The Kingless Land

by Ed Greenwood

  “One of your father’s?” the procurer murmured, even before he did as he’d been bid.

  Embra laughed and nodded enthusiastically, as if at a jest, and then leaned forward and said, “He was looking at us just now, trying to decide if we’re the four he’s been told to watch for. Pull open my bodice—and if you rip it, I’ll cut you a new and smaller nose—and empty my tankard down my front; he’ll stop thinking I might be the refined lady he’s looking for then. Tell Hawkril to pick a fight with him and throw him in the river, but don’t kill him. Be warned; he carries lots of knives.”

  Craer looked at her with respect in his twinkling eyes and said, “You’ve no idea how much I’m going to enjoy doing this!”

  “Oh, yes,” Embra replied, and let out a whoop that startled the procurer. As she reached out to pinch his cheek, she added joyfully, “I think I do!”

  “Manyfingers,” Hawkril rumbled, as Craer set enthusiastically to work, “have you gone ma—”

  He broke off as Embra kicked him under the table, hard, and a moment later Sarasper was laughing a little unconvincingly into his face, and then hissing all he’d overheard said by Embra.

  Hawkril scowled and grunted, “You’re going to expect me to be subtle, aren’t you?”

  “I,” Sarasper said grandly, sketching a formal bow, “have every confidence in your abilities, my good fellow.”

  “Afraid of that,” was the growled reply.

  “Just don’t begin by overturning the table,” Embra murmured. As the armaragor rose, looking somewhat like a small mountain deciding to relocate, he gave her what was known in refined Aglirtan circles as “a pointed look.”

  The Lady of Jewels smiled up at him and stuck out her tongue.

  The healer’s words were put to the test as the night drew on and the Four disposed of the Silvertree spy, changed taverns once or thrice, dealt with some would be thieves, and found themselves, as approaching dawn made the eastern sky a little less dark, on the docks facing more than a dozen swaggering-drunk Adelnan soldiers.

  “What d’you bet your spying friend put them up to this?” Craer whispered to Embra, as snarling warriors reeled toward them, blades and torn-off table legs in their hands.

  Just in front of his friends, Hawkril growled like a bear and reluctantly backed away, step by step, awaiting the inevitable rush.

  “Just keep me awake and unhurt,” Embra hissed back, “or our disguises may fade.” And she snatched the last old wine bottle from Hawkril’s sack, did something intricate and very swift with her fingers, and narrowed her eyes.

  A moment later, the Adelnans were joining in an enthusiastic chorus of startled shouts as their leather breeches blazed up in even more enthusiastic unison. The smell of burning hair and the thunder of frantically dancing boots both grew strong before first one warrior, and then another, sought the obvious relief, plunging into the icy harbor waters with roars of pain.

  “That spy is sure to have been watching,” Sarasper said, as the four trotted away down the street in the general direction of “away.” “We dare not tarry here longer.”

  “I want to buy some food before we head out into the countryside,” Hawkril said quickly.

  “And some wine!” Craer added.

  Embra shook her head. “You heard all the talk of war, this night!”

  Indeed, the taverns had been full of little else, afire with the news that all the baronies were arming. War was in the air—but where, and with whom?

  “I don’t want to have to fight off an encamped army—or have my hands chopped off, tongue torn out, and eyes seared to ashes as an enemy mage somewhere,” Embra added sourly. “It might be safest to be outside Aglirta for a while.”

  “What? One or more of the Dwaerindim are here—they felt very close to me, in Silvertree House!” Sarasper protested. “You owe me, all of you! I must find the Stones, not flee from them!”

  “Let us at least go to Sirlptar,” Craer said, poking his head up between them. “No baron to induce us to join his little army, out of the fray but not out of reach of all Aglirta—and if Embra’s kindly, thoughtful father’s sent agents, even mages, on our trail, they’ll never find us there.”

  The Priest of the Serpent smiled grimly at her gasp—and so did the snake that had bitten her. The glow from her breast lit them from below with eerie fire as the woman swayed. Fire that numbed and yet burned was surging through her, as many cowled figures shuffled into view behind the priest.

  “Sssuch venom slays all who serve not the Ssserpent,” he said. “Rise sssister, and join our swelling ranks, in the most sacred service in all Darsar.”

  She knew what to do and was already bending forward to kiss the scaly head of the serpent.

  The priest’s smile broadened. “Word is ssspreading,” he gloated, and the snake answered with a contented hiss.

  8

  More Mischances All Around

  We’ll never find it,” Nynter of the Nine Daggers groaned despairingly, waving out the archway at the overgrown stone mounds all around. The night now hid them from view, but everyone knew they were there. Knew all too well, after a back-rending day spent stooped over tugging and cutting away vines and thornbushes. “We could still be sitting here when the winter snows come, scratching our way into empty house after empty smithy after empty pigsty, and none the wi—”

  “Oh no, we couldn’t,” the wizard Phalagh interrupted grimly, the lantern light gleaming on his high forehead. “We’ll have visitors long before then, with murder in their eyes, spells in plenty up their sleeves, and a hunger to juggle enchanted stones in their hearts. We aren’t the only seekers after Dwaerindim, you know—the tale let fall by Yezund’s loose tongue has reached the ears of half the mages in Darsar by now! Watch out behind you, or something you dismiss as a tree is going to split your skull with an ax, or put a long sword right through you!”

  “I’ve had both of those things happen to me,” Huldaerus, the Master of Bats, agreed, stepping out of the darkness to join them. He sat himself on a rock beside their lantern, and pulled out a snuffbox. “‘Twasn’t pleasant.”

  The other two mages favored him with looks of open disbelief. Huldaerus met their gazes, shrugged, and added, “I was tutored in shape shifting by old Weslyn of Baerra. He believed in lessons underscored with pain—barbaric, but effective.”

  Outside, in the night, a wolf howled in the distance. As the mages glanced outside, seeing only dark trees silhouetted against the stars, it was answered by another, from very near at hand. They stiffened, traded wry looks, and sighed.

  “It’s time to start standing watches,” Phalagh said wearily, reaching for the lantern shutters. “I’ll take the first.…”

  “Yes, four eccentric travelers,” Craer purred. “Downriver, to Sirlptar—forthwith, under cover of darkness, yes, this late at night.”

  “Out of the question,” the boatmaster snapped, eyes glaring out over dark pouches and heavily stubbled jowls. “I’m only up and awake, meself, on account of a deckload being delivered late. My crew have worked hard all day, an’ it’d take the Sleeping King himself, risen with a bag of gold in either hand, walking up to me now to get me to …”

  The man’s eyes bulged as his voice died away, and his incredulous gaze locked on the heaping handful of gold coins the procurer was holding under his hooked red nose. He even stopped scratching at the undercurve of his ample belly, where tangled hair met the lacings of his patched and wrinkled sea breeches.

  “Perhaps I’m one of the Sleeping King’s courtiers, with a little from one of those bags, sent by the king to arrange a discreet little trip made for four of his special friends—a quiet, immediate sailing, helmed by the best boatmaster on all the river,” Craer whispered.

  The boatmaster licked his lips. There must be more coins there than he’d made in the last two summers, and …

  The procurer’s other arm moved forward to display another handful, just as heaping as the first. “And this much more to keep quiet for the
rest of this season about ever having made such a trip,” he added.

  The boatmaster’s hasty smile almost outshone Craer’s own. “When did you say you wanted to leave, master?”

  The clop and clotter of hooves, and a heavy rumbling, announced the arrival of a wagon. Craer glanced at it and tucked both handfuls of coins back into his girdle apron.

  “The moment you’re loaded, they’ve gone again, and I’ve put every last one of these good, solid gold coins in your hands,” he whispered, and melted back into the shadows the pilings cast in the light of the boatmaster’s pole lamp.

  One of the men sprang down from the wagon and ran off into the night; the other climbed down more slowly, spat thoughtfully over the edge of the dock into the water, and said to the boatmaster, “The dungskulls back at the sheds went and hitched up the wrong wagon; Baerlus is gone to get the right one, and I’ve told him to bring you back four falcons extra for keeping you up later.”

  The boatmaster grunted. “Not the first time that’s happened.” He squinted up at the high load of lashed-down kegs on the wagon. “What’s wrong with these, then?”

  “There’s nothing wrong with them,” the wagon-driver said, settling bags over the noses of his beasts and clipping their reins to the dock rings, “but that they’re kegs of beer and not long jugs of scented bathing oil.”

  “Bathing oil?” The boatmaster was incredulous. “Who’d want to bathe in something that stinks?”

  The wagon-driver gave him a grin that split a straggly beard to show a few gaps where teeth should be and replied, “Folks who has money rot.”

  “Money rot?”

  “Aye; them who think about coins and think more about ‘em and finally go mad when they get enough. Their brains rot, and they get all sorts of funny ideas—some always to do with how to show everyone else how rich they are by spending money on things the rest of us’ve got too much sense to waste good coin on—like scented bathing oil.”

  The boatmaster let out a bark of laughter. “A clever mouth on you, Jorl!”

  The wagon-driver struck a preening pose and then cocked his head, took a step along the dock and said, “Ah, that’ll be our missing wagon. Baerlus can move when I tell him to.”

  “Tell him the right way, I’ll bet,” the boatmaster snorted. “Here, help me with the lashing-lines, in yon roof box. Hold’s full, o’ course.”

  “Aye,” Jorl agreed good-naturedly, holding up his hands to catch the lines the boatmaster tossed. He hooked the well-used ropes down securely as they came; they held down the crockery long jugs in rows across the cabin roof, so that hopefully not more than a handful would crack on the voyage downriver. Baerlus had brought the proper coins and two sleepy-eyed jacks to help in the loading, so both wagons were rumbling away in a surprisingly short time.

  Craer watched them turn a corner and disappear before he led his three companions to the boat’s boarding plank, but he hadn’t seen Jorl slip down off one wagon and step into an alley.

  The wagon driver peered between two crazily stacked crates. Aye, these must be the four he’d been told to look out for, right enough: three men and an imperious woman—with one of the men short and weasel-like and another a muscular giant of a swordswinger—even if they didn’t quite match the descriptions the wizard’s voice had snarled at him out of his shaving-mirror this morn.

  Jorl smiled. Scented bathing oil, indeed. Baerlus had wasted a little cheap perfume out of the warehouse stock by sprinkling a bottle’s worth over the long jugs now festooning the cabin roof … but inside those jugs sloshed the usual old cooking oil. A right good thing he’d caught sight of the four before loading proper swig-worthy beer aboard; ’twould be a pity to lose that. After all, if one was to keep both neck and position—as Baron Silvertree’s chief factor in Adeln, responsible for nigh twenty thousand falcons in profit this last summer, let the good baron not forget—intact, one had to watch where the copper wheels rolled to, hmm?

  After all, these little unforeseen expenses kept arising. A trusty boatmaster and his boat, too, for instance. Ah, well. All lives and cozy arrangements must end sometime.…

  Jorl smiled. The little weasel of a procurer—well, maybe he looked more like a spider, now that he was moving around a bit—was peering around to make sure no one had noticed that he’d hired a boat to slip out of Adeln before dawn. Clever dog.

  But not, of course, clever enough to get ahead of the baron’s best factor. Jorl’s smile widened, in the instant before he turned and hurried off to do some hiring of his own.

  He’d always liked the hangings in this part of Castle Silvertree. Klamantle waved to the perpetually astonished centauress in his favorite scene, winked at the saucy courtesan leaning out from her balcony in the next hanging, murmured “Temptress!” to the lady bard with the runes painted all up one bared thigh who featured in a third scene, and strode on to his chambers, humming his satisfaction aloud.

  “A clever lad, our Klamantle,” he told the door to his rooms grandly, and slipped through the faint tingling of the ward spell that ensured his privacy—even against such powerful mages as Spellmaster Ambelter. Its familiar chiming told him it had not been disturbed, which meant that it was safe to gloat at last!

  Klamantle threw back his head and laughed aloud. He’d managed to slip a phrase into the shielding incantation that made him—and him alone, not Ingryl Ambelter—able to trace, when he cast the right seeking-spell, anyone using the shielding. His little trick also rendered the shield ineffective against spells cast by him, so Klamantle could prevail where the mighty Ingryl would be held at bay. All that remained was to get Ingryl or the baron to trust the shielding enough to use it on themselves.…

  In a turret not so far off, Ingryl Ambelter sprawled in the soft grip of the huge, high-backed chair that was his greatest pleasure, dangling one foot over an arm of the chair and smiling faintly as he magically “read” all of Klamantle’s thoughts. “A clever lad, our Klamantle,” he echoed the unwitting wizard sardonically, and reached for his glass of ice-dark wine.

  He’d not only seen what Klamantle was up to, he’d managed to subvert the incantation so he could tracelessly slip past any magics employing the phrase Klamantle had used to twist the shielding. That meant that Ingryl could slip through the shielding and trace a shield wearer just as well as clever Klamantle. It also meant that Ingryl could, if he cast the right magics, override anything Klamantle tried to do through such a shield.

  Moreover, it allowed everyone’s favorite Spellmaster to pass undetected through any other spells into which Klamantle chose to incorporate this personal phrase—such as Klamantle’s own shielding spell, and—of course—the wards on his rooms.

  Klamantle’s mind, however, was small and almost entirely consumed with schemes for domination, destroying foes, and gaining more power—quite dull to eavesdrop on. Ingryl took a long, lovely sip from his glass, and smiled grimly.

  Controlling Klamantle would probably prove necessary someday, but in the meantime, there were more interesting and important minds in Aglirta to visit … such as that of Baron Faerod Silvertree.

  “We’re getting too far without stiff battle,” Hawkril growled, peering around at the slowly brightening world. Huge cliffs towered above them as the boat rounded the bend that would hide Adeln from view. Mists hung thick above the murmuring water; Craer kept peering around as if he expected a dozen boats full of plate-armored Silvertree armaragors to loom up out of them at any moment. The water was running swiftly, carrying the boat along at impressive speed. Aside from a crewman slumped half asleep over the tiller, aft, the boat seemed deserted, sailing itself through the last wisps of night.

  “Easy, Hawk. It’s the magic, isn’t it?” the procurer muttered, never ceasing his glances in all directions.

  The armaragor gave his old friend a long look, and then admitted, “Aye. You’re just as wary, I see.”

  Craer shrugged. “Like you, I’d not be unhappy if, one happy night not far from now, every wizard in Dars
ar got grabbed, trussed up, and drowned—all together, in the same vat of the blood they’ve caused to be shed. It’d have to be every wizard, though … if one is missed, that’ll be the next tyrant to rise over all of us. They balance, see?”

  “Over years and lands, yes,” Hawkril said grimly. “But not if you’re standing right beside one.”

  “Even if she’s easy to look upon? She’s just about your height, too,” the procurer teased.

  The armaragor gave him a dark look. “She hasn’t used her magic to compel you yet. I’ll never forget being marched along like a child’s toy. Never. I might forgive her, some day, but I’ll never be able to trust her the way I could, say, a swordsister.”

  “She has the tongue to be a swordsister!” Craer chuckled, hooking his fingers through his belt and looking at nothing for a moment, as if seeing something in his memory rather than out over the rushing water.

  “They all have that,” Hawkril grunted, “or so it seems. Perhaps I’m just good at getting them angry.”

  “Hawk,” the procurer said quietly, “we’re in it up to our necks now. It’s my fault if anyone must be blamed, for thinking of her gowns adrip with jewels … but we’re riding the storm now, and if we try to get off, we’ll be like that Griffon trainer—Landaryn, was that his name?—who tried to jump off that runaway stallion.”

  “And broke his neck,” Hawkril growled. “I know, you’re right … but I still don’t have to like it. What’s to stop her father from sending spells through her at us, right now?”

  Craer shrugged. “What’s to stop his mages from sending spells through me against you—or through you, against me? We can’t spare time worrying about our friends—the Three know our enemies are enough, even without wizards and their spells!”

  “True,” Hawkril Anharu admitted, “and I’ve seen enough of the Lady Embra now to know she isn’t hiding some secret hatred of us and playing at being our friend until she can get us to the right place to be sacrifices in some dark scheme or other. She does hate her father, and she’s not a veteran schemer or an adventurer. Yet still, Craer—something isn’t right. I always know when something isn’t right.”