The Kingless Land

by Ed Greenwood

  “Enough,” the pipe-smoking bard said loudly. “So the Lady of Jewels gets herself kidnapped—I hear she planned it all and hired a band of deadly swordslayers to rush in and seize her!—and we’d all love that much coin, every one of us here, to save us right now from ever having to travel and sing again.”

  “One hundred trade wagons full of gold offered by the baron for the Lady Embra Silvertree’s safe recovery and restoration to him,” someone murmured. “Wonder how much more she’d pay to be kept out of his reach, from now on?”

  “I wonder how many folk up and down the Vale are foolish enough to try to find her and claim it … and think the baron’d ever allow them to live long enough to spend it!”

  There were many nods and murmurs of rueful agreement to this, and amid them someone murmured, “First light,” and pointed upward.

  Flaeros hadn’t even noticed the skylight in the ceiling. The first rosy fingers of dawn were touching the dying clouds of the night, high above the glass. The bards fell silent for a time to watch it grow brighter, and Maershee silently slipped into the room with fresh glasses and bottles for all. When she left again, it seemed to stir a dozen voices to talking. One of them said gloomily, “Plotting sorceress she may be, but I doubt the Lady Silvertree arranged her own kidnapping. If her father catches her, many floggings are the least she can expect to suffer!”

  “You think a rival baron’s behind this?” the pipe smoker asked. “To take Silvertree’s mind off putting all Aglirta to the sword until he rules it?”

  The older bard shrugged by way of an answer and turned to Flaeros. “You’re very quiet, youngling. Feeling a ballad coming on?”

  Flaeros shivered and said quietly, “Maybe. I was thinking of Lady Silvertree as a captive, and where she might be right now—alone, no doubt helpless to defend herself against any horror or indignity life may now offer her.”

  Heads turned to regard him again, but they were wrapped in thoughtful silence this time, and something almost approaching respect was in their eyes.

  “Well, lad,” the older bard said, “when it’s done, mind you sing it to us. The helpless Lady Silvertree, sad amid her small sorceries … hmmm.”

  The blast sent flames boiling up in balls and streamers of bright fury and shook the helpless Lady Silvertree back to consciousness. Embra was hurled against a blazing tangle of shrouds. Rebounding to her feet, she rose out of the flames in a fury. Under her feet the boat rushed on through the waters, shuddering now and seeming to settle lower.

  Silently thanking the Three that she’d had sense enough last night to take some of the smallest Silent House knickknacks from Hawkril’s sack to the various pouches and pockets of her own, Embra snatched out a few and wove a spell with careful, angry haste. Its final word made all the flames around her flicker in unison, rise straight up—and then, slowly, begin to move as one.

  The Silvertree sorceress stood slender and silent, thin ribbons of smoke curling from her scorched and blackened garments, as the flames became a moving ring in the air above her, snarling faster and faster under her will. Their winds snatched arrows up to harmlessly menace the sky—and when sweat was stinging her eyes and running off her chin in a steady stream, Embra snarled out the last part of the spell and flung up her arms.

  The deck was canted under her burned boots now, and water was snarling its own song somewhere close beneath its boards. She crouched to avoid arrows and watched through narrowed eyes as her magic sent the giant whirlwind of flames spinning into the trees that had been busily birthing arrows.

  Flames crashed into the forest with a vicious crackling of branches. Embra heard a single ragged shout before that riverbank erupted into a blaze that outshone the dawn. She stared grimly at tree trunks standing like black fingers against an unbroken sheet of fire, then hauled herself to her feet again, looked down the creaking deck past the boatmaster staggering along with two arrows in him, and gathered in the rest of the Four with her eyes.

  “Sail this thing!” she shouted imperiously, voice cracking on the last word, as long fingers of dark river water reached across the deck for the first time, and steam arose. Embra looked around at it, shivered, her eyes flickered, and then she slid to the decks in a loose flood of collapse.

  Sarasper was nearest, and went stumbling along the flexing boards of the deck to where she lay. Parts of it were awash now, as the sinking ship rushed on; it would not be long before the river tugged her away. …

  The healer reached her, hurled the top of a broken long jug aside, and took hold of her shoulders to drag her upright. He got the Lady Silvertree half-sitting, slipped, and caught hold of a smoldering shroud for support. Then he tried again.

  Sarasper. The voice was back.

  It was louder than it had been in the underways, when he’d stood alone on watch. The old healer stiffened, his hands on Embra’s shoulders.

  Inches from her throat, yes.

  Sarasper went cold inside, and said in the silence of his own mind: You call yourself Old Oak, and yet I feel no divine thunder. Who are you, really?

  YOU WOULD DEFY ME? The force of the shout sent Sarasper reeling, clawing vainly at his ears, as his body fairly thrummed to the force of the coercion now racing through it.

  “I-I-I—,” he sobbed, waving one futile hand as if to brush away a foe—and then the warm and angry tide rushing through him rose past his throat, and took hold of the back of his neck with fingers of steel, and he felt very cold.

  Set her by the mast for now, the voice said, and Sarasper’s limbs moved to obey without any bidding from him. The voice almost seemed to be speaking to someone else, someone not quite at hand.…

  That keelpin. Turn thus, to hide it. Now take it up, into your sleeve.

  The ship was canting over now, the right-hand rail dipping under the water. The body of one crewman, huddled around the three arrows that had slain him, suddenly rolled across the decks and left the ship with a splash. Sarasper had a brief glimpse of a mouth forever frozen open, and then the rushing boat left the dead man behind.

  The healer’s own body was moving under the bidding of the mysterious presence in his mind, climbing back along the dry side of the boat with a speed and deftness Sarasper could not have managed by himself. Old Oak brought him to where Craer and Hawkril were struggling with the sluggish tiller.

  The procurer was cutting away a tangle of fallen shrouds as Sarasper came up behind him, waited until the sudden lolling of another sailor’s body took Hawkril’s attention in another direction, and then clubbed down with the keelpin, hard.

  Craer’s body danced under the impact, and for a moment the procurer started to turn, bringing the knife in his hand up … a blade that fell from opening fingers as Craer slumped to the deck. Sarasper was already moving, ducking along the aft rail behind the armaragor as Hawkril heard his friend’s dagger clatter to the deck.

  “Longfingers, what?! …” the warrior roared, reaching out an arm from the tiller to pluck at Craer’s belt. “Ar—”

  Sarasper sprang into the air, to make the force of his blow as numbingly heavy as possible, and brought the keelpin down.

  The armaragor reeled, fell onto the tiller, and then struggled to rise. Sarasper struck him again, above one ear, and then a third time, and Hawkril fell on his face, leaving the tiller to swing.

  The healer stood over him, swaying, as the irresistible voice of Old Oak thundered orders. He was to lash Embra to a rail to keep her safely aboard, and then hold the heads of his two unconscious companions underwater for a good long time before rolling their bodies off the listing ship into the river. Then he was …

  Flying helplessly through the air in a tangle of ropes and rigging, as the boat crashed head-on into jagged rocks and tried to ride up over them. The deck buckled, erupting into deadly slivers as long as a man stands tall. Sarasper saw the boatmaster transfixed on one shard, clawing the air and wriggling vainly, before he struck something very hard, and everything rushed away on a roaring, echoing red tide,
down into darkness.…

  9

  Chasing Stones and Starting Wars

  In a high, grand hall of white stone, two old men in robes that did not fit them sat stiffly side by side at a table, not looking at each other. Across the table from them stood an ornate chair whose lofty back bore the flame-winged crow of Cardassa; a chair that would soon hold the baron himself. At his request, it was early rising for both of them. An attentive eye—like the unseen one peering at the old men through a gap in the tapestry behind that empty chair—would readily, and several times, have noticed the tightening of jaw and throat, and flaring of nostrils, that marks a courtier’s stifled yawn.

  The rays of the rising sun chose that moment to touch the tops of the tall, narrow east windows, flooding the room with sudden light. As if that radiance had been a signal, the tapestry stirred, and from behind it strode a richly robed man with piercing dark eyes, glossy ringlets of black hair, and large red hands that bore many gleaming rings. They flashed back the rosy light as he took his high-backed seat, glanced at the open doors of the room, and nodded at the discreet hand signal of a man in mirror-bright armor who stood in the doorway. He made a sign of his own, in return.

  The armored officer nodded and murmured something to the impassive cortahars behind him. Doors that soared almost to the ceiling slammed thunderously under their hands, and Baron Ithclammert Cardassa leaned forward in his ornate chair. “Well, Baerethos? It seems you’ll burst if you have to keep silent any longer, so you may as well speak first.”

  Almost stammering in his hasty thanks, the thin old man in the faded blue-and-gold mage’s robe plunged into eager speech. “Lord, my deductions are complete. Long have I labored, seeking the signs, casting divinations, and consulting elder lore, and their message have I here unraveled for you. One of the Dwaerindim—Hilimm, the Stone of Renewal—must now lie at Daern’s Moot!”

  The baron raised one eyebrow and glanced at the other old man, who sat listening in stony silence, thin lips pressed firmly together. “Daern’s Moot” he mused. “Hmm.”

  “It’s a crossroads in Felsheiryn, Lord,” Baerethos added eagerly. “A ring of overgrown stones—once a wizard’s tower, though long fallen in utter ruin—stands there, sometimes used as a camping place by passing peddl—”

  “I’m familiar with the place,” the baron said mildly, holding up a hand for silence, and took up his scepter from the table to rap a bell that sat beside it.

  Its tones brought the bright-armored officer scurrying from the doors to stand at attention beside the baron.

  “Orders,” Ithclammert Cardassa said simply, not looking up. “Send two patrols in force, under Warblade Denetharl, to Daern’s Moot. There they are to look for a mottled brown-and-gray stone—a smooth sphere about so big, with markings like a sun or star on it.” The baron held up his hands, perhaps four finger widths apart, or a little more. “Tell them thus: it may be floating in the air by itself when found, or it may not. Turn over every stone of the ring and look beneath it. Use shovels. Bring back anything like that you may find at the crossroads, as fast as you can. Beware wizards seeking to take the stone from you.”

  The other old man at the table stirred and opened his mouth, but the baron gave him a stern look. He looked down at the tabletop, reddening, and kept silent.

  The officer swept out his arm in the horizontal chopping motion that serves in Cardassa as a salute, and hurried away. Something that might almost have been a smile touched the baron’s lips as he turned to the second old man and asked mildly, “You have other thoughts regarding the Dwaerindim, Ubunter?”

  The old man in rather rumpled maroon silks shot his rival Baerethos a look of scorn, gathered himself upright in his seat, and said in stately, cultured tones, “Indeed I do, Great Lord. Rather than trusting the writings of the oft-drunken bard Haerlaer, as my colleague seated to the north of me has done, or mistaken the wizard Jhantilar’s writings of ‘the resting place of the sweetest master I have ever known’ to mean the wizard Daern rather than the sorceress Skalaerla of Brostos, I have chosen to trust Hathparauntus of Sirlptar.”

  Ubunter leaned forward, seized by excitement, and almost chanted, “He writes that in the days before Skalaerla fell into disfavor, she planned for the fall she knew must come by walling up certain magics in a crypt under Castle Brostos—activities she was observed in by Delgaer the Halfwit, younger brother of the baron of the day. He—”

  “You believe the incoherent writings of a halfwit?” Baerethos burst out. “This is scholarship?”

  “The point,” Ubunter said witheringly, “is not that Delgaer was as sound of wits as most men, but simply unable to speak—nor is it if he wrote the truth or not, or even if Hathparauntus reported it accurately! The point is that we know from other sources that the Baron Oldrus Brostos read Delgaer’s diaries long after the halfwit’s passing, investigated the crypt, and ordered it sealed after trap-spells bearing Skalaerla’s warding runes slew three of his best armsmen! Something was there, and is there still; why should it not be what we know Skalaerla had but none could find after she was chained and her quarters searched? The something she would surely have used to end her captivity, or even prevent it, if it had been available to her hand! I say that Hilimm, the Stone of Renewal, lies hidden in the walls of that crypt under Castle Brostos, in the barony of the same name.”

  “Ridiculous!” Baerethos snapped, and a moment later both men were snarling at each other, fingers rising to wag in violent disagreement. The baron rang the bell once more, and then rapped both of his would-be mages on the hands and foreheads with his scepter, giving them cold looks when he had their attention. He added the terse words, “Be still” before the lancemaster reached the table. As calmly as before, the baron dispatched a second force to the barony of Brostos, with identical orders.

  “But … but Thanglar Brostos will view your soldiers as an invading force! There’ll be war!” Baerethos said in a strangled voice.

  The baron smiled thinly. “Yes, no doubt he will. In fact, I’m counting on it.”

  As Baerethos gaped at him, face slowly going bone white, Baron Cardassa added, his mouth not quite twitching into a smile, “Cardassa is prepared.”

  Without pause the ruler of Cardassa turned to Ubunter. “I’ve heard a lot of grand words about ‘ancient powers awakening’ and these stones saving all Darsar or whelming all the dragons if they’re placed just so—but I’d much rather hear some simple, definite, and true promises about what getting my hands on just this one Stone of Renewal can do for me right now.”

  “Hilimm is the stone that renews,” Ubunter said hastily, before his colleague could say anything. “If it is touched to things, it mends breaks, banishes rot and rust no matter how widespread, and banishes barrenness in soil or wombs.”

  Ithclammert Cardassa shrugged. “Nice enough, but I’ve smiths to forge new swords when I break old ones, and—”

  “Lord,” Baerethos burst out, “the Worldstones are mighty things, every one. With Hilimm in his hand, a wizard could cast spells he already knows from now until his dying day without need for study or sacrifices or the finding of fuel—you’ve seen us building bonfires to root our spells and how casting just one magic turns a man-high blaze to cold ashes in an instant. There’d be no need for that, ever, with a Dwaerindim.”

  The baron nodded, a half-smile on his face, and murmured, “Ah, that explains—something. …”

  “He who holds a Dwaer can stand in hot sun, or the heart of a fire, unscathed, and laugh at most spells, too,” Ubunter added quickly. “Nor need he drink nor fear taint or poison if he drinks of water the Stone has been immersed in.”

  “Hilimm can make an aged man young and vigorous for one day in every year,” Baerethos added, “and all Dwaer can glow like torches, and if one gains more than one, they can be used together to command even greater powers.”

  “You describe wizards’ toys,” said the Baron Cardassa coldly. “Or something that could make the likes of you two i
nto … something approaching a mage. Is this why you’re both so hungry to get your hand on a Worldstone?”

  The two old men stared at him nervously but did not speak. Baerethos licked his lips.

  The baron smiled, and picked up his scepter again. Their silence gave him clear answer. He struck the bell on the table before him, and said, “Have my thanks, both of you. Now arise, and go to the kitchens, and eat. Cardassa needs you healthy. In the days ahead, I may well have need even for bonfire wizards.”

  As Baerethos and Ubunter stared at him, swallowing the insult together even if they fiercely resisted doing anything else in unison, one of the doorguards hastened to the table in answer to the bell.

  “Have them bring me the meal now,” the baron said, “and tell Roeglar to have his men ready to ride as soon as he can. We’ve borders to inspect, and it’s high time for an ‘incident’ with one of our neighbors.”

  As the armsman bowed, the baron tossed down his scepter and rose from his seat. The two old men bobbed up so swiftly to make their bows that Ubunter’s chair went over with a crash. No one noticed the watching eye withdrawing thoughtfully from the gap in the tapestry that the baron had used earlier—and Ubunter’s shrilly babbled apologies covered the faint sound of the door to the baron’s private bedchamber-to-morn-meal passage opening and then closing again.

  Two bleary-eyed merchants turned the same corner in Adeln just before the rays of the rising sun reached it. They were coming along narrow, barrel-strewn alleyways from opposite directions in the gloom, dusty boots quiet on wet and muddy flagstones, and nearly strode right into each other, brushing shoulders and clapping hands to blades with identical startled half-curses.

  Two men, grizzled and thoughtful, clad in the breeches, vests, and overtunics favored by traders all over Darsar, wearing plain swords “hard at hand,” and the expressions of men who knew how to use them, taking rather less time to measure each other than most merchants do, they smiled at each other rather tentatively. “A bright and pleasant morning,” one of them offered, looking up and down the alley as if gathering evidence for this opinion.