Realms of Mystery a-6

by Elaine Cunningham

  The two Purple Dragons nodded. One was almost smiling as they turned slowly to look back at their quivering superior. His hands were white as he gripped the back of the chair he was standing behind, and murmured in a voice as hard and cold as a drawn blade, “Goodman Rhauligan is correct. I spoke in hyperbole.”

  Wordlessly the guards nodded and returned to their places along the walls. The Lord Justice glared down at several sheets of parchment on the table for a moment, his gaze scorching, and then snapped, “Bring in the master cellarer. Alone.” He lifted his head and favored Rhauligan with a look that promised the merchant a slow, lingering death, sometime soon.

  The turret vendor gave him a cheery smile. “It takes a strong, exceptional man to endure the strain of keeping up these truth-reading spells. You do us all proud, Lord Jalanus. I can well see why Vangey named you a Scepter of Justice.”

  “Oh, be silent,” the war wizard said in disgust. “Have done with this mockery.”

  “No, I mean what I say!” Rhauligan protested. “Have you not learned all you needed to from yon gardener, even though he thinks he told you nothing? Hard work, that is, and ably done. Vangey missed telling you just one thing: never use the commands ‘Clap that man in chains!’ or ‘Flog that wench!’ They don’t work, d’you see? That failure goes a resounding double with the younger generation-you know, the one the gardener thinks you’re part of!”

  Jalanus waved a weary hand in acceptance and his missal as a disturbance at the door heralded the arrival of the master cellarer. The man had the look of an old and scared rabbit. Four grinning guards towered around him, obviously enjoying the man’s shrinking terror, and the war wizard looked at them and then at Rhauligan. The Lord Justice cleared his throat and asked in a gentle voice, “Renster, is it not? Please, sit down, and be at ease. No one is accusing you of any wrongdoing…”

  The stout merchant leaned back against the wall and nodded in satisfaction. Perhaps war wizards could learn things, after all.

  Rhauligan slipped out of the interviewing chamber as the twelfth guest-the castellan of the vaults, a surly, stout little man-was being ushered in. The merchant could feel the satisfied glare of the Lord Justice between his shoulder blades as he slipped through the doorway, trotted past a suspicious guard, and fell into step beside the war wizard’s eleventh “guest”: the clerk of the estate.

  The clerk-young and sunken-eyed, his face etched with fear and utter weariness-spared his new escort one glance and muttered, “I suppose the real questions begin now, is that it? After that strutting peacock has worn me down?”

  “It’s our usual procedure,” Rhauligan confided reassuringly, man to man. “We have to give wizards something to do, or they’re apt to get up to mischief-creating new monsters, blowing up thrones; that sort of thing. The problem is, there isn’t much they’re fit to do, so…“ He gestured back down the passage; the clerk smiled thinly and turned away, down a side hall. Rhauligan hastened to follow. “Where are Lord Eskult’s personal papers kept?”

  “His will, d’you mean?” the clerk asked dismissively. “The seneschal fetched that even before Lord High-And- Mighty got here. The three visiting lords wanted to…”

  “Yes, yes,” Rhauligan agreed, “but where did he fetch it from?”

  The clerk stopped and gave the turret vendor a curious look. “If it’s all that gold you’re after,” he said, “forget about it. The castellan has it hid down in the vaults, somehow so arcane that to reach it three guards all have to attend him, each carrying some secret part of a key or other.”

  “It’s not the gold,” Rhauligan said. “It’s the trading agreements, the ledgers, the tax scrolls-all that. Your work.”

  The clerk gave him a hard stare, and then shrugged. “Too dry for most to care about, but as you seem to be one of those touched-wits exceptions, they’re all in an office just along here.”

  “You have a key, of course. Who else does?”

  “Why, the Lord-or did; it was around his neck when I saw him laid out. Then, look, so does the head maid, the seneschal of course, the back chambermaid-it was hers to clean, y’see-and the Crown has a key that the tax scrutineers use when they come.”

  “I,” Rhauligan told him, “am a tax scrutineer. Here, I carry a royal writ; examine it, pray.” Reaching into his shirtfront, he drew forth a rather crumpled parchment, from which a heavy royal seal dangled. The clerk rolled his eyes and waved it away-even before the three plat- mum pieces folded into it slid out, falling straight into the man’s palm.

  “I’ve come to Taverton Hall,” Rhauligan said smoothly, as the man juggled the coins in astonishment, “without that key. I need to see those papers-now-in utmost secrecy.” The clerk came to a stop in the corridor and squinted at the merchant, almost seeming excited.

  “That meaning if I tell no one I let you in here, you’ll say the same?” he asked, peering up and down the pas sage as if he expected masked men with swirling cloaks and daggers to bound out of every door and corner in an instant.

  “Precisely,” Rhauligan murmured. No masked men appeared. Satisfied, the clerk flashed a smile, shook a ring of keys out of his sleeve, and unlocked the nearest door with only the faintest of rattles. Then he was off down the corridor, strolling along in an apparent half-doze as if strange merchants and unlocking doors were far from his mind.

  Rhauligan eased the door wide, held up a coin, and muttered a word over it. A soft glow was born along its edges, brightening into a little blue-white beam, like errant moonlight. The merchant turned the coin to light up the tiny office beyond, seeking traps.

  After a long scrutiny, Rhauligan was satisfied no lurking slayer or death-trap awaited him. There was, however, a full oil-lamp, a striker, and a bolt on the inside of the door. Perfect.

  The door closed behind the merchant, its bolt sliding solidly into place, a few breaths before the tramp of heavy boots in the corridor heralded the approach of a half-dozen guards, sent to find and bring back “that dangerous Harper.” They thundered right past the closed, featureless door.

  Rhauligan peered and thumbed scrolls and ledgers, and flipped pages. It wasn’t long before something became obvious through all the scrawled signatures and expense entries and reassignments of funds. The Paertrover coffers were well-nigh empty. He sat back thoughtfully, stroking his chin, and only gradually became aware that the room behind him seemed brighter than before.

  He turned with smooth swiftness, hand going to the hilt of the throwing knife strapped to his left forearm, but nothing met his eye save a fading, swirling area of radiance, like a scattering of misplaced moonlight. He dancing, blinked once and it was gone. Gone-but had definitely been there.

  After a brief tour of that end of the room, poking and tapping in search of secret doors and passages, Rhauligan shrugged and began the quick process of returning the room to exactly how he’d found it. When he was done, he blew out the lamp and slipped out the door again.

  Alone in the darkness, the radiance silently returned, and with it what Rhauligan had been too slow to turn and see: a disembodied head, its face pinched and white, the plumes of the long helm it wore dancing gently in an unseen breeze. It was smiling broadly as it looked at the closed door-and abruptly started to fade away. A breath later, the room was dark and empty once more.

  Guards hunted Glarasteer Rhauligan around Taverton Hall for a good hour, shouting and clumping up stairs and down passages, but found no sign of the merchant. Their failure came as no surprise to their quarry, who spent his afternoon in happy slumber deep in the shade of an overhang high up on the roof. If Rhauligan was right, things would happen at the Hall soon, in the dark hours, and he had to be awake, aware, and in the right spot then. Unless, of course, he wanted to see more murders done.

  Guards are notoriously lazy and unobservant after a heavy meal and a bottle of fine vintage each (contributed by the seneschal with a rather morose shrug and the words, “You may as well. My master, who gathered these, is a little too dead to miss them now.
”), and it was at that time, with sunset looming, that a certain much-sought-after dealer in fine turrets slid down a pillar and sprang away into the trees. He left in his wake only disturbed bushes for a bored guard to glance at, peer hard, shrug, and return his attention to a hard-plied toothpick.

  Rhauligan circled the Hall like a silent shadow, keeping among the trees and shrubbery as he sought other sentinels. Armsmen guarded the gates and the grand front entrance of the Hall, but none stood like ridiculous statues in gardens or wooded glades any longer, to feed the biting bugs.

  Not far from the closed and little-used cart-gate around the back of the Hall, however, something was stamping on the moss. It was a saddled horse, hampered in its cropping of grass by four heavy saddlebags. Rhauligan checked their contents and its tether, smiled grimly, and noted that the horse was just out of sight of the Hall windows. A little path wandered off from where he stood to the back doors. The merchant looked up, found a bough that was big enough, and swung himself aloft to wait.

  It did not take all that long. The last golden light soon faded and the crickets began their songs. Night gloom stole through the trees, dew glistened as servants lit the lamps, and the dark shadow on the branch shifted position with infinite care to keep his feet from going numb.

  The first sharp whiff of smoke came a breath before a long tongue of flame flared up, like a catching candle, inside a nearby window. There followed a sudden, rising roar, and then a dull gasp as flames were born around something very flammable; draperies or clothes well soaked in lamp oil, no doubt. Then came the shouts, the shattering of glass, and men pounding here and there in the sudden, hot brightness with buckets and valuables and much cursing. The shadow never moved from its perch. All was unfolding as foreseen. Taverton Hall was afire.

  The roaring became a steady din, and sparks spat forth into the night in a glittering rain. Draperies at one window erupted in a flame so bright that Rhauligan could clearly see the faces of the hurrying, jostling men. Lord Jalanus was among them, bent over an open book that an anxious-looking guard was holding open and up to him.

  There was a crash and fresh flames as part of the roof fell in, and flaming embers rained down around the war wizard. Jalanus staggered back, snarling something. Then he snatched at a spark in the air, caught it, stammered something hasty-and all over the Hall the flames seemed to freeze for a moment, falling silent and turning green.

  A breath later, they started to move again, crawling towards the stars with lessened hunger. The war wizard shook his head, slammed the book shut, and sent the armsman to join the bucket-runners. Then he raised his hands as if about to conduct a choir, and cast quite a different spell.

  Several rooms suddenly vanished, fire and all, leaving a gaping hole in the darkness. The flames that remained were in two places, lesser remnants small enough that stable-buckets of hurled water might tame them. Every hand would be needed, however, and the night would be a long and sweat-soaked struggle. The shadow on the branch stirred, but did not move. It was waiting for something else.

  The war wizard opened his book again and strode to where a lamp afforded better light. That was what someone had been waiting for…someone who slipped out of a window not far along from the flames, crossing the ember-strewn lawn to the trees in a few darting strides.

  The tether was undone and hand-coiled, and then saddle-leather creaked just beneath Rhauligan, who flexed his fingers, waited a moment more, and then made his move.

  The saddle had a high crupper. He lowered himself gently down onto it with one hand, steadying himself against the branch with the other. The faint whisper of his movements was cloaked by the roar of the fire and the sounds made by the unwitting man in front of him, leaning forward to shake out the reins. Rhauligan delicately plucked a dagger from its sheath on the back of the man’s belt and threw it away into the night.

  That slight sound made the man turn in his saddle and reach for his sword. Rhauligan turned with him, placing one firm hand on the man’s sword-wrist, and snaking the other around his throat. “Warm evening we’re having,” he murmured politely, as the man in front of him stiffened.

  His next few breaths were spent in frantic twisting and straining as the two men struggled together. Rhauligan hooked his boots around those of his foe to keep from being shoved off the snorting, bucking horse, and the night became a confusion of elbows and sudden jerks and grunts of effort. The merchant kept the man’s throat in the vise of his tightening elbow, and frantic fingers clawed at his arm once they found the dagger-sheath empty-clawed, but found no freedom.

  The man kicked and snarled, and abruptly the horse burst into motion, crashing through rose-bushes with a fearful, sobbing cry of its own. Trees plunged up to meet them in the night, with an open garden beyond. Rhauligan grimly set about kicking at one flank of the mount, to turn it back toward the flames.

  He was failing, and taking some vicious bites from the man in the saddle in front of him, when firelight gleamed on a helm as a guard rose suddenly into view almost under the hooves of the galloping horse. It reared, bugling in real fear, and when it came down, running hard, the blazing wing of the Hall was suddenly dead ahead and approaching fast.

  The man in the saddle twisted and ducked frantically, almost hauling Rhauligan off into thin air, but the merchant clung to him with fingers of iron as they burst through a closed gate, wood flying in splinters around their ears, plunged down a lane, and charged into a knot of men dipping buckets in a garden pond.

  Someone screamed, and for a moment there was something yielding beneath the mount’s pounding hooves. Rhauligan had a brief glimpse of the war wizard standing calmly in their path, casting another firequench spell at the Hall with careful concentration.

  The horse veered to avoid this unmoving obstacle, slipped in ferns and loose earth, and caught its hooves on a low stone wall. Bone shattered with a sharp crack. Their mount screamed like a child in agony, kicked wildly at the sky, and fell over on its side, twisting and arching. It landed on a row of stone flower urns that shattered into dagger-like shards-and ended its keening abruptly.

  An instant later, a flying Rhauligan fetched up hard against an unbroken urn. Its shattering made his shoulder erupt in searing pain.

  As he rolled unsteadily to his feet, gasping, he saw drawn swords on all sides, the furious face of Lord Jalanus glaring down-and then a sudden, blindingly-bright white light as the war wizard unhooded a wand.

  “You set this fire, thief!”

  The shout was close at hand; Rhauligan flung himself forward into a frantic roll away from it without looking back to see how close the blade seeking his blood was.

  Sharp steel whistled through empty air, very close by. Rhauligan came to his feet, sprang onto the ornamental wall, and spun around to face his foe. The man who’d been in the saddle lurched toward him, hacking at the air like a madman.

  “You set this fire!” Immult Greiryn shouted again, missing Rhauligan with a tremendous slash, so forceful that it almost made the seneschal fall over. “Slay him, one of you! Cut him down!”

  “No,” said the Lord Justice, in a cold, crisp voice that seemed to still the sound of the fire itself, and made men freeze all around. “Do no such thing. This man lies. The merchant is innocent.”

  Wild-eyed, the seneschal whirled and charged at the war wizard, his blade flashing up. Jalanus Westerbotham stepped back in alarm, opening his mouth to call for aid-but bright steel flashed out of the night, spinning end over end in a hungry blur that struck blood from Greiryn’s sword hand, rang off the seneschal’s blade like a hammer striking a gong, and was gone into the flowers in a trice.

  Lord Jalanus muttered something and lunged forward with sudden, supple speed, thrusting his empty hand at Greiryn as if it was a blade. The blow he landed seemed little more than a shove, but the seneschal staggered, doubled up as if a sword had pierced him through the guts, and crumpled onto his side, unconscious.

  The war wizard bent over the man to be sure he was
asleep. Satisfied, he looked up, snapped, “Bolyth! The wire-this man’s thumbs, little fingers, and big toes bound together. Then stop his bleeding, and watch over him yourself.”

  As his ever-present, most trusted guard lumbered obediently forward, Jalanus Westerbotham turned his head, found Rhauligan, and said shortly, “A good throw. My thanks.”

  The merchant sketched him a florid bow. The lips of the Lord Justice twisted into a rueful smile.

  Guards were crowding in around them all now, pushing past the servants and noble guests. “Lord,” one of them asked hesitantly, waving a gauntleted hand at Rhauligan, “shouldn’t we be arresting this one too?”

  The war wizard raised one cold eyebrow. “When, Brussgurt, did you adopt the habit of deciding for me who is guilty, and who innocent? I’ve had a wizard eye on this man for most of the evening-he’s most certainly innocent of the charge of fire-setting. I suspect his only crime was learning too much…for the seneschal to want him to go on living.”

  “So who slew my daughter?” a darkly furious voice demanded. Its owner came shouldering through the last rushing smokes of the dying fire, with the other two noble lords and their white-faced, staring daughters in tow. Lord Hornsar Farrowbrace’s eyes were like two chips of bright steel, and his hand was on the hilt of a heavy war sword that had not been on his hip before.

  “Master Rhauligan?” the war wizard asked. “You tell him.”

  The merchant met the eyes of the Scepter of Justice for a long, sober moment, nodded, and then turned to the angry noble.