The Wars of Light and Shadow

‘There was always a contingency,’ Arithon agreed. Settled enough to have recovered his appetite, he scraped the savory last dregs from the bowl and washed out the residue with snowmelt. Just as seamlessly unperturbed, he requested an oiled rag. Then he cleared his crusted sword from its scabbard and began the deferred chore of cleaning. The fouled blade was rubbed down through an ongoing discussion of covert land routes to Tharidor.

As though fingers and rag were not crimsoned with stains from six brutally slaughtered guardsmen, Arithon concluded, ‘Evenstar should call in port there sometime before the thaws break. She’ll give us secure passage to Alestron, where Vhandon and Talvish will see us safely back to the Khetienn, offshore.’

When Dakar looked mollified, Arithon grinned. ‘Well, that was the promise that bought their hardheaded cooperation.’ He gave a critical squint down his blade, the unearthly, dark metal of its forging like wet slate. The inlaid Paravian runes caught the sheen from the fire, sullen in mystery as molten glass drawn on the rod before shaping. Lined in the leaping, uncertain flame light, the thread silver edges gleamed straight and true. The uncanny temper showed no pit of rust, nor the wear left from commonplace sharpening. ‘Vhandon got his chance to revisit home soil, and Talvish couldn’t argue the blandishment. The s’Brydion duke can most likely be cozened to keep Khetienn provisioned in my absence.’

Arithon tossed the fouled rag in the flames, then companionably offered the oil to Fionn Areth, whose weapon was wet, and not kept preserved by ensorceling spells out of legend. ‘You’ll find out soon enough,’ the Shadow Master confided. ‘The s’Brydion clan are warmongering lions who judge a man first by his armament.’

‘What makes you think I’ll stand with you to Tharidor? Or that I care for the criminal bent of your byplays with Lysaer’s sworn allies?’ Fionn Areth drew himself up, braced to defiance by the spelled wine. ‘On no count did I promise to stay in your company beyond Jaelot’s outer walls.’

‘Well then, oil your sword,’ urged Arithon, agreeable. ‘Because on that count we’re going to fight.’

‘Damn you both!’ Dakar plowed erect, the stick he used to poke up the fire dropped in a shower of sparks. ‘I may have wards up, but they won’t protect from an outright indulgence of folly.’

As Fionn Areth accepted the invitation and the oil, and Arithon, indulgent, tore another strip of rag, the Mad Prophet howled ripe protest. ‘Fiends plague, you goose-brained s’Ffalenn bastard! That boy is scarcely past adolescence! To him, your fool mockery is serious!’

‘I’m serious, as well.’ Arithon’s green eyes stayed imperious, their hard brilliance as faceted emerald. To the young man who ranged opposite, drawn steel in hand, plying the rag over and over his weapon’s honed edge, Rathain’s sovereign prince minced no niceties at all. ‘Shall we cross swords? Very good.

That should settle all differences. Let’s please set the stakes very clearly beforehand.’

‘No stakes,’ Fionn Areth rebutted. ‘I just want you dead. That’s what drew me from Araethura in the first place.’

‘I took that as given,’ said Arithon s’Ffalenn. ‘Now hear out my terms.’ Against Dakar’s furious, clashing reproof, his challenge continued, implacable. ‘I say you’re on our side, whether you like my morals or not. The Koriathain are to blame for your trial of misfortune, but their meddling left you with my face. Despite my list of disreputable habits, I won’t stand aside and see you gutted as my namesake. Neither will I drag my close friends into jeopardy by saving you from the faggots again. The only men I trust with your safety are my own. To change that, you’ll have to defeat me.’

For answer, Fionn Areth stripped off cloak and jacket and jerked up his chin. ‘We’ll take this outside?’

Arithon arose, all trim grace, to meet him. The blanket slipped off his squared shoulders, unnoticed, while the smoke-dusky steel in his hand flashed with a predator’s confidence. ‘Kill me, and the townsmen will heap you with praise. No doubt Dakar will be amazed to see how you go about claiming the hero’s honors while wearing my royal likeness.’

‘You can’t do this.’ A contrast of lumbering corpulence, the Mad Prophet shoved upright and attempted to thrust in between.

Arithon drove him back with a glance, then faced Fionn Areth, the furious temper of his bloodline a welded, unyielding presence. ‘Seize the opportunity,’ he goaded. ‘Take me down! Cast me bleeding in the mud. For the murdered children at Tal Quorin, seize the moment to claim retribution.’

Fixated, Fionn Areth stalked past the fire. ‘Shall we start?’ He tested the edge on his blade, prepared to cut down that light, silken voice, the withdrawn countenance and cat-footed poise of the spiteful creature who opposed him. Who wore frayed wool and linen with the arrogance of fine velvet, and whose contempt seemed to scald every private, inner wound and gall-broken dream with bright viciousness.

Dakar watched, stunned breathless, as the goatherd arose to take the thrown gauntlet. Like a moth’s suicidal plunge to the flame, he resumed his plea for intervention. ‘Arithon, damn you! Have you gone mad? The wards I’ve set weren’t made to mask sound! Fight with steel, and the noise will draw guardsmen.’ The Mad Prophet snatched at Arithon’s sleeve and found himself shaken off.

‘I want this,’ said the Master of Shadow, unequivocal. His most scalding nod encompassed Fionn Areth, who paced back and forth with impatience. ‘He holds my given word I would answer to justice. Since we’re not going to stop, show the good sense to back off.’

‘Good sense?’ Dakar cried in shrill disbelief. ‘You’re the one who intends to cross steel in the dark, over glare ice and slippery footing! Not since you tried tienelle before Dier Kenton Vale have I seen you act this irresponsible.’

‘Then you’ll just have to trust that I have my sound reasons.’ Arithon brushed past, committed.

As he rounded the fire, Dakar glimpsed the stained bandage showing beneath his left shirt cuff. Concern fanned his anger. ‘Then get yourself killed! I don’t want to watch.’ While the prince and his look-alike stepped into the storm, the Mad Prophet turned to the thankless task of breaking camp and saddling the horses.

In the millyard outside, the raking east wind swept the snow to a thinned, brittle sheet. The pristine layer silenced footfalls as Fionn Areth and the man he pledged to destroy lined up to cross killing steel. A gust hissed down the cleared gash of the tailrace. Its funneled fury lashed at exposed hands and faces and moaned unchecked through the fir thickets. Darkness choked the impaired visibility down to an unreliable few yards.

If the man of experience now held second thoughts, no sign of hesitancy showed in the angle of the sword he raised up to guard point.

Nor did Fionn Areth shrink at the crux. Heedless that spelled wine had bolstered his resources, he stood braced to reclaim willful charge of the prophecy the Araethurian seeress had made at his birth. ‘Begin,’ he rang out. ‘In the name of the Light, start the trial whenever you’re ready.’

Arithon s’Ffalenn remained stilled, his held steel a motionless line scribed against felted darkness. ‘Oh, no boy. You have your priorities dead wrong. For Alliance principles or for Morriel Prime, I won’t play. If you would aspire to become Lysaer’s puppet, you’ll close on the same terms that he has. Just as at Tal Quorin and Vastmark, you’ll have to be first to attack.’

‘You think I lack courage?’ Fionn Areth launched into an immediate lunge, gratified by the belling clang as his blade met his enemy’s firm parry.

The slick footing demanded exacting balance. Arithon engaged the classic defense, his style and form letter-perfect. Despite adverse conditions, Fionn Areth flushed with self-confidence. His years of hard training rose to the occasion. He moved to heightened focus, prepared to carve out his own ebullient brilliance.

He blocked Arithon’s strong but predictable counterthrust, and answered. Steel chimed. Like dancers engaged in partnered combat, the duelists circled, their swords a glancing point of contact between them. Fionn Areth took no chances. Deliberate in technique, he held down his hot nerves, gratified as he measured Arithon’s offensive, and content to await the clear-cut opportunity to close with a lethal stroke.

Through the back-and-forth, testing exchange of first blows, he matched his antagonist’s form. Not a large man, the Master of Shadow countered weight and force with neat footwork. The polished execution of each thrust and parry displayed the temper of unruffled experience. Fionn Areth gave that spare style his reasoned analysis. He had heard the exalted heights to which this man, as Masterbard, had carried his gift of music. Time demanded limitation: few men might support the same brilliance in two different arenas at once.

Engage and spring back, then sideslip; the locked patterns of combat stamped overlapped prints in the draw. Each parry cast the ring of sheared steel through the cloaking mantle of darkness. Between whining gusts, the high banks of the millrace funneled the din of each passage. Nor did the muffling snowfall do aught to mask tortured dissonance, as blade locked to blade, then screamed edge to flat upon parting.

Emerged from the ruin with the horses on lead reins, the Mad Prophet watched the exchange with worried eyes and five centuries of jaded outlook. He had seen Rathain’s liege through stresses and hardship, and the bitter immediacy of forced slaughter. This unfolding encounter was a bald-faced farce. Each contemptuous movement was delivered in the snapping, crisp sarcasm that marked Arithon’s inimical mockery. Nor was Dakar surprised when the moment arrived to pair action with needling satire.

‘Very good, boy.’ Arithon effected a lightning-fast disengage. Fionn Areth lurched through an embarrassing stagger as the expected resistance melted away and left him overextended. ‘We’ve practiced each one of the basic attack patterns. Does your repertoire extend to intermediate skill? Go on. Come ahead. Shall we see?’

Backed off, breathing through tight concentration, the younger man threw off distraction. ‘You won’t bait me into losing my temper.’

‘Bait you?’ Tap! Tap! Arithon’s sword struck, controlled to precision that mocked. ‘Shall we pick up the pace?’

Fionn Areth met the devastating rush of the next lunge, wary, not yet thrown on the defensive. ‘You haven’t been fighting,’ he accused through the clamor as his response hammered Arithon’s brisk parry.

‘Oh, I’m fighting,’ assured the Prince of Rathain, his statement a ribbon of provocation. ‘The ground’s not ideal. What’s the point, if I were to push my sweet luck? I might fall on my arse! This duel is serious. Where would the dignity be for the hero? No ballad could applaud you for striking a man when he’s down, freezing the blood from his bollocks.’

‘Save yourself!’ Fionn Areth snarled back. Pride nettled him after all. This was his moment, his foreordained destiny. The criminal he battled should be left without leeway for crack comments on his killer’s reputation. ‘Indeed,’ snapped Fionn Areth, ‘let’s pick up the pace and settle things that much more quickly.’

Through gusts and flurried snowfall, his rapid offensive battered his quick-tongued opponent into gratifying retreat toward the streambank.

Giving way before that driving rush, Arithon let his defending sword yield again and again, the resistance of his earlier style remade into a wall of substanceless air and fast movement. He skipped backward, melting away from hard contact. Fionn Areth thrust and stabbed in frenetic response to each of a dozen snatched openings. The attacks met no target. Back and back in scissor-fast footwork, Arithon gave precious ground. Behind loomed the locked mill wheel, armored in ice, a fixed barrier to choke off his options.

Gauging the distance in one snatched glance, Fionn Areth misjudged his footing. The streambank sloped gently downward, and the extended stride of his lunge landed him on a swept patch of glare ice. Sprawled to one knee, sword flung wide for balance, the herder cried out in consternation. The strong counterblow must inevitably dispatch him before he could salvage his victory.

Yet Arithon merely stood fast and waited, the dark sword in his grasp poised and still.

‘You’re not fighting!’ Fionn Areth scrambled back upright, humiliated and stressed by the blazing pain of a pulled hamstring. ‘Damn you to Sithaer’s bleakest of pits! You give me no contest at all.’

‘You wanted to fight,’ said Prince Arithon, equivocal. ‘I promised you one chance to test me.’

Dakar, by the mill, caught his breath as the scalding invective struck home.

‘I never once gave my word I’d strike back to cause harm,’ Rathain’s prince added, spitefully reasonable. Then, as the goatherd hammered back in offense, he parried, sidestepped, and lagged a half beat to stoop and fling a snatched snow clod. ‘So far, boy, you haven’t shown me the least little cause to feel threatened.’

Struck square in the eye, Fionn Areth hissed a blasphemy. He charged up the streambank. Pressed to animal ferocity, he extended himself to deny his antagonist the chance to regain the high ground.

He encountered instead the breathtaking-fast reflex that trademarked the s’Ffalenn prince’s offensive. ‘No gain without sweat,’ Arithon taunted. ‘You wanted to make an end quickly?’

At each punitive step, through each phase of encounter, Fionn Areth’s convictions were made laughingstock. He was being mauled, mouse to Arithon’s cat, for sheer malice and flippant amusement. The insult struck home, fully and finally; Fionn Areth let fly the chokehold he kept on his temper.

The screaming cry of steel locked to steel filled the draw like the language of vengeance. Theirs was no longer a battle in form, restrained by the dictates of prudence. In snow and darkness, the paired blades carved wild arcs. Dakar, by the mill, mopped sweat from his brow and endured the unbearable, drawn tension. He eschewed use of mage-sight. His weak stomach refused the exactitude of his refined perceptions, lest chance death or injury drag him into the entangling fabric of tragedy. In the absence of light, the duel’s progress became marked by the clangor of parries; of gasped breaths and the rasp as stiff boot soles scuffed over treacherous ground seeking purchase.

Nor had Arithon surrendered his arrogant stance. On a grievous, missed step, in irretrievably marred balance, Fionn Areth’s guarding blade swung too wide. The Shadow Master jerked back his following lunge, and forwent lethal closure yet again.

‘Fight, damn you!’ gasped the enraged Araethurian.

A glib jab in verse, then a love tap with the blade’s flat served him Arithon’s blistering rejection. ‘Kill me, or quit the field outright. You’re not Lysaer, stripling. Desh-thiere’s curse doesn’t bind me. Your blood on my hands would be a cheap thrill, and I don’t like hunting sparrows for sport!’

Fionn Areth bore in, finesse abandoned. Though he felt the searing burn of each breath, the spelled wine blunted fatigue. He smashed his clamoring, brutal attack into Arithon’s graceful, quick parries. Weight and force would carry the contest in the end. Persistence must eventually wear down the blithe turn of speed that, time and again, bought evasion. The impact of steel striking steel numbed his ears. His eyes stung with running sweat. The featureless night and fine, veiling snowfall reduced his opponent to a light-footed shadow that went and came to the relentless demand of his swordplay.

The change in the match occurred without warning. In the space between heartbeats, the Shadow Master’s light-handed style ripped away, immolated by driving brilliance.

Fionn Areth gasped. Scrambling to maintain a classic defense against an onslaught of innovative genius, he at last understood the prelude had been a bald sham all along. This was a master swordsman he faced. Anytime, even now, the dark blade could slice in and take him at will. He lived and moved on his enemy’s sufferance, with no prayer for reprieve if he faltered. Gone were the mocking phrases as well, vanished like silk over flame. Lashed by a whistling, furious offensive, Fionn Areth heard Dakar shouting.

Then he shared the reason for his enemy’s unveiled form: the thunder of oncoming horsemen. An armed company of Jaelot’s guard charged the mill, drawn on by the belling notes of swordplay.

Rushed to elation, that despite his failed skill the sorcerer would receive his due punishment, Fionn Areth took heart. He pressed on in fixed purpose to sustain his defense until the mayor’s pursuit overtook them.

Just as obstinate, Arithon extended his will to bind up his steel and disarm him. The slide of rushed footfalls scuffed off the thinned snow. Locked now in true combat, the Shadow Master and his double circled and feinted and thrust across an arena of pebbled, gray ice. Panted breath and marred balance tore gaps in technique. The raging clang of each closure sang ragged where one or the other combatant scrambled to regain slipped footing.

And still, two opportune openings came and went; even threatened with capture, Arithon abjured the disabling stroke.

Dakar shoved both fists against his shut teeth to stifle a screamed exhortation. One trip, one distraction could precipitate a fatality. Too wise to stress Arithon’s rapt concentration, he recognized the moves that led into the wicked reverse stroke, and disarmament. The same sequence had once downed Lord Erlien of Alland, in a trial fought years past in Selkwood. Fionn Areth, still green, could only withstand the attacking diversion, without clue his defeat was self-evident.

But this night, on the winter-cold banks of the millstream, Arithon’s skilled tactic went wrong. That stunning, last bind became slowed by a skid, then a misstep caught short of recovery. His dark steel jerked downward, unpartnered, while his left toe gave way underneath him.

Fionn Areth’s missed thrust drove on, unhindered. Given no option to avoid a stabbed chest, Arithon guarded with the back of Alithiel’s quilloned grip. Dakar shouted as steel screamed and slid through. Yet no outcry could arrest the following force of Fionn Areth’s stripped hatred. The sword rang between Alithiel’s wrought rings, and impaled her s’Ffalenn bearer’s right hand.

Footing recaptured, Arithon sprang backward. Blood slicked the grasp of fingers gone strengthless. As he switched grip and fell back on a left-handed style, he was going to miss the next parry.

Yet Fionn Areth showed stubborn mettle and withheld the lunge that would have pressed the advantage. ‘You have a main gauche,’ he said, raging bitter. ‘Why haven’t you thought to use it?’

Arithon stood, hard-breathing and stilled, while the blare of a horn clove the night. An officer’s bellow spurred the pounding hoofbeats on a converging course down the draw. ‘All right,’ he agreed. ‘But let’s not spoil the odds, my two blades to your one.’ He flicked back his cloak, drew the evil, quilloned weapon from the sheath at his hip. ‘You take the main gauche,’ he invited Fionn Areth. ‘I prefer my small dagger.’

As if no company of guardsmen closed in, a fast toss shied the weapon, grip first.

Fionn Areth fielded the catch in astonishment.

‘Ath, no!’ pealed Dakar, wide-awake to fresh danger even before his tuned mage-sense seared warning across his overcranked nerves.

This was the same main gauche that had struck Caolle down one wretched night seventeen years ago. Its steel still harbored the horrific stamp of past dissidence: the cruel death and bloodshed of a liegeman fallen for true loyalty, and a wounding of conscience that to this day stood unrequited. In an enemy’s hand, fed by hot temper and the high stakes of extremity, that grievous, dark imprint might refire. In lingering resonance, old grief could allow such raised dissonance the opening to cloud Arithon’s better judgment. Charged by s’Ffalenn guilt, a self-abnegating justice might complete that blade’s accursed history.

But the fight disallowed any pause to broach reason. Fionn Areth bore in, sword leveled, the main gauche couched in a determinedly competent left hand.

Arithon met him, his sword tip unsteady in his maimed clasp. The weapon he retained for his left-handed guard was a suicide’s choice, a slender poignard for eating. Its tanged blade had no cross guard, no length, and no leverage to outmatch the swung impetus of a sword stroke.

Dakar’s rush to intervene was dragged short by four horses, planted by herdbound instinct. With raised heads and pricked ears, their curiosity had snagged upon Jaelot’s approaching destriers. Dakar snarled words concerning maggot-infested dog meat.

While undaunted in the clearing, the Araethurian goatherd readied the stop thrust to murder the last s’Ffalenn prince. Restored to self-confidence, in strict tutored form, Fionn Areth held his unwavering focus. He tracked the raised sword that would fail to deflect him, and so missed the deft flick of Arithon’s left hand, that launched the flat, little dagger.

The knife struck, sunk hilt deep in the goatherd’s extended shoulder. He cried out, hand gone nerveless. His sword cast free, falling, sliced a glancing gash in the high cuff of Arithon’s boot. Left the main gauche, but no space to react, Fionn Areth ended his thrust, still in balance, but unable to effect a timely recovery given the wretched footing.

Arithon stepped close. Stripped to desperate efficiency, he struck one sharp blow. Alithiel’s jeweled pommel clubbed Fionn Areth’s exposed nape and felled him, unconscious.

The horses gave way before Dakar’s goading. They sidled ahead in snorting excitement, while down the choked gash of the draw the charging lancers bore in on the ruined mill. Swearing in language to raise fire and storm, Dakar reached Arithon’s side.

‘You’ve made a right mess!’ he snapped, voice cracking as he stooped to assess the wound in the prostrate boy’s shoulder. ‘Ath on earth, man! Why did you have to choose now to indulge in a schoolboy’s folly?’

Breathing too hard, his sword smartly sheathed, Arithon recovered the herder’s dropped weapons from the snow. He secured Fionn Areth’s bared blade through a pack strap, then reclaimed the cold burden of the main gauche. ‘No folly,’ he gasped, flat sober and strained. ‘My given promise to meet him in challenge was made in dire straits, to make him leave Jaelot without argument.’

‘Damn good that does, now!’ Dakar retorted, then caught his breath at the stony expression locked upon Arithon’s face. ‘Don’t mourn. He’s not dying. Just stuck like a pig at the butcher’s. He won’t bleed to death. That’s assuming our captors allow me the grace to set him in bandages before they drag us in chains to the dungeon.’

Arithon’s relief was a palpable force. He caught the near gelding’s bridle and flung the reins over the animal’s plunging head. ‘We aren’t going to be taken.’ He reached again, snapped the packhorse’s lead out of the Mad Prophet’s stunned grasp, then vaulted into the saddle. ‘You’re to keep that boy safe! Promise me! Use every means necessary, breach my private trust as you must. Just teach him that I’m not his enemy.’

Dakar missed his grab for the gelding’s lost lead rein. Ever and always, he failed to keep pace with s’Ffalenn cunning through a crisis. ‘Arithon, no!’

But the oncoming riders were near, and fast closing, leaving no time to argue poor strategy.

‘Ward this place, now! I’ll divert them.’ Arithon closed his heels, spurred, pitched the horse underneath him from a standstill into a gallop. ‘Given shadow, I ought to manage.’ As the packhorse swerved and bolted in response, Arithon called over his shoulder. ‘I’ll find you, or meet you when Evenstar docks!’

Both horses and rider crashed into the wood, extended in flat-out flight.

Dakar stood his ground by the deserted mill. He extended the spells for ward and concealment by rote, while the horn call as the lancers wheeled and turned sounded all but on top of him. Nor could an untenable choice be reversed. Shouts pealed through the storm, fired by discovery as Arithon crossed a thinned patch of wood, or perhaps a woodcutter’s clearing. He would have lagged purposefully for that brief sighting, to draw the danger away after him.

Dakar could not rejoice for the respite of safety. Naught remained but to tend Fionn Areth. That charge left the spellbinder heartsick with shame, for in fact, against the world’s peril posed by the Mistwraith, the life left in his hands was the expendable cipher. Whether moved by compassion for feckless youth, or some sense of misguided loyalty, Dakar knew his excuse for inaction fell short. He had failed the primary obligation set upon him by command of the Fellowship Sorcerers.

Rathain’s irreplaceable, last prince now rode alone. He carried no better protection than his birth gift of shadow, and a paltry few sigils of concealment stitched into the livery hack’s saddlecloth. Whipped to zealous pursuit, the mayor’s guard from Jaelot pounded hard on his trail, swallowed at length by the fall of fresh snow and the gloved ink of solstice night.

Winter Solstice Night 5670