So last time, Talith was returned to her husband, with a new perspective that he doesn't like very much. Dakar met up with Lysaer and got to see the other side of things, so to speak. And Arithon (and I) got some very bad news about one of my favorite minor characters.

So this chapter needs a few warnings. The first, well, you know how I have a tag meant for things like telepathic mind rape? It might be applicable here. I'm going back and forth on it, honestly. Certainly the motives are far more sympathetic than Donal's. But there is still some...resonance. Anyway, if you have an opinion about whether the tag should apply, let me know.

And also, probably a warning for a war crime. Yeah. It's going to be pretty rough.



The chapter starts on the Khetienn, which is currently sailing on the Westland Sea. Dakar's as mad as I am about Dhirken's death and wishes he had a sword for retribution.

Kharadmon is there too, he seems to be helping to speed the Khetienn on its way. Dakar's not enjoying that part, but Arithon appears to explain that they're off to pay debts in Innish.

Arithon is not dealing with things very well, actually.

State doublet and silk shirt had been changed for a sailor's smock with several generations of tar stains. Beneath wind-snatched dark hair, the Shadow Master's expression showed no stripped edge of reprimand, but a self-haunted directness Dakar had never seen.

Arithon addressed a query to the invisible presence of the Sorcerer. 'If Dhirken could be condemned for the honest charter of her brig, what in Ath's mercy will befall Talith?'

Kharadmon has a whole "do you really want to know" moment. Yes, he does.

'Why care?' Dakar broke in. 'Talith was insufferably arrogant. She flaunted her looks outright to manipulate an opening for intrigue.' To the Fellowship spirit which arrowed above the brigantine's masthead, he added, 'I watched the whole thing. Arithon kept his distance from the lady as though she were fiend-plagued and venomous!'

'So he did,' Kharadmon agreed. Wind screamed through stays, and the brigantine slammed smoking through another swell. A green swirl of waters slapped across her rails, to drain in throaty gurgles through her scuppers. 'Despite that care, Talith came to recognize Arithon's compassion. She was too proud to play false with her husband. And she believed Lysaer's judgement was not impaired. Desh-thiere's curse showed her the error of her trust, but too late.'

'Her marriage is ruined,' Arithon concluded in an anguish that begged against hope for contradiction.

Kharadmon was not wont to soften the impact of cause and effect. 'Lysaer will never lie with her again. He'll honour her position and not flaunt a mistress. But his liaison with his wife until the day of her death will be kept to a state formality.'

I appreciate Dakar acting as Arithon's character witness here, though I could wish for a little less misogyny. Talith wasn't stirring up trouble, she was trying to escape so as not to be used against her husband.

Poor Talith. It's not her arrogance that brought about her downfall, but her honesty and strength of will. And her trust. And now she's trapped. Though there are worse things than being put aside. (See: Dhirken).

Arithon storms off, while Dakar is incredulous. But...his doubt might be wavering.

'Believe it,' Kharadmon finished. 'The lady came back having seen too much. The marred gift of s'Ilessid justice won't let Lysaer abide the ambiguity.'

Ice-cold, shivering in suspicion that rang clear through to his bones, Dakar laced stubborn, red fingers over his streaming knees. Fellowship Sorcerers were ever subtle players. The distinct possibility could not be ignored that Kharadmon might play his sympathies against Lysaer for a purpose, particularly if Sethvir sensed any echo that he harboured a secret augury on Arithon's life.

Dakar lacked the straight courage to confront the matter outright; and at an indeterminate point inside the next hour Kharadmon left the Khetienn to make her way south on the world's winds.

I don't really blame Dakar for his distrust here. The Fellowship HAS proven itself happy to deceive and manipulate in the past. That said, given that they went so far as to bind Arithon with a blood oath, I doubt they'd be so subtle if they did know Dakar had his life in his hands.

...then again, considering how much of Arithon's current trouble can be traced back to the Fellowship, it would be like them to make things that much worse.

-

By nightfall, Dakar's noticed something odd though. Arithon's not been back on deck since acting after Talith. He's left his men in charge of the ship and has even turned down food AND notice about whether the wind changed. Given how much of a control freak he tends to be, that's alarming.

And indeed, Dakar thinks so too:

Dakar's pulse quickened in alarm. Adamant as Arithon could be when he desired solitude, he was an irreproachable captain. Never before had he failed to oversee every nuance of sail trim and course. His slackened attentiveness now made no sense, not when the Khetienn was engaged in a race to reach Shand ahead of Lysaer's galley.

'Fiends,' swore the quartermaster, his brow creased with disbelief for the determined set to Dakar's stance. 'Oh man, you're not going down after him. The fool who tries his temper, I swear on my hindparts, is fair askin' to get the gizzard knifed out o' him.'

But like the misfortunate princess, Dakar had been too far and seen too much. From an altered perspective he scarcely knew for his own, he lashed out at the helmsman in anger. 'Did you never think? Arithon's not indestructible, however hard he tries to act the part. He's just been told another friend passed the Wheel. The upset can't help but aggrieve him.'

I shared this because I enjoy the quartermaster's dialogue. I normally don't like phonetic dialect writing, but this isn't too bad.

And of course, I'm also sharing it because of the change in Dakar's perspective. He may not be ready to admit it to himself. But for the first time, possibly ever, he's making an assumption based on empathy instead of suspicion.

So Dakar goes down to the captain's quarters. It's locked. But Dakar is resourceful.

'Open,' snapped Dakar, out of tolerance with unease. 'If you don't, so help me, Arithon, I'm going to break the latch. And not by neat sorcery, either.'

No sound came from the far side. To a half-snarled oath, then a rushed prayer to Ath, the Mad Prophet lowered his chin for a bull's charge, prepared to crash his shoulder against the wood.

The latch tripped and the panel whipped open to reveal Arithon in his shirtsleeves. 'I asked not to be troubled,' he said in ruthless annoyance. 'The quartermaster warned you. Is this loyalty, Dakar? Or, Sithaer forbid, an attempt to shepherd my conscience?'

The purple prose is surprisingly muted this time:

'None of those.' Dakar straightened up, dusky as a plum. A self-control he never knew he possessed held him steady as he raked his attention over the prince who opposed him. The clothing and hair, faintly dishevelled, and green eyes acute in their focus gave him scant grounds for reassurance. He planted himself amid the opened doorway in outright, stubborn intent.

'By all means,' cried Arithon in explosive antagonism. 'If you're going to make an occasion of my mistakes, you might as well come inside. The whole blighted crew doesn't need to share in the happy exhibition.'

So Dakar goes in and is immediately horrified to see a stone pipe and a very familiar canister. Arithon's going to get high.

And actually that's a bit of a problem. Remember how it took a lot out of him in Mistwraith? That was when he had a working mage talent to burn away the poison. He doesn't have that talent anymore. This WILL kill him.

Well. Maybe. Arithon points out that the Five Centuries Fountain that he and Lysaer had drunk from in Mistwraith might win out. That's actually an interesting thought. In this series, longevity seems to go hand in hand with advanced healing. CAN Lysaer or Arithon actually be killed at all?

I presume they could, or the Fellowship sorcerers wouldn't have sworn him to the oath. And Dakar agrees, pointing out that Arithon's got longevity protection but not immortality. And that even if the Fountain keeps his body alive, there's nothing to stop him from going insane.

But Arithon figures one way or another, he won't be self-blinded anymore. Basically, he's going to try to use the drug to smash his mental blocks apart. Taking his brain with it, if necessary.

...yeah, that tracks.

And we see the problem here with the whole genetically encoding a trait like compassion into a family line:

'Listen,' he said in breaking desperation. 'If I keep on making errors of judgement and see every friend I have come to grief, I'm going to be driven mad anyway.' The fallow glow of lamplight lined his shoulders and the suffering, stark edge of an expression kept turned beyond view. 'Tharrick was tortured. Dhirken and Maenalle were executed. Merior's now the bound outpost of Avenor, and Talith -'

'Stop this!' Dakar cracked. 'You aren't responsible for everybody's lives! You can't let yourself be ruled by their choices, no matter how much the s'Ffalenn royal gift leaves you exposed to their hurt.'

Arithon whirled, his eyes defenseless in pain as few ever saw, and terrible for the depth of their vision. 'Ath preserve, we're not talking about individuals this time. If I make a miscall against this warhost in Shand, the Vastmark tribes will be scattered. Erlien's clansmen are also involved, and outside my sovereignty to forbid. Do you think I can live with a repeat of Tal Quorin, but on a scale to make that massacre seem an exercise? Save us all! My feal clans in Rathain were all but destroyed the last time Etarra marched to war.'

Dakar's not about to let him fry his brain. Arithon's frustrated that his talent of accidently making friends by being an asshole apparently kicked in again, but Dakar clarifies that no, it's just that they're eighty leagues from land and he doesn't know anything about navigation.

Arithon has to acknowledge the point there. He urges Dakar to put a magic lock on the door so they can argue about it without interference. Dakar does so. Then gets bashed on the head, unconscious.

Because of course.

--

So Dakar wakes up in the corridor outside the cabin. He hears some sailors laughing at him for interfering in Arithon's business. Dakar's got more serious concerns though, because of course, Arithon's gone to do something stupid.

And to be fair, Dakar's got a point when he thinks that an insane Arithon entangled in the Mistwraith's curse might be a very bad thing.

So Dakar uses magic to break inside. The fumes are enough to start sending Dakar into a trance, but he's able to quickly block his magesight. Things look...not great:

Arithon's chair stood empty. The blankets on his berth were rucked into snarls, the sheets half-torn from the mattress. Chart chest, hanging locker, cabinet, and logbook, all were closed and still neatly latched, which left only the well of gloom on the deck, buried in attenuated shadow.

Sweating through apprehension, Dakar resumed his search. He scanned past a jumble of upset quills, the smashed veneer of a lacquered coffer, beyond these, a hand in faint outline, spread out and locked, the tight-fitted bones of a face pressed into a cradling forearm. Arithon lay curled on his side beneath the bowed curve of the stern window.

So yeah, things aren't great at the moment:

Under their blued lids of flesh, his pupils were expanded black wells. Arithon's limbs were dangerously cool, the reflex that spasmed the muscles to burn off deep chill reduced to intermittent, thin shudders. His pulse was erratic and fast, his skin drenched, and his tissues scoured to a dangerous, toxic dehydration.

Oops.

Dakar wraps a blanket around him and finds tea prepared to stave off the physical effects. And we get some nice hurt comfort type stuff here:

Afraid the debilitating symptoms had progressed past the reach of simple remedy, Dakar knelt with Arithon's fine-boned fingers cradled between his two hands. A pang rocked through him for the musical legacy Halliron had left Athera, set into irrevocable jeopardy.

The real issue isn't physical damage though, that takes a while. It's the risk of insanity. And Dakar, yet again, finds himself in over his head:

Here was proper work for a Fellowship Sorcerer, not for any bumbling apprentice who had wasted his centuries of instruction chasing whores and getting paralytic drunk. Dakar held no pretence. Since he lacked the practised skill to send a distress call over leagues of open ocean, the best he could do was seek contact with Sethvir through the earth link bequeathed by the Paravians.

Oh, poor Dakar, haven't you yet realized that the Fellowship is completely fucking useless? He manages to scribe a distress rune in blood on a rock, set it in flame, and splash it into the sea. That SHOULD get Sethvir's attention. IF he's not preoccupied.

And yep. No response. Of fucking course. It's not like Kharadmon could have stuck around or something. So Dakar's stuck doing it. He thinks of Jilieth, and his own shortcomings. But he's more afraid to do nothing, and risk an insane Arithon wreaking havoc.

Dakar closed the casement and bent over the prone form at his feet. He firmed hold on his mage-sense and cast a shallow probe into the veils of unconsciousness to try and raise the Shadow Master back to primal awareness. His effort met and drowned in a velvet layer of darkness. He felt battened in shadow, adrift. The surface currents of Arithon's mind were untenanted, blank and reflectionless and still as an unrippled lake.

Dakar roused and opened his eyes. Forced by need to an unkind choice, he cursed Daelion Fatemaster to be left alone at the crux of such crisis. With Khetienn at sea, he could scarcely engage the services of a herb witch to spin him small talismans of protection. If the volume of saltwater beneath the ship's keel would buffer his effort from the unshielded presence of the sailhands, the blessing came mixed. Bedamned if he would try a deeper sounding while wedged beneath the chart table, and the unkind roll of a following sea rattled his bones like a string puppet. Since Arithon was built small enough for even a fat man to heft, Dakar shouldered to the effort, half dragging the Master of Shadow across the deck.

Movement and disturbance roused a flicker of tension in the unconscious man's frame. His lips moved in whispered entreaty, 'Are they safe yet!'

Aw.

Thing is, at one point, they psychically connected to try to save a child's life. And there's something left over, enough that Dakar starts to get visions of what actually happened in Strakewood, on the banks of the Tal Quorin.

Overturned into dread, Dakar rolled his limp burden onto the wadded bedding on the berth. The tienelle visions had not led Arithon's awareness outside of himself. Instead, he was lost in relivings, damned by his own pity and unable to win reprieve from his burden of s'Ffalenn conscience as perception turned inward to unstring him.

Dakar sat and laid the prince's sweat-soaked head in his lap. Nerves he never knew he possessed recoiled in trepidation as he steadied himself into balance. He had nothing in that poised moment to suggest the best way to begin. With a whimper of fear, he smoothed back damp black hair and closed his eyes. He let his awareness unreel into stillness, then turned down to plumb the racked depths of the mind beneath his hands.

So of course, we get a full italicized flashback of horror. Which I won't share, because you can always just read the recap of the chapter. But he sees the rape and genocide, the desperate attempt to save the clans, and Arithon going through the dead later, trying to use Paravian ritual to give their spirits rest.

Then he gets booted out of Arithon's mind because of psychic defenses. Because Arithon's a prick even when unconscious.

Dakar bitches about his mental defenses, remembers Asandir making a comment about the same, and then starts to understand why the Fellowship chose to put Lysaer at risk instead of Arithon. The latter had protection, but also trained power and strength that could be used against them.

I mean, they both ended up cursed anyway. So it's a bit of a moot point really.

But Dakar understands the reason WHY Arithon's magic is blocked now:

Broken to fresh grief for old cruelties, Dakar sat in a cold sweat and chewed over the quandary ceded to his unwilling judgement. He could not heal this tienelle poisoning without inner consent from a mind that had already ranged far distant, vaulted on the drugged tides of vision to inflamed reliving of the past. Feeling battered, the Mad Prophet mumbled mixed lines of invective and self-pitying prayer. He lacked the stomach to suffer the private layers of Arithon's anguish. Yet his limited frame of knowledge allowed him no other means of access.

For his moment of rapport had revealed what was wrong. He had traced the channels of Arithon's lost powers, seared first by misuse, then racked, forced, compelled to overextend beyond the wise limits of talent and strength. The scars of past experience had healed over time, but not into functional recovery. Guilt remained, a bleak, damning barrier locked fast by the royal s'Ffalenn gift of mercy.

Dakar saw too clearly, and the damage made him weep. Too easily, the power to raise grand conjury for destruction might fall sway to the Mistwraith's directive to kill. Arithon feared beyond life to bear the result. The very compassion of his bloodline intervened, to blind and to deafen; to block off beyond even irrational reach all the fires of bright power born in him.

Oh, I do enjoy Wurts's purple prose.

And the emphasis on consent, which only seems to matter to people like Dakar and Arithon, arguably victims of the Fellowship.

Anyway, the drug trip isn't over yet. And Dakar realizes that he's going to have to enhance his own perception to try to deal with Arithon's demons. So he gets high too.

Worst trip ever.

So we get some fun sensory things here, before Dakar gets ahold of himself and then "dropped like an arrow shot off a high arc into the heartcore of Arithon's mind."

Not sure what that means, but it sure does sound cool.

Maelstrom sucked him under, white-hot and merciless, the effects of the tienelle redoubled as the physical torment to Arithon's body rocked him off-balance into cramps. Then vision sliced him through like silver-bladed knives.

Dakar mustered flayed resources. This time when mage-trained reflex sought to fling him wholesale into the dark, he cried Arithon's Name, tuned into a key of compassion.

Careful as he was, his personal feelings leaked through and coloured the weave. What secrets he hoarded allowed no false pretence; he was anything but impartial where the Prince of Rathain was concerned. As the fires of reaction roused to hound him once again, he sensed the futility of further effort. He could batter himself silly in attempt to weave an access, and only buy repeated failure. He was not as Asandir, powerful enough in wisdom and strength to intervene without force, and call spirit to respond from within. The final conclusion was unpleasant in the extreme. The herb had entangled Arithon in the same guilt which blocked off his mage-sight. Only one means existed that Dakar was aware of, to reverse the process and storm through.

He groped back to the table, too ragged to weep. Nothing, nothing at all, had prepared him for what he must endure. Whether he despaired or he howled, whether he emerged irrevocably changed, he had no other means to stem the remorseless tides of the tienelle's dissolution than to hurl Arithon's own guilt back against him.

...that sounds pretty horrible.

Anyway, there's a lot of this kind of language and description. Dakar's in Arithon's mind, basically going through all the trauma and guilt: Talith, Maenalle, Dhirken, Strakewood, Steiven s'Valerient, and even farther back to Karthan and the blood feud, and the "beloved grandfather whose every warning and principle had been disregarded and finally betrayed."

Look, we talked about that whole "foresight" thing right? Your grandfather is a fucking idiot.

At each turn, Arithon's awareness protested his presumptuous meddling. The fight in him would not be quenched. This violation of his innermost privacy roused a vehement storm of prideful temper. Dakar ploughed on, beleaguered. His instinct to show mercy for need must be utterly stamped out. He held all the weapons. He was inside the Shadow Master's deepest defences. Any of a thousand thorny fragments of happenstance were his to seize and turn, to cut off resistance, no matter how brave, and to break down spirit and courage into reeling pain.

And even stung and stung again to inward howls of agony, Arithon's nature would not give way in submission. The man who intervened in the effort to spare his sanity could do nothing else but meet each tortured obstruction, then use grief and sorrow to unbalance.

...you know. For all that consent talk, this is all reading a bit mind-rapey.

Anyway, Arithon's subconscious is trying to fight back, enraged by the "unconscionable violation of self.". Which doesn't make this feel any less rapey, to be honest. And Dakar's pretty outmatched in here. But he manages SOMETHING:

A course of sheer folly remained. The personal bindings of selfhood, which Dakar for expedience had broken, but that a master's exacting reflex in defence must be instilled to respect; aware of only that one barrier that Arithon's counterthrust would hesitate to cross, Dakar reacted. He claimed the burden of remorse he had stolen and assumed the full coil as his own.

As he conjoined borrowed memories with the signature pattern of his Name, the bleeding roots of the other man's compassion became his personal inheritance. Along with the guilt came every wounding twist of fate that had arisen to separate a masterbard from his born calling to shape music.

A heartbeat, and the victim was freed from his crippling guilt. Reason returned, and full cognizance. In a rush fired to bounding expansion by the tienelle, Arithon's mind unreeled through sharp, unfolding vision into the lost power of his mage talent.

For him, a wondering, peaceful miracle of insight, for Dakar, a stab of dark agony the likes of which ground and shattered his being through a paroxysm of change.

That sounds fun.

They share a moment:

'Do what you must,' he charged the prince he sought to salvage. 'Transmute the drug's poisons and pull yourself out of this!' He need not remonstrate that his spellbinder's resource was finite. Nor could he sustain the weight of Arithon's conscience for one second longer than shocked nerves could withstand the strain. He was not royal, nor tempered to mastery, nor disciplined to a masterbard's empathy, but only a fat man born to a spurious gift of prophecy whose burdens had driven him to drink.

'You are more than that, truly,' Arithon's reply sang back through the terrible, twinned link. 'Else I would be mad, and you would be drunk, and the Mistwraith would have its fell triumph.'

Aw. I still kind of ship it.

But does Arithon use this reprieve to heal himself and get the fuck out of this mess?

'Ah, you scheming, clever bastard!' the Mad Prophet cried.

For Arithon did not use the reprieve he had been given to restore his taxed faculties to safe limits. Instead, he shouldered the restored scope of his self-command, grasped the reins of the tienelle's powers of expanded vision, and launched through a nerve-stripping sequence of augury. As he had done before the battle at Tal Quorin to buy the survival of his clansmen, he tried now for the forthcoming debacle at Vastmark.



There it is.

So yeah. Poor Dakar's dragged along as Arithon starts sifting through horrible, bloody potential futures. Eventually, he realizes that Arithon isn't trying to find a future to save his own life:

At each turn, through every crafty twist of projected circumstance, the deployment of shepherd archers and clan scouts was replayed to sound for alternate tactics. Arithon broke rules. He trampled morality. He stretched every resource to unconscionable limit, and spared nothing of himself. At every turn, his exhaustive effort sought openings to disarm conflict. Dakar sensed the driving will to create ways to demoralize, and frighten, and haze back the enemy; to allow men misled for false cause the free option to retreat, and live, and return to their hearthstones and families.

And Dakar has a realization:

Through the terrible course of the auguries made to steer the war in Vastmark, the Mad Prophet came to know that nothing concerning the massacre at Tal Quorin confirmed his past set of assumptions. Arithon had acted in perfect consistency, start to finish, each predetermined move done for mercy. He had not, after all, struck out in wanton fury, but used destruction as his most calculated tool, the sole means he had at his disposal to turn the scope of much wider disaster.

And so he would do again at Vastmark, over terrain most ruthlessly chosen to disadvantage a warhost. If Lysaer's troops closed to fight, they would march into ruin. Arithon's scryings were unequivocal. His light force of archers and clansmen would give way and strike from ambush. They could beat swift retreat into the mountains and lose themselves, or turn and cut down pursuit from the high cover of cliff walls while their enemies blundered, unable to find the hidden tracks to scale the cruel rocks and retaliate.

In spilled blood and in resource, for Lysaer, the campaign against the Shadow Master would be a terrible, drawn-out waste of life.

And still, even still, Arithon remained unsatisfied.

What Arithon is looking for is a way to turn the warhost aside entirely. But Dakar knows that's pretty much impossible. He's seen Lysaer as he is now, and: Best of any he understood how the prince's morality had been wrenched awry and used by Desh-thiere's curse. The royal gift of s'Ilessid justice would never let Lysaer back down.

I was going to argue with that "best of any" part, but actually, I do think that's true. While I do think that Dakar and Lysaer were never as close as Dakar thinks, they were still friends. Dakar is the only one besides Arithon (who hasn't come face to face with Lysaer since the coronation) and Asandir who actually KNEW Lysaer before the curse hit.

Arithon saw the same, but was undaunted. 'There's one way we haven't tried yet. Make the stakes too punishing for even Lysaer's staunch morals to endure.'

By then, Dakar had seen all there was to know of the mind of the Prince of Rathain. In a burst fired out by the tienelle, he guessed the horrific intent. 'You can't do this!' he cried. 'Don't try, for your heart's sake.'

But his warning was hammered aside.

So let's see what we've got:

Written in blood and in razed human lives, the desperate deterrent unreeled. Arranged for maximum impact and effect, Dakar was given a raw vista of twisted corpses and fired ships as fruits of a merciless slaughter. Alongside the handful of witnesses chosen by intent to survive, he beheld the utter death of hope.

The horrible, harrowing reverberation of their pain snapped his hold on concentration.

He had no second's warning, no moment to prepare, as his senses overturned into an untimely, drug-fired augury. His birth-gifted talent sundered his control and ripped through, and like a cascading fall of dominoes, chaos stormed the breach.

Dakar cried out, racked over by truesight: of Lysaer s'Ilessid, brought weeping to his knees in a field tent, while a shaken, white-faced captain received orders: that the warhost was to turn in retreat.

'There's no foray worth the cost of forty thousand lives!' Lysaer said. 'I'll not see my men lured in and toyed with just to be needlessly broken. The conclusion is plain: the Master of Shadow has made Vastmark a trap. He cannot be run to earth over ground he has chosen. We must pull back now and rethink our strategy until other ways can be found to destroy him.'

So yeah. If Arithon can murder enough people, then Lysaer will turn back.

Jeeze.

So the tienelle vision is over. They're back on the ship.

'Are you all right?' came a ragged whisper from the berth.

The Mad Prophet paused in his effort to swear. He peered across the creaking gloom of the cabin to where Arithon lay, eyes slitted in pain, but watching him closely all the same.

'I have a headache that could kill,' Dakar answered. 'And balance so wrecked, I doubt I could manage to make a puddle in a chamber pot without missing.' He refused to address the rest, or confront the meat of the question's intent. For of course, he would never be quite right, nor be able to resume his past carefree ways. Stitched into memory beyond his power to dissolve, he held the pure recall of everything in life that Arithon s'Ffalenn had ever suffered.

If it helps, Dakar, we both know Arithon would absolutely HATE that.

And we get more Wurtsian prose here:

The sting of conscience was unrelenting, and twofold for the parts where his personal lapses had added impetus to the burden: the scouring devastation of pride at Minderl Bay, the betrayal at Alestron's dungeon, the loss of Halliron at Jaelot. Remorse was too paltry a concept to encompass the wretchedness he shared with Rathain's prince. Pretence was ripped away. The conclusion he had to bear forward was forthright in simplicity: that Arithon s'Ffalenn was no criminal at all, but a creature of undying compassion whose natural bent was to celebrate an irrepressible joy for life.

This is a fun realization to have, now that Arithon's got to murder a shit ton of people. Five hundred deaths, to be precise, in exchange for forty thousand.

Dakar points out that this still could go wrong. Basically, Dakar has two types of prophecy. The visions he gets, that he remembers, are mutable and changeable. The only CERTAIN ones are the ones that he gets, and doesn't remember afterward.

So it's not a guarantee that Lysaer will recall his troops. Something could still happen. (See: Strakewood. Arithon couldn't stop the kids from taking part in battle, which then led to Lysaer's men finding the women's camp and commiting rape and murder.) Dakar asks what then? If Arithon's "killing field" fails?

Curled into a reaming fit of dry heaves, the Master of Shadow closed tormented eyes. He answered with no change of position as soon as he was able to command speech. 'I'd be forced to follow through, as you saw. Ath's pity has no part. By blood oath to Asandir, I'm charged to survive. If the ploy fails and I draw the wrath of that warhost into Vastmark, I can't let my allies come to die for it.'

The Mad Prophet hung mute, unable to refute that tortured course of logic.

But hey, he did manage to do something for Dakar. At some point, toward the end of their shared vision, Arithon broke Asandir's geas over Dakar. Dakar is free to do whatever he wants.

But is he?

Except for Asandir's verbal charge of service, Dakar's free will was once again his own. He drew breath to speak, then coughed through his beard, crestfallen. For the issue was no longer simple. The changes to his person had been driven too deep; and an arrow's fatal role in the Shadow Master's affairs remained yet to happen in the winter.

Dakar took stubborn hold, pushed himself to his knees, then shot a poisoned glare at his nemesis. 'You won't be rid of me so easily, and anyway, you're going to need a nurse who knows how to draw you clear of a tienelle poisoning.'

He was Arithon's man, that much could not be changed, at least until after the campaign was turned in Vastmark. Only then could he measure the impact of what he had become. He had until equinox to weigh the warning impact of his augury and decide whether he should abandon Lysaer to fate and stay involved with the Master of Shadow.

--

So the next subchapter is Strike at the Havens.

And I'm honestly regretting my insistence on doing these reviews as single chapters like this, because I'd really like to sit and process that last subchapter for a bit.

Instead, we're just diving into it.

It's the end of summer now, and the warhost is closing on Vastmark. They're making landings on the peninsula. And one of those landings has been singled out.

Well, I suppose I admire how Wurts doesn't flinch away from the harsh consequences of decisions. She doesn't postpone them either, because here we are.

Flattened amid a fractured clutch of shale on the brim of a cliff, his black hair stirred to a clammy breeze off the inlet known as the Havens, the Master of Shadow lay cat still. He wore no armour, but only a grass-stained shepherd's jacket and tunic; on his person he carried no weapon beyond a knife. His intent study encompassed the cross-weave of rigging and yardarms of a fleet of merchant brigs and fishing sloops, recently anchored.

Caolle is here too. And he's not completely happy about all this.

'Well,' said Caolle in sour censure behind his shoulder, 'you wanted a place where they'd play straight into your design.'

'Killing is killing,' Arithon said, flat bland. 'Are you faint? I'm surprised. After all those murdered couriers out of Jaelot, I didn't think you had any tender spots left to offend.'

The barb shamed Caolle to stiff silence; a contrary and difficult service he had of this prince, but one he was forced to respect. Bloodshed had never balked him for the sake of his clans in Deshir. If Arithon's proposed tactics lay outside his approval, there were headhunters' devices amid the town pennons which streamed from the mastheads below. Except for the odd fishing sloop out of Merior, these men marked as prey were not innocent or harmless, but professionals as dedicated as he.

And soon, it's time. Caolle asks for the honor to fire the first signal, but Arithon refuses him. This is his responsibility.

Arithon s'Ffalenn slid back from the precipice. He took up the strung bow of black-lacquered horn set waiting against a rock, then chose the first of three marked arrows arrayed in a row in the dirt. The red streamers affixed to its head flicked over his shoulder as he knelt and nocked the first. Slight, thin-tempered, dwarfed by the bowl of the Vastmark sky, he made a drab figure against its surfeit of colour as he drew and took aim.

The hammered look of anguish his features showed then gave even his war captain pause.

Then the bowstring sang into release. The arrow arced up, poised, tipped into irrevocable descent. Ribbons unfurled behind in a snapping tail of bloody scarlet.

So it's an ambush. One hundred and twelve bowmen shoot down arrow after arrow. And a lot of people die.

I appreciate what Wurts is trying to do here. And I'm no expert in international law. This probably does constitute a war crime, but I'm not sure I really appreciate how this is worse than any other ambush or battle that we've seen in the series so far.

I mean, okay, the invaders don't get the chance to fight back. But...why should they? They're not civilians. They're not here for a peaceful purpose. Many of them are the same headhunters that committed genocide against the clans. How do we think they'd act if they met Dalwyn and Ghedair?

The book treats this as something of a moral event horizon for Arithon. And I guess theoretically, I understand. But, and maybe this says more about me than the characters, I don't see it as a dealbreaker.

On the clifftop, Caolle knuckled his fist to closed teeth, raked over by a sudden wash of cold sweats. He had seen war; had fought and inflicted ugly carnage in his time. This was not battle, but a living, tearing nightmare that made him want to cringe and block his ears.

I'm not sure I buy this reaction from a man who survived Strakewood. But okay. It probably does feel different when you're the one committing the war crime.

Actually, this bit is kind of poignant to me:

'Turn them back! Ath's pity, get them down to the boats!' cried a garrison commander from the beachhead. Erect in dedication, he wore the black-and-gilt surcoat emblazoned with Jaelot's gold lions. As a man who had once matched companionable bets over bows with the conniving imposter, Medlir, he knew beyond fear what he faced.

I do hope, for his sake, Arithon doesn't see this guy Because we know he'd recognize him.

And indeed, even as they retreat, the clan archers keep shooting.

This was not war, but unconscionable slaughter. Men shook their fists, or scattered and ran, or huddled in clusters under targes that failed to protect. Arrows raked the clear air and pinned their scrabbling, yelling figures like flies, whether they struggled in mad flight, or stood ground in a vain effort to cover their comrades' retreat.

It's rough on the scouts too, actually. They start to beg for permission to ease off. But Arithon says nothing. Of course. And...oh no.

The crack of sails being set and sheeted home rebounded from the imprisoning cliffs, then spiralled on the breeze to the heights. Every vessel in the anchorage turned her helm down to flee, but for the one plucky fishing sloop from Merior. Manned by a captain too dour to stand down, that one wore ship in a neat turn of seamanship and tucked up underneath the ledges. Shielded by rock, she launched off her dories, while her stubborn master bellowed orders to evacuate the wounded from the shingle.

Fucking Merior.

Arithon shoots another signal arrow. Oh. Okay.

In the caves lower down, bound to obedience, the archers tipped the lids off ceramic pots of coals. They changed from broadheads to shafts tipped in tallow-soaked lint, then touched them aflame one by one. Their next shots were fired in high arcs across the water, their targets the billows of unbrailed canvas. The air rippled, first singed into distortion by brown smoke and fat-fed flame, then cut by hissing arcs and the heartrending, treble shouts of panic. The ships nearest to the shoreline sprang into fire like toys. Men jumped clear of burning rigging. They escaped the scything crash of fallen yard-arms into water, to thrash in frantic circles until they drowned. Or they swam back onto the blood-slippery beaches, into the directionless melee that drove the trapped garrisons hither and yon, while the arrows fell and fell and served lethal end to their struggles.

One of the vessels does catch wind, and the Khetienn blasts her with arbalests.

It is actually pretty gruesome.

'The Havens,' Arithon ground out in a whisper. The peal of laughter that followed caused Caolle to stiffen. He raised a hand, decisive, to deal a swift slap to break hysteria.

Moved by swordsman's reflex, Arithon spun to block the blow; and the icy, pitiless sarcasm fixed into his expression checked his war captain cold.

'I'm not going to snap,' Arithon said, his tone incised like a sheared scrape of crystal over yelling and the harrowing echoes of the screams. 'My half-brother may. Pray to Ath, if you know how, that he finds the cost of his blighted justice high enough to break his princely nerve.'

Then things almost come to blows. There's one ship left, the little sloop from Merior, loaded with wounded. Caolle grabs for the last signal arrow - the one for a ceasefire.

A demonic flare of irony lit the depths of green eyes. 'Ah no,' said Arithon. 'No mercy. Not now. You'll spoil my intent. There are men down there alive still, and in no mood for charitable action.'

'Daelion himself!' cried Caolle. 'Let the wounded go! Ath forbid, she's just a fisher sloop! This isn't war you wage now, but pointless slaughter.' He drew a scraping breath. Never had he foreseen the hour he must argue for mercy against a prince who, before this, had been too soft to sanction the necessary harsh measures.

'You'll do nothing,' Arithon said, distant, tuned in to some altercation arisen on the water down below.

Even a crewman from the Khetienn begs to them to stop. He's from Merior himself, and he recognizes the captain as someone who isn't a soldier, but someone he's known since birth.

Well, I mean, maybe the dude shouldn't have joined a warhost that's already been involved in genocide?

Caolle, wonderful Caolle, does try to stand his ground here.

Caolle gripped the white shaft in locked fingers. 'The clansmen are mine. I could pull them off, despite you.'

'Do that!' cracked the Prince of Rathain. 'Then stand and endure the taste of my sanctioned royal justice. I'd take the heads of the ones who obey you for treason.'

No threat, but hard certainty; Caolle read as much. He spat in revolted disgust.

'So many deaths,' Arithon mocked him, vicious. 'You say they're enough. Well, half measures won't serve. We're not fighting against a man, or a moral, or a principle.'

'Desh-thiere's curse is your justification? Then I'm questioning that.' As much as Caolle knew of the reasonless hatred and inspired lust to kill from what Jieret had related after past events at Minderl Bay, this act at the Havens broke the mould.

And that's it. I see now. The issue isn't what Arithon is doing, but how. This isn't fear or anger. It's cold and calculated. And that does make it worse.

Five hundred deaths for forty thousand. It really is a terrible calculation to make.

I do love this conflict so much:

'If they're all dead, who takes Lysaer the warning?' Caolle cried.

Arithon gave back a nasty smile. 'I'll pick the envoys I need from among the least-hacked survivors.'

Caolle could not contain the rise of his gorge. He hurled the white signal arrow to Arithon's feet, eyes inimical as black steel boring into his prince as his sword sang clear of its sheath. 'You may not be sick,' he said in a low, taut rage he had never before felt toward any man. 'But by Ath, I am. For both of us.'

Arithon's lip curled. 'Don't worry,' he taunted before that steady, levelled blade. 'If my foray here doesn't raise enough terror, you'll have your chance to shoulder the larger sacrifice. You'll stand front and centre, up against forty thousand. I'll watch you direct the bloodbath to stop the next wave when the warhost mounts the vale at Dier Kenton.'

Which urgent bit of viciousness slapped Caolle short. He did not challenge a madman, but encroached instead on a naked and tortured vulnerability.

Poor Caolle.

The carnage at Tal Quorin had been done in heated battle, over the freshly gutted bodies of clan women and children. The Havens was a tactic wrought out in calculated cold blood to break nerves; to raise by brutal storm the very reasonless upset a seasoned man of war would never imagine he could fall victim to.

Stung too late for the impulse that had made him question his liege lord's timing, Caolle recoiled against the uttermost cruel paradox: Athera's Masterbard was no spirit to be forced to command here. Yet the half of him that was Rathain's born prince was too much the man to relinquish the unendurable weight of sovereignty.

'Ah, Ath, I can't fight you.' The war captain stood down, abashed. 'Not over this. Not when you're like to wish yourself dead over what you believe is stark necessity.'

When Arithon finally does shoot the ceasefire arrow, Caolle is unashamedly weeping.

--

So it's after the slaughter now. Or most of it. Clansmen who survived Strakewood and are still bitter over the loss of their families have been sent to deal mercy strokes and send litters for the few chosen to survive.

It's pretty gruesome:

Arithon led, still swordless. Under the merciless sunlight, he descended the gore-streaked stone, past men lying sprawled with eyes and mouths opened to sky; past others who were little more than boys, curled in agony over the slow pain of lacerations, the torment of an arrow in the gut. He did not hurry. The scouts selected to carry the wounded trailed at his heels, half-sickened by the stench of sudden death and hazed by the circling buzz of flies. They listened, struck mute, for their liege lord to speak; to point to the grey-haired captain panting in the half-shade of a niche, a broadhead pinned through a wrist. 'That one.'

And another:

Downward, the party passed, into the shadowed throat of the Havens inlet. Now the air reeked of char and the tide-bared weed on the rocks. Arithon pressed footprints into a shingle fouled in the stains of dying men; past corpses piled like drift wrack. He stepped over discarded swords and slackened fingers, and once, a face blistered to featureless meat where canvas had fallen, still burning, upon a swimmer. Amid the carnage and dead, a young boy who had been a banner bearer sat, crying over blistered hands. 'That one.'

...somehow this is actually worse than the slaughter to me. It doesn't make me hate Arithon though. Wurts did a good job of making me believe the necessity of the action. But it's still incredibly painful to read.

Basically, Arithon chooses the survivors. And the rest are mercy killed.

The wounded brought away from the Havens were treated there by the same black-haired man who had designated who should be spared. He made his rounds, quiet, self-contained, and versed in the arts of healing. The remedies in his satchel had no witcheries in them. He spoke no unnecessary word.

'What will the Shadow Master do with us?' gasped a boy with a broken arm, held flat by two scouts as the bones were splinted. 'Why were we saved, except for some fate more terrible?'

His plea received no answer. The small, dark man in still patience just finished wrapping the splints, his sure hands astonishingly gentle. Through air pressed close with the scents of stirred dust and the herbal pastes brewed to make poultices, he went on to bind a compress on the next man in line, who lay moaning in pain on a pallet with a gaping shoulder wound.

Of course.

We learn the numbers: five hundred and forty were killed. Twenty-five were spared. Arithon lost one guy, by the way, caught by surprise by a head hunter.

--

Later, Dakar comes to the site. The clan scouts seem to be taking things rather well. Considering what they've survived, it's not that surprising. Some of them even wonder why Arithon is leaving the other inlets alone, when they have enough archers to take all of them.

Dakar goes to find Arithon. And I really like this moment.

Arithon s'Ffalenn remained still as the intruder he did not want stopped to a chink and scrape of boot leather over crumbled shale. He spoke through his fingers in stabbing, sudden venom. 'I suppose you couldn't resist the chance to come and meddle.'

Unpractised at minding the affairs of others, Dakar ventured the first words to cross his mind, just to fill in the silence. 'You'll gain nothing by brooding.'

The awkward moment came anyway, while wind patted fingers through his unkempt hair, and twisted and untwisted the cord lacings on the other man's suede herder's jacket. 'You have no choice now and there'll be none tomorrow. The blood's been let. Accept what's finished and have done.'

Arithon, being Arithon, tries to antagonize Dakar, offering to drink to his half-brother's tears with him. (And it is an interesting note that as much as Lysaer tries to deny their kinship, Arithon never does.) But Dakar has a different response.

Dakar ripped the proffered flask out of strong fingers and threw it, gurgling in protest, over the cliff face. Without heat, he said, 'You damned fool. I know you too well not to guess the exact measure of your feelings.'

'And curse you for that, while I think of it,' Arithon said. The words clipped short in a cough. His hands moved in a blur to shutter his face and he twisted aside in the grass.

Aware of what, was happening, Dakar dropped to his knees. He caught the prince's racked shoulders in a grasp that clamped bone, and held on through a horrible interval. Arithon lost grip on every nerve all at once, bent helpless in a vicious, heaving nausea that seemed to go on far too long.

And wow. Look at this:

Belated and thrown out of his depth, he came to understand worse: the prince beneath his hands had lost himself into a wilderness of grief. Arithon was weeping in harsh, unbridled bursts that had everything to do with a mind-set unsuited for cruelty.

'Think of the forty thousand,' the Mad Prophet murmured like a litany. 'Take hope for the ones you may have saved.'

The words fell thin, whisked away by the sea wind, their impact reft of meaning by an unpardonable truth. Logic, morality, justice, or reason could not stay the cut of s'Ffalenn compassion. And it came to Dakar, through the channels of his rage and an unaccustomed stab of anguish, that in fact, he was not helpless after all.

He asked and received from Arithon a ragged assent, along with the unequivocal understanding that if anybody else had dared the intervention, they would have been harried off the clifftop.

Could you have imagined this at the start of Ships of Merior? Arithon trusting Dakar enough to fall apart? Dakar offering comfort?

By the way, what Dakar just did was send Arithon to sleep. Look at that trust.

His unpractised spell of deep sleep required time to take effect. But when those terrible, dry sobs of remorse finally stilled, the Mad Prophet crouched on his knees on sharp stone, a prince he had never believed he could pity cradled in his arms like a brother.

So...Arithon's just committed an atrocity. Will it work?

--

The next subchapter is Field of Thorns.

Here, the survivors are given food and then marched to hill country. Arithon's there, though they only know him as "the black haired healer". Dakar's there too.

Only when he stepped close to check bandages and poultice wraps could a man see the marks on him of a haunted, uneasy night. He looked harrowed. Beneath his every movement lay a hunted, flinching tension that startled at slight sounds, and turned listening for voices only he seemed to hear. As if he were dangerous, or chancy to cross, all but the fat man maintained their wary distance.

As different from the clanborn killers he walked with as a hawk's quill cast among broadswords, still, no man among the captive wounded dared to break his aggrieved silence to inquire why he should be here so obviously against his given will.

Whooo. That's a long story, guys.

So their trek lasts fifteen days. No one will tell them where they're going. Though I rather like this bit:

No matter who asked, whether in the grey-haired veteran's tactful phrasing, or in the young boy's pleading fear, none of the survivors could pry a clue from their keepers concerning the destiny awaiting them. The fat man proved deaf to all questions.

The clan scouts said in blunt dismissal, 'That's for his Grace himself to say, when he wills,' often with a fast glance over the shoulder, as if they feared someone watching.

From the healer who gave them no name, they had the soft promise, 'You will live.'

Of course, this leads to an appropriately dramatic reveal when they're told the Prince of Rathain (and honestly, he should be the KING) will address them:

Silenced by dread, every captive faced the small man who entered, armed with a black lacquered bow and a sword of unnatural, dark steel. His neat frame glittered to the muted wash of light through the canvas, the sable and silver leopard of Rathain stitched rampant upon a green silk tabard. Under trimmed hair and the circlet of royal rank, the face was one grown familiar through the past fortnight.

Here stood the Prince of Rathain, called sorcerer and Master of Shadow. He was also none other than the healer whose hands had dressed their wounds and splinted their broken bones in a compassion whose memory became overturned into stunned disbelief at the moment his captives identified him. The irony dismembered reason, stopped thought, that this same man's whim had sown broad-scale, indiscriminate death at the Havens.

As usual, we get the comparison to Lysaer:

Here was none of Lysaer s'Ilessid's forthright appeal. This prince's features stayed shuttered. His voice, crisp and light, made no bid for close loyalty. Without fire, stripped to its thread of bald conviction, the fate Rathain's liege held in store for the chosen twenty-five he had selected was forthright to the point where no listener dared to believe him.

Anyway, Arithon appoints someone spokesperson and issues his demand: he wants news to reach Lysaer by week's end. He wants Lysaer to know EXACTLY what happened and will happen.

'You want us to sap our men of courage,' the gaunt captain accused.

Green eyes flicked up to match him, stung to a frost spark of irony. 'Daelion as my witness,' Arithon flared back in pure anger. 'I want you to save their sorry lives.'

--

And now we join Diegan. He's the one who meets with the spokesman, who gives his account.

'That's no news to be handled lightly,' Lord Diegan agreed, too urbane to reveal his blazing rage. 'Before we go the next step, I'll have your report set in writing. A scribe will come here to take statements under my seal before witnesses. I'll send guards, a tent, food and blankets, as soon as they can be arranged. The rest must wait until morning, since our prince has retired for the night.'

Brisk in distress, the Lord Commander took his leave. He strode up the rise, waded through bracken feathered in droplets to the gulch where his scout remained with the horses. Careful to keep his voice low, he said, 'The rest of your patrol are Etarran?'

A soft word confirmed from the dark. 'All trained under Pesquil, rest him. Why, you have need for discretion?'

Diegan let go an imperceptible sigh of relief. 'Near enough.' His scouts were well seasoned. Already they grasped the sensitive problem posed by these survivors. If measures must be taken for expediency, he need not grind through tedious explanations to convince them to follow his orders. 'I'm going to send servants from my personal train. They'll set up two tents, one to serve a cold meal. When the refugees have eaten, you'll bring each in singly, but not to make the written statements they've been told to expect.'

Nope instead, they'll be bound and gagged and held prisoner.

Diegan is concerned about Lysaer. He knows about the nightmares and stress. He wants to avenge his sister, or even mend the marriage. Because he's a fucking idiot and he's decided this is a bluff.

To the sinewy, weathered captain who entered the tent for instructions, he said, 'Outside of camp, due northwest, you'll find a pair of tents guarded by four Etarran scouts. There are twenty-five men with them, all deserters from a minor skirmish with the enemy that took place on the upper coast. They've been duly judged and sentenced. I ordered them bound. Your knife work should go quick and quiet.'

Oh, and there's scalp pay involved as well.

Fucking Diegan.

And there's the problem with Tienelle scrying. It doesn't anticipate every response. Arithon's desperate attempt to save forty thousand by murdering five hundred...is dead on arrival. With the twenty-five "survivors."

--

The sneak peek section is Endings.

1. Jinesse and Tharrick get married. However, of course, as each swears the vow of marriage, their thoughts dwell with ambivalence and regret upon the enigmatic, black-haired prince whose fate brought their two lives together. . .

Have you guys considered a threesome?

2. Lirenda brings the Waystone back to Morriel Prime, just in time for her to attempt to murder Arithon with it, per Dakar's vision. Thanks Sethvir.

3. Talith is in Avenor, aching for the absence of her beloved, pledged to lead a warhost to kill a single enemy whose cursed destiny has come to poison everything in life she held dear . . .

Poor Talith.