by Ed Greenwood
“A scheme Gadaster boasted of perfecting,” Sarasper said almost smugly, nodding. “It starts with the bindings. Once your mind had been shaped to their will with the proper spells—that takes a long time—they’d have severed both your arms at the shoulders … to turn your hands into little fetch-and-carry enchantments to fly around the castle at their bidding. Then the bloodletting starts … years of it, because they have to work a few drops of your flesh and blood into the mortar or plaster slather on every stone in the place.” He grimaced, and looked away. “I read too much.”
Embra merely nodded, but Hawkril shuddered, waved his arms as if to sweep away all thought of vicious mages and armless women, and then flourished his sword at the walls and ceiling around them. “But what of this place? Once the seat of the Silvertrees, aye, but why was it abandoned? How did it get haunted? Why was sh—Embra so angry when we came here?”
Craer sighed, and Embra and Sarasper both chuckled.
“Where to start?” the healer asked of the room in general and then shrugged and pointed at Embra. “The house belongs most to you, Lady: the tale is yours.”
Embra shook her head. “We haven’t days to waste, but … well, this is ‘the Silent House’ because its owners can’t live here, so it—the high-minded bards presumed—stands empty. More properly, it is Silvertree House, once the mansion of the Barons Silvertree.”
She looked at the ceiling, sighed, and adopted the cultured voice of an aged tutor: “The house was abandoned to the role of being the burial ground to the family when a powerful curse was laid on it by the wizard Harabrentar, long ago. To whit: any of the blood Silvertree to dwell herein for more than a month slowly but irreversibly change into a loathsome, dangerous beast—akin to the nightwyrms conjured by my father’s mages, but flightless—and end their days hunted and mad. The efficacy of this curse has been demonstrated several times, down the years … usually when a particularly arrogant baron decided to reoccupy the house, or a desperate rebellious son ran away to hide here.”
Embra slowly got to her feet and strolled across the room. Hawkril watched her every step, his sword tight in his grasp. “The house has become a feared place,” she continued, “shunned by outlaws and wanderers alike because of its hauntings and its traps: pitfalls, rockfalls from above, and walls that thrust out blades into the unwary. These charming features were added centuries ago on the orders of the Baron Suldaskes Silvertree, who didn’t want a rival family to occupy the mansion as a hostile fortress in the heart of his own land.”
She looked at the armaragor, smiled crookedly, and added, “So there you have it; the just-the-flourishes tour. I always wanted to explore this place when I was young, but my tutors would never let me. They said they weren’t sure if the curse worked when one stays a month at a stretch or if a few days here and a few there, over the years, adding up to a month, would cause the beast madness to come.”
“What did you say about hauntings?” Hawkril asked quietly, his eyes very large. “Are there ghosts in this place?” The swordmaster glanced quickly at some of the six or so dark passages leading off the room, as if expecting a sudden parade of apparitions. He did not look disappointed when nothing appeared.
“Many,” Embra told him sweetly. “Most are harmless and silent; they startle the eyes but do no more.”
“Most,” Hawkril echoed, rather grimly.
“One thing I should add, Lady,” Sarasper put in. “The house is full of things that bear small magics, hidden away by Silvertrees long ago—or by me, rather more recently, to keep them out of the hands of the more daring intruders. If they’ll be of use to fuel your spells …”
Embra looked up. “Yes! Can we collect a few of those and get down to the catacombs? There are old ward-spells on this house, but my father’s mages won’t be denied for—”
The floor shook, and there was a sudden roar and booming of rending stone. In its wake, the floor seemed to heave and roll under their feet, like a long wave lifting a boat.
“—ever!” Embra shouted. “Whither, healer?”
“Take none of these passages,” the healer said warningly. “They’re all—”
The passage behind Craer was suddenly gone, lost in a great cone of whirling wind and stones, and the roaring suddenly became deafening.
Hawkril grabbed the procurer, who was having trouble keeping his feet, and dragged him across the room to where Sarasper was frantically busy at the stones of the nearest wall. Embra stared at the magical whirlwind, seeing pieces of what could only be a shattered pillar tumbling around like chaff above a threshing floor. As she watched, the ceiling of the passage fell and was whirled away down the funnel of winds … a funnel that something was moving behind. Behind and above, on bat wings … another nightwyrm.
“These mages certainly have wild imaginations,” she said bitterly, watching the ravening destruction come for her, right through the mansion that had stood for centuries. Across the stones it crept, shrieking.
“Lady!” She could just hear Sarasper’s shout, and turned her head in time to see him tossing three small metal bowls, and as many statuettes, to her. “Defend yourself!” he cried, and then did something to the wall a few paces more distant. As he went, the healer left the wall behind him pockmarked with the niches he’d emptied, their little stone doors swinging crazily in the rising gale.
What opened under his hands this time was a little larger: a tall but narrow door, such as might be found in a servants’ passage in Castle Silvertree. The healer hurled something small and glowing through its opening. Light burst into being, beyond.
“Through here!” Sarasper called, as Embra awkwardly fielded bowls and snatched at those that eluded her and bounced all around.
And then the floor obligingly whirled up to bring them to her, and she was tumbling helplessly in midair. Through a whirling chaos of dust and small stones she saw Sarasper spin through his opened door, cracking his head and his arm in the journey—as tapestries in another dark corner fell in a torrent of dust, burying a shouting Craer.
Then something large and heavy-booted smashed into her, snarling curses, and was whirled on toward the wall as she struck the floor, hard, and was suddenly deeper. Hawkril’s vainly flailing sword was the last thing Embra saw before the snapping jaws of the nightwyrm blotted out her view of the room above.
She was falling, tumbling shoulders-first into heaving darkness, and landing with a crash, on a tangle of sharp points and things that crumpled under her.
There were grinning skulls and curving ribs and less identifiable bones bouncing up all around and collapsing under her like crushed eggs, with a queer sighing sound. Bone dust swirled up around Embra as she fell through what must have been several feet of piled bones, pulverizing them. Even after she shuddered to a stop, she could not seem to stop sneezing.
Through streaming eyes she saw stones whirling around the chamber far above. She was wedged into the narrowing pit, with her boots up in front of her face and a pile of bowls and statuettes on her throat and chest. Well, at least there’d been no killing spikes in the bottom of this pit … or had they turned to rust and collapsed, long ago?
This was no time for fanciful speculations; the whirlwind had moved on, and in its wake the nightwyrm had returned. A long, snakelike neck peered down the shaft at her, and dark-fanged jaws parted hungrily.
Bruised and winded, Embra juggled a statuette in her hands, frowning up at the conjured beast with mounting anger. She had no more spells stored ready in her mind—but with items to drain in her hands, she could call up any magic she could remember.
A firebolt, for instance. As the nightwyrm folded its wings back and thrust both of its heads down the shaft together, so as to use the full stretch of its snakelike body to reach her, the Lady of Jewels held up the statuette and carefully cast her spell.
The figurine crumbled to dust in her hands, its preservative magics gone, as ravening fire burst forth from its collapse and roared up the shaft. The flames beheaded the
nightwyrm—twice, of course—broke the spell that gave it existence, and then faded away to nothing, in mere moments.
The gory black form wriggling down to crash lifeless upon her faded away just as it brushed her boots.
Embra let out a breath she hadn’t known she was holding and started to cry.
Sarasper Codelmer clawed his way along a wall as the howling winds tugged and tore at the aging robes he wore. Stones and dust hissed and cracked around him, and for a terrifying moment it seemed the sucking whirlpool of spellwinds was coming in the door after him. “Graul, graul, graul!” he sobbed, clawing his way along the wall with bleeding fingers, heedless in his haste.
And then the fury of the spell-driven storm slammed the door shut with such force that the walls around him shook … and there was sudden stillness.
Tiny stones clattered to the floor here and there, and he could still hear a deep booming and roaring behind him, but a closed door now stood between him and the fury of whatever the baron’s mages had sent after them.
The baron …
“Craer?” he called, apprehensively. “Anyone?”
There was no reply. He was alone again, his newfound friends swept away. His healing wasted, and worse. They must have been spying with their spells to know where to send this storm. They knew where he was, his name and likeness, and his long-hidden healing. They’d never stop coming after him now.
“Claws of the Dark One!” he hissed bitterly into the empty passage, watching dust swirl and settle. After all these years of hiding and lurking, more beast than man … his secret was out, in a few frantic hours, and the doom he’d long dreaded was here.
Or would be. He should have torn out her throat when first she burst into the house. Fled with her head deep into the catacombs, and eaten it down to a bare, gnawed skull so there’d be no wits to spellcall back.
He shivered, seeing her beauty again, and then snarled. “The baron’s daughter—his daughter! Only heir, too, so of course he’s reaching for her, and me too close. Too close. She could be after me and everything else here as weapons to wield against him or even to take back to him as his dutiful daughter.”
Sitting himself against the wall, he added bitterly, “Who’s to say she isn’t serving him as wife by now? Silvertrees will do anything. Or compelling her with his mages to come in here to catch me? If they’re good, she may not even know it! Gods, gods, but you’re stupid, Sarasper! One glimpse of a pretty face and—and all, and you’re fawning and talking and even healing them all, bebolt it!”
With a despairing groan he sank back against the wall and closed his eyes, suddenly shaking with weariness. He’d healed them, all right—and drained himself, an utter fool-head … oh, Sarasper, how could you forget the lesson that shaped your whole life?
Too weary to weep, the old man sagged down the wall, finding oblivion in the swirling dust even before his nose and cheek found cold, patiently waiting stone.
It was not tranquil slumber.
It was a bright morning when the soldiers of Brightpennant came for Qelder Waern.
The dirty-faced youth who answered to “Sarasper” or even the gruff shout “Pot boy!” was sweating over a dozen bubbling pots of herbal infusions and didn’t even notice the armaragors until a long, dirty sword thrust through the tangle of pot chains and fire hooks to pierce the greasy leather of his only tunic. Too startled to shout, he slipped in the mud of many spilled brews. The blade laid open his shoulder on its way to thrust hard into the spongy wood of Qelder’s old powders cabinet, and Sarasper made a sound that was half gasp and half sob and fell hard.
He had a confused glimpse of the blade drawing back over the pots, glistening with his own blood, and then it was cold and dark, and he was shivering, and old Skaunt was leaning over him and whispering hoarsely, “Boy? Sarasper! Wake, lad, and up! The wolves’ll be here soon!”
Full night had not yet fallen, and the boy stood dazedly in Skaunt’s rough grip, staring at the dark fingers of cloud in the westering sky, with the black spires of Brighttowers standing stark against them.
“What,” he asked wearily, hardly daring to hear the answer, “befell? Does Qelder live?”
“I know not, lad. They’ve taken him; he’s in the Towers right now!”
Sarasper stared hard at the castle, and his voice was thin and cold when he said, “Give me your knife, Skaunt.”
“Wha—why, lad? You can’t carve the armor of half a hundred armaragors with my little knife!”
“The baron,” the boy said grimly, “only wears his armor on feast days. When he’s grown so fat from feasting that it won’t cover him, and they let the lacings so loose that its plates dangle. There’ll be room in his guts for one little knife.”
Skaunt looked into Sarasper’s face, drew in his breath hard, and slapped the hilt of his knife—an old, broken war sword worn down to a wavering needle of a blade—into the boy’s dirty hand. “May the Three watch over thee, lad,” he whispered. “I dare not go with thee.”
Sarasper nodded. “The knife is more than enough aid, old warrior.” He clasped arms with the forester, and when Skaunt was gone, he turned to the cabinet, for the ten small glass bottles of acid in the upper drawers. He might need it to eat through chains … or the face of a guard.…
Qelder Waern was the most famous healer in all Aglirta Vale. Folk came for miles for his touch or his medicines, but always he refused to leave his hut by the brook and go to dwell in the baron’s court at Bright-towers. They said in Sart that some upriver barons kept healers in cages, treating them less well than their dogs, and when the work of making others well drained them to withered husks in a summer or six, they tossed out the bones and sent their soldiers scouring Darsar for another. Sarasper had seen the Baron Authlin Brightpennant flogging his dogs after a failed hunt and was surprised it had taken him this long to just reach out and seize the healer dwelling on his doorstep.
The castle gates stood open, and it wasn’t hard to see why. A steady stream of overpainted women in gowns side-slit right up to their waists was flocking into the castle, greeted by drunken shouts of enthusiasm from half-dressed armaragors. No one challenged or even noticed one small boy strolling among them as if he’d every right to be there. There were other boys, but this one wore no rouge or perfume or lacy costume … ah, but the guards’ shifts were changing, and it was a splendid summer evening, and no one had attacked Bright-pennant in living memory.…
It was a little harder finding an unguarded way upward, but once he realized that guards stood only on grand stairs, and the dark and narrow servants’ flights were ignored, it was but the work of a few panting moments ere he found himself in a world of tapestries and soft murmurings and scented candles. He was, of course, hours too late.
“I’d not go in this night, were I you,” a voice muttered warningly on the other side of a tapestry. “You just might find yourself with a sword through your guts or a table broken to kindling over your skull!”
“But the missive I carry is most urgent. The Baron of Tarlagar desires an answer by nightfall tomorrow! I—”
“Well,” the first voice said heavily, “your most urgent baron’s just going to have to wait. Saw you the corpse in the chair yonder?”
“Aye—what happened to him? Looks like a pig farmer, or some forest hermit, but dried up like the last barrel apples after a hard winter! And it looks like someone broke all his joints for him, throwing him around like a doll, too! Was it—magic?”
“It was, but not against him. That was the healer Waern.”
“Qelder Waern? He saved my master’s youngest—the Lady Athris—once, from the brownspots. Half Tarlagar sends word to him when folk fall ill!”
“Well, he won’t be heeding words sent to him any more.” The voice started moving away, and Sarasper scrambled along behind the tapestry to keep within hearing. “They brought him here this morn to bring the dead back to life.”
“Healers can do that?”
“Well, you saw him;
they can, and they can’t. Our Lord Baron had more than a bit too much to drink last night and saw things. He got down the Strongbow’s Ax from the wall and started hewing his way from one end of this top floor to the other.”
“Serpent in the shadows! How many did he—?”
“Thirty-odd servants, though we’re still finding more. You noticed how quiet it was, up here? Some of the servants who’re supposed to be waiting behind the tapestries are waiting there right patiently, if you know what I mean. Oh, and he laid open both his sons and beheaded his wife, the Lady Rhildra.”
“By the Three!”
“Aye. I had to pick up her head, down below—he threw it over the balcony rail, roaring that it was one less night serpent who’d come slithering up at him when he was asleep—and bring it back here. By dawn he was sitting weeping with his dead all around him, swearing to the Three that he was sorry and that the Serpent himself must have gotten into him and that he’d do anything to have them all back. I saw them; hacked like battlefield dog feed, they were, with flies buzzing all over them. When someone suggested the healer, he sent all the armsmen the castle can muster, with orders to sword anyone who got in their way or was around to see them take Waern … and they did.”
“Horns! What happened?”
“The healer saw them, and started weeping worse than the baron. I think he knew it would make him a husk, but he was crying more for them and that he might fail. He seemed a gentle man.”
Sarasper found something perilously close to a sob rising in his throat. He bit down hard on his knuckle, and trembled, straining to make no sound—and to hear every last word.
“Lord Dorn and Lord Bravyn, he brought back. I know they were dead; I helped lay them out, guts and splintered ribs and all—but he did it. They coughed a lot, and they stumble and tremble now and then, but … they’re swaggering around with all their old bluster and sneering, right now. The healer was near a husk by then, but he tried with the Lady Rhildra. He did. I guess even the best healer in Aglirta can’t put a head back on.”