I Read What?!

Last time, Halliron's injuries were too much for him, Arithon got an unexpected job offer, and Dakar discovered that he's been cursed: and the only way to get out of it is to kill the dude he's been ordered to protect. Fun!



So now, Dakar is catching up with Arithon at the shrine of Ath Creator, the patron deity of Athera (and presumably Dascen Elur, as I feel like I remember both Lysaer and Arithon swearing to them.) The description is pretty neat, and gives us some insight into Atheran culture.

The shrine to honour Ath Creator lay well outside the walled harbour of Ship’s Port. No ceremonial building marked the site, nor ever had; the old beliefs took after Paravian ways, that an edifice of man’s design need not glorify the prime power that had made and Named all Creation. Only a worn, dusty path indented across the grey cliffs above the bay gave evidence of any activity beyond the swoop of gulls and nesting ospreys. Shadows striped the grasses as Dakar slid stiffly off the back of his lathered mount. He looped the reins over a weathered deadfall, too worn to care if the hack shied back and tore the bridle.

Dakar's been having it pretty rough. He's got saddle sores from riding hard, but worse, because of the curse, he hasn't really been able to do much by way of eating or drinking, and he's a bit lightheaded.

On the plus side, Arithon is here:

Amid the remains of uncounted offerings left to celebrate Ath’s mystery, fresh beeswax dips shone ivory and gold, flames fluttered in the humid sea air. Limned in their crawling halos, Arithon, Master of Shadow, stood in the shrine exactly as the herb witch in Tharidor had foretold.

...

I wonder if he specifically posed that way.

Anyway:

He would have died in that moment, had Dakar carried a knife. Bereft of any weapon; pained enough that his gorge rose for the fact his knowledge fell shy of bane-spells or riddles of unbinding, the Mad Prophet stopped in helpless hatred.

If the enemy he passionately wished to throttle heard the scraped steps of intrusion, he never turned, but sparked flame to a final candle, then spiked the light on the ledge alongside hundreds of others. Minutes passed. The sky beyond the grotto purpled and sank into indigo, while inside, the uncertain fires hissed and dwindled, to drown one by one in puddled wax.

Still, Arithon did not turn. Left no channel for his anger, Dakar fumed until reason intruded to argue why a man might bum candles alone in Ath’s shrine at dusk.

Dakar gets a clue a moment later:

Arithon bowed his head. ‘He passed the Wheel this morning. Just after sunrise.’ Whisper-quiet and level, he added, ‘Sethvir informed a soothsayer, who sought me out to bring word.’

Dakar swallowed awkwardly. ‘I’m sorry. Ath, I’m so sorry.’

So they wait in silence until the last candle consumes itself. It's night time now. Dakar realizes that he's alone in the shrine and goes out to find Arithon:

A moment’s search revealed Arithon standing outside, nervelessly still in a gloom that, for him, held no obstacle. Lined by the pale cream of surf, his black breeches and full sleeves fitted and neat, he faced Dakar with his head tilted an intent fraction to one side, much as he had in the past while he unriddled some melodic nuance of Halliron Masterbard’s teaching.

Antagonized by a mannerism drawn from his former, false identity as Medlir, Dakar stiffened. ‘You knew! You heard the resonance of the geas Asandir laid upon me and never bothered to warn.’

‘I did ask about the coin, if you recall,’ Arithon stated. ‘The harmonic pitch set about your person has strikingly similar overtones.’

Arithon is such a dick. I love him.

As we saw before, the root of Dakar and Arithon's animosity, from Dakar's end is a misunderstanding. And unfortunately, it's a misunderstanding that keeps building. Dakar has already got a lot of pre-conceived notions of who Arithon is as a person, and he interprets Arithon's actions in accordance with them. Like here: he thinks that Medlir's mannerisms are a pretense. But I think Medlir is probably the most honest and open that Arithon has been in a long time. We saw how much he trusted Halliron, and how comfortable he was with him. I think that when Arithon uses Medlir's mannerisms, it's actually a sign of trust.

Dakar, of course, sees it as mockery. And when he asks what Arithon intends to do now:

‘I’m overdue to visit a certain tavern on Harbour Street.’ The Master of Shadow pushed away from the rocks. ‘You look as if you need a beer.’

‘Ath, no,’ Dakar cut back. ‘Not again. That ploy won’t serve any more to keep me pliant and drunk.’ To thwart Asandir’s geas and compromise the Shadow Master, he would need subtle planning and clear thought. ‘Now that I know it’s your company I keep, you won’t catch me muddling my wits.’

A stir of white shirt in the gloom, Arithon shrugged. ‘As you wish. The truth is, I could do with a beer.’

‘Daelion’s pity!’ Dakar bristled in disgust. ‘Where’s your respect? The bard who loved you enough to share a master’s training lies dead! Is this how you honour his memory? By running straight off to get sotted?’

No expression on his face, Arithon murmured a line in liquid Paravian lost to hearing through the thrash of the surf. Surprised not to suffer the expected scalding retort, the Mad Prophet was caught flat-footed as the subject of his rebuke shouldered past. Compelled to scramble after, the fat prophet tripped and stubbed toes all the way back up the cliff path.

Again, Dakar and I read Arithon's invitation very differently.

But also, really Dakar? Arithon just lost his mentor, and sole support system for the past six years or so. His cover is blown. And that's just this book. Let the poor guy get a drink!

So they go to a tavern in the town of Ship's Port. There's some great description here too:

From sundown till dawn, the harbourside quarter of Ship’s Port brewed up a teeming moil of racket and crowds. Here, where tricksters juggled flaming torches, and the pawn stalls stayed open all night for sailors to trade trinkets for coin, the raucous parade of whores and the reeling celebration of deckhands on leave packed into kaleidoscopic hubbub. If the alleys overlooked by the gable-roofed shops seemed thronged as a holiday fair, the taverns were jammed to bursting. Over-dressed or half-clothed, a stew of sweating humanity gathered in the frenzied determination of sailors to cram nine months of pleasure into their first night ashore. Most rampaged and caroused until their coin ran out, then stumbled to the purser of an outbound trader to sign for another voyage.

So Dakar and Arithon are going to the wildest dive on the street. It's the kind of place where smugglers and pirates gather. Newcomers are generally not welcome, at least not without a bribe. Dakar resents this, even though he's resolved to stay sober anyway. He eavesdrops on Arithon's conversation and catches a reference to a captain named Dhirken and a ship called the Black Drake.

Meanwhile, Arithon proves that he's learned the fine art of tavern etiquette:

A coin changed hands and Arithon backed up, fast reflexes alone averting collision with a prostitute’s overflowing bodice. He grinned at her disappointment, dropped a half-silver down the maw of her cleavage, and cheerfully bypassed temptation. ‘You heard?’ he called to Dakar. ‘Well, come on, then.’

The shipper in me suspects that the sex worker is barking up the wrong tree.

But then Arithon goes off to talk to "a doxie with a waist-length black plait of hair". Dakar seems amusingly resentful of Arithon's decision to "flirt" on "the eve of Halliron's death". Anyway, Dakar has some scheming to do.

See, now that Dakar knows that Arithon is trying to charter a ship, he's got his own game plan. He plays drunk and starts antagonizing the sailors gaming nearby. He asks them if they're "Captain Dhirken's scumbag lackey" and suggests he heard a rumor.

He lucks out, one of the men he's antagonizing is the first mate. Anyway, he suggests that he's heard the crew are "slow as tar" and the ship is slack, and that if his friend is seeking to hire them, he shouldn't. Taverns being what they are, some other sailors join in, and it turns into an all out brawl. Dakar is very pleased. He'd dropped enough hints that the crew should be VERY hostile to Arithon when he seeks to hire them.

Arithon and Dakar share a moment:

By the streetside window, spattered with meat shreds and stew broth, the stoic mermaid figurehead looked on with paintless eyes as the Kittiwake’s landlord rammed shoulder-down to confront someone seated at the table. While shrill questions erupted into argument, Arithon watched, cat-still and poised, his face a mask of straight-lipped irony.

Even from his vantage on the floorboards, that expression moved Dakar to a pin stab of dread. The surge of the fight now behind him, he regained his feet, ducked a flying bottle, and side-stepped a wrack of splintered chairs. Somebody had drawn a cutlass; above the belling clang of parries, and a woman’s spitfire obscenities, he cocked his ear to track the altercation.

Things get interesting though, when the landlord starts expressing his wrath for all the sailors present, particularly the Drake's crew. And when he starts to insult the captain, he finds he has a naked cutlass at his belly. Held by someone with a "silken alto voice" and a very long black braid.

‘Don’t,’ repeated the woman with the glossy, black braid, her consonants frigidly emphatic. She uncoiled to her feet, neatly compact, every inch of her primed for a stop-thrust. ‘Presume again to say how my men should be handled, and I’ll spit your guts just for joy. The Kittiwake’s damages will be squared to my satisfaction; but only after my crew gets done with mending the slight to their competence.’

Dakar stiffened in his tracks. Slack-jawed, he looked askance at Arithon. ‘Captain Dhirken?’ he mouthed, shaken silly by the concept that she had been female all along.

The corners of Arithon’s lips twitched. ‘No other. You should have noticed. Whores don’t generally dress in sea boots.’

Dhirken knows that Dakar is the one who antagonized her first mate and orders him elsewhere, before she "slit[s] [his] gizzard to oil the Black Drake's brightwork."

Dhirken is so awesome.

‘Lady,’ Arithon said, softly laughing. ‘Desist, please. That one’s on our side.’

Caught at a loss, too dignified to gape, Captain Dhirken spiked an exasperated glance toward the pair of them. She shrugged, finally, helpless to stay angry before Arithon’s infectious bent of humour.

‘Sithaer’s damned, a conspiracy?’ She loosened strong fingers and sheathed her blade with a hiss of whetted steel. ‘If you wanted my attention, you have it. But by Dharkaron’s hairy bollocks, your business had stinking well better make me rich!’

So there's some negotiation and banter. A sarcastic comment from Dakar gets some fun backstory about the first mate, only notable because I would totally read a book about these guys.

We also get some backstory about Dhirken herself, or at least the public version, when (after Dhirken leaves to deal with her men) Dakar asks Arithon if he's possessed or in love. Arithon just says he wanted the boldest captain in the bay.

There are two versions of Dhirken's backstory: that it was her father's ship, and when he died at sea, the first mate tried to take over and she cut out his heart with a cutless.

The second version is that she was the captain's lover and it was HIS heart she cut out. Either way, no one sees fit to argue.

‘I believe the second tale,’ Dakar cut in, his gaze torn between searching out his coming meal, and the female captain in her fitted scarlet breeches and loose, seaman’s tunic that spilled in uninformative folds over what he could see of her chest. In sullen and contrary conclusion, he added unthinkingly aloud, ‘Probably binds her dugs flat, if in fact she has any.’

‘You think you’ll pinch her to find out? Don’t whine to me when she gelds you.’ Arithon tipped back the rum jug, lit to merciless merriness. ‘Since I plan to buy up her services, you’re just going to have to get along.’

Actually, Arithon doesn't succeed in hiring Dhirken. She's sent her men away to sleep off the fight, and she's not really on board with his job offer of: time unspecified, to sail to a destination unspecified, with his judgment overruling hers in unfamiliar waters. Especially since Arithon is very cryptic about what the pick up cargo is going to be.

Things take a turn then, when the landlord wants payment. But Arithon is a bard and he knows how to play to his audience. And maybe there's even a moment of catharsis there.

The measures spun faster, and faster still, alive as the crackle of summer lightning. A few of the doxies sprang up to dance a jig, and soon the floor planks were shaking. In minutes the whole Kittiwake rocked in celebration, while more customers packed in from the street. By then, Arithon had bent his head to his soundboard. Black hair veiled his expression, wholly; even Dakar, who was closest, never noticed the flash of the tears that splashed and wet his flying knuckles.

Halliron Masterbard was dead; gone. In a headlong, passionate harmony of celebration, the man proven fit to succeed him made the most coarse-mannered dive in Ship’s Port reel with ruffians who stamped and clapped and shrieked. As if by whipping up joy to bring catharsis, he could fill the bereft void in his heart.

"bereft void in his heart"...Wurts really can't leave a subtle moment alone, can she? I kind of love her for it.

--

But now things get interesting. Arithon wakes Dakar out of a sound sleep, and indeed, EVERYONE in the tavern is asleep. He tells Dakar that if Dakar is sailing with him, they leave now. It's so hard not to excerpt all of Dakar and Arithon's dialogue. I hope you appreciate my sacrifice. Like this one:

‘What about them?’ Dakar’s groggy gesture encompassed the patrons heaped and snoring over trestles and bricks.

‘Brandy or beer, does it matter? The Drake will be ready to weigh anchor. Are you coming or staying?’

‘Coming.’ Dakar heaved to his feet. ‘For nothing else, just to see you hurt for this.’

A soft thread of laughter mocked him back. ‘Don’t trouble. Dhirken’s crew will likely be at my throat before your wits have had time to wake up.’ Arithon flicked an airy, tight-cuffed wrist. ‘Do you want to lend a hand?’

...I really do think Arithon is still flirting with Dakar.

So what is Arithon doing?

Actually, he's kidnapping a pirate captain:

He flashed a fast grin, unstrapped the heavy cutlass, and thrust baldric, weapon, and the unslung weight of his lyranthe into Dakar’s arms. Then he bent and hefted the woman in a seaman’s carry across his shoulders. Her weight made him stagger a half-step. Wrist and feet dangling, her hips folded close against his nape, she was easily larger than he was, a limp body difficult to balance. He shrugged her bulk to ease a pressure point, and even that slight change in his stance raised a sweet-chinking clangour of metal.

One of my favorite scenes in early Walking Dead is Rick carrying Carl, who has just been shot, and barely managing to stay upright as he runs for help. There's a point where he nearly falls over, and it's a touch of humanity that I love every time I see it. I feel the same way about Arithon staggering under Dhirken's weight.

So anyway, apparently people liked Arithon's playing enough that there is a shit ton of money on the floor. More than enough to pay the damages.

And I can't resist another excerpt:

Dakar looked at him, eyes round as an adder’s and his brows pinched in unaccustomed thought. ‘Dhirken,’ he said. ‘If you wanted her service, why not spare the bother and just lie to her?’

‘Because I happen to need her trust.’ Green eyes reflected the expectant, curbed patience a hale man might show a blind half-wit, until the silence stretched too long. ‘Oh, Dakar,’ the Master of Shadow said finally, his words drenched in irony that jabbed.

‘Trust you? Dharkaron’s Black Spear and Chariot!’ Dakar sucked in a breath, hot to launch into a tirade, then stopped. ‘Her men,’ he ventured through a pregnant pause. ‘For this, you had to be rid of them.’

Arithon waited, quietly subtle as slow poison.

‘Oh, you bastard,’ gasped Dakar, slammed sick by the recognition that his rage had been teased and then used, himself a dumb pawn strategically advanced to further his enemy’s design. The brawl in the Kittiwake had offered no setback at all, but played straight into Arithon’s hand.

Poor Dakar.

So this is their dynamic now. Dakar is going to do his best to sabotage, if not outright murder, Arithon. Arithon is going to treat it as the world's most entertaining chess game.

And I'm going to keep 'shipping it.

--

The next subchapter is Black Drake.

Awesome.

So remember that captain that Arithon kidnapped? She wakes up in her berth. The ship is under way. It's actually pretty cool to see how attuned she is to her vessel and she can draw conclusions as to weather and position of the sails before she fully wakes up.

One thing she notes is that her first mate's skill at the helm has never been so deft. (of course!) And that apparently, she'd slept in her clothes. Which is not generally her habit unless a storm is brewing. And that voice she hears issuing orders on the quarterdeck is NOT one of her men.

So anyway, we see now what Arithon's scheme was: and it's both brilliant and idiotic. Basically, he brought Dhirken back, claimed she was drunk and that he'd hired her. And her crew bought it. Now, of course, she's really fucking pissed.

One bit that seems unrealistic to me is that Dhirken, after issuing orders to the ship's lad, takes time to unpick her plait and comb and retie her braid. I've only rarely had long hair myself, and never waist length, but in my experience, it takes a while to comb out hair. Especially if you've slept with it braided or otherwise up.

But anyway, Dhirken's men bring Dakar straight to her. Dakar, unfortunately, is very seasick. But he's definitely happy to spill everything he knows about Arithon. Including that he's "the Master of Shadow".

Dhirken recognizes Arithon's ridiculous sobriquet, but thinks that the "meddling little string-plucker who's commandeered [her] brig is anything but royal and a sorcerer".

I love Dhirken. I really do.

Dakar points out that the sky is black outside, and that while they think they see a shoreline, where are the signs of land?

The sailors indeed realize that something's wrong. The wind doesn't smell right. So she goes off to confront her kidnapper:

Limned in orange by the stern lantern, the conniving little bard who had played the Kittiwake’s scum to a standstill stood in still grace before the binnacle. He still wore his oddly-tailored shirt. Silver-pointed cuff ties chimed at the wrist held negligently crooked around a wheel spoke. His pose of inattention was deceptive; the brig kept her heading like a gannet. Languid as poured honey, Dhirken stepped up to meet her adversary. He did not loom dangerous enough for a sorcerer, she thought; he lacked the grand majesty of a prince. Beyond hands too slim for their office, he could have been a ship’s boy with wind-ruffled black hair, bare feet braced against the heeled deck.

Only the gaze that flicked aside to greet her was too sardonic and deep for a child’s.

I swear, one day, I will stop showing you every dramatic description of Lysaer and Arithon. Today is not that day. So anyway, confrontation engaged. When Dhirken's men lunge at him, the darkness around them blasts away.

It's full noon. And there's no shore in sight.

Arithon doesn't fight them as they tie him up. I think he likes bondage, personally. Anyway, there's trouble: since Arithon was navigating, no one recorded the heading, speed or course. He's the only one who knows where they're going.

I know I ship Arithon/Dakar, but I could totally ship Arithon/Dhirken too:

Freed at last to vent her spleen upon the primary offender, Dhirken braced against the brig’s wallowing roll. Light scalded off her studded bracers as she raised her cutlass and caught the tip through the ties at her prisoner’s shirt front. ‘Don’t think to bluff your way through this. I was never drunk in the Kittiwake last night. You heard me plainly when I said the terms of your contract were fool’s play.’

‘Ah,’ grunted Arithon, a hitch to his breath as a seaman bent his arm a notch higher. ‘Since you didn’t give me an answer, it’s fair that I’m offering again.’

Dhirken twisted her weapon. A lacing sheared through with a thin rasp of sound and exposed a soft triangle of skin. ‘What makes you think you’ve got aught beside your bollocks left to bargain with?’

‘For one thing, I know where we are.’ Under his chin, another lacing parted. Arithon held steady, even as Dhirken’s blade dipped, snagged white linen, and nicked in a vicious downward tear. The sea plunged the brig through a bucketing roll and smacked her down in a trough. Spray pattered over decking and sail-hands, and Dhirken’s jarred blade stencilled a scratch in new blood.

...I'm just saying, I could totally see this as a scene in a bad/awesome pirate themed porn movie. Come on, cut more of his clothes off!

Ahem.

Anyway, Arithon suggests she cut a little lower. Because he's like that. But also, he has a parchment from Sethvir that states to the copper what he's worth. Oh, I see. Remember the goods that Maenalle stole from Lysaer? That must be the list!

Dhirken is wonderfully skeptical about Sethvir's existence as anything but a legend told to children, but Arithon indeed has a very fancy scroll.

Dhirken and Arithon have another wonderful exchange:

‘Lady?’ Arithon offered in grave diffidence. ‘May I suggest you fetch someone who can read?’ Subject to the captain’s venomous glower, he gave a hampered, apologetic shrug. ‘You’re holding the sheet upside down.’

‘Fiends alive!’ Dhirken grinned in icy enjoyment, despite herself pleased by his boldness. ‘You’re going to die very slowly. Maybe one finger at a time, until we’ve attracted enough sharks for the rest of you.’ The gold loops in her ears spat hard glints as she flipped the parchment into the startled grasp of her slit-eared first mate.

Can I ship them too? Is ship an unfortunate pun in this instance?

Anyway, it is indeed an itemized list of a shit ton of wealth. Dhirken doesn't believe Arithon came by it honestly, and he basically turns into a cat:

‘Now that would be prying.’ Arithon stretched to extreme limits and managed to claw a toe-hold on the deck. Perhaps annoyed that the sailors who pinioned his finely-made wrists seemed determined to strangle his circulation, he added, ‘I didn’t ask how you acquired the lading list in your hold.’

‘And you didn’t seek to hire a smuggler’s ship without particular reason, I see that.’ Left the predicament that her brig was adrift beyond sight of bearings or shoreline, Dhirken fingered her cutlass.

There's an interesting power struggle here, and we see that Dhirken has more complicated issues than just a wayward prisoner:

Locked eye to eye with a prisoner no taller than she was, Dhirken sensed his taunting irony: as though death itself were a gambit tossed out to serve some feckless need. Since the habit of command made her cautious of allowing any miscreant to have his way, she hesitated; and the moment ceded a dangerous awareness that her crewmen sized her up like a wolf pack.

She had been challenged before them, by a man. Pitched to grasp at the first hint of weakness, they waited to see if she was afraid of him.

That fact alone saved his life.

Dhirken notes that they're still in the bay. As long as they sail anywhere but east, they'll hit land.

Arithon's done his homework though. Whitehold has a price on her head. Jaelot would imprison her and confiscate her goods. (...well, maybe not. But let's not go there.) The harbourmaster at Tharidor would retire for the pleasure of hanging her.

Arithon's got an offer and a challenge. He knows exactly where they are. She can choose any city on the continent, and he'll steer her there by forgotten arts of navigation. Because that's the real offer here: the ability to sail straight out to sea and go wherever they want to go.

The crew is intrigued. And Arithon sweetens the pot with a little kink:

To her prisoner, she said, ‘If what you say is true, if this navigation isn’t sorcery, then anybody here could learn it?’

‘Anybody,’ Arithon assured. ‘My hands could be tied. Given proper instruments and my instruction, you could make and plot the sightings by yourself.’

‘Then your hands will be tied and your feet also.’ Pleased to snatch triumph from opportunity, Dhirken dispatched a sail-hand to scrounge in a locker for spare cord. The landfall I choose is the harbour at Farsee. Get us there. Or I’ll see the crabs feed on your carcass.’

The kinky femdom fantasy really writes itself, doesn't it?

Eventually, Dhirken remembers that she's got a seasick accomplice downstairs, gagged and bound. Dakar must have amazing control over his nausea, because I feel like that could be trouble. But no worries, he's gnawed through the gag and galley sponge. He's good that way.

Above her, between moans likely due to colic from ingested shreds of sponge, the prisoner gasped, ‘Where’s Arithon?’

‘Tied to the mizzenmast pinrail, damned unpleasantly tight, if you please.’ A moment’s forethought, and Dhirken sheathed her cutlass, the cook’s steel being handier to hack through knotted twine. There your man stays till Black Drake makes port where he’s promised.’

As his bonds gave way, the Mad Prophet chafed scored wrists. ‘How many seamen did he kill before you trussed him?’

Knelt down to free Dakar’s ankles, Dhirken looked up sharply. ‘None,’ she said in irritation. ‘Why ask? He gave himself freely.’

‘Ah, lady.’ Dakar heaved a soulful sigh. ‘You don’t know him at all. That’s trouble. Whatever you think, whatever Arithon led you to believe, be certain of this. If he didn’t kill, then you dance to his design.’

I will sail over the horizon in my tiny two person kayak. Dhirken notes that Dakar doesn't like Arithon and that she doesn't find it reassuring. But until she sees a motive, she'll use her own judgment.

I think she just doesn't want to get in the middle of the inevitable hate sex. Too bad.

--

The last subchapter is Attrition and it crushes my spirit, because instead of enjoying kinky pirate hijinx, we're stuck with fucking Asandir. Nooo.

Actually, wait, sorry, it's Luhaine. Luhaine's not too bad. He's checking the Mistwraith's prison, and okay, fair point. That is a good thing to do.

There's a lot of nice description here, by the way. It's very bleak, dignified and rocky. We get some history: Davien the Betrayer built it. And thus it's trickier than it seems.

Anyway, there's more information on what exactly Asandir and fellow sorcerer Khardmon had done to contain the Mistwraith, but we saw that last book.

Unfortunately, the wards have deteriorated. The Mistwraith is fighting back with the knowledge obtained from Arithon (you remember, the knowledge they wanted to protect so hard that they sacrificed Lysaer, only to find the Mistwraith had got it already.)

He reports to Sethvir, and this concern is such that he's going to have to postpone dealing with the situation in Alestron, that was mentioned before.

Then they get a brilliant idea!

‘Well have Dakar address Alestron’s bit of mischief,’ Luhaine cracked back in a flayed up whirlwind of snowflakes. ‘That’s the least the useless drunkard could do, and just compensation, for his ruinous caper in Jaelot.’

The notion was absurd, if not dangerous. But the straits exposed by the Mistwraith’s activity posed too grave a threat. The Fellowship’s affairs were strained to the point where Alestron’s dilemma became secondary.

Okay, FIRST of all, Jaelot wasn't Dakar's fault. Yes, he got imprisoned, but as I mentioned before, you could have broken him out at any time and spared Arithon and Halliron the mess that followed!

SECOND OF ALL, Dakar has been sent to protect Arithon! Remember him! The guy being hunted! The guy who you need alive for that stupid prophecy! Why are you saddling him with yet another job?!

THIRD OF ALL, Dakar has a curse that means he has to stick with Arithon. Arithon's got shit to do!

FOURTH OF ALL, you don't know this and officially neither do I, but Dakar is totally going to try to turn this into a trap. The consequences of which will extend into the next book. So congratulations, you might actually be getting Arithon KILLED here.

You're no longer my favorite sorcerer, Luhaine. It's back to Traithe by default.

--

The sneak peek section is Precedents. An apt name.

1. A company of Avenor (Lysaer's new city) is sent to test its might against barbarians. They capture 28 clanborn men, who are marched to Karfael to "receive sentence under the mayor's justice"

Hey, fucking Fellowship! Remember that peace you keep talking about!!!

2. In Alestron, some scholar is lighting up a bronze tube, which unleashes a booming roar and a belch of thick smoke; and a whining ball of stoneshot hammers into an oak grove, splintering green boughs like burst bone….

...okay, I can see why it's a priority, but there are fucking five of you assholes. Plus Verrain. Are you seriously saying NONE of you can do this?

3. We're told that Sethvir has no choice but to send Dakar to deal with Alestron. I feel like you do have a choice, but fine. Let's see what happens.