by Ed Greenwood
Where that glow struck stone, be it hulking knight or the massive wall, the stone seemed to smoke for an instant—and then burst apart with a roar, streaming away from the sorceress like so much dust.
A little grit eddied around the armaragor and the procurer, and then drifted past their ankles and was gone. The two men stared at the empty, trampled turf where the statues had been, and at the gap in the wall beyond, with moonlight dappling the river silver … and then back at their newfound companion.
Lady Embra Silvertree lifted an eyebrow as she met two dumbfounded gazes and announced crisply, “Now we must be swift indeed. Hence, sluggards!”
“So tell me, Spellmaster, what you think Silvertree’s next move should be,” Baron Faerod Silvertree bade, raising raven-dark brows. He looked like a sleek, handsome bird of prey as he set down his glass with almost silken delicacy, smiling at his most senior mage across the map graven in the table.
It was a familiar smile but not a nice one. The fat, softly sinister Ingryl Ambelter was deep in the last and most succulent mouthfuls of his spitted bustard’s mushroom-and-butter sauce, but he knew better than to displease the rage-driven man who employed him. The master of Silvertree could storm hot or cold, but neither was comfortable to see, and both were humors better left slumberous—even by the mightiest wizard in three baronies.
So Ingryl wiped his chin and his pudgy, many-ringed fingers with every evidence of eagerness, plucked back the full sleeves of his robe, and leaned forward to look up and down the winding course of the Silverflow on the table map for a moment before speaking. His words would have to be both sure and precise to sway his employer; madmen chafe under the steerage of others.
“Lord Baron,” he said, catching what he judged was just the right note of restrained excitement, “I think we’ve a rare chance.…”
Across the room, a deep booming erupted, followed by the high, musical tinkling of falling glass.
Two heads snapped around to watch the shards of the spell telltale tinkle and scatter across the floor. The rightmost head was missing from the row of grinning glass gargoyles: something had breached the enchantments on the outer wall of Castle Silvertree.
A golden row of dragon heads was set into the baron’s edge of the high table; he snatched and pulled two of them before the gonglike echoes of the riven telltale had faded, then reached for his glass with rather less delicacy than he’d set it down.
He’d scarce had time to drain it and sigh at the burning its contents left in his throat when two arched doors opened in the walls of the chamber. Armed guards issued from one, and two robed wizards hastened in the other. None of the arrivals was foolish enough to blurt out questions; the baron had rung for them and would issue his orders in his good time.
He did not disappoint their expectations or keep them waiting long—though they attended him with no particular eagerness. They’d all seen the scattered glass without making any show of looking at it and knew it betokened a night of hard work … and more than one of them still held sleep in his eyes.
“The Castle wall has been breached, probably at the far end of the Isle,” the baron snapped. “Follow whoever has left us, and bring them back to me—without delay and as alive as possible.”
Armaragors bowed their heads and hustled back out the door they’d entered by. Lord Silvertree raised his eyes to the three robed men still in the room and asked quietly, “And you’re waiting for—?”
Nothing beyond those words, it seemed. In a swirling of sleeves, all three mages sped to their benches in respective corners of the room, to work magic.
It wasn’t long before Ingryl Ambelter hissed, “There!” He spread his hands, leaving a glowing eyeball spinning and floating in the air before them. It darkened, rose, and burst into a mist that flowed up in iridescent chaos along the ceiling, a crawling carpet of magic.
Its colors winked, spiraled, and then abruptly twisted into a sharp and lifelike image of three dripping figures clambering up the far bank of the River Coiling.
“My daughter,” the Baron said softly. “How interesting.” He looked around at all three of them and added almost carelessly, “You know what to do.”
The youngest mage was still eager and foolish enough to need to display his cleverness by answering aloud. “Keep her unharmed,” Markoun Yarynd murmured, “and bring them all back. The condition of the two men matters not.”
“Precisely,” the baron purred. The three mages exchanged expressionless glances and returned to their corners to work magic anew.
The books—and Embra’s clothes, atop them—hadn’t fared well in the river, Craer feared, but the Lady Silvertree didn’t seem to care. Nor did the wet nightgown clinging to her soaked body appear to bother her, or the drenched and clinging tail her long, unbound hair had become. Not that they had overmuch time to contemplate such fripperies as they stumbled through tangled trees in deepening darkness.
A pace ahead, Hawkril swore and plucked out his blade. The branches they’d been breaking through or pushing past were moving—turning like questing snakes, reaching out to strangle or bind, and curling around them, now, in a gigantic, living cage.
Craer snatched out his shortsword to join in Hawkril’s enthusiastic hewing, real fear rising in his throat with a chill as cold as the Silverflow. A bough snaked past his head, and he ducked away from its strangling return, almost impaling his throat on the spearlike tips of another reaching branch. “Claws!” he swore aloud, almost sobbing; how soon would it be before living wood brought them down, blinded them, or choked the life from them?
The Lady of Jewels chanted something imperious close by his ear, and abruptly an ale-brown radiance washed out of her and away into the dark trees ahead. Boughs shuddered and recoiled from it, shrinking away … no, withering, to dwindle and then break and hang, dangling lifeless and weightless. Craer hacked his way clear of the last two branches, stumbled over a third, and found himself in a long scar of lifeless trees, a path of ruin leading off into the night. Hawkril was waving at him impatiently to take the lead.
“You know the way, Longfingers,” the armaragor growled. “I’ve never been all that welcome in Silvertree, remember?”
Craer and Embra found themselves looking at each other. The procurer lifted his sack. “Uh—you want your boots? And—”
“Later,” the sorceress told him crisply. “When we reach whatever safe lair you’re taking us to. My father has too many overclever mages for us to be standing around talking.”
“Just how many overclever mages does he command?” Craer asked, a trifle grimly. By the Three, but it’d have been less foolish to walk into Castle Silvertree and start snatching the baron’s silver in broad daylight than going after the wardrobe of the Lady of Jewels! It was more than likely that by dawn they’d—
Something clapped large wings behind them, and came through the trees in a dive of many small crashings and snappings. Something scaled and dark and bat-winged, with altogether too many snapping jaws.
“Horns! What’s that?” Hawkril gasped, bringing up his blade.
“Run!” the Lady Silvertree snarled at the two men. “Run, and keep low!” She followed her own advice without delay, fleeing past them into the night like a damp, barefooted wraith. With one accord the two men raced after her, stumbling into many trees with numbing force, and rolling off without slowing to plunge onward, lurching and staggering over unseen roots and uneven ground. Ongoing splinterings behind them told that the flying horror was following with unbroken enthusiasm.
“You know …” Craer panted, when he finally caught up to the sorceress they were supposed to be guiding, or abducting, or taking far away from Castle Silvertree and the reach of its cruel baron, “what that thing is?”
“It’s called a nightwyrm,” Embra gasped, “conjured by one of my father’s mages. It’ll tear us apart if it catches us.”
Neither Hawkril nor Craer had time to make any clever reply just then—the nightwyrm seemed to be able to fade in and
out of solidity and was diving through trees that should have stopped it, plunging after them with frightening speed. It was only feet away, it was—
They flung themselves away, sprawling desperately, as teeth clashed only inches behind them, sinuous heads reached greedily, and—a gnarled tree intervened.
The crashing impact would have slain any normal beast. The trunk of the tree shivered and split, torn but still standing, boughs rained down all around, and Lady Embra Silvertree somersaulted over backward among them in an undignified landing that bounced the breath out of her, spun her around, and thrust her dazedly up into a sitting position amid a tangle of riven wood.
She found herself staring into one open, manytoothed maw from inches away. Gurgling, the nightwyrm lunged to engulf her.
“Will you not eat, Lady?”
Mressa’s voice was almost a sob. To see her young charge this desolate tore at her heart even more than the evil this girl’s father had done to her mother. An evil that might yet stretch—such a little, little way—to claim the younger Lady Silvertree, too.
The girl turned away fiercely. Mressa watched her dwindle along the battlements, a black-robed wraith drifting … to her doom? Silent and bone white, waiting to be struck down as her mother had been. Or would Embra choose the moment of her dying, looking at the rocks in the river below—as she was now—before flinging herself out and down, down, in a brief and broken flight that could have only one ending?
Mressa brought the spurned platter back against her ample bosom, watched a still and silent Embra looking down at her own death, and shivered. She dared not go to the girl, now, lest her approach be the spur that made Embra end it all, screaming.
Screaming … as her mother Tlarinda had done all that long night, howling out her agonies strapped to a table under the tortures of her lord husband. Screams that had ended just before sunrise, when her mutilated body breathed its last and the gently smiling Baron Silvertree turned away, drenched in the blood of his wife, to ask calmly if his requested bath was ready and warm.
Mressa shivered at the memory—and then froze. High on the topmost tower a lone figure was standing, watching Embra even as she watched the Silverflow slide endlessly past. A vulture perched above prey he knows can’t escape, the cold weight of his gaze a dagger pinning the maid in place.
Mressa could feel his cold smile. She tried to gasp but could find only breath enough to tremble. She kept her eyes on the silent girl she must call the Lady Silvertree henceforth, not daring to look up again. She was rooted here, fated to stand watching while Embra Silvertree decided whether or not to die.
Learning his error, he’d shrugged and smiled. Mressa would never forget that smile.
Still smiling, he’d drained his stirrup cup as always and ridden off to buy for his breeding stables, changing his plans not one jot. It was then the fourth morning since Tlarinda had died at his hands, butchered for the sin of faithlessness.
The baron had seen her talking with a man in a lane—a man the Lady Silvertree had seemed delighted to see; they’d kissed, embraced, and laughed together. A stranger, who was in irons in a cell when the bloody pieces of Tlarinda were delivered to him by the baron’s order … and hauled out into the main square, before the morning was an hour older, to have his arms and legs hewn off, the wounds sealed by flame whilst the cruel spells of Gadaster Mulkyn kept him alive … and be left there, naked in the sun, to starve to a slow death.
The stranger who’d been Tlarinda’s long-unseen brother.
That was the news that had made Faerod Silvertree shrug and smile. A smile of trifling regret, as if he’d worn the wrong cloak or lifted an empty decanter rather than the full one beside it. A passing error not worthy even of an oath, let alone remorse or amends. A stunned Mressa watched as the remains were fed to the castle hogs, and the matter was done. Leaving behind a quiet, dreamy girl, given to wearing gem-adorned gowns and reading alone in the gardens. A girl now silent and shattered, who’d neither spoken nor taken off her black mourning gown since the deaths.
Something moved along the parapet, snatching Mressa’s attention back to the here and now. A stone had swung open like a serving hatch, and the lass was lifting forth books from a hiding niche behind it. They looked like wizard’s tomes, very like books she’d seen, twice or thrice, in front of the baron’s highest-ranking wizard, Gadaster Mulkyn.
Something else moved, higher. She forced herself to glance up, in time to see Gadaster join the baron. They stood coldly smiling down at the young Lady Silvertree as she paged through the books in wonderment. Oh, horns of the Lady, was Mressa Calandue going to be the only witness to one more dark deed? A tongue Faerod would still the moment he thought of what it could say?
She was. There was a balcony below the battlements where Embra stood: a round platform jutting from the wall where the Lord and Lady Silvertree had been wont to sit and watch the river slide by on pleasant evenings. It was deserted, but Gadaster Mulkyn waved a hand, the balcony air shimmered for a whirling instant—and then Faerod Silvertree stood there looking out at the Silverflow, a goblet in his hand. He leaned on the balcony rail, seemingly oblivious to the girl above. She noticed him and stiffened.
Mressa glanced up at the high parapet in time to see the baron—the real baron—step back to stand just behind the wizard Gadaster. He watched as Embra stared at his image below her, glanced quickly all around—her eyes counted Mressa as a friend or as loyal furniture and slid on past the aging maid without pause—to ensure that she was alone, then flipped pages furiously, her head bobbing in frantic haste.
It seemed an eternity before she straightened, put out one slender arm like a sword to point at her father below, and said something sharp and clear.
The air above the balcony boiled and flashed, the entire castle shook, and baron and balcony were suddenly small, blackened fragments clawing at the air before plunging to the river below.
Guards shouted and came running, heads appeared at windows—and on the highest parapet a shining globe flashed into being around wizard and baron. Quivering, it drifted out into empty air, descending smoothly to where a young girl stood staring at the nothingness that had been a balcony. The voices of Gadaster and the baron came to Mressa as clearly as they did to Embra, spinning her around to stare up, her face as white as bone.
“A swift, vigorous, and natural aptitude for magic,” the wizard murmured.
Faerod Silvertree smiled. “Good. She’s going to be of more use to me—at last—than as a walking display of my jewels. Do what you will with her, Mulkyn, so long as she never dares disobedience. I can’t abide faithlessness.” And he smiled.
At his last word, Embra Silvertree’s face changed. For a moment it held greater rage than Mressa had ever seen, a contorted flame of fury.
And then, because she was a Silvertree, it smoothed back into inscrutability, and the Lady Embra watched her doom come for her with her feelings hidden behind a mask.
3
Eluding Comprehension—and Worse
Of all the beasts that hunt humans, none is so widely feared as the nightwyrm. Darsar does hold more formidable monsters—and there are even a few thought to be more ruthless—but there is something about a glistening, eellike thing as long as ten men, that flies through the air like a giant bat and has jaws enough to devour an entire family at once, that makes men sob in terror.
There have always been nightwyrms in the valley of the Silverflow. They hang motionless in midair when the sun is high and bright, usually in the shade of deep forest thickets or floating above swamps where men do not go … and drift out to feed at dusk. A cow or several sheep or goats are better feeding than a human, but some nightwyrms love to hunt. Some delight in daylight snatchings. Some seem to love taunting and teasing humans by smashing traps set against them or repeatedly awakening humans in their beds—by plunges through windows, to upset the bed itself, and tumble occupants in all directions—to visit terror nights before they arrive to slay and feed.
&
nbsp; A few develop the taste for the flesh of one family or seem to develop an enmity for folk of a specific barony or town. All of them hate those can hurt them most: archers and wizards. Minstrels often tell the tale of Maerdantha, who lost an entire family—son after daughter after uncle—because they could all hurl spells at dark flying things who devoured their sheep. In the end, she spun the shape of a nightwyrm with her own spells and lurked in that shape among the fast-dwindling family flock.
When the hunter came, she clung to her life and slew him only because he reacted amorously to her form rather than deciding to rend her at the first sight.
The body the servants found, after carrying their sorely wounded mistress to shelter, was sixty feet long from the shoulders of its batlike wings to the tip of its barbed tail. Even torn in death, it lay sleek and sinuous, looking so graceful and so deadly that few dared approach it. Its pointed heads were many, and all of them had birdlike beaks as long as a man is tall, lined with many sharp, sharklike teeth. Its eyes were white shapes, without pupil or focus, and even priests were seen to shudder as they drew near.
This nightwyrm seemed smaller than most, but far more generously equipped with jaws. As they gaped open, snapping hungrily as it plunged down at Embra, the beast did not seem the slightest whit amorous.
Unless, that is, its love was for the blood-drenched, smokingly fresh corpses of sorceresses.
The Lady of Jewels spat into her hand and stammered a word of power she’d hoped not to have to use until she was years older than now. It echoed eerily around her as she thrust her arm forward, hurling her spittle down one of the wyrm’s yawning gullets. The sick weakness born of using that word burst forth within her, and she moaned aloud.
The other head darted at her, dark-fanged jaws snapping. Embra kicked it away and threw herself up and over the tangled pile of tree limbs in one desperate, twisting motion. Branches raked her skin like tongues of fire, jolting her out of her nausea.