by Ed Greenwood
Markoun’s eyes narrowed. “To burn and destroy? Forgive me, Lord, but that’s something I’ve never understood … how does harming and despoiling what you conquer gain you anything? Won’t the Silvertree warriors who die in battle have thrown their lives away for … nothing?”
Faerod Silvertree smiled down at a surging sea of heads, as all six of his maids sought to reach where the others had not. “A ruler must take a longer view of things than those he rules,” he explained. “So should you—a wizard—if you expect to flourish. In your mind, you see only the fires and the deaths and the wailing and think only of plunder as slaves or as stuff of gold that you can snatch up in your hands and bear off in triumph. Learn another way of thinking of things, Yarynd.”
“Ah … what other way?”
“Thus,” the baron said smugly. “The devastation well-prepared Silvertree will wreak on its foes—including those neighbors who think themselves my allies but who are going to be revealed as faithless traitors, once swords are out—will plunge them into starvation in the hard winter ahead. A few weak survivors will make poor farmers in the season beyond, whereupon conquering them—as they face a bleak harvest and another winter—will be simple. I shall hold feasts in every town and village my forces occupy. Those who eat at my table will thereafter be loyal to me—in the war I shall wage next, to conquer new lands and fill my granaries again.”
Markoun stared openmouthed at his employer, the blood slowly draining from his face. His mouth worked, but for the moment he could think of no words to say. It was so cunning, so utterly, horribly …
“Brilliant, is it not?” Faerod Silvertree said jovially, waving his maidens away and reaching for a decanter of wine. “You must learn to think thus, and be shocked by unfolding plots no more. Our Spellmaster saw every step of it at the same time I did, when we went up against Blackgult.” He nodded his head again in the direction of Ingryl Ambelter.
Markoun looked to the Spellmaster and saw that Ingryl had turned away from the flickering radiances of the spell he was crafting to favor Markoun with a smile. It as a bland and unreadable smile—and it did not reach Ingryl Ambelter’s eyes.
Embra’s still and silent body was shaken by a sudden spasm, and Craer shouted in alarm. Sarasper and Hawkril came crashing back through the trees from the riverbank, where the healer had been restoring something of the warrior’s strength.
By the time they reached the dell with its dying fire, the Lady Silvertree was awake at last, and sitting up with her fingers over her eyes, shaking away the procurer’s attempts to hold her still.
“My eyes, Craer!” she was hissing. “They burn! They burn!”
“The flames on the boat? Can you see?” the procurer asked, cradling her shoulders as she shook herself and restlessly tried to rise.
“Yes, yes, but—the pain! Just now, out of nowhere! Ah! Ah, it eases.…”
Hawkril looked grimly at Sarasper. “Can we have a little healing?”
The older man was frowning, his eyes narrowed. “If ’twill do any good … this seems to me more like a spell from afar. Lady? Can you see?”
Embra snatched her hands away and glared at him. “Yes,” she snarled. “Open or shut, my eyes feel like hot coals in my head! Graul and bebolt! It has to be some magic sent by my father’s mages!”
Hawkril loomed over her like an attentive mountain. “Should Sarasper try to banish i—”
“If it goes on and on until I can’t take it,” Embra snarled, “yes. I’ll need to sleep, for one thing. But … not yet.”
She growled, shook herself all over, and said suddenly, “I’ve been in the river … the boat. By the Three!” She looked wildly around. “All of you—whole? Unhurt?”
“Just as you see us. Everything else … boat, crew, all of our carryings … gone,” Hawkril growled. “We’ve been arguing about where we go now.”
Embra smiled thinly. “Away.”
Sarasper said gently, “My fear was that the quest would be forgotten in the haste to flee the hand of your father, but Craer and Hawkril hold to another view. ’Tis only fair, Lady, to hear your thoughts.…”
The sorceress turned her head. “We do owe Sarasper our aid,” she reminded the men of Blackgult. “If we are to be any better than my father, our promises must mean something.”
“Neither of us want to forget our promises,” Craer said smoothly, “but we daren’t chase after them and do nothing else, or whenever the fancy takes him your father can cry news of a Dwaer and hold out his hand to snatch us when we come running.”
Embra nodded. “That’s—aaaahhh!”
The three men leaned forward as one. “Lady?”
Embra’s hands were at her eyes again. “No, no,” she murmured weakly. “The pain is gone.” She lifted her head again. “Magic,” she confirmed, looking at Sarasper. “You see why we must do more than chase enchanted Stones, no matter how much I’d like to hold one when next I must face my father’s mages?”
The healer nodded, face somber, but the sorceress was already turning to Craer and Hawkril again. “Yet think, both of you: we might well be able to help our friend gain a Stone easily if we act the moment we have any hint of where one might lie.”
As they nodded, another thought struck her. “How far are we from Sirlptar?”
Everyone looked at Hawkril, who rumbled, “We went on the rocks on the west side of the Gullet, the narrowing below Glarondpool, and are a bend below that now—a day or two of steady travel, if we meet with no delays, out from the Glittering City.”
Embra’s eyes narrowed. “In which direction does it lie—exactly?”
Hawkril pointed through the trees, and a trace of a smile touched his lips. “There. Exactly.”
Embra nodded and said briskly, “Our disguises are gone; we’d best hasten. Gather around and touch me, all of you. Fingers to my bare skin, and firmly—my shoulders, not my face or hands.”
“What casting?” Craer asked sharply. “We’re a team, remember? Magic need not—must not—be your solitary mystery, kept from us.”
“A spelljump,” the Lady of Jewels replied with a nod of apology, “to the top of yonder ridge, where I can see bare ground enough.”
The three men looked at each other. “Agreed,” Sarasper said after a moment, and extended his hand to her neck. Impatiently she tugged the lacings of the tunic loose and pulled it down to lay bare one shoulder. “Here,” she said. “I know some of you would rather get your fingers around my throat, but…”
With grins the men of the Four gathered around her. When they were all touching her, she held up a glowing mirror from the Silent House, spoke some words over it, and watched it fade away between her fingers like bubbling smoke.
There was an instant in which the world seemed to be falling away under their boots, and a confused rushing was all around them, like beer hurling itself from spigot into tankard. Then, abruptly, the trees around them changed. They were on the ridge, a little way closer to Sirlptar, on the bare shoulder of rock they’d seen from beside the river, with trees standing thick and dark before them.
The Lady Silvertree trembled, broke free of the hands on her, and staggered away to fall on her knees, white-faced. As they watched, she was loudly and noisily sick, her shoulders shaking with sudden weariness, and then started to crawl laboriously to her feet, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.
Behind her back, the three men of the Four exchanged somber looks.
They did so to the accompaniment of the loud snarl of an arrow that came hissing out of the trees to strike, quivering, in a tree trunk beside Craer’s nose.
10
In the Glittering City
The arrow busily burying itself in the tree had been no warning shot.
Others followed, hissing forth from the trees in a deadly cloud as the Four cursed and sprinted away along the ridge—all except for Embra, who was still on her knees, retching.
Not an arrow found its mark, and there was cursing in the trees. “Out and at
them!” someone roared. “They must have food!”
“Not the woman—leave her!” someone else insisted. “She’ll be our body slave!”
“How by all the holy Three could all of you miss?” a third someone snarled.
“Same way you did,” came a laconic reply, as men in motley armor, with swords and clubs raised and ready in their hands, trotted out onto the ridge and leered down at Embra.
“A pretty lass!”
“Hoa—they’re coming back! Snatch her!”
Eager hands reached out, only to break fingers on something unseen that barred their way like a shield—the hasty conjuring that had driven the arrows wide and was now weakening Embra with each passing moment.
As the outlaws snarled astonished curses, she swayed on her hands and knees, face white to the lips … and started the slow sag into unconsciousness.
Craer had seen the failed grabs and led Hawkril in a wide arc around the fallen sorceress, while Sarasper felt his way carefully toward her from behind.
“For Blackgult!” Hawkril thundered, swinging his blade, and one of the outlaws looked startled.
“Wha—why, that’s …”
A blade laid open the man’s neck. He staggered and fell, managing to gasp, “ … us!” before he died.
Craer bounded over him, into the trees. “Attack us, would you?” he cried, stabbing and then racing around a tree to stab at someone else. “Ruin our stealthy approach to the Glittering City, hey? Well, pay the price, fools!” He stabbed a third time, and someone gurgled in reply.
“And dead men,” Hawkril added gravely, hacking through a raised hand to slice open the throat behind it. On all sides there were crashings and cursing as the agile procurer swung around trees, kicked faces here and knees there, and danced among blades that never seemed quite swift enough to catch up with him.
“Who sent you?” he asked one man, as he drove his sword through the outlaw into a tree beyond.
The man coughed forth blood, sagged forward as Craer dragged his blade free, and moaned, “No one! Back from the wars … starving …”
“Well, so are we,” the procurer snarled. “Go dine on Silvertree’s soldiers, dogs!”
“You seem unusually agitated, friend,” Hawkril observed, as he chopped aside branches to engage three outlaws. “Questions, orders—you sound like a sword-master!”
“I feel like a swordmaster,” Craer snarled, “surrounded by idiots! Can’t these thickskulls go attack someone else?”
“Are we leaving any to mount such attacks?” Hawkril inquired mildly, sending one opponent crashing back through a dead tree and in the same movement bringing his blade around to take out the throat of another.
It was at that moment they heard Embra’s scream.
“No,” Craer answered savagely, as he spun around and raced back through the trees. “Not a one!”
Sarasper put a hand on Embra’s cheek from behind. Sargh, but she felt cold! He slipped one finger into her mouth and went to his knees beside her. Her shielding sighed away into nothingness as he did so, and he hissed a hasty curse and poured some of his own vitality into her. It wasn’t bones knit or wounds banished she needed … it was the force of life itself restored to her, energy that each spell she worked was stealing from her. A weakness new to her, on the night they’d met. A wizard’s curse, perhaps? Well, it almost had to be.
Embra moaned, under him. Sarasper felt weak and empty himself, now. Shuddering, he sank down atop her shoulders, smelling the sweet spice of her hair. Some guardian he was. Oh, to have strength to stand again! How could the lass do this, day after day? She must have the will of an angry dragon!
He heard the panting first and then the thud of running feet. Sarasper rolled over and saw a wild-eyed outlaw racing from the trees, sword out. “Least I’ll…” the man gasped angrily, swerving toward the healer, “ … get you!”
A sword stabbed down viciously. Sarasper kicked and twisted, and the blade sliced along his ribs as it slid into the stony ground beside him. The healer winced at the icy fire in his side and grabbed at the man’s sword wrist. When the blade was snatched back out of the turf, the old healer was hauled up with it. He kicked out his heels, twisted, and the startled outlaw went over Sarasper’s head with a cry. They rolled together across the rocks, and from somewhere near at hand Embra screamed.
“Bebolt and blast you!” the outlaw gasped. “We just wanted … food!”
“And our lives,” Sarasper told him grimly, as he found the hilt of his belt knife at last, and drove it almost delicately into the man’s left eye. “And our lives!”
The man stiffened under him, and then went limp. As Sarasper rolled away, gasping, he heard the thunder of a new pair of booted feet. These were much lighter and faster. “Craer?” he called.
“At your service,” the procurer chuckled, “seeing as how you and Embra have taken care of things so well here.”
The old healer rolled over and stared up at the cloudless blue sky. “Delnbone,” he gasped, “if you and Grimthews have finished your merry butchery in the trees, I need some of your blood.”
“You, too? That’s what all of these dead men were after,” Craer told him, kneeling down beside him, “and we weren’t very gentle with them. Knowing that, answer right carefully: what do you want it for?”
“Keeping our lady sorceress alive,” Sarasper grunted, before he passed out.
“By the Three!” Hawkril gasped, his face going pale. “I feel like … someone’s torn out my insides and left me nothing!”
“That’s what the Lady Silvertree’s been feeling like with every spell she’s cast,” Sarasper said gruffly. “Now lie still sensibly, like she’s doing. Just a moment more, and she’ll have life enough to spelljump us again, away from here. Craer thinks those outlaws may have friends we haven’t met, yet.”
“Your thoughts, healer, always cheer me,” the armaragor growled, and let the world fall away into darkness.…
* * *
“Not much of a map, is it?” one of the warriors grunted.
“You haven’t gone out exploring to improve it yet, have you?” Rivryn replied crisply, lifting his head to glare at the man, who stepped back, muttering. Silence fell again, as they all stared at the scratches on the shield of a warrior who’d never need a shield again, now.
It was crude, yes, and only a small corner of the ruins of Indraevyn, but it was enough for them to see what stood where under all the trees and undergrowth. They were fairly certain, now, that their immediate surroundings were free of both lurking terrors (such as whatever had slain Nynter) and of promising surviving buildings to explore—though anything might be buried under fallen stones, or overgrown, or in hidden cellars underground.
“Less than promising,” another Ornentarn warrior murmured. “Have we l—”
His words died away unspoken as the sentinel outside whistled two notes, and Rivryn’s head snapped up. “All of them back,” he reported a moment later, and the atmosphere of the room suddenly seemed less tense.
They came into the room in a weary line of ready-armed warriors, back from their “long ramble.” In their midst was the older and more powerful of the two mages. Huldaerus, the Master of Bats, leaned down with a drawn dagger to carefully mark three new buildings on the shield. “These were the most promising sites we found,” he announced to the silent room, then turned his head to look at the other wizard in the group. “Take you some warriors and have a look at the first—this one.” His dagger tapped the shield.
“While you sit here safely guzzling wine, I suppose,” Phalagh replied, looking up.
Huldaerus shrugged. “I went into danger,” he said, waving a hand at the open doorway and the ruins beyond, “and now it’s your turn. We dare not risk both of us at once—and so court the greater risk of leaving these good swordsmen mageless in this most dangerous of backwaters.”
“No,” Phalagh observed, rising with a sigh. “I suppose we dare not.” He looked around at the faces of many n
ot-quite-grinning warriors, and asked, “Which of you accompanied the Lord Wizard Huldaerus into these three ruins?”
Several warriors raised reluctant hands. Phalagh smiled. “Good—then you can now lead me into them.”
There was a long silence before the first warrior shouldered out the door, and the others slowly began to follow. Phalagh ignored their growls of resentment, gave the room a tight smile, and strode out after them.
As the scrape of their boots on the rocks died away, Huldaerus looked at the map, and spoke to the nearest warrior without looking up. “Despite what happened to Lord Master Nynter,” he said, “we’ve been here overlong without facing an attack. I need guards posted, in pairs, here and here.…”
“Once more,” Sarasper said soothingly, his arms warm and gentle around a shivering Embra. “Just once more, and we’re there.”
“But this shouldn’t be happening to me,” Embra sobbed. “It’s as if working magic is making me sick!”
Sarasper drew back her tunic to lay bare her shoulders, and Hawkril and Craer reached out grimly together to put their hands on her.
The Lady of Jewels steadied herself, drew in a deep breath, and held up another knickknack from her dwindling supply. She murmured something, made a complicated gesture with her free hand—and the world around the Four changed suddenly.
They stood now on a rocky knoll, with tilled fields on all sides of them—and the walls of Sirlptar in the distance. “I can see the gates,” Craer murmured, more to lift Embra’s spirits than for any other reason.
They stood together, the three ignoring Embra’s feeble attempts to shake them free as Sarasper worked a magic of his own, stealing more energy from all three of them to strengthen the sorceress.
Craer gasped at the sudden weak emptiness in his guts. “Could this be the curse of the Silent House on the blood of Silvertree?” he asked.
“Or something cast by her father’s mages?” Hawkril rumbled. Silence was the only reply to both questions.
Set free at last, Embra turned to face them, white to the lips, and snarled, “The same guises as in Adeln?”