The Kingless Land

by Ed Greenwood

  “Shall I slay this one?” she called, slowing.

  “And rob me of the pleasure?” Craer called back. “Oh, all right!”

  She shook her head at his mock dejection and hurled lightnings at the stranger—but the man vaulted over some crumpled shelving and was gone down a dark opening to unknown spaces beneath.

  Embra frowned. “I’m reluctant to go down there,” she told her companions, hovering above them. “Why not gather up on the balcony? From there we can see him approach if he returns.”

  “What?” Craer croaked, rubbing at his throat. “You’ve got this precious Stone everyone’s after—let’s begone, before all the rest of the wizards and outlaws in Darsar get here!”

  “Soon, soon,” Embra told him. “There’s something I must do first!” She turned and flew to the glowing shafts.

  Behind her, Hawkril and Craer groaned.

  * * *

  Ingryl Ambelter lifted his eyes from the scene that flickered in the depths of a glass globe up at the baron, raising his eyebrows in a silent question.

  Faerod Silvertree smiled. “Treachery and young mages go hand in hand; when I deal with those young in sorcery, I expect no less. Wherefore I feel no loss nor loyalty when I must spend the life of such a mage. Klamantle has reached his final usefulness to us. Use him, by all means.”

  The Spellmaster nodded, turned with a grim smile, and murmured into the sphere, “Fleeing so soon, Klamantle? Ah, be brave!”

  His fingers moved briefly, and he saw Klamantle stiffen as that magic reached him. The flying mage froze in midair, only his twisting, trembling face betraying a frantic struggle against its grip—and then turned, firmly under the Spellmaster’s control, to fly back at the dome.

  There was stark terror in Klamantle’s eyes as he hurtled to his doom.

  The Lady of Jewels hovered above the open books, quoting aloud. “Then did the Golden Griffon…” she muttered, moving restlessly in the air, her brow furrowed in thought.

  Her face changed as something new occurred to her, and she deliberately brought the Stone in her hand into one of the shafts of light.

  Nothing happened, and after a moment she thrust it into the next shaft of light, and watched nothing befall there, either. Shrugging, Embra went back to reading.

  And gasped aloud, face growing pale. What she’d done with the Stone had made the writing on one page change.

  If ye have but two Dwaerindim, the Sleeping King can be awakened thus: touch ye the two stones together, and say aloud…

  Embra read the few lines over and over again, trying to burn them into her memory beyond all forgetting. She was almost done when the writing flickered under her gaze—and she was staring at what she’d read there earlier: cryptic clues as to the whereabouts of the Dwaer. Clues that she could make sense of readily enough, but that seemed, well, wrong.

  “These point to Silvertree House,” she said aloud at last, shaking her head. “But I must be wrong, or this a ruse—this Stone wasright there, in yon pit.”

  As if her words were a cue, a bright flash and a deafening roar smote the Four, crashing into the dome on waves of flooding sunlight—as part of the dome was blasted down from above. Huge shards of stone hurtled down, dashing the sorceress to the floor but tumbling through books that hung untouched, intangible, and oblivious.

  Shouting in alarm, the three men ran forward as one, seeking Embra.

  They barely noticed something small and spiderlike land just behind their hurrying boots. Something that was bloody beneath the dust, and twitched slightly, like a tired spider. It was a man’s right hand. Until very recently, it had belonged to the wizard Klamantle Beirldoun.

  Faerod Silvertree was not a slow-witted man, but he seldom allowed more than malice to master his face and voice. He had kept silent, pretending ignorance, waiting and watching as all of his Dark Three wizards had unfolded their own separate treacheries. How best to use their misdeeds?

  One tool was now shattered; it was time to temper another. “You made him a living spellblast,” he murmured. “Rather wasteful, don’t you think?”

  Ingryl Ambelter shook his head violently. “My Lord,” he snapped, “believe me when I say Silvertree could no longer afford his ambitions. Markoun was merely blindly and ineptly greedy; Klamantle was an active and capable danger. He laid a curse on your daughter that brought this whole affair about, causing her to flee the castle in open disloyalty to you and work all the trouble and mischief you’ve seen since. Klamantle was behind it all.”

  The baron’s eyes narrowed. “And my Spellmaster caught him not?”

  “Lord,” his last and mightiest mage snarled, “I’ll gladly discuss all this later. Right now I must work a magic on the healer.”

  “Your ‘Voice of the God’?”

  “The same,” Ingryl Ambelter snapped, settling his nose against the glass globe. Laying two fingers of either hand atop it, he muttered a few soft words. The baron watched for a moment, not quite smiling, and then bent his attention to his own globe. As he peered into its familiar glow, a thought struck him: what would be left of him if his willful Spellmaster decided to make a certain glass globe burst apart?

  In the depths of the glass there was frantic activity. Hawkril and Craer raked stony rubble from Embra’s crumpled body in feverish haste, tossing it so wildly aside that Sarasper was moved to circle widely around them, and come at her from another way.

  Sarasper, it is time.

  Old Oak?

  You know me, Sarasper. Now heed: seize the Stone. Take it into your hand and bear it away, smiting with its fires all who seek to gainsay thee. Take it. Now. I command thee.

  Sarasper whimpered then, staring wide-eyed at Embra Silvertree’s sprawled form. Craer looked up at the sound, eyes narrowing, and the healer waved his hands as if to brush that glance away.

  “No,” Sarasper moaned, “not my friends. Not to betray, to harm.…”

  A wave of well-nigh-irresistable coercion washed over him. Betray me not. Seize the Stone. Seize the STONE! Take it NOW!

  The old healer shuddered and staggered forward, snarling. “Craer! Hawkril! Stop me! Stop me from what I must do!”

  “What’s he gibbering about now?” Hawkril growled, as he ran careful fingertips over Embra’s head and back, seeking out broken bones and the sticky wetness where blood welled and—thank the Three!—finding nothing. Yet.

  “A spell on him, I think,” Craer said, feeling around in the rubble for a stone that would fit his hand without taking his eyes from Sarasper, who was now sobbing and protesting incoherently. “I don’t think a man can hurl spells while fighting a spell sent by another … but what if he stops fighting?”

  As the procurer and the armaragor exchanged grim glances, a shadow stole forward with swift, gliding strides, to pause on a balcony not far above the four adventurers.

  “Luthtuth comes creeping back,” the figure whispered soundlessly to itself, and smiled. “Luthtuth always comes creeping back.”

  The baron pushed the candelabra across the polished tabletop, into easy reach. Ingryl thrust one hand into its flames, hissing as he drew in its heat, the pain its searing brought—and fed them to the distant Sarasper. “Now,” he said, his voice as deep and yawning as a fresh grave, “healer, you are mine.”

  And in the dusty, rubble-strewn wreckage of the library of Ehrluth, in a ruined city half Aglirta away from where the Spellmaster sat hunched in growing pain, Sarasper Codelmer’s distorted voice fell silent, his eyes blazed with sudden fire, and he strode purposefully toward Embra.

  Craer and Hawkril sprang up as one, charging at the older man—and Ingryl Ambelter gasped, “Now! By the Three and all the love of the Lady for dark weavings, now!”

  The flames under his fingers flared to scorch the ceiling and sent the baron wincing back, a hand shielding his eyes—and then went out. The Spellmaster reeled and fell back in his chair shuddering and trembling uncontrollably, his face lined with sudden exhaustion.

  And across the m
iles, through the spell-link, his lightnings cracked out of Sarasper’s body, lashing the procurer and the armaragor with purple fire.

  They were hurled away, end over end. Hawkril struggled to shout in pain but managed only squeaks and the whistling of trembling lungs—in the instant before they crashed among the fallen stones.

  Purple fire howled on across the room, crackling among the clouds of dust and racing up spiral stairs to make the balcony rail erupt in a racing line of blue, snapping sparks. The shadowy figure crouching at that rail trembled uncontrollably, doubled up in pain—and slowly toppled off the balcony, crashing heavily onto splintered shelves below.

  Sarasper reached for the Stone. He’d stumbled across loose rubble and fallen on his knees, and uncaring, had crawled on and up Embra’s motionless body until now his hand was almost on the Dwaer.

  Luthtuth rose out of the wreckage of the shelves, shaking off pain, and stared across empty space at the Stone he’d come so far to seize. Too much empty space to cross in time.

  The old man’s fingers touched the Stone, and it winked once, mockingly.

  Luthtuth turned, a shadow once more, and sprang into the darkness, running awkwardly but swiftly, stumbling only once. Fleeing to await a better time. Again.

  The healer lifted the Stone, and Embra’s limp hand came up with it, dragging it out of his hand. Sarasper reached for it again, his hand closing around the smooth, heavy …

  Something struck the old man aside and senseless with one brisk, shrewd blow.

  Another hand closed on the Stone of Life. A hand that belonged to a bearded man who wore trail leathers. He had a pleasant face, and the Dwaer lit it with a soft, warm glow as the man touched the Worldstone to Embra—who stirred under its touch, the bruises and lines of pain receding from her face—and then to Sarasper, where it made the blazing light abruptly fade from his open, staring eyes.

  The man put the Stone into Embra’s hand, closed her fingers around it, and slipped away. He did not go into the shadows whence the shadowy procurer had fled.

  There was a little silence in the library before a slender figure suddenly sat up, dust and small stones falling from her limbs, blinked, and looked around.

  The six books still floated serenely above Embra Silvertree, and her three companions lay sprawled on all sides. As she stared at them, another tiny piece of the riven dome high above her crumbled and fell, plunging down a very long way to the floor. Its sudden shattering awoke rolling echoes.

  Somewhere in the ruins nearby, a wolf howled—and from farther off, other wolves answered. The Lady Embra Silvertree shivered and scrambled to her feet. Her injuries and her weariness were gone, and instead she felt a rising, insistent tingling. She looked down. In her hands, the Stone had begun to glow …

  16

  Live by the Spell …

  Screams split the air in a guarded chamber in Castle Silvertree.

  Ingryl Ambelter arched back in his chair as lightnings leaked from his eyes and mouth, shrieking his agony. The chair burst into flames beneath him, shuddered, and was ashes before it struck the floor. He never felt himself crashing down with it, never saw the baron flung senseless into a stately ebon-wood sideboard or the glass globes melt into teardrops that arced across the room to splat and sizzle against distant walls—and he never noticed his safe-spell claiming the lives of the only two guards bold enough to burst into the room with swords drawn.

  When the lightning died away, it left behind no sound but sizzling.

  Somehow the Spellmaster reeled to his feet and staggered across the room. He went to no guarded door, but to a dark green statue of a forever-staring sorceress that stood where a side wall met the outer wall, and muttered a word to it.

  The staring sorceress obediently sank into the floor, plinth and all. Ingryl shouldered through the low opening thus revealed, and gasped his way down the dark and cramped passage beyond.

  White-faced and sweating, the Spellmaster staggered along through chill, damp stone to the spell-locked closet he’d hoped not to have to visit for years yet. Never again would he doubt the power of the Dwaerindim or dare to stand against them. His hold over Sarasper had been snapped in an instant, broken with such a backlash that he was still burning, inside … and if he didn’t get to what lay within the closet soon …

  The House of the Tall Sword was the grandest inn of the Glittering City. It rose like a castle, its dark stone walls as thick as a wagon and crowned with battlements—and men paid handsomely for the use of its fortified, defensible upper rooms. Many a plot had been hatched therein, many a coup planned—and many a meeting in the “Upper House” had ended with blood on the floor and a body or two discreetly dumped down the midden chute.

  The Chamber of the Falcon was smaller than some upper rooms and was given to cold drafts. Despite the dark and heavy tapestries that cloaked its walls, it saw less use than some House chambers—and by tradition, its door stood always open. For years, in fact, the thick oaken door that should have barred passage to the room had been missing.

  That door floated somewhere on the winds, bards said, with the body of a dead king pinned to it by many swords—and no one dared replace it for fear of what spell-chaos might ensue when the spell that had sent the door forth was broken.

  But then, bards said a lot of things.

  Right now, the room was crowded with nervous men in robes and suspicious, grim-faced men in armor, their hands never far from the hilts of their weapons. A bard could have identified them as lesser mages from all over Aglirta and the grim-faced warriors, their baronial escorts. Many eyes strayed often to that missing door—as if their owners expected some foe to suddenly appear in fire and risen spellglow, to menace them all.

  “ … and they’ve gone to this ruined city in the forest, too?” one mage snapped.

  Another shrugged. “Gone in any event, this month past. Grave times are upon us, I fear.”

  “You fear, you fear, Andraevus—you’re always fearing something,” one of the warriors snarled. “Be a little more specific, will ye?”

  Andraevus replied coldly, “I shall. Hearken: worrisome times have come to Aglirta. Powerful mages are missing, and there are dark rumors—of wizards being slain, dragons being bred in the wilds to feast on folk who venture there, the ancient Serpent in the Shadows rising … and the Baron Silvertree trying to make himself ruler of all Aglirta with fell magics, seizing the fabled Dwaerindim to smash any armies sent against him.”

  In the still silence that followed his grim words, Andraevus looked hard at the warrior who’d snarled at him and asked, “Specific enough to fear, Andrar?”

  “Dragons bred? I’d like to watch a witch try that! Their tails’d flatten her into mead in half a breath!” a voice rang out, and suddenly the scoffing was in full, loud sway around the table—scoffing that slowly died away into silence as men looked at each other, and the stink of fear again ruled the crowded room.

  “Many of us here are accomplished at talking, and talking, and then talking longer,” the warrior Andrar said heavily, carefully not looking at any of the mages, “but we are gathered here—and that alone imperils many of us—to try to agree on something … anything … we can do”

  He looked around, bushy eyebrows raised, and growled, “No suggestions, mages of the Vale? Well, we do make history here today, then.”

  As the din of sneers and shouts arose, Andrar stepped back again against the wall, collecting more than a few half-grins from other warriors standing in their places around the room. It looked to be a long and noisy council. …

  “Well said, Andrar,” Ingryl Ambelter said sardonically, leaning back at ease in his chair with the scryingsphere gleaming in front of him. It had taken more than a little magic, but he was fully recovered. The thorn wand floated ready, black and menacing, above the table to his right, where a guard lay hooded, bound and helpless, his bared chest rising and falling rapidly in fear.

  The Spellmaster of Silvertree commanded magic enough to shatter shieldin
gs and force his way into almost any spellguarded chamber in Aglirta, but the gods were smiling on him at last. By incredible happenstance these bonfire wizards had chosen the House of the Tall Sword for their council, out of all the inns in the Vale. More than that, they’d met in the Chamber of the Falcon—the very doorless chamber where on Ingryl Ambelter, fledgling but cunning mage, had long ago set up a portal to aid him in controlled spelljumps, so he could visit Sirlptar whenever he chose.

  That meant he’d been able to steal past wards upon wards undetected and could reach out at any time now to hand them their doom. It was clear enough that none of them commanded a Dwaer or had any secret scheme or powerful magic at the ready. The council would, therefore, soon become tiresome. It was time.

  Ingryl smiled, said softly and gently, “Now,” and waved his hands in a last spell-gesture. A tiny blue flame began to leap and lick up and down the dagger on the table in front of him.

  The Spellmaster took it up, plunged it with a sudden, grunting effort into the heart of the man on the table, and as the guard’s body convulsed and arched in the spasm of a life’s passing, he plucked forth the dagger again and touched it to the thorn wand.

  Blue flames whirled around the wand in a sudden rising fury, and the wand cracked, blackened, and crumbled to dust.

  In the Chamber of the Falcon a weird ball of coiling and sputtering fire burst into sudden being above the table—and then raced around it in a widening spiral. Men shouted, toppled chairs in their haste to rise, and snatched out swords or wands or scepters. Rings winked like scattered stars on fingers all around the chamber.

  Blue and hungry were the flames that raced around the seated circle of mages, burning away one head after another. Fearful warriors threw themselves at the doorway after one look at the stump-necked, spasming torsos the rolling fire left in its wake …