The Kingless Land

by Ed Greenwood

  Their roar of reply rang off the ceiling, and he smiled and held up his hand again. When they were silent, he held the Stone aloft in his other hand, and caused it to glow with white fire.

  “Great is this Worldstone, and its power now serves us,” he intoned, “but the Stone of Life is in the hands of another. We must have it. We shall have it! We can have it, if you but aid me now!”

  The roar was of assent this time, and the Priest of the Serpent cried, “If you would serve the Ssserpent henceforth, disrobe, kiss your snakes, and dance to the song of the Stone—now!”

  The Stone flashed once with a hungry ruby radiance, then throbbed like the boom of a drum so deep it made the ears tingle. Once more, and again, slightly faster. Again. Faster and faster—and with the hand that wasn’t holding the Stone on high, the priest threw back his cowl and signaled his most senior priestesses.

  Their sashes flew, their robes swirled away, and they began to dance, passing from his right side in front of him to his left, and on, circling him, their snakes coiling excitedly around their arms.

  Other, lesser worshipers, snakes coiling along their limbs, hastened to join the throbbing, quickening dance, as the Stone flashed again and again.

  At each flash the lashing, slithering serpents drew back their heads and then struck, sinking their fangs into the bared flesh that carried them, and the dancers wept and sobbed and wailed, raising their hands to the Stone. The priest laughed in exultation and stared up at the Dwaer he held, feeling it reaching across the miles to wherever the Stone of Life was tugging at it … bringing it home.

  The dancers were whirling in a frenzy now, the snakes biting repeatedly. The song of the Stone rose louder, and the dance of the circling clergy moved with it, then started to change. Quickening limbs jerked stiffly, bare bodies became deep amber and then deepened to a dusky purple, staring eyes glittered golden, and mouths began to foam as venom surged through veins. Only the sweeping, rising power of the magic kept the faithful on their feet.

  A door opened in Castle Silvertree, and a man in rich robes strode into a blood-smeared room.

  One of the women lying dejectedly against the end of the bed looked up through weary eyes. “You,” she said, a thread of contempt in her exhausted whisper. “I knew you’d find your way here before long.”

  Ingryl Ambelter spread his hands with a smile. “And I’ve not disappointed you.” His gaze roved around the chamber, meeting many reddened, empty eyes, and he added, “As Spellmaster of Silvertree—as ruler of Silvertree—I offer you a choice.”

  He waited, but the watching women gave him only sullen silence. The Spellmaster’s friendly demeanor shrank to a half smile. “If you serve me in all matters, as you did the baron, I’ll banish those talons and make you normal again.”

  Sarintha stiffened and rose off the bed, holding out her talons like daggers before her. Her bare body was black with blood, not all of it her own, and with every step she left a bloody footprint on the furs underfoot.

  “Serve the magic that made us this way?” she hissed, eyes glittering. “Serve the only man even Silvertree feared?” She launched herself into a sudden dash at him. “Never!”

  As Sarintha reached for him in savage anger, curving claws raking, Ingryl Ambelter calmly stood his ground, and fire roared out of his hands.

  He blasted the leaping woman to ashes and bones not two strides from his nose, and watched all that had been Sarintha clatter and sigh to the furs, trailing smoke.

  Then he lifted his head to smile again at the rest of the bedchamber girls. The survivors. Standing there with the last wisps of flame curling up from his palms, he gently repeated his offer.

  Slowly, eyes downcast, a slender woman with a magnificent mane of flowing black hair crossed the room and knelt at his feet submissively, carefully holding her talons behind her and away from him. He felt the soft brush of her lips on his boot, and smiled.

  After a moment, another of the baron’s girls padded across the floor to kneel beside the first … and then another. There followed a general move toward the Spellmaster, and he threw back his head and laughed in exultation.

  As the last woman knelt at his feet and bent her head to kiss his boots, Ingryl made a grand gesture—and one of the baron’s coronets rose from its jaunty perch on a bedpost and floated across the room to the wizard’s head.

  As it settled about his brows, he felt gentle kisses on his boots and his legs, and laughed again—never noticing that for every kiss that landed, a dozen or more tears fell. But then, it’s not in the nature of most wizards to care overmuch about the desires and feelings of others. The crown of Silvertree rode well on Ingryl Ambelter.

  Unheeded, the tears pattered onto the bloody furs.

  The song of the Stone of War shook the Silent House as the dancers moved ever faster. The priest at their heart felt power, dark and mighty, rising within him.

  There came a flash outside the circle, a radiance the Priest of the Serpent wasn’t expecting. He frowned at it, peering to see. Perha—there was another!

  When the second mysterious glow died, the priest saw that a headless man he didn’t recognize was jerking and shuffling along in the dance, a tattered bat circling him. The man ahead of him was a warrior in the armor of Ornentar, head lolling loosely over a slit and gaping throat. There came another flash, and another, bringing two more warriors to join the circle of dying, foammouthed clergy.

  The Priest of the Serpent gaped at them for a few moments and then shrugged and gave himself over to the awe and power of the ritual, accepting that the floating clouds of bloody bones and fragments that appeared next, bobbing and swaying in time with the rest of the dancers, had once been living men.

  It wasn’t the end that either Markoun or Klamantle had anticipated for themselves, but, then, few mortals of Darsar get to choose the time or manner of their passing.

  As the torn bodies of bards and headless, scorched wizards joined the outermost ring of dancers, the delighted priest laughed aloud, and the ritual roared on.…

  A small, translucent castle of flasks and bottles stood on a certain marble floor in Urngallond. Beyond their gleaming spires was the lip of a tub inset in the floor, where four heads leaned back at ease, and there was much merriment.

  “Gods!” Craer gasped, nearly dropping his half-full bottle into the warm, scented bathwater. “I’m as hard as a hammer!”

  “Hah!” Sarasper snapped, swiping the wine out of the procurer’s hand. “No more dallying with lady sorceresses for you!”

  “Well,” Hawkril rumbled, “I never thought I’d end up bathing with a lady wizard in water that’s more wine and Craer’s bladder juice than water! Hand me another of those, will you? Embra?”

  The Lady Silvertree had fallen silent.

  “Embra?” the armaragor asked roughly. “Is something amiss?”

  The sorceress turned a grim face to him and then looked back down into the water—where the three men, getting themselves upright with sudden urgency, could see a glimmering glow.

  “Lady?” Sarasper asked, “What’s happening? Tell us!”

  Embra’s eyes were large and dark with apprehension as she lifted her head to look at him, wet hair trailing back over her shoulders. “Magic,” she murmured, “tugging at the Stone.”

  Even as the words left her lips, the glowing Stone rose up like a giant mushroom shedding dew, making the bathwater bulge. Then it burst free of the water entirely, its glow blazing whiter and brighter as it ascended.

  The Lady Silvertree clung to it, her wet fingers wrapped around it going white with the strength of her grip, and whispered a prayer to the Three.

  The three men watched apprehensively as the Stone rose slowly and silently straight up into the air with the sorceress clinging to it, until she was hanging upright and dripping in midair, her dripping feet a hand’s span above the water, and more. …

  Hawkril reached out one large and hesitant hand to grasp at her ankles, rumbling, “Lady Embra? Should I?…
”

  The sorceress flung her head around to look back at him down the glistening length of her body, the Stone now at full stretch above her head. “I—,” she began, in tones of obvious bewilderment—and then the Stone suddenly brightened.

  They saw wisps of steam drifting from her slender fingers like smoke as its heat banished the water on her skin. Then there was a sudden roar, and the Stone burst into green-and-golden flame.

  Embra cried out in pain. The men below her, scrambling up with shouts of alarm, saw her fingers, locked to the Stone, begin to char.

  17

  No Stone Unburned

  The sizzle of burning flesh was loud enough to be heard over the splashings of three men clambering out of the tub to reach for the sorceress hanging from the Stone of Life.

  “Don’t touch me!” she screamed at them, through tears of pain. “Get back!”

  Flames roiled up from around her blackened fingers, and Embra wept, her trembling lips barely able to grasp out, “S-show me the cause of this!”

  The Dwaer flashed, and suddenly a scene hung in the air beside the naked sorceress: a room where a cowled man held another Stone on high as many folk danced around him. They seemed almost drunken, reeling with their heads lolling, but their limbs jerked with wild speed. The innermost dancers were naked save for flailing and thrashing snakes coiled around their bodies; the outer dancers wore all manner of garb, but looked decidedly…

  “Sweet kisses of the Three!” Hawkril gasped. “They’re all dead!”

  The song of the Stone was deafening now, and the Priest of the Serpent sang worldlessly along with it, borne along in utter triumph. There came, suddenly, a deeper boom than before—and the song died away almost to a whisper.

  Above his head, the Stone of War erupted in red and then black pulsing flames, fire that did not sear the priest’s hand. He gazed up at the fiery tongues in delight and wonder as they spat outward … and seemed to cause ripplings through the slowing ranks of dancers.

  He looked to see what those ripplings might be and saw that they were waves of change wrought by the Stone. Scales were appearing on the bodies of priests and priestesses, and the tongues lolling beneath those dark, dead eyes were suddenly long, forked, red, and darting.

  The priest laughed aloud, glorying in power—and he was still laughing when the dancing corpse of the wizard Jaerinsturn, its face and breast still blackened and blistered from the fires of his death in Sirlptar, shuffled up behind the serpent-man, drew a massive bone club from under scorched robes, and dashed the back of the priest’s scaly head in, so hard that the brains met the serpent-man’s nose.

  With a sniveling, bubbling sigh, the priest fell dead to the floor, the flames dying away from the Stone in his hand like a snuffed candle.

  Somewhere in a seacoast inn, flames died around another Stone, and Embra Silvertree gasped in relief as she fell back into the tub with a mighty splash.

  Not caring where the waters went or how many wine bottles were swept to ruin, she sobbingly called on the Dwaer to heal what little was left of her fingers and tried not to let go of the precious thing in her shudders.

  Three men plunged back into the pool to hold her and murmur comforts. She smiled tremulously up at them through glistening tears.

  * * *

  There were thuds and thumpings in the Silent House as dancers slumped to the floor in a lifeless ring. Snakes glided swiftly away, heading for shadows.

  None slithered toward the center of the ring, to menace the only being left standing in all that chamber. The dead wizard lowered the club that had slain the priest and turned away—and as he did so, the burned face of Jaerinsturn melted away into a featureless, fleshy mask.

  As the faceless man picked his way through the circle of the dead, his face slowly began to acquire the features of someone else.…

  Lying in the cooling waters of the tub in Urngallond, Embra went white.

  “What is it, lass?” Hawkril asked quickly, one large and hairy arm tightening protectively around her shoulders.

  The sorceress looked at him and then back at the scene hanging in the air above them. “There was a book in my father’s library,” she said, voice trembling. “An old history; large and embossed, with locks and latches I loved to work and fondle. … Yet the pages, within—I was always scared of the tale they told. Something about ‘The Faceless shall deliver thee …’”

  “The Koglaur,” Sarasper whispered. “Those who walk among us, weaving a design we know not, always watching … even in the temples of Forefather Oak, we were taught to fear them, for they serve none of the Three, and speak not of their intentions, even under magical urging.”

  “So who are they?” Craer hissed. Embra and Sarasper shrugged in unison.

  The Four stared up at the scene floating above them and saw the Koglaur striding through the Silent House to the room that held the hacked and scarred Throne of Silvertree. He set the Stone of War upon its seat, murmured something over it, and then slipped out a hitherto-secret door, leaving the Dwaer sitting there.

  Sarasper cleared his throat. “We must get it at one—”

  The air beside the throne shimmered and became a smiling Ingryl Ambelter, with a crown of Silvertree on his head. The wizard extended a finger, and lightnings briefly played between it and the Stone. When they died away, he shook his head and scooped up the Stone. “You Watchers are fools,” he told the empty room scornfully, and vanished back into swiftly dying shimmerings.

  With that the scrying-scene collapsed, leaving the Four blinking up at the ceiling of their room at the inn.

  “Where’s he gone?” Sarasper asked sharply.

  Embra closed her eyes, and the Stone in her hands glowed once. When she opened them again, it was to reply calmly, “He’s in Castle Silvertree.”

  Craer caught at her arm. “The Stone can trace folk? Why, we—”

  Embra shook her head. “No, I called on the Stone to power my own perceptions. They trained me to be the ‘Living Castle’ of Silvertree; I can feel things through its very stones, and influence—in, I fear, too small ways—how the castle itself behaves.” She sighed and sank back down into the tub until the waters touched her chin.

  “Hand me a bottle, one of you, and then get dressed and packed,” she announced wearily. “If we don’t finish yon mage now, he’ll finish us later this night, when sleep takes us.”

  Three men scrambled grimly to do her bidding. When the evening wine server rang his gong outside the locked door and then used his passkey to let himself in for the collection of empty wine flasks and to serve the bedtime hot nut-cider, he was astonished to find the palatial rooms empty except for a tub of cold water, a forest of empty wine bottles, and a scattering of gold coins across the unused beds.

  The Band of Four were suddenly standing in a chamber Craer and Hawkril had seen before—a room hung with many gowns. Through gauzy curtains they could see warm, moving glows in the next room. A trio of glass lamps made to resemble floral blossoms were floating there about the shoulders of a man sitting at a table studying an open book.

  “Ingryl Ambelter is my father’s Spellmaster,” Embra breathed in their ears. “He just might be the most powerful wizard in all Aglirta. Keep very quiet.”

  “What’s he doing here?” Craer whispered back.

  “I always had the best lighting,” Embra said, as they watched the lamps drift. “Prettying myself, you know.” She touched her companions, drew their heads together, and added, “Make ready, now. The moment he starts hurling spells, I want all of you touching me—at all times. It’s the only way I can call on the Stone to protect you.”

  And she raised her hands and brought into being a bolt of lightning, following it an instant later by another. As their flaring birth made Ingryl’s head jerk up, Craer threw a dagger at the wizard’s face, as hard and as fast as he knew how.

  Ingryl waved two fingers in greeting, smiling a wintry smile—and both the bolts and the dagger struck an unseen spellshield. The
lightnings crackled right back at the Four, and Embra shouted, “Remember—hold to mer!”

  The snarling bolts struck, crashed blindingly around the Four, and swirled away again, leaving behind only numb tinglings. They saw the Spellmaster smile more broadly as a spell left his nimble fingers.

  The air grew shadowy, half-seen fangs, mouths that gaped and snapped. Craer ducked away from one and caught back hold of Embra’s sleeve just in time, as she shouted warningly and the jaws swept down on the procurer, passing through each other in their haste to savage him.

  Embra waved an arm and the half-seen fangs were gone, swept away in a sudden wash of white radiance that scattered like dying stars across the space between the two mages.

  Ingryl clutched the Stone of War to his chest, book and all forgotten as he backed away from the table, fumbling a scepter from his belt with his free hand.

  Embra’s mouth tightened. She called on the Stone of Life and her years of spell-servitude to awaken her control of the Living Castle once more, her will rushing along well-worn links and enchantments and half-sleeping warding magics … and as the scepter rose to aim, a flood of painted tiles tore free of the ceiling and came crashing down on the Spellmaster, battering his arm back down to his side.

  “You’ve got to advance on him, lass!” Hawkril roared, by her ear. “It’s the only way our blades can reach him! Walk with us while working your spells!”

  And he stepped forward. Frowning and nodding, Embra took a step forward to stay with him, and then another. Like a plodding turtle, the Four advanced together through a whirling storm of spells.

  Tapestries battered the Spellmaster, and more tiles, smashing aside his scepter time and again as leaping lightnings snarled and spat between the Stones glowing on two breasts. The men of the Four reached for Ingryl Ambelter with their weapons as they came, and the angry snarling of lightnings rose ever louder in their ears.

  Ingryl retreated, back through a door curtain and across a room until he passed through another curtain, moving from the garden side of Embra’s chambers into the rooms overlooking the river. When his hip met the dark-polished table where her father had always met with her, the Spellmaster smiled for just an instant, and the Lady of Jewels wondered just what doom he was seeing for them.