by Ed Greenwood
The day wore on, and the time came when they must make a turn, and they did so, halting only when Embra lifted a hand and said softly, “Indraevyn must lie there, and stretching that way, before us.”
Craer and Hawkril looked to their weapons; Embra felt around her person for the remaining enchanted House knickknacks she’d need to power any spells she might have to cast.
“It would be best,” Sarasper murmured warningly, at her elbow, “if you cast no magic that is not desperately needful.”
She looked back at him. “It would,” she agreed gravely. “See to it, then, that my need is not desperate.”
The healer grinned and spread his hands in an open, helpless gesture. They shrugged in unison, then started toward the ruins, moving as stealthily as possible. Craer took the lead, making hand signals as to how and when the others should follow.
They hadn’t been creeping forward for long when a sudden flash of light occurred above the trees ahead. On its heels came screams of pain mingled with shouts of alarm and anger.
The Four looked at each other.
Craer silently signaled the advance.
12
Uneasy Mastery of Magic
Out of the bright and clear blue sky over the Glittering City, on an afternoon not soon to be forgotten in Sirlptar, two black, bat-winged, and serpentine monsters swooped down. Miniature dragons, they seemed, with men riding their backs.
As folk who glanced up cried out and pointed, older and longer-bearded ones looked, and saw—and ducked into doorways, to seek cellars in haste. Nightwyrms out of ballads and tale-tellers’ legends these might be, yes, but to them that didn’t mean happy endings and romantic moments as heroes grandly saved the day—they knew what nightwyrms could do. They also knew what sort of men would dare to ride them.
Horns that had not sounded for many a year awoke into frantic life, bellowing brokenly over the rooftops, calling on Sirl archers and mages to drop whatever affairs presently pressed them, and leap to the defense of their city.
They did not have to reach a watchtower to see why the alarum had been raised.
Over the oldest and wealthiest streets of Sirlptar the sinuous and splendid wyrms of the air banked, gliding along the ridge like black ghosts while the robed men astride them worked with strands of hair feverish magic … magic that did not go well.
As the wind of his wyrm’s glide tossed back his hair and cooled his cheeks, Klamantle finished his spell and used its risen power with his customary care. He’d been careful to phrase his incantation to “feel” the Lady Embra within—and a goodly way beneath—the entire city, and all river and land now within his sight.
Yet the spell found nothing.
Markoun raised a similarly baffled and angry face from his own casting, and their eyes met in shared fury and frustration as the two wyrms flashed past each other and circled under the frustrated guidance of their creators, for a parley that both already knew the opening and sole concern of: the Lady Silvertree was not to be found anywhere in or near Sirlptar.
“Our fury will be nothing to the baron’s,” Klamantle told his fellow mage grimly.
The younger mage flashed his teeth in a smile too fearful to be pleasant and shouted back, “Only if we fail!” He bent low over the neck of his conjured mount and, as it turned into a savage dive, began to murmur words Klamantle knew all too well.
Tiny whirlwinds of flame spun out from Markoun’s fingertips, slashing through the air like arrows streaming one after the other.
Arrows of flickering fire that streaked down into the many-gabled roof of the Wavefyre Inn.
The building shuddered, and many shingles spun into the air, trailing flames. There were shouts and screams, and Markoun smiled tightly as he followed his fiery darts down in a deadly plunge.
With easy grace he pulled his mount out of its dive at the last possible moment and leaned out to almost nonchalantly hurl a Fist of Fury down through that shattered and blazing roof as he swept over the inn. Most of its uppermost story erupted into the air in his wake.
Klamantle watched, shrugged, and sent a Woodmelt spell of his own into the Wavefyre, to hasten its collapse onto the heads of folk within. That at least would send Markoun’s reckless flames down into the heart of the Wavefyre, rather than dancing over rooftops to raze half Sirlptar.
Floorboards and pillars alike melted away and slumped, and screams rose among the crackle and rising roar of flames. Markoun snarled another firespell, uncaring of the destruction he might cause—and most of the next floor down was blasted into flaming wreckage. Men shrouded in flames could be seen staggering vainly about amid collapsing floors and toppling walls, seeking a way out that they would never find in time. Raw-throated wailing accompanied patron after desperate patron in frantic leaps to the street, where they lay dashed and broken on the unyielding cobbles. Behind them, among the milling many who’d streamed out of the common room to stand aghast and stare, drinks still clutched in their hands, the Wavefyre Inn went up like a wind-whipped bonfire.
Sobbing for air, Daerentar Jalith and Lharondar Laernsar clawed at a door already darkening with rippling flame and died together in the hungry smoke with their curses choking them. They were only paces away from a hasty magic that was keeping a column of air free of fire and smoke, but it might as well have been a broad barony distant. Seconds after they’d fallen, the door that had resisted them collapsed over their bodies in a shower of sparks.
At the bottom of that column stood a mage aflame with his own fury: Jaerinsturn of Elmerna, his spell-book between his feet and his arms raised to hurl death back at whoever had done this. He saw nightwyrms circling in the sky, and in a trembling voice he fashioned the strongest ravening spellblast his mastery could encompass. It snarled out from his thin lips and shaking hands—and a diving nightwyrm became so much black roiling smoke, spilling its robed rider out of the sky.
“Aid!” Klamantle shouted, clawing at air that would not hold him. “Markoun! A rescue!”
The younger mage swept past, their eyes met—and the nightwyrm flapped on, trailing Markoun’s cold laughter.
Dark Olym take him! As the cobbles rushed up to meet him, Klamantle desired only that he could whisk himself away from here, to a safe hideawa—
By the Three! Yes!
Klamantle mouthed three words he’d almost forgotten—and the world changed around him, whirling away mere instants before he would have struck the ground, and whirling him back into utter darkness. Dank, dust-filled darkness, a smell he knew—and did not know. What was that … musk?
There was a grunting sound very close by. The mage turned and in frantic haste made the air glow with light, revealing a boar, perhaps six paces away, hooves slipping as it began a charge!
Klamantle shouted the simple spell that births flames for campfires and hurled it down a tusked throat before diving aside. Crumbling tomes of his own long-ago making tumbled around him as he rolled, the boar growled its way past, and flames erupted with a dull, wet booming.
A hoof struck the wall and rebounded past the dazed wizard, dust rolled up like stormclouds, and a little silence fell over Klamantle’s hideaway.
He crouched on hands and knees, blinking into the gloom, for what seemed like a long time, listening and just gathering his wits. He’d prepared this little hideaway when? Twenty years ago? That long?
Long enough for something to find and roll aside the boulders that held the door shut and for a boar to lair here. Long enough for his simple novice spell writings to crumble, even before he’d worked magic in the little cavern to blow the boar apart.
He should find his way to the entrance and see if there’d been changes outside—in the abandoned, overgrown village wherein his little cave had once been a root cellar … or in the fallen barony of Tarlagar around it. Soon.
The last echoes of the tumult faded beyond hearing, and Klamantle shrugged, clambered upright, and started around familiar rough stone walls, picking what fragments of cooked boar he could f
ind off the stones. It’d been months since he’d tasted good cooked boar, without all of the strange, sweet sauces the baron liked to smother it with, and knowing the temper of the master of Silvertree, it might be a long time before certain wizards tasted decent meals again.
Wait! Hadn’t he—yes, here! Up the little fissure, feel up and back—the thong was still there! He plucked and pulled, gently, until the tiny, crumbling leather bag fell out into his cupped hand and yielded up the dull, firespoiled ruby he’d enspelled so long ago. Probably the only thing of worth left here, beyond healing potions: the proud achievements of a sweating year of castings and mistakes and endless recastings … a scrying gem. His scrying gem. Klamantle found a tiny pedestal table he’d forgotten existed, dragged it over to a cold stone seat set into the wall, and set down his gem on it.
Sitting down to stare into ruby depths, he thought of the burning inn in Sirlptar. Flames roaring up, smoke rolling up into a long, greasy plume over the ridge that rose into the tallest turreted houses in the Glittering City … there. There in the ruby deep: a tiny, gleaming scene growing steadily larger, nearer …
The nightwyrm convulsed in agony, almost spilling Markoun Yarynd from his perch.
The youngest of the Dark Three wizards of Silvertree clawed at glassy black scales to keep from falling to a tumbling, helpless death, recovered himself with a desperate snarl, and turned to look back with the sweat of fear running off him like a rainstorm.
Markoun’s eyes were wide and staring, and he was shaking in rage and terror. If his fingers had slipped …
He shuddered and then wheeled his dragonlike mount savagely around. Twice the nightwyrm turned in the sky over the Glittering City before its rider regained enough control over himself to work magic again. Futile arrows leaped up at him in some places, falling far short, and the flashes of spells too slow and too timidly aimed shook the sky in other places.
Markoun ducked his head away from the magics and thanked the Three that the city seemed to be so empty of mages at the moment. When the nightwyrm responded to him again, his first, snarling act was to hurl a handful of fire back down at the wizard standing in the heart of the inferno. The only one who’d touched them with his spells, smashing Klamantle’s spell-spun wyrm out of the sky. Thankfully, his second strike had missed Markoun, though not by much.
It was a spell not known in Silvertree. Who was that mage down there, alone amid the flames?
Had the Silvertree wench run to this stranger? Had he hidden or transformed or spelljumped her away out of a whim or to draw Baron Silvertree into battle?
Or was it just the laughter of the Three that he’d been staying at this inn right now?
Then the young wizard’s mind came to the most important of his string of questions: It didn’t really matter now, did it?
If Markoun didn’t claim that wizard down there was to blame for Embra Silvertree’s escape—after destroying him utterly in what must look like a city-shaking battle, the hide that would pay the price of Silvertree fury would be one that answered to the name of Yarynd.
As horns blared again in the city below, something purple suddenly burst in the air close by to his right. Markoun flinched and set his wyrm tumbling away without waiting to see if it had been hit. Even the mightiest battle-spell couldn’t harm what it couldn’t hit.…
He had to destroy this stranger-mage, the inn, and a lot more besides. Perhaps if he whisked aloft those barrels of cooking oil from three streets over, caused them to hang above the inn, and then tore them apart.…
At his thought the nightwyrm climbed, its powerful wings stroking the air like the oars of a racing boat, that obsidian back undulating with the power of its wingbeats. From somewhere among the taller houses on the ridge another spell streaked out, tracing a slow green arc across the sky … and falling short.
Arrows sought him, a few wingbeats farther on, but a sharp bank and slip to one side, and they clawed emptiness and fell. Chuckling in delight and rising battlerage, Markoun clung to his perch and cast the spell that would snatch aloft the barrels. It worked as smoothly as a bard’s ballad; he urged his mount away only just in time.
Behind his nightwyrm’s curling tail, the air erupted into a ear-shattering torrent of flames that the gods themselves might have been proud of. Markoun couldn’t even hear his own shouted laughter as he turned his mount from the height of its frantic race out of harm’s way, looked back, and waved his fist in exultation.
Jaerinsturn of Elmerna, the Wavefyre Inn, and several surrounding buildings of fair Sirlptar vanished as one, in the heart of a blast that hurled citizens into the air like rag dolls, splattered them against walls like so much rotten fruit, and smote the ears of everyone else in the Glittering City with a ringing, muffled tumult that would take hours to pass.
The nightwyrm bucked and shuddered in the roiling air, but Markoun held his seat with a grim smile, waiting for smoke and dust to clear enough to be sure that no sly adventurers would be creeping out of inn cellars with tales of reckless wyrm-riding mages.
Something streaked up out of the city to burst nearby; the nightwyrm recoiled in the air and almost fell over into a wild tumble.
Another spell soared up from another street—and another; Sirlptar seemed full of angry mages, all seeking revenge for the disturbance on the man in the air.
Markoun raised a hasty shielding, and almost immediately a scattering of midair stars told him that it had been tested … by a bearded man in leathers standing in an alley not far from where the inn had been. A man in the gaudy robes favored in far Carraglas peered sharply at the bearded man—and then joined him in hurling spells into the sky. When they began to arrive all around the twisting, thrashing nightwyrm, Markoun was suddenly too busy for spellscrying anyone on the ground … any one, for instance, of the score or more of mages now hurling destruction into the sky.
The nightwyrm shuddered underneath him as fire burst out of empty air not so far away—and Markoun decided a return to Silvertree was now more than increasingly attractive. It was urgent.
In the heart of the ruby, Klamantle saw his younger colleague wrestle his dark and scaly mount around to streak upriver, as spells burst in the air all around. He’d never seen so much magic hurled at once … but then, he’d never seen a mage reckless and stupid enough to invite such a display.
Reckless and stupid enough to strike at a busy inn in the heart of a bustling city that was bound to be acrawl with wizards, at the bright height of day and in full sight of all, parading around the sky on a conjured nightwyrm. And now Markoun was flying away, not even paying the price for his folly!
Disgusted, Klamantle stared hard at the gem and thought of his own worktable in Castle Silvertree. Its dark expanse just so, the little brazier there, the row of clay jars along the back … and suddenly he was looking at them all, Sirlptar and bright-bursting spells gone. He turned the view in the gem away from his worktable, to look across the spell-hurling chamber.
The Baron was sitting in his customary seat at the table—but Ingryl Ambelter was sitting at his side. Elbow to elbow, they were, like two close friends, their heads bent in close converse … plotting.
A trio of hand-high figurines stood on the polished wood between them, little statues of deftly carved wood. The baron gestured at one of them, and the Spellmaster took it up into his hand. It was a very lifelike miniature of Embra Silvertree. The glows of unleashed, building magic were already flickering around Ambelter’s fingers as he raised it in front of his face.
Its removal let Klamantle Beirldoun get a clear look at the other two miniatures on the table. He blinked, and then blinked again but had no trouble in recognizing himself and Markoun Yarynd!
Cold fear shivered through the mage in the cave, and he found himself blinking at the gem, shoulders back against the cold stone wall and sweat running down his jaw.
So the jaws had drawn close. Well, he’d always known they could, more or less at the whim of the Spellmaster or the ruler of Silvertree.
’Twould it be best to flee far from Aglirta, right now? Or pretend he knew nothing and walk back into the waiting deathtrap?
Klamantle sat in the darkness for a long time before he admitted to himself that he had no real choice; Ingryl, if not the baron, was sure to have some magical way of readily tracing and tormenting him.
He sighed, returned the gem to its hiding place, and looked around his hideaway. Scoop the crumbling books behind some stones to keep casual searchers from becoming enthusiastic, leave what was left of the boar to the flies, and … no, there was nothing he wanted to take from here.
Wearily, Klamantle Beirldoun strode to the entrance, seeking enough open ground to conjure another nightwyrm and get home. As he shouldered his way out into the forest, he never saw the motionless man watching from behind the tree right beside the entrance to his hideaway. A man clad all in leathers, who never lost a grim but gentle smile.
Markoun was unable to keep the smile from his face, even with most of his magic gone and his mount collapsing under him. The hail of spells that had forced him away from Sirlptar was still eating away at his nightwyrm, forcing him to stay over the wide but winding river—better a ducking than a bone-shattering fall onto rocks or into the ever-present trees … of lands that had no cause to love Silvertree mages.
Ah, but what a bright battle it had been! To rend that inn like a handful of rotten kindling and scorch a dozen mages or more …
Markoun found himself grinning again, as the nightwyrm’s scales became smoke beneath him, and he was suddenly tumbling through the air.
The River Coiling was cold—kisses of the Three, ’twas cold!—and Markoun found himself gasping for air as he struggled to the nearest bank. His fingers were numb already; it took him three tries to claw himself up the rocks and ashore, dripping.
