The Kingless Land

by Ed Greenwood

  “Wonders of the Three!” she breathed in delighted awe. Where she’d expected to see only ashes and dark smoke, the shafts of light—with their floating books—stood as before, apparently untouched.

  The Lady Silvertree turned and found Craer at her elbow. “We—are we alone here?” she asked, almost fiercely.

  “No, L—Embra,” the procurer replied. “That lurker I saw, and at least one more mage … probably more than that, besides; they’re all still here, somewhere.”

  “I’ve got to get a look at those books,” the sorceress told him. “But how?”

  “Can’t you fly up there, with a spell?”

  “Of course. It’s bows I’m worried about, and—”

  “Worry about the bolts and arrows,” Hawkril rumbled in her ear. “Never the bows.”

  “Funny, funny man,” she told him out of the side of her mouth, and took a stride forward, and then another. Her companions didn’t try to stop her this time.

  “Can you raise a shield, like that mage outside?” Craer asked.

  Embra put her knuckles to her mouth. “Yes, but any wizard can destroy such a magic,” she said slowly, “and I can’t fend off dozens of crossbow bolts. I don’t know about getting into those columns of light and keeping my spells active, either. How? …”

  “Just do it,” Craer urged her, “but don’t stop and hover—dart this way and that, swoop, drop suddenly, and never stay still. If someone fires at you, fly away, but try to mark where the shot came from and then get above it—high above it. We’ll run there and see if we can’t silence the bowman.”

  Embra looked at him, fires of excitement rising in her eyes, and then plunged both hands almost greedily into her bodice, brought out two rather battered-looking knickknacks, and hissed incantations in furious haste. A small, wet sound in the next row made Hawkril dart around the corner, where he found a sagging warrior pinned to the shelves with a heavy war quarrel, a dark ribbon of blood spreading out from the man’s twitching feet. The dying man had been there for some time, by the looks of all that spilled blood. Hawkril shot glances up and down the aisle but could see no foe to be wary of.

  He was just turning back into the row where the Four had fought the warriors when Embra rose into the air, glided along the tops of the shelves with the toes of her boots almost touching the weathered wood, and then reached the curving wall of the dome and soared up along it.

  No arrows reached for her, and they could hear no sound in the dark, dead library but their own breathing.

  “I hope the lass isn’t chasing a trap,” Hawkril muttered. “You saw that wizard’s hand pass through the tome? Those books aren’t even here.”

  “It’s only in bards’ tales that folk cast mighty spells and spend bags upon bags of gold to build traps everywhere,” Craer murmured back. “The books lie open—’tis some sort of message intended for mages.”

  “Or passing pigeons,” the armaragor grunted. “If that’s not too much of a stretch, outside a bard’s tale, that is.”

  “Funny, funny man,” Craer told Hawkril out of the side of his mouth, in devastating mimicry of Embra’s tones.

  The armaragor grimaced and then stiffened as the Lady of Jewels swooped out of the great arc of the dome, curling around its far surface where runes were written. She peered at them narrowly, slowing in her glide, and then soared again. The men of the Four tensed, straining to hear the rattle of a windlass or the thrum of a bowstring, but the library seemed eerily quiet.

  Embra plunged into view again, now clearly curling around the columns of faintly glowing air. She slowed, peered, and then circled away, coming back to the same book again, and then tossed her hair back and soared up into the dark heights of the vault again. Craer nodded approvingly.

  “Then did the Golden Griffon rage … At his forever foe enthroned … in the splendor of a nest new and strong raised,” Embra Silvertree murmured to herself, the dusty air whistling past her shoulders. “His foe would be a Silvertree and the nest Silvertree House, if the writing is old, or Castle Silvertree if ’tis recent. Probably ’tis old …”

  She bit her lip and plunged down out of the heights once more, peering at the dark arcs of shelving as she descended, seeking bows and men in armor and eyes glaring her way.

  Embra thought she saw movement, back in the dark reaches well away from her companions, but when she peered again, she saw nothing but empty shelves and drifting mold spores.

  The book she’d glanced at before showed her the same words. That was good. She swept past it and slowed at the next one, murmuring its words under her breath as she scanned them: “The place of fallen majesty, its master and namesake now gone, with all his strivings, to a pearl upon the fast Silverflow, an upthrust prow of shields for to cleave the winter waves.” Well, that was clear enough: the pearl was Silvertree Isle, and the place of fallen majesty Silvertree House. If these were clues to the whereabouts of a Dwaer, they were clearly pointing to the Silent House.

  Perhaps the third b—

  The world around her exploded in a burst of varicolored light, shaking the vast dome above her with a sound like rolling thunder. Amid the roaring, dust rained down, and out of flickering, pulsing afterblasts below her raced long, snakelike necks with needletoothed, snapping jaws.

  Too breathless to scream, Embra was snatched away from them by blasts of tortured air that felt like the blows of large, wildly swung fists. She was cartwheeling through the air, spinning helplessly through shafts of light and phantom books—well, that was one thing learned: touching a shaft, or even a book, robbed a mage of no magic!—with those snaking, impossibly long necks twisting up after her, climbing nearer … and nearer … and she was feeling sick again, weak and empty and …

  Whenever the snakelike spell-things touched one of the glowing shafts, they boiled away into it and were gone, Embra saw. Her wild spinning was slowing now as she approached the curving wall of the dome and met roiling air rebounding off it. The dome above her was still ringing like a bell, but through its din she could now hear shouts and the high clang of swords meeting in anger. A shout rose above the rest, soaring up to her ears as she struggled to gain control of her flight: “For Ornentar! For victory!”

  By the Three, did warriors bellowing war cries ever realize just how foolish they sounded?

  Embra shook her head and plunged down through thinning smokes, past snapping jaws that veered and swooped at her too slowly to find their mark, toward the shelves where heavily armored warriors were hacking at Craer and Hawkril, who stood back to back with old Sarasper dancing between them, tiny lightnings flickering between his fingers as he held some spell she didn’t recognize ready … to heal? To harm?

  Beyond and behind the warriors stood two men in robes—men with cruel faces and cold eyes. One stood with hands raised, sweat glistening on his forehead, and the ripples of intense concentration playing across his jaws. Jaws, like those that snapped and swooped at her…

  The other mage was older, and from his jowls to his wintry brows he reeked of power. His eyes were on her, and his lips were moving. From his fingertips dark wisps of smoke or shadow were curling, welling up as they escaped from his grasp, into dark and flapping things that squeaked and cut the air like shards of black glass. They were … bats.

  Embra frowned, even as she hurled herself sideways in the air to escape whatever doom this cold-eyed man was weaving. Hadn’t Spellmaster Ambelter—her lips curled in revulsion at the mere remembrance of his face—once disparagingly mentioned a downriver wizard who styled himself the Master of Bats?

  Bats were circling the cold-eyed wizard’s arms and over his head now, a score of them or more, and Embra applied herself to climbing away from him and getting to where the shafts of light would stand between them. She was going to make it, she was …

  Caught like a leaf in a gale, hurled away again too stunned to shriek, as the world exploded in blinding brightness that seared her eyes and rang in her ears and smacked her against curving stone that th
rew her away again into emptiness.…

  Was her arm broken? Her hip shattered? Or … were they just numbed past feeling? She tried to turn her head and look at herself and had a confused sight of red threads of blood trailing like ribbons behind her, through a white and ever-present glow.

  Something struck her, hard—something smooth and solid—and she crashed along it until she came to rest, half through something … it was such a relief to just slip away.…

  Craer sprang up, kicked a gleaming helm squarely between the eyes, and had time for a glance up and across the dome as his opponent staggered back. Embra was half sitting, half sagging among the carvings along the ornate balcony rail, a trickle of blood falling from her open mouth. She was moving slowly, her head lolling…

  “She’s alive!” the procurer howled. “She lives!”

  Hawkril’s answer was a roar of approval, and his blade shrieked it protest as he drove in half through a breastplate. There was a muffled cry from within the helm, armored shoulders shook, and Hawkril moved with the reeling warrior, driving his sword in low under the man’s arm—into a second warrior, who’d been trying to reach past the first. There was a roar of pain.

  Hawkril twisted his sword, clinging to it with both hands to keep custody of it as one warrior flailed about in agony, and the other backed away. With a wet wrenching, the second armsman tore free of the steel that had thrust into the chainmail at his crotch, and staggered away, hunched over and groaning.

  Craer parried a vicious sword cut, but its force drove the procurer to his knees. His Ornentarn attacker bounded forward to stand over Craer, so as to hack him to the floor. Sarasper snatched a handful of moldering mushrooms from the nearest shelf and hurled it into the man’s face, up under the helm. The shuddering sneeze was immediate. The old healer gritted his teeth, tried to ignore a second armsman trying to reach past the first with his sword—and drove his dagger firmly up under the edge of the sneezing man’s helm, jabbing again … and again.…

  There was a sudden flash of light from behind him, and the healer spun around. “Hawkril?” he cried in wild, rising fear, trying to peer into blinding white-starred smoke. “Hawk?”

  “I live,” the armaragor growled. “Guard thyself!”

  The healer spun around again, raising his dagger in a frantic parry—and the warrior lumbering past him ignored it and its wielder in his haste to get at Hawkril.

  The hulking armaragor grinned, beckoned the Ornentarn with a wave of one large hand, and brought his blade up. Whereupon the world exploded again behind him.

  A mage was flung helplessly out of that tumult, his flailing body sweeping the legs of an Ornentarn warrior out from under him. They crashed into a bookshelf together with bone-shattering force, and it shuddered, swayed, and started to topple.

  Beyond the blast, shelves were crashing down, ponderous and inexorable, rolling thunders rising from their ruin. The ceiling above the shelves was shuddering as dust and stone blocks rained down together, crashing and rolling.

  “Silvertree!” a coldly triumphant voice called, from the far side of the echoing chaos—and in the wake of that war cry something bright stabbed out, a lance of light that lasted for but a breath and then was gone. Its brilliance faded more slowly in the eyes of those who’d seen it. Where it struck, an Ornentarn warrior crashed onto his face, smoke rising from his armor.

  Bats were flying wildly everywhere, and the mage who stood where they clustered thickest turned to face this new threat. He said one cold word as he traced a symbol in the air before him—and the smoke rolled away, as if swept by an unseen hand, to lay bare a scene of splintered and twisted devastation.

  Shelves lay like so much storm-felled timber, with broken bodies of fighting-men draped here and there among the broken spars. Beyond the ruin stood two mages, smiling slightly as they stared at the mage among his bats … and the second wizard, struggling to his feet barely a sword’s reach in front of a narrow-eyed Hawkril.

  “Silvertree?” the mage of bats sneered. “You look far too young even to be allowed to launder mage robes in that dark barony.”

  The older of the two Silvertree mages lifted a scornful eyebrow. “The courtesy of Huldaerus, Master of Bats, is legendary—and now I see the reality is no less. A pity your tongue outstrips both your judgment and powers.” He raised a hand as if in salute … or to unleash a spell. “Klamantle and Markoun of Silvertree, here to hand you doom.”

  “Fine words,” Huldaerus purred. “Can you make them more?” He did not lift his hands, but from the rings on his fingers dark lightnings spat, snarling across the open space of shattered shelves at the Silvertree mages.

  Halfway there the dark bolts struck an unseen shielding, clawed along it, and then expired in swirling black sparks. Klamantle acquired a stiff smile and brought his upraised hand down.

  A stone block larger than a man obediently tore itself out of the ceiling right above Huldaerus and crashed down—but the body that was smashed to the floor beneath it wore the armor of a warrior, and the wizard of the bats suddenly stood some distance away along the shelves, where an Ornentarn warrior had raised a sword but a moment before.

  The Master of Bats barely had time to twist his lips into a scornful smile before Markoun of Silvertree raised his hand and hurled a raging sphere of flames at Huldaerus. The Ornentarn mage lost his smile and ducked around the end of a shelf with rather more haste than dignity. Markoun’s magic burst with a roar—a roar that was immediately echoed by the flames it birthed, as they tore hungrily along deserted shelves.

  “Impressive,” the other Ornentarn mage commented, raising an eyebrow. “Phalagh, by the way, at your service.”

  Hawkril swung his war sword even faster than the Silvertree mages could snarl spells, but his blade passed right through the smiling Phalagh as if the mage had been made of smoke.

  Phalagh gave him a tight smile, murmured, “Await my revenge, thickskull,” and stepped through the shelf he’d been leaning against, out of sight.

  An instant later, that entire course of shelves vanished into whirling splinters with a roar. Klamantle stood at one end of it with the hands that had cast that rending spell still raised, peering through the dust, but Phalagh’s laugh came back to them from somewhere in the dark shelves beyond. Shelf after shelf crumpled and sighed into nothingness in the distance, more and more slowly as the spell spent itself.

  A last shelf groaned and fell, and the wizard Huldaerus stood revealed, trying a small and ordinary door in a wall none of them had seen before—a wall that stood amid the shelves, enclosing a wedge-shaped room. The mage glanced up at them, face tightening in anger, and hissed something. When he touched the door next, it vanished in a gout of smoke, and Huldaerus darted into the space beyond.

  As Markoun raised his hand again, an Ornentarn warrior sprinted after the wizard of the bats.

  “Ehrluth’s spell chamber?” the younger Silvertree mage asked, his eyes narrowing.

  “Whatever it may be,” Klamantle replied, “he enters to win time to work magics against us—or to seek new weapons to slay us with. Come!”

  The room Huldaerus hurled himself into was dark and dusty, but it sang with the echoes of countless forgotten, long-cast spells, their jangling rising anew as the mighty magics of the spell-battle flooded in on the heels of the hurrying mage. This was Ehrluth’s spell chamber—and if the Three were kind, it just might hold some spell or scepter that he could hurl against these Silvertree mages.

  His bats squeaked around him, telling him that the room stood empty, and Huldaerus made candles of his own fingers to peer at the walls for runes or storage holes or handles. Nothing. Curses of the Three, had he raced into a trap?

  He turned and wove the strongest shielding he knew with shaking fingers, almost humming in his haste, and barely had time to curse the Ornentarn warrior who blundered into the room with drawn sword and wild eyes before the older of the two Silvertree mages could be seen beyond the door, weaving a spell of doom.

&
nbsp; Huldaerus cloaked himself in his shielding and stood tall and still, feeling every curve of his shaping, tracing its web in search of weaknesses that might mean his death, and finding … nothing. He found that nothing just as the room screamed around him, exploding into amber fire tinged with green and purple, a magical conflagration that broke like a wave over the Ornentarn warrior still blundering along the walls.

  The warrior screamed once, a wet and bubbling sound that quavered to the floor along with his body. His flesh and bone melted together into a sort of red jelly that slumped across the floor, leaving his armor behind as an empty, rocking shell of armor plates. All around the room, bats turned to dark and shapeless globs, and splashed and pattered like broken eggs on the floor in a short, wet rain.

  The Master of Bats tasted real fear for the first time in long years, turned on his heel from that horror, and rushed for the door, hoping his shielding could hold off the flesh-drinking fire long enough for him to escape.

  Of course, he was running right into whatever those mages wanted to hurl at him—and they knew it. He shaped bats in feverish haste as he ran, feeling them wriggle along his flanks and crawl near his throat. If he fell, and but a single bat of his desire flapped safely away, Huldaerus could rise again.…

  Long and cold years might pass then before he had his revenge. But have it he would, oh, yes.…

  The younger mage was, of course, too impatient. He stepped into view before Huldaerus had quite reached the doorway. A ruby circle appeared in the air above his palm, red radiance that burst into a thin, bright, ravening ray that seared the very air. The Master of Bats, racing too fast to stop or veer, simply flung himself on his face—and the floor opened up beneath him.

  Red fire exploded harmlessly above his head as the Ornentarn mage tumbled down a stone-lined pit, a trap that Ehrluth must have placed under the very threshold of his spell chamber, a—no, not a trap.