Warhost of Vastmark

Warhost of Vastmark
Janny Wurts

Tricked once more by his wily half-brother, Lysaer arrives at the tiny harbour town of Merior, to find that his brother’s ship yards have been meticulously destroyed and abandoned. But where is Arithon? The forces of light and shadow circle and feint, drawing ever closer to a huge conflict.Tricked once more by his wily half-brother, Lysaer, Lord of Light, arrives at the tiny harbour town of Merior to find that Arithon’s ship yards have been abandoned and meticulously destroyed, and that the Master of Shadow has disappeared as if into thin air.Meanwhile Arithon and the Mad Prophet Dakar are travelling on foot through the treacherous Kelhorn Mountains towards the Vastmark clans, there to raise further support for his cause. But raising a warhost is a costly business. Is it mere coincidence that Princess Talith – Lysaer’s beautiful, headstrong wife – is taken captive and held for a vast ransom by a master brigand?The forces of light and shadow circle and feint, drawing ever closer to a huge conflict. And in the background the Fellowship of Seven Sorcerers and the Koriani Enchantresses watch and plan, and wait…

JANNY WURTS

Warhost of Vastmark

The Wars of Light and Shadows Volume 3

Copyright (#ulink_0858b161-aaf4-5cc4-af3f-5d34c45e74df)

This novel is entirely a work a fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

HarperVoyager An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk/)

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 1988

Copyright © Janny Wurts 1995

The Author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication

Source ISBN: 9780006482079

Ebook Edition © OCTOBER 2010 ISBN: 9780007364398

Version: 2016-10-21

For Jane Johnson, for the grand leap of faith -thanks is too small a word.

Contents

Title Page (#u5e937b80-58e4-56c8-8b89-a20659cd2796)

Copyright (#ue936f02e-51f5-5cea-b18c-8906cdc52b7e)

Dedication (#uc2bfd1ee-424a-5bf7-9464-5261f2754f7f)

I. SECOND CONVOCATION (#ude8f3be8-b560-5967-8543-a46c1a8d87c8)

II. SHIPS OF MERIOR (#u33a75383-6589-5525-a241-bb8f09a75874)

III. VASTMARK (#uecd44a40-684f-581c-a4ad-88b9796a79e3)

IV. THIRD INFAMY (#litres_trial_promo)

V. THREE SHIPS (#litres_trial_promo)

VI. OSTERMERE (#litres_trial_promo)

VII. GRAND AUGURY (#litres_trial_promo)

VIII. STRIKE AT DIER KENTON (#litres_trial_promo)

IX. COUNTERPLOYS (#litres_trial_promo)

Glossary (#litres_trial_promo)

Acknowledgments (#litres_trial_promo)

Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

Also by the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

I. SECOND CONVOCATION (#ulink_2a6ef238-5ddf-5076-a383-3ded484ba8f6)

Sethvir of Althain soaked in his hip bath those rare times when he suffered glum spirits. Lapped like a carp in warm water, his hair frizzled over the sculptured bones of thin shoulders, he sulked with his chin in his fists while the steam whorled up through the hanks of his beard and dripped off the white combs of his brows. Misted and half-closed with melancholy, his eyes seemed to cast their brooding focus on his gnarled toes, now perched in a row on the tub’s rim.

The nails curled in neglected need of trimming.

Of more telling concern to Sethvir, Prince Arithon’s brilliant strike at Minderl Bay had still failed the wider scope of his intent. If the allied northern war host recruited to hound him had been dismantled with lightest losses, Lysaer s’Ilessid’s misled following had not awakened to perceive the stark truth: that what had destroyed their sea fleet at Werpoint had been less a bloody ploy of the Shadow Master’s than the mishandled force of Lysaer’s own gift of light, maligned by Deshthiere’s curse.

The one ship’s captain lent the insight to know differently lay slain, beset in a dingy dockside alley. The footpads who knifed him had been hired by Avenor’s Lord Commander for political expediency, Sethvir knew beyond doubt. As Arithon’s sole witness, and a man who had viewed the unalloyed directive of the Mistwraith’s geas firsthand, the seaman had been killed before he could cast any pall of public doubt upon Prince Lysaer’s judgment in defence. Remanned by a crew of less-questionable loyalty, his benighted brig would sail south with the tide for Alestron, Lysaer s’Ilessid and the pick of his officers on board.

The sorry conclusion weighed like a stone in the heart.

If Arithon had just demonstrated his fullest understanding of the curse that shackled his will, if this second encounter at Minderl Bay had increased his respect for its fearful train of ill consequence, his half-brother Lysaer owned no such searching self-awareness. Misconstrued by the gift of the s’Ilessid royal line, which bound his relentless pursuit of justice, Tysan’s lost prince remained the sad puppet of circumstance. To the root of his conscience, he stayed righteously assured that he held to honourable principles. He believed his born cause was to hunt down and eliminate a confirmed minion of evil.

Sethvir glowered into the soap-scummed surface of his bathwater, then blinked, as if for the barest, fragmentary second he had thought to see stars in the suds clinging about his knobby knees.

Stars’ idle musing sharpened into farsight. The muddled distance in the Sorcerer’s blue-green eyes snapped into sudden, sharp focus. His wet skin stabbed into gooseflesh, Sethvir bolted from his tub. Water splashed jagged stains in his abused scarlet carpet. He snatched up his robe, burrowed it over his wet head, then paused through a drawn-out, prickling shudder as dread raked through him once again.

Grazed against the limits of his awareness, beyond the world’s wind-spun cloak of living air, an event of chilling wrongness carved a line. Its fire-tailed passage jostled the harmonics of the stars into thin and jangling discord.

Sethvir took only an instant to confirm that the upset was bound to an associate Sorcerer’s Name and signature. Kharadmon of the Fellowship was at long last returning from the interdicted worlds beyond South Gate, and an immediate crisis came with him.

The Warden of Althain rushed barefoot from his personal chambers. He slapped wet footprints up the spiral stair to reach the library in the tower’s topmost chamber. Even as his hand tripped the latch and flung wide the oaken door, his cry of distress rang out to summon his disparate colleagues.