Lord of Stormweather

by David Gross

  “I changed my mind,” shouted Shamur. “Leave the Sorcerer to me!”

  “It would be better if we concentrate on—ulp!”

  Shamur leaned forward to send Ripper plunging toward the congregation among the torture wheels. The diving griffon sent the courtiers and their servants scattering to the edges of the tower, their fine goblets crashing to the stone floor behind them. The guards raised an alarm before gathering near the center of the tower to form a unified defense.

  “Get ready to jump!” Shamur yelled above the cacophony of terrified courtiers and the screaming wind. She pulled Ripper’s neck to the side to force a tight turn and dived toward the tower again. “Get him down from that thing!”

  “This is not the best way to—” Cale gave up trying to persuade Shamur of a less direct attack. The sight of her tormented husband had driven out any lingering inclination toward subtlety.

  He gripped the back of the saddle with one hand while unbuckling the straps with the other. Shamur brought the griffon in close to the vane on which Thamalon slowly spun. Too late, Cale realized how hopeless it was to leap from the flying animal to the wheel. He had no choice but to jump anyway,

  He hit the sheet metal blade hard enough to make a Cale-shaped dent in its surface. He grabbed for the rigging with both hands and held fast with one. Fortunately, one was enough to let him swing around and catch hold with the other. He might have climbed the blade as nimbly as a spider were he not hindered by the vermilion armor, yet he took one glance down at the spears of the guards and was glad for the protection.

  The shock of impact stirred Thamalon to wakefulness. He craned his neck to see Cale clinging to the vane above him, then beside him, then below him as the wheel turned in the wind.

  “We’ve come to get you out of here,” said Cale.

  “Oh, good,” said Thamalon thickly. He sounded drunk, more like his wastrel son than himself.

  Cale felt a sudden thickness in his throat. Like Shamur, he felt a rising fury against the man who had set his master upon this torture device, but even more he felt the sour tang of guilt that he’d failed to protect Thamalon.

  “Let’s get you off this thing.”

  “The guards,” murmured Thamalon.

  “Shamur is keeping them busy.”

  “Where?” Thamalon asked. He lifted his head, blinking through his grogginess.

  Ripper screamed as Shamur brought him in for another pass over the Vermilion Guard. Cale hoped she stayed out of range of their spears and that the flying guards who circled the tower hadn’t yet arrived. He put his trust in her and concentrated on freeing Thamalon.

  “Hold still,” said Cale, “this is going to be tricky.”

  He cut the wires binding Thamalon’s right wrist to the blade. Thamalon’s arm fell limply to his side, all sensation long since squeezed out of the limb.

  The heavy armor made it difficult to maneuver on the spinning vane, but Cale thrust one foot between the frame and the metal blade. Wedged there, his leg gave him an anchor. He unclasped his weapon belt, looped it through Thamalon’s belt before securing it once more, and freed his master’s legs.

  Awkwardly, Thamalon put his limp arm around Cale’s neck. Cale felt a feeble strength in his embrace and hoped it would return more quickly once he got Thamalon down.

  “Hold on,” he warned Thamalon. “Go limp, and make sure to stay above me.”

  He cut the remaining bonds, then kicked away to fall to the tower floor. The impact knocked the wind from his lungs, but the ill-fitting armor at last proved useful as more than a disguise.

  Thamalon rolled off of Cale and lolled on the stone roof. Cale rose to a crouch and drew his long sword. To his surprise, none of the guards approached him.

  The courtiers and servants had already fled the roof, and the guards had withdrawn to the far side, near the stairs. They held their spears up at attention and watched the sky above.

  Cale looked up to see Shamur and Ripper circling the tower, waiting to land near Cale and Thamalon. She looked down at her husband lying on the ground, struggling to rise to his hands and knees as Cale stood protectively above him.

  She didn’t see the Sorcerer rising in the sky behind her.

  “Shamur!” cried Cale. “Look out!”

  She turned just in time to see the man shake his winged scepter at Ripper. A spear of red lightning shot from the scepter’s giant ruby to plunge into the griffon’s back, straight through the archer’s seat in the double saddle. Sparks from the scintillating shaft ignited Shamur’s red cloak. As the griffon fell onto the tower floor, she threw herself to the side, rolling to smother the flames. They had spread from the cloak to the long plume on her helm.

  Ripper’s body rolled until it hit the low wall at the tower’s edge. Its impact sent half a ton of stone tumbling from the tower’s edge, but the creature came to a halt, its wings splayed horribly as its leonine legs twitched for a few seconds before going limp.

  “How many more uninvited guests must I endure?” bellowed the Sorcerer.

  To Cale’s ear, the voice sounded like Tamlin imitating his father. He couldn’t see the man’s face within its barred helm, but he feared he already knew whom he would resemble.

  Shamur whipped off her flaming helmet and cast it away. She drew her sword and glared up defiantly at the Sorcerer.

  “We are the death of you,” she said, “if you don’t allow us to leave here with my husband.”

  The Sorcerer laughed and glided slowly down to her.

  “What a fierce one you are! Lady Uskevren, is it? However did mild Thamalon win you over with his ledgers and abacus? Let me have a look at you.”

  Cale saw her frown in puzzlement at the Sorcerer’s words. Perhaps she was beginning to recognize his voice as well. Cale hoped that wouldn’t cause her to hesitate at the wrong moment.

  “Can you stand?” he whispered to Thamalon.

  Thamalon rose to his feet, but he stood hunched painfully, his arms hanging in simian fashion at his sides.

  “Barely,” he said, raising one hand to receive the short sword Cale passed him. He held it gingerly but with the unconscious grace of a practiced swordsman.

  Cale doffed his helmet and pulled open the straps on his pauldrons, letting them slip to the roof.

  “Stay here,” he said, before circling around the tower.

  All eyes were on the Sorcerer and Shamur, so he felt he had at least a slim chance of closing with the man should he land.

  The Sorcerer remained carefully out of reach of Shamur’s sword. He lowered his scepter and gazed appreciatively at the woman.

  “I can see the resemblance in your eyes,” he said. “I suppose I should be grateful.”

  “Reveal yourself,” Shamur shouted. “Show me your face!”

  “With pleasure, my dear girl,” said the Sorcerer.

  He lifted his helm and tossed it to his soldiers, who fell over themselves to catch it before it struck the floor.

  Shamur grimaced at the sight of her son’s face.

  She snapped at him, “What have you done to Tamlin?”

  The Sorcerer flinched.

  “Do not speak that name,” he growled. “I will not tolerate—”

  The tower shook as thunder rumbled up from the castle’s foundation—exactly as Cale had felt at Stormweather Towers twice before falling into the strange alternate plane. He’d made it halfway around the tower’s edge, slightly behind the Sorcerer. It was still too far, and the man still floated too high above the tower roof. Cale crept ever closer, praying that none of the guards would notice him and cry out a warning.

  “Who dares?” said the Sorcerer, shooting a glance at Thamalon and dropping slightly closer to the tower floor as he did so. He seemed surprised to see his guest was still present. “How—? Who else have you brought here?”

  “Tamlin!” cried Shamur. “Where is he?”

  “Of course,” the Sorcerer said. “He would be able … But that means …”

  Cale sensed th
at the man was about to flee. He would have no better opportunity than this one. He ran at the Sorcerer.

  “My lord!” shouted one of the guards.

  Shamur spotted Cale at the same time. Her gaze flicked uncertainly from the Sorcerer to Cale.

  “No!” she shouted. “Wait!”

  But Cale knew that to hesitate would mean their deaths, not to mention thousands more when the elves arrived. He leaped while still two yards behind the man, thrusting at his spine.

  The Sorcerer turned just enough to elude instant death. Cale’s blade sank deeply into the man’s back, piercing his lung.

  Despite her uncertainty, Shamur pounced upon the wounded Sorcerer. Shocked by his wound, he sank to the floor as she pulled him down. Cale had already withdrawn his sword and pressed it to the man’s throat. He pinned the Sorcerer’s left arm to the roof and kicked away his scepter.

  “Don’t kill him,” hissed Shamur. She knelt on the man’s right arm, though not too heavily. Her expression flickered between mistrust and wonder. “He could be …”

  She didn’t finish her thought.

  “Don’t worry,” said Cale. He shouted at the approaching guards, “Stand back!”

  At the sight of the blade to their master’s throat, the guards withdrew a few steps.

  “Drop your weapons,” said Cale.

  They grudgingly complied, throwing down their spears and unbuckling their sword belts.

  “Idiots,” grunted the Sorcerer.

  His handsome face was twisted in a rictus of pain and annoyance. He twisted his pinned arms to press his fingers to Cale’s leg, and he spat out a word of Art.

  Even as Cale drew his blade across his enemy’s throat, an electric jolt snapped his spine like a whip and blinded him with a flash filled with green afterimages. His body jerked in uncontrollable spasms, and the Sorcerer pushed him away. Cale fell back on the roof. As the Sorcerer rose painfully to his feet, Cale saw Shamur twitching on the roof beside him.

  The shock passed in mere moments, but that was all it took the guards to recover their weapons and form a line between their master and his foes. Cale rolled slowly to his side and seized the sword he’d dropped.

  The Sorcerer looked up at the sky.

  “You!” he shouted, shaking his fist at the heavens. With a gesture that left incarnadine trails behind his fingers, he waved away whatever vision only he had perceived then he snapped to one of his guards, “Take me to the Vault!”

  The Sorcerer leaned heavily on the man’s shoulder, and Cale saw he was leaving a trail of blood. Perhaps he would die before he reached his destination. Cale thought a prayer to Mask that it would be so.

  Before descending the stairs, the Sorcerer paused to give his men one last command.

  “Take these interlopers. When I return, I want to them all spinning on the Vanes.”

  CHAPTER 25

  PASSAGE

  After the blinding light and the horrid keening sound, Tamlin floated in a white abyss. He’d lost both his sword and the mysterious key that had pulsed in his hand as they uncovered the gate. His hand went to his breast. Not only was the flesh unbroken by the wound he was sure had killed him, but it was also bereft of clothing.

  As the light receded to a comfortable level, Tamlin saw that he was completely naked.

  Also, he was flying.

  Tamlin floated in the center of a high hall. Its ceiling soared so far above him that he could barely make out its vaulted arc. He looked down to see that the floor was a distant shadow. All around the curving walls were doors and windows, crooked passages and candlelit promenades, half-balconies and flights of stairs that rose up past balconies of mirrors and portraits, only to turn and end abruptly in midair.

  The room looked like a jumbled jigsaw puzzle of Stormweather Towers stacked four stories too high, with pieces lost from a hundred other puzzles mixed in. There stood a gigantic suit of armor that Tamlin’s uncle Perivel had once worn. Upon a flight of stairs was a painting of his mother as a young woman, but Tamlin had never seen the portraits to either side of her. One of them was a green-faced lion-woman.

  Tamlin was fairly certain he would have heard of such an unusual ancestor.

  “Where in the world …?” Tamlin let the question melt away.

  “Beats me,” replied a voice behind him.

  Tamlin tried to turn around, but he managed only to squirm where he hovered in the air.

  “Just think about it,” said the voice. “Not, ‘I’d like to turn around now.’ That’s not the way it works. Instead, just imagine that you’ve already turned.”

  Tamlin did as the voice instructed. His body responded instantly to his will, turning him gracefully around.

  “You’re a natural!” said the man who floated before him. “It took me hours to figure that out, and a tenday to get good at it.”

  Apart from the floating, the other figure differed from Tamlin in two significant ways. First, he was fully clothed. Second, he was very nearly transparent.

  “Chaney Foxmantle!”

  “In the ectoplasm,” said Chaney.

  “You’re a ghost?”

  Chaney lifted the collar of his shirt and peered through it at Tamlin.

  “Either that, or I’ve got one hell of a complaint for the girl who does my wash.”

  “Very funny,” said Tamlin.

  “I see something funnier,” said Chaney, smirking.

  Tamlin covered himself with both hands. Scowling at the ghost, he said, “This is no time for jokes.”

  “Trust me,” said Chaney. “There’s never a better time for a few laughs than after you’ve just been killed.”

  “You saw what happened?”

  “I had a box seat,” said Chaney. “It’s a long story, but you’d better hear it all.”

  Tamlin listened in wonder as the ghost relayed his tale. By the time he was finished, Tamlin felt a heat for vengeance rising in his heart. He couldn’t decide whom he wanted to murder first, but the Hulorn was a favorite for when he was next in a betting mood.

  “Not only was I not inducted into this ghostly procession of yours,” said Tamlin, “but somehow you and I both ended up in this strange place. It looks a bit like Stormweather here, doesn’t it?”

  “I was just thinking the same thing. That looks like the banister Tal and I used to slide down when we were boys.”

  “What do you suppose happened to the other ghosts? Were they destroyed?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Chaney. He pointed to an open hallway lined with windows. “Look there. Can you see it?”

  Tamlin saw a shadowy figure lurking by one of the windows. It pressed its smoky hands upon the glass as if trying to escape.

  “And there,” said Chaney, pointing to a door far below them.

  Tamlin saw a pair of dark specters tugging at the latch of a portal that looked exactly like the kitchen door at Stormweather Towers. Despite the shadows’ efforts, the latch remained stubbornly fast.

  “Why’re they here?”

  “It must have something to do with that big stone block you dug up. What was that thing?”

  “I’m not certain,” said Tamlin, “but I suspected it was a secret relic of my grandfather’s. Also, it might be the key to my parents’ disappearance.”

  “How so?”

  Tamlin told Chaney his story since the kidnapping. While he’d never known his brother’s friend very well, he decided it was safe to confide in him. After all, Chaney was already dead. He wouldn’t be spreading much gossip in the Green Gauntlet.

  “So this portal somehow intercepted them from being trapped inside a magic painting? If so, they must be in here somewhere,” suggested Chaney. “Maybe this is some sort of magical family mausoleum.”

  “I hope you’re wrong about that.”

  “Sorry,” said Chaney. “Never mind me. Sometimes I say ridiculous things.”

  “My bet is that it’s some sort of otherworldly hiding place, like the secret passages in Stormweather Towers.”r />
  “That makes sense if your grandfather had some secret magical powers,” agreed Chaney. “After all, you aren’t dead. I mean, you don’t look like a ghost.”

  “And my wound is healed,” said Tamlin. “If old Aldimar had some contingency spell that could be triggered only on his death, then it must also be designed to heal him of the wounds that killed him.”

  “Too bad he didn’t spend the extra coin on the clothing spell.”

  “At least I wouldn’t be caught dead in those threadbare rags,” Tamlin shot back. “I would make a far more fashionable corpse, I assure you.”

  He meant it as a friendly jest, and he was glad to see Chaney took it that way.

  “You see? It’s all much easier when you don’t take it too seriously.” He stopped laughing abruptly and said, “Hey, how did you do that?”

  Tamlin was fully dressed in his favorite attire: a green and blue quilted tunic threaded with gold and pearls, russet velvet trousers held with a jeweled belt, and thigh-high boots made of black leather so supple it might have been silk.

  “I need a sword,” Tamlin said, and his favorite blade appeared at his hip.”

  “Nice trick,” said Chaney, appreciatively. “Can you get me one?”

  Tamlin smiled and buffed his fingernails upon his chest.

  “A blade for my friend, if you please.”

  A short sword appeared in Chaney’s grasp. His triumphant grin transformed into a frown as the weapon fell through his intangible hand and down to the distant floor.

  “Dark,” said Chaney.

  “Enough of this. That murderer is still in my house. We have to go back and stop him.”

  “You mean go back and get killed again?”

  “I won’t make the same mistake again, I promise you. This time I’ll fetch the archers and have him perforated from a distance.”

  “Not bad,” said Chaney, “but how will you get back there?”

  “Good question,” said Tamlin. “This place is full of doors. What do you say we open a few?”