Master of Whitestorm by Janny Wurts Read Free Book Online

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III

    THE BLIGHT OF TORRESDYR

    THE GATEKEEPER of the king’s palace leaned against the lichened stone of the barbican. He squinted up at the stranger on the tired gelding and spoke in a voice gone rusty as the hinges he tended. “So, ye would hear the story of the Blight? Why ask here? Any man in the city could tell you.”
    Unmoved by the sarcasm, Korendir said, “I want the truth, not tales told in taverns by the tap.” He paused, aware haste would earn nothing but the gatekeeper’s contempt.
    At last the old man kicked at the weeds underfoot and gestured toward crumbled stone walls. “Torresdyr was a fair land once. But the old king committed an injustice. Now lord and farmsteader suffer alike.” Then, irritation intensified, he accused, “Why care? Ye look to be poor as the rest of us.”
    Korendir’s hand stayed quiet on the rein and his eyes remained expectant.
    Discomfortable under that steady gaze, the old man shrugged; in plain phrases he described how the fairest of the Eleven Kingdoms became cursed.
    A generation past, when the current king’s sire ruled the land, Torresdyr employed a court wizard to provide fashionable wonders for the revels. Iraz of Idmire last held that post. Though his face and one eye had been grotesquely scarred by a miscast spell, he was without dispute the finest master of lesser magic in the Eleven Kingdoms. Not all his spells were illusions. Iraz could make roses bloom at wintertide, and pears grow from thorn branches. His skills became the envy of rival courtiers, and he rose quickly to fame and favor. Quartered like a lord in the palace, he fell in love with the king’s second daughter and got her with child.
    The king’s rage knew no bounds. Rather than grant consent for his daughter to wed a man who was scarred, landless, and untitled, he ordered Iraz imprisoned. The princess was sent to a distant keep to bear her wizard’s bastard in shame. On the eve she went into labor, the king’s wardens discovered Iraz’s cell empty, the steel lock a misshapen ruin. Left in runes on the dungeon wall was a threat that the wizard would marry the princess, else curse all the land to misfortune.
    The king mustered his men-at-arms, yet before they could march, the princess died in childbed. Inflamed with grief, Iraz of Idmire claimed both her surviving daughter and the tower for his own.
    His walls were defended with sorcery, and weapons in the hands of soldiers could not breach his spells. Fearing Iraz’s threat of vengeance, the king appealed to the White Circle, the mightiest enchanters on Aerith and as far beyond the powers of mortal wizards as sunlight above plain clay. To aid the king’s cause, the White Circle created a wardstone of tallix crystal. The completed gem was round as a man’s fist, each of two thousand two hundred and forty facets angled to deflect one aspect of ill fortune.
    “Guard it well,” warned the Archmaster when he gave the talisman to the king. “There shall not be another.”
    Iraz labored seventeen years on his curse against the king. Its final consummation claimed his life, but his illegitimate daughter Anthei survived him. Grieving alone in her tower, she saw a land unspoiled under sunlight. Angered that her father’s death had achieved no vengeance, she swore to see his work complete.
    On the old king’s death, Anthei made her way to court. There, with her beauty and knowledge of Iraz’s arts, she beguiled the distraught prince and stole the wardstone away. Secure within her tower, she worked foul sorcery upon the White Circle’s defenses and at last limited their virtues to the gardens surrounding her keep.
    The Blight of Iraz fell in full measure upon Torresdyr. Crops withered, and starvation shriveled the livestock in pasture and barn. Children sickened with fever, cloth mildewed upon the loom; the sun vanished behind a mantle of mist and did not reappear. Country folk fled over the mountains to Northengard, but the Blight