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i_read_whatLast time, we saw Arithon once more employ the method of making friends through kidnapping. There was also a LOT of purple prose. A LOT.
This time though, we're joining the "Captain Mayor Pesquil" on his trip to Tysan. If you recall, he's the headhunter dude who discovered what happened to Jaelot and Alestron. Now he's bringing that news to Lysaer directly.
He's also a genocidal asshole who helped Lysaer murder a shit ton of people in Strakewood, because some things should never be forgotten.
He gets to Erdane (the city where Arithon and Elaira first met!) and is met with a very warm welcome. And it's while taking a much welcomed bath that he's visited by a train of ladies. I almost feel sorry for the guy, since he admitted them thinking they were a servant with a razor. This is not appropriate, ladies.
The ladies are led by Talith, Lysaer's fiancee. And well, she's kind of a bitch.
Proprietary as a hunting tigress, his visitor’s glance raked over the stringy, scarred muscles of his torso. Her coral-pale lips bent before an amusement whose withering sting left no impact, sheer force of beauty having long since anaesthetized reason. Called on by reflex, Pesquil plunged his hands beneath the scummed water.
An ugly man possessed of an iron dedication, the head-hunter captain held his ground as a wolf might, nipped at by mastiffs.
I like the random judgment of the naked guy that you burst in on, Talith. Anyway, she's here because she figures that he probably has news about Arithon ("since barbarian scalps are not in season until spring". Ugh.).
I have no idea why Talith thinks it's okay to ambush a guy in the bath. But she definitely is happy to assert her power, pointing out how unhappy the mayor will be to find them "quite cosy with his lowborn guest".
Ugh.
A sinew jumped in Pesquil’s lantern jaw. He had few illusions; his most guarded point of pride was his station, won through achievement and competence rather than the accident of pedigree. Lady Talith was Etarran, no stranger to sordid jokes played for intrigue. The Mayor of Erdane’s flighty daughters were scarcely in her league, though their nervous, darting glances showed them thoroughly intrigued with an escapade.
Although Pesquil scorned the confined standards of morality the westland cities imposed on their women, the mayor’s hospitality implied a trust he misliked the principle of spurning. Uncomfortably aware of the youngest girl’s fascination with the cock’s comb whorls of hair that seamed the midline of his chest, forced on display before Talith’s dizzying charms, the headhunter willed his hard limbs to relax. A rebellious ache beneath the waterline, another bodily part of him cheerfully rejected self-control.
He was male, after all, and not bloodless.
I hate Pesquil, but this is a pretty disgusting situation and makes me not very fond of Talith either. But Pesquil knows what he's doing. He asks her to pass the soap and then after she throws it at him, goes about his business. He notes that if he calls the ladies' bluff, then they'd get in trouble. And well, if he does get thrown out of the city, he'll get to Lysaer that much faster.
Anyway, Talith wants something and I'd be impressed at her nerve if she weren't so classist and obnoxious.
If the pretty dark daughters standing guard upon the doorway showed unease at his balky character, Talith’s fresh poise only heightened under challenge. ‘I am no ornament to be left waiting on a shelf.’ She stood, jerked open a drawer, and plucked out the clean holland shirt scarcely wrinkled from its storage in a saddle pack. You have news of Arithon s’Ffalenn. That will mean war. I don’t intend to sit here while you rouse my betrothed to muster his armies and quarter the continent to fight him.’ A back-step carried her to the casement. She flicked the catch, pressed open the leaded panes, and tossed the shirt upward onto the snow-covered slates of the dormer peak.
Basically, she's completely willing to throw all his clothing out, so he'll have to go naked and [h]is scars would be the talk of every barracks in Erdane, as well as the bourdoirs of the ladies"
Apparently this is Pesquil's limit. And I lose a bit of respect for him here, because really? Humiliation is all it takes to spill the beans? He tells her that Arithon has "disrupted the peace and caused havoc in one city, and killed seven men in another through an explosion of fire and sorcery." They know he's heading south.
Talith doesn't think that's all of it, since why would Pesquil come as courier. She presses him about why, but he blames that on the Etarrans not being willing to make a winter crossing. He explains his own intended route, which horrifies one of the mayor's daughters. He'll be going through "the Sorcerers' Preserve."
‘If the Khadrim don’t flame you to a cinder, or tear you limb from limb with their jaws, there are hot springs, and mud pots, and lava wells, and no guide to choose a safe trail.’ The girl cautioned, ‘Better to stay neglected here in Erdane than to find yourself boiled alive.’
Spoiler: we're going to skip past all of this. Probably for the best, since both Pesquil and Talith are terrible and I have no vested interest in seeing either of them survive the journey.
Anyway, Pesquil's not particularly worried. He also has NO intention of bringing Talith, but she's insistent. He will take her.
Pesquil confronted her tawny magnificence, the water that embraced his hips chill enough to dampen the dregs of any man’s ardour, and the soap squeezed 10 pulp in his fists. ‘I won’t.’
Talith held his gaze, locked eye to eye. But her lip trembled ever so slightly.
Like a kick in the belly, Pesquil recognized that the motive which drove her was, love. He would not shake that, not if he killed her.
It occurs to me that love, as a motivation, is a fairly frequent motif in this book. From Halliron, to Arithon, to Jieret and Jinesse. Even Dakar is motivated by his love for Lysaer. It might be worth revisiting this idea later. I think Pesquil and Talith might suffer in the comparison.
The servant with the razor finally arrives, and Talith makes a dramatic exit from the room. Pesquil muses about Lysaer's marital future:
Girt in the tepid discomfort of his bath, he concluded that any prince mad enough to marry a pedigree Etarran lady deserved to suffer merry hell and intrigue on the home front. Just as well the Master of Shadow would afford a sound reason for a husband to stay absent in the cause of bloody war.
Lysaer would need the violence just to stay sane with that brazen-mouthed vixen in his bed and ever busy, stitching steel claws through his vitals.
-
So we end up skipping over the journey, which is probably for the best. We get some lovely description of Avenor:
The first sound heard by visitors to the prince’s new city of Avenor was the sweet, high ring of the armourer’s mallets shivering the air between the stripped branches of the oak groves. Worn by a long and arduous journey, weary of the suck and splash of her mount’s hooves through the rime of late-season snow, Lady Talith pushed back her fur-lined hood, the better to take in the view as Pesquil’s cavalcade of headhunters crested the last rise and passed the gap in the hills.
Ahead, the clear, cold line of the sea slashed a sky like dirty ice. Flocks of gulls settled like caught twists of paper against the dunes, crusted with salt-eaten drifts. The city’s unfinished walls commanded a high knoll, smirched with smoke from the brickmaker’s kilns, and alive as an ants’ nest with activity.
Windburned to a high flush, her silken hair silted in the collar of her cloak, Talith sorted through the jumbled supply sheds, the cruck built officers’ hall, then squinted against sunlight torn through a broken cloud layer to pick out the ravelled outline of keeps and revetments and gate turrets. Inside the honeycomb shapes of partial structures, a single tower arose, near complete, the spoked beams of its roof line as yet bare of slate. The distant snaps of the ox drovers’ whips, the limpid stream of banners, and the squeals of a hog bound for slaughter strained through the white rush of surf and the trumpet calls of an officer.
Even through inclement weather, the practice field lay in use. Directed by a mounted officer, a field kitchen spread half-dismantled in churned mud. A tent billowed flat to shouts and a timed release of guy ropes, while mule teams jostled supply wagons into position for loading. Marksmen fired crossbows at the butts; grooms with buckets swarmed up and down the horse lines to tend steaming charges led in hot from heavy exercise, while the men just dismounted shed empty quivers and short, compound bows, to take up pikes and renew their drill in the disciplined formation of foot companies.
So it's very much a martial city. As Pesquil puts it, it's more barracks than city. Talith keeps her dignity though, and Pesquil's lieutenant comments that she must "have hide like a crocodile" and that it's unnatural that she's so fresh after their hellish journey. (We get a brief description of the hazards, it definitely sounds pretty hellish. Good. Fuck the headhunters.)
Anyway, the men give her credit for not whining.
Diegan arrives now, and he's gone from peacock to warrior:
Diegan had grown harder, leaner. His elegant jewels were replaced by thick mail and leather that showed the rubbed shine of hard wear. The dark, handsome features were knit taut to the bone, rugged now with new angles where the flesh of languid living had burned away.
Apparently, the mercenaries are busy laying bricks. Lysaer felt it would teach them skills that might help during future sieges. And he's got enough charisma that they're actually willing to do it. The most seasoned folk though are on campaign, guarding merchant trade routes. It's a good way for them to get experience, and the Avenor treasury gets a share of the profits.
This interests me far more than it does Talith. She's here to see Lysaer. Diegan knows his sister very well and immediately assumes that she's there to break things off with Lysaer. He basically sneers at her and says: ‘Lady sister, leave him if you can.’
Ew. First of all, Diegan, stop projecting. Second of all, shouldn't you fucking support your sister if she wants to leave a dude. Even though we don't yet know why she's come.
Anyway, Diegan's mood changes when Diegan learns that Pesquil came with Talith, and he leaves her to find out what the hell is going on.
As it turns out, Talith IS here to break things off with Lysaer. She loves him, but she doesn't like his prolonged absence. She wants done with this.
We get an interesting brotherly parallel here, as Lysaer is talking to an earnest little boy:
‘We don’t yet have a scribe, that’s not civilized, I know,’ said Lysaer s’Ilessid to the child. ‘But that doesn’t matter. A page should know how to fold and seal a document for the day he grows up to be a lord.’
The boy said something in dulcet, shy tones.
‘The job is only boring before you learn how it’s done.’ A sculptured hand reached up, snagged a ribbon in Tysan’s royal colours from a cache between quills and inkwell, and resumed patient instruction. ‘Here, and here,’ Lysaer said, a smile on his lips to tear the heart. ‘Now the knot. Use two hands this time, and try not to smear the royal star.’
And do we get some purple prose now?
The light fringed his hair to a leafed blaze of gold. Unsoftened by the coarser glow of candles, his austere face showed an unearthly beauty no memory could preserve with due justice. The impact of cobalt-blue eyes stunned like a physical shock. The frozen moment, while Prince Lysaer sized up her waiting presence, spun the last shred of breath from Talith’s throat.
His Grace of Tysan was not in rough attire, as she had expected, but ablaze with gold studs and a chain worked in pearls and small sapphires. His cuffs and collar were damascened silk, and his tabard, of trimmed velvet, looked cut from the shadow of a snowdrift. Every inch of him lordly, he poised for the space of a heartbeat.
OF COURSE WE DO.
More than that:
The firm, muscled strength underneath his soft clothes lifted her, spun her, set her down. Talith was consumed, then ignited by his flame of vital heat. She sensed the sped pace of his heart as his knuckles sank in her damp ermine, and his lips seared a kiss on her forehead. ‘You are just the person I wished to see, beloved. My writ was to reach you in the hands of the next messenger. Yesterday, our wedding date was set.’
Her anger in trembling ruins, Talith recovered her breath with a gasp. ‘What?’
‘We shall marry when the orchards are in blossom.’ Lysaer consumed her with his gaze, then took swift advantage of her open-mouthed, speechless surprise.
Talith's resolve basically crumbles immediately. Lysaer fusses a bit, noting that she's crossed the path and must be peaked. The page is sent for wine and scones. The tender moment is interrupted by Pesquil and Diegan though. And Lysaer is brought up to speed.
Pesquil notes that he doesn't have verified facts from either government, but the rumors come from multiple sources. Lysaer reacts dramatically:
A glint of sharp distress charged the depths of Lysaer’s eyes as he reeled off a string of fast conclusions. ‘They are port towns. It is s’Ffalenn design, and wantonly inflicted on innocents.’ Passion frayed through as he added, ‘The instant the weather lets the trade galleys sail, we’ll send for documented evidence. At last I’ll gain the leverage I need to turn Tysan’s guildsmen. The threat this man presents is dire, but until now, only cities in Rathain saw the proof.’
Apparently Erdane's already offered reserves, upon presentation of hard evidence. Lysaer remembers the reward he'd offered for first word of Arithon, but Pesquil tells him to use the gold to pay for soldiers.
Per Diegan, the men are ready. Lysaer plans to gather the officials and ranking officers together. He also urges a somewhat irate Talith to freshen up after her journey.
Talith snapped back from his touch in offended fury. ‘No thank you, my Lord Prince. If you’re going to draw up plans to slay your nemesis, I shall stay exactly where I am.’
‘But of course.’ Lysaer stroked a fallen curl from her cheekbone, his tenderness too sincere to be patronizing. ‘I expect you back once you’ve changed. This is no mayor’s realm, to keep women at home uninformed.’ He smiled, sternly royal, and admonished, ‘You shall be Avenor’s princess on the equinox feast. Could you doubt for a minute? The responsibility to defend Athera’s cities must be shared. Your place through this war council is nowhere if not by my side.’
Outflanked and speechless, Talith inclined her head. She gathered mud-splashed skirts and swept headlong from the study.
As soon as she's out of the door, she's weak and shaking. And I'm reminded again about how disconcerting this relationship dynamic is. Lysaer says all the right words, of course, but they come across as patronizing and disingenuous. Talith can hear them discussing tactical issues like provisioning without her.
As obnoxious as I found Talith in the scene in Pesquil's bath, it's somehow more difficult to see her here, with Lysaer so able to steamroll right over her. It doesn't feel like a healthy relationship at all.
And I realize that's somewhat hypocritical considering my current ships involve people either forced to spy on each other, or actively plotting each other's death.
But see?
As Talith overheard, her bitterness deepened, that once again her love must make way before the great quest to stalk down the Shadow Master. Her autonomy could not be sustained against Lysaer, and her anger fell powerless before yearning. She moved off, beaten humble by misery, to seek refuge in the quiet of the anteroom.
Dakar might feel frustrated, Elaira might feel powerless, Arithon...god knows WHAT he feels. But they're not "beaten humble" And that's an important distinction for me.
Anyway, Pesquil has one very good question which Talith overhears: how will Lysaer know where to corner Arithon. Lysaer says that when the time comes, he possesses a sure means to find out.
--
The next subchapter is Rendezvous:
YAY, the Black Drake has arrived in Merior!
Jieret gets a pretty great description here, by the way:
Jieret Red-beard lounged at her rail, peeling across his hawk nose from the burn of the strong southland sun, the quilloned knife just used to pare his nails still unsheathed in his hand. Relaxed though he seemed, the sailhands who had shared winter passage from the Gulf of Stormwell maintained their distance. The lad had cold eyes and no patience for the fool who dared cross him while he simmered with impatience.
Unfortunately for Jieret's patience, Arithon isn't actually IN Merior at the moment. As a "wee, pale snip of a woman" (Hi, Jinesse!) informed Dhirken, he's in Innish, keeping a promise.
I kind of dig Dhirken and Jieret's interaction:
‘You’ll sail there?’ Jieret pressed.
Poised on braced legs, her back stiff as nail stock, Dhirken shrugged. ‘If I don’t, you’ll walk, is that so? With all his blighted treasure on your back? You’ve got lint between your ears to think he’s worth it.’
A pause ensued, while the busy wind flicked through the laces on Jieret’s jerkin and ruffled his raw-spun copper beard. The tropical sky scored glints in hazel eyes that seemed to view a sight very different.
When Dhirken snapped her rings against her cutlass hilt to recoup his attention, the Earl of the North stated baldly, ‘If not for my liege, I wouldn’t stand here alive.’
‘Well at least sheath that dirk before you stick somewhat else with it.’ Brazen in distaste for loyal sentiment, Dhirken spun away to chastise the longboat’s oarsmen, now crowding the rail at her shoulder. ‘Do I pay you my silver to gawk? Smarten up and haul in that tender!’
Of course they're going there. But Arithon didn't leave any charts for the south coast, so they're winging it. It takes time though. Between the weather and recalcitrant merchants, it takes a while for them to get maps. But eventually they get to the city of Southshire, where a chartmaker seems to be waiting for them:
His moist eyes regarded her in scholarly curiosity. Then a cheery smile stirred his drooping moustache. ‘I expect you’re after maps for the coastline to Innish?’
At the captain’s stiff glare, he waggled a moth-eaten goose quill. ‘Ach, there’d scarcely be two of you, yes? The young master sent word in a letter last month, along with pay to see your needs met.’ The cartographer bobbed beneath his counter, rattled aside rulers, tufts of string and worn nibs, and popped erect with a ribboned roll of parchment. ‘Your chart, lady captain, with yon mannerly gentleman’s compliments.’
‘Dharkaron’s hairy bollocks!’ Dhirken advanced a nettled step. ‘I’m nobody’s bound lackey! It’s naught but a stray slip of fortune that I bothered to visit here at all!’
‘Aye, well, you needn’t stay riled for my sake.’ The little man’s spirits stayed unshaken. ‘Yon fellow made demands of the shipwrights that were fair preposterous. They howled just as loudly. He still got everything he wanted. Are you going to take this, or spit on it?’
Arithon is SUCH a dick. He also left instructions to unload two bullion chests at the shipwright's mansion. It does sound like he'd left instructions that got Dhirken paid as well, but she's still pretty understandably vexed. She'll happily sail on to Innish though, just to deliver to Arithon’s royal face my word on his bloody-handed arrogance.
Careful, Dhirken. I think he'd like that.
So they get to Innish by spring equinox. Dhirken and Jieret continue to bond:
‘Don’t have me speak for my liege,’ Jieret said, too apprehensive himself to show sympathy. ‘It’s a likely guess his Grace won’t welcome the tidings I bear from the north.’
‘Don’t think to weep on my shoulder,’ Dhirken retorted. ‘A thousand times, I’ve wished I’d never met the man.’
Heheh.
Anyway, Jieret stays on board, since his accent will be enough to give him away even here. Apparently clansfolk are executed in Shand as well. Damn. I wish I could go back to the beginning of this book and punch Asandir and his "no pressing business" in the fucking face. He waits fingering the worn quillon dagger, looted seven years past off the corpse of a headhunter killed for the murder of his family. The touch of whetted steel made him wonder whether Arithon s’Ffalenn still cherished the boy’s knife for whittling given that day for remembrance.
There's a feast going on in Innish, and that makes poor Jieret contemplative:
Aboard the darkened Drake, jumpy as a caged wildcat for the fact he lay surrounded by enemies, Jieret listened to the shrieks of the doxies, and the deeper rasp of male rejoinder; the frenetic laughter from the puppet theatres, and the thumps on the water as boats collided to slurred apologies from handlers too drunken to trifle over chipped paint or marred brightwork. Haunted by distant memories of the spring bonfires from his childhood, Jieret tried not to wonder how the feast might be celebrated, had his clans not been hunted by townsmen, and were his prince not accursed by Desh-thiere.
I wish Pesquil and his assholes got frostbite on their junk.
There are some interesting bits of color here. Some pranksters who beg for a copper or they'll come aboard to "bring joy". Jieret, of course, can't risk a reply. Fortunately, the crew has the matter in hand: the cook pours broth onto the would be boarders.
But then of course, things get interesting:
‘Dear lady, a note sent ashore would have found me,’ retorted a firm voice, but animated now, its inflection reschooled to sound townbred, and vastly more carefree than Jieret’s past memories from his father’s lodge in Strakewood Forest.
Dhirken cracked into ripe laughter. ‘ ‘Twere fair reckoning, prince, after the Kittiwake. I gave my men full leave to roust you by any means they saw fit.’
Of course, Arithon still managed to keep his bargain. The tavern patrons weren't completely happy by the arrival of the pirates, but Arithon wasn't leaving before midnight. Of course. And we get a line about the "spare, foxy angles of a face seven years had changed not at all."
But, oh. I was WAITING for this:
Jieret pressed through the crowding sail-hands, knelt, and bent his head to the man he had last seen over the grave cairn of his slaughtered parents. ‘My Liege of Rathain.’
Time stopped.
Arithon’s fingers locked on grained wood. The breath spun out of him as if impelled by a suffocating weight. The young man on the ship’s deck before him might have been a ghost restored to flesh, for the grief that marked his blanched features. For one numbed second, dread for returned obligations made Arithon recoil in pain.
Then his unbearable apprehension by itself forced the moment to snap.
The Shadow Master hurled himself over the rail in a welcome that burst all restraints. ‘Jieret!’ He caught the young man by the wrists and raised him, stunned all over again as the earl last seen as a twelve-year-old boy arose to full height and dwarfed him. Arithon fell back a step, his joy overwhelmed by amazement. ‘By Ath, man! Caolle must be proud. You’ve grown into the very image of your father.’
Jieret's nineteen now. He'll be of age before winter, and he asks Arithon to accept his service now. And you know I can't resist purple prose:
Exposed before Dhirken’s curiosity, jostled by the press of Drake’s crewmen, Arithon turned the blade over in recognition. Fine fingers still sensitized by the lyranthe string recorded the nicks of hard usage. As if the separate, belling vibrations of the blows the steel had staved off, and the life spilled from each opened wound stung his senses, he said, ‘Mine the honour, Earl of the North.’
In complete disregard that the moment was not private, to the speechless amazement of hard-bitten sail-hands who knew nothing of customs kept by old high kings, blooded royalty knelt before his prospective vassal. With a clarity wiped to acid by his singer’s trained diction, Arithon swore the traditional oath of sovereign prince to liegeman that sealed a pact of guardianship, and ended with the lines, ‘For the gift of feal duty, Earl Jieret s’Valerient, my charge of protection; for your loyalty, my spirit shall answer, unto my last drop of blood, and until my final living breath. Dharkaron witness. Take back this blade as token of my trust, and with your true steel, my royal blessing.’
He then of course comandeers the chartroom, and "in words that asked only friendship" requests Dhirken to attend. Dakar's in a brothel, and Arithon determines they can wait until dawn to rouse him out.
So. Surely that's not all the colorful description we get, right? Jieret's only just met the guy again after seven years!
His ambiguity banished with the shadows, Arithon looked not a whit older than in the hour he last left Strakewood. Haggard, then, beset as any of Deshir’s clan survivors, he contained himself now in tight-reined calm that implied an unbreakable composure. Elegant in a bard’s clothes trimmed in silver and onyx, his shirt of pale silk tailored close to narrow wrists, he folded hands that were callused only on the fingertips from an artistry confined to fret and string. The boy’s knife accepted by the grave cairn in Deshir would have been used to trim lyranthe pegs, if the gift was remembered at all.
Of course not.
Jieret and Dhirken get their own bits too:
Daunted by sudden uncertainty, that perhaps he did not know his prince at all, Earl Jieret assumed the seat opposite. By size and dress set apart, he wore his deerhide jerkin unadorned, laced with ties that would not catch stray sunlight, or betray him by chance-made noise. His flecked hazel eyes devoured the royal presence, while the red hair that matched his dead mother’s spilled in wind-caught tangles over shoulders grown broad in new manhood.
Dhirken slouched against the bulkhead. Discomposed as a cat flicked by raindrops, prepared in her way to be obstructive, she watched in still malice as the earl launched his case to press his prince to reclaim an abandoned sovereignty.
Aw, poor Jieret. I think we all know that feeling after a long absence. But don't worry, Arithon is forever the angst-ridden asshole we all know and reluctantly love.
So anyway, Jieret brings the news: Lysaer knows about Jaelot and Alestron and is gathering his forces.
Arithon, of course, has a different concern:
‘No one could stop that,’ Arithon said. His green eyes stayed wide, almost black in the lamplight, and his concentration harrowed as he said, ‘Jieret, what price did you pay for those few months of silence? How many died?’
He did not refer to fallen clansmen.
Under that horrified, knife-point regard, Jieret remained as unflinching in the face of necessity as ever his father had before him. ‘My war captain knows. I left before Jaelot’s disaster became public, to seek your Grace and bring word. How many died is no issue, then or now. These armies mean death for my clans, and your liegemen. I would know whether to count on your help to see how many of our own we can save.’ He paused, the large fists clenched beneath the table top half-braced for an explosion that never came.
Arithon said in stifled quiet, ‘You’ve come a long way for this audience. You have my attention. Go on.’
I love Jieret's straightforward ability to remind Arithon that it's not all about him. The clans are the ones taking the brunt of the danger, while Arithon remains in hiding. He talks numbers: Rathain will probably muster thirty five thousand to add to Avenor's highly skilled forces.
Arithon reveals his own plan though: he intends to retreat to the sea. An army can't march there. A fleet can't pursue if shadow-blinded. Lysaer's support is from merchants and they won't pay to waste money forever. (This still leaves the clans in the lurch, but I think the idea is that if Lysaer is focused solely on Arithon, the clans will have an opportunity to relocate deeper into hiding.)
Dhirken notes that he can't hide forever, and she has no intention of chartering the Black Drake under Rathain's banner. Arithon agrees. He's building his own ships. He just wants to hire her to carry messages.
There's more news of course. Stuff we knew: Rathain's cities are now allies. The clans are hard pressed, seeking refuge deep in old haunted woods, but it won't last. And of course, there's the issue with Alestron. Bransien s'Brydion has described Arithon well enough that Lysaer is absolutely going to be able to win his support, and THEY can present fifteen thousand.
Jieret calls Arithon out on the Alestron thing:
Jieret coughed back the grin that arose despite his plucked nerves. ‘I should have guessed yon by-play to be yours.’ Intuitively bold as his mother before him, he challenged his liege’s coiled patience. ‘You have your royal reasons for close confidence, no doubt. But the s’Brydion line is clanblood. A canny prince in your predicament should have approached them as possible allies.’
But of course:
‘I don’t want allies!’ Arithon bit back. ‘This time, I’ll have no clan following stand their ground to bleed in my name. I need ships and two years in which to build them.’
Jieret, this is Arithon. He is incapable of making a decision that doesn't turn around and fuck him over later. We know this.
Finally, finally, he explains what he intends to do, and what he's BEEN doing all along:
The Master of Shadow began in measured phrases to speak. Long before he finished, Jieret’s strained censure had dissolved into rapt attention. He did not ask, after all, what became of the signet ring with Rathain’s blazon that he noticed its Teir’s’Ffalenn no longer wore. Captain Dhirken seemed unable to tear her gaze from the clever, musician’s hands, folded and quiet on her chart table. A coldness invaded the pit of her stomach, that she had ever dared to mishandle this man, or chain him like a miscreant to her taffrail.
His mind worked level upon level with a subtlety that nipped her skin into gooseflesh. On his travels, Arithon had quartered his kingdom. What he noticed, he remembered, and all things he put to a singular and ruthless analysis. He had studied every turn of Rathain’s roads, traversed in Halliron’s pony cart. He knew each hollow in which an army could be ambushed, and each hill crest where its scouts would be exposed. He knew his cities; had read them, mayor and council and guildhall, and reduced their strengths and weaknesses to one or two pared phrases. That his touch for subversion and strategy had plotted the ruin of Etarra’s forces in Strakewood was confirmed beyond equivocal doubt. Whether, as Lysaer s’Ilessid insisted, his person should be hunted down and killed, Dhirken lacked the moral will to say. But every maudlin and drunken warning the Mad Prophet had tried to deliver through an ill-advised passage to Farsee had been nothing less than honest truth.
What the Shadow Master had done in his months as bard’s apprentice was to arrange an information network of astonishing breadth and depth. The dispatches would collect in taverns and ports, to be picked up by an agent he would specify; and not a one of the contacts held the whole pattern, or knew to whom the letters would be passed.
So dramatic.
Here's the immediate plan: if Dhirken will run messages, then Arithon will know their moves ahead of time. Jieret's clans can disrupt supply lines with very little risk and exposure.
Dhirken braced against the table, this once caught unbalanced by the drift of the ship underneath her. ‘You bear no grudge toward these townsmen for this uprising raised in your name,’ she forced out in gritty admiration. ‘Ath forbid, and woe to us all, if that poor fact should ever alter.’
Anyway, Dhirken agrees to help, if only to get Arithon off the continent. She does want to be paid in advance though. If things go badly, she wants to be rich enough to wait out the bad times. Fair enough. He takes her to the hold to see what strikes her fancy.
But here's where things get a little amusing. Apparently Lady Maenalle merely indicated that she wanted to stake a fortune to undermine Lysaer's strength. Arithon was desperate enough to accept her "donation".
Which means Jieret gets to explain that Maenalle basically stole the money from Lysaer himself. (Well, as she puts it, it was Rathain's money first.) Dhirken and Arithon are both pretty amused. But Dhirken notes, with "admiration tinged with regret" that his plan requires one year too much to expect.
Arithon’s smile cut the gloom like edged lightning. ‘That’s scarcely a setback, lady captain. Lysaer can muster his force at Etarra. He can outfit and march them the breadth of the continent at vast and ruinous expense. But to engage and wreak my ruin, he first has to find me. That will cost him a long and merry search.’
The Shadow Master stretched, caught the lantern from its peg, and flung an expansive gesture toward the ladder that led to the hatch. ‘What do you say? We could broach that cask you’re perched on. Let’s drink like old friends to the charter you’ve earned, and my most cherished hope of freedom.’
I'm basically just including this part because, well, it's the end of a subchapter and Arithon deserves a moment to be happy and triumphant, because...
--
The last subchapter is Bargain.
We're back in Tysan. It's past the Spring Equinox and the wedding, sadly. A shame, I'd have liked to see it. But they're all dedicated to war. Poor Talith rarely gets to see her husband during the day, because there's so much to do. On the other hand:
Nights in the fast quiet of their high tower chamber became a guarded time of solace for them both. Clenched in the passion of her husband’s embrace, Talith unleashed every charm she possessed to kindle his ecstasy, then storm his keyed nerves until his ongoing worries became seared away by blind passion. She melted to Lysaer’s skilled touch until her own starved response touched off his rapture in turn, to eclipse and scald out self-awareness. In his arms, she let nothing intrude; not the discipline of fractious young officers, nor frayed temper from the trials created by marching armed companies across leagues of bad roads; or allotments wrung from a dwindled treasury, to hire galleys for crossing Instrell bay to reach established supply lines in Rathain.
Talith had no hope to change fate. Prince Lysaer’s peace of mind was inextricably linked to his drive to kill the Master of Shadow.
At least someone's getting laid.
But this morning is a little different. Lysaer notes that, in the old customs of his homeland, the king would slay a spring boar to prove prowess. He's off going hunting. And this is interesting and a little alarming:
‘You’re mad!’ Talith shot erect in a churned up calyx of silk sheets. ‘Why rush off to bloody some hapless, mean creature?’ Etarran enough to make her pique sting, she flared, ‘Does the Master of Shadow not offer sport enough?’
A dangerous, brittle stillness claimed the space where Lysaer stood. Then the hiss of his expelled breath tore through his protracted quiet. ‘Dare you question my love for you?’
Talith gasped. ‘Ath show me mercy, how can it compete?’ And the tears came, hot and stormy, for the way his honest hurt could devastate her defences. ‘Is it so hard?’ With sadly swallowed pride, she admitted, ‘I dread the day you must leave me.’
If this were Roberson, I'd bitch about the non-sequitur. Here though it's got a purpose. A scary one. Get the Hell out of there, Talith.
Lysaer speechifies:
A boot dropped with a thud against the carpet. Then the mattress gave to his knee. Cool fingers cradled Talith’s chin, turned her stiff neck. Lysaer’s lips moulded to hers and shared the salt on her mouth. ‘One old boar shouldn’t keep me past nightfall if I’m quick and skilled. As for my regard, lady wife, how can that be measured against a commensurate evil? You’ve married a prince who is human flesh and blood.’ Like the rip of cold iron, he added, ‘If you, who are closest, think my heart isn’t torn, then rejoice, for I have triumphed. Every man bound to follow me onto the field must never guess how this duty chafes my spirit. Did you forget?’
His grip tightened. ‘The criminal I go to ruin is my mother’s bastard son. I beg you, bear up and be brave. The killing of a half-brother is burden enough on my conscience.’
This might be the first time since the curse that Lysaer's acknowledged their blood relation. Somehow it is not reassuring.
So Lysaer is hunting, but somewhere along the way, he slips away from his escort. He's not really interested in a ceremonial boar hunt. He's got bigger fish to fry. And an alliance to make. But interestingly, right at this moment, Lysaer is alone and contemplative, musing about magic and his mother:
Truly alone for the first hour since the machinations of a sorcerer had banished him through a World Gate into exile, shouldered since with responsibility bequeathed by long-forgotten ancestors, Lysaer thought of the mother he had barely known. Lost when he was four into the arms of a s’Ffalenn lover, she had been the only daughter of a high mage. From her had come his given gift of light and Arithon’s deadly touch at weaving shadow. Lysaer’s last memories of her were indelibly twined with the scents of citrus and spices; of delicate jewels and silver chains, and a rippled fall of pale hair. The Lady Talera had made no spells in his presence that he could recall. More clearly he remembered his father’s savage rages, the acrimony of the kingdom’s prim seneschal, and the lengthy, hushed sessions of the kingdom council following her repudiated marriage vows.
Horror still revisited through his recollection of the trials, the miasma of late-burning oil lamps intermingled with the sweaty fear of the accused. Then the weeping agony of the families through the purges, as every man, woman and child suspected of sorcerous activity, or in sheltering the queen in her escape, was sent to the executioner’s block for justice. The poisoned, vicious anger of his royal father still cut, at his request to ask his mother’s family for the training to develop his born talents to full advantage.
Whatever cloaking spells and trickery Queen Talera had used to shame her lawful marriage and beget her bastard, her cuckolded husband never shed his passionate distrust of magecraft. Her legitimate firstborn had grown to manhood without so much as a herb witch to tell him whether he had inherited any further arcane potential from the distaff side of his bloodline.
Whereas Arithon had been raised by the high mage himself. His powers had been moulded by the arduous discipline demanded by a master’s training
1. A psychologist could probably do a lot with all of this. Particularly the associations between magic, femininity, his mother and his younger brother.
2. And we see the darker side of Amroth. Witch hunts. Men, women and even children suspected of sorcery or in aiding the queen were executed. Even CHILDREN.
This is the world that Lysaer grew up in. I suppose it's not surprising then that the Mistwraith was able to twist his sense of justice, when it would have already had to have been warped beyond recognition to simply accommodate all this to begin with.
It's a miracle that Lysaer was ever sane.
He remembers wise words from his father:
The words still haunted, burred with the memory of the wax-scented gloom of the privy chamber as the royal spate of rage finally cooled. ‘My son, ideals and strengths and the foundation of sound rule are never so simply reconciled. A king who values his subjects will treat with them as a fellow man. Power to upset natural order goes ill with royal office, that by nature must wield influence over lives. The concepts of justice and fairness are not born through greater strength. They spring instead from sympathy with the lowliest weakness.’ The King of Amroth had looked upon his heir, the seams of a life-time’s bitter decisions softened to entreaty on his face. ‘The judgements you make for the crown when you inherit will be hard enough on the heart. You will need a mind undivided between the laws that must govern humanity and the uncanny secrets of the mysteries.’
There is something FASCINATING about these words coming from Amroth's king. Remember, this is the man who would have been more than happy to execute an entire ship's crew if his wife's son died before he could torture him. We've heard about Karthan villages burned and terrifying witch hunts.
But Arithon's grandfather had said much the same thing. (I'm not quite sure how that works when Rauven was a country in its own right, but well, hypocrisy has stopped very few people.)
Lysaer thinks about how Queen Talera claimed she was righting a balance, and only then had been "lonely enough to bury the grief of her sacrifice in the comfort of illicit love."
...really, Talera? Really? Your "sacrifice" involved banging a hot pirate king who just happened to be your husband's greatest enemy? Couldn't you have at least taken your kid with you? Sure, it would have pissed off your husband, but you pretty much did that anyway. (For the record, I don't blame her for leaving her abusive, asshole husband. It's just everything ELSE was really fucking ill-conceived.)
More fascinating shit here:
Briefly beguiled into friendship with her bastard, Lysaer had seen the insidious way fine knowledge of power could corrupt mercy. The secret fear rode his heart: how the means to sway fate might corrode a man’s spirit to forget his humanity and embrace an abstruse creed without pity. Wider knowledge could blind the eye to suffering; or why else should Athera’s greatest arcane order give even indirect sanction to a prince who had turned the shining wisdom of his upbringing toward acts of unconscionable slaughter?
The blind hypocrisy is just truly magnificent, isn't it? Who led the army to whom again? Who permitted the slaughter of women and children?
I will grant that the Fellowship IS useless. But this isn't why.
Anyway, here's here to see if the Koriathain will help him track down a "felon".
Is Arithon a felon? I mean, I wouldn't put it past Lysaer to try him in abstentia, so I suppose so.
You may wonder what Lysaer has to offer them. Certainly the Koriani witch does. The Koriani prefer Lysaer to Arithon, but they know full well that if they give Lysaer the answer he wants, there'll be war. And they're not actually on board with that.
The Koriani have their own plans for Arithon, after all. But Lysaer hears something else in her refusal to help: the Koriani Prime DOES know where Arithon is.
He gives a good speech:
Lysaer outfaced the crone’s ire. ‘Before the Mistwraith invaded Athera, your order did not trifle with nursing the sick. They peddled no petty charms for iyat bane and let herb witches attend birthings and sick livestock. Koriani magecraft at one time was said to cure mortal wounds. Initiate sisters weren’t culled from your orphanages, but sent to your hospices by parents, lest their talents languish without teaching. What of your hopes to restore such lost influence? Is your sisterhood content to remain overshadowed by events? As a prince pledged to mend this land’s rifts and sad hatreds, I would suggest your Prime’s goal and mine at heart aren’t so terribly different.’
This provokes the enchantress. Lysaer uses light to dramatically illuminate the room. She tells him to speak his bribe. And whoo boy. Lysaer has one.
You'd be forgiven for forgetting, but back in Mistwraith, there was a chapter that took place at Althain Tower. Lysaer was given a tour then, by Traithe, and he happened to see a very large amethyst, that Traithe identified as the Great Waystone of the Koriathain.
They gave an excuse for why they had it. The sorceresses never asked for its location or to get it back! I said that was bullshit then. And it was.
And now Lysaer has just given that knowledge to the Koriathain.
We get a nice explanation of why this is important to them:
Misplaced since the time of the uprising, the Great Waystone held capacity to channel the trained awareness of one hundred and eighty enchantresses. The crystal had stood as the keystone of Koriani power. Since its disappearance, the sisterhood had been as a body blinded, reduced to crippling weakness.
If means could be found to restore its possession into the hands of the Prime, the order could rebuild its lost influence. The Koriathain might regain their former strength to steer events in mercy and compassion; to alleviate those trends of daily suffering the Fellowship in its arrogance deemed unworthy of attention. Through the Great Waystone, the medicinal virtues of herbals could be raised beyond individual treatment, plagues could be averted, the course of storms bent aside; earthquake and wildfire forced quiescent. Once more the order could act to spare the world from its imprint of senseless, natural disasters.
So let's see what comes of this:
1. Lysaer now has Arithon's exact location. Specifically they give him this vision:
… the azure harbour sparkled under mild, salt winds, creased by the satin splash of breakers. Against a fan of palm trees and the fluffy, low clouds of the tropics, a man in sailor’s garb closed a bargain with an aproned craftsman. ‘My shipyard will be settled at Merior by the Sea,’ he informed. ‘Your contract will extend for two years, through the course of building ten brigantines.’ As he turned to depart, the fall of southern sunlight limned glossy black hair and a face of steep planes and narrow angles; eyes clear-cut as dark tourmaline revealed him as the scion of s’Ffalenn …
How helpful of Arithon to announce the location at that moment.
2. The Koriathain now know where their great power source is. When they get it back, their strength will be restored, with a brand new, completely understandable grudge against the Fellowship.
3. The Koriathain are still trying to deal with Arithon themselves, and now they'll be more powerful. This will fuck Arithon over in a number of ways.
Considering the Fellowship supposedly has a vested interest in putting Arithon on his throne, they spend a shit ton of time just fucking him over.
So now, Lysaer is pretty much in a berserker state thanks to the curse (acting up when he saw his brother), and "lent a hunter's concentration by the riptide shock of Desh-thiere's curse", he basically finds a boar and kills the shit out of it, singlehandedly.
It dies in agony, and Lysaer "revel[s] in its pain.
He twisted the spear, felt the blade slide past bone and bite deeper, to hack and ravage and bleed white. Through his curse-driven fervour of elation, he gloated in the knowledge that finally, his half-brother lay within reach.
Before the turn of the year, the unprincipled creature dying on his steel would be the Shadow Master, Arithon s’Ffalenn.
So Lysaer returns triumphant, with both boar and Arithon's location. Worse though, there was something else in the vision:
Feeling cleansed, Lysaer understood that the Koriani witch had been wise in her way to arrange his tryst with the boar. The catharsis of violence had restored his control. He could review her scrying now with equanimity. A detail slipped past in the first heat of vision pricked now to the forefront of his mind.
The bullion chest in the sand by his half-brother’s foot, offered to bind honest craftsmen, had carried an Etarran guild brand as well as the wax seal of Tysan. The Master of Shadow could never have acquired such a coffer, except through Lady Maenalle’s collaboration.
Oops.
Well, Tysan's clans were already kind of screwed over by all this. But now, Lysaer has declared Maenalle a traitor and her life forfeit.
I'm going to blame the Fellowship for this bullshit too.
--
The final section is Interstices:
1) Sethvir actually misses both the death of the boar and the scrying, because he's busy trying to find his lost colleague.
Because, say it with me, the Fellowship is fucking useless.
2) A dishonored captain, marked with raw whip scars, is sentenced to exile from Alestron.
3) The companies are leaving Avenor, and Talith wishes Lysaer a tearful goodbye.
This time though, we're joining the "Captain Mayor Pesquil" on his trip to Tysan. If you recall, he's the headhunter dude who discovered what happened to Jaelot and Alestron. Now he's bringing that news to Lysaer directly.
He's also a genocidal asshole who helped Lysaer murder a shit ton of people in Strakewood, because some things should never be forgotten.
He gets to Erdane (the city where Arithon and Elaira first met!) and is met with a very warm welcome. And it's while taking a much welcomed bath that he's visited by a train of ladies. I almost feel sorry for the guy, since he admitted them thinking they were a servant with a razor. This is not appropriate, ladies.
The ladies are led by Talith, Lysaer's fiancee. And well, she's kind of a bitch.
Proprietary as a hunting tigress, his visitor’s glance raked over the stringy, scarred muscles of his torso. Her coral-pale lips bent before an amusement whose withering sting left no impact, sheer force of beauty having long since anaesthetized reason. Called on by reflex, Pesquil plunged his hands beneath the scummed water.
An ugly man possessed of an iron dedication, the head-hunter captain held his ground as a wolf might, nipped at by mastiffs.
I like the random judgment of the naked guy that you burst in on, Talith. Anyway, she's here because she figures that he probably has news about Arithon ("since barbarian scalps are not in season until spring". Ugh.).
I have no idea why Talith thinks it's okay to ambush a guy in the bath. But she definitely is happy to assert her power, pointing out how unhappy the mayor will be to find them "quite cosy with his lowborn guest".
Ugh.
A sinew jumped in Pesquil’s lantern jaw. He had few illusions; his most guarded point of pride was his station, won through achievement and competence rather than the accident of pedigree. Lady Talith was Etarran, no stranger to sordid jokes played for intrigue. The Mayor of Erdane’s flighty daughters were scarcely in her league, though their nervous, darting glances showed them thoroughly intrigued with an escapade.
Although Pesquil scorned the confined standards of morality the westland cities imposed on their women, the mayor’s hospitality implied a trust he misliked the principle of spurning. Uncomfortably aware of the youngest girl’s fascination with the cock’s comb whorls of hair that seamed the midline of his chest, forced on display before Talith’s dizzying charms, the headhunter willed his hard limbs to relax. A rebellious ache beneath the waterline, another bodily part of him cheerfully rejected self-control.
He was male, after all, and not bloodless.
I hate Pesquil, but this is a pretty disgusting situation and makes me not very fond of Talith either. But Pesquil knows what he's doing. He asks her to pass the soap and then after she throws it at him, goes about his business. He notes that if he calls the ladies' bluff, then they'd get in trouble. And well, if he does get thrown out of the city, he'll get to Lysaer that much faster.
Anyway, Talith wants something and I'd be impressed at her nerve if she weren't so classist and obnoxious.
If the pretty dark daughters standing guard upon the doorway showed unease at his balky character, Talith’s fresh poise only heightened under challenge. ‘I am no ornament to be left waiting on a shelf.’ She stood, jerked open a drawer, and plucked out the clean holland shirt scarcely wrinkled from its storage in a saddle pack. You have news of Arithon s’Ffalenn. That will mean war. I don’t intend to sit here while you rouse my betrothed to muster his armies and quarter the continent to fight him.’ A back-step carried her to the casement. She flicked the catch, pressed open the leaded panes, and tossed the shirt upward onto the snow-covered slates of the dormer peak.
Basically, she's completely willing to throw all his clothing out, so he'll have to go naked and [h]is scars would be the talk of every barracks in Erdane, as well as the bourdoirs of the ladies"
Apparently this is Pesquil's limit. And I lose a bit of respect for him here, because really? Humiliation is all it takes to spill the beans? He tells her that Arithon has "disrupted the peace and caused havoc in one city, and killed seven men in another through an explosion of fire and sorcery." They know he's heading south.
Talith doesn't think that's all of it, since why would Pesquil come as courier. She presses him about why, but he blames that on the Etarrans not being willing to make a winter crossing. He explains his own intended route, which horrifies one of the mayor's daughters. He'll be going through "the Sorcerers' Preserve."
‘If the Khadrim don’t flame you to a cinder, or tear you limb from limb with their jaws, there are hot springs, and mud pots, and lava wells, and no guide to choose a safe trail.’ The girl cautioned, ‘Better to stay neglected here in Erdane than to find yourself boiled alive.’
Spoiler: we're going to skip past all of this. Probably for the best, since both Pesquil and Talith are terrible and I have no vested interest in seeing either of them survive the journey.
Anyway, Pesquil's not particularly worried. He also has NO intention of bringing Talith, but she's insistent. He will take her.
Pesquil confronted her tawny magnificence, the water that embraced his hips chill enough to dampen the dregs of any man’s ardour, and the soap squeezed 10 pulp in his fists. ‘I won’t.’
Talith held his gaze, locked eye to eye. But her lip trembled ever so slightly.
Like a kick in the belly, Pesquil recognized that the motive which drove her was, love. He would not shake that, not if he killed her.
It occurs to me that love, as a motivation, is a fairly frequent motif in this book. From Halliron, to Arithon, to Jieret and Jinesse. Even Dakar is motivated by his love for Lysaer. It might be worth revisiting this idea later. I think Pesquil and Talith might suffer in the comparison.
The servant with the razor finally arrives, and Talith makes a dramatic exit from the room. Pesquil muses about Lysaer's marital future:
Girt in the tepid discomfort of his bath, he concluded that any prince mad enough to marry a pedigree Etarran lady deserved to suffer merry hell and intrigue on the home front. Just as well the Master of Shadow would afford a sound reason for a husband to stay absent in the cause of bloody war.
Lysaer would need the violence just to stay sane with that brazen-mouthed vixen in his bed and ever busy, stitching steel claws through his vitals.
-
So we end up skipping over the journey, which is probably for the best. We get some lovely description of Avenor:
The first sound heard by visitors to the prince’s new city of Avenor was the sweet, high ring of the armourer’s mallets shivering the air between the stripped branches of the oak groves. Worn by a long and arduous journey, weary of the suck and splash of her mount’s hooves through the rime of late-season snow, Lady Talith pushed back her fur-lined hood, the better to take in the view as Pesquil’s cavalcade of headhunters crested the last rise and passed the gap in the hills.
Ahead, the clear, cold line of the sea slashed a sky like dirty ice. Flocks of gulls settled like caught twists of paper against the dunes, crusted with salt-eaten drifts. The city’s unfinished walls commanded a high knoll, smirched with smoke from the brickmaker’s kilns, and alive as an ants’ nest with activity.
Windburned to a high flush, her silken hair silted in the collar of her cloak, Talith sorted through the jumbled supply sheds, the cruck built officers’ hall, then squinted against sunlight torn through a broken cloud layer to pick out the ravelled outline of keeps and revetments and gate turrets. Inside the honeycomb shapes of partial structures, a single tower arose, near complete, the spoked beams of its roof line as yet bare of slate. The distant snaps of the ox drovers’ whips, the limpid stream of banners, and the squeals of a hog bound for slaughter strained through the white rush of surf and the trumpet calls of an officer.
Even through inclement weather, the practice field lay in use. Directed by a mounted officer, a field kitchen spread half-dismantled in churned mud. A tent billowed flat to shouts and a timed release of guy ropes, while mule teams jostled supply wagons into position for loading. Marksmen fired crossbows at the butts; grooms with buckets swarmed up and down the horse lines to tend steaming charges led in hot from heavy exercise, while the men just dismounted shed empty quivers and short, compound bows, to take up pikes and renew their drill in the disciplined formation of foot companies.
So it's very much a martial city. As Pesquil puts it, it's more barracks than city. Talith keeps her dignity though, and Pesquil's lieutenant comments that she must "have hide like a crocodile" and that it's unnatural that she's so fresh after their hellish journey. (We get a brief description of the hazards, it definitely sounds pretty hellish. Good. Fuck the headhunters.)
Anyway, the men give her credit for not whining.
Diegan arrives now, and he's gone from peacock to warrior:
Diegan had grown harder, leaner. His elegant jewels were replaced by thick mail and leather that showed the rubbed shine of hard wear. The dark, handsome features were knit taut to the bone, rugged now with new angles where the flesh of languid living had burned away.
Apparently, the mercenaries are busy laying bricks. Lysaer felt it would teach them skills that might help during future sieges. And he's got enough charisma that they're actually willing to do it. The most seasoned folk though are on campaign, guarding merchant trade routes. It's a good way for them to get experience, and the Avenor treasury gets a share of the profits.
This interests me far more than it does Talith. She's here to see Lysaer. Diegan knows his sister very well and immediately assumes that she's there to break things off with Lysaer. He basically sneers at her and says: ‘Lady sister, leave him if you can.’
Ew. First of all, Diegan, stop projecting. Second of all, shouldn't you fucking support your sister if she wants to leave a dude. Even though we don't yet know why she's come.
Anyway, Diegan's mood changes when Diegan learns that Pesquil came with Talith, and he leaves her to find out what the hell is going on.
As it turns out, Talith IS here to break things off with Lysaer. She loves him, but she doesn't like his prolonged absence. She wants done with this.
We get an interesting brotherly parallel here, as Lysaer is talking to an earnest little boy:
‘We don’t yet have a scribe, that’s not civilized, I know,’ said Lysaer s’Ilessid to the child. ‘But that doesn’t matter. A page should know how to fold and seal a document for the day he grows up to be a lord.’
The boy said something in dulcet, shy tones.
‘The job is only boring before you learn how it’s done.’ A sculptured hand reached up, snagged a ribbon in Tysan’s royal colours from a cache between quills and inkwell, and resumed patient instruction. ‘Here, and here,’ Lysaer said, a smile on his lips to tear the heart. ‘Now the knot. Use two hands this time, and try not to smear the royal star.’
And do we get some purple prose now?
The light fringed his hair to a leafed blaze of gold. Unsoftened by the coarser glow of candles, his austere face showed an unearthly beauty no memory could preserve with due justice. The impact of cobalt-blue eyes stunned like a physical shock. The frozen moment, while Prince Lysaer sized up her waiting presence, spun the last shred of breath from Talith’s throat.
His Grace of Tysan was not in rough attire, as she had expected, but ablaze with gold studs and a chain worked in pearls and small sapphires. His cuffs and collar were damascened silk, and his tabard, of trimmed velvet, looked cut from the shadow of a snowdrift. Every inch of him lordly, he poised for the space of a heartbeat.
OF COURSE WE DO.
More than that:
The firm, muscled strength underneath his soft clothes lifted her, spun her, set her down. Talith was consumed, then ignited by his flame of vital heat. She sensed the sped pace of his heart as his knuckles sank in her damp ermine, and his lips seared a kiss on her forehead. ‘You are just the person I wished to see, beloved. My writ was to reach you in the hands of the next messenger. Yesterday, our wedding date was set.’
Her anger in trembling ruins, Talith recovered her breath with a gasp. ‘What?’
‘We shall marry when the orchards are in blossom.’ Lysaer consumed her with his gaze, then took swift advantage of her open-mouthed, speechless surprise.
Talith's resolve basically crumbles immediately. Lysaer fusses a bit, noting that she's crossed the path and must be peaked. The page is sent for wine and scones. The tender moment is interrupted by Pesquil and Diegan though. And Lysaer is brought up to speed.
Pesquil notes that he doesn't have verified facts from either government, but the rumors come from multiple sources. Lysaer reacts dramatically:
A glint of sharp distress charged the depths of Lysaer’s eyes as he reeled off a string of fast conclusions. ‘They are port towns. It is s’Ffalenn design, and wantonly inflicted on innocents.’ Passion frayed through as he added, ‘The instant the weather lets the trade galleys sail, we’ll send for documented evidence. At last I’ll gain the leverage I need to turn Tysan’s guildsmen. The threat this man presents is dire, but until now, only cities in Rathain saw the proof.’
Apparently Erdane's already offered reserves, upon presentation of hard evidence. Lysaer remembers the reward he'd offered for first word of Arithon, but Pesquil tells him to use the gold to pay for soldiers.
Per Diegan, the men are ready. Lysaer plans to gather the officials and ranking officers together. He also urges a somewhat irate Talith to freshen up after her journey.
Talith snapped back from his touch in offended fury. ‘No thank you, my Lord Prince. If you’re going to draw up plans to slay your nemesis, I shall stay exactly where I am.’
‘But of course.’ Lysaer stroked a fallen curl from her cheekbone, his tenderness too sincere to be patronizing. ‘I expect you back once you’ve changed. This is no mayor’s realm, to keep women at home uninformed.’ He smiled, sternly royal, and admonished, ‘You shall be Avenor’s princess on the equinox feast. Could you doubt for a minute? The responsibility to defend Athera’s cities must be shared. Your place through this war council is nowhere if not by my side.’
Outflanked and speechless, Talith inclined her head. She gathered mud-splashed skirts and swept headlong from the study.
As soon as she's out of the door, she's weak and shaking. And I'm reminded again about how disconcerting this relationship dynamic is. Lysaer says all the right words, of course, but they come across as patronizing and disingenuous. Talith can hear them discussing tactical issues like provisioning without her.
As obnoxious as I found Talith in the scene in Pesquil's bath, it's somehow more difficult to see her here, with Lysaer so able to steamroll right over her. It doesn't feel like a healthy relationship at all.
And I realize that's somewhat hypocritical considering my current ships involve people either forced to spy on each other, or actively plotting each other's death.
But see?
As Talith overheard, her bitterness deepened, that once again her love must make way before the great quest to stalk down the Shadow Master. Her autonomy could not be sustained against Lysaer, and her anger fell powerless before yearning. She moved off, beaten humble by misery, to seek refuge in the quiet of the anteroom.
Dakar might feel frustrated, Elaira might feel powerless, Arithon...god knows WHAT he feels. But they're not "beaten humble" And that's an important distinction for me.
Anyway, Pesquil has one very good question which Talith overhears: how will Lysaer know where to corner Arithon. Lysaer says that when the time comes, he possesses a sure means to find out.
--
The next subchapter is Rendezvous:
YAY, the Black Drake has arrived in Merior!
Jieret gets a pretty great description here, by the way:
Jieret Red-beard lounged at her rail, peeling across his hawk nose from the burn of the strong southland sun, the quilloned knife just used to pare his nails still unsheathed in his hand. Relaxed though he seemed, the sailhands who had shared winter passage from the Gulf of Stormwell maintained their distance. The lad had cold eyes and no patience for the fool who dared cross him while he simmered with impatience.
Unfortunately for Jieret's patience, Arithon isn't actually IN Merior at the moment. As a "wee, pale snip of a woman" (Hi, Jinesse!) informed Dhirken, he's in Innish, keeping a promise.
I kind of dig Dhirken and Jieret's interaction:
‘You’ll sail there?’ Jieret pressed.
Poised on braced legs, her back stiff as nail stock, Dhirken shrugged. ‘If I don’t, you’ll walk, is that so? With all his blighted treasure on your back? You’ve got lint between your ears to think he’s worth it.’
A pause ensued, while the busy wind flicked through the laces on Jieret’s jerkin and ruffled his raw-spun copper beard. The tropical sky scored glints in hazel eyes that seemed to view a sight very different.
When Dhirken snapped her rings against her cutlass hilt to recoup his attention, the Earl of the North stated baldly, ‘If not for my liege, I wouldn’t stand here alive.’
‘Well at least sheath that dirk before you stick somewhat else with it.’ Brazen in distaste for loyal sentiment, Dhirken spun away to chastise the longboat’s oarsmen, now crowding the rail at her shoulder. ‘Do I pay you my silver to gawk? Smarten up and haul in that tender!’
Of course they're going there. But Arithon didn't leave any charts for the south coast, so they're winging it. It takes time though. Between the weather and recalcitrant merchants, it takes a while for them to get maps. But eventually they get to the city of Southshire, where a chartmaker seems to be waiting for them:
His moist eyes regarded her in scholarly curiosity. Then a cheery smile stirred his drooping moustache. ‘I expect you’re after maps for the coastline to Innish?’
At the captain’s stiff glare, he waggled a moth-eaten goose quill. ‘Ach, there’d scarcely be two of you, yes? The young master sent word in a letter last month, along with pay to see your needs met.’ The cartographer bobbed beneath his counter, rattled aside rulers, tufts of string and worn nibs, and popped erect with a ribboned roll of parchment. ‘Your chart, lady captain, with yon mannerly gentleman’s compliments.’
‘Dharkaron’s hairy bollocks!’ Dhirken advanced a nettled step. ‘I’m nobody’s bound lackey! It’s naught but a stray slip of fortune that I bothered to visit here at all!’
‘Aye, well, you needn’t stay riled for my sake.’ The little man’s spirits stayed unshaken. ‘Yon fellow made demands of the shipwrights that were fair preposterous. They howled just as loudly. He still got everything he wanted. Are you going to take this, or spit on it?’
Arithon is SUCH a dick. He also left instructions to unload two bullion chests at the shipwright's mansion. It does sound like he'd left instructions that got Dhirken paid as well, but she's still pretty understandably vexed. She'll happily sail on to Innish though, just to deliver to Arithon’s royal face my word on his bloody-handed arrogance.
Careful, Dhirken. I think he'd like that.
So they get to Innish by spring equinox. Dhirken and Jieret continue to bond:
‘Don’t have me speak for my liege,’ Jieret said, too apprehensive himself to show sympathy. ‘It’s a likely guess his Grace won’t welcome the tidings I bear from the north.’
‘Don’t think to weep on my shoulder,’ Dhirken retorted. ‘A thousand times, I’ve wished I’d never met the man.’
Heheh.
Anyway, Jieret stays on board, since his accent will be enough to give him away even here. Apparently clansfolk are executed in Shand as well. Damn. I wish I could go back to the beginning of this book and punch Asandir and his "no pressing business" in the fucking face. He waits fingering the worn quillon dagger, looted seven years past off the corpse of a headhunter killed for the murder of his family. The touch of whetted steel made him wonder whether Arithon s’Ffalenn still cherished the boy’s knife for whittling given that day for remembrance.
There's a feast going on in Innish, and that makes poor Jieret contemplative:
Aboard the darkened Drake, jumpy as a caged wildcat for the fact he lay surrounded by enemies, Jieret listened to the shrieks of the doxies, and the deeper rasp of male rejoinder; the frenetic laughter from the puppet theatres, and the thumps on the water as boats collided to slurred apologies from handlers too drunken to trifle over chipped paint or marred brightwork. Haunted by distant memories of the spring bonfires from his childhood, Jieret tried not to wonder how the feast might be celebrated, had his clans not been hunted by townsmen, and were his prince not accursed by Desh-thiere.
I wish Pesquil and his assholes got frostbite on their junk.
There are some interesting bits of color here. Some pranksters who beg for a copper or they'll come aboard to "bring joy". Jieret, of course, can't risk a reply. Fortunately, the crew has the matter in hand: the cook pours broth onto the would be boarders.
But then of course, things get interesting:
‘Dear lady, a note sent ashore would have found me,’ retorted a firm voice, but animated now, its inflection reschooled to sound townbred, and vastly more carefree than Jieret’s past memories from his father’s lodge in Strakewood Forest.
Dhirken cracked into ripe laughter. ‘ ‘Twere fair reckoning, prince, after the Kittiwake. I gave my men full leave to roust you by any means they saw fit.’
Of course, Arithon still managed to keep his bargain. The tavern patrons weren't completely happy by the arrival of the pirates, but Arithon wasn't leaving before midnight. Of course. And we get a line about the "spare, foxy angles of a face seven years had changed not at all."
But, oh. I was WAITING for this:
Jieret pressed through the crowding sail-hands, knelt, and bent his head to the man he had last seen over the grave cairn of his slaughtered parents. ‘My Liege of Rathain.’
Time stopped.
Arithon’s fingers locked on grained wood. The breath spun out of him as if impelled by a suffocating weight. The young man on the ship’s deck before him might have been a ghost restored to flesh, for the grief that marked his blanched features. For one numbed second, dread for returned obligations made Arithon recoil in pain.
Then his unbearable apprehension by itself forced the moment to snap.
The Shadow Master hurled himself over the rail in a welcome that burst all restraints. ‘Jieret!’ He caught the young man by the wrists and raised him, stunned all over again as the earl last seen as a twelve-year-old boy arose to full height and dwarfed him. Arithon fell back a step, his joy overwhelmed by amazement. ‘By Ath, man! Caolle must be proud. You’ve grown into the very image of your father.’
Jieret's nineteen now. He'll be of age before winter, and he asks Arithon to accept his service now. And you know I can't resist purple prose:
Exposed before Dhirken’s curiosity, jostled by the press of Drake’s crewmen, Arithon turned the blade over in recognition. Fine fingers still sensitized by the lyranthe string recorded the nicks of hard usage. As if the separate, belling vibrations of the blows the steel had staved off, and the life spilled from each opened wound stung his senses, he said, ‘Mine the honour, Earl of the North.’
In complete disregard that the moment was not private, to the speechless amazement of hard-bitten sail-hands who knew nothing of customs kept by old high kings, blooded royalty knelt before his prospective vassal. With a clarity wiped to acid by his singer’s trained diction, Arithon swore the traditional oath of sovereign prince to liegeman that sealed a pact of guardianship, and ended with the lines, ‘For the gift of feal duty, Earl Jieret s’Valerient, my charge of protection; for your loyalty, my spirit shall answer, unto my last drop of blood, and until my final living breath. Dharkaron witness. Take back this blade as token of my trust, and with your true steel, my royal blessing.’
He then of course comandeers the chartroom, and "in words that asked only friendship" requests Dhirken to attend. Dakar's in a brothel, and Arithon determines they can wait until dawn to rouse him out.
So. Surely that's not all the colorful description we get, right? Jieret's only just met the guy again after seven years!
His ambiguity banished with the shadows, Arithon looked not a whit older than in the hour he last left Strakewood. Haggard, then, beset as any of Deshir’s clan survivors, he contained himself now in tight-reined calm that implied an unbreakable composure. Elegant in a bard’s clothes trimmed in silver and onyx, his shirt of pale silk tailored close to narrow wrists, he folded hands that were callused only on the fingertips from an artistry confined to fret and string. The boy’s knife accepted by the grave cairn in Deshir would have been used to trim lyranthe pegs, if the gift was remembered at all.
Of course not.
Jieret and Dhirken get their own bits too:
Daunted by sudden uncertainty, that perhaps he did not know his prince at all, Earl Jieret assumed the seat opposite. By size and dress set apart, he wore his deerhide jerkin unadorned, laced with ties that would not catch stray sunlight, or betray him by chance-made noise. His flecked hazel eyes devoured the royal presence, while the red hair that matched his dead mother’s spilled in wind-caught tangles over shoulders grown broad in new manhood.
Dhirken slouched against the bulkhead. Discomposed as a cat flicked by raindrops, prepared in her way to be obstructive, she watched in still malice as the earl launched his case to press his prince to reclaim an abandoned sovereignty.
Aw, poor Jieret. I think we all know that feeling after a long absence. But don't worry, Arithon is forever the angst-ridden asshole we all know and reluctantly love.
So anyway, Jieret brings the news: Lysaer knows about Jaelot and Alestron and is gathering his forces.
Arithon, of course, has a different concern:
‘No one could stop that,’ Arithon said. His green eyes stayed wide, almost black in the lamplight, and his concentration harrowed as he said, ‘Jieret, what price did you pay for those few months of silence? How many died?’
He did not refer to fallen clansmen.
Under that horrified, knife-point regard, Jieret remained as unflinching in the face of necessity as ever his father had before him. ‘My war captain knows. I left before Jaelot’s disaster became public, to seek your Grace and bring word. How many died is no issue, then or now. These armies mean death for my clans, and your liegemen. I would know whether to count on your help to see how many of our own we can save.’ He paused, the large fists clenched beneath the table top half-braced for an explosion that never came.
Arithon said in stifled quiet, ‘You’ve come a long way for this audience. You have my attention. Go on.’
I love Jieret's straightforward ability to remind Arithon that it's not all about him. The clans are the ones taking the brunt of the danger, while Arithon remains in hiding. He talks numbers: Rathain will probably muster thirty five thousand to add to Avenor's highly skilled forces.
Arithon reveals his own plan though: he intends to retreat to the sea. An army can't march there. A fleet can't pursue if shadow-blinded. Lysaer's support is from merchants and they won't pay to waste money forever. (This still leaves the clans in the lurch, but I think the idea is that if Lysaer is focused solely on Arithon, the clans will have an opportunity to relocate deeper into hiding.)
Dhirken notes that he can't hide forever, and she has no intention of chartering the Black Drake under Rathain's banner. Arithon agrees. He's building his own ships. He just wants to hire her to carry messages.
There's more news of course. Stuff we knew: Rathain's cities are now allies. The clans are hard pressed, seeking refuge deep in old haunted woods, but it won't last. And of course, there's the issue with Alestron. Bransien s'Brydion has described Arithon well enough that Lysaer is absolutely going to be able to win his support, and THEY can present fifteen thousand.
Jieret calls Arithon out on the Alestron thing:
Jieret coughed back the grin that arose despite his plucked nerves. ‘I should have guessed yon by-play to be yours.’ Intuitively bold as his mother before him, he challenged his liege’s coiled patience. ‘You have your royal reasons for close confidence, no doubt. But the s’Brydion line is clanblood. A canny prince in your predicament should have approached them as possible allies.’
But of course:
‘I don’t want allies!’ Arithon bit back. ‘This time, I’ll have no clan following stand their ground to bleed in my name. I need ships and two years in which to build them.’
Jieret, this is Arithon. He is incapable of making a decision that doesn't turn around and fuck him over later. We know this.
Finally, finally, he explains what he intends to do, and what he's BEEN doing all along:
The Master of Shadow began in measured phrases to speak. Long before he finished, Jieret’s strained censure had dissolved into rapt attention. He did not ask, after all, what became of the signet ring with Rathain’s blazon that he noticed its Teir’s’Ffalenn no longer wore. Captain Dhirken seemed unable to tear her gaze from the clever, musician’s hands, folded and quiet on her chart table. A coldness invaded the pit of her stomach, that she had ever dared to mishandle this man, or chain him like a miscreant to her taffrail.
His mind worked level upon level with a subtlety that nipped her skin into gooseflesh. On his travels, Arithon had quartered his kingdom. What he noticed, he remembered, and all things he put to a singular and ruthless analysis. He had studied every turn of Rathain’s roads, traversed in Halliron’s pony cart. He knew each hollow in which an army could be ambushed, and each hill crest where its scouts would be exposed. He knew his cities; had read them, mayor and council and guildhall, and reduced their strengths and weaknesses to one or two pared phrases. That his touch for subversion and strategy had plotted the ruin of Etarra’s forces in Strakewood was confirmed beyond equivocal doubt. Whether, as Lysaer s’Ilessid insisted, his person should be hunted down and killed, Dhirken lacked the moral will to say. But every maudlin and drunken warning the Mad Prophet had tried to deliver through an ill-advised passage to Farsee had been nothing less than honest truth.
What the Shadow Master had done in his months as bard’s apprentice was to arrange an information network of astonishing breadth and depth. The dispatches would collect in taverns and ports, to be picked up by an agent he would specify; and not a one of the contacts held the whole pattern, or knew to whom the letters would be passed.
So dramatic.
Here's the immediate plan: if Dhirken will run messages, then Arithon will know their moves ahead of time. Jieret's clans can disrupt supply lines with very little risk and exposure.
Dhirken braced against the table, this once caught unbalanced by the drift of the ship underneath her. ‘You bear no grudge toward these townsmen for this uprising raised in your name,’ she forced out in gritty admiration. ‘Ath forbid, and woe to us all, if that poor fact should ever alter.’
Anyway, Dhirken agrees to help, if only to get Arithon off the continent. She does want to be paid in advance though. If things go badly, she wants to be rich enough to wait out the bad times. Fair enough. He takes her to the hold to see what strikes her fancy.
But here's where things get a little amusing. Apparently Lady Maenalle merely indicated that she wanted to stake a fortune to undermine Lysaer's strength. Arithon was desperate enough to accept her "donation".
Which means Jieret gets to explain that Maenalle basically stole the money from Lysaer himself. (Well, as she puts it, it was Rathain's money first.) Dhirken and Arithon are both pretty amused. But Dhirken notes, with "admiration tinged with regret" that his plan requires one year too much to expect.
Arithon’s smile cut the gloom like edged lightning. ‘That’s scarcely a setback, lady captain. Lysaer can muster his force at Etarra. He can outfit and march them the breadth of the continent at vast and ruinous expense. But to engage and wreak my ruin, he first has to find me. That will cost him a long and merry search.’
The Shadow Master stretched, caught the lantern from its peg, and flung an expansive gesture toward the ladder that led to the hatch. ‘What do you say? We could broach that cask you’re perched on. Let’s drink like old friends to the charter you’ve earned, and my most cherished hope of freedom.’
I'm basically just including this part because, well, it's the end of a subchapter and Arithon deserves a moment to be happy and triumphant, because...
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The last subchapter is Bargain.
We're back in Tysan. It's past the Spring Equinox and the wedding, sadly. A shame, I'd have liked to see it. But they're all dedicated to war. Poor Talith rarely gets to see her husband during the day, because there's so much to do. On the other hand:
Nights in the fast quiet of their high tower chamber became a guarded time of solace for them both. Clenched in the passion of her husband’s embrace, Talith unleashed every charm she possessed to kindle his ecstasy, then storm his keyed nerves until his ongoing worries became seared away by blind passion. She melted to Lysaer’s skilled touch until her own starved response touched off his rapture in turn, to eclipse and scald out self-awareness. In his arms, she let nothing intrude; not the discipline of fractious young officers, nor frayed temper from the trials created by marching armed companies across leagues of bad roads; or allotments wrung from a dwindled treasury, to hire galleys for crossing Instrell bay to reach established supply lines in Rathain.
Talith had no hope to change fate. Prince Lysaer’s peace of mind was inextricably linked to his drive to kill the Master of Shadow.
At least someone's getting laid.
But this morning is a little different. Lysaer notes that, in the old customs of his homeland, the king would slay a spring boar to prove prowess. He's off going hunting. And this is interesting and a little alarming:
‘You’re mad!’ Talith shot erect in a churned up calyx of silk sheets. ‘Why rush off to bloody some hapless, mean creature?’ Etarran enough to make her pique sting, she flared, ‘Does the Master of Shadow not offer sport enough?’
A dangerous, brittle stillness claimed the space where Lysaer stood. Then the hiss of his expelled breath tore through his protracted quiet. ‘Dare you question my love for you?’
Talith gasped. ‘Ath show me mercy, how can it compete?’ And the tears came, hot and stormy, for the way his honest hurt could devastate her defences. ‘Is it so hard?’ With sadly swallowed pride, she admitted, ‘I dread the day you must leave me.’
If this were Roberson, I'd bitch about the non-sequitur. Here though it's got a purpose. A scary one. Get the Hell out of there, Talith.
Lysaer speechifies:
A boot dropped with a thud against the carpet. Then the mattress gave to his knee. Cool fingers cradled Talith’s chin, turned her stiff neck. Lysaer’s lips moulded to hers and shared the salt on her mouth. ‘One old boar shouldn’t keep me past nightfall if I’m quick and skilled. As for my regard, lady wife, how can that be measured against a commensurate evil? You’ve married a prince who is human flesh and blood.’ Like the rip of cold iron, he added, ‘If you, who are closest, think my heart isn’t torn, then rejoice, for I have triumphed. Every man bound to follow me onto the field must never guess how this duty chafes my spirit. Did you forget?’
His grip tightened. ‘The criminal I go to ruin is my mother’s bastard son. I beg you, bear up and be brave. The killing of a half-brother is burden enough on my conscience.’
This might be the first time since the curse that Lysaer's acknowledged their blood relation. Somehow it is not reassuring.
So Lysaer is hunting, but somewhere along the way, he slips away from his escort. He's not really interested in a ceremonial boar hunt. He's got bigger fish to fry. And an alliance to make. But interestingly, right at this moment, Lysaer is alone and contemplative, musing about magic and his mother:
Truly alone for the first hour since the machinations of a sorcerer had banished him through a World Gate into exile, shouldered since with responsibility bequeathed by long-forgotten ancestors, Lysaer thought of the mother he had barely known. Lost when he was four into the arms of a s’Ffalenn lover, she had been the only daughter of a high mage. From her had come his given gift of light and Arithon’s deadly touch at weaving shadow. Lysaer’s last memories of her were indelibly twined with the scents of citrus and spices; of delicate jewels and silver chains, and a rippled fall of pale hair. The Lady Talera had made no spells in his presence that he could recall. More clearly he remembered his father’s savage rages, the acrimony of the kingdom’s prim seneschal, and the lengthy, hushed sessions of the kingdom council following her repudiated marriage vows.
Horror still revisited through his recollection of the trials, the miasma of late-burning oil lamps intermingled with the sweaty fear of the accused. Then the weeping agony of the families through the purges, as every man, woman and child suspected of sorcerous activity, or in sheltering the queen in her escape, was sent to the executioner’s block for justice. The poisoned, vicious anger of his royal father still cut, at his request to ask his mother’s family for the training to develop his born talents to full advantage.
Whatever cloaking spells and trickery Queen Talera had used to shame her lawful marriage and beget her bastard, her cuckolded husband never shed his passionate distrust of magecraft. Her legitimate firstborn had grown to manhood without so much as a herb witch to tell him whether he had inherited any further arcane potential from the distaff side of his bloodline.
Whereas Arithon had been raised by the high mage himself. His powers had been moulded by the arduous discipline demanded by a master’s training
1. A psychologist could probably do a lot with all of this. Particularly the associations between magic, femininity, his mother and his younger brother.
2. And we see the darker side of Amroth. Witch hunts. Men, women and even children suspected of sorcery or in aiding the queen were executed. Even CHILDREN.
This is the world that Lysaer grew up in. I suppose it's not surprising then that the Mistwraith was able to twist his sense of justice, when it would have already had to have been warped beyond recognition to simply accommodate all this to begin with.
It's a miracle that Lysaer was ever sane.
He remembers wise words from his father:
The words still haunted, burred with the memory of the wax-scented gloom of the privy chamber as the royal spate of rage finally cooled. ‘My son, ideals and strengths and the foundation of sound rule are never so simply reconciled. A king who values his subjects will treat with them as a fellow man. Power to upset natural order goes ill with royal office, that by nature must wield influence over lives. The concepts of justice and fairness are not born through greater strength. They spring instead from sympathy with the lowliest weakness.’ The King of Amroth had looked upon his heir, the seams of a life-time’s bitter decisions softened to entreaty on his face. ‘The judgements you make for the crown when you inherit will be hard enough on the heart. You will need a mind undivided between the laws that must govern humanity and the uncanny secrets of the mysteries.’
There is something FASCINATING about these words coming from Amroth's king. Remember, this is the man who would have been more than happy to execute an entire ship's crew if his wife's son died before he could torture him. We've heard about Karthan villages burned and terrifying witch hunts.
But Arithon's grandfather had said much the same thing. (I'm not quite sure how that works when Rauven was a country in its own right, but well, hypocrisy has stopped very few people.)
Lysaer thinks about how Queen Talera claimed she was righting a balance, and only then had been "lonely enough to bury the grief of her sacrifice in the comfort of illicit love."
...really, Talera? Really? Your "sacrifice" involved banging a hot pirate king who just happened to be your husband's greatest enemy? Couldn't you have at least taken your kid with you? Sure, it would have pissed off your husband, but you pretty much did that anyway. (For the record, I don't blame her for leaving her abusive, asshole husband. It's just everything ELSE was really fucking ill-conceived.)
More fascinating shit here:
Briefly beguiled into friendship with her bastard, Lysaer had seen the insidious way fine knowledge of power could corrupt mercy. The secret fear rode his heart: how the means to sway fate might corrode a man’s spirit to forget his humanity and embrace an abstruse creed without pity. Wider knowledge could blind the eye to suffering; or why else should Athera’s greatest arcane order give even indirect sanction to a prince who had turned the shining wisdom of his upbringing toward acts of unconscionable slaughter?
The blind hypocrisy is just truly magnificent, isn't it? Who led the army to whom again? Who permitted the slaughter of women and children?
I will grant that the Fellowship IS useless. But this isn't why.
Anyway, here's here to see if the Koriathain will help him track down a "felon".
Is Arithon a felon? I mean, I wouldn't put it past Lysaer to try him in abstentia, so I suppose so.
You may wonder what Lysaer has to offer them. Certainly the Koriani witch does. The Koriani prefer Lysaer to Arithon, but they know full well that if they give Lysaer the answer he wants, there'll be war. And they're not actually on board with that.
The Koriani have their own plans for Arithon, after all. But Lysaer hears something else in her refusal to help: the Koriani Prime DOES know where Arithon is.
He gives a good speech:
Lysaer outfaced the crone’s ire. ‘Before the Mistwraith invaded Athera, your order did not trifle with nursing the sick. They peddled no petty charms for iyat bane and let herb witches attend birthings and sick livestock. Koriani magecraft at one time was said to cure mortal wounds. Initiate sisters weren’t culled from your orphanages, but sent to your hospices by parents, lest their talents languish without teaching. What of your hopes to restore such lost influence? Is your sisterhood content to remain overshadowed by events? As a prince pledged to mend this land’s rifts and sad hatreds, I would suggest your Prime’s goal and mine at heart aren’t so terribly different.’
This provokes the enchantress. Lysaer uses light to dramatically illuminate the room. She tells him to speak his bribe. And whoo boy. Lysaer has one.
You'd be forgiven for forgetting, but back in Mistwraith, there was a chapter that took place at Althain Tower. Lysaer was given a tour then, by Traithe, and he happened to see a very large amethyst, that Traithe identified as the Great Waystone of the Koriathain.
They gave an excuse for why they had it. The sorceresses never asked for its location or to get it back! I said that was bullshit then. And it was.
And now Lysaer has just given that knowledge to the Koriathain.
We get a nice explanation of why this is important to them:
Misplaced since the time of the uprising, the Great Waystone held capacity to channel the trained awareness of one hundred and eighty enchantresses. The crystal had stood as the keystone of Koriani power. Since its disappearance, the sisterhood had been as a body blinded, reduced to crippling weakness.
If means could be found to restore its possession into the hands of the Prime, the order could rebuild its lost influence. The Koriathain might regain their former strength to steer events in mercy and compassion; to alleviate those trends of daily suffering the Fellowship in its arrogance deemed unworthy of attention. Through the Great Waystone, the medicinal virtues of herbals could be raised beyond individual treatment, plagues could be averted, the course of storms bent aside; earthquake and wildfire forced quiescent. Once more the order could act to spare the world from its imprint of senseless, natural disasters.
So let's see what comes of this:
1. Lysaer now has Arithon's exact location. Specifically they give him this vision:
… the azure harbour sparkled under mild, salt winds, creased by the satin splash of breakers. Against a fan of palm trees and the fluffy, low clouds of the tropics, a man in sailor’s garb closed a bargain with an aproned craftsman. ‘My shipyard will be settled at Merior by the Sea,’ he informed. ‘Your contract will extend for two years, through the course of building ten brigantines.’ As he turned to depart, the fall of southern sunlight limned glossy black hair and a face of steep planes and narrow angles; eyes clear-cut as dark tourmaline revealed him as the scion of s’Ffalenn …
How helpful of Arithon to announce the location at that moment.
2. The Koriathain now know where their great power source is. When they get it back, their strength will be restored, with a brand new, completely understandable grudge against the Fellowship.
3. The Koriathain are still trying to deal with Arithon themselves, and now they'll be more powerful. This will fuck Arithon over in a number of ways.
Considering the Fellowship supposedly has a vested interest in putting Arithon on his throne, they spend a shit ton of time just fucking him over.
So now, Lysaer is pretty much in a berserker state thanks to the curse (acting up when he saw his brother), and "lent a hunter's concentration by the riptide shock of Desh-thiere's curse", he basically finds a boar and kills the shit out of it, singlehandedly.
It dies in agony, and Lysaer "revel[s] in its pain.
He twisted the spear, felt the blade slide past bone and bite deeper, to hack and ravage and bleed white. Through his curse-driven fervour of elation, he gloated in the knowledge that finally, his half-brother lay within reach.
Before the turn of the year, the unprincipled creature dying on his steel would be the Shadow Master, Arithon s’Ffalenn.
So Lysaer returns triumphant, with both boar and Arithon's location. Worse though, there was something else in the vision:
Feeling cleansed, Lysaer understood that the Koriani witch had been wise in her way to arrange his tryst with the boar. The catharsis of violence had restored his control. He could review her scrying now with equanimity. A detail slipped past in the first heat of vision pricked now to the forefront of his mind.
The bullion chest in the sand by his half-brother’s foot, offered to bind honest craftsmen, had carried an Etarran guild brand as well as the wax seal of Tysan. The Master of Shadow could never have acquired such a coffer, except through Lady Maenalle’s collaboration.
Oops.
Well, Tysan's clans were already kind of screwed over by all this. But now, Lysaer has declared Maenalle a traitor and her life forfeit.
I'm going to blame the Fellowship for this bullshit too.
--
The final section is Interstices:
1) Sethvir actually misses both the death of the boar and the scrying, because he's busy trying to find his lost colleague.
Because, say it with me, the Fellowship is fucking useless.
2) A dishonored captain, marked with raw whip scars, is sentenced to exile from Alestron.
3) The companies are leaving Avenor, and Talith wishes Lysaer a tearful goodbye.