The Kingless Land

by Ed Greenwood

  Ingryl smiled at what he saw in the scrying-sphere. Spellmasters should never indulge overmuch in gloating, but…

  A door that no one but Ingryl should have been able to open banged behind him. The Spellmaster of Silvertree whirled around, his hand closing again on the dagger.

  “Put that down,” Baron Faerod Silvertree said with terrible gentleness, over the blasting wand he held aimed and ready, “or lose the hand that holds it, mage.”

  The smile frozen on his face, Ingryl let the dagger fall. The baron cast a glance at the dead guard, whose blood was starting to drip steadily from the edge of the table now, but the cold, calm expression on his face did not change.

  “My patience is at an end, Ingryl. My daughter is still out of our hands, and your deeds have cost the barony two of its mages. Spellmaster, your own life is forfeit if you fail to deliver a Dwaer safely, without magical traps or coercions bound to it, into my hands—soon.”

  Silence fell as cold eyes met. After it had stretched for too long a time the baron added, “Never forget those vials of blood. I’ve only to shatter one to burst your heart.”

  Ingryl nodded soberly. “I will succeed in my present task, Lord,” he said grimly.

  Faerod Silvertree flashed a mirthless smile, raised the wand in what might have been a salute, and strode out of the room, exuding menacing grace and exultant power.

  When he was gone, Ingryl looked at the open door, shrugged, and then smiled. He’d long since subverted the baron’s magical hold by switching his own heart’s blood with that of an innocent mage elsewhere. As he quietly closed the door, his smile grew broader. This was going to be fun.

  Embra Silvertree let the Stone rest on her knees, stared up at the riven dome above her, and drew in a long, tremulous breath. What would happen now, if she lost this wonderful, deadly thing—and was left powerless to undo blunders and wounds to herself and her companions?

  “Solve the worries of the world later, lass,” Hawkril Anharu rumbled, close beside her. “We must be moving; Indraevyn is full of hungry human wolves.”

  Embra smiled and nodded. She trusted the armaragor. More than that … she loved him. She loved and respected all of these men. Feelings born such a short time ago, but none the less for that. Together, the Four would stand against all Darsar could hurl at them.

  She shook her head at such grand thoughts of doom, sighed, tossed back her hair, and agreed briskly, “Yes. Let’s go.”

  It was long past time to leave this shattered library, with its ghosts and fresh corpses alike shrouded in new dust. They moved without further word or ceremony, Craer at the fore all peering and stalking grace, intent on seeing that lurking shadow-man before he saw them, and Hawkril bringing up the rear, peering back warily over his ready war sword to ensure that nothing was following or rearing up to spit one last deadly magic at their backs.

  When they were gone, the library of Ehrluth knew a single moment of stillness before a hitherto blank stone wall opened, and the man in leathers stepped out of the darkness behind it. He took one step amid rubble and the next into air, striding smoothly up through the empty air to the books floating in their shafts of light.

  Reaching into those steady glows, he turned the pages of all the tomes, touching them where the hands of Embra and the others had passed vainly through, until all six displayed different writings.

  The man stood on nothing reading them for a moment, nodded as if satisfied, and went down to the wall again, leaving the open books hanging in the air like so many white birds frozen forever in flight.

  Suddenly they were standing on a slate-and-pitch roof with empty laundry racks all around them and a seabird eyeing them suspiciously before it waddled a little farther away. The smell of the sea was strong, and a city fell away on all sides. Craer stared around suspiciously. “I should know this place,” he said, and looked to Embra. “So where are we?”

  “Urngallond. The roof of The Lion Looks Seaward, a luxurious inn,” the Lady of Jewels replied. Hawkril eloquently raised his eyebrows, and she added, “One must spelljump to a known place. I once stayed here, when my father had business yonder in the Coinhalls.”

  “He let you leave the barony?” Sarasper asked, looking down over roofs to where the forest of tall masts in the harbor began and gulls wheeled and shrieked. The open sea lay like a gray line beyond headlands cloaked in old, tall, many-balconied buildings.

  “I was an infant then,” Embra told him. “All I knew how to do was watch things.”

  “A superior sort of infant,” Hawkril growled, and jerked his thumb at Craer. “All heknew how to do was snatch things.”

  His voice acquired sharp alarm as the sorceress strode toward him. “What’re you doing?”

  “Healing all hurts,” Embra told him crisply, touching the Stone to his cheek. He seemed to shimmer before their eyes, growing at once shorter and fatter. “Oh, and making you look like an old, fat merchant.”

  Sarasper and Craer stared at a bulbous nose, dangling jowls, and a pout that would have served a whole household of petulant folk—and burst into laughter.

  “A little less mirth,” the armaragor growled at them. “You’re next.”

  The old healer looked gravely into Embra’s eyes as she drove away the pains in his back and arms and made him an overly rouged trader in purple silks, and asked, “Casting magic … is your pain all gone?”

  The Lady Silvertree gave him a quick smile. “Yes,” she murmured, and beckoned to Craer. “Little man,” she said in a voice of doom, “it’s time.”

  “I seem to recall a lady saying just those words to me, once before,” Craer remarked slyly. “Now, was it in Sirlptar? Or—”

  “‘Twas in some place where you had to lay down coins, I’ll warrant—or where she got a good look at all of you,” Hawkril grunted.

  His eyes widened as Embra turned and he got a good look at all of her. A bewhiskered and sneering man in well-worn vest and breeches stood squinting back at the armaragor from under a broad sun hat.

  “Rundrar the trader can shuffle off elsewhere after we take rooms,” she explained crisply, in a voice that wasn’t far off a man’s. “Then he can send in his lady partner to deal with you three.”

  There was a chorus of welcoming chuckles and explanations, which she quelled with a rather withering glance.

  “Just acting like merchants, Lady,” Craer explained with a quick smile. “I—”

  “What’s this ‘Lady’ talk? It’s Rundrar, remember,” she growled. “Rundrar the Bold!”

  The three merchants coughed at her. “Oh, well…’the Bold,’ eh?” the procurer replied. “Uh-ha.”

  “Rundrar always shares a suite with his friends on the road,” Embra added rather grimly, “just so you don’t go ordering me separate chambers or something similarly suspicious.” She sighed and added, “Though I suppose I’m being overly wary. Even if some scrying mage finds us here, hired slayers can’t ride up to the inn without being seen.”

  The three men exchanged rather more sober glances before Craer laid a hand on Embra’s arm and said in low tones, “Think you slayers jingle about with scabbarded blades thrusting out from their armor in all directions and scars all over their faces? Lady, know this: It is so pitifully easy to kill a man. One knife-throw, one shove—even one well-placed broken goblet.”

  Embra sighed. “I was hoping to forget about all that for a few days. I want to test this Stone, and then give it to Sarasper.”

  “Ah,” the healer said hesitantly, “perhaps that wouldn’t be such a good idea just yet. You wield it so well.…”

  Craer shot him a look. “A god demanded you undertake this quest, and perhaps it’s not such a good idea, now? D’you habitually try to outdeal gods, or is a grave looking particularly welcoming just now?”

  Even through his florid, warty disguise Sarasper looked uncomfortable. “I-I don’t trust myself with such power, that’s all.”

  The armaragor’s heavy hand came down on his shoulder. “We none
of us love what life hands us, all the time—but there’s no one listening, I find, when you give complaints to the Three. If you don’t like what befalls, it seems, that’s just too flootin’ bad!”

  “Friends,” said the healer in a small voice, “I’m just a lot more … tired than I thought I’d be. I’ve hidden and skulked and grown patient for too long. Give me some time.”

  The procurer clapped his arm. “Well, that’s easily done. I’d rather leave saving all Darsar from doom to someone else for a month or more, too, and go where every passing man with a tankard isn’t a mighty mage trying to slay me in slow, utter agony just to gain a lump of rock.”

  Sarasper nodded as they went down the old and groaning roof stairs. “It’ll probably be best if we lie low and use spells to scry out the land for a goodly time before we try to gain another Dwaerindim.”

  “For that matter,” Embra agreed, “I’ll be happier if we stay well clear of Aglirta while it’s full of armies whelming and wizards swarming like angry bees around a cracked hive.”

  And she said not a word more until they were settled into their rooms, with a large, full tub of hot petalscented water to soak in, and cold wine to share. Then she calmly kicked off her boots, dropped her clothes and her magical disguise together, picked up a wine flask, and asked, “Well? What are you all waiting for?”

  Wisely the three men said nothing—but none of them failed to notice that, bare as she was, Embra had the Stone of Life tucked securely under one arm.

  “Well?” Baron Ithclammert Cardassa sat back in his ornate chair of office and regarded his two advisers with a thin, unfriendly smile. “I’m waiting. Have either of you any other brilliant deductions as to the whereabouts of Dwaerindim?”

  Baerethos and Ubunter squirmed under the baron’s cold, watchful gaze. News of spell-battles in the wilds was all over Cardassa, and more: priests of the Three up and down the Vale had just proclaimed from their altars that a Dwaer Stone had been found and called upon.

  The three men facing each other across the grandest table in Cardassa knew something else: that the baron’s two best war blades had gone to great expense to hire wizards near the places Baerethos and Ubunter had said a Stone would be found. Exhaustive searches had followed—and found not the slightest trace of anything.

  The two advisers darted glances at each other, found scant comfort in the view, and looked away, Baerethos regarding his own reflection in the mirror-polished table and Ubunter raising his eyes to the nearest flame-winged crow of Cardassa, of many adorning that lofty hall. Neither looked at the cortahars in gleaming armor stationed along the walls.

  “As I’m sure you both know, trusted advisers,” the baron added in tones that were silken but not a shade warmer, “I’ve hired a new House Wizard for Cardassa in recent days. You may also have suspected that he’s been doing much farscrying for me. Almost all of it has been to observe both of the searcher wizards, often and at great length. He has seen nothing—yes, nothing—to suggest that either mage has secretly found a Stone. Nor have they since gone anywhere, including back to the locations you were so knowledgeable about, and searched for one on their own.”

  Baron Cardassa drummed his fingertips gently on the tabletop in front of him, then picked up his goblet. “All of this has cost the coffers of Cardassa precisely sixty-two thousand, three hundred and twelve gold thelvers to date,” he announced softly. “Have my two most trusted and capable advisers any ideas as to how they might be able to make up these losses before next spring? At that time, should any monies still be owing, their less-than-capable carcasses will be sold to the slavers of the far south to gain back at least a few coins.”

  Ubunter and Baerethos exchanged looks again, found as little comfort in each other and in shared dismay as before, and slumped dejectedly in their chairs.

  Ithclammert Cardassa set down his goblet, swallowed, and ordered curtly, “Start thinking.” He made a signal, and two cortahars left the wall, jerked the old men to their feet, and marched them out of the baron’s presence.

  The little glass sphere rose out of its box, spinning gently as it chimed. Ingryl smiled at it. A thing of beauty, all his own.…

  As the scene he was seeking obediently swam into its depths, all candles and sighs and bodies moving on the great bed, the Spellmaster murmured an incantation.

  The crack of a whip curled up from the sphere, and then a sob. It was time. Oh, yes. It was past time.

  The whip snapped again, and there was a ragged cry. Tearful protests followed, and Ingryl Ambelter leaned forward to better see his magic unfold.

  Sarintha was the first, as she lay weeping under her baron’s lash, her unbound hands clawing the sleeping-furs above her head. Abruptly they caught and tugged fur with her every jerk and clutch. Faerod Silvertree was displeased with her, and the aftertaste of his wine, and his mages living and dead, and his daughter, and because the woman under his lash didn’t break and beg.

  And so he laid her back open, and went on flogging, as blood flowed, Sarintha wailed into the furs, and the other lovechamber girls shrank back in fear, hating their cruel master. He was sure to turn to one of them when Sarintha fell senseless and silent. Already she looked more like a slab of meat in the kitchens than a lass meant to excite and give pleasure. The baron snarled down at her as if he was a raging lion rending a kill with his claws and not a naked, aroused man.

  The furs caught in Sarintha’s lengthening nails, then fell away, sliced free. One of the girls reached to scratch herself, and gasped. Her long-nailed fingers were now impossibly long, and stretching still more, turning to—to talons!

  She choked back a shriek and looked at the others. One of them was staring down at her spread hands in horror, as they grew visibly: a foot long … and more.…

  Sarintha rolled over, pleading—to no avail. The blood-soaked whip rained down on her breast and flank as Baron Silvertree shouted at her. Then, with a snarl, he clubbed her across the face with the gilded butt of his weapon.

  Sarintha’s eyes blazed, and she reached out, catching hold of the whip. Screaming in fury, the baron tore it free, not noticing how much of it was left behind, and lifted both hands to punch at her breasts, and drive her down broken on the bed. She must submit! She would surrender! She w—

  The first slash of her talons raked across both of his uplifted arms, and he screamed at the sudden, burning pain and clutched his bleeding limbs to his body. As Faerod Silvertree stared at her in disbelief, the second slash laid open his belly.

  He shrank back, howling in pain—and the bleeding thing rose and roared out her pain and rage in a snarl of her own—as she went for his throat.

  Frantically Silvertree fended her off, rolling away on the bed, but her claws cut away one of his nipples and a long strip of flesh with it—and by then, with shrieks of fury, all of the baron’s lovechamber girls were charging across the room at him with long, rending talons raised.

  The baron cursed them and ordered them back as he fell out of bed in his haste to back away, regained his feet barely in time to win free of clawing and clinging talons, and backed away across the room, kicking and punching viciously to keep them at a distance.

  Terror made him smash his bedchamber pretties with all his strength, and more than one fell senseless, but bubbling rage was banishing wide-eyed fear in the faces of the rest. Their claws tore and slashed at their master, slitting skin to ribbons and slicing away his very fingers as he fought.

  In the end Faerod Silvertree could think only of fleeing. He staggered and kicked and tore his way across the room, his feet leaving a bloody trail as cruel claws tore away flesh and hair and even genitals. Gasping and shuddering, the baron fell through the curtains, rolled out onto the balcony beyond the women sobbing, groaning, and clawing beneath him, and fetched up hard against its parapet, fighting desperately.

  A shrewd slash laid open his side, robbing one arm of all strength and twisting him around—and with a long, wailing scream of bewildered pain and despair,
Baron Faerod Silvertree plunged down, down into the cold and waiting waters below.

  The River Coiling received him with a splash—and reaching talons found him no more.

  As Ingryl Ambelter’s harsh laughter arose in front of a spinning sphere, sobbing women sank down on their knees in horror in the blood-smeared bedchamber, trailing gory talons as long as short swords and weeping at what they’d become.

  * * *

  A stone wall slid open with a deep rumbling in the darkness, and a man in trail leathers stepped out of the hidden passage and walked quietly across a many-pillared hall in the Silent House, toward a distant glimmer of light. He descended a short flight of steps, ducked through a low archway—and then stiffened as something slapped him across the face. Something fanged and hissing.

  The man struck it away from his brow and half turned to pull the Stone of War from its sling in the breast of his leathers—whereupon he stiffened again, looked down in disbelief at the point of the spear protruding from his belly, and slowly sank to his knees.

  He clawed out the Stone as he fell on his face, but it was hooked away from him by the bloody spear, even before hissing rose loudly on all sides … and a score of serpents glided in to feed.

  The Priest of the Serpent reached down and took the Stone of War into his hand. Power! Ah, yes, fairly throbbing under his hand. Ready.…

  Looking down at the corpse, half hidden under wriggling, striking snakes, he smiled and observed, “It seems Koglaur can fall, after all.” Then he turned his back and walked away, heading for the waiting glimmer of light.

  When he came out into that candlelit room, he held up the Stone of War in triumph, and there was a roar of approval from the shadows. Cowled figures pressed forward around him, straining to touch the Stone. He laughed and strode to the dark star of tiles that marked the center of the chamber, raising a hand for silence.

  And they gave it to him. “Faithful of the Ssserpent,” he cried into it, his voice louder and more excited than they’d ever heard it before, “I need your service now!”