by Ed Greenwood
Morning brought death to Indraevyn in earnest. From where the silent man lay, sprawled atop a creepershrouded tower, he could see a conjured spellstalker crushing armsmen with its fists, the mage who controlled it crouched in a thicket unaware that three armaragors were creeping up behind him with naked daggers in their hands; at least two separate spellbattles between rival mages at opposite ends of the ruins; and something that looked like a man-size scaly rock lizard in battle leathers, with a lion’s head, leading a grim band of fighting men up against a cluster of armaragors who were serving as bodyguards to a frightened bonfire wizard.
The silent man watched and listened to screams and bloody deaths as the sun climbed the sky. Wizards certainly seemed to know many nasty ways to slay … but sword swingers were always happy to repay the damage when magic ran out or they could catch a mage alone or unguarded. Well, let them slay tirelessly and with enthusiasm, doing Luthtuth’s work for him.
The servant creatures summoned by mages, in particular, he’d be happy to see others destroy for him. Bodyguards and even veteran armaragors he could handle, but the procurer some knew as Luthtuth and others called Velvetfoot had no love for magic, and even less for the creatures it could call, and those who wielded it. So he lay still, fire smoldering within him, and watched vicious confusion reign below, spell-battles erupt and be resolved, and men die by the dozens. The dying, wounded, and those who merely blundered off alone would be his prey once darkness came again.
“An agile, lurking strangler who likes to strike from above,” a patron had once described him. Luthtuth had smiled then, and he smiled now, his body wound about with a shifting armor of trip-cords, strangle-wires, and climbing lines that would come into their own once darkness fell. If he should be attacked before then, his weapons would be the few enspelled “smoke eggs” he carried, the sack of daggers he could throw with deadly accuracy, and his wits.
His current patron was a masked and secretive mage who claimed to be from far Renshoun. His task was to seek and bring back to the Masked One the four stones called the Dwaerindim, for “if used together in certain rituals, they’ll serve to awaken, free, and call forth the Serpent in the Shadows, age-old foe of the Sleeping King.”
This aim bothered Luthtuth not a whit; mages are always chasing some unattainable, crazed thing beyond their powers. So long as they pay first, and in full, let them destroy themselves in all sorts of spectacular and clever ways, and leave Darsar that much safer for all the rest of the not-quite-so-clever folk to enjoy.
His own clever plan was to gain this Stone, hire someone to make a replica of it and someone else to deliver that replica, and take advantage of the resulting fury of his employer to call in some known foes of the wizard to settle old scores. Luthtuth would hide and watch, just as he was doing now; if the opportunity presented itself, he’d ransack the Masked One’s lair; if not, he’d merely slip away … one Worldstone richer.
A leaning stone tower off to their left suddenly burst into rock shards with a roar. “By the Three, but there seem to be a lot of wizards on the loose today,” Sarasper muttered.
“Am I not enough for you?” Embra Silvertree whispered teasingly, as the Four crouched together under a tilted slab of stone.
“Now there’s a line to quote back at her, once she’s Queen Embra of the Vale,” Craer muttered to the other two men. Then he pointed ahead. “Could that be the top of your domed library, Old and Wise?”
Sarasper squinted. “It could be, Small and Annoying. Let’s get closer, shall we?”
Closer proved to be a tangle of bushes, the stone rubble of a fallen building, and a little open space between that and a series of crumbling half-walls, with the circular domed building rising almost untouched beyond. Craer slipped calmly from one wall to the next, until he saw a door in the library wall. He turned his head. “There ’tis, m—”
“Down!” Embra cried, and he fell on his face without hesitation. Something sizzled past low overhead, and the procurer rolled sideways until he was behind what was left of a stout stone wall.
“Who’s trying to kill us now?” he asked the armaragor behind him calmly.
Hawkril was lying on his side behind another partial wall, and spread empty hands. “I know not. Some mage or other—looks young, and has scepters—long metal ones, like the one old Mellovran Spellshards used to wave around, when we were young—in both hands.”
Part of the armaragor’s wall exploded into purple flames, and he flinched, backed away, and asked, “See?”
“If you hadn’t been so quick to roast my best warriors,” the Baron Silvertree told his two younger mages, “this task would not now be yours. So put away those scowls, take up the shielding spells, and bestow them on my daughter without delay.” He leaned forward in his seat, and asked silkily, “Or is there something else—terribly pressing—you wish to tell me at this time?”
Klamantle looked up at the familiar ceiling of this chamber in Castle Silvertree and said nothing, but Markoun, after darting several glances at his fellow mage, burst out, “Lord, both of us are less than enthused with the act of riding a conjured nightwyrm down into a cauldron of battling mages, but Klamantle has a plan.”
The baron quirked an eyebrow. “One that has robbed him of his powers of speech, perhaps?”
Klamantle brought his eyes down from the ceiling, his face smooth and blank, and said, “I happen to have once visited Lake Lassabra, Lord. I can spelljump us both thither, and from there we can approach the ruined city with stealth enough to hope to accomplish our task.”
The baron’s eyes turned to meet those of his Spellmaster and collected an almost imperceptible nod. He extended his hand toward the mages’ worktables. “Apply yourselves, then, and let us see victory therefrom.”
When two robed backs were turned, the Spellmaster approached the baron’s table and set down a cloth with something inside it: two palm-size glass globes. Ingryl let the fold of cloth he’d peeled back drop back into place over them and murmured, “In these, we shall see as if staring out of their belt buckles.”
The baron nodded and wordlessly reached for a decanter.
When the mages departed and the globes glimmered to life, rising a few inches off the table, the first thing to be seen in the depths was the shore of a lake ringed by trees.
The second—the baron stiffened and leaned forward in his seat—was a hail of arrows, leaping from the nearest of those trees!
Stones erupted into dust and smoke, and Sarasper fell on his face with a gasp. “It’s no use,” he panted, across the little open space between them—ground that it would mean instant death to try to cross. “He knows exactly where we have to get to, and until those scepters run out of magic, he can blast the ground we have to traverse as he wills!”
“How long does it take scepters to run out?” Craer snapped.
“Centuries,” Embra told him, with the ghost of a smile. Sarcastically the procurer echoed it, and then peered around the edge of the wall again. A scepter spat, the ground erupted in a line of racing flames, and Craer sniffed at it and pulled his head in again, spinning smoothly around on his haunches to face Hawkril and Embra.
“He’s behind that stub of wall on the left,” the procurer told them. “Have you some sort of blasting spell, Lady?”
“I do,” Embra confirmed, eyes narrowing. “Why?”
“Because I’ll need you to strike him down right after I do this,” the procurer replied, scrambling to his feet, “and right before I need the healer!”
And he put his head down and sprinted around the end of the wall that was sheltering them, straight out into the open and running hard for the library door.
Sarasper gaped at the running figure, and then shouted, “No! Come back, you dung-witted purse picker! Come back!”
He leaped up from his own sheltering wall and took two running steps after the procurer—just in time to have all Darsar erupt in front of his face as a scepter blasted Craer Delnbone off his feet and hurled him through the air like a c
hild’s rag doll.
14
Borrowing Privileges
Craer!” Embra screamed, leaping to her feet. Beside her, Hawkril sobbed. Fists balled and shaking, she turned to face the hulking armaragor just as he spun around and lumbered toward the end of their wall. “No!” she cried. “No!”
He put his head down and did not slow. Desperately the Lady Silvertree flung herself to the ground in front of his ankles.
Her ribs took a heavy blow, her sky was darkened by fast-descending warrior, and Hawkril Anharu crashed to the ground, chin bouncing, as purple fire spat again, scorching the stones a few feet in front of him. Something small out of that inferno struck the armaragor’s cheek, and Embra, winded and floundering under a pair of large and heavy shins, distinctly heard flesh sizzle, followed by Hawkril’s soft curse.
“Hawk,” she gasped. “Hawkril, listen!”
A rising growl of fury was her reply—and boots that weren’t at all gentle scraped and scrabbled around her as the armaragor gained his knees and turned with frightening speed to catch hold of her by the fabric covering one shoulder. Hot eyes glared into hers. “What?”
Embra panted for breath, suddenly awed by the warrior’s strength, and gasped out, “If you rush out there, he can’t miss you! How will that help Craer?”
“Lady,” the armaragor snarled, “Craer Delnbone is my oldest friend in the worl—”
“And perhaps he’ll remain so,” the sorceress snapped, “if you can keep him alive. To do that, we need Sarasper unharmed. To manage that, we need that guard gone.” She clasped slim fingers to his shoulders and shook him with all her strength; she fluttered like a leaf in a gale, but he held firm. She shouted into his face anyway. “Listen to me!”
The armaragor blinked at her and then barked simply, “Talk.”
“I need you to rise up, but then get right down again, once he fires the scepter. I’ll need that time to see him and finish my spell. If the Three stand with us, that should shatter his shield.”
“Shield? My swor—”
“Not that sort of shield. The spell I sent at him struck something—a spell of his, a barrier—and so did the little stone Craer threw to ruin his aim. That mage is standing behind a wall of magic.”
Fire spat again, they heard Sarasper sob from somewhere in the spreading smoke, and earth and gravel spattered the other side of the wall they were crouching behind.
Hawkril’s head snapped around to peer in the direction of the unseen guard for a moment, then he looked straight back into Embra’s eyes and snarled, “Lead, then. Tell me when you’re ready for me to do this little dance.” He hefted the heavy war sword in his hand meaningfully, face still hard, and something in his eyes made Embra shiver.
She drew in a deep breath, turned herself to face the wall and the guard beyond, closed her hand around another of her dwindling store of knickknacks, and said softly, “Do it now.”
A stone rolled as the armaragor moved, rocking his shoulders to make it look like he was rushing forward when no scepter spat fire in the first moment. Then purple fire roared out once more, and Embra shot up to peer through the smoke as the air beside her sizzled. There!
She fancied that distant eyes met hers, just for a moment, as she calmly and precisely spoke the last words of the spell—and lightnings of black tinged with purple flashed out of her hands, wrestling at the air as they leaped forward through the smokes in a spectacular crawling that arched up and over a suddenly staggering figure.
Beside her, there was sudden movement, something whipped through the air, almost singing as it went—and Hawkril stood watching grimly as his hurled blade cut through spark-strewn air, end over end.
Steel spun about a throat, and a scepter exploded in a whirling wash of light. Hands spasmed in pain—and in a sudden burst of purple fury, the second scepter exploded, hurling stony rubble and small cantles of wizard in all directions.
Hawkril didn’t wait for the gruesome rain to settle. He had a dagger out and was lumbering around the end of the wall even before Embra could swallow at the sight of a ragged torso toppling out of sight. She drew in a deep, shuddering breath and ran after him.
Somewhere ahead, Sarasper was sobbing weakly. They caught sight of him, staggering dazedly through the smoke, and he looked up at them with pleading eyes and mumbled, “I can’t find him.”
There was a small sound from the smokes above, and even as Hawkril whipped back his knife for a throw, stones clattered down, followed by a small, limp, and familiar body. Its boneless fall smashed the healer flat to the littered ground, a bare three strides away from the armaragor.
Hawkril covered that distance in one long lunge, plucked up Craer’s body as if the procurer was a child’s rag doll, caught hold of a bruised jaw, and stared into the little man’s bloody, unconscious face. Then he turned his head and peered keenly, for all the world like a falcon glaring down at prey, into the face of the moaning healer … just as Sarasper’s head lolled back, his eyes rolled to their whites, and his discomfort fell silent.
“Alive, both of them,” Hawkril said gravely to Embra, as she knelt beside him, panting from her hard run over broken, smoke-shrouded ground. “This is probably not a good time to enter yon portal.”
She smiled almost impishly at him. “So what’re we waiting for?”
After a startled moment, he grinned wolfishly back.
“Horns!” Klamantle swore, breaking into a clumsy run that ended in a stumble and sprawl. Arrows hummed past him and on out over the waters of Lake Lassabra.
Markoun stiffened as a shaft cut bloodily along one of his arms, and whatever magic he’d been struggling to hurl collapsed into a gout of winking, swift-dying lights.
Klamantle snarled out something through the dirt on his face, and without trying to rise lifted both of his arms like gliding wings. They tingled as they poured forth thousands of racing blades, glittering needles of force that hissed out in a silvery cloud.
A dozen or more archers shrieked or shouted in vain alarm ere they died, and when the spell-fangs had all boiled away into smoke and the twitching bodies had slumped down amid shredded leaves, Klamantle rose, wiped himself off, and gave Markoun a disgusted look. “My best battle spell, gone already,” he growled.
Markoun looked up from the healing vial he’d just sipped a careful few drops from, and shrugged. The gesture made him wince and clutch at his half-healed arm. “At least we’re alive to see you cast your secondbest battle spell.”
The older wizard’s face split in a wide, mirthless mockery of a smile. “Most amusing,” he snapped. “Let’s get away from this shore before someone else sees us. Come!”
“Yes, master,” the younger mage muttered, dropping his voice below audibility on the second word. He followed Klamantle across blood-drenched ground. “Who were these men anyw—what’re you doing?”
“Collecting weapons,” Klamantle said, lips tight with revulsion as he bent to his second gory bundle and tugged at a scabbard still under a spray of fountaining blood. “With swords and knives enough, we can turn a whirldance spell into a wall of slicing swords. Besides, ’tis always wise to seize what you can’t borrow. Hasten!”
“Indeed,” Markoun almost snarled, bending to take up a sword that spasming hands had thankfully hurled a good distance from its owner. If haste good Klamantle desired, haste he would get. He glanced up at the thick forest around and shuddered. If dark found them still creeping around this, getting stabbed at by arrows shot by unseen lurking foes, then he was all for a running charge into the ruins, and to the Three’s dung midden with stealth and slow, cautious advances!
“Faster,” Klamantle grunted, from somewhere ahead. Markoun didn’t bother to look up, but merely waggled his fingers in an appropriately rude gesture.
The top of a wall nearby suddenly exploded in flames, and from somewhere in the distance in quite another direction, a short, choked-off scream rang out. Embra looked up at the armaragor bending grimly over her, his scorched and blood
y war sword back in his hand, and said, “T-this is going to be dangerous.”
Hawkril glanced around as the clash of steel arose from behind a building on their left, and the burning wall slumped to the ground, a limp dark-robed body tumbling amid its rubble. “This concerns me,” he replied, not bothering to smile. “Deeply.”
Embra smiled for him, and shook her head in warm mirth as she bent to her task in the armaragor’s protective shadow. She rose from her knees to place knick-knacks on two foreheads, clapped her hands over them and leaned forward into an all-fours position, and looked up at Hawkril. “Now.”
The armaragor nodded expressionlessly, and she felt surprisingly gentle hands plucking at her tunic, dragging it out of her belt to lay bare her back. The great war sword was planted in the turf bare inches from her cheek, and she felt rather than saw him take out his knife again. There was a tap on her back. “Here?”
“Y-yes,” she told the ground in front of her, and caught at her lip. There was a sudden coldness, a wet trickling, and growing pain as Hawkril carefully took the enchanted curio she’d given him and pressed it into the bleeding cut he’d made. Trembling, Embra said, “If it’ll stay, stand back now.”
“Back,” the armaragor agreed, and she heard the scrape of one of his boots, moving away. The sorceress drew in a deep breath, felt the pain growing, and murmured the incantation.
Her back exploded with fire, as she’d known it would, and through the sudden, stinging sweat her world suddenly became a small boy frantically climbing a chain out of a dark room of death, a howling pack of war dogs racing nearer … and her father smiling down at her chained nakedness and spilling a lazy handful of gemstones onto it. “My little Lady of Jewels,” he drawled, “what will you become?” His dark laughter rolled over her then, deafeningly, and left Embra blinking in a sudden chill. Wisps of spell-smoke were rising from under her fingers—fingers tensed over foreheads that had suddenly risen bolt upright, and belonged to faces now frowning at her in bafflement.