by Ed Greenwood
Did they know the truth about Eldred and Horondeir?
Pelmard waited, but she said no more, letting the silence lengthen until he filled it by sighing, shrugging, and saying, "I disagree with your judgment of me, yet I doubt I can unmake it in any great hurry. What would you have me be?"
"A battle leader," she said crisply.
"And a worthy heir of this house," Lord Magrandar Lyrose added heavily.
"And failing that," his sister Mrythra said silkily, "I'd like to see you killed while trying to become those things."
Pelmard kept his face as expressionless as he knew how, as he gazed back at her.
So this was the trap at last, yawning before him, and all three of them seeking to thrust him forward into it. He knew very well Mrythra and his mother Maerelle both believed Mrythra would make a much better Lyrose heir anyway—and one who could shrewdly marry a Stormar lordling to drag new allies into the endless Ironthar wars, so as to defeat and slaughter Hammerhand and Tesmer once and for all.
"And so?" he asked quietly, lifting one eyebrow in sardonic challenge.
He knew what was coming.
His family stared back at him. So did they.
"AND SO," Lord Magrandar Lyrose replied quietly, "we're expecting you to stride forward into firmly and properly doing the right deed. For once."
"And just what would this 'right deed' be?" Pelmard tried to sound as unconcerned yet silkily menacing as his mother or his sister ever had. He would be damned before the Forestmother and all the prancing Dooms if he'd give them the satisfaction of seeing him crawl. Or show fear. Or rage in desperation. "Getting myself killed trying to become a victorious-in-battle heir of this house?"
His parents and his sister answered him with shrugs, silently smiling nods, and sneers.
"I see," Pelmard drawled, trying to sound far more nonchalant than he felt. "In my judgment—as heir of this house and a loyal Lyrose son who has dared much for my kin, unlike my only surviving sibling, whose daring very seldom reaches beyond the walls of this castle—that seems to be a view that's very wasteful of family resources. Almost, one might say, the act of a foe. Hammerhand swords claimed the lives of my brothers, not Lyrose treacheries. Yet all of you cleave to this decision?"
More silent, smirking nods, broken by Lady Maerelle Lyrose saying coldly, "Put away indolent cowardice and obey your father, Pelmard. It is far past the time you should have begun doing so. Lead this foray into Irontarl or be a Lyrose no more."
Pelmard met her cold stare for a time that would have been less than comfortable for anyone not so well armored in hatred as those of the Blood Lyrose. Then he said lightly, "Very well. If you are all resolved to be this wasteful of kin, I shall do the same."
He held up his right hand and slid an ornate ring off his middle finger, to reveal a second ring that had been concealed beneath. It instantly kindled into a sullen glow.
"The wizard Malraun favors me," he told his family gloatingly, "and gave me this, for use should my life ever be threatened. I can blast all of you where you stand—or as you dare not oppose me, I can stride out of this castle, hie me straight to Hammerhand with all of my knights riding at my back, and fight against Lyrose henceforth. Making your deaths slower, but probably far messier."
"Think you so, foolish boy?" his mother said sweetly. "What have you ever done, that a Doom should favor you over the rest of us?"
Sneeringly she drew a locket on a fine chain up out of her bodice into view, and flipped it open to reveal an identical warning glow of magic. On either side of her, her daughter and husband unveiled their own glowing rings to Pelmard; mirrors of his own.
"As you see," his father said, "we all have our little secret weapons, tokens of the special esteem our patron Doom holds all of us in. Given to each of us privately by the wizard Malraun, in return for our various personal promises, yet seeming very much alike to me. Wherefore know you, Pelmard my obedient son, that these three arrayed against you overmatch your little gift from Malraun."
Lord Lyrose smiled and took a step forward, dropping one hand to the hilt of his sword. A gem in its pommel promptly took on the same glow as his ring. "You may try to play the traitor as you threaten," he added softly, "but I promise you death will be your reward for any such attempt."
A tension had built in the room as each of the little glows had waxed brighter; now, every dim corner of the little turret chamber crackled with power. Although it could be seen that there was nothing but dust under the high, uncurtained bed, this risen power seemed to gather there, pulsing or thrumming in a way that could not be heard, yet made all ears ache.
"Loyal son," Pelmard's mother sneered in quiet triumph, "there's one thing more. Your father's sword and this locket of mine can both fly after you, seek and find you no matter where or how you hide, and smite you down from afar. If ever you succumb to treachery, you are doomed."
"They blaze up prettily the more you wave them at me in clumsy threat," Pelmard replied, "yet forgive me if I believe not your claims. Malraun said noth—"
"Listen, brother," Mrythra said scornfully, "and learn. Learn to believe, or you'll soon be very dead. Your ring is the least of the Doom's tokens, because he trusted you least. We all bear two of Malraun's favors, thanks to your carelessness over stripping magics from the bodies of your dear brothers. Behold, before you in folly cling to further defiance, what my 'other' can do."
A glow kindled in her bodice, eerily lighting her face from below, and Pelmard abruptly became aware of a burning pain in his manhood, a searing so intense that he choked, reeled helplessly, and found himself panting and clutching at his cods as he staggered across the room, whimpering.
"Every gladsome inch the sullen son and heir," his mother murmured sarcastically.
"Scorching from a distance," his sister announced, her voice idle and carefree. "Have you ever worked with your ring, Pelmard, and truly mastered all it can do? This ring was Eldred's, and in but moments I learned how it can burn from afar. Stop whimpering long enough to heed me, and hear this: brother, I promise you far worse agony if you displease me in any way, from this moment on."
On his knees, drenched in sweat and lost in teeth-chattering pain and terror, Pelmard barely managed to gasp out, "Mercy! I hear and heed! Oh, by the Three Thorns, stop!"
"Am I hearing you promise your obedient loyalty?" his father asked gloatingly, from very close by.
Through welling tears Pelmard stared at his own left hand, splayed on the flagstones in front of his nose. It was bone-white, which surprised him not in the slightest.
"Y-yes," he managed to sob. "I'll lead your mad-foolish attack on Irontarl. And die heroically, along with loyal Lyrose knights you'll thereafter urgently need, but then no longer have. You're hurling us all to our deaths."
No one replied to that bitter opinion, but the air crackled above Pelmard, and he felt the roiling, vaguely sickening flows of restless magic. His father's wards were all active, no doubt to prevent a desperate heir erupting in knifings—or a tripping followed by frantic flight.
Pelmard shook his head, sweat spattering the smooth stone floor nigh his nose. He could barely stand; violence and sprinting out of his family's clutches were... far beyond possible.
Somehow he found his feet, the floor yawing alarmingly in front of him as he clutched at nothing... then bent low to keep from crashing face-first back to the floor.
"Come," his father said, the sharp note of impatience barely overriding an overall smugness. "If it's falling you crave just now, many steps await yonder to afford you more spectacular descents. I'll take you to join the knights I've chosen. You are to prepare this foray, so you can move in at dawn and take Irontarl before the sun's truly up—to say nothing of yawn-a-bed knights of Hammerhold. Show me a true Lyrose, son, and I might just manage to forget most of the words I've heard out of your mouth here this day. Might, I said."
Shaking, Pelmard mumbled out a few words more foul than anything he'd ever said before.
"I'M
THE STRANGER here," Rod said politely, as they came to another fork in a narrow forest trail, and took the smaller and more tangled way on, "but surely the Lyrose lands lie back behind us? Down the valley from Hammerhold, across the river?"
"They do," Syregorn said curtly. "Yet it is not Lord Hammerhand's will that all of us be slaughtered when the echoes of our boots on Hammerhold's cobbles have barely died away. We're making a wide loop through the forest, along older, nigh-forgotten back trails, to come at Lyraunt Castle from a less-than-expected direction."
Rod's stomach rumbled loudly. Again.
"Nor has it escaped my attention," the bald, scarred warcaptain snapped, "that you are more than a little hungry, Lord Archwizard. Hungry men have little patience, and do foolish things. This way will take us along the flank of a hill to a clearing—where we will eat, and wait for night to come. Now, silence. Idle talk carries far, and warns many."
Without another word the small band of leather-clad knights set off again along the trail, flitting like shadows through the tree-gloom. The way was barely more than a line through the thick thornbushes, and the lead knight stalked along it slowly, peering carefully and stopping from time to time. It dawned on Rod, with a little shiver, that the man was seeking snares and trip-lines and hidden pitfalls.
None were found, as the trail rose along the hillside, then forked again. Without hesitation the lead man turned left again, upslope. The slope became steeper, then rock-strewn, and then came out into a place where rising rocks burst out of the trees at last, and bright sunlight dazzled.
Syregorn tapped Rod's chest and pointed where he should go, across a drift of loose, tumbled stones that were sprouting tiny vines and creeping flowers. Rod followed one of the knights, and found himself in a little hollow amid the soaring rocks.
Shaded by a great toothlike slab that soared overhead, it was about the size of Rod's kitchen—minus the cupboards, fridge, and stove. Two leaping strides could have taken Rod from one end clear to the other, and halfway up the waiting stone wall there. Amid the lowest rocks underfoot, a spring gurgled faintly, rising up to run away again to unseen depths.
"Can we talk now?" he muttered, as Syregorn and his six knights settled into the rocky bowl around him, all facing each other.
"Yes. You have questions," the warcaptain said flatly, accepting a helm from one knight and various small cloth-wrapped bundles from others. Upending the helm to make it a bowl, he set to work mixing together various powders and green leaves from the bundles in it. "I'll give few answers, so ask sparingly."
"I—well, forgive my asking, but if darkness is cloak enough for a foray like this, why isn't every night full of knights creeping about Ironthorn, daggers drawn, and every morning after having its harvest of corpses?"
"Once, they were," Syregorn told the bowl, "and many Ironthar died. Then came the wizards and their nightmists, and cold iron seared and poisoned at a touch, wherever light or wardings did not reach."
He looked up with a glance both cold and sharp. "How is it that the Lord Archwizard knows not such things?"
"Nightmists," Rod replied in a voice that was as grim as he could make it, as he invented magical "facts" off the top of his head, "are not my way. They poison the land. What price a feast, if you've tainted all the food to get it?"
Several of the knights nodded acceptance of that, and Syregorn's voice was the barest shade warmer when he said, "You use words as swords." It cooled again when he added, "Like the Lord Leaf."
Someone passed him a belt-flask, and the warcaptain poured its contents into the mixture in the bowl, stirred it with the blade of his dagger, then looked to the only one of the knights who looked older than him.
That Hammerhold veteran unwrapped three gigantic, many-veined leaves from around two long, thin loaves of dark bread that he'd already sliced—into thick, generous slabs—and wordlessly held them out. Syregorn started slapping the contents of the bowl pinned between his knees onto the bread, and passing the slices around, Rod's first.
Rod wasn't unobservant enough not to notice the thick sprinkling of dark powder on Syregorn's knife before it spread his slice—powder that wasn't on the knife when it spread any of the later slices.
Yet he also wasn't unobservant enough not to feel the wary gazes of all the knights fixed on him, and the drawn daggers ready in their hands or across their laps. Keeping his shrug an inward, private thing, he bit into the slice without any hesitation.
Whatever was in the mixture—lots of herbs and fragments of crushed leafy greens, plus a wet paste that might have been crayfish mixed with quail, but was almost certainly something else—tasted very good. By the way the knights ate, and their faces, they thought so, too.
In what seemed no time at all, Rod's slice of the dark, nutty bread was gone, and the curt warcaptain was wordlessly handing him another. He ate that one just as eagerly, even as the first threads of warmth and strangeness started to stir in him.
Well, whatever that powder was, here it came. He didn't think they'd go to all this trouble just to poison him, when a dagger in the back could have delivered the same fate many, many trudging strides ago.
No, this was something else. Drugging, intended to... what? Rod wasn't feeling sleepy. On the contrary, every inch of him was starting to tingle, his fingers curling and twitching by themselves, and a fire was rising in him.
He felt more awake than he'd done in years. It was like the shock of plunging into icy waters—without the shock, or the cold. Rod felt hot all over. Not burning, hot. He reached for his brow, to wipe away the sweat he knew would be there... but his trembling fingers came away dry.
Then it really hit him.
Whooooo! His heart was racing, adrenalin surged through him like a flood of mint-laced water, his mind started throwing up visions, memories racing past so wildly and swiftly that he had to fight to keep a grasp on here and now...
Rod gasped aloud, staring all around at knights. They sat still, daggers in hands, staring expressionlessly back at him. Except for the old one, who gave Syregorn a glance that asked as clearly as if he'd shouted it: "Mixed it wrongly, aye?"
The only response the warcaptain gave was to look at Rod and ask, as gently as any concerned chambermaid, "Lord Archwizard?"
"I—yes, ah, that's me, yes indeed, Rod Everlar, creator of Falconfar, every castle and Aumrarr and glowing sunset of it, well, except for the Holdoncorp stuff, and that's—and the—uh, the Dark Helms, uh—ah—"
He was babbling, and couldn't stop! Syregorn's powder—or, no, it would have come from the Lord Leaf, that icy, nasty worm, wouldn't it?
From the shocked expressions some of the knights were now wearing, and the half-grins twitching about the mouths of the rest, Rod gathered that he must have said those thoughts aloud. Shit, he was babbling.
"Drowsy and biddable, hey? I'd say Lord High Holy has crashed down proper," the old knight whispered to Syregorn behind his hand. It was faint, barely more voice than soft breathing, but Rod heard every word clearly. Jesus, he could hear the heartbeat of the knight closest to him! Whatever this powder was, it was mighty stuff!
Fire raged through him and roiled within him, burning nothing but hurling him to his feet, straining on tiptoe, thrusting him up on its own warm tide. Knights hefted daggers watchfully, but did nothing as Rod danced awkwardly in their midst.
I must look like a proper dolt.
He was bobbing on his toes like a child's balloon bouncing, too light to fall as the buoyant surges within him gathered strength...
"Lord Archwizard," Syregorn said soothingly, though he was now wearing a dark-browed frown of exasperation, "rest easy. You are in no danger, I assure y—"
"No danger? No danger?" Rod's uncontrollable eruption of bubbling laughter was almost a howl. "Since first walking Falconfar I've faced nothing else! Everyone wants to kill me, or harness me like a prize bull, and no one will believe me when I tell them there's a lot—a lot!—about Falconfar that I just don't know! So hear me, men of Hammerh
old! I don't want to rule you or use magic to force you to do anything! I don't want to use magic at all! I just want to rescue Taeauna from the wizard Malraun!"
"Malraun," one of the knights muttered, wary eyes fixed on Rod and dagger raised and ready. "Syre, he's raving."
Syregorn sighed. "I believe I'd noticed that already, myself," he growled, raising nervous chuckles all around the hollow.
"Somehow, that is," Rod added. "No magic, not if I can help it! I'm not like the Dooms, I don't want to rule Falconfar! I don't! I—"
"We hear you," Syregorn said sharply, reaching out a hand to pluck at Rod's sleeve and drag him back down to sit on the rocks. "We might even begin to believe you."
"I—but I don't, I assure you! Please, you must believe me! God, hell of a hero I'm turning out to be, babbling like an idiot and—and—"
"Lord Archwizard," the warcaptain said sternly, "speak more slowly, and say less. We are well away from Ironthorn, but talk does carry. Is there anything we can do for you, to set you more at ease?"
"I—" Rod started to shake his head and wave his hands dismissively, but then a sudden bright thought struck him. " Yes! Yes, there is! I need ink, quills, and something to write on! Straight away! I—"
He sprang forward, caught hold of Syregorn's shoulders, and shook him. "Now! Here and now! Writing—"
"Archwizard," the warcaptain snapped, letting go of his dagger and clamping his hands around Rod's wrists in what felt like a grip of iron, "sit down. Do you think, faring forth on a raid, we would carry ink and quills with us? When none of us can read or write?"
Rod saw on some knights' faces that this was a lie, that Syregorn himself could read and write, but—but did he dare say that? When these grim knights almost certainly didn't have any writing necessities with them, anyway?
"Why do you want them?" the warcaptain snapped, staring into Rod's eyes almost nose to nose, Rod held like a doll in his strong grip.
"I—ah—"
" Why do you want them?"
"Uh, ah, to Shape Fal—uh, I—ah, don't want to rule or oppress anyone! I only want to free Taeauna, so she can guide me! I, ah—"