Dakar traveling towards the West Gate formed onto a pool’s surface. She noticed it, recorded it and moved on. There was a lot of ground to cover on the whole Second Lane.
Second: – The Waystone and The Fellowship of the Seven
The Waystone is a spherical crystal that can encompass the power of 180 Koriani enchantresses and bind them into a single force. It was “misplaced” during the chaos of the Mistwraith’s conquest. If recovered, it would allow the Prime Enchantress to KNOW what actually happens on Athera, instead of trying to guess based on what the lane watch reveals.
Sethvir of the Fellowship may know or find out where the location of the Great Waystone is, but the Koriani would never even consider asking him for help. The sisterhood regarded the Fellowship with deep and bitter resentment and despite their need, they’d rather suffer through it than make that particular appeal. – That should tell us quite a bit about the relationship between the 2 factions. (hide spoiler)]
Curse of Mearth
(view spoiler)[The 2 half-brothers head for the gate in Mearth, after having their strength restored by the Five Centuries Fountain.
Note how Lysaer’s personality is revealed even more here. You’ll be needing to form a good image of his character to be able to understand his decisions later; to be able to see how he changes and realize why.
He resents his half-brother because Arithon was given a training he, as a prince never received. He resents the fact that Arithon doesn’t mock him for his lack of experience. He struggled for years to learn on his own and that fact again doesn’t provoke any reaction from Arithon. Does Lysaer want praise and resents the fact that he’s not getting it? Or is Arithon proving to be better than the mean bad pirate sorcerer everyone believes him to be and that nettles Lysaer because his own already formed opinion may be wrong?
Lysaer's entire upbringing has centered upon a crown he would never inherit. He sees no future for himself in another world and is anguished by a gnawing sense of worthlessness. – Important!
He keeps comparing himself to Arithon and grudgingly admits that his half-brother could earn a place of respect anywhere, while his quick mind and enchanter’s discipline (forged during years of training that Lysaer was denied!) could be turned to any purpose on any world.
Lysaer sees himself only as having a future as a fencing tutor or a guard captain and “shrank in distaste at the thought of killing for a cause outside his beliefs”. – Important. We’ll come back to the killing and the beliefs towards the end of the book.
Together, the brothers face the Curse of Mearth, manifested in the form of living darkness that tries to possess them and bars their way to the Gate.
In this display of light and shadow vs darkness, we get a good glimpse at the gifts of both brothers.
Arithon can manipulate shadow; draw it in or dispel it. This way he can wrap a place in shadow turning broad daylight into night. He can either manipulate an existing shadow or create/summon his own.
In turn, Lysaer can manipulate the light of the sun. He can either draw it from the sun and manipulate it, by turning it into bolts of lightning; or he can create his own light to further turn into a bolt of lightning.
Both brothers' access to power is elemental in nature, and used together, create an opposing force.
Combining their use of powers and relying on each other for strength, the two manage to pass through the Gate together. (hide spoiler)]
Chapter Set 4Note: This Chapter Set has a lot of important details and info you need to pay attention to.
IV. Mistwraith’s Bane
(view spoiler)[Asandir and Dakar are already waiting in front of the West Gate when Arithon and Lysaer come through. Asandir realises the princes had been touched by the shadows of Mearth and are now in grave peril. “The shadows’ geas bound the mind to madness.”
They take the princes to an abandoned woodcutter’s cottage and Asandir immediately attends to Arithon - to Dakar’s dismay, who believes Arithon to be a criminal or an outcast, because of the evidence of recent and brutal captivity clearly shown on his body. Despite being told to look at the blade Arithon carries, Dakar refuses to acknowledge it, sticking to his already made opinion of a peasant carrying a Paravian blade and tends to Lysaer who had suffered nothing worse than desert exposure.
We have a mention over here, of the Paravian races.
Athera’s oldest races were called The Paravians. They were 3: the unicorns, the centaurs and the sun children. And they all had vanished after the Mistwraith’s conquest of Athera’s skies. They play an important role in the series so we need to remember them.
Saddened by the obvious abuse a royal son of s’Ffalenn had been subjected to because the sight itself “was an offence”, and wanting to know why it came to be, Asandir first asked forgiveness for the past, then attempted to probe Arithon’s mind with his own. He realised that Arithon was mage trained and his strength was considerable, if his defences extended beyond waking perception (while passed out cold).
Note the name here: Arithon – the Paravian root of meaning was “‘forger’, not of metals but of destiny”. Important because it also foreshadows what will come.
Also note that Asandir attacks Arithon’s defences with the force he would have accorded a near equal. – Again a hint of how strong Arithon really is.
Once he breaches the defences, Asandir recognises the geas of Mearth’s curse. It bent the mind into endless circles around a man’s most painful memory, until the victim was either driven insane or into amnesia. Arithon’s most painful memory represented the death of his father.
Pay attention here and you will see that this neatly connects with the memories pulled forward during the delirium, as well as the discussion with healer before his trial.
King Avar is dying and regrets calling his son away from Rauven. And Arithon denies it: “Fate witness, you were right to call me!” But deep inside, under that denial is a whole cartload of self-doubt.
If he hadn’t been called, he would have never needed “to face the anguished choice: to withhold from misuse of master conjury and to count that scruple’s cost in lives his unrestricted powers could have spared.”
He could have used sorcery and destroyed the Amroth fleet, but he didn’t! He didn’t use his power directly to harm. And the result was the death of everything he held most dear!
All these fragments of the past scattered within the first few chapters will need to be picked up and placed together the same way you’d make a huge puzzle. Only after gathering them all will you be able to get a complete picture.
After Asandir snapped off the cycle provoked by Mearth’s curse, he sorted through Arithon’s memories to see what he has to work with. And here we get another good insight into the prince’s character makeup as well as the first hint to the inborn powers he had been gifted with.
“Arithon was a man multiply gifted, a mage-trained spirit tailored by grief to abjure all desire for ruling power.” (The why of it should be already clear by now.) ”Scarred by his severe s’Ffalenn conscience and haunted past healing by his mother’s s’Ahelas foresight, Arithon would never again risk the anguish of having to choose between the binding restraints of arcane knowledge and the responsibilities of true sovereignty.”
Simply put, Arithon is:
1. A gifted mage
2. Has a severe s’Ffalenn conscience
3. Is haunted by s’Ahelas foresight (from his mother’s side)
All of these added to his mastery of shadow.
To note: 2 different traits from 2 different royal lines. Do all the royal lines come with specific traits? We’ll come back to it.
Also, as the s’Ahelas foresight came from Arithon’s mother – has Lysaer also been gifted with it? We’ll come back to it.
Arithon was the last living heir to the Kingship of Rathain, a land divided in strife since the Mistwraith had drowned the sky. The hopes of generations filled with sorrow were resting on Arithon stepping up and accepting the crown for his people. The balance of an age was resting on the prince’s choice and Asandir didn’t want to take chances. He could not release the prince from Kingship so he tried to at least grant piece of mind and a chance for acceptance. For this purpose only, he blocked all of Arithon’s memories that were making kingship incompatible with magecraft. A temporary block only as The Law of the Major Balance which founded his power didn’t allow him to interfere directly into mortal lives.
Note the fine line Asandir walked here: he didn’t fully block the memories, so he didn’t interfere directly. He controlled only the recognition and allowed Arithon to not be aware in full of his awaiting fate until he could be offered the guidance to manage his gifts by the Fellowship of the Seven. – Why would he need help managing those gifts so that he can accept the kingship? – We’ll come back to it later. And was Asandir right to do it?
Note how Dakar had already formed an opinion of Arithon and doesn’t want to change it even when he is holding Alithiel in his hands as proof.
It is here that we get the first good look at Alithiel:
“Ath! That’s Alithiel, one of the twelve swords forged at Isaer from the cinder of a fallen star.”
So Alithiel is one of 12 particular swords forged from the cinder of a fallen star. More to come about her in the next chapter!
Asandir tries to explain to a confused Dakar what unexpected tangle the prophecy had spun, by bringing to Athera 2 princes instead of one. And here we get another clue to the inborn powers of the brothers as well as their connection to the Fellowship, through their ancestors.
“Our princes are half-brothers through s’Ahelas on the distaff side. The affinity for power Sethvir once nurtured in that line has evolved unselectively on Dascen Elur, to the point where direct elemental mastery was granted to unborn children, all for a bride’s dowry… Elemental mastery of Light and Shadow granted intact upon conception.”
Note: Sethvir nurtured the affinity for power in the s’Ahelas line!! Did Sethvir grant that line the powers? Or is there more behind it? And what about the s’Ahelas foresight? – More to come!
Also, Asandir remarks that only one of the princes understands his gifts and that “Athera’s sunlight might be perilously bought.” And note that “Man’s meddling created the Mistwraith. And by the tenets of The Major Balance, mortal hands must achieve its defeat.” Pay attention to these details! Mortal hands and lack of understanding – Important!
As soon as Arithon awakes, he recognises the presence of Asandir as a “power greater than any he had ever known… One strong enough to found a World Gate or bind added lifespan arcanely into water” and warns Lysaer that he’s expecting their benefactors to have a reason for their kindness.
Note here the difference between the brothers: Arithon - sure of himself and instantly taking charge, Lysaer – shoved in beyond his depth and resentful of having to rely on charity and a former enemy’s judgement. Note: former enemy!! – Is he starting to trust or admitting he may have been wrong in his assumptions?
The first meeting of Asandir with the brothers allows another glimpse at the ‘level of power’ wielded by Asandir, and the Fellowship by extension: “the blinding presence of the infinite”.
Important: When Asandir rebukes Arithon’s thanks for the hospitality, Arithon kneels and begs forgiveness assuring he didn’t want to slight - fact which causes Lysaer’s outrage and Dakar’s shock. Why? Is it because a prince doesn’t kneel before a sorcerer? Or something else?
Everyone tries to make Lysaer feel included by switching from the Paravian language they initially used (language known on Dascen Elur as the Old Tongue) to the common tongue (on both worlds) and he eases up, while Arithon tenses. By now he had already decided: “his magecraft and his music will not be sacrificed to the constraints of duty a second time.” To cover his intent with distraction he keeps the initiative and provokes. He wants to know who Davien is and he is making it clear to Asandir that he is aware his memories had been gone through.
We are told that Davien was once a sorcerer of Athera’s Fellowship of Seven who opposed his fellow sorcerers and overthrew the Order of the High Kings because he had judged mortal men unfit to reign in dynastic succession. –Important detail! To remember for later!
Unsatisfied with the answer, Arithon demands more by provoking again, driving Lysaer to outright anger because of his lack of diplomacy. Lysaer’s accusation, of Arithon not having learned any diplomacy whatsoever as heir of Karthan, drives Arithon in turn to remember his past suffering, but in doing so, he encounters the memory block set by Asandir. Puzzled and angry at having his self-command stolen from him, he fights the block (without result) till he passes out.
Note that Arithon realises he is being lied to and is angry at not being given a choice. He now has to accompany Asandir to Althain tower to meet the rest of the Fellowship of the Seven and see for himself the ruin caused by the Mistwraith.
Also note that the realisation that Asandir had placed Arithon under mind block because “he had an excellent reason” only hammers down Dakar’s already formed opinion that the s’Ffalenn is not to be trusted. He adds this detail to an almost formed prophecy he had been driven to while holding Alithiel and makes up his mind. – Important to see how this will play out later. (hide spoiler)]
Chapter Set 4 - Part 2Overview
(view spoiler)[Gritten, a clansman and the 14th heir of a deposed earl, huddles in a cleft overlooking a mountain pass in the wilds of Camris.
Survival there came dear for the clans, hedged by storm and starvation, a contrast to the comfortable life of the townspeople in Erdane, led by the Mayor who now ruled the former Earl’s castle.
500 years ago, an uprising had swept Erdane in the wake of the High King’s fall. The earl was slaughtered in his bed and his people fled looking for refuge in the wilds struggling to survive while haunted by both winter storms and the headhunter’s horns.
Hunted like animals with bounties on their heads, the clansmen allowed their hearts to fill with hatred and turned to ambushing and raiding caravans heading to town as a means of survival. They would defend clan honour with their lives and await the prophesized return of their long lost s’Ilessid High King. Because there lay the true measure of their birthright!
Note that Gritten is ordered to hold back the raid because a bard rides with the caravan. And the bard is friend to the clan protected by guest oath. – Important detail! Honour and oaths! They are important to the clans. (hide spoiler)]
Preview
(view spoiler)[The half-brothers are working together and fighting the Mistwraith. Training for what’s to come, under Asandir’s supervision. They are all on the way to Althain tower, where Sethvir awaits and the Fellowship of the Seven will convene.
Note that Asandir and his colleague are hoping the princes will be able to “mend the rift between townsman and barbarian” – but risk is involved because of Dakar’s newest prophecy foreshadowing future trouble.
Remember: Dakar didn’t want to have that prophecy! He refused it by breaking contact with the sword! – Important. What if he hadn’t? (hide spoiler)]
Envoys
(view spoiler)[Elaira is sent to Erdane as messenger
A raven is sent from Althain and the raven is guided by a geas.
Asandir receives warning from a colleague that one pack of Khadrim has escaped.
Khadrim – flying fire-breathing reptiles that were the scourge of the Second Age. By the Third Age they had been driven back and confined in a warded preserve in the volcanic peaks in North Tysan.
Note: Khadrim are flying fire-breathing reptiles, NOT dragons. (hide spoiler)]
Chapter Set 5 - Part 1V. Ride from West End
(view spoiler)[On the way to Althain tower, the travellers stop near the town of West End. The princes are left in a glen at the edge of the forest next to the town with orders to wait there, while Asandir sets of on an errand of his own and Dakar goes to the town fair to purchase additional horses.
Dakar is late and the brothers grow bored of the wait. Curious to find out why they were specifically instructed to do nothing but wait, Arithon suggests a visit to the town’s autumn fair. Despite being weary of Asandir’s displeasure at the disobeyed order, Lysaer finds the new and unexpected prankster side of his half-brother infectious and decides to tag along.
Hedging bets on finding Dakar dead-drunk and face-down in a gutter as well as on how long it would take the prophet to get sober, the 2 princes venture into town.
Note how wretched the town itself looks. Arithon instantly realizes West End was a seaport fallen into decline. With the Mistwraith covering the night sky, the great ships were no longer able to make port there.
Also note Lysaer’s difficulty to adjust to his new station. Without valet and on foot, with no status, he tries to use the charm that had made the ladies on Dascen Elur fawn over him to obtain directions to the fair. His approach backfires though and instead of being fawned over, he gets threatened and called “sly-faced drifter scum”.
Confused and wary because of the town-people’s reaction to them, the brothers head towards the fair and encounter Dakar, drunk and snoring in a gutter, sprawled on his back and covered with garbage. Arithon steals Dakar’s sack of coins (Dakar will not forget the slight!) and they resume their search of the fair with the intention of buying the horses Dakar was supposed to get.
Note that the town’s people are speaking a with a different accent, while the people at the fair use one much closer to usage on Dascen Elur. The same language, one could even say, but evolved differently.
When Arithon asks for the price of a gelding he confuses the trader:
“Daelion’s hells!! What clan are you from brother, and is this some jest, you here bidding like a townsman?”
So the “drifters” were clansmen. Their speech differs from that of the townspeople and is accented the way the princes were speaking.
The gelding Arithon had asked for, was not for sale. It was the personal mount of a clan lord. And that fact alone turned Arithon’s inquiry into an insult. One clansman does not bid for the personal mount of another! And clansmen will never allow such an insult to pass.
Just when the situation is about to get out of control, Asandir arrives and soothes everything out. He buys the gelding with a way beyond generous amount, and it is accepted because of his status/not the coin. He then takes the princes out of the fair and instructs them to wait while he goes after another horse.
Note his warning: “You’ve already left an impression with the drifters. Don’t cause more talk in West End, am I clear?”
Followed by another: “…in this place, people associated with sorcerers very often wind up roasting in chains on a pile of oiled faggots.”
– Why the warnings? – In the previous chapter, the Fellowship determined to let the princes receive their impressions of Athera through direct observation. Do people hate sorcerers? Townspeople in particular!? And why would the brothers cause talk?
Asandir is concerned that the folk who saw the brothers will talk. And “the result might brew up a curiosity far better left to bide until later.” - We’ll also come back to it later.
The party leaves West End after Asandir gets another horse for Arithon and collects Dakar from the gates (trussed and draped across the saddle – still drunk, stinking of garbage and snoring, despite being doused in cold water).
Note that Asandir takes special care to get Arithon a mare that will keep him busy. He has to use his every shred of attention to keep her on the road. – Why? Does Asandir want to keep Arithon preoccupied so that he doesn’t think of his awaiting fate? Or is it something more? We’ll come back to it later.
On the way, we are told who ‘the drifters’ are – people whose ancestors once ruled in West End and who had been nomads since the time of the rebellion which threw down the high kings. – Remember Grithen's thought on that historical event in the previous chapter?
During the party’s travel to Camris, there are a few things we should take notice of:
First the Iyat who possesses Dakar’s cloak and tries to apparently strangle him.
The Iyats are energy sprites native to Athera, not visible to the eye, who manifest in a poltergeist fashion by taking temporary possession of objects. They feed upon natural energy sources: fire, breaking waves, lightning, temperature change, etc. When you deal with Iyats, you have to restrain your emotions. Anger and distress only goad them on to greater mischief. – They will appear often in our story.
Second, during the princes’ conversation in the night, Arithon’s answer to Lysaer’s question:
“If you could go anywhere, do anything, be anything you wanted, what would you choose?
Not to go back to Karthan.”
As well as his conviction that the fate that awaits him won’t be pleasant.
The explanation for the carved standing stones in the forest: “In times past, creatures who were not human tended these forests. Attuned to the deepest pulses that bind land and soil to Ath’s harmony, they left stones such as these to show what ground and which trees could be taken for man’s use and which must stay whole to renew the mysteries. Once the protection of sacred ground was the province of high king’s justice. Pastures and fields were cut only where the earth could gracefully support them. But now such knowledge is scarce.”
In other words:
- In the past the old races (Paravians) tended the forests
- There is an universal energy binding the land and soil to exist in harmony
- Some of the trees must stay whole to renew the mysteries (- these will be later explained)
- The high kings were responsible for the protection of the sacred ground where the protected trees were growing.
- The knowledge of that past is almost lost at present
We are also told that the last of the Paravians passed from the land when the Mistwraith swallowed the sunlight and no one knows where they have gone.
The minstrel met on the way. He had been waylaid by a caravan, beaten and left on foot without his horse. Note Asandir’s outrage: “Who in this land has dared to abuse a free singer?” – In the previous chapter the caravan raid was called off because a bard was riding with it. And now Asandir’s outrage! – music and those who bring it are highly valued on Athera! (hide spoiler)]
Chapter Set 5 - Part 2Peaks of Tornir
(view spoiler)[Ferilin the bard travels with the princes’ party and entertains everyone in the evenings with songs and ballads accompanied by the lyrante. Day after day he watches Arithon and suspects him of a bard’s talent or at least predisposition. He makes repeated attempts to entice Arithon out of his shell and make him sing but without success. Until one night when he uses Dakar and places a bet. Unable to resist the chance to humble Dakar, Arithon accepts the lyrante and plays, astonishing everyone, including Ferilin, who is now convinced the brooding young man has a masterbard’s talent. Angry because Arithon rejects his praise, Ferilind scolds him: “How dare you waste such great talent! Can’t you accept your true calling?”
Note the longing and sorrow in Arithon’s reply: “Daelion turns the wheel. One cannot always have the choice.”
And Asandir’s clarification: “These are troubled times for all of us my friend. Arithon has the gift, none can doubt. But music cannot be his first calling.” – And there you go again! The prince will again be forced to do what needs to be done and keep his dreams and desires aside.
While approaching the Tornir pass, the travellers encounter the remains of the caravan who had waylaid Feirilin. Everyone was dead – killed by a pack of Khadrim who are still ahead, in the pass. Asandir urges everyone forward and warns Arithon that he will have to draw his sword when told to. At Dakar’s confusion he clarifies: the sword “was forged ten and a half thousand years past, expressly for war against the Khadrim.”
Note that the nature of Alithiel had escaped all mages on Dascen Ellur and note how Arithon resents having to carry it, because he views it as only another symbol to tie him to an unwanted duty. See how envious Lysaer is of his brother’s possession! He would treasure the chance to bear such a great talisman. Arithon sees it and wants to give the sword to his brother as a gift. But Asandir forbids it.
“You can never relinquish that sword except to your own blood heir.”
As they attempt to cross the pass, Arithon takes the lead and is attacked by a Khadrim. In an effort to keep his spooked mare under control, he reacts too late and the Khadrim engulfs him in fire. When the flames clear, both Arithon and the mare are untouched in the middle of a seared circle of carbon. – Was that Arithon who raised shields? How strong is he then to resist such a fire?
Once Alithiel is drawn, she gives off a peal of perfect harmony vibrating upon the air. She rings a perfect pure timbre and comes alive. “Light ripped along the silvered lines of inlay, blindingly intense, a shimmer like harmony distilled to an exultation of universal creation.”
The Khadrim shrieks in pain and crashes against the mountainside. Once it is dead, Alithiel’s light fades to a glimmer and dies away, leaving only plain black steel behind. Note that the runes inscribed on the steel were no longer familiar to Arithon after the sword stilled. – He had known them while she was in use.
Here we get the first glimpse at Alithiel’s power. “Asandir’s great powers seemed a brute statement” compared with the energies of the sword. After wielding it, Arithon felt “bereft, as if the world where he stood had grown coarser, more drab, somehow clumsy and lacking in a manner that defeated reason”. – Why? – We’ll come back to it later.
Note Lysaer’s envy and desire! – Important! (hide spoiler)]
Alithiel’s Story
(view spoiler)[Continuing their way to Camris, the travellers make camp in a cave on the far slopes of Tornir Peaks.
Around the fire, they complain about roads gone wild and winters coming early, all effects of the Mistwraith covering the sun. Asandir reveals to an astonished Ferilin that the two princes are the ones promised by Dakar’s prophecy and tells the story of Alithiel in the bargain.
Over eighteen thousand years in the past, 12 blades were forged at Isaer by the Paravian armourer, Ffereton s’Darien, from the cinder of a fallen star.
Ffereton was Ilitharis, a centaur. The Isaer swords were his finest most famous creation, wrought at need to battle the vast packs of Khadrim that were the scourge of the Second Age. Each blade took five years’ labour, a full decade if one were to count the sorceries that went into the sharpening. The steel holds an edge that neither time nor battle can blunt.
The swords were given over to the fair folk, called sunchildren, for finishing. They made the hilt, chased the channels for the inlay, no two patterns the same.
Riathan, the unicorns, sang the great spells of defence and infused the alloy with harmonics tuned to the primal chord of vibration used by Ath creator to kindle the first stars with light. Legend holds that 21 masters took a decade to endow Alithiel alone.
Along the centuries, the blade passed from centaurs to sunchildren until it was rewarded as a gift to a human, an ancestor of Arithon. And from that time only, it remained in human hands.
Among the sunchildren, Alithiel was regarded as a symbol of kingship but wasn’t considered a cherished possession. In fact, it was rumoured to carry a tragic reputation of seeing the end of every royal line it belonged to, so no one dared to claim it. Among humans however, it was a prized possession. The emerald in the hilt was cut by a sunchild’s spells and the initial in the crest was changing according to the name of the bearer.
Note here a few more details about the old races: The Paravians were not mortal as man might define. And they can be expected to survive for even eighteen thousand years.
Shaken by Asandir’s story and worried about his future, Arithon looks for solitude to try and sort out his thoughts. But he is cornered by Feriling who manages to extract an oath from him.
There’s a singer. A Masterbard named Halliron. Arithon vows to play for him if he meets him. And he also vows to accept the offer of apprenticeship if the Masterbards should make it. He longs for the vow to be fulfilled but fears that it will never happen.
Here we get again another little insight into the two brother’s hopes and expectations. Athera’s need to be released from the Mistwraith turns into Lysaer’s purpose. His lifeline into an unknown world, completely different from his own! And on the other side, it drives Arithon to despair. Because here again he will be forced to choose what he must do, instead of what he longs to do. And what if here again he’ll fail? (hide spoiler)]
Backtrail
(view spoiler)[The news of the two princes speaking the old tongue is spreading among the drifters, who foresee war, as well as among the townspeople who inform the mayor (all of a sudden sweating).
The Khadrim warn each other of a spell-cursed steel not seen for thousand years and retreat back to spell-warded sanctuary where they can be safe from it. Note: the Khadrim communicate and coordinate. (hide spoiler)]
Chapter Set 6 - Part 1VI. Erdane
(view spoiler)[Elaira, Koriani enchantress and message-bearer for the prime, enters Erdane and heads on an errand of her own, without sanction from her superiors. Note that she was the first of her kind to pass the city gates for close to four hundred years. Erdane is a dangerous place for anyone connected to sorcery or the old ways.
“Unlike the commoners and the craftsmen, the mayor of Erdane and the guildmasters had access to archives that detailed a history of conspiracy and murder.” – The very same one Grithen recounted. And because they remember, they are afraid!
”They fear that powers from the past might arise out of legend and claim vengeance. To them, the sun was no myth but a harbringer of sorcery and certain doom.”
Clansmen and people suspected of sorcery, they were all burned at the stake without trial if caught.
Elaira knows the risks but is willing to chance them, because she wants to see for herself if her suspicions are true and if the Westgate Prophecy is on the way to fulfillment.
The mayor’s most persistent nightmare was indeed already half-way realized as Asandir and two old-blood princes were already temporarily in residence in a warded house, on a warded street in Erdane: the home of the seeress Enithen Tuer.
Note the warning the seeress gave Elaira when she asked to be allowed entrance: “You may be sorry”, followed by: “you don’t need a seer to tell your future’s just branched into darkness.” – Important! Does she mean that Elaira will get into trouble for coming there without the Order’s permission? Or something else?
Note the contrast between the brothers’ appearance and behaviour in this scene.
Lysaer – golden, elegant and handsome, possessing the dignity of a man schooled to listen and a pride unselfconscious as breathing, courteous and smiling, he instantly rises to meet Elaira.
Arithon – black haired and blending into shadow, shocking Elaira with his awareness of one trained power meeting another, he stays back and observes.
Elaira confesses her curiosity to Asandir, trusting that, unlike a Koriani senior, this sorcerer would pass no judgement upon her and no debt would be set on her demands. – Important! The Koriani Order will set a debt upon fulfilling any demand and will judge everything an enchantress of their own order does.
Asandir is satisfying her curiosity but informs her that he expects the information to be treated with a foresight her superiors might hold in contempt. - Another insight into the Order’s ways!
And within his explanation we finally get to fully understand the relationship between the Rauven Mages and The Fellowship. “In the times of rebellion when four of the high kings’ heirs were sent to safety through West Gate, the Fellowship granted foundational training to the Teir’s’Ahelas to increase her line’s chances of survival. Her descendants on Dascen Elur continued her tradition but forgot certain of the guidelines. In the course of five centuries of isolation, the mages there achieved what the Seven could not.”
If you’d like to know how that came to be, refer to the short story Child of Prophecy.
Note also his observation: “What is possible does not always coincide with what is wise.” – Elemental mastery is an immense power that might cause a great deal of harm, if entrusted into the wrong hands.
The Order had been dedicated to intolerance according to Asandir and Elaira admits it and justifies with the fact that her seniors hate to admit to incompetence. That should tell us a bit more about the character of the witches!
But Elaira is different and Asandir warns her: “You have a clear eye for truth. Don’t replace one mistaken set of principles for others as narrow minded.” – Why? What is he warning her about, what change of ideals? Is Elaira important somehow? Why would Asandir take a chance on her when the Fellowship and the Order are at odds? – Important to watch out for.
Note also Elaira’s worry. Asandir had not used her but he easily could have, which means the Prime’s Circle fears about the Fellowship were not in the least unfounded. – Here we get the first insight into the Order-Fellowship relationship: The Order fears and is at odds with the Seven!
Insight reinforced by Elaira’s conclusion: “Arrogance did not admit fallibility, and reticence did not offer explanation; about the Fellowship, the Koriani Senior Circle was emphatically mistaken.”
Having fulfilled her errand, Elaira is aware that the lane watch enchantress will be turning her attention towards her soon and wants to conceal her meeting with Asandir. If her escapade were to be found out, she would be severely reprimanded and the secrets entrusted by Asandir could not be kept hidden. So she decides to create a diversion and meet up with the Mad Prophet betting on that being worse than meeting a sorcerer of the Fellowship. (hide spoiler)]
Chapter Set 6 - Part 2The Four Ravens
(view spoiler)[The Inn of Four Ravens was a rough place; the hangout of head-hunters, labourers and off-duty garrison soldiers. The last place an enchantress would want to be! But Elaira sits there at a table and plays cards with a half-drunk Dakar, waiting for the initiate on lane-watch to turn her attention towards her. Felirin the Scarlet happens to be the minstrel appointed for the night.
Dakar promptly passes out overcome by drink and excitement, perhaps an avoidance because he sees Arithon entering the Inn all alone. Frustrated because she still hadn’t been spotted in Dakar’s company by the enchantress on watch, Elaira is trying to literally kick the Mad Prophet awake, when she notices Arithon.
He was standing, as if frozen in mid-gesture, staring at the blazon of the old s’Ilessid sovereign dynasty of Tysan, with a look of shocked confusion on his face. – Why? Was he trying to remember and Asandir’s block was getting in his way? Was he recognizing the blazon from his past on Dascen Elur, and if so, the congruency tells him something.
In a daze, he tries to snap out of it and jostles someone at the bar. In the rush of the moment, Arithon apologizes and his accent alone is enough for the whole room to surge into motion and try to land hands on the intruder. Arithon is cornered and fights his attackers with a pot hook, making a stand against the pantry door. Worried that someone may sally from the pantry and skewer the prince, Felirin and Elaira decide to help out.
Felirin causes a distraction and Elaira centers her mind in her focusing jewel, cobbling together a glamour of concealment and disappears. Note that she didn’t literally vanish but assumed an aura of sameness, as a chameleon would, to blend in. Praying the she won’t be discovered by the enchantress on watch who is still due to check on her, Elaira secures the door behind Arithon’s back with a hard rune of binding and rushes through the back door, through the scullery and pantry and opens the door behind Arithon herself. Seeing no other solution to save him from the blood-thirsty mob, Elaira knocks Arithon unconscious with a spell, disguising it with a blow from a pastry-roller to his head. Note Arithon’s amusement before he passes out. – Why? We’ll come back to it later.
Elaira uses her power to divert the emotions of the crowd, laying a spell of influence and illusion over them and manages to convince them to throw the prince out the back door. Together with Felirin, they take the still unconscious prince to the hayloft next to the Inn.
The enchantress expects the prince to be royally pissed when he awakes, instead, she’s the one who starts scolding. How could Arithon be so reckless and come to that particular inn alone!? How is it that he didn’t know his speech would turn him into a target!? And in her indignation she reveals to Arithon what Asandir was trying to keep hidden: that he is Teir’s’Ffalenn, prince and heir apparent of the crown of Rathain.
The revelation allows Arithon to break through Asandir’s memory block and then we see him flying into a blind-sided rage. Because Teir’s’Ffalenn – is ‘successor to power’, because the high king crowned in Rathain had always been a s’Ffalenn, and because, extrapolates the possibility that: “The people of Rathain are subject to misery and strife and Ithamon, his ruling seat, is a ruin in a wasteland.” And above all because, once again, he is supposing he may be forced to choose what must be done, instead of what his heart desires, only to possibly fail in the end.
“A bad king revels in his importance. A good one hates his office. He spends himself into infirmity quashing deadly little plots to make power the tool of the greedy…. There’s very little beauty in satisfaction and justice rewards nobody with joy.”
It is then that Elaira realizes Arithon had not actually been in real peril in the taproom. The pot hook was only a diversion since he had both mage training and shadow mastery carefully held in reserve. He was himself planning on getting out through the pantry when Elaira interfered and knocked him out cold. That’s why his amusement before passing out.
Grateful for her interference, Arithon offers to accompany Elaira to her lodgings but she refuses. “I can find my way just fine. The question is can you?” – Note that she doesn’t refer to the wards concealing the seeress’s house.
Amused by the thought she thinks he may need guidance, Arithon promises to hide the whole affair from Asandir, gently pulls Elaira to her feet and starts plucking the loose hay from her hair. At that moment precisely, the junior initiate on lane watch stumbles across Elaira’s presence and responds with self-righteous indignation.
Apparently, speaking with princes in haylofts after midnight was an offense considered even worse than visiting sorcerers of the Fellowship or engaging in card games with disreputable apprentice prophets. Elaira will now have to face her personal version of Asandir, an enchantress by far not so understanding. (hide spoiler)]
Guardian of Mirthlvain
(view spoiler)[Mirthlvain Swamp, between the peaks of the Tiriacs and the north shore of Methlas Lake, was a place where even the boldest were reluctant to thread. Its pools spawned horrors that the efforts of two civilizations had failed to contain and it was one of the places that the Fellowship never for an instant left unwatched, despite being grievously shorthanded.
Master spellbinder Verrain is the Swamp’s appointed guardian, ensuring that none of the deadly creatures breeding there ever escape. And he is constantly searching for evidence to track the recombinant forms as the meth-spawn are continuously mutating.
Meth-snakes – cross-bred genetic mutations left over from a First-Age creature called a methuri (hatewraith). Related to iyats, these energy creatures possessed live hosts, which they infested and altered to produce mutated offspring to create weakened lines of stock and thereby widen their choice of potential host animals.
They come in many forms, ranging from harmless to virulently poisonous. One of the most venomous kind carry a toxin called cierl-ankeshed. In contact with human skin, it causes dissolution of nerve tissue. Paralysis is almost instant, with death following days later. Without a known antidote, the poison is caustic and can be absorbed through the skin.
In his search, Verrain discovers a meth-snake with cierl-ankeshed – a threat that the Fellowship had hoped to be eradicated.
If you want to know how Verrain came to be the guardian of Mirthlvain, you will find his story in the novella The Gallant, published in Secrets & Spells: 6 Fantasy Novels. (hide spoiler)]
Observations
(view spoiler)[A raven alights on the shoulder of a sorcerer dressed all in black and wearing a broad-brimmed hat with a patterned silver band –Take note of him. He is important!
The enchantress on the watch reports to the prime, that Elaira has visited Erdane without permission and had clandestine meetings with a prince in a hayloft.
Sethvir sends a thought warning to Asandir prompting him to hurry across the Camris, because trouble is pending, from a migrant strain of meth-snakes with confirmed cierl-ankeshed venom. (hide spoiler)]
Chapter Set 7 - Part 1VII. PASS OF ORLAN
(view spoiler)[The morning after Arithon’s escapade at the Four Ravens, Asandir, in the wake of Sethvir's advice, orders the party on the way again. Note that on the way, they stop for a night at a tavern that once had been a hospice tended by Ath’s initiates in the past. Ath’s adepts’ connection to the mysteries became sullied after the conquest of the Mistwraith. The link that preserved the connection was lost along with the Riathan Paravians, and the conclaves of the adepts are in decline.
Note how frustrated and troubled Lysaer still is; hating the fate that left him closeted at the whim of a sorcerer in the fusty lodgings of a second rate roadside tavern! Since too much quiet let him brood over the undermining losses of his banishment, he tries to entertain himself by keeping Arithon company.
Notice here, that what Lysaer assumes about Arithon, the beliefs about his attitude and his past played as gambits to draw Arithon into sympathetic conversation - are wrong! Arithon's corrections are mild, understated, and true. He does in fact share confidences. But when Lysaer concludes his upbringing and setbacks must have made him cynical, Arithon is startled into surprise - and states otherwise. A great deal is said between the lines, here, about Arithon's inner self, and how he was seen by others, even in his past circumstances where people supposedly knew him. Take note of which questions he chooses to answer for Lysaer, and which he rejects. Why?
After two days of travel, the riders reach Standing Gate, a rock arch carved ages past by centaurs into the likeness of the twins who founded their royal dynasty. (this little 'detail' thrown into this book is, in fact, Janny's 'tribute' to Tolkien. It is the only one for this author - there are others, to other great authors' works) Standing Gate marked the upward ascent to the high valley pass of Orlan, sole access through the mountains to the lands of the East.
Arithon discovers they are watched but Asandir isn’t worried. He had expected them to be watched but feared no consequences as their party wasn’t town-born.
Arithon connects the watchers to the clans of Tysan and, because he is wanting to test how greatly his fate is entangled, and in a ploy aimed to force the Fellowship's hand - he gets Asandir to confirm that the Camris clans were subject to the High King of Tysan. The old Earls of Erdane had sworn fealty to the high king and their descendants will follow the tradition. Too bad no one had informed Lysaer about it though – because he’s in for big surprise!
Note how, at Arithon’s warning that trouble is to come in the pass, Lysaer requests a sword but Asandir denies it. “When you have need of a weapon you shall be given one.” - Why? Does Lysaer also have a sword like Alithiel waiting for him to claim it? Or is it something more? Perhaps Asandir is afraid of Lysaer’s rashness?
Arithon decides to trigger the watchers and forges ahead, purposefully attracting attention to provoke. His ruse works and, while making himself an isolated target by cutting the ice from his mare’s shoes, his ruse works too well. He is ambushed by Grithen, who had been laying in wait.
Why did he recklessly push on with aggression? Because he had to do something about Lysaer! The prince had too much character to meet any threat with complacency. He was too prideful to submit to a threat. His lack of fear before danger would force the clansmen to harm him before capture. Arithon counters the mounting problem he's created by allowing himself to be captured, allowing danger to himself to drive Lysaer to surrender without coming to harm, as well as smoking out the fact that the clans would discover Lysaer's connection to them, both granting Lysaer what he sorely wished to recover (sovereign rule) and also, testing the Fellowship's commitment to Arithon's posited connection to Rathain.
Note how angry Lysaer is. Driven to white-hot rage because he knows that, despite being infuriatingly obstinent and reticent, secretive and odd, Arithon is not evil. His motives before exile had likely not been founded in malice and he was kin after all. Kin and also “the only other in this mist-cursed world who recalled that Lysaer had been born a prince.” He is both angered by the ambush of what looks like bandits, and worried about his half-brother’s fate and when he sees that the barbarian clans had captured Arithon, bound him hand and foot and hung him upside down over a cliff, he forgets that he no longer holds any royal authority and challenges.
He demands a trial of single combat as settlement for honor and when he is denied, he even threatens to have everyone put to the sword. Every inch the prince despite having lost his kingdom, embarrassed to recall he has no honor guard to make good his threat to the clansmen, Lysaer relents at Asandir’s urge and dismounts to negotiate with the barbarians.
Grithen resents it that his prisoners are not cowed and threatens them, but his hand is stayed by the clan elder, Lord Tashan. Asandir makes use of the moment and orders Lysaer to reveal his face, hidden under his hood. The masks come off: Recognizing the bloodline they were sworn to serve, the barbarians kneel before their Teir’s’Ilessid, the scion of the high kings of Tysan.
Note Lysaer’s shock at the reveal. – Asandir hadn’t told him. Why? Astonished, Lysaer kept his feet and his bearing through unbending royal pride only. Once he recovered, he asked for his half-brother to be restored to him and surrendered his judgement over Gritten to Asandir, because anger might bias his opinion. – Important detail! Lysaer knows he may not be just in his judgement because of anger and he doesn’t want to pass a wrong sentence.
In turn, Asandir relinquishes the claim, because the Fellowship pass no judgement upon men, assuring Lysaer that Lady Maenalle, Steward of Tysan, who had been dispensing the King’s justice in the absence of her liege through the last two decades, would be more than qualified to adjudicate.
Important detail to note: In the absence of the High Kings, the clans appointed Stewards (who are much more than second in command, wait for it), to uphold the high king’s law and preserve the old tradition in the absence of their sovereign. Lady Maenalle is Steward of Tysan and you will get to know the others also as we go. (hide spoiler)]
Chapter Set 7 - Part 2An Arrival
(view spoiler)[Lady Maenalle herself greets the party at the head of the valley. She rides to meet Asandir in full state finery, holding a spring briar in her hand, a thorn branch that symbolized the centuries of royal absence and the clans' bitter exile into the wilds. Asandir accepts the branch and engages his arts, bringing the branch to life until it sprouts a flawless summer rose – the symbol of a renewal.
Introductions are made and Lysaer expects shock and hostility because Lady Maenalle’s office would be now supplanted by his kingship, he cannot imagine anyone choosing to relinquish that sovereign power. Instead, he is greeted with relief and hailed as “light of our hope made real”. And then he is swept from the saddle, embraced and pummeled on the back with rough cut camaraderie by every single clansman around.
Note how flustered Lysaer is and how bruised in dignity. He was accustomed with royal property maintained even between friends and didn’t know how to deal with the absolute abandonment of decorum exhibited by the clansmen.
Once the company reaches the clan lord’s west outpost, Lady Maenalle asks to speak to Asandir alone. She wants to know if she can shed her office along with her tabard, now that her Liege Lord has arrived. But Asandir advises against it. “The Seven have not yet formally sanctioned Lysaer’s accession to Tysan’s crown.” – Important detail! The Seven sanction the high kings!
Lysaer’s official sanction for royal succession must be withheld until full sunlight is restored. And no guarantee can be given that the half-brothers will emerge from the battle with the Mistwraith unscathed. After all, one of Asandir’s Fellowship colleagues, who barred South Gate against the mist first invasion, was left broken and lame by his act.
Another important detail! – The Mistwraith invaded through the South Gate and one of the Fellowship sorcerers managed to seal that gate before more horrors than the already existing ones came through.
“The Seven will guard the safety of both princes to the limit of their power and diligence”, but cannot guarantee the outcome itself. Why? Are they not powerful enough, or, if they hold the power, what restraint prevents them? (hide spoiler)]
A Return
(view spoiler)[Elaira returns to the Order and is informed by a novice initiate that “The Prime Enchantress is displeased” and is awaiting her. She enters the Council Chamber where Morriel Prime holds audience and discovers she was not to be submitted to an enquiry for her escapade. Instead, she will face the formal closed trial reserved for enchantresses who broke their vows of obedience.
First Enchantress Lirenda, clad in judiciary black and veiled in muslin, stood in attendance as Ceremonial Inquisitor. This type of judgement was called only for initiates who had committed a major offense and Elaira cannot understand the reason for it.
She is accused of having disgraced the Order by stooping to scour brothels and taprooms for knowledge of events and forsaking all ethics. She is ordered to submit for questioning by the Skyron Focus. This crystal, although nowhere near the power of the lost Great Waystone, would make any inquiry directed through its matrix impossible to defy. The initiates judged guilty would be stripped of the self-awareness that defined their individuality.
The scenes from the hayloft are pried out of her memory through the focus of the Skyron jewel and picked through in embarrassing detail. Every word and every line was replayed and dissected to underlying nuance and then cross-checked again against her reflections on the return journey. Luckily, the initiate on watch had not noticed Elaira’s visit to the seeress’ house, but the First Enchantress Lirenda suspects more. In an attempt to thwart Lirenda’s invasive probe, knowing that she wouldn’t withstand a second interrogation without revealing the conversation with Asandir, Elaira rebels and asks for her judgement to be passed and her punishment to be given without delay, arguing that her doings in Erdane had been prompted by “nothing beyond an ill-advised quest after knowledge.”
The Prime relents and sends Elaira off with a warning. She is now in disgrace and must dissociate herself from the Prince of Rathain and dedicate herself to the Order. Her actions will be weighted from that moment onward until the Prime sees fit to issue a verdict. In other words, she is declared on probation. Deeply worried by the ramifications of Morriel’s suspended verdict, Elaira remembers the warning Enithen Tuer gave her: ‘You don’t need a seer to tell your future’s just branched into darkness.’ – Was this what she meant? Or is more coming? (hide spoiler)]
Portents
(view spoiler)[Meth-snakes are escaping Mirthlvain Swamp
Far in the North-West, under a tent pitched in a forest, a scar-faced barbarian chieftain tosses under a prescient dream in which he sees the face of his king, as well as the blood of his own death.
Four tall towers stand on a wild stretch of grassland, next to the ruins of a shattered fifth one. (hide spoiler)]
Chapter Set 8VIII. CLANS OF CAMRIS
(view spoiler)[The princes, along with Asandir and Dakar, are sheltered within the permanent mountain outpost maintained by the Clans of Camris.
Lysaer had been given “the King’s Chamber”, a room present in every single clan encampment in Tysan and held perpetually in readiness for the King’s return.
Note Lysaer’s confusion and distress. “Unusued to being worshiped as a legend come to life”, he cannot find his way in a land where civilised merchants would slit his royal throat and barbarians who raided caravans welcome him with open arms. Being provided with a fresh set of rich clothing, he feels whole for the first time since the exile through Worldsend gate.
“Humbled by the honest recognition that he desired the throne these clansmen offered at least as desperately as their disunited realm, needed sound rule”, he tries to dismiss “his suspicion that such luxuries might have been dishonestly procured” and represses his doubts over the lifestyle of his new realm’s subjects, until he can know them better. He realises how much he has changed as a person in such a short time and wonders which Lysaer would make a better king: “the cosseted and idealistic royal heir he had been before banishment, or the more self-sufficient man who needed a crown to feel complete.” – Important!
Annoyed and frustrated, he demands to know from Asandir why he hadn’t been given warning.
“I chose not to.” Is Asandir’s reply. “This is a land afflicted by mismanagement, greed and vicious misunderstanding. The clans rob caravans to ease a harsh existence, and the mayors pay headhunters to exterminate as a means to ease their terror. Your task is not to judge but to set right. Your royal Grace, justice must be tempered by sympathy if the unity of the realm is to be restored. So I did not explain because words cannot substitute for experience. … For these people, you are the living embodiment of hope. Listen to their woes and understand what they’ve sacrificed to preserve their lives and heritage.”
Realizing that he’s expected to show a great deal more than tolerance, Lysaer tries to give his best. But will he be able to do it open minded? Or is his opinion already formed?
A grand feast is arranged, with hospitality as fine as any grand fete held in Amroth, where the clan born of the west outpost, descendants of the Camris aristocracy, greet their returned Liege lord in full state finery. Maenalle, steward of the realm, cuts no corners and informs Lysaer, without any trace of reluctance or envy, that she is proud to revert to her old title of “caithdein – shadow behind the throne ” now that her Liege lord has returned. (Note the term used; her duties are more than you might assume, and this is your first hint.) The absolute faith she is placing in the s’Ilessid name leaves Lysaer unnerved. Uncomfortable because of the elaborate customs seemingly displayed by the barbarians, Lysaer keeps his posture through sheer pride. And to declare the banquet open, he pledges the guest-oath. Important! He pledges friendship to the clans and his service as “steadfast as blood kin”. - We’ll come back to this later.
Presented with complaints from clan-lords, Lysaer realizes that “land-owning, an inalienable tradition on Dascen Elur, appeared to be a bloodletting violation in Tysan. The prince held the concept daunting and uncivilized that he might one day be expected to punish a man for laying claim to the farmland he tilled.” He is expected to see the injustice in such laws but cannot. And his mood grows darker as the feast continues. Because he gathers that the wonderful tapestries on the walls were “stolen”, the hall where the celebration was held was actually serving as a “storehouse to safeguard generations of plunder” and the fine clothes, “the jewels, even the plates and the cutlery that graced the table were no less than spoils of generations of ambush and murder.”
Alarmed and disgusted, he cannot look beyond the appearances. He cannot even consider the fact that all those riches had belonged to the clans first, before their exile, and were unjustly taken by the towns people at that time; too shocked by their present lifestyle and apparent barbarity, he cannot see the clans real plight. Back in Amroth he had seen hardworking merchants suffer because of the s’Ffalenn piracy, and that affront had left a deep mark on Lysaer and his sense of justice. The outrage felt that time remained and transferred here.. on his new subjects of Tysan.
Asandir counsels him to tolerance and patience; he asks him to withhold judgement until he’s sat at a mayor’s table and listened to that version also. But will Lysaer be able to keep an open mind? Or are his mind and heart already set?
As the clansmen lack the presence of a bard, Lysaer encourages Arithon to sing. Maenalle send him down to the vault to choose and instrument (another proof that Lysaer’s theory regarding hoarded treasures was true) and Arithon returns with a battered old lyranthe. Before Maenalle can be thoroughly offended by having her generosity mocked by Arithon in choosing the worst possible lyrante from the vault, Asandir reveals that the instrument was in fact a lyranthe crafted by a sunchild. Of those Elshian crafted, only two are known to exist: the one Arithon had found in the vault, and one other held in trust by Athera’s masterbard Halliron.
Relieved, made aware that Arithon has perhaps chosen the most valuable instrument from the vault, Maenalle insists on having Asandir use her own silver bracelet to turn into strings for the instrument. “Mine the honor Kingmaker!” – Another important detail showing how highly honor was held among the clans.
Once Asandir had outfitted the lyranthe, Arithon plays for the clansmen. Lacking the knowledge of Athera’s own lore, he chooses sea balads from Dascen Elur. He sings of pirate raids and willy captains, a choice apt for the setting, according to his minstrel’s insight. But Lysaer cannot help being stung in his pride. “The thievery that delighted these barbarians had roots in a past that reminded how terribly wide lay the gulf between subjects and sovereign.” (hide spoiler)]
Confrontation
(view spoiler)[At the end of the feast, after having spent some time with Lysaer, Asandir confronts Arithon.
As it turns out, the sorcerer knew of Arithon’s escapade in the loft of the Ravens’ stable yard, as well as the intent to force the hand by revealing Lysaer’s identity to the clans in the pass.
Still angry because of the mind-block, Arithon demands to know why it was set.
“Would you warm a man just tortured by fire before an open hearth? The memories of your failures in Karthan were all too hurtfully recent.”
And despite Arithon’s dismay at the news, Asandir continues to inform him of the consequences that may result from Arithon’s rash behaviour. Lysaer wasn’t meant to learn of his heritage until he had experienced the atrocity of the mayors himself. Now however, the cards had been turned, Lysaer was in shock and Grithen, the last living heir to the late Earl of Erdane had been sent in shame to the camps and may even be denied his inheritance.
Arithon doesn’t want to claim responsibility. According to him, all these things could have been prevented. Does he set the blame on Asandir not communicating and keeping his plans a secret?
He is made to understand that the Fellowship will not use force to hold him back. He is allowed to choose himself the path he wants to walk without any interference from their side. The truth however is that Arithon would not allow himself to abandon that path, regardless of how much he hated and feared it! He could not, in clear conscience forsake the clansfolk of Rathain who would be hunted and mercilessly killed after the return of the sun, in fear of a king who wasn’t there.
“You give me Karthan, all over again.”
“The man would not stand here who did not choose Karthan first.”
One threat, one compulsion, one word spoken with the intention to bind, would have given Arithon the opening to escape, but Asandir uses only pity and promises to try and relieve him of the unwanted kingship. So Arithon has no choice but to follow his lead. Because being a king to his people is a role equally important to that of deliverer from the Mistwraith.
(Note: this builds upon Arithon's earlier comment to Felirin, 'Show me a hero, and I'll show you a man enslaved by his competence.')
Arithon clearly recognizes: 'The bitterest enemy is myself, then.' An important contrast is drawn between how the two brothers' view their personal responsibility. Arithon looks inward; Lysaer projects outward.
Exasperated by Arithon’s stubbornness, Asandir finally asks him what he would have done in the Fellowship’s place.
“Find the Paravians” is Arithon’s answer, and now we are told that has already been tried. Ciladis of the Fellowship took on that quest, for he treasured the old races most of all. But he never returned. (hide spoiler)]
Traithe
(view spoiler)[At Althain Tower, Sethvir of the Fellowship pens thought on paper, while his awareness ranges far and wide beyond the tower, tracking almost everything on Athera, when Traithe arrives. The arrival is announced by a black raven who pecks at the shutters.
Note how Sethvir greets the bird: “Welcome back little brother.” – Important! The raven isn’t only a simple bird.
Sethvir needs to unbind the wards of protections around Althain Tower so that his colleague can enter. Traithe had lost a great share of his powers when he single-handedly sealed the South Worldsend Gate to save Athera from the Mistwraith.
The Mistwraith, or Desh-thiere was in reality a vast entity, only one small portion of it having afflicted Athera. If the entire entity’s access wouldn’t have been blocked by Traithe sealing the gate, Desh-thiere would have choked off all life on the planet. The battle with the Mistwraith had left Traithe broken in both body and power. Traithe could not even connect by thought to his fellow sorcerers anymore, the way every other member of the Seven did.
The two sorcerers prepare for the arrival of the princes. Clean up the mess of books and inkwells without caps that is, to be able to find the table beneath them. And at the same time, they must help Verrain as a great number of venomous meth-snakes were about to escape the Mirthlvain Swamp. If not caught, those snakes could decimate all the country folk from Orvandir to Vastmark in a matter of days. (hide spoiler)]
Summons
(view spoiler)[A sorcerer “whirls” his way south in great haste.
A second sorcerer, once called the Defender, rendered discorporate long ago, rushes to the Tower from another direction
Asandir listens to news delivered with the wind and prepares for immediate departure. (hide spoiler)]
Chapter Set 9 - Part 1This Chapter is again very dense and contains a lot of information that will set the course for the rest of this volume, as well as for the rest of the series as a whole. You need to pay attention here!
IX. ALTHAIN TOWER
(view spoiler)[The morning after the royal feast, Asandir and his party are getting ready for departure. Note Lysaer’s relief at being quit of the company of subjects he found disturbing, relief covered under flawless manners. And note how those manners are impressing the clansmen who believe him a worthy prince because he is pleasant to serve even after roused at dawn on the heels of a celebration.
Also take note of Maien (Maenol s’Gannley), Maenalle’s grandson who serves Lysaer as a page here. – He’ll play an important part later.
Arithon is furious. He wanted to seek an audience with Maenalle to speak in Grithen's behalf. He feels responsible, having baited the man for his own objective, and Grithen’s punishment is heavy for an offense not entirely of his own making. During Maenalle's approach to say farewell, he takes the opportunity to plead the man’s case but is rebuffed by the lady because:
“Tysan’s scouts do not act for personal vengeance. No matter what the provocation, they are forbidden to take hostages. We are not like Rathain’s clans, to extort coin and cattle for human lives. For breaking honor Grithen must answer…. The code than condemns him is one that upholds clan survival.”
At her answer Arithon presses for an explanation for the lady's disapproval of the clans of Rathain, Arithon’s future subjects. He is told that the trade city of Etarra rules, in Rathain. “Feud between clanborn and townsman is pitiless there. In the eastlands the governor’s council can execute a man for the offense of singing the wrong ballad.”
Nettled Arithon declares he may never lay claim to his title and lands and Maenalle asks him: “Would you risk the perception that inspires your talent, by hardening your heart against need?” – Important! By hardening his heart Arithon may risk the perception inspiring his talent! What does it mean? We’ll come back to it.
Maenalle’s last advice to the future prince of Rathain is very important to understand the plight that Arithon is supposed to solve: “there can be no remedy for Etarra, except to raze it clean to the ground.”
In a hurry to reach the destination, Asandir sets a grueling pace normal horses could not have withstood. He is using magecraft to sustain the animals' strength by depleting himself.
Note Lysaer’s irritation because he is the only one who didn’t notice the magecraft, as well as his jealousy at the fact that his half-brother perhaps might be able to do the same. At Lysaer’s concern that Asandir won’t be able to keep it up much longer, Dakar explains that the limits of a Fellowship sorcerer are unknown. He himself has studied with them for centuries and doesn’t know. – Important detail about Dakar’s age: he is centuries old.
The journey from Camris to Althain Tower should take 6 full days of hard riding, but as the night falls, that very same day, Asandir brings his charges to a power focus within a grove.
“We stand at the center of the Great Circle of Isaer, build in the First Age to channel earthforce to guard the halls of the earliest Paravian kings. Those defenseworks are long vanished, yet the circle itself was maintained, at least until the conquest of Desh-thiere.”
Important detail to notice: These Power Circles are found in different places on Athera. They are used to channel the energy of the lanes for different purposes, including travel from one circle to another. Althain Tower is also build above such a power point.
Travel through the energy lanes from one circle to another is disorienting, so Asandir gives the princes spelled wine: to ease Lysaer from the upset of passage, and to prevent Arithon's trained sensitivity from perceiving too deeply. Arithon is unconscious throughout the transfer, and unaware of his arrival. Afterward, immersed in spell-wrought sleep, his enchanter’s sensitivity starts to reawaken, and by training, his semi-conscious awareness aligns to the etheric energy of his surroundings. In the dream state, he has a vision of Mirthlvain swamp and Verrain, and his awareness picks up the connection to the Sorcerers gathered at Atlhain Tower. Before he can see more, or immerse in the energy flow of the Seven's working, Sethvir’s gentle touch to gathers his consciousness back in.
Arithon snaps awake. Too stressed for sleep, too aware of the peril ongoing at Mirthlvain, he seeks Sethvir, Traithe, Asandir and Dakar deep in council., where the sorcerers were channeling the earthforce of the third lane through the focus point of the brazier. Given warning of the danger posed by the meth-snakes migrating to escape, he offers his help. The sorcerers are shorthanded, and the combined strength required to eradicate the threat is daunting, so they accept.
The prince is asked to lend support to Dakar, from trance and unconditionally; and despite the risk of having the life wrung out of him in an instant if the conjury goes wrong, Arithon accepts.
Note Sethvir’s dismay at Arithon’s reaction: it gives the first clear cut insight into Arithon’s determination: both his willingness to test Asandir's promise that his free will is his own, and also hints at some underlying traits in his nature, that forcefully drives his choices.
“Our Teir’s’Ffalenn has the sensitivity imbued in his forefather’s line, but none of the protections. His maternal inheritance of farsightedness lets him take no step without guilt, for he sees the consequences of his every act, and equally keenly feels them.”
Arithon is farsighted. He sees the consequences of his actions (trait from his mother’s side) and he FEELS the consequences of his actions (trait from his father’s side). – More will be added to the explanation later on.
To the above observations Sethvir makes, we have another added by Asandir: “A prior conflict between ruling power and trained awareness of the mysteries has already broken Arithon’s peace of mind.” So the mages consider setting him free from the obligation of kingship, allowing him to pursue his gifts and seek Rathain’s prince among his heirs.
To have a clear image of the consequences of such a choice, they decide to cast an augury to examine the matter after the meth-snakes have been dealt with.
Note Dakar’s dismay at having been given Arithon’s complete trust and surrender; his anger because the prince had so carelessly set everything that he was in danger; and ultimately his gall because Sethvir chose to lay extra protective wards on Arithon’s awareness to make sure he will pass unscathed through the trial. “It’s not as if he gave a whistle for the land or the people, or even a spit over principles.”
Note how his opinion once formed doesn’t change even at Sethvir’s gentle rebuke: “You misunderstand the man gravely.” – Important to see how it plays out later.
The three sorcerers in Althain Tower use Dakar, and by extension Arithon, as a bridge to channel the raw force of the third lane into the power focus at Meth Isle, where the spellbinder Verrain recaptures it and sends it forward to the remaining two Fellowship sorcerers to stabilize and strengthen the defense wards laid around the swamp to stop the meth-snakes.
The trick is to do it in such a way that the third lane energies don’t disturb those of the fifth lane in the area of the Swamp, as energy will inevitably react to energy, and at the same time, retain enough awareness to not be swept within the channeled raw energy flow. Once the wards are strengthened and stable, they are passed into the care of only one of the two sorcerers on site, Luhaine once called the Defender, while the other, Kharadmon, engages his powers and burns the meth-snakes trying to escape the warded circle.
The energy flow is too strong and Verrain falters, due to exhaustion and over-extension. Dakar, being in close connection with Verrain, notices and gives warning just in time for Asandir to snap the flow and divert the third lane energy back into its normal channel, before it can collide with that of the fifth lane and bring disaster. The defense wards around the swamp also fail as the energy flow is cut, but Kharadmon had managed to destroy most of the meth-snakes by that time and should be able to track down and eradicate the remaining ones.
The crisis is averted and both prophet and prince need to be carried to their beds. Arithon is not bound to wake for a few days until he recovers. (hide spoiler)]
Chapter Set 9 - Part 2Strands
(view spoiler)[The evening of that very same day, all the remaining sorcerers of the Fellowship of the Seven gather in the upper chamber of Althain tower: Sethvir, Asandir, Traithe and the two discorporate sorcerers who had held the wards at Meth Isle, Luhaine and Kharadmon. Two of the Seven are not present; Davien is in exile, and Ciladis remains lost since his failed searchfor the vanished Paravians.
They summon Dakar with the intent of setting him into a drug induced trance, then letting his native gift of prescience divine the strands of all possible futures determined by the conquest of Desh-thiere by the brothers.
The Fellowship sorcerers interpret the strands, which are charged energetically to map future probability, at a glance. They instantaneously measure the mathematical patterns to assess changes that spring from alternate sets of events, with even the tiniest nuance made plain.
Dakar enters into trance, the sorcerers raise their power, imbue the strands with the properties of everything that will be in play, major force to minor detail, then call forth the projection of the events that may occur.
For those of you who want to know the how, here is the exact method the Seven used to enable the Strands. NOTICE this sequence:
- First, they draw a clean line of pure energy:
“Power gathered in the hands of Asandir. Above the dark velvet he spun a rod of energy, a glimmer like a line of veiled starlight. To this he added a second then a third, ach for the triad of mysteries that embodied Prime Power and underlay all Athera’s theeming life.”
- they INFLECT it with Name so the 'essence and energy' is imprinted:
“Next he added two score lesser lengths, to which Sethvir assigned names in a Paravian ritual that summoned the essence of the ruler, place, or power and stamped it’s quickened current on the spell. The strands assumed identity and altered, each according to assigned nature.”
- they refine these, layer on layer:
“To cities, human consciousness and natural forces were added individuals, and After this plants, animals and natural elements until a geometric lattice glimmered above the velvet backdrop, an entire world's interlinked complexity recorded in precise proportion and line.”
- and then the mathematical proportion and line creates PATTERNS that will change if any single energy is shifted - course, direction, depth of power, degree of change - all interpreted in mathematical proportion and line.
“The strands were superlatively sensitive. Each would react as its nature dictated, mapping even minute shifts of balance with pinpoint accuracy.”
And the Fellowship interpret it ALL at a glance....
Here are the three main paths they see:
1. Desh-thiere is conquered; Lysaer unites the towns, makes war to claim all the wild lands for the mayors and finally eradicates all the barbarian clans; while Arithon flows from place to place dedicated only to music and under the shade of persecution.
2. The Fellowship kills the princes to preserve peace, the Mistwraith remains and there is no war, but the Paravians will perish.
3. Arithon is charged to accept Rathain’s crown, coronation takes place in Etarra, Arithon’s futures develops into a jagged line of anguish that peaks repeatedly but endures, Lysaer STILL rouses the townborn to war; a great schism tears the width of the continent with strife predominant; and the Paravians survive.
A conclusion is drawn: that the Mistwraith itself lies at the root of the future conflict, but ONLY that future holds the assurance of Paravian survival. The nature of the Mistwraith (it emerged from offworld) and the unknown extent of it blinds the Seven to the knowledge required to prevent that dark turn from happening.
In the end, the Fellowship inclines toward freeing Arithon from crown obligation, as the powers of sovereignty are best not involved in the oncoming probability of strife, But as they frame that decision, Dakar, under the expansive influence of narcotic herb, has another prophecy that alters the impact of EVERYTHING (This is the Black Rose Prophecy and it will affect the entire series):
“Davien the Betrayer shall hear no reason, nor bow to the Law of Major Balance; neither shall the Fellowship be restored to Seven until the Black Rose grows wild in the vales of Daon Ramon.”
“Black Rose! But none exists,”
“There will be one. The briar will take root on the day that Arithon s’Ffalenn embraces kingship.”
It is here that we get the first insight into the Fellowship's buildup. The Seven cannot be replaced! Even if they take apprentices, those would never be able to replace one of the original Seven. Why? - The explanation will come!
Dakar’s prophecy, added to the viable destiny of the Paravians, seals Arithon’s fate. The Fellowship are compelled to take option 3. They will charge Arithon with Rathain’s kingship and set every possible safeguard to minimize the upcoming conflict.
Since four of the five realms of Athera will lie under threat of dissent, the Seven take steps to see that the 5th, the Kingdom of Havish, will maintain stability against the upcoming disaster.
If Lysaer chooses to claim sovereignty of Tysan, he must do so without Fellowship sanction. Maenalle will be informed and, as Tysan’s steward, charged with upholding the safety of the clans, for whom redoubled bloodshed has been foreseen.
The meeting concluded Asandir and Sethvir attend the task of spellwarding the crown jewels of Rathain to ensure that their endowed powers would not augment Arithon’s gifts to the point of becoming unmanageable. The crown jewels for each kingdom, had been cut by the Paravian artisans of Imarn Adaer, each one as a power focus tuned to the descendants of their respective royal lines. But the master’s training given Arithon by the Dascen Elur mages has already enabled his finer perceptions, without need of such focus to enable him.
At the last, the Sorcerers are not concerned the wards over the jewels' properties would fail, but that their prince dislikes baubles, and may unwittingly trade them for something inherently more practical! The subchapter ends with the sorcerers’ impasse, given the expected headache of dealing with Dari s’Ahelas' descendants, who had herself been difficult the entire time Sethvir tutored her. (hide spoiler)]
Artifacts
(view spoiler)[Lysaer wakes from the spelled sleep the next day after the strand casting and is welcomed to Althain Tower by Traithe, who was waiting in the princes’ room, mending a broken bridle. Note how Lysaer still feels out of place, and how his self pity for the loss of his previous life.
Unsettled to find his half-brother is still asleep, then resentful he hadn’t been called upon also during the past night's crisis, and once more bitter not to have been granted training to further his mastery over light; Lysaer welcomes Traithe’s invitation to assist with a search in the storerooms, and pushes his dark thoughts aside.
Traithe is looking for the regalia of the Kings of Havish, to entrust to that realm's surviving heir, soon to be crowned under the necessity unveiled by the strand casting. Presently, Dakar joins them in search for food. His meddling mistakenly disturbs a wrapped package on a shelf. The contents prove to be the long lost Great Waystone of the Koriathain, sought by the Prime and her witches for centuries. Stashed on the quiet at Althain tower, the Stone's location has not been volunteered the Order. Sethvir would return it if asked to, but the Fellowship prefer the request never came. – Note: Lysaer witnesses the Waystone's location, and knows Dakar was aware of this, prior.
One last detail of note is Lysaer’s reaction to the jewels of Havish. He is humbled by how very ancient the kingdoms on Athera are and muses upon the gravity of the royal accession awaiting him in comparison to the realm left behind on Dascen Elur. After humility, he is shamed to have dared to place judgment on the Camris barbarians without understanding their plight. He resolves, going forward, to rebuild trust with his half-brother, and do right by the Kingdom of Tysan by embracing a more nuanced concept of justice.
We are shown Traithe’s deep sorrow because, due to the Mistwraith, the admirable quality of Lysaer's character may never come to flower. (hide spoiler)]
Harbingers
(view spoiler)[Traithe rides out to look for the hidden heir to the Crown of Havish.
Kharadmon arrows east to measure and map the power base of the governor’s council of Etarra.
Luhaine drifts west to bring dire warning of future events to Maenalle, steward of Tysan. (hide spoiler)]
Please note: These books work ONLY if the reader does not skim or pass over stuff - the nuance is all there.....and having the reader examine it at this early stage REALLY makes the volumes to come a truly explosive experience....
Chapter Set 10 - Part 1X. DAON RAMON BARRENS
(view spoiler)[Lysaer is awakened before dawn by a very high-spirited Dakar who informs that they are due to leave Althain Tower within the hour and travel to Daon Ramon Barrens through the third lane focus. As Arithon is still asleep, still spent after averting the crisis from Mirthlvain swamp, Dakar had been charged to carry him both him and his possessions to the third lane focus in the tower dungeon.
Note how Dakar's resentment drives him make a mockery of Rathain’s prince; how cheerful he is awaiting Arithon’s reaction as he is bound for a place he would avoid at all costs – Rathain. Note the sorcerers’ angry reaction while noticing the treatment and also, Lysaer’s irritation. Not just at the handling of his comatose brother but at the indignity of not being informed of the sorcerers’ plans – he is a king’s heir after all and accustomed to responsibility!
The party will travel through the power focus directly to the focus of Caith-al-Caen, in the ruins west of Daon Ramon Barrens and from there continue on foot to Ithamon. For Arithon’s sake they will not transfer directly to the focus at Ithamon, but cross on foot through the Vale of Shadows. Note Dakar’s disgust when hearing the Fellowship’s intention. “Why protect him?” – Why indeed? We’ll come back to it later.
Caith-al-Caen, as the Paravians had called it, or Vale of Shadows by the dawn of the second age, was a place alive with the echoes of the past. Here the Riathan had gathered each solstice to renew the earth's mysteries and to rejoice in the turn of the seasons. The ecstasy in their music has marked the very soil and now wind itself mourned the loss. Even after a thousand years the land is still blessed with a grace that haunted. An energy coursed through the soil that glorified life. Walking through the Vale of Shadows, a mage would see the imprinted traces of past unicorns’ dances and feel the echo of their exalted presence. In that place where the old spirits linger, Asandir is anguished. Too many memories of the deceased reproach him for the loss of hope and dreams and joy! And his anguish finds no ease in the notes of Arithon’s lyranthe, the spirit in them filled with abandon, sure evidence that the prince has finally come to trust in the Seven.
Why? – Asandir knows this is because the Sorcerers had allowed him to challenge the right to self-destruction uncontested. This convinced him that he will be allowed to make his own choices by free will. But Arithon doesn’t know he hadn’t been in any actual danger; he doesn’t know Sethvir had laid wards to see him through the ordeal unscathed. Did he really have a choice?
Arithon extends the unshielded confidence of friendship to Asandir, a rarity for a man unaccustomed to companionship. And here we get another glimpse at the real Arithon, the inner person behind the cold mask, and the protective intent behind the sharp tongue and provocation.
“a lonely boy raised in the company of elderly mages who had all loved him at a distance. He had grown without a mother’s affection, but hereditary compassion had turned him from resentment. He readily forgave what he did not understand, and defined his joy through his competence. Praise for his achievements kept him from discovering the depths of his isolation, the cost of that misapprehension still yet to be paid.”
Arithon seeks his self-worth instinctively in music but Desh-thiere and a crown hang in between. Feared for his mastery of shadow even by the girl he had once liked, Arithon doesn’t know how it feels to have a caring lover, or even a true friend. He lives censured by his inherited s’Ffalenn compassion and driven by the s’Ahelas farsight inherited from his mother’s side. His vulnerability stirs Asandir to grief sharp as outrage “for he could, he would and he must, manipulate this prince into voluntary betrayal of everything he held dear.”
The sorcerer stamps down his pity and opens Arithon’s awareness to the residual glimmer of Paravian magic present in the soil of Caith-al-Caen. And now Arithon can also see the Paravians dancing; he can also feel their joy! But note the cost: Asandir’s grief, regret and pity! Because Arithon was meant to feel this joy before reaching the ruins of Ithamon, the royal seat of Rathain. It is there that the Fellowship intend the brothers to fight the Mistwraith, and also, there, the residual imprint of the past were “stark with the blood and tragedy of displaced lives and dreams.”
The ruin of Ithamon has lain shattered since the uprising, except four of five towers raised by the Paravians are still standing. The enduring echo of their harmony lies in contrast to a backlash of magic unleashed by the fall of the fifth, the King’s Tower. Arithon would be able to shut those haunted impressions out, but at the cost of his bardic inspiration, and Asandir is well aware that the compassion that is permanently ingrained in every scion of the s’Ffalenn line would never allow it.
“The King for Rathain would be bought in false guilt, against every dedicated principle of the Fellowship whose first task was to foster enlighentment. For the prince now entranced by the unicorn spirits lacked the hardened self-wisdom to stand down Ithamon’s past. He was too young, too strong and too much the puppet of pity to perceive that responsibilities were always self-imposed.” – Important!
Daon Ramon was once a beautiful grassland, fair with herbs and wildflowers. “Golden Hills” – the name meant in the old tongue. Convinced that Paravian magic couldn’t abide in a land without water, the townsmen of Etarra diverted the river Severnir, turning the land barren. No Paravian would return to dwell there, as long as the hills remained a desert.
Dakar keeps waiting for Arithon to snap and show the temper, bound as they are for Rathain’s ruling seat; but contrary to his expectation, Arithon is courteous and helpful and even defends his half-brother from the Mad Prophet's nettling.
Lysaer grows increasingly frustrated. With each passing day, he feels as if he’s being watched but doesn’t understand why. There is an aching hollow something that tugs at his nerves like pain. He remembers his life before the Gate and misses it. “No noble dedication to purpose could ease his longing for home.” – Important! Especially as: “the confusion that had harried him since exile held a core of ugly truth. No longer did the glamour of noble purpose veil fact: that his brave resolve to Traithe in Althain’s storeroom had been rooted in vanity and pride.He had renounced a difficult path of study and vowed instead to redress the wrongs of a kingdom for his own personal glory.” – Also note his self-disgust at the discovery!
Close to Ithamon, the party stops for a meal in a place where a centaur was once beset during rebellion and killed. The sunchildren sung a lament to commemorate his passage and the words and melody still ring upon the wind to any with sensitivity enough to listen. Arithon hears the lament and begins to recognize that the gift Asandir made him by opening his perception to the Paravian signature may have an unpleasant side effect. He can feel the pain of the dead centaur; and the sorrow of the sunchildren who sang the lament; and Ithamon is nearing!
Nothing prepares the brothers for their first sight of Ithamon. Especially Arithon! The buildings all looked as if they had been razed stone from stone with battering rams. Amidst the harrowed ruin left by chaos and devastation, inside the shattered wall of the Inner Citadel, rise the four intact towers at the heart of Ithamon!
“Built by the centaurs, refined by sunchildren, they were Name-bound and warded by the unicorns.” The Paravian towers were 19 thousand years old. Throughout the ages, they have been called The Sun Towers or Compass Points for their alignment and dizzying height, but the ancients who laid their stones gave them separate names:
1. Alathwyr with the strength of Wisdom – the white tower with alabaster combing
2. Endurance, which represents the Paravian concept of honour - the east black tower
3. Grace – the south tower of rose quartz
4. Kieling, or compassion, symbolic of renewal – the tower of green jasper
Important: When civilisation has abandoned any of these qualities, its respective tower will fail, for the power that binds their structure is the force of each virtue renewed.
Ithamon means Five Spires in the old tongue, and the name was given because there were once 5 towers. The fifth, Daelthain, the King’s Tower for justice cracked on the day a Second Age Paravian High King was murdered in his hall by an assassin and the last remnant crumbled during the Third Age rebellion.
It is here, at the sight of these towers, that Arithon encounters the full impact grief within the memories of blood and murder. He cannot bear the weight of sorrow and demands of Asandir: "How am I to suffer this?”
Note Asandir’s reply: “I will answer when you ask out of care, Prince of Rathain.” – He understands Arithon’s pain and pities him, but in the end – “Shall all that has been go to waste because Arithon refuses the responsibility? Arithon’s personal preference is a luxury the times can ill afford.”
The subchapter ends with the party deciding to camp within a tower, as those are sound, comfortable and dry, and Arithon chooses Kieling – Compassion. (hide spoiler)]
Chapter Set 10 - Part 2Caithdein
(view spoiler)[Maenalle s’Gannley, Steward of Tysan, is waiting to welcome all of Tysan’s clanlords at the west outpost of Camris. Giddy with anticipation, she is waiting to deliver them the news that a true-born heir had returned through West Gate to claim the High King’s throne.
Her joy is cubed by Luhaine who arrives in haste to deliver the news of upcoming war. He informs Maenalle that Lysaer s’Ilessid will cast his lot with townsmen, to the detriment of the loyal clans. Shocked and staggered that their own prince will betray them, Maenalle demands to know why. But the Seven don’t have an answer.
They perceive the evil which will set s’Ilessid prince against s’Ffalenn will be prompted by the Mistwraith, but how exactly that will come to pass is beyond their power to divine. Desh-thiere’s nature is opaque to them. The Seven have no insight into it without knowing the Name to embody its essence. The Paravians refused to get close to it. Traithe attempted to encompass it for interpretation when he sealed the South Gate against invasion. but was left crippled in both body and power, unable to express whatever he had discovered.
Forced to choose in between war and restoration of full sunlight, Maenalle agrees with the Seven: Sunlight must be restored at all costs.
Since Lysaer cannot be sanctioned for inheritance, Maenalle is left with the frail hope that anther royal descendent may replace the lost High King in future and is charged with the clans’ survival. Cold with foreboding, she is now forced to shoulder the task of informing the clan lords of the upcoming disaster, as well as breaking her own grandson’s heart, because Maien already admired the prince’s faultless manner and poise. (hide spoiler)]
Scryers
(view spoiler)[The Koriani Prime Enchantress, Morriel, is alerted by First Enchantress Lirenda that the battle to vanquish the Mistwraith has begun. The grip of the fog is loosening in the far West, where sunlight has broken through for the first time in centuries. At the same time, the mist above Ithamon is becoming more concentrated, which supports the conclusion that the princes are setting Desh-thiere under siege from there.
Curious to know HOW the princes are able to battle the Mistwraith and considering it the Order’s DUTY to KNOW HOW the princes CAME BY THEIR POWERS, Morriel tries to scry and find out. They use the Jewel of Skyron and, because the battle takes place from within Kieling, Morriel decides to use compassion as a weapon to breach the Tower’s safeguards. And she takes the imprint of sympathy from Elaira’s memory of the hayloft encounter.
Through the Skyron Focus, Lirenda accesses Elaira’s trial record and rifles her most intimate emotions.
She experiences Elaira’s miserable childhood among thieves and beggars and sees how, in the absence of proper food and shelter or belongings, Elaira had made her life rich with caring. Lirenda accesses water, as Elaira would have done, instead of fire, her own predominant element, and breaches the wards of Kieling under the shield of Elaira’s compassion. She sees the princes and Dakar but becomes entangled in Elaira’s memory from the loft.
Entranced by the tender sensation of Arithon's fingers plucking straw from Elaira's hair, Lirenda fails to notice her invasive presence has been detected. Arithon's planned retaliation, exposing her to the blast of light Lysaer directs to reduce the Mistwraith, floods her scrying and tosses her physically head over heels. Not only does the backlash break the connection, the bare force is sufficient to wreck the furnishings in the Prime’s chamber.
The enchantresses take no pleasure from the triumph that the Mistwraith is being vanquished. Instead, they are angry and worried that the princes have been granted untold powers – abominations loosed upon the world!
The subchapter ends with the Prime summoning Elaira because she is needed to create the opening for further study of the princes and their powers. (hide spoiler)]
Triad
(view spoiler)[The seer Enithen Tuer snaps awake from her nap in Etarra, from a dream revealing stars and moon on an indigo sky.
Elaira is recalled and she fears trouble.
On a faraway island, a unicorn is puzzled to see Desh-thiere’s mists part and glances at a cave mouth without rousing the sorcerer sealed under sleep spells within. – Important! (hide spoiler)]
Chapter Set 11XI. DESH-THIERE
(view spoiler)[Atop the battlements of Kieling tower in Daon Ramon, Arithon and Dakar are doubled over with laughter after the prank played to thwart the Koriani Prime and her First Senior's meddling. Through tears and outbusrsts of chuckles, both of them try to explain coherently what just happened, to a confused Lysaer and an irritated Asandir.
The sorcerer demands to know how exactly Morriel was able to breach the towers’ wards and scrutinizes Arithon’s most inner feelings to find out the answer was “compassion”.
“Kieling tower may admit no force except unconditional love.” – Important! And note Asandir’s warning to Arithon in recognition:
“You must never ever in your life allow Elaira to indulge in her feelings where you are concerned. Her care is real enough, and generous, but to acknowledge her in any way would lead her to ruin. The Koriani creed she is bound to obey is unnaturally opposed to human nature.”
Add that to Arithon’s reply: “Elaira is secure from my attentions, most certainly, since I’d die before I’d give your Fellowship even one chance of getting an heir”;
and Asandir’s retort: “if you want me to think that you hold the enchantress in light regard, you’ll need better subterfuge than lying.”
And we get early insight into the feelings of both. – Pays to follow it all up.
Arithon realizes at this moment that his free will is a sham and that his Kingship over Rathain is connected to the recovery of the Paravians. Just as Asandir had no choice but to force him on the path of kingship, Arithon himself has no choice but accept because the murder of the Paravians is not an option.
Ironically, it is Lysaer this time who takes his brother’s side: “Less than the truth would not bind him, is that it?”
“Truth is like a gem with many facets – reflection and illusion from every outward angle. The one unsplintered view can only be found from within.”
And the irony bites that truth by itself would not condemn the Paravians to extinction! They would forsake Athera, but not perish. The Paravians’ return and the restoration of the Fellowship of the Seven both rely upon the Prince’s decision! Because of Dakar’s Black Rose prophecy, whose particulars are in question still.
Arithon relinquishes his personal dreams once again and assumes the responsibility of the crown awaiting at Etarra.
Trying to reconcile his unwanted fate, he seeks solitude away from the towers Lysaer comes in search of him in Ithamon's ruins because he had resolved to better understand his half-brother. Because he felt that Asandir had not shown any kindness to compensate for the unwanted burdens laid on Arithon, he makes a genuine attempt to bond with his brother and offer support.
To draw Arithon out of what he believes to be brooding, Lysaer confesses he feels watched and haunted, especially when they are fighting the Mistwraith. He queried the sorcerers, only to have his worry dismissed, because their scrying found nothing amiss. Note the exchange - where Arithon's apparent reticence in fact takes his brother’s concern seriously. Since he himself had kept his awareness shielded to cope with the haunted resonance of Ithamon, he hadn’t allowed himself to feel anything. The instant he lowers his barriers to probe, both brothers are attacked by Desh-thiere.
The mist they had been given to subdue was an intelligent and hostile entity. And the Seven hadn’t known! The princes work together and lay down defenses while they retreat toward the safety of Kieling tower. But Desh-thiere is spirit-formed and attacks their awaerness, unraveling protections as fast as they can be maintained. It manifests as a ghostly circle of faces closing in around the brothers and leering with blood-thirsty ferocity. “Their image was wrought of seething mist and their strength was that of a multitude.”
Lysaer raises a hedge of light to drive back the mist and crumbles the next minute without warning. – Important! Especially as the next instant Arithon is encircled by a band of hostile entities and a probe from them lances his mind. Desh-tiere's assault tries to break his defenses and access his inner awareness. – To what purpose? Remains to be seen!
The Mistwraith was an entity more than just aware. It was intelligent and bent on retaliation against the princes who were its sure bane. But how did it hide its nature from the Fellowship all this time? – We’ll come back to it.
Just when Arithon’s protections were about to fail, Asandir arrives and sets his own shields against the Mistwraith's attack. Note what kind of power resides within Asandir and how the Mistwraith, instead of recoiling, simply vanishes. Why? We’ll get to it in the next subchapter.
Back under the safety of Kieling tower, Arithon is told that the wards within Alithiel reacted to his peril and came alive, almost setting the clothes chest on fire. That is how Asandir knew trouble was brewing and rushed to the rescue in time .
The sorcerers can't yet fathom how the Mistwraith could manifest a concerted attack. But with Arithon’s recounting of the event, Asandir now pieces the clues together.
The Mistwraith is an entity that encompasses thousands of spirits, too many to number separately and all of them bound captive in hatred. It could cross the tower’s wards at will because, even though the Paravian defenses bar entrance to the spirits within the mist, the mist itself is only a boundary of dampness that the wards allow through. Nothing on Athera can escape the vigilance of the Seven, but the Mistwraith is not of Athera, so neither strands nor seer can read it. They can only divine its effects.
In an effort to gain greater insight into the threat posed by Desh-thiere, Asandir surveys untold miles of Daon Ramon seeking even a trace remnant of those entities, but without result. Note how clearly Asandir can discern nuance on Athera; how he can identify and recognize even a fallen leaf or a bird asleep. Even know them by Name. He sees both substance and beyond that, to the energy that structures all beings, everything visible to his awareness as individual signatures.
Asandir sees to the comfort of Arithon, humbled by recognition that the prince he had bound to an unwanted fate through guilt had not harbored any grudge against him. He waits for Luhaine to come and help set stronger wards, while Sethvir and Kharadmon are already at Althain tower analyzing Arithon’s experience and alongside the past experience that left Traithe crippled. While Lysaer seems to have come to harm, despite not owning Arithon’s mage-trained protections, Asandir fears that reducing the mist as the confining vessel of those malevolent entities might ultimately set them free. As creature of unfettered spirit, or free wraiths, they might readily shift their vibration and continue to manifest on Athera. (hide spoiler)]
Backsearch
(view spoiler)[Sethvir and Kharadmon are in council at Althain tower.
“The damage has already been done.” – Sethvir concludes. And we need to remember!
Luhaine and Asandir had found nothing amiss through an in depth survey of Lysaer. But Sethvir is adamant.that Traithe's plight suggests a deeper threat of endangerment.
Together, the two sorcerers review the moment when the South Gate was closed and correlate it with the attack on the princes. They reach an uneasy conclusion:
Desh-thiere’s aspects besieged Traithe’s mind the instant he opened himself to its essence seeking its Name to gain ascendancy over it. He should not have been vulnerable, except the beings he sounded were out of phase from his time sense, removed from the present a half-step into the future. Because of this, Traithe’s defenses were a fatal fraction too slow.
Desh-thiere gained access to Traithe’s consciousness and Traithe reacted with a brutal defence. He “sealed away half of his awareness, truncated his own vision by blasting it out with raw power, that Desh-thiere could be stopped from enslaving him. He burned it out as a hill warrior might hack off a limb with a septic wound, by his own hand rendering himself crippled.” He lost memory in the process, as well as the greater vision that founded his faculties, as well as all trace of the Name of his attacker(s).
Desh-thiere’s aspects did not challenge Asandir’s wards or retreat because they simply passed elsewhere, into another time. And the only logical premise implied that they had accomplished their purpose. Sethvir believes the s’Ilessid prince has been affected by the wraiths, but that the change will be evident only at a future moment,carefully chosen. – “Arithon’s coronation in Etarra”!
Warned that Deshtiere’s wraiths can slip the confines of time, the sorcerers construct counter wards to forestall them. Likely too late, given the worst has already happened! (hide spoiler)]
Dispatch
(view spoiler)[Elaira had been summoned by the Prime Matriarch and heads directly to the Order’s winter quarters near Mainmere. But the road is hard, the weather dismal, and the mare ripped off a shoe, so Elaira is forced to take shelter with the marsh folk along the way.
They live deep in the wild, isolated descendants of farmers displaced since the rebellion,. Although they are exiles and outcasts, they understand the grace of hospitality more than rich families in the towns. Elaira is welcomed once the people notice she is unarmed.
While resting, Elaira is startled by panicked screams. By night, the sky had been cleared of mist and the people in that region have, for the first time in centuries, seen stars. They panic, unable to grapple with a new view of a world not blanketed under mist.
While admiring her first view of the cleared sky, Elaira dutifully wrests her thoughts away from the two princes responsible for the change, and in particular, her chance encounter with Arithon. Then, she receives a changed directive from her Prime: to go to Etarra, where the Fellowship of Seven plans to arrange the High King’s coronation, and bring back for the Koriani order's analysis her most intimate insights into the royal princes’ characters. (hide spoiler)]
Guard, Ward and Bard
(view spoiler)[Luhaine works new protections against Desh-thiere at Ithamon, wards that cut across time and worldly dimension
When sunlight breaks over Havistock, Traithe ends his visit to the craftsman who stands as foster parent to the young heir of Havish. Prince Eldir will assume his inheritance once Rathain’s succession has been settled in Etarra. Until then, his life as a common craftsman’s apprentice is not to be changed.
North, in the town of Ward, where mist is still holding, an elder bard rips dow the appeal he had posted in bright hope the day prior, bitter to have been disappointed in his search to audition a suitable apprentice. (hide spoiler)]
Chapter Set 12XII. CONQUEST
(view spoiler)[Months have passed and the Mistwraith’s bane is nearly accomplished. But Asandir is worried. His deepest scrying can only half-sense the sick entities Arithon encountered within the mist. But he knows they are there. Luhaine and Kharadmon have set wards over Ithamon to forestall Desh-thiere's escape through an alternate time or dimension, and they are also concerned the spirits might somehow slip through them.
Lysaer and Arithon in the ruins of Ithamon - Curse of The Mistwraith Cover Art by Janny Wurts
The moment the princes drive the last remnant of mist inside the Paravian protections of Ithamon, the wraiths could escape the fog that confines them and, as separate entities, continue their existence as free wraiths. They might then possess Athera’s creatures with dire consequences. The Methuri from Mirthlvain Swamp had similar origins. To counter the risk, the brothers must concentrate the infested mist and drive it intact into the containment set by the two sorcerers.
Atop the battlements of Kieling Tower, as the party gathers for the final stand, note the observation Kharadmon makes regarding Arithon’s lyranthe when he is about to summon the prince to the battle:
“A formidable weapon, Elshian’s lyranthe.” And Asandir’s reply: “In Arithon’s hands not just yet.” – Important! Especially if you connect this to the first memory of Arithon learning magic “just like music”.
While the brothers engage against Desh-thiere, Lysaer is attacked by the wraiths. They seize on his power and press the mist into collapse toward annihilation. Note how the wraiths bend Lysaer’s mind and feed him the illusion of winning to make him overspend his gift to their purpose. Asandir stops Lysaer just in time, but the fog is left dangerously diminished. The entities were aware enough to bid for escape by forcing Lysaer to annihilate the mist outside the Paravian wards. Or perhaps they might lure the princes into an attack and then make them a target.
Desh-thiere striking at Ithamon - Curse of the Mistwraith Cover Art by Janny Wurts
Asandir suggests a new plan: have the princes drive Desh-thiere within the wards of Kieling tower, as the Paravian working is strong enough to absolutely fence the wraiths even if they shed their containment of mist. Asandir will open the tower's wards, the princes will drive Desh-thiere inside, to be resealed as soon as the last bit of fog is within their boundaries. Then both sorcerers and princes will act in concert to drive the wraiths into a final containment of wardspells created from those of the tower itself.
As Asandir will be engaged with reshaping tower’s wards for this purpose, the two remaining sorcerers must partner with the princes to assist and assure their safety. Free will consent is required Lysaer grants permission to be bonded by Kharadmon and allows the sorcerer access to his mind and body. The same is agreed between Arithon and Luhaine. Then battle is joined. Desh-thiere is driven within the wards of Kieling tower, to be resealed by Asandir, but as the brothers pressure the wraiths into their final, spelled captivity, and Lysaer falters. Kharadmon takes full charge, and holds his will firm until the last minute. As the wraiths are almost contained, a breach pierces the wards. Lysaer notices the disaster as it forms, and Kharadmon releases his hold.
Left to his own free will, Lysaer draws on his last resources, uses his gift and covers the breach with his bare hands at the last moment. And the wraiths seize that access. They get inside him and wreak havoc throughout his mind. His memories are ripped through by the hostile spirits. They rifle his memory and note their focus: of Arithon standing above him in the desert is combined with pain and another memory “of an enemy who was wholly and unforgivably a s’Ffalenn, ever and always Amroth’s enemy, and the righteous s’Illesid fury is shared and fanned hotter” by the ravening horde of wraiths. – Important point to follow up!
The sorcerers successfully push the horde of demonic spirits out of Lysaer and into the containment vessel that is permanently sealed seamless. After five centuries without sunlight, Desh-thiere is at last secured in captivity. (hide spoiler)]
Legacy
(view spoiler)[The evening after Desh-thiere's imprisonment, Asandir and his colleagues head south to secure the containment vessel, leaving the princes behind at Kieling with Dakar.
Enjoying a quiet night and a sky brilliant with stars over a rare flask of brandy gifted by Asandir, the brothers discuss their future. Lysaer sits at rest, while Arithon paces as though caged. He dreads his coming presentation in Etarra, surprising Lysaer with his observation that he suspects the sorcerers have no choice but to crown him.
A bit tipsy from celebration brandy, Lysaer pursues a clear answer: why doesn’t Arithon resent the Fellowship for his imposed fate. And why exactly would they be obligated to crown a s’Ffalenn descendent. Dakar, belatedly making an appearance to seize his share of the brandy, is cornered to explain.
Arithon has a theory that someone had meddled with both the s’Ffallen and s’Ilessid family history. Dakar confirms, and further assures that “Consent was given, on behalf of the s’Ffalenn line, sealed in blood by Torbrand s’Ffalenn on the day Rathain’s charter was drawn up by Ciladis of the Fellowship.”
Now we know precisely why the royal lines of Athera are irreplaceable, and get deeper insight into the heritage of the two princes.
“The Fellowship selected three men and two women to found Athera’s royal lines. They were hand picked for a dominant trait that would resist corruption and the pressures that power brings to bear on human nature. It is a grave thing to alter or to influence unborn life. Yet, that is what the sorcerers did, to ensure fair rule throughout generations of dynastic succession. They set a geas ward that would fix those chosen virtues intact, in the line of inheritance.” And for that they were given consent.
For a better understanding, here are the virtues chosen for each of the royal lines:
1. the s’Ilessid royal line - Kingdom of Tysan – gifted geas: justice
2. the s’Ffalenn royal line - Kingdom of Rathain – gifted geas: compassion/empathy
3. the s’Ellestrion royal line - Kingdom of Melhalla – gifted geas: wisdom
4. the s’Lornmain royal line - Kingdom of Havish – gifted geas: temperance
5. the s’Ahelas royal line - The High Kingdom of Shand – gifted geas: farsight
What does this mean for our two princes?
First and foremost that –“ they can never escape their nature!”
Arithon will forgive the knife that kills him. He cannot do otherwise. To understand and to sympathize with the needs of every living thing is his inborn nature, the forced gift of the s’Ffalenn lineas bequeathed by the Fellowship of Seven.
Lysaer in his turn, will always seek justice even where none can be found.
One more thing to note within this subchapter – Dakar is aggrieved because Lysaer had been the one to stop the Misth-wraith barehanded!
Lysaer had been Kharadmon’s selection for the sacrifice. Of both half brothers, Lysaer was the least trained to the mysteries. Contact with the flesh allowed Desh-thiere’s wraiths to access the mind, but to let such beings touch knowledge of true power, such as Arithon possessed, might have led to a danger far worse. Lysaer’s exposure posed the lesser risk. (hide spoiler)]
Insurrection
(view spoiler)[The city of Etarra is in uproar. True sunlight is hailed as a catastrophe by the merchant guilds. Trade has stalled, terror stricken citizens huddle indoors waiting to die under influence of the bad omen. The townspeople blame everything on sorcery and fear the old rumours and legends from the time before the uprising. Already corrupt, Etarra grows dangerous in unrest.
Morfett, Lord Supreme Governor of Etarra is forced to call in Lord Commander Diegan to muster the city guard and enforce order. With equilibrium nearly restored, Sethvir materializes on the city’s inner battlement and requests the governor's guest suite aired for state visitors, and for the town to prepare to feast royalty. And of course the mayor is incensed, His impulse to evict the unwanted visitor; becomes thwarted in force: Sethvir's presence is joined by Luhaine and Kharadmon, who corner him with the news that Etarra must give over authority and swear fealty to the new High King within a fortnight.
Note the Governor’s reaction: “Over my dead body.” And Kharadmon’s unblinking reply: “If need be.” – There’s only one way to have Arithon crowned here – by sheer force!
Morfett does his utmost to undermine the procedures but finds himself beset from all sides. His wife and daughters are eager with curiosity, the hired assassins fail to take down their targets, and to top this all, the farmers become obsessed by the concept that guild overlords no longer hold rights to their lands. They are backing their petitions with threat of strikes, in anticipation of the change in governance. Traithe has been busy, sowing insurrection among the country folk.
We are gaining, here, the very first hint that town rule as it stands is nothing at all like the charter law, that presided of old.Take careful note, because these differences are significant; you will be shown how deep and how wide they are as the series progresses. (hide spoiler)]
Overviews
(view spoiler)[Lirenda reports to the Prime that Desh-thiere’s remains have been sealed under ward and imprisoned temporarily in the caves at Skelseng’s Gate. After Arithon is crowned in Etarra, the Fellowship intends to transfer the Mistwraith to a permanent place of captivity. They wish to learn then why the sorcerers faltered in the end and preserved the creature alive.
In Strakewood, in the northern reaches of Rathain, the clan gathering celebrates the new sunlight for a fortnight and a pair of barbarian boys bored with the feasting sneak away from the festivities to play at raids on Etarra’s merchants.
On her way to Etarra, Elaira is warned that provisions are scarce in the markets. Farmers won’t sell to the townsmen and talk of sorcerers and monarchy has the trade-guilds in uproar. (hide spoiler)]
Chapter Set 13XIII. Etarra
(view spoiler)[On the day Arithon is due to arrive in Etarra, the Sorcerers gather the Lord Governor Supreme and his officials at the outer gates of Etarra to pay their respects to their prince.
Guild ministers, trade officials and council governors, all accompanied by their wives sweat in their finery, openly showing disdain towards monarchy by making fun of their future prince.
The Lord Governor sees Arithon as no more than a child and, and in spiteful mockery, consents to let the Sorcerers conduct the ceremonial of affirmation of the Prince’s right of ancestry. Despite being phrased as an insult: “His Grace has my leave to chill his feet in our dirt, may he grub the worms’ favor for the honor.” His word is taken literally, and Asandir proceeds with the ancient rite. Too late, the jeering officials recognize that Asandir is not just affirming Arithon’s right of ancestry, but confirming his right of succession, as direct line descendant of Torbrand, first High King of Rathain. He binds Arithon to the land and with the charge to guard Rathain's ground as his own.
Arithon kneels barefoot in the soil and Asandir Kingmaker sanctions him as crown prince with a plain circlet of sanction transmuted from the soil of Rathain.
Morfett and his Lord Commander Diegan are outraged, insistent they have been tricked into willing consent. Their fury intensifies when confronted with their new Prince, as they discover he is a sorcerer, and not the green child they were led to believe. They inform Arithon that he is not acknowledged by the Etarra Governor’s council, but their belligerence does not cow him. Arithon returns a warning, deadpan: “If you and your council rule justly, you need have no fear of me.” – So let the game begin!
Morfett and his cronies opt to undermine Arithon’s newly set authority and issue a warrant for his arrest. The attempt is thwarted by Lysaer and Dakar who step forward to offer friendly information. Their instigation leads the council members so deep in their cups, they become too drunken to convene their meeting until the next day.
Meanwhile, Arithon and the sorcerers get down to business and comb through Etarra’s records throughout the night. By early morning, they have reviewed Etarra’s condemned and under the precepts of charter law, issue pardons and reprieves from execution for all convicts wrongfully tried and sentenced. More, their audacity vouches treasury funds as reimbursement for unfair fines;. Lists are posted declaring laws will become repealed, wrongful taxes to be eliminated, and which corrupt public servants are to be relieved of their posts; with such decrees to be carried out on the day Arithon is invested as High King.
The belated completion of Morfett's arrest warrant for Arithon has been undermined at one stroke. With a city aroused to the brink of a riot, rumour had spread that Etarra’s council intends to outlaw the royal charter: under the ancient law, land owning is abolished. Tenant farmers strapped with taxes and overlords would no longer owe anyone for the produce they raised, and the fruits of their tilled land would be restored to them. Since charter law frees them to their own enterprise, they rise up and storm the council hall doors.
To avoid being torn apart, limb from limb, the First City Aldeman caves in and declares that the guilds are abdicating from ruling power and backing the s’Ffalenn right of sovereignty. Cornered, the council surrenders to the will of the sorcerers. They choose to bend now, and wait upon a future opportunity. to revolt. The Sorcerers cannot be everywhere. Sooner or later they will succumb to distraction, and Etarra’s revenge will be waiting!
Arithon resents his position, perhaps even more than the deposed elite of Etarra. He dislikes scheming politics. Feeling displaced at the parties given in his honour, he lets Lysaer claim his place at the center of attention. Talith, Lord Commander Diegan’s sister, has one of the best minds for intrigue in Etarra. Yet even she meets rebuff in her attempt to wrestle information from Arithon. Passed off on Lysaer's abundant charm, she applies her abundant beauty and allure to wring what she can from his vanity. – Take note of her. She is important!
When the council convenes the following morning, Arithon's conspicuous absence leaves Lysaer to shoulder the responsibility of hearing the guilds’ complaints. Plagued by fierce headaches ever since the Mistwraith’s defeat – Important! - Lysaer breaks away from the proceedings and goes in search of his brother. He finds him in the slums of Etarra, making a brigantine wrought of shadow to entertain the street urchins. Arithon is happy and is laughing; an astonishing facet of character that stops Lysaer in his tracks. His presence is noticed. Sight of an aristocrat in rich clothes spoils the poor children's trust. Note how this scene differentiates the two brothers in behavior, emotions and outlook.
Lysaer is appallled that Arithon could waste time amusing filthy urchins ahead of the serious matters posed by the guild and the council. He insists Etarra's governance can be made to work for the good of the people, given judicious handling born of understanding. The powerful can be molded into the backbone to steady the realm, if Arithon gives them wise guidance.
Arithon points out the corrupt practice that steals children for the misery of forced labor. Arithon refuses to pander to anyone condoning such cruel abuse. His fury is also personal: “The needs of this realm will swallow all that I am, and what will be left for the music!” Anguish aside, he gives Lysaer his promise to give his best effort and route Etarra’s corruption in his own way. The rebuke he leaves Lysaer is stinging and brisk, that the problem is HIS to sort out! (hide spoiler)]
Indiscretion
(view spoiler)[Jieret, 12 years old, and Idrien, his younger companion, are clan youngsters bored with a feast and sneak away to play raider. They ambush a solitary old man driving a pony cart on the road toward Tal’s Crossing. Threatening him with sticks, the youngsters demand his surrenders to take him hostage for ransom. The old man complies, and in smothered amusement. lets the boys take him to the clan encampment as their prisoner.
Steiven, current regent of Rathain, and Jieret’s father, recognizes the captive as Athera’s Masterbard, Halliron, a person of such high regard that his captivity is an offence. Since Halliron can barely keep a straight face, Steiven takes charge of his personal fear, fright of the real danger to his half-grown had the boy confronted a hostile townsman armed with only a stick. So the errant boy gets off with a scolding for keeping slack discipline, and is saddled with taking care of the bard's cart and his grumpy pony as punishment.
Halliron is granted hospitality in Steiven’s tent to shelter from a coming storm. Talk centers on his disappointing failure to find a worthy apprentice to inherit his legacy. Steiven and his wife, Dania, console the Masterbard, interrupted when Jieret wakes from a troubled sleep and announces that he had a dream.
Forevision runs in Steiven’s clan lineage. Jieret has been gifted Sight, just as his father, with vivid dreams that often predict upcoming, bloody violence.
Wrapped in his father’s arms and bundled in Halliron’s cloak, Jieret describes a vision of the King of Rathain riding under pursuit from Etarra. Detail suggests he was injured, driving north on a tired horse, hunted by two score lancers from Etarra’s garrison. The trees appeared green with new leaves, under snowfall out of step with the season.
Steiven takes action on his son’s vision and dispatches warning to Fallowmere to double the road-watch, ready to intercede in his liege's behalf when the time arises. (hide spoiler)]
Introspections
(view spoiler)[Lysaer wakes in the middle of the night, plagued by the latest recurrent nightmares after the Mistwraith’s defeat. Unsettled, he takes a stroll in the garden outside to clear his head.
Etarra's political infighting disturbs him. Despite his civilized preference for town life, the intrigue and corruption encountered here make him question his deepest convictions. Accustomed to holding his people’s trust on Dascen Elur and despite seeing the needs of the populace as his own, he has been applying that same method of rule in Etarra, gradually winning over the councilmen. Yet Arithon's perspective has exposed facets in a dilemma that Lysaer's experience cannot solve.
The guilds could not be served without destroying the children enslaved in the workhouses; the merchants’ rights to safe trade could not be enforced without condoning the headhunters and their butchery on the clansmen. Lysaer sense of justice struggles to reconcile the right course through Athera’s divisive cultures and shattered loyalties. The Fellowship has withheld their advice. They will not offer guidance or expectation, but only encourage the royal heir to rule by his gifts and his conscience. And that daunting responsibility has become suffocating. With no obvious course to satisfy justice, Lysaer finds himself at a loss to formulate a fair rule to all parties, by his own merits.
His brooding is interrupted by Elaira, who observes him from the shadows. She admits to being sent at her Prime’s order to gather insight on the princes and urges Lysaer to think.
Lysaer doesn’t agree with Arithon’s way, of “looking for pearls among beggars”, but considers the better approach to be that of ruling from the council chamber. “A man can feed the hungry and clothe beggars all his life and not change the conditions that make them wretched.”
But Elaira suggests that both views are equally valid, despite being very different.
She detail's Arithon's view, as a mage trained to mastery: “Universal harmony begins with the recognition that the life in an ordinary pebble is as sacred as conscious selfhood.”
Elaira agrees that “Etarra offers entanglement enough to torture any man and suffering very clearly bares the spirit.” She credits Lysaer for placing love and care for the masses before individual suffering. But when Lysaer turns the conversation to Arithon, Elaira ends the discussion. Note her observation before parting: “What this realm will kill for certain is your half-brother’s musical talent. Mourn that.” – Important! (hide spoiler)]
Preparations
(view spoiler)[The call to arms is given to the clans in North and East of Rathain
The entities of Desh-thiere brood, imprisoned in their sealed stone flask, their hatred bent upon the two half-brothers who sent them to their doom.
The Sorcerer Kharadmon diverts rain from Etarra and sends the storm to the north coast of Fallowmere, ensuring fair weather Arithon’s coronation. Note how he begs forgiveness to the plants, soil and wild creatures, for the violation of nature. (hide spoiler)]
Chapter Set 14 -Part 1XIV. CORONATION DAY
(view spoiler)[Dakar helps ready Arithon for his coronation and delivers royal garments warded and blessed by ritual done by the Fellowship when he is overcome by his gift of prophecy. His vision shows Arithon driving in heedless panic through a crowded square and foretells a disaster.
Terror strikes Dakar, related to a possible hold Desh-thiere might hold over Lysaer. Arithon himself is distressed. Without pause to share the prophecy’s details with Dakar, he rushes in search of Asandir. Luhaine, supposedly on guard over the chamber, is missing – another signal of disaster. Note Arithon's final word of advice as he leaves: “Dakar, as you love peace, if you care for my half-brother, keep him from me! For if we’re brought face to face, the terms of your prophecy shall be met. The result will end in a bloodbath.”
In the council hall of Etarra, Asandir is keeping the nobles on a leash, to forestall trouble, when dire warning arrives from Sethvir. He flags down Traithe and informs him Lysaer is in serious trouble. “The pattern that encompasses his Name has drifted. Worse, Luhaine reports that Dakar has been alarmed by premonition. Both events indicate that our s’Illesid heir may harbor one of Desh-thiere’s wraiths, picked up through the moment of confinement.”
Worried, Asandir leaves Traithe to smooth over the prickly tempers confined to the council hall. He sets off to find Lysaer. But Morfett has eavesdropped on the exchange and is bent on announcing to the Fellowship’s straits to every official within earshot. Traithe overcomes him and sends him into a spelled sleep.
At the same time, Lysaer is found entertaining Diegan, Etarra’s commander of the guard, and his sister Talith at their home. He is feverish and unsettled by discovery that he cannot recall parts of the conversation. He blames his nerves on imagination and residual distress from his nightmares and lack of sleep. But he starts to drift into past memories. Diegan’s speech in favor of the merchants’ guilds incites Lysaer's rage as his present situation reconnects with the past feud with s’Ffalenn pirates. Lysaer tries to separate past from present: that Arithon was not his ancestor, and Etarra is not Dascen Ellur, but the blur that affects his mind makes Diegan's accusations inflame further doubt and increase rage.
His perception of Arithon reverts to the chained sorcerer who burned 7 ships and baited his father’s council in Amroth. Lysaer strives to retain his fair judgement, but uncertainty over his brother’s nature seeps through. Just as Lysaer decides to confront Arithon over his future intentions for Rathain, Dakar and Asandir arrive at the mansion. To Lysaer’s dismay, Dakar sets wards around the room to confine him, preventing a meeting with Arithon. His dismay fires rage! And an explosive fury drives a poisoned conclusion: “the s’Ffallen bastard was to blame”! - a conclusion driven home by Dakar’s insistence that Arithon had begged at all costs to keep him separated from Lysaer.
Lysaer doesn’t have time to question his oddly troubled reactions. Driven by an overpowering urge to confront Arithon and, led into flight by Talith, he escapes Diegan’s parlour through a secret passage. Asandir follows but too late.
In the council hall, Traithe strives to calm the restive aristocrats when Arithon arrives in search of Asandir. The fact that he was witnessed passing through all the spells of protection surrounding the hall identifies him as a sorcerer. Luhaine cannot be found, Asandir went in search for Lysaer. Since Traithe cannot divest his first charge to contain the councilmen, he sends his raven to guide Arithon to Sethvir. Arithon’s obvious relief at the prospect of powerful backing to avoid the disaster foretold by Dakar’s prophecy is clearly seen, which turns Etarra's officials on their would-be prince. While Arithon flees in pursuit of the Raven, Traithe sets every gathered dignitary in the council hall into a spelled sleep to prevent their interference.
Lysaer’s body tingles. He suspects the Sorcerers are trying to locate him through spellcraft, without being certain of how and why he knows. The conviction confirms the fact he has changed. “He is no longer quite what he had been.” Note that the insight is more appropriate to a mage-taught perspective and Lysaer is not a mage! – Important! He doesn’t question what caused the deviation to his behavior or WHY he has the intuitive knowledge. Instead, he is ridden by a compulsion to seek justice. To him, Arithon is now an established liar and a proven criminal; and Lysaer's moral obligation is to defend the populace from him. Fanatical resolve replaces the sensation of tingling once Lysaer's decision is set. He goes in search of Arithon.
He finds Arithon long gone from their shared quarters. The sight of the king’s cloak left crumpled onto a divan and the gemmed scabbard thrown on the floor like spurned gifts contrasted by the lyranthe couched lovingly on the window seat drives Lysaer to hot rage: “Are Rathain’s people of less account than minstrelsy?!” – Note: his towering fury is triggered by something he cannot phantom. – Important!
Lost to his rage, Lysaer smashes Elshian’s lyrante and storms towards the coronation square to find Arithon.
From an mansion balcony overlooking to the market appointed for the coronation procession, and, with a clear view of the square, he spots Arithon through the crowd, following Traithe’s raven.
Convinced Arithon is running away from his commitment to the realm, Lysaer snaps. He draws the people’s attention to Arithon and accuses him of sorcery, then attacks him with light. Although Asandir and Luhaine are also in the square, they cannot interfere. Asandir is still too far and Luhaine can’t get Arithon away while he is being held down by angry townspeople.
The wraith is now in full possession of Lysaer and he strikes Arithon with a light bolt embedded with spells; spells that Lysaer himself had no way of knowing! “Desh-thiere’s wraith had delivered a bane-spell against the half-brother beyond reach of possession.” Now the curse gains foothold on Arithon. He strikes back with shadow and plunges Etarra into darkness to escape.
Spent by the powers that had driven him, Lysaer crumbles where he stands, but Dakar’s prophecy had already been fulfilled. The Sorcerers are left to try and heal the smashed pieces. (hide spoiler)]
Chapter Set 14 - Part 2Backlash
(view spoiler)[Luhaine is trailing Arithon to protect him if necessary, while Asandir takes Lysaer to Sethvir, who had been busy keeping Etarra’s armory sealed from access by rioting townsmen. The sorcerers are bleak and blame themselves for not checking Lysaer for possession across time! Without the name for the wraith responsible, they wouldn’t have had the foothold for a preventative response.
Its plot in hindsight has been deviously thorough. Aware its bane relied on the half brothers' paired strength, it set them against each other in self defense. Hatred set their gifted talents against each other, setting them under a curse of enmity.
Desh-thiere had tagged its enemy and imprinted the brothers’ personalities the night they had been cornered at Ithamon. In that split-second of contact, the wraiths grasped the scope of Arithon’s training but withheld from action, brooding upon what they had learned. No real damage had occurred before the moment of bare handed contact, when Lysaer had prevented Desh-thiere's escape.
The irony wounded that the the Fellowship's protections may have been wrongly aligned. Lysaer was defenceless to the wraiths's meddling, while Arithon might have deflected their attack due to his mage-training, or at least sensed the wraith's presence before it moved to possess.
“Dharkaron damn us for fools, we threw the wrong prince into jeopardy!” – But regret comes too late to reverse a choice miscalled through crisis and desperation.
A stolen memory from Lysaer’s trials in the Red Desert – the moment when Arithon had used spellcraft to inflame Lysaer’s hate and keep him going – offered the wraiths their foothold for revenge.
“The Mistwraith seized upon discord, then borrowed deeper knowledge from the bindings Kharadmon attached to Lysaer’s consent on Kieling Tower. The spell-curse just cast interlinks with the half-brother’s life force.”
The wraith had interlinked its purpose to such an extent that removing it might lead to Lysaer’s death. The geas to kill Arithon both was and was not part of Lysaer’s essence. To miscall just one twist of its bindings would be to condemn the prince to death.
But the sorcerers must undertake the exorcism. They concentrate all their strength but cannot find the wraith. It is hiding in the one place the sorcerers wouldn’t have considered a vulnerability: the mage-given gift of justice of the s’Illesid royal line, “the one avenue of conscience Lysaer was spell charged never to question! The fault and the weakness were never Lysaer’s, but the Fellowship’s own, for sorrowful lack of foresight.”
In the end, the wraith is removed. Lysaer survives, but at a cost: The curse that set Lysaer against Arithon has sullied the s’Illesid gift of true justice. Bent to ill usage by the wraith, the inborn gift of the s'Ilessid royal line has sustained untold further damage.
Note Sethvir's final discovery - the wraiths had once been human, and trapping unconsenting spirits in a limbo of imprisonment or sending them to destruction lies outside of the Fellowship’s purview!
Dakar and Diegan’s arrival interrupts the sorcerers, who awaken Lysaer to stop the populace from riot as his gift of light is needed to lift the shadows Arithon placed over Etarra. Note how changed Lysaer is after awakening; and the vicious ill will shown towards his half-brother:
“When I find your lying get of a s’Ffalenn pirate, I’ll see him dead and thrown in pieces to the headhunter’s pack of tracking dogs!”
By now, Arithon is out of Etarra. He had paused in his flight only to free the enslaved children from the knackers', paying for the locksmith and a wagon to get them away with one of Rathain’s crown jewels. Since his course takes him northward, towards Rathain's clans, the sorcerers expect open war, a grim option but preferable to Arithon's death and subsequent doom of the Black Rose Prophecy. (hide spoiler)]
Muster
(view spoiler)[As the councilmen are still spell bound in sleep and the sorcerers have departed, Lysaer assumes command in Etarra. For the first time, he satisfies his drive justice through LIES and twists his mother’s flight into rape and abduction, then blames his exile from Amroth on a “s’Ffalenn’s doings”.
One hour under the wraith’s full possession has completely and irrevocably realigned Lysaer’s character. He now views his odd bouts of confusion on spells laid by the sorcerers, with Arithon used as their puppet.
From the dais built for Arithon’s coronation, Lysaer engages his gift of light to drive back the shadows from Etarra. Hours on end, enveloped in light, he spends himself until darkness is driven from the city gates. Over-awed, the people acclaim him as a savior. When he passes out from exhaustion, he is attended for by the Lord Governor’s own healer. The remaining shadows disperse on their own by midninght (never meant to last any longer), but the people attribute the reprievet to the prince who had delivered them from their terror; “Lysaer of the Light”.
Lancers sent after Arithon's trail fail to find him. Aware he will find shelter with Rathain's clans, Lysaer convinces the councilmen of Etarra muster for war to eradicate the barbarian clans, along with their criminal prince. (hide spoiler)]
Sojourns
(view spoiler)[Morriel is informed that Etarra musters for war, the sorcerers have misplayed the s’Ffalenn succession and Arithon is a fugitive so she summons Elaira to meet her at Narms
Asandir and the Mad Prophet carry the wraith removed from Lysaer to Skelseng’s Gate, with the intent to find a more secure place for Desh-thiere's imprisonment, while the storm Kharadmon had diverted for the coronation spends itself over lands to the North
Arithon, hunched against the rain, rides a stolen draught-horse at gallop away from Etarra (hide spoiler)]
Chapter Set 15 - Part 1XV. STRAKEWOOD
(view spoiler)[The last of the storms Kharadmon released encountered the fierce darkness of Arithon’s shadows and for a while, nature got warped and snow fell in green spring.
After three days and two nights of blind flight, Arithon is intercepted by Steiven’s scouts and taken to the barbarian encampment where Lord Steiven already awaits him. He is given the welcome and acknowledgment of a rightful ruler by the clan chieftain and his followers.
Arithon is shaken, bone-tired, and his effort make his newly found caithdein understand that he neither desires nor welcomes his title and inheritance, but his arguments fall on deaf ears. The gathered chieftains insist their destiny is to defend their liege. And Etarra will rise against the clans regardless of whether Arithon is sheltered among them or not. The prince’s choice is simple: forsake the clans and allow them to die for an empty title or make a stand with them and grant them the meaningful purpose of dying for a living sovereign.
None of Arithon’s protests move them. Not his confession of being a bastard, nor the fact he is cursed by Deshtiere! The only one who holds trepidation is Caolle, the clan's veteran war captain, but even his reserve cannot turn Steiven’s set course. Take note of Caolle as a character to watch!
Arithon’s objections are obliterated by the caithdein, leaving him cornered with no escape. Even the corpse of the girl child that Arithon had carried in his arms throughout his flight, perished of injuries sustained while enslaved in Etarra’s warehouses firms the reason the clans’ stand to fight.
Townsmen have held the clansmen’s lives cheaply since centuries before the prince’s birth, and for less cause than seizing children for forced labor.
Cornered and exhausted, finally told that Steiven has already foreseen the time and manner of his death (in the coming battle, this is implied), Arithon has no choice but to bend in agreement. While his needs are attended, the war council plans and launches the muster for war that very night.
Of note in this encounter are the reactions of Halliron, present in his standing as Athera's Masterbard during Arithon’s arrival. Due to the training of his office, he pays keen attention to the prince’s reactions and notices small details that redouble his watchful observation.
The clans relocate east of the Tal Quorin river, with the utmost urgency, to prepare the ground for their stand against Etarra’s troops. Their camp is broken before dawn. Their life is hard, and the customs born of necessity for survival are even harder. Any person unfit for travel would normally be given a mercy stroke and abandoned where they lay. since litters for the wounded or the infirm pose a hindrance to those still hale. And Arithon is not fit for travel! After 3 days of flight with no rest, he falls asleep despite his best attempt to to keep pace, he tumbles from the saddle, forcing the scouts to haul him as dead weight.
Despised for his weakness, he is left behind to recuperate with the pregnant women and young children, who move at a slower pace than the advance party with the warband.
Aware of the clans’ contempt for him, Arithon decides to reinforce it, exaggerating his delicacy and pretending complete ignorance to life in the wilds. He aims to drive home the impression of uselessness - both to provoke the clans to disown him, and also to mask his attributes as a trained asset. He also needs to seize time in strict privacy to enable to a scrying with tienelle to seek better odds on the outcome for the upcoming battle. Once Etarra’s invasion had been repulsed, he hopes the disdain of the clan chieftains will drive them to release him from the blood bonds of sovereigity, for the clans would be burdened by a useless addle-headed dreamer for their king! (Take note, for future volumes, here: that Arithon is very likely assuming a great deal concerning the purpose of his heritage, and the supposition he is playing on may not line up with the actual functions he would serve as fully crowned sovereign.)
Through the next days of travel, Arithon immerses himself in play with the children and even carves them whistles, to the fury and dismay of the women, who fear undue noise will draw the head-hunters upon them. They are all unaware aware that Arithon had already set precautions against that: wards of protection and others, to mute noise. All along, he has not been walking aimlessly through the forest but using his training from Rauven's mages to maintain everyone's safety. Halliron alone pierces the mask of foolishness that Arithon has projected. Suspecting the prince is more than he seems, and charged by his calling to bear witness to history, the masterbard remains with the clans and bears close watch on the prince whenever the occasion arises. He notices Arithon’s love for music, and studies his resentment and intention, until one moment, catching Arithon uawares, he discovers the fact that this prince has been mage trained - more, that Arithon is also putting to use what he knows to safeguard the clan women and children - without anyone knowing.
A brief confrontation sparks when Arithon discovers the Masterbard his caught him out. Arithon's response - the reader will have grasped by now - is prickly to drive off the masterbard's curiosity and worse: the ability to perceive his true self, and the intense need to allow that intimacy from a fellow musician. The pain driven exchange almost fools Halliron -but not quite. He emphatically grasps that this prince regards him as a threat and is irked for not being able to uncover the reason.
Upon arrival into the valley of Tal Quorin, Arithon Teir’s’Ffalenn receives oath of fealty from the clans, despite rebellious mutters of contempt, and open gossip over the prince’s weakness. The discourtesies and sullen resentment are cut short by Steiven, who must hope that his liege will snap out of his unseemly brooding and shoulder his heritage. (hide spoiler)]
Chapter Set 15 - Part 2Attraction
(view spoiler)[Etarra prepared for war. The forges are hammering out weapons and armour, while recruits are drilled for the assault. Talk of war is on everyone’s lips and the high born elite are left side-lined. To compensate they throw frenzied parties, burying themselves in fawning admirers and wild escapades.
Talith and her brother Diegan, who would have been front and center at every frivolity in the past, now find them silly before the gravity of the coming conflict. Talith yearns for Lysaer’s presence, for his humour that didn’t belittle and his air of controlled power not bought through brutish intrigues and bribes.
Lysaer finds her taking the air on a balcony outside the festivities, the night before the army marches out. Through an intimate exchange, he confesses his fear of failing to kill his half-brother. Note how well-set his intention has become. How right and just the cause is! He displays the deep hatred for the s’Ffalenn line as he relates his personal memories from Dascen Elur!
And note Talith’s relief when she realizes he is not posturing for favor: the prince actually cares for her well-being and her happiness! This straightforward admission is a novel, and while she feels it worth following through, Lysaer defers her. The war must come first, and her interest must wait until afterward, when he has standing to offer her his undivided attention. (hide spoiler)]
Deduction
(view spoiler)[At Narms, Elaira is summoned before the Prime and Lirenda and is informed that Lysaer has roused Etarra to war and has marched with an army ten thousand strong to hunt down the clans and Arithon. She is shown through scried images that Tal Quorin’s banks have been riddled with death-traps by the barbarians and is thrown the reverse, that her visit to Asandir had not escaped the Prime’s notice after all.
To wrest that misdemanor to the order's advantage, Elaira is ordered to fashion a clear recall of each of the princes, a precise enough view to open the insight into their personal characters. The spells used to unmask such a deep sounding are perilous: the intimacy exposed to view often bind the participant to the subject under study through bonds of emotion and insight, inciting sympathy nearly impossible to deny. The experience might even overwhelm Elaira’s spirit completely, but a prime's direct order cannot be deined. The Koriani owns Elaira, flesh and mind, and disobedience to the Prime's will would invite her destruction.
Note the conversation between Lirenda and the Prime, while Elaira prepares for trance. The Prime is fully aware that the ritual of clear recall is bound to deepen Elaira’s feelings for Arithon and spoil her future career in the order. Even ruined, Elaira poses a valuable tool, a window into Arithon’s character that will be desperately needed later on. The flawed instrument she becomes can serve as no other can, before the day comes when she will be driven to break and forsake her vows.
This scene opens the first insight into Morriel’s character. Old and weary, terrified to become the first Prime to meet death without the necessity of a trained successor, she regards Lirenda, the 43rd candidate to her office, as a mere cipher. Her attached interest in the particulars of any candidate, and any affection for them, had died with the first one to fail.
Under the narcotic given to enhance her awareness, Elaira exerts her powers of recall to open a memory of Arithon first. She chooses the moment when Arithon was entertaining the street children with the shadow-wrought brigantine, unaware he was being observed. The infallible accuracy of Elaira's insight unveils Arithon’s vulnerable inner heart.
Contemplating the opening to bring him down, Lirenda suggests that “killing will unman him, for s’Ffalenn conscience must force him over time to back down.”
But Morriel focuses on his hands before his eyes. She suggests the deceit Arithon so easily displays is rooted in the gift of true farsight from the s’Ahelas royal line.
Next, Elaira displays an image of Lysaer in the garden, caught in an introspective moment of soul-rending self-distaste. Both Lirenda and Morriel grasp how s’Ilessid justice wars with the propensity for s’Ahelas farsight. Both recognize how Desh-thiere’s influence choke Lysaer's character, until pity and mercy seem absent.
Both Morriel and Lirenda are convinced that Arithon is the more dangerous due to an incompatible legacy that leaves his mind fatally flawed. But Elaira insists they are wrong. She reckons Lysaer's flawed nature as the greater peril, as charisma, coupled with his ingrained bias towards noble principles are powerful incentives the prince will wield to inspire a fanatical following.
But her fears are dismissed. Lysaer’s course is deemed predictable by the Prime, and what can be anticipated can also be controlled and prevented. Arithon’s actions, in turn, pose a wild card, an 'incompatible legacy' born of two royal gifts, which in Morriel’s opinion, makes him far more dangerous. Elaira insists: "He is conscious of his actions as Lysaer can never be"
Take particular note of the statement as Morriel agrees: "Which is precisely what makes him dangerous....Lysaer's sense of justice and farsight will answer to logic, and therefore be reconciled by compromise. But since when can (Arithon's) compassion ever be made to condone pain: S'Ahelas blood gives Arithon full grasp of cause and effect; mage training compounds this with awareness of the forward reactions of power. These traits aligned against the s'Ffalenn gift of sympathetic empathy cancels the mind's self-defenses. The shelter of petty hatred becomes untenable. Arithon is a visionary placed at the nexus of responsibility. Desh-thiere's curse will embroil him in violence he can neither escape nor master. Stress will prove his undoing, for the sensitivities of poets have ever been frail, and the broadened span of his thinking shall but inflame and haunt him to madness."
And Elaira's response: "you're mistaken." Based on her recall of the whiplash resilience the living man had possessed, "As Ath is my witness, the conclusion you've drawn from this is wrong."
Which observation is 'right' - which do you trust? Which of these deep insights will play out, and how, in the coming course of the series?
Note Elaira’s regret and guilt at the end of this chapter. By exposing Arithon's private self in attempt to win Arithon’s protection from the consuming threat of her order's interest, in sad fact, she may have betrayed him by unwittingly providing her Order with a powerful weapon against him. (hide spoiler)]
Daybreak
(view spoiler)[Lirenda’s dreams are haunted by s’Ffalenn green eyes, deep with a compassion expressive enough to leave her weeping and desolate till dawn.
Deshir’s clansmen continue building traps in the marshes flanking Tal Quorin while their prince is conspicuously absent. Young Jieret takes it upon himself to pursue the mystery of the prince’s behavior.
The caravan master who had been paid with one of Rathain’s crown jewels by Arithon is perplexed, wondering why he decided to just hand over the jewel when Sethvir simply asked for it. (hide spoiler)]
Chapter Set 16 - Part 1XVI. AUGURY
(view spoiler)[In a solitary forest glen, removed from the clan’s activities, Arithon fasts in trance for twelve uninterrupted hours, to prepare himself for deep scrying. Given the means to tap prescient visions through Rauven’s teaching and the narcotic herb tienelle filched from Sethvir, he resolves to ensure no lives would be needlessly endangered by casting his mind into a review of all possible futures.
He knows from trained experience that trance under influence of tienelle should never be attempted while alone, since the poisonous side effects can become too dangerous to manage without help. Yet Arithon disregards the grave risks.
“The endangerment to Rathain’s feal vassals must be shouldered, while every minute the temptation to take and twist clan trust into a weapon to bring down Lysaer ate like a darkness at his heart.” – Important! Arithon is well aware the curse is trying force itself over free will. His fight to prevent it is a constant threat.
The the visions begin, showing reeling holocaust Fire, smoke and death pervade all possible futures! He sees clan children executed, corpses and rivers of spilled blood! Caolle’s prudently laid strategy will yield nothing but disaster! Arithon searches through thousands of alternate outcomes, but every single one leads to ruin! Left to their own resource, he finds the clans will be destined for slaughter to last man!
Traumatized by unbearable grief for their sacrifice (and driven by his royal empathy), Arithon decides! He lays his dreams of peace and music aside; he rejects the outcome he survived on Dascen Elur! He will ”give his whole mind and bend the talents his grandfather had nurtured to full-scale killing.” He tests new strategies contributing magecraft and shadow mastery to turn the slaughter aside; the tests housands of variations that brooked no conscience. He counts the dead closing his heart to sorrow, while he weighs and recombines the results of each chain of possible happenstance, until he forges an alternate path. “Only a scant third of Steiven’s clansmen could be kept alive”, but the third is still better than none. “Bitterness squeezed his heart for what felt like a tragic failure… How could a prince, mage or otherwise, brook the scale of such sacrifice?” Etarra would suffer even greater losses, for a small reprieve that still would be devastating!
With the scrying completed and strategy set, wrung to sickness by the herb's side effects, Arithon remains in the glen, physically worn and scarcely fit to surmount and clear the toxic residue left by the tienelle from his body. He is still torn open, and sensitive to visions, when Jieret waylays him. Arithon strives to handle the encounter with tact, aware he is in no condition to do so. The boy has mettle enough to provoke, aware of the contempt of his elders. He tries to swear fealty to Arithon and annoyed at being refused due to his young age, he justifies his worthiness by shaming his liege over the strength of clansmen, who will not hesitate to dispatch their daughters into the conflict. The mention hurls Arithon into prescience and he foresees the horrific, violent death of every single clan woman and daughter.
Determined to prevent this fresh disaster, Arithon musters his strength to seek Steiven. Asked to wait for him in his tent and, struggling to curb his dark thoughts and fight the ongoing withdrawal from the tienelle's toxins, he resorts to the solace of playing Halliron’s lyrante.
Halliron overhears, and is furious: “Did you lack the guts not to speak to me beforehand?” Arithon’s apology and promise that he won’t meddle with the lyranthe only inflame Halliron’s wrath. He is not angry because the prince had touched his lyranthe but because he has hidden a rare talent for music. “I say it here, you’ve no right to see that strangled.”
“My sword, you’ll recall, is now wedded to the cause of a kingdom.” – Note the confirmation that Arithon has already surrendered his personal preference. “if, if, if!” The choice was never his. Or so he believes.
With little time left before the tienelle withdrawal will drive him unconscious, Arithon meets Steiven and Caolle and straight out orders them to change tactics. He drops the act of “womanish daydreamer” act and forces full disclosure of the mage and shadow master kept hidden. He warns of the peril to the women, proven out by his scrying and demands to take an active part in the battle. He manages to outline his revised strategy before Steiven is called to attend to Jieret who has been overcome by his inherited gift of foresight, and beheld the same vision of slaughter witnessed by Arithon. Twice warned, Steiven and Caolle decide to follow Arithon’s change of tactics.
But the small victory comes at a cost: even Caolle has been forced to recognize with Arithon's true mettle. Although he succumbed to the tienelle poisoning, the collapse had not been due to weakness. The strength and determination demonstrated through their prince's recovery forever shreds image of the “useless dreamer” beyond salvage. (hide spoiler)]
Incarceration
(view spoiler)[Asandir, Kharadmon and the Mad Prophet scale Rockfell Peak and imprison the flask containing Desh-thiere deep within the mountain.
A seemingly insignificant conversation over the 'dangers' (are they real?) of climbing the peak evolve into deeper matters:
Take note of Dakar’s outspoken resentment at the mages for sacrificing Lysaer, whom he considered a friend: “you used a good man and then broke him.”
There is a lot to unpack here, when Kharadmon's silence on the subject provokes Dakar to pry, "You don't agree."
Kharadmon responds obliquely, and the question he asks broaches a MAJOR clue to the Fellowship's moral stance: "You have seen how Asandir take deer for the supper pot."
And Dakar's peevish, but truthful response: "he never hunts anything I ever saw....Asandir just goes out and sits in a thicket somewhere. Eventually a buck happens along, lies down, and dies for him."
Kharadmon's truthful clarification opens up a lot of insight for later: "HE PROJECTS HIS NEED ANS ASKS. The deer chooses FREELY and its fate and man's hunger end in BALANCE."
As the conversation swings back to Lysaer's apparent 'betrayal' Kharadmon’s clarification is deeply significant. “Your prince answered circumstance according to his innate character. The Fellowship imposed nothing outside his natural will and intentions.” And concerning Desh-thiere's bid for coercion: “Where opening did not already exist, the creature could not have gained foothold.”
“But Sethvir as much as admitted the s’Illesid inborn gift was at fault. Had Lysaer not been driven to seek perfect justice, the wraith would have found nothing to exploit.”
“If so, our Fellowship has a reckoning to answer for.” – Were the Fellowship wrong? Did they err this gravely? Kharadmon states: “We are permitted our mistakes…" How far have events gone astray? Or have they not gone astray at all, is there a greater balance in play, and if so, is it, or isn't it jeopardized? HOW FAR DO THE FELLOWSHIP SEE?
The subchapter progresses into the sequence of unlocking the defenses that secure Rocfell's wardings. The reader is shown all of this through Dakar's observation: mostly in external detail....what you see here as surface description - far more is going on, and expect that the series will, in due time, delve down into the layers later on, and you will grasp, in full measure, on all levels, exactly what is happening. The magic shown here is not 'handwavy' but actually founded on an extrapolation based upon resonant physics.
Note at the finish how restless Desh-thiere’s wraiths are within their confinement, ”awaiting the vengeance curse laid on two half-brothers to burgeon into bloodshed and war.” (hide spoiler)]
Chapter Set 16 - Part 2Warning
(view spoiler)[Unsettled since the character scrying, Elaira is determined to redress her wrong, since her vision, allowed the Prime Circle the opening to pursue Arithon’s fate. His moves are to be exhaustively tracked, with Koriani policy primed to disadvantage him wherever he can be hampered. Heartsore and unwiling to let that happen, she means to send warning to Sethvir, that Arithon can be protected. The act would be a direct betrayal to her Order, but Elaira resolves to risk the dire consequences.
We learn that she was taken into service to the Koriani as a condemned street child at the age of six, sworn under vows sealed to flesh and permanently recorded by a Koriani focus crystal that gave bound over her free will over into Morriel’s control. Regrets were useless as, Elaira believes her straits as a sisterhood initiate are powerless to revoke. She insists on the subtlety, the Prime may command her obedience, but doesn’t own her in spirit. This narrow grasp of true nature bases her decision to challenge the Order.
Except, she is stopped from following through by Traithe, who waylays her where she aimed to perform the scrying. He offers comfort and eases her doubts, saying the Fellowship is fully aware of Morriel’s obstruction. Further, he advises her to trust Arithon to guard himself against the Prime’s interventions. He relates what happened the first time, when Morriel breached Kieling’s wards through the use of Elaira’s private feelings and describes Arithon’s vicious outrage, and his emphatic counter response.
Arithon is aware Elaira is being treated as a game piece and Traithe ensures that Elaira knows this More, he reveals that Arithon means to defend her: that she is neither alone, nor Morriel’s plaything
What happens between the lines, here, is significant. We already know that the Fellowship will not reveal answers UNLESS THEY ARE ASKED. Is Traithe angling for her to think deeper, here; and if so, is she trapped by her own emotional turmoil when she falls back on the trouble she fell into by visiting Erdane?
Why does he rebuke her, for entangling herself in the past, "Never sell yourself so short!"
But if there was an opportunity, it is past. His next line offers what soothing encouragement, and a quittance her limited thinking can accept.
“Lady, great heart. .. The love within you is no shame.”
The fact he does not discourage her interaction redoubles the meaning behind the warning Traithe grants to Elaira before departing: “… for good or ill, you’re the one spirit alive in this world who will come to know Arithon best. Should your Master of Shadow fail you, or you fail him, the outcome will call down disaster.”
Hold this line in mind, it will loom large throughout the entire series.
“And if neither of us fails?”
“Ah, lady, we’ve been entrusted with this world and free will, which certainly cancels guarantees.” – If this line is coupled with Kharadmon's lighter conversation (not so light, really) with Dakar concerning a balance based on free will, true autonomy means that nothing is set in stone and no assumption should be taken as given! For the Fellowship, given the foundation of their moral creed (formally called The Law of the Major Balance), the future holds no guarantees! (hide spoiler)]
Eventide
(view spoiler)[Lysaer and Diegan decide upon following through with Pesquil’s plan, following the initial battle with destroying the viability of the clan encampments By killing the game and poisoning the springs, they will starve out the survivors and ensure will be no next generation…
The clans under Steiven s’Valerient’s command get ready for battle while Halliron Masterbard plays ballads to inspire them to a valour he grieves will be futile…
Sethvir bends his regards to Rockefell Peak to check the wards for Desh-thiere’s prison and detects no flaws. Though Arithon would be able to unravel them if he built on his training, he is least likely to meddle in foolishness. Therefore, the sorcerer is at ease… (hide spoiler)]
Chapter Set 17XVII. MARCH UPON STRAKEWOOD FOREST
(view spoiler)[Etarra’s troops march for war with Lysaer in their midst. Ten thousand strong, they head for Strakewood forest to bring an end to the threat of the clans. Note how Lysaer keeps comparing Rathain with Amroth. Why haven’t the forests been cut down to open the obviously productive land for grazing sheep? And note his determination to set those changes in motion.
Approaching the edge of the woods, the Etarran scouts spot six barbarian children no older than 12, practicing javelin casts in a glen just upriver of the ford across the Tal Quorin. Ill-pleased to spend a summer swatting insects and enduring hardship in the wilds while hunting down barbarians, Diegan suggests the troops seize the opportunity and track the children back to the clan encampment, attack at once, and end the battle soonest. The two commanders Pesquil and Gnudsog object to the plan, suspecting a trap, but Lysaer makes a convincing argument that his half-brother would never stoop to using children as bait for an ambush.
A cautious plan sends 40 riders to chase the children, while Etarra’s troops follow, split into 5 divisions, two in front and 3 following. Pesquil remains certain a barbarian surprise lies in wait, and chooses to keep his headhunters in the middle division, well behind the leaders who would spring the trap.
The boys bolt at the Etarrans approach, with the riders led by Gnudsog in hot pursuit into Strakewood forest, through muddy game trails entangled with briars. No ambush in waiting reinforces the conclusion the children had been caught unawares and are fleeing for their lives. The decision to follow through becomes fixed when one of the riders falls into an improvised, fatal trap laid by one of the children; supposition holds that no child sent to draw the Etarrans to slaughter would pause for a kill unless they were desperate and alone.
The garrison advances up the Tal Quorin river course, with the main force split, with two flanking divisions dispatched up the valleys adjacent to the river. By now, even Gnudsong has reservations, since the advance seems too easy. Lysaer and Diegan dismiss his concern with confidence. Disaster strikes when the troops are committed, too far to turn back. The clansmen break open several dams set up prior, and send the river in flood down the valley. The torrent unleashed is swift and merciless, sweeping down three quarters of the first and second division. The survivors caught in disarray are picked off as they flee to dry ground by clan archers waiting in concealment.
Gnudsog's timely order urged Lysaer and Diegan dispatched to safety on higher ground. Lysaer refuses to go, convincing the men to draw Diegan to safety instead, while he tries to keep order and organize, getting as many Etarrans as possible to safety. He is overtaken when the torrent hits, and swept four hundred yards downstream, where captain mayor Pesquil finds him. Note Lysaer’s reaction here: self-revulsion and guilt because he had been wrong to dismiss the warning the would be an ambush. Also note his hot rage! Not for the “barbarians’ expertise in warfare” but because of “the knowledge delivered on two companies’ ruthlessly massacred bodies, that he had been masterfully deceived.”
His perception of Arithon darkens still more: to a “bastard of shadow who 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 note his conclusion: “His half-brother, so gifted in magecraft and so superior in unprincipled cunning was a blight and a threat to society.”
The thought ends with Lysaer's self-condemnation as he tells Pesquil: “This was my mistake. Since my ignorance has led to disaster, I’m willing to listen… And if you deem it necessary to slay children … I shall no longer obstruct you.”
Stalking the enemy upriver with Pesquil’s still intact company, Lysaer encounters the horror that clan boys have been sent to dispatch any of Etarra’s fallen left alive in the wake of the flood. They move in speed and silence, cutting the throats of every Etarran found still breathing. Enraged, Lysaer leads Pesquil and his men to attack that slaughters all the children engaged in the grisly job.
He justifies his ruthless response thus: “If Arithon s’Ffalenn used children for his battles, the scar upon the conscience must be his.” (hide spoiler)]
First Quarry
(view spoiler)[In the valley adjacent to the flood that has ravaged Tal Quorin, Arithon is placed in a guarded thicket with young Jieret and 5 of Steiven’s archers. With his mage trained perception spread across the terrain he had marked and measured the day before, he plays his trained talent for shadow and magecraft to disorient Etarra's flanking division below. Note the strictures by which he draws them: there is always a point where the enemy was given the chance to turn back, without penalty. Only those who hate enough to push forward will be drawn into the crossfire of the archers.
While Arithon is engrossed, Jieret has a vision of one young girl drawing the headhunters to the secluded tents that shelter the clan's women and children. In blind panic and grief, he bolts from the thicket, in a effort to stop the upcoming tragedy. Arithon breaks concentration and follows, obligated to the boy's protection by the blood bond exchanged between them.
Catching up, made aware of the threat by a sounding that almost drives him into the thrall of the curse, Arithon realizes he cannot expose himself to Lysaer without disastrous repercussions. Yet he must immerse into a mage trance to seeks the means to prevent the upcoming slaughter of the clan's noncombatants. Terrified he will fall to the influence of Desh-thiere’s curse, he commands the clansmen to tie him up. Then he tells Jieret to nick him with Alithiel if he should descend into madness. His worst fear is realized: Desh-thiere takes hold of Arithon, with sanity salvaged when Alithiel draws his blood, and the Paravian spellcraft awakens and breaks the enthrallment.
“And nothing was right. Nothing at all. The wasted lives by Tal Quorin were only the prelude to disaster.” Hampered by Lysaer's close proximity, Arithon understands he has little hope to salvage Deshir’s wives and daughters! But he has to try. (hide spoiler)]
Last Quarry
(view spoiler)[Teynie, the young girl, had fatefully tagged after her brother into the thick of the conflict. When Pesquil's men fall on them, and the killing reaps her companions, she takes flight to the sequestered camp. Pesquil holds back, and sets his scouts to follow her, that her flight will lead them straight to the hidden camp the barbarians had no spare men left to protect. Lysaer joins the stalking advance up the Tal Quorin along with Pesquil's head hunters.
Note Lysaer’s determination. He knows what will follow and justifies his choice to go after the noncombatants based on the horror of encountering children who have been trained to kill without conscience: “No matter how unpleasant, duty demanded that he see the action through.” He sees the reason why Pesquil and the Etarrans are driven to cleanse Deshir of the clans, and endorses the action as a moral necessity.
But even his resolve balks at the tactic the headhunters employ when they encounter the camp. They aren’t killing the women and girls cleanly, but have their sport with them in the process. Lysaer draws the line against brutal abuse. Told that this is a commonplace strategy for drawing the fighting clansmen out of secure cover, Lysaer will not rein in his fury. He calls the men back and orders the women contained in a cordon. When the headhunters refuse his command, Lysaer wields his light gift and and threatens to use it to blast the insubordinates. This checks Pesquil’s men, though they fear the prince will go on to free the hostages. Lysaer releases none of them, but opts to “end them cleanly” and in such a way that both Steiven’s barbarians and Arithon will be “unable not to come and face them”. (hide spoiler)]
Three Valleys
(view spoiler)[Caolle and Steiven receive news from a runner sent by Arithon, that the disaster foreseen before the war has not been averted…
Running towards the grotto where the women and children hide, Arithon and Jieret hear screams and male shouting cut off as a burst of light shears through the trees, leaving Arithon’s abject denial go unheard: “Lysaer, oh Ath, Lysaer, no!”
In the vale to the west of Tal Quorin, the shadow-wrought barrier ward shatters and lifts, leaving half a company of Etarra’s garrison fighting a handful of clansmen who can no longer shelter behind sorceries. (hide spoiler)]
Chapter Set 18XVIII. CULMINATION
(view spoiler)[In their rush to reach the grotto that shelters the clans’ women and children, Arithon realises they are already too late. He stops Jieret, whose beserk rage drives him onward, regardless. “They are dead, every one. You can’t help them.”
They can only attempt to spare the remaining clansmen who would become maddened with grief and press into a vengeful attack that could only see them slaughtered outright. Arithon sends a scout to Caolle with orders to keep the men out of the canyons. But the scout never gets through. Pesquil’s headhunters have Arithon’s party surrounded, some of them armed with crossbows. Forced at bay against a tree, the few take a stand to protect Jieret. Those with bows shoot to kill crosbowmen, and the rest meet the enemy charge with swords. Aware Caolle’s men are approaching, with Etarra's other division at their heels, Arithon cannot use shadow without alerting Lysaer and triggering the curse in full measure. He knows the inbound clansmen will become engaged on two fronts and torn apart, and one crossbowmen still shooting from cover will pick them off, leaving Jieret exposed. Arithon is forced to engage his craft as never before. Seeing no other way to secure clan survivors, he taps forces forbidden by any right thinking mage. With no room for the smallest mistake, Arithon violates integrity and abjures safe limits: he builds a snare of unbinding, counter to the Major Balance and in parallel with chaos and unleashes that to destroy the crossbowman.
Then he connects his consciousness to that of Strakewood forest trees and twines spells that ensnare the headhunters’ consciousness into that of the trees, to be slaughtered at will by the Deshans. The way clear to escape, he dispatches Jieret to safety with the earnest intention to follow after he has spun illusion to help counter the forces against Caolle. But that last effort leaves his strength too depleted, with no reserves left to go forward. Overcome, driven to his knees, he remains and spends his last effort ease a mortally wounded clansmen, Madreigh, fallen in his defense.
“He had acted outside of greed and self-interest, had to the letter of obligation fulfilled his bound oath to the Deshans.” But "duty did not cleanly excuse which lives should be abandoned to loss, or which should be taken to spare others…. No answer satisfied. No law insisted that justice stay partnered by mercy.”
Disoriented, Arithon regains full awareness a bit later, surrounded by Steiven’s division, vengeance-bent on killing headhunters. Though the cost destroyed them to the last man, Pesquil’s division would not leave Strakewood alive. Arithon tries to muster strength and use magecraft to separate the combatants before they annihilate each other, but Lysaer encounters him first.
Desh-thiere’s curse eclipses reason for both brothers. Lysaer attacks with light, and Arithon retaliates with shadow. Though clansmen and forest alike will be destroyed between them, no threat to life and limb will snap Arithon out of Desh-thiere’s control. Enraged beyond sanity, Lysaer vows that the wiles of his unprincipled bastard brother shall cause no more damage. He will serve justice at all costs. And “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.” Overmastered by hatred, he channels the whole of his being into the destructive aspects of his gift. The light of his own making would martyr him, regardless of whether Arithon can shield himself.
In that moment of victory, when the s’Ffalenn prince sees his half-brother's death as a certainty, Jieret breaks Desh-thiere’s hold through the blood bond sworn between them. And Arithon is forced to choose: protect Jieret, and also save Lysaer from his own demise, or allow everyone to die. Torn by the irony, aware that if he does nothing, and allows the curse free rein in this moment, all further future conflict will end with Lysaer's death. Or he can spare Jieret and the clans and soak the future in further bloodshed. Spare the innocent few, now, or sacrifice them - Arithon does as his nature demands (alleviate the suffering in front of him, not hypothetical possibility) He fights the geas and and spares Jieret, then conjures shadow with virulent force enough to cloak Strakewood in darkness, not only sufficient to snuff Lysaer's light, but allowing the surviving clansmen and Pesquil's headhunters to escape. He holds these defenses until he drives himself unconscious from total fatigue.
A mere 200 clansmen lived, no women and children among them. And they must flee into hiding in Fallowmere, since the surviving Etarrans will go on to poison the rivers and game in Deshir.
Orphaned at the age of 12, Jieret is left as caithdein of Rathain, with the task of raising and training him fallen to Caolle, who once had one the same for Steiven, only lose him to an early death.
Through the night, the clansmen sweep the terrain for survivors, helping those that can be saved, and dispatching the rest with a mercy stroke. Arithon wakens, and leaves the camp to shoulder the grisly task of freeing the dazed spirits left behind. Caolle and Halliron encounter the evidence of his work, and Caolle is forced to reckon with concepts beyond his experience as war captain.
As Arithon tends to each and every one of the dead, clansmen and Etarran alike, freeing their traumatizes spirits to the peace of Ath’s mysteries, Caolle’s resentment is forced to a head. Aggrieved by the scale of clan losses, he blames himself for his strategic failure. More, he criticizes his liege for attending to corpses ahead of the wounded, until Halliron forces him to reckon with the impact of Arithon's accomplishment.
When they come to the tree, and the enemy fallen whose deaths were arranged to save Jieret, Caolle shares the anguish of the moment as Arithon bares himself to the animosity of those spirits slaughtered by his mage craft. Caolle must reckon with the strength in the man, and the exposed strength of character required to bear the s'Ffalenn gift of compassion. At the last he acknowledges the stature of a man he had considered weak, inadequate, and too soft to surmount the responsibilities demanded of Rathain's crown prince. Note the accolade he offers as he capitulates to Halliron's wisdom: “Arithon is greater than Steiven.”
Also take particular note of Halliron’s reply: “You see that. You are privileged. Many won’t and most will be friends.” (hide spoiler)]
First Resolution
(view spoiler)[Etarra’s garrison is in tatters. Less than three thousand remain living out of the ten who marched out, and most are wounded. Lysaer immerses himself in their midst, unsparingly. Not too proud to dirty his hands, he makes rounds of the camp, consoling and encouraging the shattered survivors. His presence seems that of a savior to the men. “To find his ragged magnificence still among them in the cheerless grey of the morning made men break their hearts to meet his wishes.”
Lysaer faces his fatal shortfall: that he had endorsed self-destruction to buy the Shadow-Master’s death. He has a moment of genuine uncertainty: “the inspiration to risk martyrdom for the cause might not have been Lysaer’s own.” And note in conclusion how he blames it on Arithon, for the best strategy would be to “dedicate an enemy to self-destruction.” And how he hasn’t given up on his quest of revenge.
The wounded return to Etarra, while the core of the Etarran army turns its effort toward Strakewood to poison the rivers and kill the game and hunt down Deshir clans’ survivors. Lysaer seizes on the chance to stay with them as his authority is already accepted, unquestioned. More, Lysaer plans to mold them into a troop of formidable strength. His resolve is backed by Diegan, who intends to convince Lord Governor Morfett to issue a formal invitation for the foreign prince to Etarra. Lysaer accepts, with resolve to mobilize towns the breadth of Rathain to join their just cause to destroy Arithon. He stays with the troops, awaiting Diegan’s invitation, and ends with the promise to pay court to lady Talith. For “no Master of Shadow with his darkness shall be permitted to keep us apart.” (hide spoiler)]
Last Resolution
(view spoiler)[Deshir’s clansmen bury their dead in expedience, before hasty retreat to Fallowmere.
Kneeling next to the cairn that marked Steiven and Dania's gravesite, Arithon discovers his mage sight and all trained access to craft has been lost after the transgressions he invoked in the battle. Torn by grief and alone in a strange world, he is desolate, as if a part of himself has been blinded. Mastery of his shadow remains, but no assurance suggests whether time will heal his access to other gifts.
Determined spare the clansmen from the hazards of guarding his presence, he takes leave of Jieret and Caolle, because where he goes, Lysaer’s army will assuredly follow.
“I can neither repay nor restore your losses. Nor would I cheat you with promises I am powerless to uphold. You gave me life and offer a kingdom. Your lord shared a friendship more precious. In return I give my word as Teir’s’Ffalenn that I won’t squander these gifts.”
Caolle admits he had misjudged his liege lord and requests sanction to rouse all clans on the continent to take arms for the upcoming conflict. Though if Arithon doesn’t approve, nonetheless, he acknowledges Caolle's right in to take action after the clan's terrible losses.
As dusk settles over Starkewood, Halliron Masterbard finds Arithon on a beech log in a clearing. Reluctant and wary, braced for a refusal, he offers the prince a minstrel’s apprenticeship, and to his delight Arithon gives his consent. The oath sworn to Felirin the Scarlet is fulfilled, that if Halliron were ever to offer apprenticeship he would accept it.
“For this night and others, Arithon was free. He could sit, set his hands to silver strings and at long last, bend sorrow into music.” (hide spoiler)]
Reflections
(view spoiler)[Asandir, Dakar and Verrain check the Mirthlvain swamps for resurgence of methsnakes, Traithe and Kharadmon arrive in Shand and while the Fellowship’s hope for the South centers on a prince in hiding, the Warden of Althain tracks two cursed brothers and awaits against hope any sign that the Black Rose Prophecy might still be valid…
In Korias, the hour after sunrise, First Enchantress Lirenda reports to her mistress Morriel Prime that the Master of Shadow’s tracks have been lost…
Sealed deep within Rockfell, behind triple rings of wards, the Mistwraith languishes in confinement and endures in unquiet hatred… (hide spoiler)]
BONUS MATERIALHow did the blood feud between s’Ilessid and s’Ffalenn originate?
(view spoiler)[Dascen Elur is a world of oceans, with small population, and widely scattered volcanic archipelagoes. Communication was slow and difficult, with all goods carried by ship. With no major continents to break up the wind, weather patterns were dangerous, quick to change, and the dangerously fierce storms could cause widespread damage. Fishing was a major staple; salt fish, in particular, carried folk through winter where soil was stony and crops subject to storm damage. Spruce forests on the mountainous slopes and the straight trees in protected valleys were used for ship building, and the houses warmed by gathering peat or sea weed.
The s'Ahelas lineage had been trained to the rudiments of power by Althain's Warden. Upon their small islet, the descendents made craft their byword and their trade.
S'Ilessid had the largest population and the wealthiest holding of land, best protected for agriculture.
Karthan and s'Ffalenn had very little arable land, and the severe storms at the wrong season often caused the crops at low elevation to fail. So they made their way by using what timber they grew to build ships, and move trade goods by sea in exchange for coin to buy what they needed.
The inception of the feud did not involve the royal houses at all, at first, but began when a grain merchant engaged s'Ffalenn ships to move a surplus crop to another islet. This merchant was subject to Amroth, from the largest island in the richest archipelago ruled under s'Ilessid. The grain shipment was outbound for smaller islet where crops had failed due to drought, also subject to s'Ilessid, and under the royal treasury's auspice, and funded by Amroth's council as relief to the realm's subjects caught in hardship.
The grain delivery was accomplished in the teeth of a rising storm, and the sacks of barley, oats and wheat placed into a dockside warehouse. The stores should have been removed to the security of high ground immediately, but the factor's son in charge of the lading was injured in the rushed unloading, and the underling who took over for him made off with a portion of the shipment for blackmarket profit. To hide his nefarious tracks, he got the overseer drunk, and paid off a corrupted harbor official. So the rest of the grain languished at harborside, and the s'Ffalenn captain, ignorant of skulduggery, had already laid his deepwater vessel offshore to escape the dangers of riding out a bad gale in an exposed, inadequate anchorage.
His ship rode out the storm elsewhere and returned to Karthan, unaware of anything amiss.
The grain in the warehouse molded, dampened by leaks from a storm-damaged roof. In desperate efforts to hide the mishandling and the shortfall due to theft, in fact to deny the fact that the relief grain had arrived at all, the guilty parties jettisoned the spoilage in the harbor by night to avoid vigilante justice at the hands of the hungry. The lading lists, the records, all documents appertaining to the shipment were destroyed; and in the famine that raked the isle, many of the key witnesses sickened and died.
Karthan sent to the King of Amroth to collect its due fee for shipping; and s'Ilessid paid in good faith; while the islet suffered, unknown to anyone, until the desperate appeal reached Port Royal that folk suffered, with children dead, and no relief grain received to ease their condition.
A s'Ilessid cousin was dispatched to investigate. He was received by officials unaware they were covering a lying colleague's dishonesty. No grain had been delivered, they insisted. No paperwork existed in the harbor master's office.
A now angry delegation was sent to Karthan to demand redress, not just for payment for a delivery paid for by the royal treasury, that was apparently never made, but to claim blood fee for the dead, and fines to settle the devastated islanders, with the additional demand for another shipload of grain to replace the one (apparently) absconded at sea.
S'Ffalenn denied all charges. Under questioning their captain swore he had made a proper delivery. The time of year being winter, there was no surplus grain in Karthan to spare, and Karthan's wealth, being ships, the demand in gold was too great to pay, even had there been cause for redress.
The quarrel grew heated. The s'Ilessid ambassador sailed back, unsatisfied, but bearing the original ship's log, and the stamped excise papers with the island factor's sign off for receipt of the shipment.
The ambassador was murdered in Port Royal, enroute to the s'Ilessid King, and the papers he carried disappeared. Whether this was the unrelated work of footpads, or the long reach of the corrupt island official, who now feared to hang for treason, is not clear.
But a second delegation, by two of the royal family, was sent from Amroth to Karthan to demand immediate redress. Without the original proof, the s'Ffalenn decided there was no way to swear to their honesty without sending their own ambassador to the King of Amroth, so both parties set sail together for Port Royal, including two sons of s'Ffalenn descent to earnestly match the two sons of Amroth's king, returning empty-handed to their father.
Mishap struck at sea, a common occurrence with Dascen Elur's violent weather. All four royal sons died of bad food from spoiled ship's stores. The bodies were heaved overboard by the captain, who ordered his ship, and his sickened crew, back to Karthan.
Amroth's s'Ilessid king was told by a corrupt council member that his sons had been murdered by a bribed councilman, paid off by the blackmarketeer on the islet. Both royal houses were devastated with grief, and for their own reasons, stayed annoyed with each other – s'Ilessid, believing s'Ffalenn corruption had caused a whole islet's population to suffer cruel deprivation, and s'Ffalenn, for believing they had been set up, since the original state papers had vanished in Amroth's capitol with no explanation.
Negotiations broke down again over the grain, and s'Ilessid's response was a demand, in coin or in kind, for damages to both the islet domain's families, AND now the royal house, for two sons dead on a s'Ffalenn ship. Reparation was promised if the settlement was not paid immediately in full.
Another meeting was attempted, with discord and hot words on both sides, and again, the issue was clouded by the dishonest factor who ditched the grain, and the harbor officials on the islet, now terrified to disclose the (likely) unsavory truth, with royal deaths involved on both sides.
The end result raised contention enough to send an army out of Amroth, which invaded the sparsely populated archipelago of Karthan and sowed the fields with salt to punish its villagers in like fashion for the starvation of Amroth's cheated subjects.
So began the feuding between the kingdoms on Dascen Elur, which lasted until the last s'Ffalenn prince was exiled through the Worldsend Gate. A peace was accomplished – with the eventual annexation of Karthan as a subordinate colony under Amroth's crown. (hide spoiler)]
Highlights for Chapter Set 1To note!
I. CAPTIVE
(view spoiler)['Sailors sworn to the pirate king's service seldom permitted themselves to be taken alive.'
That should tell us something about the relationship between the kingdoms of Amroth and Rathan and the treatment the prisoners may expect.
Arithon curses the healer, raves and insults everyone, until the first officer is forced to gag him and toss him in the sail-hold to prevent his crew members from lynching him. – Why?
Lysaer s’Illesid, the crown prince of Amroth, in whose charge prince Arithon will be delivered, is known to be of “dependably exactingly fair” judgement. – Important! (hide spoiler)]
Crown Prince
(view spoiler)[Lysaer s’Illesid, crown prince of Amroth, is wielder of the inborn gift of light and thus “a match for sorcery and shadows”.
The sparring bout with the nobleman in the earl’s practice yard provides a subtle insight to the prince’s character:
Lysaer (probably, the nobleman suspects) forfeited the match on purpose to curry favor/and 'end' it smoothly with no ruffled feelings -- He threw in the dagger not as a gift, but as a gesture of concession. He also demonstrates his astute grasp of others' affaris: he knew the nobleman had a quiet bet on the side (on the outcome of the practice match) AND he knew about the nobleman's wife's pregnancy....he uses that knowledge to 'offbalance' just a little - but it is all done in such a suave and charming manner, it's impossible for the 'victim' (the noble) to take any offense.
So Lysaer throws the match/demonstrates his piercing awareness of others' personal lives AND is magnanimous enough to 'pay' the silver the noble will have lost, since, evidently, Lysaer knew the noble expected to fight and lose (possibly to curry royal favor, who knows) - it shows the first glimpse of Lysaer's adept statesmanship/ability to swing people and politics to his side - effortlessly.
Lysaer himself has to fight an irrational hatred towards the s’Ffalenn prince at the bare mention of his name. Due to 7 generations of bloodshed that stand between Amroth and Karthan’s pirates and due to the terrible rages of the High King of Amroth, Lysaer’s father, rages always caused by a s’Ffalenn. But he does fight it and is determined to distinguish between hatred and justice because the man is after all his half-brother. Note that he goes to meet Arithon with that decision in mind.
Please note the emotions both brothers go through during their first meeting. They are pivotal for their character build-up.
Arithon is baiting:
'Show me a man who's harmless, and I'll show you one stone dead.' – What does he mean?
His humanity seems “sealed behind ungoverned viciousness” and he doesn’t hold back from taunting Lysaer to the extreme. But he does it with a warning:
“Kill thou me, and I shall helpless be. Or perhaps you’re too squeamish to try?" - WHAT does he mean by this, beyond the obvious provocation? (Is he perhaps scared of the CONSEQUENCES of exerting his power - and if SO, why? Or is he protecting someone?) This is what Janny wants the reader to discover or determine.
The memory of Lysaer’s last day with his mother, Lady Talera, Queen of Amroth - that whole dialogue in between the king and queen is vital to determine the real reason for Talera’s betrayal and Arithon’s existence:
Talera has brought to the marriage as brides gift the ability to give birth to 2 gifted children, one to wield the power of light and the other to master the shadow. Lysaer had already been born and had the power of light but that didn’t satisfy the king who wanted control over the shadow. He desired it for the purpose of using it against the s’Ffalenn and destroying them. Talera didn’t want to allow it so she fled and ‘evened’ the balance by birthing the child with powers over shadow to the s’Ffalenn king.
If you’d like to know the entire story and find out the reasons behind Talera’s decision, it will be posted under BONUS MATERIAL at the end.
After striking Arithon, Lysaer belatedly realizes what his half-brother’s attitude was about.
“You want me to kill you!”
And there we have it revealed – behind Arithon’s mask of mad violence, ”a tearing grief and shocking desperation”! - Why?
Because the captain of the brigantine who had burned with his ship was the pirate king of Karthan himself and Arithon’s father! Arithon was now the last living s’Ffallen heir. – Note that this is again very important in justifying Arithon’s future actions. Why the grief and despair? Is it just the death of a parent or something else? And we’ll come back to it later.
Arithon begs Lysaer for a knife to kill himself but his request is denied.
Ashamed of having lost control of himself and his emotions, ashamed of having almost given it to the prisoner’s request, Lysaer orders Arithon to be drugged to sleep and taken to Port Royal to his father. He is warned that the drug will probably cause Arithon to go mad from such a prolonged overdose, but still insists on it. To protect the sailors from the king’s retribution at delivering a damaged prisoner, Lysaer decides to sail with them. (hide spoiler)]
Tracer
(view spoiler)[The High Mage of Rauven is pacing anxiously in his tower and demands to know what happened to his grandson; “his daughter’s s’Ffalenn bastard whom he deeply loved.” – Arithon is loved!
A memory surfaces in the grandfather’s mind, of a little black haired boy who just mastered his first magic lesson.
“But it works like music!” – Very important! This is how we will explain magic on Athera. In a way, just like music.
The grandfather is angry and in his anger he exclaims: "Do you know what that boy renounced when he left to accept his father's inheritance?" – again important. What does he mean? Is Arithon special? If yes, how? – we’ll come back to it later. (hide spoiler)]
Fragments
(view spoiler)[You need to pay attention to these triplets. Given at the end of each chapter, they offer clues and important details about things to come.
One this page, perhaps the most important is the last one:
“Under misty skies, in another place, a world awaits with a prophecy five centuries old, and not even its most wise yet know that a prince and a prisoner hold all hope for deliverance between them…” (hide spoiler)]
Highlights for Chapter Set 2II. SENTENCE
(view spoiler)[Arithon regains consciousness in the dungeon, as the drug he had been given for over two fortnights gradually weakens and he is overwhelmed by pain. Having received a master’s training under the sorcerers at Rauven, he automatically reaches inward to assess his condition.
Here we are given a few details about a mage’s training and the way magecraft is engaged
“Even small tricks of illusion required perfect integration of body and mind; a sorcerer held influence only over forces of lesser self-awareness.”
And
“A mage who attempted to manipulate a superior force would incur backlash upon himself at the closing moment of contact.” – important details for our understanding of magecraft engaged in the future.
In his self-assessment, Arithon realises with horror that despite the fact he had sought to die, he has been brought to Amroth alive. “Instead of granting death, his captors had poisoned him, drugged him with a herb that ruined body and mind just to salve their king’s demand for vengeance.”
In the dungeon, Arithon collapses under the bodily torment of drug withdrawal and his thoughts unravel into delirium, engulfing him into past memories.
The first memory – five years prior to the present moment – the day the High Mage of Rauven, informed him that his father, Avar, King of Karthan, asked leave to name Arithon his successor. With a boy’s exuberance and wild ambitions, Arithon dreams that day of going to Karthan and using magecraft to free the waters beneath the sand and help the land be green again, thus putting an end to the feud between the s’Ffallen and s’Ilessid. Because,“with grain growing in the fields, the need for piracy and bloodshed will be ended.”
The grandfather commends the boy’s worthy ambition but warns him too. “Your talents are music and sorcery. Consider these for you have great potential. A king has no time for such arts. As a man who holds judgement over others, his life belongs wholly to his subjects.”
And all the while the raving Arithon rages at his younger self: “Fool!...you’ll go only to fail.”
The second memory – three years prior to the present moment – the day Arithon knelt before his grandfather’s feet and renounced the mage training and the only home he had known and loved for 20 years, in favour of kingship and his father’s inheritance. The boy’s exuberance had toned down and wisdom was starting to grace the young man. This time he didn’t really want to leave but HAD TO. “How dare I ignore such need? I might bring Karthan hope of lasting peace”.
“Heed your heart, his present drug-tortured awareness pleaded. Karthan might be made fertile from shore to shore but Amroth will never be weaned from hatred. Would you suffer s’Ilessid vengeance for your mother’s broken marriage vows?”
The third memory – same time three years prior – when Arithon accepted Aver’s sword as token for his heirship and laid it down at the High Mage’s feet pledging to go and restore peace in Kathan. And his granfather’s last parting words: “My grandson, you chose responsibility above your inner talents. That is a difficult turning. Although men might be inspired by a bard or enchanter, they cannot be led by one. The master’s mysteries you have learned at Rauven must never be used for political expedience, however pressing the temptation…”
And in the end, the last – the memory of Karthan’s spoiled farmlands that were transformed much too slow and a last voyage undertaken to Rauven to beg the aid of another mage. The final battle that claimed King Avor’s life and took Arithon’s freedom and on the heels of it, the wrenching guilt because: “I used sorcery, as Ath is my witness. But never directly to murder. Not even to spare my liege lord.”
This last scream of Arithon, in the throes of delirium, we can connect to the question in Chapter Set 1 (the discussion between the brothers in the sail hold - the provocation) and perhaps get an answer. – What guilt? For not using sorcery to kill even to save his father? For using sorcery and killing even if indirectly? We’ll come back to it.
These memories are all important! They stand at the core of Arithon’s behaviour and development as a character. And they are very easy to miss because the story in itself will make you want to rush reading. I missed them too at first read, and that did affect my understanding. There will come a time, in the future chapters, when Arithon’s behaviour may seem to not make sense. At that time, you may need to return here.
For 2 days the healer and his apprentices struggle to wean Arithon from the drug. After 2 days of suffering and agony, the drug is no longer necessary and Arithon, despite looking more dead than alive, is out of danger.
When Arithon triumphs over the drug and wakes, the healer, impressed with his patient’s strength of character and resilience, wants to grant him TIME before the trial so that he can restore his strength as much as possible. But Arithon refuses and points out that if he's healed, it will only give the king more - he will be resilient enough to suffer longer. Weak, just out of his addiction - he can make an end of it faster. And here we get the answer to the previous questions (Arithon’s scream, in the throes of delirium as well as that in Chapter Set 1)
“Arithon turned his head towards the wall, too fraught to frame his deepest fear: that grief and despair had unbalanced him. That his fragile grip on self-restraint might snap under further provocation and tempt him to an unprincipled attack through magecraft.”
He is terrified of slipping and using his greater abilities to cause harm! He'd rather perish than live with that. This terror of causing harm is again another stone at the base of Arithon’s build-up as a character. It will be better explained later on and we’ll come back to it several times over during the series.
On the day appointed for his trial, Arithon is taken in front of the king. He baits the king and as the king’s rage grows and the abuse increases. But Arithon doesn’t defend himself. When asked why, he gives the reason: "I could talk the fish from the sea, your Royal Grace. You would hear nothing but the reflection of your own spite."
Lysaer is ashamed of the animal savagery exhibited in the court and wants to leave. – Important to know why. Does his inherent sense of justice rebel against the violence? (hide spoiler)]
Prelude
(view spoiler)[Do not miss the intro:
Dakar’s Prophecy of the West Gate is revealing the beginning of our story. It is not a spoiler for the end because in this case, the end is only the beginning.
On Athera, Sethvir of the Fellowship keeps the records at Althain tower, listening to pretty much everything happening on Athera and beyond (thoughts, images, facts and occurrences) and penning stuff down, as the fancy strikes him, into documents to be archived.
He hears the clairvoyant’s report to the High Mage and instantly focuses his attention on Rauven. “Power great enough to shatter mountains answered Sethvir’s will. Faultlessly directed, it bridged the unimaginable gulf between worlds and retrieved the vision” of the High Mage clutching the sword. – That should tell us the kind of power Sethvir has at his disposal and may easily wield.
Sethvir knows the blade and remembers past events; pairs fact with circumstance and reaches a conclusion that makes him whoop like a boy and race to deliver it to his colleagues in the Fellowship of the Seven. Note that he does it by thought, not pen and paper.
In the time before the Mistwraith’s curse, three royal heirs from Athera had fled through the Worldsend Gates through the west, seeking sanctuary from a rebellion which threatened their lives. That blade had been carried by one of the princes, who had been abandoned to their fate as their exile became permanent. After their flight, the Mistwraith’s conquest banished all sunlight, covering the skies in fog, and the gates were directionally sealed on the promise of a madman’s prophecy (the one in the intro).
Sethvir recognised the High Mage of Rauven. He himself had trained the man’s ancestor in the foundational arts of power. So he kept two and two together and reached the conclusion that Dakar’s Prophecy of the West Gatewas just being born. – that should also give us a clue to Sethvir’s age. (hide spoiler)]
Interlude
(view spoiler)[Meet Dakar everyone! Dakar the Mad Prophet and author of the West Gate Prophecy, delivered 500 years before the present day events.
Drunk and soaked to the skin, Dakar is collected in tow for a swift departure by Asandir of the Fellowship of the Seven. Asandir informs him that the prophecy is about to bear fruit, and they must reach the West Gate in time for the arrival of the prince(s – implied, since no number is specified, Dakar jumps to a hasty conslusion) destined to be the Mistwraith’s bane.
The prophesied prince was sent through the Worldsend Gate on Dascen Elur that very morning and was expected to pass through the West Gate on Athera in 5 days time, after crossing the Red Desert, the buffer world for this particular gate.
For a better understanding, here are a few details about the Worldsend gates:
There are 4 gates on Athera:
The West Gate – in Tysan, next to Avenor – buffer: Red Desert - destination: Dascen Elur
The Northgate in Northwest Rathain – in the ruins of Penstair
The East Gate – in East Rathain
The South Gate – South-West of West Shand – destination: Marak
Each gate is a two-way portal to another world but the travel will be done in 2 stages, through a sort of “buffer world”: Origin world – buffer world – destination world.
To explain: once you step through the origin gate, you reach the "first" world, which acts as a buffer. That buffer world will have another gate, a correspondent of the one on the original world, and you need to take your second step through that, to reach the destination world.
Dakar is wondering which of the royal princes is bound to arrive and bets on s’Ilessid.
So now is the time to fill in the details regarding Athera’s royal lines.
• For the Kingdom of Tysan – stands the s’Ilessid royal line
• For the Kingdom of Rathain – stands the s’Ffalenn royal line
• For the Kingdom of Melhalla - stands the s’Ellestrion royal line
• For the Kingdom of Havish - stands the s’Lornmain royal line
• For the High Kingdom of Shand (divided into West Shand and East Shand) – stands the s’Ahelas royal line (hide spoiler)]
Highlights for Chapter Set 3III. EXILE
(view spoiler)[
Stabbed by grief that his royal father didn’t care enough for him and disregarded Rauven’s warning to satisfy his vengeance, shaken because he had suddenly lost everyone that bound his pride and ambition and terrified of an unknown future away from everything he’s ever known, Lysaer looks for a scapegoat to blame fort his plight and assigns the role to Arithon (“the only living human who remained to take the blame”)
He refuses to trust his “enemy”, and would rather die than depend on his “hated bastard-brother”! But Arithon will not allow it. Determined to keep “his brother” alive at any cost, he uses sorcery to drive Lysaer to his feet and manipulates his hate to keep him walking.
After 5 days of traveling, Lysaer takes advantage of Arithon's exhaustion, almost killing him. But before he gets to deliver the final blow, Arithon urges him to head on to Mearth and beware the curse mentioned by the Rauven records. “You’ve a chance at life. Don’t waste it.” Important!
Arithon’s behaviour makes Lysaer falter and let go of his fury. With a clear head he realises that his brother had used sorcery against him to inflame his hatred and keep him going. Torn between hatred of s’Ffalenn and distrust of his own motives, he decides to let fate and the desert be the judge of Arithon and hurls the sword away with the intent of collecting his share of the supplies and set off on his own. Unfortunately, the thrown sword had pierced the last waterflask. The prospect of being left with no water horrifies Lysaer and drives home the guilt of leaving a half-brother badly wounded under the pitiless sun “with the marks of injustice on his throat”.
It may be easy to pass over all these emotional stages Lysaer goes through now, but they are important comparison measures for what will come next. How Lysaer develops as a character, how much of that development is due to innate characteristics or outside influence, these stages Lysaer goes through now should help you get a clearer idea.
Note Arithon's relief when realising his brother has a chance at survival, despite having almost been killed by him) and his horror after discovering the pierced water-flask because he thought Lysaer had rejected the chance to live.
Pay attention to the memories brought up by his torment and delirium.
* The lyrante abandoned at Rauven along with a bright future in magecraft. – His hopes had gone silent just as his music.Another piece of the puzzle to add to the the foundation of Arithon’s character. Renouncing something that he loved deeply, only to fail in the purpose he chose above it.
* An image of Lysaer dead – because he “failed to save him!”
* An image of his dead father, shot by an arrow and licked in a rising rush of flame. – this one accompanied by agony because Arithon may have been able to save his father if he had used sorcery to destroy the Amroth fleet! Instead of doing that he had just used shadow and blinded them so that they turned on each other until 7 were destroyed.
And here is where we get to the core of Arithon’s inner torment. “How could I twist the deep mysteries? Was I wrong not to fabricate wholesale murder for the sake of just one life?” – This question is what will drive him and we’ll come back to it at the end of the book.
Lysaer returns and drags his half-dead brother to a fountain he had discovered in the desert. “Your life is your own affair but I refuse responsibility for your death.” – Is it guilt that drove him back? Or something else?
The fountain Lysaer discovered is the one mentioned in the chapter intro: The Five Centuries Fountain built by the sorcerer Davien. The brothers are healed and refreshed as soon as they drink from the fountain’s water but now they are destined to cease to age for 500 years as well as to suffer those lengthened 500 years with tears and through grief. (hide spoiler)]
Transgression
(view spoiler)[Meet Lirenda, First Enchantress to the Prime Matriarch of the Koriathain, and Elaira, junior initiate of the same Order.
Elaira states that “the second lane requires no watch duty”. But Why? We’ll come back to it.
Two of the most unmentionable subjects known to the Prime Circle of the Koriani are: the Fellowship of the Seven and The Lost Waystone.
First:- The Koriani and the Lanes
There are 12 energy lanes throughout Athera, channels of electro-magnetic force that array Athera’s world. They span the circumference of the planet, intersecting at the north and south poles, and standing waves formed into bands of energy flow/current.
The Koriani are an ancient Order of Enchantresses whose interests on Athera will be revealed later in the series. They are ruled by the Prime Matriarch or Prime Enchantress who is assisted by the First Enchantress and the Prime Circle, a circle of twelve of the oldest and most experienced/powerful enchantresses. They have the ability to manipulate the elements: water, fire, earth and air (one element being predominant for each of them) and are well known for their healing skills.
By tuning their consciousness into harmony with one of Athera’s lanes, the Koriani can build a connection between their mind and the lane, using their predominant element as a bridge. As a result, they can literally ‘see’ what happens within the entire area covered by the lane.
Ex.: Elaira used water, her predominant element, and a picture of Asandir and Dakar traveling towards the West Gate formed onto a pool’s surface. She noticed it, recorded it and moved on. There was a lot of ground to cover on the whole Second Lane.
Second: – The Waystone and The Fellowship of the Seven
The Waystone is a spherical crystal that can encompass the power of 180 Koriani enchantresses and bind them into a single force. It was “misplaced” during the chaos of the Mistwraith’s conquest. If recovered, it would allow the Prime Enchantress to KNOW what actually happens on Athera, instead of trying to guess based on what the lane watch reveals.
Sethvir of the Fellowship may know or find out where the location of the Great Waystone is, but the Koriani would never even consider asking him for help. The sisterhood regarded the Fellowship with deep and bitter resentment and despite their need, they’d rather suffer through it than make that particular appeal. – That should tell us quite a bit about the relationship between the 2 factions. (hide spoiler)]
Curse of Mearth
(view spoiler)[The 2 half-brothers head for the gate in Mearth, after having their strength restored by the Five Centuries Fountain.
Note how Lysaer’s personality is revealed even more here. You’ll be needing to form a good image of his character to be able to understand his decisions later; to be able to see how he changes and realize why.
He resents his half-brother because Arithon was given a training he, as a prince never received. He resents the fact that Arithon doesn’t mock him for his lack of experience. He struggled for years to learn on his own and that fact again doesn’t provoke any reaction from Arithon. Does Lysaer want praise and resents the fact that he’s not getting it? Or is Arithon proving to be better than the mean bad pirate sorcerer everyone believes him to be and that nettles Lysaer because his own already formed opinion may be wrong?
Lysaer's entire upbringing has centered upon a crown he would never inherit. He sees no future for himself in another world and is anguished by a gnawing sense of worthlessness. – Important!
He keeps comparing himself to Arithon and grudgingly admits that his half-brother could earn a place of respect anywhere, while his quick mind and enchanter’s discipline (forged during years of training that Lysaer was denied!) could be turned to any purpose on any world.
Lysaer sees himself only as having a future as a fencing tutor or a guard captain and “shrank in distaste at the thought of killing for a cause outside his beliefs”. – Important. We’ll come back to the killing and the beliefs towards the end of the book.
Together, the brothers face the Curse of Mearth, manifested in the form of living darkness that tries to possess them and bars their way to the Gate.
In this display of light and shadow vs darkness, we get a good glimpse at the gifts of both brothers.
Arithon can manipulate shadow; draw it in or dispel it. This way he can wrap a place in shadow turning broad daylight into night. He can either manipulate an existing shadow or create/summon his own.
In turn, Lysaer can manipulate the light of the sun. He can either draw it from the sun and manipulate it, by turning it into bolts of lightning; or he can create his own light to further turn into a bolt of lightning.
Both brothers' access to power is elemental in nature, and used together, create an opposing force.
Combining their use of powers and relying on each other for strength, the two manage to pass through the Gate together. (hide spoiler)]
Fantastic job, Laura! 😊😘
Mod
Thank you lovelies!! 😘😘
You’re most welcome!! 😊😘
Wow, this is amazing! Thanks for taking your time for this!
Im here, have skimmed your prologue notes. Im intrigued.Will you be posting a chapter a day?
An awesome effort. Well done Laura.
Thank you Bea and Graeme! 😊😊
@Jess - that's what I'm planning for. 1 chapter a day. :)Btw- you're not supposed to skim. :D If you skim you miss. And there are lots of little details there that are very important for later. 😊
Laura wrote: "@Jess - that's what I'm planning for. 1 chapter a day. :)Btw- you're not supposed to skim. :D If you skim you miss. And there are lots of little details there that are very important for later. 😊"
To be honest, I kind of want to go it mostly on my own, unless there is something I am super confused about. I get thats not great, I just dont want the surprises ruined for me. It’s probably cocky of me! Thinking I can go it alone!
I do thank you for all the hardwork! I may come to need it!
Fantasy Buddy Reads
Books mentioned in this topic
Child of Prophecy (other topics)The Curse of the Mistwraith (other topics)
Gardens of the Moon (other topics)
The Curse of the Mistwraith (other topics)
Introductory notes & What should you expect (especially if you've read Malazan)
here
Prologue
DETAILED CHAPTER SUMMARIES
Chapter Set 1
Chapter Set 2 - Part 1
Chapter Set 2 - Part 2
Chapter Set 3
Chapter Set 4 - Part 1
Chapter Set 4 - Part 2
Chapter Set 5 - Part 1
Chapter Set 5 - Part 2
Chapter Set 6 - Part 1
Chapter Set 6 - Part 2
Chapter Set 7 - Part 1
Chapter Set 7 - Part 2
Chapter Set 8
Chapter Set 9 - Part 1
Chapter Set 9 - Part 2
Chapter Set 10 - Part 1
Chapter Set 10 - Part 2
Chapter Set 11
Chapter Set 12
Chapter Set 13
Chapter Set 14 - Part 1
Chapter Set 14 - Part 2
Chapter Set 15 - Part 1
Chapter Set 15 - Part 2
Chapter Set 16 - Part 1
Chapter Set 16 - Part 2
Chapter Set 17
Chapter Set 18
Bonus Material - How did the blood feud between s’Ilessid and s’Ffalenn originate?
CHAPTER HIGHLIGHTS
Chapter Set 1 Highlights
Chapter Set 2 Highlights
Chapter Set 3 Highlights