Curse of the Mistwraith. Janny Wurts
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The Wars of Light and Shadow
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Curse of the Mistwraith
Janny Wurts
Table of Contents
XVII. MARCH UPON STRAKEWOOD FOREST
The Wars of Light and Shadow were fought during the third age of Athera, the most troubled and strife-filled era recorded in all of history. At that time Arithon, called Master of Shadow, battled the Lord of Light through five centuries of bloody and bitter conflict. If the canons of the religion founded during that period are reliable, the Lord of Light was divinity incarnate, and the Master of Shadow a servant of evil, spinner of dark powers. Temple archives attest with grandiloquent force to be the sole arbiters of truth.
Yet contrary evidence supports a claim that the Master was unjustly aligned with evil. Fragments of manuscript survive which expose the entire religion of Light as fraud, and award Arithon the attributes of saint and mystic instead.
Because the factual account lay hopelessly entangled between legend and theology, sages in the seventh age meditated upon the ancient past, and recalled through visions the events as they happened. Contrary to all expectation, the conflict did not begin on the council stair of Etarra, nor even on the soil of Athera itself; instead the visions started upon the wide oceans of the splinter world, Dascen Elur.
This is the chronicle the sages recovered. Let each who reads determine the good and the evil for himself.
All for the waste of Karthan’s lands the Leopard sailed the main. s’Ilessid King then cursed s’Ffalenn, who robbed him, gold and grain.
stanza from a ballad of Dascen Elur
The longboat cleaved waters stained blood-red by sunset, far beyond sight of any shore. A league distant from her parent ship, at the limit of her designated patrol, she rose on the crest of a swell. The bosun in command shouted hoarsely from the stern. ‘Hold stroke!’
Beaten with exhaustion and the aftermath of battle, his crewmen responded. Four sets of oars lifted, dripping above waters fouled by oil and the steaming timbers of burned warships.
‘Survivors to starboard.’ The bosun pointed toward two figures who clung to a snarl of drifting spars. ‘Quick, take a bearing.’
A man shipped his looms to grab a hand compass. As the longboat dipped into the following trough, the remaining sailors bent to resume stroke. Oar shafts bit raggedly into the sea as they swung the heavy bow against the wind.
The bosun drew breath to reprimand their sloppy timing, then held his tongue. The men were tired as he was; though well seasoned to war through the feud which ran deadly and deep between Amroth and Karthan’s pirates, this had been no ordinary skirmish. Seven full-rigged warships in a fleet of seventeen had fallen before a single brigantine under the hated leopard banner. The bosun swore. He resisted a morbid urge to brood over losses; lucky, they were, to have the victory at all. The defeated brigantine’s captain had been none other than Arithon s’Ffalenn, called sorcerer and Master of Shadow.
The next swell rolled beneath the keel. Heaved and lifted on its crest, the longboat’s peaked prow momentarily eclipsed the castaways who struggled in the water. Afraid to lose sight of them, the bosun set the compassman as observer in the bow. Then he called encouragement while his oarsmen picked an erratic course through the splintered clots of planking and cordage which wallowed, treacherous as reefs upon the sea. The crew laboured in dead-faced silence. Not even the scraping bump of the corpse which passed beneath the keel caused them to alter their stroke. Horror had numbed every man left alive after the nightmare of fire, sorcery and darkness that Arithon had unleashed before the end.
The boat drew abreast of the survivors. Overtaken by a drift of wind-borne smoke, the bosun squinted through burning eyes. Only one victim looked to be conscious. He clung with whitened fingers to the nearer end of the spar, while at his back, another sailor lay lashed against the heaving pull of the waves. The knots at this one’s waist were half loosened, as if, seeing help on the way, his companion had clumsily tried to free him.
‘Ship