by Ed Greenwood
Three nods gave her answer, and she dug out almost the last of the little magics from Silvertree House, in trembling hands, and set to work, touching Hawkril first—the others nodded in approval—then Craer, and then Sarasper. She fell limply against him before she could do any more, and started to slide toward the ground.
Wordlessly Hawkril extended his cloak. Sarasper and Craer wrapped the Lady of Jewels so as to conceal her face, the armaragor lifted her into his arms, and they set off toward the gates of the Glittering City.
Laughter rang off a ceiling in Castle Silvertree. “I can see through both eyes again!” Markoun Yarynd announced triumphantly to the baron, “and more than that: I’ve just seen, through farscrying, four folk enter Sirlptar—a tall warrior, a short man, and two others, one of them bundled up and being carried!”
Faerod Silvertree smiled. “Our little band of four fools,” he purred. “Ingryl, alert my men there. It’s time, and past time, for the slaughter of these three men my daughter’s acquired. She’ll be much more biddable when stripped of them and alone again.”
“Done, Lord Baron,” Ingryl murmured, turning back to his corner to work the necessary magics.
“’Twere best if the shielding and listening spells were settled on Embra before the blood of her newfound play fellows starts to flow,” the baron continued silkily. “See to it, won’t you, Ingryl?”
“Indeed,” the greatest of his wizards replied, without turning. “Klamantle has been working hard to ensure my success in such matters.”
At this barbed comment Klamantle went red, and then white. He’d thought that the mental orders he’d just magically given his own personal agents in Sirlptar—to capture the mysterious third man of the four, for questioning—were his own secret. The accursed Spellmaster must have woven some trickery into the spells that had just restored Klamantle’s eyes to be able to read so much.
Fighting to make his face smooth and impassive again, he called up a mind-shielding spell, whispered its casting over the implements on his worktable, furiously wished Ingryl dead … and started to wonder just how to bring that death about.
The gate guards merely looked bored as the three men and their bundle entered; perhaps scores of women wrapped up in cloaks were carried into Sirlptar every day. All three conscious members of the Four had seen the crowded, narrow streets before. They patiently shoved their ways along the lanes, through the busy throngs of folk, in the shadows of the ever-present overhanging balconies, enduring the smells and the din. The Glittering City seemed, if possible, more crowded and frenetic than ever, with many armed men—obvious outlanders among them—shouldering through the thick press of crowds and insistently calling vendors.
Hawkril caught sight of a banner and shook his head. “Bah,” he said over his shoulder, as he started to clear a road for the others with his bulk, “you’d think the master bards would choose some quieter place for their Moot.”
“Castle Silvertree, for instance?” Craer murmured in arch reply, but the noises around them were so loud that Hawkril heard him not. By unspoken agreement the three were heading for one of the oldest and shabbiest houses of accommodations in Sirlptar, one that welcomed armsmen more than others: the Wavefyre Inn. To fighting-men it had the attractions of good food, reasonable prices, never being quite full, and—for those who knew—of having many side entrances and back ways out. This was the inevitable result of years of success under proprietors who disposed of easy-stolen riches by purchasing the building next door, and then the one beyond that, breaking through walls to string everything together and leaving the ground floors rented to shopkeepers.
There was, however, just one “proper” entrance. As they mounted its worn steps, Sarasper said suddenly, “I hope someone has coins enough for our stay. I’ve a few oddments from Silvertree House, but explaining such things attracts far more attention than I’m fond of.”
“Have no fears,” Craer murmured almost jauntily. “Hawkril will provide.”
The armaragor turned and gaped at him. “I what?” Swiftly scowling eyebrows drew together. “With what?”
“With this, Tall and Menacing,” the procurer replied smoothly, plucking a gold coin from the cuff of the armaragor’s boot and a handful more from under the knuckle plates of Hawkril’s right gauntlet, and displaying them with a flourish.
Hawkril’s jaw dropped—and then his lips quirked into a smile. “I was richer than I knew,” he told the door of the inn, as he booted it open and turned to shield Embra from its return swing. “Perhaps our favorite procurer will enlighten me as to how long I’ve been carrying around such epicene wealth.”
“Since Adeln,” Craer replied merrily. “I couldn’t risk being caught with them in my possession at the tavern I was stealing them in—and there you were, sitting like a patient mountain beside me, draining tankards like a horse at a water trough.”
“While there you were,” the armaragor replied, “stealing coins like Craer in any tavern I might name.”
“No names, Tall and Mighty,” the procurer said warningly, as they arrived at the inn desk together. “We’re romantically involved, remember?”
“I was forgetting that, yes,” Hawkril said heavily. “Help me remember, O ardent lord of my dreams, won’t you?”
“By the Three,” Sarasper muttered to the armaragor, “he does get going, doesn’t he?”
“He always gets good rooms, though,” Hawkril murmured. “Watch.”
The procurer leaned close over the desk and murmured dark warnings to the stiff-faced clerks, tossed a few gold coins carelessly into their laps, accepted some looks of new respect, and was done.
“Act haughty and mysterious,” he said out of the side of his mouth, as they went to the stairs. “We’re high-ranking baronial agents, securing a private room for a very discreet meeting with certain high priests—and foreign envoys.”
“Don’t embellish,” Hawkril grunted. “The only outlanders we know where to find hereabouts are lasses who remove overmuch of their clothing and dance in taverns.”
“That’s why I included them,” Craer replied archly. “After all, one never knows, does one?”
“Sounds like you’ve already chosen your baronial motto to me,” the armaragor grunted. “Now there’s just this small matter of acquiring a barony …”
Three stairs rose out of the lobby. The southernmost, curving up the left wall, was the darkest and least used. With four loose keys in his fist, Craer led the way up two flights, to a small landing where a third flight ascended and two doors faced each other. He applied his key to the door on the right with an air of mischief, shrugged when it rattled in the lock but failed to open the door, and turned to the door on the left—the clearly marked door of the room they’d rented.
“Displayed enough cleverness yet?” Hawkril grunted. “This bundle grows no lighter as the hours pass!”
“Complaints, always complaints,” the procurer murmured, as he peered out windows and pulled open doors in swift succession, his drawn sword in hand. At last he turned to face them and announced with a sigh, “It will serve.”
“I’m glad of that,” Hawkril replied in dry tones, “seeing as I’ve put the lass into this bed already.”
For all his dash and dazzle, the procurer had missed seeing the door across the landing open a finger’s width for a few moments and someone peer across the landing as the Four entered their room.
The someone was a man possessed of a weathered face, a short and close-trimmed beard, and a pleasant expression. He wore trail leathers of the sort favored by bards—and vagabonds. One eyebrow rose in surprised recognition ere he pulled his door closed again and was joined by a thoughtful frown as he shot the bolt.
The Lady Silvertree played at disguise the way most mages did: all folk enspelled together saw each other’s true seeming, not the disguise provided by the magic for others to look upon. Her three sword-companions were obviously unaware that her magic had failed, and their true appearances were visible to ev
ery interested eye in Sirlptar. The Glittering City had far too many such eyes for the watcher’s liking; he hoped the four who’d come all this way from the Silent House weren’t going to learn a bloodily expensive lesson for their slip. And was the Lady Embra just asleep, or had some harm befallen her? That could well shatter her spells—and men unfamiliar with magic might not even realize this.
Behind his closed door, the bearded man had a sudden thought—or came to a decision. He spun around in haste and strode away.
Behind another closed door, Craer was checking the readiness of knives up this sleeve and that, and saying firmly, “The master bards are still meeting, Hawk. Your height makes you too easily recognized and remembered—so you must bide here, guarding Embra, and not show his face or hers outside yon door. All of the barons are sure to have spies and agents at work in the city right now.”
Hawkril nodded, growling reluctantly, “I’ll do so, but I’m setting a price: mind you bring me back a roast kleggard and a bottle of wine, at least, when you return.”
He sat down on the largest chair in the room and laid his naked war sword ready across his knees as Craer and Sarasper made their promises. The procurer looked at the warrior settled into his chair and said, “Very impressive—but you’ve got to get up and bar the door behind us—the bar’s in yon closet.”
“Clever, aren’t you?” Hawkril grunted, as he went to the closet.
As the procurer and the healer went out, they heard the bar rattle down into place. They traded grins as they clattered down the stairs and threaded their ways through the crowded Wavefyre common room to the street. “Bloody Droppa’s Window?” Craer asked, not noticing a man in one corner of the room stare hard at him, then draw back and swiftly go elsewhere.
“It’s still there?” Sarasper responded in delight. “Then of course!”
Sirlptar was a maze of hurrying people, rumbling carts, shouts and curses, and trotting dogs. The noisy, muddy streets were awash in a thousand smells, most of them particularly strong in the alleys and back passages Craer ducked down and hurried along, with Sarasper following trustingly in his wake.
As they descended toward the harbor, the streets grew narrow and dirtier, and the alleyways more littered with all manner of rotting filth. It was a relief to the healer when they turned into a half-remembered street overhung with dripping washing, and slowed. Ahead, a shifting group of men were gathered around an unadorned window, in the side of a crumbling building that had probably begun its career as a warehouse.
The smells rolling out of that window, amid streamers of steam and smoke, made mouths water and throats tighten. Roast kleggard, horse, and what must be a mixed-fowl stew mingled with the seemingly perpetual stink of overscorched boar that both men’s memories carried about the Window. The familiar crumbling clay pots and dirty sacks taken from grain hauling use because of holes, were also in evidence as customer after customer trotted away from the window laden with steaming supper.
When it was their turn, Craer ordered enough for six hungry armsmen with the muttered comment to Sarasper, “He eats for three, and we’ve got to keep her strength up, hey?” The healer was staggering under a hot, gravy-soaked sack when they made their own retreat from the Window. The procurer took one look at Sarasper’s face and said, “I know an even shorter way. Come!”
They ducked into an alley that was so dark and narrow that it seemed almost like a tunnel. Almost immediately Craer bent low with his dagger and slashed a trip cord. Turning his head to the left, he snarled, “I’ve magic to burn you with!”
The empty threat seemed to work. Hastening in his wake, Sarasper saw eyes ducking away from a dark opening and almost missed seeing the procurer duck through another opening, into what seemed more a sewer than an alley. They splashed through filth for only a few steps before Craer turned sharply again, plunging into darkness.
“Slow down!” the healer panted.
“Daren’t!” the procurer called back happily, as they mounted a slippery, stinking flight of stone steps that seemed to be climbing a rough dirt hillside of impromptu graves—some of them yawning open, waiting—under the floor of a building held above their hurrying heads by pillars crisscrossed with fading messages scrawled in fire ash.
“Death to all barons” was burned across “Death to all wizards,” and there were names and cryptic symbols; Sarasper hadn’t time to notice more before they reached another tunnellike passage, low under the overhanging building, where they had to scuttle along bent double. A dart hissed out of the darkness to strike, quivering, in a rotting wooden beam that was sagging down from the building; rats scurried toward it, in case it was something to eat.
Craer snarled, “My curse will find you!” but did not slow down to do so; panting, the healer caught up to him just as the passage ended on the lip of a stinking pit choked with kitchen offal, spoiled food, and human waste. The procurer ignored a forlorn figure stirring the fly-swarming mess with a stick in hopes of finding something, and ran along the edge of the midden to another slimy set of stone steps.
Sarasper rolled his eyes and followed. Their way led through several more noisome passages and stairs that the healer would have termed near-sewers had Craer tarried long enough to listen, and skirted a dozen or more open middens, before the procurer was forced to halt for a little local traffic.
It occurred when a gasping Sarasper judged they’d climbed a little more than half the way back up to the Wavefyre (which stood two streets over on the seaward side of the ridge that southern Sirlptar was built on), when they came to a space where refuse abounded and five twisting back lanes met.
Two men rose from behind mounds of rotting, rat-infested waste when the procurer and the healer were crossing the moot. Men with leather armor under their rags, who bore long, well-used knives in their hands, and wore unpleasant smiles.
“Give, friend, and live,” one of them directed Sarasper, beckoning for the still-steaming sack.
“You’ve been to the Window,” the other purred, hefting his knives menacingly. “Yield the sack.”
Craer plucked up a handful of slimy, fly-haloed fruit and threw it almost casually into the face of the nearest man, then tripped him as he staggered back, shouting.
The second man rushed forward to stab and hack at the procurer, snarling curses, but Craer lured him back into a refuse mound and then sprang all around him slashing—until the slipping, sliding knife man was streaming blood from half a dozen gashes and was starting to gasp and go pale.
Then Craer plucked up a length of rusting pipe from the rubble and swung it in a great arc from his knees right around until he’d turned, shoulders and all, to cleave air. Somewhere in the midst of that swing he struck the man’s arm, and a knife went clanging and whirling away. The man staggered, clutching at his hand—and the backswing of the pipe met the side of his head. He fell on his face, in silence.
The other man was snarling vicious curses as he wiped streaming eyes, but Craer smiled at him across the steaming sack and warned, “Back off, friend, and live.”
The man glared at the grinning procurer, eyed the food and the knife that had appeared like spell’s work in Craer’s hand—and was now poised for throwing—and then ducked away down an alley.
“By the Three!” Sarasper gasped. “That was … too … cl—Craer? Craer!”
The procurer uncurled out of a nearby window with three bottles of wine splayed in one hand and grinned at his comrade. “Look what just fell into my hands! Folk are so careless about where they leave things! Can I keep them?”
“For about an hour, I’d say,” the healer replied in very dry tones, jerking his head in an insistent “move on!” gesture. “Try to leave a little for the rest of us to drink, eh?”
They hastened up streets that were more flights of steps than anything else, and plunged into one of the gatherings where merchants met to trade odd ends of goods, settle debts, and plan future prosperity. Snatches of excited talk came to their hurrying ears as they scuttled
around and between grandly gesticulating men.
“Well, I say that we’ll have war again, and soon! Just yester—”
“Can’t be, Nolos; even wizards can’t be in two castles at once. If las—”
“—mages coming from all over Darsar, I’ve heard, to some ruin far upriver. Something about the Sleeping King—p’raps they’ve found his tomb, all full of magic! Wouldn’t th—”
“That Silvertree, now: I’ve heard he’s planning how to seize the city itself! Aye, right here, and he’ll tear down most of Helder Street to build himself a soaring castle atop everything! Won’t that be—”
Behind two fat and bearded perfume dealers, two men in long cloaks stiffened at the sight of the hurrying pair and abandoned the comfortable pillar they were lounging against to move in the same direction as the supper bundle. As they went, they clasped sword hilts to keep scabbarded blades from knocking into the oblivious merchants crowded around.
“Aglirta doesn’t need that sort of king! Armsmen torching cottages by night, and slave-chaining up everyone who so much as looks back at them—I don’t think so! We’ll end up as bad as—”
* * *
It was a long way from Castle Silvertree, but Daerentar Jalith and Lharondar Laernsar had no difficulty remembering the baron’s blunt orders. Their constantly tingling bodies reminded them with each step they took and every twitch their limbs made—spasms that were unpleasantly new to them and had begun to foster in them the beginning of respect for wizards. If working magic was like this, no wonder most mages were right bastards.
Daerentar’s head snapped around. Was that—? Yes.
He clapped a hand on Lharondar’s arm, and pointed, using only his head. A moment later, the two spell-bearing warriors were moving carefully through the crowd after the agile little procurer and the old man trudging along with the sack. Two fools whose fates mattered not a whit—but who couldn’t be cut down until they led the way to the Lady Silvertree.
They crossed Am Lane, and then Belzimurr’s Way, turning up a nameless alley that crested the ridge and dropped down into Stamner’s Street. It was in the alley that it became obvious to the baron’s best blades that others were following the renegade pair. Well, no wonder. Kidnapped or no, if the Lady of Jewels could be turned against her father, any baron of the Vale would dearly love to have her spells bent to his causes.