The Kingless Land

by Ed Greenwood

  At once the scene cleared, and they were looking into a dark and empty room, with a square pit-shaft in one part of its floor and an open door in another corner. “This is the room inside the entry chamber, where—ah—”

  “My armaragors lie crushed and entombed,” Faerod Silvertree said gently. “Yes, go on.”

  Markoun cleared his throat nervously, and said, “By your leave, Lord, I shall attempt to move the spell-eye through that open door, investigating these various passages only if that route seems fruitless.”

  The baron waved a hand at him to do so, at about the same time that the ghostly shape of a high-helmed warrior drifted through the room, glaring about, and disappeared through a solid stone wall.

  “Ah, the—”

  “Silent House is haunted, yes,” the baron said calmly. “You were about to scry beyond that door, as I recall.”

  “Yes, yes,” Markoun said hastily, and then clamped his lips firmly shut to still further nervous gabbling, and moved the spell-eye. There was a short passage of several bends, and then another large room with a central pillar, a table, and a grand throne that looked to have been much hacked with large and heavy bladed instruments.

  As they gazed at it, a part of the wall opened, and out of the hitherto-concealed door stepped a man with a short, neatly trimmed beard and a pleasant expression, dressed in the trail leathers of a vagabond or bard. His hair was brown, his age of the middle years, and his demeanor calm and assured; no man’s servant.

  “Do you know this man?” the baron asked. “I’ve not seen him before.”

  “No, Lord,” Markoun said truthfully, watching the man approach another apparently solid wall and reach up to touch a particular stone.

  “Move the eye to stay with him!” the baron said sharply. “Close, now, to see how he opens the wall!”

  “Of course, Lord,” the wizard replied, and added carefully, “he will be able to see the spell-eye if he turns his head.”

  “So he will,” the baron agreed calmly.

  They watched the man open a secret door, step through it as Markoun lifted the eye to hang directly above the man’s head, and pull it closed. The man did not seem to notice their scrutiny as he strode along a dark, narrow passage, up a short flight of steps, and into a room where something gray and ever-coiling hung in the air.

  “A veil of force, of the most powerful sort,” Markoun identified it. The man reached through the magical field without hesitation or appearing to work any magic. No fires or lightnings destroyed him or severed his boldly reaching arm, and he drew forth a hand-size, mottled brown-and-gray stone sphere.

  Markoun sensed rather than saw the baron leaning forward for a better view.

  The bearded stranger hefted the stone in his hand for a moment, seemed to decide or realize something, and then turned and looked directly at them with an unpleasant smile.

  “He’s seen—”

  The stone in the stranger’s hand flashed—and the oval scrying-portal erupted in flames, flames that consumed it and roared at its creator.

  The baron hurled himelf over backward, chair and all, and ducked beneath the table as his youngest wizard screamed, reeled back with his hair transformed into a torch, and spun around. Flesh sizzled, hair crackled away to ash, and one eye hissed and then burst, spattering Markoun’s hand and cheek as he fell, howling in agony.

  Under the table, the baron heard his bottle rolling along above him. He calmly swung himself around to catch it when it reached the edge and toppled.

  “How long have we been walking, anyway?” Craer sighed, as something skeletal shrank back into the depths of the cavern they were crossing. What looked like human bones lay underfoot, and the Band of Four took care not to disturb any of the inky pools in the dimpled stone floor as they passed.

  “Most of a day,” Sarasper and Hawkril said together. The broad-shouldered armaragor ducked as the hundredth or so flight of bats whirred past his face, cast a glance at Embra, and frowned.

  He felt sick and well, empty, from the vitality he’d given up to her, through Sarasper—and yet she was moving along as if in a dream, pale faced, listless, and silent. Was some dark magic eating the sorceress from within because they’d torn her away from the castle she was magically bound to? Or, as a Silvertree, was she falling victim to the curse of the mansion they’d passed through? Or—what?

  Hawkril frowned again and peered into the darkness off to their right as he heard the small sounds made by yet another of the creeping, slithering things that took care to keep out of sight. He liked foes who faced him with jaws and claws or weapons, that he could meet face on in the fury of a fray—not all this skulking and not knowing and lurking magic. May the Three blast all wizards to ash, and leave Aglirta a happier place!

  He glanced at the Lady Silvertree again. Well, perhaps all wizards but one.…

  Yet no—for if she was the only one, what sort of tyrant might she grow into? The armaragor frowned again, and strode on, and was not happy.

  “What’s that smell?” Embra asked after a time, her voice rough from disuse.

  “Sewers,” Craer said simply. “We must be under Adeln.”

  “Food!” Hawkril said emphatically, and several stomachs promptly growled in unison. The four companions chuckled.

  Sarasper said gently, “We’ll need disguises, Lady—not yet, but before we go up where we can be seen.”

  “And once we’re up,” Craer added, “everyone cluster around the sack Hawk’s carrying. No one must see those books … and we’re going to need every last gold coin, I’m thinking.”

  “May the Three save us!” Embra said suddenly, smiting her brow in mock horror. “He’s thinking!”

  There was a moment of startled silence before the three men erupted into laughter—laughter that redoubled when Hawkril tapped Embra’s shoulder with a finger and said reprovingly, “Lady, if you’re going to walk with us, I’m going to ask you not to steal my lines.”

  Embra gave him a weak smile, and then burst out, “Oh, by the Horns of the Lady—take me somewhere with a sky I can see, and wine, and something to eat!”

  “Your tower in Castle Silvertree?” Craer suggested slyly—and discovered that the sorceress still had strength enough to launch a swift poke at his ribs.

  Their way became damp, and the air reeked. No one with a nose would have needed help in identifying the sewers now.

  Craer brought them to a halt and said, “It looks to run narrow from here on—we’ll probably have to find a grating, or an alley dump that’s washed down here by the bucket. Lady, if you need space to work magic, this had better be it.”

  “What do you want to look like?” Embra said teasingly, clutching her bowl.

  Sarasper leaned forward, and said, “You’d best look less pretty, lass, and I younger. Make both of these rogues fatter, so their heights won’t be so clear to a spy who’s been told what four particular travelers look like.”

  The healer’s words sobered them all. Embra went to Hawkril’s sack for the bottles to fuel her casting and said, “It’s not spies in Adeln I’m worried about—it’s Father’s mages, using magic. They must know, or be able to find out in our library, where the underways lead.”

  She reached up and laid her hands on either side of Hawkril’s face, because he was nearest, and then with whispered words and little ceremony, went to each of the others. Each bottle she touched shivered and collapsed into shards and spilled vinegar as the faces seemed to change, and her bowl slumped into shavings of rust last of all.

  Looking down at it, she leaned against Hawkril and murmured, “This spell leaves eyes untouched and alters only seeming, not flesh—so don’t let any amorous wenches run their hands over you.”

  “Had you such plans?” he asked after a moment, sounding as much fearful as jesting.

  The sorceress gave him a look. When she stepped away from the armaragor, she was shaking with weariness, and the three men exchanged worried glances.

  “Lady—?” Crae
r asked, but Embra waved her hand sharply at him in dismissal.

  “I’m all right,” she said firmly, “or will be. Just get me food.”

  Craer smiled. “I know a tavern …”

  “You would,” she replied, raising an eyebrow. “Would you mind very much if we went to another one—one where I won’t be expected to take my clothes off and dance on a table?”

  “They have taverns like that in Adeln?” he asked, in mock astonishment. “Hawk, do you ever recall—?”

  “No, I never do,” the warrior rumbled. “I make a point of it. If someone’s dancing on my table, they’re putting their feet where I could be assembling a goodly pile of meat tarts!”

  “Procurer,” Embra said warningly, “don’t make any jokes about ‘meat tarts’—just don’t.”

  “Lady,” Craer said innocently, “the thought never crossed my pure, nay, pious, mind.”

  “He has a pure and pious mind?” Sarasper asked Hawkril.

  The warrior snorted. “Aye. He cut it out of some priest in a brawl. It shriveled up into a little thing like a prune, and he carries it around and takes it out when he wants to impress ladies—say, Little Manyfingers, look! We’ve a lady with us now!”

  “That’s no lady, Lord Sword, that’s a sorceress.”

  Embra winced. ‘That wasn’t all that amusing.”

  “Lady,” Sarasper murmured, “I don’t think any of their jokes are. Just let the gabble wash over you, and the time passes.”

  Craer rolled his eyes. “Ready on?”

  When they nodded, he led them up a slippery slope, into an incredible smell and a pile of rotting refuse, human waste, and bones.

  “Behold—an alley dump,” he explained cheerfully, “and unless I’ve forgotten all five of Adeln’s streets, our tavern’s right over there.”

  The procurer had dismissed perhaps forty or so laneways in Adeln in his reckoning, but he was right about the tavern.

  * * *

  It was hot, noisy, and crowded in The Ring of Adeln and smelled of unwashed bodies crammed close together, much spilled beer, and—other spilled things. The Four discovered just how ravenously hungry they were when they found themselves devouring three or four platters each of decidedly bad meat tarts and something called egg-and-greens scramble with hot sauces. The ale smelled like a gutter and was thin and sour, but one stopped noticing that after about seven tankards.

  Folk were crushed in shoulder-to-shoulder, and the din of talk and drunken laughter was almost deafening. Someone had overturned a table, and there were several fights, but the four who’d come in together kept to the corner table they’d claimed and devoted themselves to listening and looking around rather more alertly than they pretended to.

  Much of the talk seemed to be about trouble—trouble between barons, and the war that might soon bring to all the Vale. A Tersept had openly renounced all claim to his hold and taken a barge down to Sirlptar, wizards had been seen exploring back trails and wells, and armed men were riding into the Vale through every mountain pass, it seemed.…

  There came a time, much later, when the Four were each on their eighth tankard. Embra was belching delicately as she idly pushed a dozen or so copper wheels—their change from just one gold falcon—around into patterns on the tabletop in front of her and wondering whether she should finish her ale and be sick or let one of the others have it and just feel uncomfortable for a while.

  The wheels wouldn’t stand on edge, she decided, after her third attempt—and her fingers were shaking just a trifle, mind you, no more—when a hush fell upon the place.

  The four from the sewers glanced up in the stillness to see bright helms pushing through the suddenly shrinking crowd, accompanied by bright breastplates with the flame and crossed golden swords of Adeln large and splendid upon them. In between were grizzled faces that wore rather unpleasant grins, two of them belonging to men even larger than Hawkril.

  “Ah, behold! Loyal citizens of Adeln who’ve shown their love for our brave baron by bringing their weapons into town so they can join the soldiery!” the largest of the warriors said jovially, around a mustache as large and as greasy as a butcher’s slab. “Up, lads, and bring the wench with you! It’s four falcons, and the barracks to spend them in, you’ll be seeing this night!”

  Even as they heard the rattle of manacles in one of his hands, the Band of Four found themselves staring down the sharp length of a dirty dagger he held in the other.

  The recruiters were very good at their jobs. Hawkril and Craer had blades to their throats in a trice, even before their leader was properly started into his speech, and the pommels of daggers poised above their ears to strike them senseless, just for good measure.

  No such rough measures had been used yet, though. The recruiters obviously expected a little fun—and some coins offered as desperate bribes, as well as unfinished tankards, to swig—before dragging their prizes away.

  The large mustache reeked of old, bad stew and spilled beer as it bent forward over the Lady of Jewels, and its owner leered down at her, peering at all the flesh he could see and sliding his dirty blade forward to make the slice that would either scar Embra for life or lay her bare down to the waist.

  Hawkril groaned, deep in his throat, and she saw the recruiter behind him tense to strike, just as Sarasper made a sudden movement, and—

  “You are here,” Baron Silvertree said simply, “because you are my best warriors. Succeed at this little task, and you can both expect promotions and enough gold to buy splendid houses, or a stable of horses, or anything of that sort you fancy. You have my word on this.”

  The two burly armaragors kept as still as they could and carefully avoided looking at each other. The baron’s word. They were Silvertree’s best, and so they knew very well that they’d not live to see their promised rewards, one way or another. If it hadn’t been for the cursed mages who ruled everything in Silvertree, they could simply fade from view after reaching Sirlptar. But then, if it wasn’t for those same thrice-cursed mages, they’d not have this task in the first place. The spells just cast on them had set their bodies tingling—an endless thrumming that showed no signs of abating, so as to let them, for example, sleep.

  “Daerentar Jalith and Lharondar Laernsar,” the baron intoned grandly. “Two names that shall be heard in Silvertree often each day, as we await word of your success. You know the men all down the river to contact, should you need aid—and they know to expect you and to stint nothing in their efforts to make your venture a success.”

  Daerentar and Lharondar smiled their thanks in unison. Both recalled the cold menace in Spellmaster Ambelter’s voice as he’d explained that the shielding spell they carried would do nothing to aid them and could be discharged only by an enemy wizard using a spell designed to shatter magic or by their touching the Lady Embra Silvertree directly. The black looks the Spellmaster had given the wizard Markoun had made it clear whose idea this magic was, but if the Baron, the other mage, and Markoun himself gave no sign of noticing that glare, neither warrior was going to be foolish enough to do so, either.

  The mages, the Spellmaster had proudly explained, had used hair from her hairbrush to link the protective enchantment specifically to the Lady Embra alone—and they’d added “hooks” to the enchantment so they could fling a pain-inducing spell, such as bloodfire, onto it from afar, should “control of a wayward armaragor become necessary.” No effort would be stinted, indeed.

  “Go first to Sirlptar,” the baron continued. “Fugitives and outlaws always run straight to Sirlptar, thinking they can hide from us amid the teeming folk. It’s not all that large a place, really—just be sure they don’t slip aboard a ship without you seeing them.”

  “Four falcons and the barracks? No, I don’t think so,” Embra said softly, looking up at the recruiter. He glared at her, peering to see if she held a weapon—but no, she was merely juggling a handful of copper coins in her hand.

  The greasy mustache leaned closer, twisting in a leer. “Wha
t’s that, wench? Not finished with these lads, yet?”

  “Look into my hand,” she murmured, ignoring the recruiter’s foul, beery breath, “and tell me what you see there.” And she opened her fingers.

  There were four roundels of metal in her palm, but they weren’t copper coins. Four miniature silver shields shone back the flickering candlelight, and each one proudly displayed the arms of Adeln.

  “We serve the baron already,” Embra murmured, “carrying secrets to him, and for him. For hampering us in our work, the penalty is—death. I know the baron very well; do you?”

  The recruiter’s face slowly turned the color of old, yellow cheese. “Uh—urrgh—uh, well …”

  “I thought so,” Embra continued, her voice acquiring a snap of steel. “Now leave this place, swiftly, and I’ll probably manage to forget mentioning you in my report.”

  “I—ah—” the recruiter added, his eyes darting back and forth from face to face.

  Craer and Sarasper gave him slow nods of equal parts menace and promise; Hawkril merely narrowed his eyes.

  “Stand off, lads!” the recruiter snarled, and turned hastily away from their table, making a signal with his dagger that Craer resolved to remember for later use.

  In moments, the brighthelms were gone from the tavern, and the Four were deafened by a roar of approval. Tankards clacked together, and beer struck the floors and tables in floods.

  The procurer thrust his head against Embra’s and shouted in the din, “That was well done! We’ll have to come back here, next time we’re into town!”

  The Lady Silvertree gave him a sour look and the traditional withering reply: “When the land has a king again!”

  Then she stiffened, laid a hand on his arm, and looked quickly down into his tankard.

  “All gone, Lady,” he said merrily, “but if you’d like anoth—”

  “Don’t call me that, fool!” she hissed into his ear. “Now keep smiling, look up and around at a lot of folks, and notice the man with the long nose and the cap, without staring at him!”