The Kingless Land

by Ed Greenwood

  It was a bone pit, a body disposal for creatures slain by spells, and …

  He was crashing through their remains, bones crumbling to acrid dust all around him as he plunged and rolled and came to a crashing, breathless halt atop some loose stones that had fallen from the pit walls.

  Dazedly, Huldaerus heaved himself upright, wincing at his bruises and still struggling for breath. He must climb out, or be truly trapped to face the next spell—as if he were standing at the bottom of a bottle held in the gloating hands of his foes.

  He’d fallen only about twenty feet or so, and the walls of the pit were all large, rounded, loose stones stacked carelessly together, offering easy purchase everywhere for fingers and boots. The Master of Bats let two of his little creations spring out of the neck of his robes and flap upward, and then he set his teeth and followed them, surging up swiftly. He was going to make it, he was …

  Gasping as he set his hand on a smallish stone, and raw power shocked through his arm! Power that numbed and surged and … he was lying on his back amid swirling bone dust again, back at the bottom of the pit.

  Huldaerus shook his head to clear it, barely knowing where he was. Such power! Could it be? Well, whatever it was, he needed it now, more than he’d ever needed raw, untried magic before.

  He started to climb again, slipping in his haste, looked up—and saw the younger Silvertree mage smiling down at him.

  Snarling in fear and desperation, the Master of Bats clawed his way upward, crying in a desperate ploy, “It’s eating me! It’s got me! Come no closer! Save yourself!”

  Markoun laughed aloud—and Huldaerus of Ornentar tore the small, round, dun-colored stone out of the wall. Fingers bleeding, he held it up … and the Silvertree mage stopped laughing.

  And then, with a leaping heart, Huldaerus was certain. He was holding the Stone of Life!

  His hand swept up, trailing fires, and he exulted. Then he called on its power, and as the leaping warmth flooded through him, he hurled a spell he’d dared not use before. He knew he held power incarnate, one of the Dwaer that could reshape all Darsar.

  A moment later, Markoun Yarynd knew it, too.

  15

  To Stand Upon A Stone

  The fires raining down on the Master of Bats should have crisped him on the spot. The very stones he clung to cracked and burst in the heat, showering him with hot shards.

  “Too late, young idiot,” Huldaerus told his foe exultantly, standing unscathed in the heart of the inferno.

  As the roaring flames boiled away, their hurler stared down at him, gulping in disbelief—an emotion echoed in the raised eyebrows of the older Silvertree mage as he came to stand beside the first and look into the pit … and swiftly lost his air of bored unconcern. Both wizards hastened to send down deadly magics.

  Huldaerus did nothing as lightnings crashed and fires roiled and lances of pure force stabbed around him. He laughed triumphantly, even as stones around him melted, slumping and flowing, and the pit grew deeper. He stood patiently as stones crumbled, flames roared, and deadly gases raged around him, until at last the onslaught died away.

  In the sudden stillness, Huldaerus decided it was time to raise a sardonic eyebrow of his own.

  Only the younger mage was still poised above the pit. The sneering face of the older Silvertree mage was gone; its owner had fled. Huldaerus looked up at the young fool who’d used his last few battle-spells in vain and now stood with smoke curling away from empty hands, looking down at his own death with dark despair in his eyes.

  Looking down at the Master of Bats.

  Huldaerus gave his foe a gentle smile and, almost delicately, sent killing flames up at him in a steady, inexorable roar. His smile did not waver, nor his fires lessen, until Markoun Yarynd had become small embedded pieces of flesh sizzling in the ceiling above the pit.

  Huldaerus watched scorched stone creak and shimmer as it cooled, ignoring the sounds of battle above. He was too busy exulting at so narrowly escaping death and at the sheer power he now commanded.

  At length he chuckled and lifted a hand to burn footholds in the dripping stone beside him. Well, now, it seemed Ornentar might prove the mightiest barony in all the Vale, after all. A quick clamber up, a rallying of the helmheads, and then …

  The removal of Phalagh, who was all too quick to see things and apt to succeed in wresting the Stone away from his colleague, a mage he hated and feared … a mage who, bats and all, still had to sleep sometime.

  Huldaerus shaped gauntlets out of the air to keep his hands from burning on the searing stones, and climbed. Halfway up, the rich stink of smoldering leather reminded him to do the same for his feet. By the Three, there was no end to the spells he could spin with this power!

  As the Master of Bats clambered out of the pit, he feigned weariness—and was pleased to see Phalagh run to his aid. Feigned? Well, no, he was tired. Huldaerus shook his head as the world started to spin. All that crafting and guiding of spells … the Stone might power them without stint or faltering, but his were the wits that still had to frame each magic.…

  His fellow Ornentarn was bending anxiously over him now. Huldaerus looked up, smiled tightly, and cast a fleshripper spell right into Phalagh’s startled face. It was a magic that tore apart its caster as well as its victim, usually employed only by doomed mages desperate to fell a foe as they died.

  Phalagh didn’t even have time to scream. His glistening remains were still spattering down into the pit when the Stone of Life finished restoring its bearer, and Huldaerus completed his many-times-interrupted rise back into the library.

  He did not have to look far to find his warriors. Ornentar helms turned toward him to receive his orders.

  “Kill everyone,” he told them, waving his hand casually at the shelves around. “Scour out this place; leave none living.”

  Obediently they turned and lumbered away to do that. The Master of Bats watched them go, smiling faintly. Now, if he ruled all the Vale, what sort of land would he desire his kingdom to be? Hmm?

  The slaughter took a long time, and two more Ornentarn fell. The last one took an armored giant from Brostos with him, grunts of furious effort twisting into gargling sobs of agony as they drove their blades repeatedly through each other. When the Ornentarn warriors strode up to the shafts of light where Huldaerus was standing, there were only three of them left.

  “The hall is cleansed?” Huldaerus asked.

  A helm shook in a reluctant “no,” and a scarred gauntlet rose and pointed down an aisle. “The sorceress lives and has rejoined her companions.”

  “Kill them for me,” Huldaerus said mildly. “Or have you seen fit to change my orders?”

  “No, Lord,” the warriors assured him hastily, and stalked off to deal death. They’d gone perhaps halfway down the aisle when a bright blade stabbed at them out of one of the rows; when they charged thence to give battle, a bookshelf was thrust over on them, crushing one Ornentarn.

  The man’s high, shrill scream brought a scowl to the face of the Master of Bats, who plucked up a piece of wood from the nearest fallen shelf. Touching it to the Stone, he closed his eyes and murmured something.

  When he opened them, all wood in the part of the library he was facing melted away, leaving his two warriors facing four adventurers across a bare stone floor.

  Four bedraggled adventurers. One was a mountain of an armaragor, eyes bleak and battle-calm, shoulders and arms as broad and as mighty as many a castle door—but the others were but wisps: one was old, one was little larger than a boy, and one of them was a dazed, limping woman. As the Ornentarn stalked forward, Huldaerus smiled grimly, awaiting butchery to come.

  But it was one of his own warriors who came crashing down on his back, after an agile procurer had rolled hard into the man’s legs—and the other who retreated in fear before the armaragor’s shrewdly swung blade.

  The Master of Bats snarled. Hefting the Stone, he worked a spell to make many whirling axes appear out of the air to race a
nd spin through the area. The fully armored warriors of Ornentar should suffer little, but as for their foes …

  He’d barely drawn breath for a grim chuckle when his conjured weapons, fading into view, flashed and fell and were no more. His spell was broken.

  Beyond the flashing swords of the fighting men, the young woman stood glaring at him, no longer dazed. Then her lips twisted in a smile that promised doom.

  Huldaerus gave her a sneer in answer and lifted the Stone, causing blue fires to play about it to show her what she faced. A moment later, the tiles beneath his feet abruptly heaved upward, as if punched by a huge rock fist—and he landed hard on his own backside. The smile on the face of the sorceress widened.

  Huldaerus snarled, lifted the Stone over his head without bothering to rise, and willed forth bolts of lightning to lash and tame this arrogant woman.

  Armored figures staggered in the sudden blue-white cracklings, but he hadn’t even managed to spit out a curse at his own stupidity when the lightnings died away, and the groans of his warriors became gasps and grunts—and the clash of blades began anew.

  “Horns of the Lady!” Huldaerus snarled. “Die, sorceress! Die!”

  And he reached down deep into the Stone and called forth the strongest slaying spell he knew. He’d have a headache to outsing bards soon, and weariness to overmaster wakefulness, but if it slew this woman and let him walk free of Indraevyn with a Dwaer stone, ‘twould be worth it.

  Like a black and vengeful ghost his cloud of slaying left him, rippling as it rose, and he saw his foe’s face go pale as she recognized it.

  Huldaerus smiled. Fitting, ‘twas, that she’d know her doom just before it took her. The Silvertree mage, then Phalagh, now this one … he was going to enjoy destroying wizards up and down the Vale this season, until none but the Master of Bats could hurl a spell from Sirlptar and the sea to the singing headwaters in the wastes, wherever they might lie. He’d…

  Embra thought furiously, watching death come for her. She had no effective counterspell. The only way to end a death shroud is with a death—either of the caster or the target. So all she had to do now was slay an accomplished wizard who commanded the endless power of a Worldstone.

  She smirked bitterly. Simplicity itself for the legendary Lady of Jewels, no?

  Embra retreated from the swordplay to buy herself a few more breaths to think of a way out of this. Patiently the drifting death shroud followed, looming up large and dark, opening out to receive her. …

  She stumbled against a fallen ceiling stone and almost fell. Wait—that was it!

  Bending over to wrap her arms around the block with one of the last few knickknacks caught between two of her fingers, she strained to lift the stone block an inch off the floor, gasped out a spelljump incantation—

  —and was suddenly straining in the air, with Huldaerus just beneath her boots. She let go of the block and arched upward, seeking to climb empty air.

  The Master of Bats had time to look up as the block came down—but no time to gasp. It smashed him to the floor, driving his head deep into tiles far harder than flesh or bone. His hands, however, were moving.…

  Embra came down kicking at them. One out-flung forearm cracked like dry kindling as she landed on it, bouncing and gasping in pain. His other hand spasmed open in agony—and the faintly glowing, awakened Worldstone fell out of it. The dark wall of the death shroud faded away.

  The Lady of Jewels rolled over, groaning from her landing, and snatched up the round and reassuringly heavy Dwaer.

  The Ornentarn warriors had broken off their losing battle with Hawk and Craer to thunder toward her, blades raised. Sinister helms glared down, promising her swift, sharp death.

  Embra kept rolling, found her feet, and raced across the rubble-strewn floor toward one of the stairs. Wind whistled near her shoulder as a blade didn’t quite catch her, and then Craer yelled as he always did when throwing something heavy. There was a curse and a heavy thumping close behind her—as her running feet found the first step.

  Hugging the Stone to her breast with one hand and snatching at the stair rail with the other, Embra burst up those steps like a storm wind, hearing the scrape of pursuing boots only on her last turn around the rising coil. She came out onto the curving balcony gasping for breath and staring at doors … closed doors.

  There! One stood open, and she made for it. She had to win time to collect her wits and call on the Stone before a sword cut her open and ended all striving.

  The room beyond the door was dimly lit by three tall windows and held a tangle of decaying chairs around a grand table that had collapsed long ago. Embra spun around, shoved the door shut—and discovered that its latch bar had rusted away. There was no way to secure it closed.

  Hissing a curse, she hurried to a window. At least she could leap out if that swordsman got to h—

  The library around her shuddered as if struck by a giant’s fist, and the ceiling came down in rolling thunder. Shouting in alarm, Embra threw herself desperately out the window as stone blocks poured down and the dust rolled up.

  The Stone let her fly, and even hover. She swooped up from what would have been a nasty landing on tumbled rubble in a rising arc that brought her almost nose to nose with Klamantle Beirldoun, as he stood perched on the crumbling summit of another building, his trembling hands spread in the exhausted aftermath of trying to bring down the dome of the library. His face went white as he saw the Stone in her hands.

  “Yes,” Embra snarled, as she flew past. “So you should fear, pawn of my father! So you should fear!”

  And she turned in a tight bank, seeking a perch to slay wizards from.

  The din was deafening, and the very floor shook under their boots as stones crashed down all around the dome, smashing away parts of the balcony rail. Dust rose like smoke from a wind-whipped fire. In the quaking gloom, no one saw three black bats flit up from the body of the Master of Bats—or the stones hurtling down that smashed one of them back to the floor. The wizard’s remaining hand twitched once, as if trying to grasp something that wasn’t there, and then was still. Dust started to fall on it as the thunderous clamor slowly died away. In the distant shadows, two bats flapped furiously away, seeking the forest beyond this shattered, doomed place.

  “Hawkril?” a voice husked, and then broke off to cough. “Craer?”

  Something moved elsewhere in the gloom, an agile shadow that slid a dagger into an Ornentarn throat, and then glided down a spiral stair.

  “Hawkril?” the voice came again, sharp with alarm. “Where are you?”

  The warrior of Ornentar who’d begun to move slowly toward that voice, sword raised to slay, suddenly staggered, twisted over backward under the cruel force of a choking arm—and then stiffened as a dagger slid into an eye slit of his helm. The shadow bounded away even before the warrior crashed onto a heap of fallen stones—and when Hawkril came stumbling past a moment later, peering this way and that for Sarasper or a foe, the shadow was gone amid the swirling dust.

  It rose up again to scale a bookshelf, outlined for a moment against the steady, unchanged glow of the columns of light, and the only person to notice it saw it steal along the lofty wood like a prowling cat, drawing nearer to an unsuspecting Hawkril Anharu … and nearer…

  A knife flashed as the shadow sprang, fingers reaching for an unprotected throat, steel ready to slash an unhelmed face.

  A second shadow hurtled out of the dust, boots spread to smash aside a knife arm and drive a heel solidly into the side of a head. The two shadows met, twisted—and crashed to the floor, bouncing and rolling apart.

  The armaragor spun around. “Craer?” he called, trotting forward. He recognized that slim, agile figure.

  But two short and slender bodies rose in the dust, and two knives flashed. Hawkril slowed, peering over his raised sword, seeking to know his friend.

  A steel ball flashed at Craer’s temple. He ducked away and sensed rather than saw the thin cord trailing behind it—the cor
d that tugged at his arm as the ball spun in a curve. The procurer who’d thrown it pulled hard, seeking to haul Craer into his raised dagger.

  Craer planted one foot and lunged in the direction he was being pulled in, bringing his dagger up with both hands to fend off that stabbing blade as he plunged past it, kicking hard at where an unseen belly must be. His boot touched something that was fading away, and a faint chuckle came to his ears as the waxed cord dropped across Craer’s throat—and tightened.

  The procurer threw himself onto his back and kicked out wildly with both feet, hoping to hurl himself out of his foe’s reach before his shoulders struck the floor—and out of the darkness overhead a hulking body reached out a war sword over him, stabbing at his foe.

  “Little dancing man,” Hawkril growled. “Who are your”

  The answer that came out of the gloom was delivered with soft amusement. “Luthtuth am I, and your death this day.”

  Someone snorted, not far away, and Sarasper’s unmistakable voice complained, “How many times have I heard such claims? How churlish! Not even ‘You must die because my master decrees it!’ or ‘Know that the price of your doom is six golden sarcrowns, and he who paid it is—’! These younglings have no style, no respect for the rules and rightness of things!”

  Luthtuth replied silkily, “I dislike babblers. Be then the first to fall!”

  Sarasper snorted again, and as the shadow sprang at him, the old man was gone, and a longfangs scuttled away through the drifting dust. In the distance they heard him shout, “Embra? We need you!”

  The voice could not be mistaken, nor its cry ignored. The Lady Silvertree sighed and turned reluctantly from the pleasurable job of chasing and slaying Klamantle to swoop back through a window into the library. It took but two thoughts to banish dust and make the air glow brightly as she went. Framing magics was tiring, yes, despite the coursing power of the Stone—but she was being drained no more, and by the Three it felt good to work spells unafraid!

  Rubble lay everywhere, and among it her three companions—Sarasper halfway up one of the stairs—and a stranger. A slim, crouching man who by garb and manner was probably another procurer. There was a knife in his hand, and he was headed toward Sarasper.