by Ed Greenwood
Once the block was closed again, the naked priest turned away, his face and body sliding into something quite different than it had been. Again he reached out an arm that became much longer than any human arm had any right to be, and opened another pivoting block. A smock, trews, and boots were plucked into view and donned, deft fingers sketched guardian spells over both blocks and the inside of the door that had allowed admittance to this passage, and a farm laborer took six steps, made a particular gesture, and caused a whirlwind of coiling light to spiral into being in the empty air. Through it he stepped-and vanished, the spiral eating itself in his wake.
Only then did a dark, unseen watching eye floating high in one corner of the passage end blink twice, and perform its own vanishing act.
Its far end winked out in another chamber not far away, where another priest stood holding the scroll he'd just been given. "Well, well," he murmured. "A dangerous shapeshifter amongst us. Dear me. Something will have to be done about that."
His face melted and slid into quite a different visage. "Competition can be so harmful."
"Remind me," Hawkril rumbled, "why we must go riding blindly through the Vale again, offering ourselves as targets to all, to search out Dwaerindim. Can't you just use your Stone to seek them from afar?"
Embra sighed. "I can, yes, but unless the bearer of a Dwaer uses it for a very great magic, or is in the act of calling forth its power, or knows no better and is carrying it awake and aflame-for a light in a dark place, say-I cannot see it. If I touch not the powers of my Stone, and keep it hidden, someone using another Dwaer to seek it could stand beside me and not know I carried it. Some tricks offer themselves to anyone who can use two Dwaer in a search, but even then, must be very close to a sought Stone."
Tshamarra nodded. "More than that: One can only see raw Dwaer-power from afar-if its wielder uses it only to power spells of their own casting, one sees nothing."
"What if we sat you in a tower somewhere, guarding and feeding you, and you spent days using your Dwaer to search?" Craer asked.
Embra gave him a smile that held little mirth. "My Stone would be awake all that time. Someone-or something-would almost certainly see me, and come to snatch a Dwaer and slay."
"Thereby coming within our reach," the procurer responded triumphantly, "and allowing us to choose the battlefield!"
The Lady Talasorn sighed. "I doubt they'd herald their arrival, my lord. They'd watch and see just where we all were, and how best to slay us. The first you'd know of any battle would be a Dwaer-blast separating you from your bones."
Craer looked at her-and suddenly beamed from ear to ear, saying brightly, "My, but the Vale's lovely this time of year! I feel a sudden longing to take horse and ride."
Blackgult had said nothing, and continued to do so, but he did- almost-smile.
2
Stones Hunted, Trouble Found
The blacksmith shook his tongs to make sure of his grip, lifted the cooling, darkening bar, and thrust it into the bucket of oil. There was a roar of hissing smoke-into which he spat thoughtfully-and he set his hammer down, straightening with a grunt. "Be ye ready?"
Two men looked up from their last tightenings of the straps and buckles that held the great draft horse. "Aye, Ruld. He's in the harness."
The smith nodded. "Well, then, let's be about it. 'Riverflow stops for no man,' as they say."
"Aye," both farmers replied, completing the saying more or less in unison: " 'Not even if the Risen King commands.' "
Ruld snorted as he strode across his cluttered smithy. "Some 'Risen King'! Risen and gone, like that, an' some fool lad sitting the throne in his place. If they were going to choose any green youngling standing by, they'd've done better to pick a farmer-an' at least have someone who knows crops 'n' harvest and such."
"Aye! Better a Sirl peddler than this boy king," Ammert Branjack agreed, patting the vast flank of his horse in a manner that was meant to be reassuring. "They might as well have chosen a farfaring merchant from half the world away! What were they thinking"
"Ah, that's just it," his friend Drunter said, spitting thoughtfully into a corner heaped with rusty scraps of old metal. "They don't think, up at Flowfoam. If they did, we'd not have half the realm dead, every third brute calling himself baron, and the hissing snake-heads still lurking behind every tree."
"Hoy, now!" the smith growled. "Untrustworthy as the rest an' beloved of talking menace they may be-but the Serpents pay good coin an' do no worse than any baron, an' I've never had a baron fetch me water before, just to be helpful an' not expecting anything in return!" He wiped his brow with a brawny forearm, blinked at the nails splayed out in his hand, and shook his head.
"B'y'Three, but I'm hot today," he growled. "Don't know why… shouldn't be wet as this, after so short at the forge…" He took a swig from the longpipe of water on the post two paces from his anvil, gasped, and shook his head again.
"You be looking pale, Ruld," Dunhuld Drunter said helpfully. " Tis all that wenching, I'll be bound!" He tried a grin, but put it away again swiftly when the blacksmith only grunted.
"Ah, but at least the weather's holding up," Branjack offered. "If this keeps on as it looks to, we'll have a good harvest, sure."
The smith spat and shook his head grimly. "An' who'll bring it in, with so many dead? Grain's nothing but a free meal for the gorcraws if it rots in the fields. Sirl merchants won't pay to reap an' husk-an' won't pay fair coin at all, if they can claim there's a glut. Some of them are claiming that already, an' not a plant in the Vale properly showing its own yet!"
"Ah, but Ruld, we've seen war and plundering outlanders and misrule before this-aye, and bad weather too-and there's still enough to fill every belly in Fallingtree, and Aglirta yet stands around us. Oh, barons rise and barons fall, and no doubt there's lives wasted and coins gone that could have been saved if the Kingless Land never saw strife, and a good strong king ruled well from Flowfoam… but what man alive has seen that, as the years and years pass? Yet we still have a kingdom that Sirl folk, for all their coins, covet dearly."
"Aye," the smith shot back, a strange green and purplish hue washing momentarily across his face, "yet I doubt me not if Aglirta had seen less foolishness of barons and blood spilled needlessly, the Vale would rule Sirlptar outright, long since, an' we'd all have coins to toss an' roll about in."
"And then ye'd only charge a dozen times what you do now, Ruld," Drunter responded, "as would we all, hey? And where would this golden Aglirta come from, where the gods make barons behave differently than barons have ever done, anywhere? And kept the weather grand, folk friends to all, and the reavers of all Darsar-aye, and the swindlers Sirl city breeds, too-far away?"
The smith shook his head like a horse seeking to drive off persistent flies, and growled again wordlessly as he snatched up hammer and shoe, and approached the horse strapped into the shoeing harness. "Tempt me not into clever answers, friend Drunter," he grunted, as he hung the shoe over the usual hook and caught up the massive hoof to be shod, "an' I'll spin thee no airy tales, hey?"
"Wise words, Ruld," Branjack said quickly, wary of the smith's tone of voice. "Wise words! We'd all do well to-"
The blacksmith straightened, shuddered all over-and then whirled around with frightening speed and laid open Branjack's startled face with one strike of the horseshoe.
With a bubbling scream, the farmer stumbled hastily back-and fell hard on his backside. He landed whimpering in fear and scrabbling to get up and out of the way, but the wild-eyed, sweating blacksmith bounded past him, hammer in hand, and smashed Drunter to the ground with a single blow.
Dunhuld landed hard, his skull crushed like an eggshell. Jaw dangling and eyes gushing blood and brains, he for once-and forever after-had nothing to say.
Branjack screamed again as he plunged out the smithy door. Men were trotting nearer, peering to see what was afoot, for Fallingtree was not so large a place that solid entertainment was to be had in generous plenty, and Ruld's smithy w
as where many of them were wont to gather in easy company, to talk in the din and glow where a man they all respected worked and held just opinions and shared them in a few short words, but suffered others to talk as long and as freely as they would.
Branjack clawed aside the first man who tried to talk to him-which kept him alive for as long as it took the blacksmith to slay that man, and the next, and another after that. Then everyone who'd approached the smithy was running away, and a sobbing, roaring Ruld was amongst them like a wolf savaging running deer. One man fell, spattering the ground with his brains, and then another, landing like a hurled grainsack with neck broken and head lolling. Swearing, a third tried to draw a belt-knife-and the smith rounded on him in a roaring fury and battered him to the ground in a rain of bone-shattering, brutal blows.
Branjack made it most of the way down the lane ere the horseshoe in the smith's hand laid open his smock across the shoulders and his skin with it, and then struck one of his elbows a numbing blow that spun him around.
Face to face with the staring-eyed smith, the farmer wasted no time in trying to turn, but ducked under Ruld's arm and sprinted back toward the smithy, seizing on some wild idea that the smith wouldn't want to break his own anvil, nor spill out the forge fire, so perhaps fleeting shelter could be found behind them…
That thought died on the smithy threshold with Branjack, the shoeing hammer driven so deep through his skull that it almost reached the top of his spine.
Howling, Ruld ran across the warm, familiar room, bloody hammer in one hand and gory shoe in the other-and began to madly belabor Drunter's draft horse.
It reared in the harness, belling and then screaming as loudly as any of the villagers had managed, and then some-and at its third bucking plunge worn straps parted, and it bolted, kicking out hard as it went.
The unshod hoof smashed Ruld's ribs like dry kindling, hurling him back into his tools with a crash.
The horse burst out through the half-door, still kicking hard, and the blacksmith rebounded to his feet in a dying daze, sobbing for breath, clawing weakly at the air… and seeming to see the blood all over him and the sprawled bodies of his friends for the first time.
"No," he gasped bloodily, stumbling forward with the hammer falling from his failing hand. Everything was going dim…
"No! Three Above, no…"
But the Three weren't in a hearing mood, it seemed. Bucklund Ruld managed two more steps before he collapsed on his face and Died.
"The so-called Band of Four have defeated all our Brethren could hurl at them twice before, Brother Landrun-and prevailed. Don't be fooled by the buffoonery of Overduke Delnbone and the dim-as-yon-post front Overduke Anharu likes to present to the world. They're not the ineffectual fools they look to be."
"Yes, Lord-and knowing that, we shall-?"
"We shall make very sure of what the Blood Plague gives us, before anything else. You and I test, observe-and also watch over Scaled Master Arthroon and his Fangbrother, Khavan, as they conduct their own far more clumsy experimentations. You know the plague has no effect on a few, but plunges many into madness. Know this much more: it transforms others into marauding beasts."
" 'Marauding'? Mad, or hungry, or consumed by the urge to slay all they see?"
"Most of them, yes. Yet, if our most secret tomes can be believed, some may be suited to serving us in a greater way."
"And this 'greater way'-?"
"Patience, and we'll see."
"But…"
"Landrun, which of us two is a Lord of the Serpent?"
"My," Craer Delnbone commented, squirming in his saddle, "but there's one thing being a tirelessly roving overduke gives you a true appreciation of: just how blamed big the Vale is."
"I suppose," Tshamarra teased, "you'd prefer all the King's foes to obligingly show up at court and line up to receive us?"
"Well," Craer reflected brightly, "t'would save wear on my backside-and spare the horses, too. We could sword the enemies of the crown by appointment, be finished by evening, and celebrate in the wine cellar."
"Thereby considerately saving servants the trouble of fetching us bottles up and down stairs," Blackgult observed. "Your commendable consideration for others surprises me, Lord Delnbone-'tis a side of you I've not seen before."
"My good Lord Blackgult," Craer observed in shocked tones, "you amaze me. Why, you hired me yourself as a procurer in your forces, some years back. Can it be that you've forgotten the function of procurers? Poured out from the brimming flask of your memory the fact that procurers considerately relieve persons possessing too many valuables-or valuing same so carelessly that they safeguard them not-of excess items, and transfer those items to persons who think so much more highly of them that they're willing to pay to acquire same?"
"Craer," Embra observed pleasantly, "belt up. Procurer philosophy is far too arch to be entertainment even if one's tipsy-and all of us are very far from that now."
"Precisely why I evoked the image of the royal wine cellar at Flowfoam," Craer explained earnestly. "Scouring the realm for missing barons and anyone else who may have a Dwaer-Stone is thirsty work."
"I believe King Raulin used the phrase 'crucial and exacting' rather than 'thirsty,' " Blackgult told his saddlehorn calmly, "but your mention of refreshment brings up a point we may as well debate now as later. Once more we ride through the Aglirtan countryside seeking Baron Phelinndar, the Stone he presumably bears, and two other unaccounted-for Dwaerindim. Various tersepts and barons are demonstrably paying a minimum of loyalty to the River Throne-and despite our exalted tides, we are but five against all the forces they may muster. Accordingly, we should reach some decisions about where we should look next-hmm?-and how closely we should keep in touch with Raulin, to guard against courtiers either slaying or subverting him."
Craer sketched a bow. "My concerns exactly. As the overduke who's invariably in the lead when we get attacked-"
"This sounds all too much like a cue," Tshamarra murmured to Embra, peering into the trees that shaded their wandering cart track on both sides.
"-and upon whom shall fall the weight of the blame should we ride enthusiastically into a trap, it behooves me to share some of that blame by involving the rest of you in some decision as to where specifically we're headed. Now, some prudent Aglirtans-killjoys and shutter-minded sorts, to be sure, but fellow citizens of this fair realm nonetheless-cleave to the notion of deciding where they're bound even before they set forth, but-"
"Browning's too quick for him," Embra observed. "Strangulation, Hawk?"
"If you insist, Lady Love of mine," the hulking armaragor rumbled, "though I should point out that he does have his uses. Occasionally."
"-on the other hand, it has been observed by sages writing well before my time that if you expected a hireling to do nothing stupid, you'd not engage the services of a procurer in the first place, and-"
"If he keeps this up," Blackgult observed, "his horse may strangle him."
Tshamarra shook her head. "Nay, drowning, definitely. Toss the rider, pin him down with one hoof, empty bladder downwards-and 'tis done, simply over, and avoids all that chasing about looking for a handy overhanging branch… Oh, my; such as the one approaching now!"
Craer made a rude sound and a ruder gesture in her direction. "Really, Lady Talasorn, such an old ploy is unworthy of you. Even street urchins in dusty backtrail villages like Fallingtree rise above such crude gambits. May I remind you that I'm no longer a mere vagabond and outlaw procurer, but an Overduke of Aglirta, bright-belted and apt to-"
"Be found loitering around ramshackle whorehouses by night," Embra supplied helpfully.
Craer gave her a wounded look, ignoring Tshamarra's urgent pointing gesture, and said grandly, "Lady Baron Silvertree, that remark is similarly unworthy of you. I can perhaps overlook the transgression of the Lady Talasorn, hailing as she does from an outland and some may say-though I for one do not-barbarian culture, but your lineage-"
"I withdraw my warning
," Tshamarra told him with a snort, folding her arms in mock dudgeon. "Let yon branch have its way with you, sirrah!"
"-is much grander and could even be said to rise from the very roots of Aglirta, like that of my former employer Lord Blackgult here, and-"
Craer's horse trotted on, and the handy overhanging branch attacked.
Pounced, actually. The procurer let out a momentary and somewhat strangled yelp as it jabbed into his side and thrust him from his saddle, but Craer was as swift as many striking serpents, and twisted in the air enough to bat at the branch and so propel himself onto the back of Tshamarra's mount, right behind her.
His personally painful arrival upon the high rear cantle of her saddle more than startled the horse beneath the Lady Talasorn, and it reared, snorting in alarm. Embra laid a hand on her Dwaer to send a soothing spell if need be, but Tshamarra was equal to the task of wrestling her mount back to head-tossing complaint and then normalcy, despite Craer's distracting hands upon her, as he-or so he insisted-merely reached for reliable handholds.
"D'you think you could stop playing the fool, on this foray?" the Golden Griffon snapped at the irrepressible procurer.
Craer gave the glowering old noble a merry smile. "Lord Blackgult, in a word: no. If my… foolishness won me the tide of 'Overduke,' then I shall cling to it. 'Tis not as if I could do anything else-and I refuse to become a grim, stone-nosed old noble… ah, like some folk I could mention. If Craer of the Wagging Tongue was good enough to rescue Aglirta from itself thus far, that same Craer shall see the Realm of the Vale safely through the next few days, as well. I'll not change into some bootlicking sobersides. Demand it of me, and farewell empty overduchal tide and good greeting to the outlaw life once more!"