Lord of Stormweather

by David Gross

  Chaney had never been inside the building, and he doubted he could sink down below the upper floor before coming to the end of the invisible tether that bound him to Radu, so he hoped Drakkar was bound for an upstairs chamber. His petty wish was granted moments later, as the cloaked wizard ascended the stairs, guided by a halfling in garish livery.

  “… instructed her before she left,” said the halfling. “Rest assured, she will be the same as the usual girl.”

  The halfling led the wizard to the room next to the one from which Chaney had emerged. As they approached, the door opened, and there stood a pretty young brunette dressed in blue-and-white servants’ garb. Tiny bells tinkled from her turban.

  “The hair is wrong,” said Drakkar. “I told you—”

  “I beg your pardon, master,” said the halfling, bowing.

  “Easily changed, my lord,” the woman said as she curtsied, her eyes at Drakkar’s feet.

  “Master,” whispered the halfling from behind his hand.

  The young woman’s eyes acknowledged the correction. “Master,” she amended.

  Drakkar nodded slowly and said, “It will do.”

  He followed the woman into the room, and she shut the door. The halfling yawned into his fist and returned to the ground floor, scratching his round belly.

  “Oh, no,” said Chaney.

  He’d recognized the woman’s costume and had already formed a strong theory about the identity of the object of Drakkar’s desire. He wished more than ever that he could somehow communicate with his old friend, Tal.

  He returned to the roof, and Radu sensed his presence immediately.

  “Where?”

  “Here,” he said. “On this side, toward the street. The room next door is unoccupied.”

  Radu leaned over the roof’s edge. Looking over his shoulder, Chaney saw shadows moving behind the shutters.

  “What did you see?”

  Chaney considered the likelihood that Radu would break into the room to confirm his report. He thought of the dead boy and decided to tell as much of the truth as possible.

  “He has a thing for chambermaids.”

  Radu considered that information for a moment then shrugged. He moved over the window to the unoccupied room.

  “This one is empty?” he asked.

  “Yes,” said Chaney, hating himself.

  He wanted to believe that he would be less helpful if Radu could hurt only him and not some innocent, anonymous stranger. Part of him was glad to think that Radu would kill more victims soon and thus more quickly burn out his own life. Chaney believed it was no crime of his own should Radu kill someone just to prove a point—but he couldn’t shake the guilt. Would the boy’s murder weigh on his own judgment when at last Radu perished and their souls were forfeit to the gods?

  Radu slipped over the roof’s edge and with his good hand grasped the bars that protected the shuttered windows. He curled his right arm around one bar to support himself, and he carefully peeled back the remaining iron shafts as easily as he might break the legs off a steamed crab. Radu broke the latch on the shutters and pulled himself inside.

  He went immediately to the door, which he closed and latched, then he listened briefly at the wall. If he could hear anything, he made no sign of it. Instead, he laid his sword upon the bed and stretched his body out beside it.

  The inky specters of his other nine victims gradually surrounded the bed and knelt at its edges, inclining their heads like mourners around the coffin of a beloved father.

  On any other night, Chaney would have waited until Radu’s eyes began to flutter with dreams, and he would scream to jolt the killer from his slumber. The howls of the other ghosts always followed soon after, and Radu rarely slept more than an hour before their only form of vengeance dragged him back to wakefulness.

  “Watch them,” said Radu with a nod toward the wall. “And watch the door. Wake me when he leaves or if someone comes for this room.”

  Radu closed his eyes, confident that he’d cowed his belligerent ghost to obedience.

  Chaney hated him because he was right.

  CHAPTER 12

  THE DREAMING EYE

  More dreams? Vox signed.

  “Yes,” said Tamlin from his dressing chair. His hands were busy lacing his codpiece, or he would have replied in the silent tongue only he and Vox understood. “At least I’m better rested after a few nights in a proper bed.”

  His bodyguard’s question didn’t bother him, but Tamlin realized he was in an irritable mood.

  He hadn’t slept well, and that had nothing to do with his health. Since Larajin healed him after his rescue, he’d remained under the constant attentions of Dolly, a housemaid with a profound affliction: absolute devotion to Tamlin. While in itself that wasn’t an uncommon malady among the ladies of Selgaunt, it was an unfortunate predicament for a woman outside the noble caste.

  Perhaps Dolly was the matter that gnawed at him.

  As much as he enjoyed a tumble with the servant girls and tavern wenches, Tamlin knew perfectly well that he would never marry beneath his station. His father, while lacking in many other areas of paternal communication, had taken great pains during Tamlin’s puberty to explain the facts of life as they applied to the men of Stormweather Towers. One should drink life to the lees, but never at the expense of the family reputation. Bastards were to be avoided or, failing that, contained with quiet payments on condition that the mother raise her children far from the legitimate family.

  A second son or daughter might marry for love, but that was an indulgence not permitted to the head of a House.

  Tamlin believed it was all wise advice, even considering his father’s own indiscretion, incarnated as it was in Larajin—assuming that story was true. In fact, the thought that Thamalon had sired a pair of bastards after Tamlin’s birth gave the Old Owl a rakish notoriety, at least in his son’s estimation. A little tarnish made the aging relic that much more interesting.

  Still, it didn’t change Tamlin’s opinion of consorting with the help—at least those who clearly doted on him. He had no qualms about seducing the willing, and he would gladly accept any invitation to an afternoon frolic, so long as the girl understood the limits. He would have no weeping drudges standing on the steps to his tallhouse, nor pestering his mother with plaintive letters.

  And so, the problem of Dolly was no problem at all. Even when she looked up at him with such naked adoration while sponging his sweaty body or changing his bed linens while he lolled helplessly in a surfeit of sleep.

  Still, she tried too hard to please, and perhaps that was the true source of Tamlin’s ire. When he rose early that morning, he discovered a carafe of wine beside his bed and testily dismissed Dolly from the room. He’d ordered the servants twice before that he no longer wished to rise to an aperitif before breakfast. Dolly’s disobedience angered him all the more because that morning he’d taken a sip out of habit before remembering his vow of abstinence.

  They trouble you, said Vox.

  “What?” Tamlin realized he’d been staring into space.

  The dreams.

  Vox looked at him querulously, but he didn’t ask where Tamlin’s mind had been drifting.

  That was the reason Tamlin liked being alone with Vox. The mute barbarian had no compunctions about silently pointing at the obvious when Tamlin took every effort to elude it. At least with Vox, Tamlin didn’t have to endure actually hearing someone state the matter he was avoiding.

  “They’re like the dreams I had as a child,” he said. “The land there is unutterably beautiful, fantastic. Unlike anything you’ve ever seen, Vox, and when I’m there …”

  Tamlin hesitated, realizing he was embarrassed to confess his childhood fantasy, especially since he was reliving it as an adult. He glanced at Vox, who looked back with an expression of honest interest, totally devoid of the snide skepticism of Tamlin’s witty peers.

  “In the dreams, I have powers,” he said. “Magic powers. I can soar above the
clouds, I can catch lightning and throw it where I will, and I can blow away the storm clouds before they burst into rain. At least, that’s the way it was when I dreamed as a child. Since the dreams returned, they … well …”

  Tamlin frowned, and Vox signed, They changed?

  “Sometimes I do things I … I do despicable things, Vox. Really hideous stuff, like out of the worst ghost stories the meanest boys told around the campfires out at Storl Oak.”

  He shuddered at the memory of the executions on the high, revolving racks atop castle, the sycophantic clapping of his guests at the gory spectacle. Such grotesqueries drained him of the joy he felt at the return of his flying dreams.

  Things you imagine doing for real?

  “No! Absolutely not. In no way are these reflections of my own dark thoughts, my good fellow. And don’t think I haven’t given that possibility a great deal of consideration.”

  Vox nodded an affirmation. The gesture heartened Tamlin, because he knew his loyal bodyguard would never lie to him, even to spare his feelings. He needed that support, because, truthfully, he’d been wondering whether the dreams were some sort of window onto the darker regions of his subconscious.

  Your dreaming eye is opening, said Vox.

  “What?” Tamlin asked as he fastened the gold button at his collar.

  The bearded man pressed a finger to his own narrow forehead then signed, The door to dreams. Yours has been closed a long time.

  “Just because I drank a trifle too much?”

  Vox shrugged.

  “Nonsense,” said Tamlin, but then he thought of the sudden lightning as he and Tazi fought the darkenbeast. At the time he imagined it had been some side effect of the magic circle around his cell.

  Tamlin’s heartbeat quickened at the thought that he might actually have some talent for the Art, but how was that possible? Even his childhood tutors had pronounced him hopeless, and they stood only to gain by tutoring the son of a wealthy merchant lord.

  “That gives me an idea, Vox. Fetch me that poker.”

  Vox went to the fireplace and retrieved the iron rod. He handed it to his master.

  Tamlin brandished it like a sword, though the weight was all wrong. He concentrated on the poker, willing energy to pass from his own body into the black metal. He couldn’t be sure, but he thought he felt a faint warmth gathering in his palm.

  “All right,” he said, approaching the fireplace, “stand back.”

  He touched the poker to the metal.

  Nothing.

  “Drat it all,” said Tamlin, turning back to look at Vox. The genuine surprise he saw on the big man’s face made him laugh aloud. Even if Tamlin had his doubts, loyal Vox had nothing but faith in him.

  “What a fool I am!” he said, tossing the poker back into its rack. He clapped Vox on one thick arm. “Letting you get me all worked up with childish fancies.”

  Tamlin returned to his dressing chair and pulled on his boots. Despite his self-effacing laughter, he couldn’t shake the question from his mind.

  “Just what do you know about this dreaming eye business, anyway?”

  Not much, Vox admitted. What the witches told me. An open eye can bring a man strength, power, or …

  “Or what?”

  Sometimes impotence.

  “Very funny.”

  Vox couldn’t laugh, but Tamlin glanced at him to make sure there was a spark of mischief in his eyes. It was there.

  Tamlin turned toward the full-length mirror and regarded his reflection.

  His jacket was ivory white brocade with gold embroidery. Clusters of gold braid highlighted the Eastern cut of the collar, and a double-slashed pattern in the sleeves let the deep blue blouse peek through, completing the Uskevren colors. He wore the horse-at-anchor on a cloisonné medallion. The bejeweled hilt of a dagger protruded from one of his thigh-high boots.

  On each hand he wore a pair of rings. Two of them were enchanted, one as a proof against poison, the other as a ward against mental assault. For physical threats, Tamlin would have to rely on Vox and his own sword arm.

  But first …

  “Would you check on my cape?”

  Vox eyed Tamlin suspiciously.

  “Come now, what harm can visit me in my own bedchamber?”

  Vox reluctantly left the room. He had been loath to leave Tamlin’s side since the kidnapping, for which the big man undoubtedly blamed himself.

  Tamlin winced a silent apology for his deception, stepped behind the mirror, and pressed the floret that opened the secret door to his room. Quietly, he closed the door behind him.

  In the darkness, he felt for the glass torch and whispered, “Illumine.”

  After its mellow light filled the narrow space, he wound his way through labyrinthine passages to his first destination.

  Hidden within the walls of Stormweather Towers, Tamlin felt secure for the first time since his kidnapping nine days earlier. In the absence of his parents, he was the only one who knew the full extent of the network of secret doors and concealed passages throughout the mansion.

  Oh, he suspected Tazi had found more than a few of them, or how else could she slip so easily in and out of the manor? Talbot was surely too dim to find them on his own, and lately he’d grown too big to fit through some of the narrower crannies.

  Certainly none of the servants was aware of the hidden passages, except possibly for Erevis Cale—but the butler had vanished along with Thamalon and Shamur. Could the mysterious servant be responsible for the disappearance of Lord and Lady Uskevren?

  Tamlin had mulled the thought like sour wine to make it palatable. No matter how long he stirred it, the idea remained unappealing. Despite the secret side to Cale’s life, Tamlin didn’t want to believe the man was capable of betraying his father. If a man couldn’t depend on his closest servants, the world was a much darker place than Tamlin liked to think.

  Before leaving the east wing, Tamlin paused. He pressed his hands against one of the many decorative bosses until he felt a slight shift, and he turned the concealed disc twice widdershins. There the wall opened to reveal another secret passage within the first.

  The short hallway ended in yet another concealed door, this one to Thamalon’s bedchamber. The servants had already searched the room, but what they sought was hidden more deeply than they knew. As Tamlin reached above the lintel for the keys he knew were there, he felt a sudden chill upon his neck.

  Someone else was standing nearby.

  “Father?” he said, heeding an intuition.

  Tamlin listened for the scuff of a boot or the creak of a doorway—any indication of an intruder.

  Nothing.

  Tamlin shrugged off the eerie feeling and grabbed the keys.

  He heard a tiny snap. In the gloom of the hidden passage, he could actually see the spark that leaped to his fingers. In the brief white flash, he saw a double shadow out of the corner of his eye, as if someone was standing immediately behind him.

  He turned quickly, but there was no one else there.

  “Hello?”

  No one answered. He was alone in the passage.

  He shuddered, and to dispel his lingering chill he said aloud, “I must have Escevar arrange for an exorcism.”

  He looked at the master keys. There were only seven on an undecorated electrum ring. Four of them, Tamlin knew, would together open all of the mundane doors to Stormweather Towers. Another unlocked the treasury, while the sixth granted access to Thamalon’s desk in the library.

  The seventh was the mystery key. Almost as long as Tamlin’s hand, it was made of a purplish brown metal flecked with silver. Its three teeth seemed far too simple for a secure lock, and its size suggested a keyhole far too large to thwart a determined lockpick. As a boy, Tamlin had pestered his father about it, but the Old Owl had only shrugged. It had been dug up from the ruins of the previous Stormweather Towers, he’d explained, so whatever it had once opened must have perished in the flames. He kept it as a remembrance of his own father,
Aldimar.

  Far from answering his question, his father’s explanation had only inspired his youthful imagination to a hundred doors and coffers the key might open. Did it lead to treasure? Monsters? An armory of enchanted dwarven blades? The bedchamber of a foreign princess?

  Tamlin held the strange key and felt its peculiar warmth. Perhaps it was a charm to prevent keys from falling behind dressing tables, he mused. Or maybe the unique key was merely a token to facilitate a finding spell should the owner drop them while riding.

  Alas, thought Tamlin, the truth to any mystery is always far less exciting than the speculation it inspires.

  He left the passage to his father’s room and secured the secret door before proceeding to his destination. Six turns, two more secret doors, and a short flight of stairs later, he arrived.

  Tamlin checked the peephole to make sure the library was empty before he emerged from the secret passage. The entire household was awaiting him downstairs, but they could wait.

  The secret door closed silently behind him as he went to the big desk. The burned rug had been replaced with a thick Calishite carpet, but the smell of lamp oil still lingered in the air.

  Tamlin settled into his father’s leather chair and surveyed the scene, trying to imagine how it had looked when the servants first entered the room on the night of the disappearance. Escevar had recounted their reports, but Tamlin still could make no sense of them. It was too great a coincidence that he would be kidnapped the same day his parents were abducted.

  Or killed, he reminded himself.

  The action he was preparing to take assumed that Thamalon the elder, at least, was dead. The clerics had been no help confirming the old man’s death. Larajin claimed to have consulted her goddesses—Tamlin had blinked at the plural but he decided not to inquire further—but unfortunately, neither Sune Firehair nor Hanali Celanil would answer, or else Larajin exaggerated her powers.

  Tamlin still doubted her other claims as well, despite Tazi and Talbot’s corroboration. He had no illusions about his father’s perfect fidelity, but yet another issue that put Tamlin at odds with his brother and sister seemed suspicious. Could Larajin be trying to drive a wedge between the siblings?