by Ed Greenwood
“He died trying?”
“Aye, and after he’d collapsed, damned if the two lord sons didn’t snatch him and shout at him and shake him, with their father crying and beating his breast not an arm’s reach away, and then start hurling him about, clubbing him against the walls and the bed until he was as broken as you see. Then if they didn’t march downstairs and call for the scribes and have a proclamation drawn up. Every kin and aide and pupil of Qelder Waern is to be brought back here and put to death under torture, while the two of them watch. I guess you and yours are going to have to send word elsewhere than Brightpennant for healing!”
The scream that burst out of Sarasper then set the two men on the other side of the tapestry to cursing in earnest. His frantic flight brought him through the bewildered guards before anyone recognized him, and down the stairs like a scared bolt of lightning, but he was still four sprinting strides from the doors when Lord Dorn’s bellow rang out from the balcony.
“Let loose the dogs! Hunt him down, and bring what’s left back here to feel Brightpennant vengeance! Hurry, you worthless whoresons!”
The doorguards spun to face the fleeing boy and block his way to freedom, swords flashing out. They grinned at his knife and moved in unison to swipe at his arms with their blades, and trip him. Sarasper threw Skaunt’s old blade into the one guard’s face and gave the eyes of the other the unstoppered contents of a bottle of acid.
It took only an instant for the screams to begin. Qelder had used it to melt away scar tissue and warts, but it seemed to work just as well on eyeballs.
The knife had only nicked the other guard’s nose, but Sarasper bestowed another bottle on his snarling features and then was out into the darkness, running hard.
It was hours later, just after dawn, when he heard them howling behind him. He’d been squelching his way wearily along the edge of a swamp, seeking a way around into the barony of Glarond. Thus far, he’d found far too many thorns and nettles, but no dry way east; the swamp seemed to go on forever. The barking and howling grew swiftly nearer, threading through every twist and turn he’d taken—until he could search no longer. Weeping in fear, he plunged into the cold, evilsmelling water and thrashed and flailed his way wildly east, trying not to think of watersnakes and scalyjaws and other things lurking under the black, bubbling waters. …
The war dogs were right behind him. Sarasper’s prayers to the Three were lost in their triumphant howls and wet, hungry snarls; somehow he splashed onward into a place of tree-tall reeds and spiderwebs between them that glistened with dew like gems in the brightening morning.
A morning that held hunting arrows, humming through the reeds like hungry wasps to take the foremost dog through the head. Sarasper crouched chin deep in the chilly, stinking muck and tried to claw his way onward, as shaft after shaft tore through the reeds, and dog after dog died.
“Master of Arrows, fresh shafts!” came a cheerful command.
“At once, Lord. Ah, you realize these must be Brightpennant’s dogs? They’re hunting something, an outlaw perhaps.…”
“What of it? Any foe of Brightpennant is a friend of mine! Loose at will, all of you—if we can do my gentle neighbor out of every last one of his war dogs, all the better! Serves him right for hunting them onto my land! Taerlith, where’re those shafts?”
Crouching in the blood-fouled water, Sarasper Codelmer shivered, and he vowed silently to the Three that if no arrow found him this morn, he’d never serve any baron.…
The cowled figure leaned forward. “Ssso—you agree?”
A trembling breath was drawn, became a sob, and said, “Yes.”
“Kneel.”
When the gowned woman was on her knees before him, the cowled man tore open her bodice, baring her to the waist. His other hand came from behind his back, fingers cold and wet with glistening slime, to trace a design down her front.
As it touched her trembling flesh, the slime began to glow a dull green-white. By its light the kneeling woman saw something crawl out of the priest’s sleeve.
A serpent, of course. It slithered along his arm toward her, tongue flickering.
“If you ssscream, you ssshall also perish,” he promised calmly—and thrust his arm at her.
The serpent reared back and struck, biting her glowing breast.
The pain was fierce. She gasped raggedly, but forced herself to be silent and still. The snake watched her with glittering eyes as numbing fire washed slowly through her.
“Sssuch venom ssslays all but those who serve the Ssserpent,” the cowled priest said formally, approval in his dry voice. “Rise, sssister, and join in the most sssacred service in all Darsar.”
As the woman found her feet, the glow on her breast flared into white brilliance. Cowled figures were gliding silently to places all around her, forming a circle. Their faces were hidden under bent cowls, but she could feel their eyes upon her.
“Kisss the Initiator,” the Priest of the Serpent commanded, extending his hand. The scaly head whose fangs had savaged her breast wavered in front of her, and she was seized by the sudden fear that its fangs would tear out her eyes or throat … but as she dared to bestow a kiss on those scales, the snake lifted its head a little to rub against her lips, like a purring cat.
At the dry, leathery contact, she was suddenly seeing not snake or priest, but a daylit field with a huge slab of rune-graven stone embedded in its trampled grasses, and robed, cowled figures standing around it. Live snakes slithered and coiled up and down their arms.
“Behold the tomb of the Ssserpent, in the backlands of Aglirta,” the dry voice murmured in her ear, “watched over day and night by Ssserpent priests who await the time of the Rising. The vast body of the Ssserpent slumbers beneath it, invisible to any spell or digging shovel, awaiting the time of its Rising, when all Kingless Aglirta shall be devoured and made the realm of the Ssserpent. In that time, only the faithful shall survive the deadly feeding of the Coiled One—the faithful whose ranks you have just joined, sssister.”
She felt his very human lips kiss her cheek, and then knew no more.
Her body did not bounce as it met the floor; many hands were waiting to catch her and cushion her fall.
Shattered bones shifted under her, and Embra found herself sliding helplessly back and down, following her left shoulder into darkness. Well, at least she wasn’t staring up at her boots and the whirling storm far up the shaft above them any more, while struggling to breathe with all her own weight on top of her.
As if that made things any better. All she’d done was amuse her father and given his mages a little practice. She could have just given the two Blackgultans some gems and helped them back off the island as fast as they’d come. She should have asked them to make love to her—gods, how she ached for someone to just hold her, with love and not for cruel sport!—and then kill her, cheating her father out of his Living Castle by dismembering her and giving her parts to the river.
She should have killed herself years ago.
Not that she’d ever had the courage to do more than pick up a knife and watch herself tremble in the mirror as she thought about using it. Drenching her fine white rugs with bright blood, staring at the ceiling until everything went dark …
She was no adventurer. Gods above, she wasn’t even a sorceress. And here she was, dragging men to their deaths. Men whose hatred of her was only held back by their fear, though they knew her not.
Well, they knew she could hurl spells, and they knew she was a Silvertree. That was reason enough to hate and fear her, was it not? All Coiling Vale hated and feared the Silvertrees, with good reason in plenty.
“I will not be like my father,” she told the darkness around her fiercely. “I will not!”
As if the darkness was eager to answer, there came a dry rattling sound off to her left. A clacking sound, as if something old and dry was moving deliberately closer to her.
Embra felt for the bowl that had struck her cheek earlier, hand grasping at empty air
and tinder-dry bones in the flood of debris between her legs. She needed magic to call up magic; she needed a flame to see.
That dry clacking came again, a little closer, and she was suddenly floundering around in bones, frantically wallowing and rolling to try to find footing, and stand. Her raking, darting hands found one of the little figurines Sarasper had thrown, closed thankfully around its crumblingly reassuring curves, and spun her a flare of flame as fast as she could shape her will.
Flame that danced wildly in the breezes roiling down the shaft, but showed her enough to make her scream.
6
Odd Bottles and the Stone of Life
Embra Silvertree was standing in a little chamber that opened off the bottom of the pit she’d fallen into. A half-height stone door had swung open to spill her and the bones of many, many intruders into a small stone chamber … a crypt. What were probably stone caskets stood on all sides, some of them cracked and discolored, and stains on the walls and floor told her waters had seeped into this place in vanished years.
The thing that had made the sound was perhaps seven running paces away, or a little more. It was the skeleton of a man, brown and gape-jawed and shuffling—and despite its eyes being empty sockets of darkness, it was moving toward her. When she stepped to one side, biting her lip, it turned its head as if it could hear the faint crunchings of whisper-dry bones under her boots and redirected its slow, patient advance.
Embra lifted the crumbling figurine and let her fear shape a slaying bolt of flame that snarled forth to smash into dry brown bones.
Bones that kept coming, that dangling jaw lifting for a moment in what seemed like a soundless laugh. When the figurine had quite crumbled away, Embra’s flame died … and the skeleton was still advancing on her.
It was glowing slightly, now, as if it had stolen some of the radiance from her flames, and it seemed somehow taller. Less stooped—no, larger. Embra’s eyes narrowed. Then she took two swift steps and plunged into the scattered chaos of old bones that had slid into this dark and secret chamber with her, clawing among the brittle brown and yellowed things again for one of those metal bowls.
Her fingers found the eye sockets of a skull, and she flinched back. There was a dry scrape behind her—too close—and she snatched up the skull, spun around, and threw it, as hard as she could.
The skeleton was a bare three strides away, its long brown fingers reaching. Her hurled skull smashed its jaw, the pieces tumbling away to clack and clatter down stone caskets to the floor, but it kept coming, as silent and patient as when she’d first laid eyes on it.
Gasping in sudden terror, Embra kicked and clawed her way through the bone rubble away from it, and—thank the Three!—heard the ringing sound of metal on the stones. A bowl! She snatched it up, whirled around, and danced three quick steps back and away, stumbling up against the cold stone of a wall. She could flee no more.
Not that the Lady of Jewels would have to. The enchantments on this bowl, whatever they’d been meant for, were strong, and she could give this shuffling skeleton more fire than dry bones should be able to withstand.
“Burn!” she shrieked at it, sudden rage boiling up in her. Was she fated to be fleeing and weeping in fear for the rest of her life?
“Burn, graul you!” And she gave it fire—white-hot and as furious as she was, flashing forth like a hurled spear, smashing into brown, advancing bones with force enough to hurl them back, shattered, against the far wall.
Fire that she let die away beneath her disbelieving chin as the skeleton loomed up over her, blood red and glistening now, its bones covered with a webwork of stringy sinew. It stood a head taller than before, brown and dry no more, and the riven, dangling shards of its jaws were growing, lengthening as she gaped at it to reshape, and join each other, and grow little gnarled bumps that would soon be teeth.
“No!” she protested, dancing away from its reaching hands. Her magic was feeding it!
Fingerbones clawed at her long, tangled hair, and she clutched the bowl to her breast and shrieked, tearing herself free in utter terror and darting away blindly, not slowing as she glanced bruisingly off caskets she could not see.
Far above her the spell-driven winds howled, swirling up dust from the bony rubble as they moaned down the shaft, and Embra found herself wishing another nightwyrm would come—come and smash this shuffling, silent horror to bone shards before it clawed or strangled her.
Gods, it was probably one of her own ancestors! Her father didn’t have to slay her—one of his own forebears would quite capably accomplish the little task of tearing the head off his wayward heiress!
“Serpent in the Shadows!” she whispered in despair, watching the tall, smoothly striding bone man come for her. Shuffling no longer, it moved with alert and agile purpose, its hands spread wide so she could not hope to dodge past, here where the caskets stood close together.
She almost screamed again when her hip fetched up against a casket that was open—and then saw that no skeleton lay within or was rising to menace her with its own dry clutches.
Of course; this must have held the thing that was coming for her. Something had shattered the stone slab that served as a lid long ago; its pieces, all of them larger than she could lift, lay tilted or fallen around the casket, and within—what was that?
Desperate, slender fingers closed on something cold and hard. Embra snatched it forth, found that she held a wand and that the skeleton was a bare pace away from its bony hands closing on her, and willed the magic in her hand into life. Magic might strengthen this skeleton, but perhaps its own magic could hurt it—and she had no other chance left.
Sharp, bony fingers caught at her throat, closed on her collarbone and shoulder as she twisted desperately away—and then shone with bright fire as the wand spat into life.
White sparks cascaded down its bony ribs and danced on the floor around them both; Embra didn’t even know what she was awakening. The skeleton surged upward and seemed to grow more substantial, its glowing bones vanishing beneath a racing cloak of tissue, its hands growing more solid and fleshy, its—
As the heiress of House Silvertree sobbed in despair, bubbling laughter began, laughter that rolled around the crypt, gathering strength, and—
Broke off sharply, as something crashed into the ceiling. Something grated damply on stone, and then the grip that was bruising her was abruptly gone, and the body that now dwarfed her own toppled past her, crashing into the casket that had held it, its head lolling loosely.
Embra stared at that head, and then swung the bowl in her other hand with all her strength.
That skull shattered, and her hand was suddenly drenched in dark, thick wetness. She snarled in revulsion and swung again, smashing the cracked curve of a head. Again, and again until the thing that looked like an egg with its top shattered and gone broke free of the shoulders it was lolling on and fell, to roll away among the silent caskets.
The headless thing draped across the casket did not move, save to shrivel slightly, sagging down with a faint sound that might have been a moan of disappointment … or might have just been escaping air.
Embra looked at the wand in her hand and suddenly flung it down. It struck the floor with a ringing sound that echoed loudly in the sudden silence.
Above her, the spell-born storm was gone.
The Lady of Jewels clutched the bowl to her breast and called, “Craer? Hawkril? Sarasper?”
“Lady?” a cry came back. It was the procurer, and he sounded anxious … truly scared for her. “Are you all right?”
Embra’s face was suddenly wet with tears. She had to swallow twice before she could shape the words, “Yes. Yes, I think so. Now.”
The trees they’d been walking through for most of the day gave way to swamp, and the stinging insects grew really fierce. Ornentarn hands slapped at cheeks and thumbed at eyes and nostrils, trying to keep the keening things away. Ornentarn boots slipped and slid in muck and evil-smelling water—and Ornentarn tempers smolder
ed.
The world stank, and even the reeds they rustled through were the color of sucking mud. By the smell, everything that had ever lived in Darsar had crawled here to die. All except the ever-present stinging flies.
Somewhere ahead lay the Loaurimm Forest, and deep in its vast, dark heart stood the ruined city of Indraevyn, no doubt overgrown and smothered by vines, trees, and brambles. Somewhere in all that would be the library of the dead wizard Ehrluth, where—if one crazed wizard was right and no one else had reached it first—might await Candalath, the Stone of Life. One of the four mighty Worldstones, the Dwaerindim of elder days. Power enough to rule Darsar or to reshape it. Power enough to bring back the Sleeping King—or call up the Serpent in the Shadows.
The twenty-strong band of mages and warriors in the midst of the stinging, whining cloud understood power, wherefore they were here, far from the comforts of Ornentar—but far, too, it seemed, from lost Indraevyn.
“So if your spells can keep us going in one direction,” the armaragor Rivryn of the Black Blade grunted sourly, “why can’t they just whisk us to the library doorstep, hey?”
“In the days when Indraervyn stood proud and populous,” the wizard Nynter of the Nine Daggers hissed in reply, “mages knew how to work spells to keep uninvited and unexpected neighbors from arriving anywhere nearby. A flying or spell-jumping trip to any long-settled place that old is likely to be a final journey. You generally burst into flames and burn like a torch in midair, at about the time you’re breaching the wall wards. Along with anyone you’re carrying with you, of course.”
The conspirators trudged on in grim silence for a while after that.
“Do your father’s mages ever sleep?” Craer called down the shaft, around the dangling chain. Its links had once been as thick as his forearm but were rusted away to a third of that, or less; Embra blinked as showers of red rust came down on her.
“I wouldn’t rely on that,” she spat, tasting iron, “if he thought by flogging them he could crush us right now.” The chain tapped her knee and then her forehead; the Lady of Jewels caught hold of it, wrapped it around herself and then wound her ankles around it to keep from being curled over on herself and stuck against the walls of the shaft when Hawkril hauled on it. The armaragor nodded approvingly and pulled on the chain.