Falconfar 01-Dark Lord

by Ed Greenwood

  So had tarrying there a breath too long, after royal dismissal. Wherefore Galathgard's great halls were now deserted. Not to mention cold, dark, and echoing. They stank of mold and animal leavings. Two gigantic open archways beyond where Baron Nyghtshield stood now was the throne hall, the largest and grandest chamber in all Galath, and if there had been a single lamp lit in it, or fires in its hearths, he would have been able to see and feel it long since.

  He strode toward the lantern, and the circle of faces around it. Great lords of the realm, all.

  "Huh," he said aloud, as he approached them. "It feels more like we're visiting a tomb than the Court of Galath. Where are all the courtiers? The servants? The bustle, the waiting feast, the errand-riders hastening in and out?"

  He knew the answers, of course. They all knew the answers.

  The courtiers were all dead, or long since fled. Hungry beasts prowled the halls, Dark Helms dwelt in armed camps in the outlying wings and towers, and the king walked alone.

  Mad as a drool-wits.

  "Speak not so freely," Arduke Halath Lionhelm replied warningly, his handsome, hawk-eyed face stern. "Galathgard is not so deserted as it seems in these few halls. You'll find fresh blood in many corners; the Helms were probably set to slaying or driving out the monsters, to empty the main rooms for our arrival."

  "Grand and grander," Nyghtshield muttered, finding himself suddenly more than impatient with the ordering of Galath by the Mad King. He looked around the ring of noble faces with his surviving eye, and nodded politely to everyone, seeing mistrust and weariness to match his own in every gaze, and outright dislike in some.

  There were nine faces in all; while he'd been walking to Lionhelm's lantern from one direction, it seemed other lords had been arriving from other rooms. Lionhelm was the only arduke, but there were three marquels: Blackraven, who was humming to himself as usual, Duthcrown, and gleaming-monocled Mountblade; two klarls, Dunshar and Snowlance; and three barons, loud and fat Chainamund, yellow-eyed Murlstag, and stone-faced Pethmur.

  Dunshar, a cruel, burly man Nyghtshield had never liked, was glaring at him, as were the barons. Young but white-haired Duthcrown was looking sourly at everyone.

  The glimmer of a bobbing lantern shone into the gloom from a side-arch, out of the Hall of Lions. It was borne by a servant using a loft-pole, who strode toward them with measured pace, intoning like a doorwarden, "Behold! Velduke Aumon Bloodhunt, Velduke Melander Brorsavar, and Arduke Tethgar Teltusk are come among you."

  "Behold, indeed," Duthcrown grunted. "We all stagger under the weight of titles, I daresay."

  "Yet let us cling to this small measure of courtliness," Velduke Bloodhunt snapped, eyes blue and sharp, but his old face gone as gray from the pain the long ride had brought him as the hue of his thinning hair. "It is so very nearly the last vestige left to us." He nodded across the ring of lords in the brighter lighting, and murmured politely, "Lionhelm. Snowlance."

  "My lord," the hawk-eyed arduke replied with a nod, and lifted a hand to indicate another archway. "More of us arrive, I think."

  Nyghtshield turned to look where Lionhelm was pointing, and saw two tall, muscular men striding out of the darkness. They looked like warriors, and increasingly familiar as they approached, but the baron turned to the servant. "Well?"

  The man with the pole-lantern acquired an expression of uncomfortable uncertainty, and looked to Velduke Bloodhunt, who was evidently his master.

  "Introduce them," Bloodhunt said shortly.

  The servant cleared his throat and announced, "Arduke Laskrar Stormserpent and Arduke Yars Windtalon."

  "It seems likely this is all of us, leaving aside the border knights," the other velduke growled. "We should go in."

  The servant looked at his master again, who gestured silently in the direction of the throne hall. The servant straightened his shoulders, lifted his lantern, and started to pace in that direction, and the great lords of Galath drifted after him, their chatter dying away.

  Arduke Lionhelm, with his lantern, brought up the rear, and Nyghtshield peered through the darkened archways they passed and saw more than one pair of gleaming eyes staring back at him. Oh, yes, Galathgard still had its beasts. He was suddenly glad that his handful of knights was standing in the same stables as the far larger bodyguards of the vuldukes and ardukes.

  Until he remembered that the new royal decree that armed underlings remain out in the stables meant their swords were no deterrent to monsters prowling here, in the main chambers of state.

  In grim silence the lords of Galath paced through the vaulted halls, boots nigh-silent on the dusty marble, ignoring stains and bones and the rubble of crumbling adornments fallen from on high since their last visit.

  When they stepped into the vast throne hall, the pole-lantern's light showed them a little of its high, arched ceiling, and below that the two tiers of dark and deserted high galleries, their archways like so many empty eyesockets in rows of watching skulls. Below the galleries were the rows of little round, shell-like stone balconies stretching down both sides of the hall, supported on their impressive clusters of pillars.

  The servant strode to the stone stand that had held pole-lanterns and braziers since his grandsire's great-grandsire's day, and rajsed his pole to slide it down into one of the waiting sockets there.

  Whereupon the stone spoke, in a cold and crisp voice that so startled the servant that he nearly dropped the pole. "Depart this place right speedily, and take your light with you."

  Lantern swaying wildly, the servant cast one fearful glance at his master, and fled.

  The lords looked at Lionhelm, who took his usual place on the tiles. He stood facing the throne, swung open his lantern, and looked back at all of them, a silent look of command riding his handsome, hawk-eyed face. The other lords hurried to their preferred places; the moment they reached them, the arduke extinguished his lantern, plunging them all into near-darkness.

  "And who was that, who spoke to your man?" a lord's voice muttered. "Sounded like a woman, not the king. No voice I know, anyway."

  The darkness hid old Velduke Bloodhunt's shrug, but he'd barely finished making the gesture when a distant, startled shriek arose from the direction the lantern-bearer had taken—and ended, as abruptly as it had begun.

  "Doomblast!" Bloodhunt snapped, blue eyes blazing with anger. "I liked that lantern."

  Someone chuckled in the darkness, and Bloodhunt growled wordless anger in that direction.

  "Nice to know we're as well behaved as young lads at play," someone with a reedy voice observed.

  "Speak for yourself, Klarl Broryn Snowlance."

  Snowlance snorted. "Such candor, Mountblade. Pity you showed none of it last summer, when the king wanted to know who'd raided the Hammerfell granaries."

  "Baseless—"

  "Not at all," came the sour tones of Marquel Oedlam Duthcrown, who had plucked forth a comb from some hidden place about his grand garments. "You were seen by many, Ondurs. His Majesty knew the truth when he asked." He began tidying his prematurely white hair. "Enjoy your leash; it grows shorter."

  Marquel Mountblade busied himself with polishing his monocle, and did not reply.

  "SHALL I END it, master? The darkclaws hasn't eaten much more than the head of Bloodhunt's servant, yet; it's still hungry."

  "Not yet, Amalrys. Let them savage each other awhile longer. I'm enjoying this."

  PETHMUR MIGHT BE one of the poorest barons, a sheepfarming warrior whose face was customarily as hard, gray, and expressionless as stone, but when his temper rose, his normally closed mouth erupted.

  It was erupting now. "And who stole the Sunder jewels, before the king's agents could get to them? Baron Glusk Chainamund, that's who."

  Chainamund was a fat, florid man who seemed to swell up when he was angry, his large straw-yellow mustache quivering like the barbels of a monstrous catfish. He was swelling up now. "That's a lie! I was never near that tower!"

  Pethmur's stony face seemed al
most to crack as it creased into an unaccustomed sneer. "Ah, but 'tis amusing, isn't it, to stand in the presence of a belted baron of the realm so stupid that he condemns himself out of his own mouth? And just how did you know, Chainamund, the Sunder women kept their jewels in the tower? When their rooms were all in the new wing, which was terraces and low halls, with nary a tower in sight?"

  "You shut your mouth, Lothondos!" the fat baron bellowed, his face a deep crimson. "You lie like a dragon-shitting rug!"

  "Now, now, Chainamund!" a burly klarl interrupted sharply. "Baron Pethmur may indulge in falsehoods, or may not lie like a dragon-shitting rug—such a colorful phrase; I thank you for the entertainment!—but he does raise a telling point. The whereabouts of those jewels was a deep Sunder secret, not something all Galath knew; yet you were seen to ride right to the tower doors, and have your men force them, paying not the slightest attention to the inviting windows and easily opened doors of that new wing we'd all exclaimed over and strolled through, before the Sunders... fell out of favor."

  That overlarge, straw-yellow mustache curled. "Oh? How would you know, Dunshar?"

  "I know many things, Baron Chainamund; I make it my business to know things. For the good of Galath, of course. In this particular case, His Majesty had ordered two lords of the realm to watch over the seat of the Sunders, to guard against unauthorized visits. And, of course, to watch each other. One of those lords was myself, and the other was Baron Mrantos Murlstag. Murlstag?"

  "I confirm," Murlstag said heavily, his yellow eyes flat as he looked up at the fat baron. "I and Klarl Annusk Dunshar did watch over Sundertowers, and you, Chainamund, rode right up to the old tower and forced entrance, just as Dunshar says. We reported as much to His Majesty. Ask him if you believe us not."

  "Oh?" The red-faced baron threw wide his arms. "All that will prove is the lies you told him! And did he not remind us all, at our last conclave, that lying to the crown is treason? Was not Marquel Larren Blackraven, who stands not three paces from you now, charged by the king to enact justice on the knight Harlbrace, of Harl Keep, for that very crime? And did so, bearing the traitor's head back here? By the way, where is it, Blackraven?"

  The hook-nosed marquel broke off his quiet humming to smile easily. "It was yonder, on the spire atop yonder balcony, but something has eaten it," he said, pointing with one hand as he stroked his neat mustache with the other. "I see the jawbone on the floor there. A little gnawed, but still recognizable."

  "So something is dining well at court," a lord commented sarcastically. "Behold, all is not lost in Galath yet."

  "Well," broad-shouldered Velduke Brorsavar said gruffly, "that's a comfort. Of which I have all too few to cling to, in these my declining years. I—"

  "Hold!" one-eyed Baron Nyghtshield interrupted sharply, throwing up a warning hand. "Someone comes!"

  "More than one," Klarl Dunshar put in, striding to one of the lesser arches of the hall. The burly noble peered, and then turned back. "Yes, far more than one; more than a dozen."

  "The border knights," old Velduke Bloodhunt said dismissively. "I believe, my lords, that we can now cease to wag our tongues quite so freely. Hmm?"

  By way of reply, his fellow nobles all fell silent, so the border knights of Galath entered the throne hall in an uneasy stillness that was broken only by the faint scrapes of their own boots and the creaking of their best war-leathers.

  It didn't take them long to assume their places down the sides of the hall, cough, peer warily into the beast-and decay-smelling surrounding darkness behind them a time or two, shuffle their boots, and then settle into the deepening tension.

  Whereupon, with a sudden flash and roar, two bright columns of flame erupted up out of the smooth, bare marble tiles on either side of the archway through which the lords had entered the throne hall.

  Between them, framed by their sun-bright roarings, came striding a young and handsome man, grinning haughtily under the glint of a gold crown worn askew on his lank black hair. He was clad like a noble youth at ease, in a flowing open-fronted silk shirt with fluid sleeves, black breeches with scabbarded sword and matching dagger, and warriors' boots.

  "All bend the knee to His Majesty Devaer, King of Galath and Lord of Falcons!" commanded the same crisp, cold, and loud female voice that had earlier instructed the lantern-bearer.

  The lords and border knights of Galath stared and listened in startled silence for a moment, and then went to their knees in leather-whispering unison.

  AMALRYS TURNED, HER chains chiming. "Very impressive."

  Despite the biting dryness in her voice, Arlaghaun smiled at her carefully expressionless face—by the Falcon, those eyes of hers! As deep and bright ice-blue as ever—letting his real mirth show,

  "As I intended," he told her gently. "Silence, now. I must speak for this puppet of mine, for the next while."

  Brown eyes blazing, the gray-garbed wizard made a steeple of his hands, rested his chin on them, and sat motionless as the rising sparks of his magic rose around him.

  Amalrys hastened to assume one of the poses that would let her chains hang silent, and waited to be noticed again.

  "YOUR SWIFT AND attentive attendance upon us here at court warms our heart, loyal lords of Galath," King Devaer purred.

  Behind mask-like faces, more than one of those lords wondered how their hitherto blustering and profane monarch had managed to acquire such glibness in the short time since their last conclave. Oh, they'd all heard the talk about his mouth being directly controlled by the wizard Arlaghaun, greatest of the Dooms, but then, wild talk races across lands like the light of the rising sun, and about as often.

  Or was there a cabal of wizards, who for their own amusement took turns making His Majesty dance? That would explain the changing royal eloquence.

  "My lords, you will have heard of the unfortunate fate of Baron Ammurt, late of our loyal company," the king continued. "It is our belief that peace and order in fair Galath are best maintained by loyal lords in every castle, with no break in rule that may lead to lawlessness through brigandry, marauding wild beasts, the evil done by invaders who desire Galath to fall, and the treason of the disloyal. And make no mistake, my lords, we are watched by many who would prefer Galath to be swept away for their own rapacious gain. Wherefore I want Castle Ammurt rebuilt and a strong and loyal Baron Ammurt dwelling in it and dispensing our justice—and mercy—in the Ammurt lands, before the snows fly again."

  Devaer paused to stare briefly down the hall, at carefully impassive face after carefully impassive face.

  "As Gustras Ammurt's heirs perished with him, we find it necessary to create a new Baron Ammurt. The chance to reward faithful servants of Galath warms us even as the unfortunate passing of a family bright in history and brighter in service to the realm saddens us."

  The king paused, stepped forward, and threw up his right arm with a dramatic flourish. He held it aloft for a long moment, looking around the hall again, and then brought it down to point at one man.

  "Tauntyn Lhorrance, stand forth!"

  Childish though the pointing and bellowing was, most of the lords blinked at Devaer with new respect. They hadn't known he could thunder.

  The border knights ranged down the sides of the dark and lofty hall stirred, and from among them hesitantly stepped forward an obviously startled man, tall and pockmarked. "M-majesty?"

  "Here and stand before us, Lhorrance. You have sworn fealty to us as Sir Tauntyn Lhorrance, but we now require your personal loyalty to us as Baron Tauntyn Ammurt. Do you, before the titled lords of Galath, in the throne seat of Galath, swear to serve us with personal, absolute, and utter loyalty, foresaking all other ties and obligations?"

  "I... I do."

  "Accepted. Do you swear to serve us lifelong, and hazard your life without hesitation, at our command?"

  "I do." The pockmarked border knight had gone pale, as if realizing where this oath might well lead. Soon.

  "Do you swear to uphold our laws and decrees ab
solutely, showing neither variance nor exception?"

  "I do."

  "Do you swear to obey us in all things, without question or offering debate or disagreement?"

  "I do."

  "Then put out your hand."

  Slowly, struggling not to frown, Tauntyn Lhorrance extended his right hand. Devaer shook his head and pointed to the knight's left hand; Lhorrance hastily proffered it instead.

  The King of Galath produced a small vial out of one silken sleeve, drew his dagger, sliced a line along the fleshy part of the knight's palm, and filled the vial from the blood that welled forth.

  "Go forth from this place as Baron Tauntyn Ammurt!"

  "I... thank you, your majesty."

  "Go under our command, Ammurt. You are to take your handful of armsmen, scout the lands of Baron Tindror and Velduke Deldragon, and report back in all haste to us here, ere returning to the Lhorrance lands. There, you shall speedily train a knight to administer those lands for you, as you secure the Ammurt lands and make habitable Castle Ammurt. Go, and tarry not in the performance of any of these crucial duties!"

  Pockmarked face pale, the new Baron Ammurt turned and marched out of the throne hall, his hand dripping blood.

  Smiling crookedly, the King of Galath watched him go, and then raised his voice again.

  "Veldukes Aumon Bloodhunt and Melander Brorsavar; ardukes Halath Lionhelm, Laskrar Stormserpent, Tethgar Teltusk, and Yars Windtalon; marquels Larren Blackraven, Oedlam Duthcrown, and Ondurs Mountblade; klarls Annusk Dunshar and Broryn Snowlance; and barons Glusk Chainamund, Mrantos Murlstag, Margral Nyghtshield, and Lothondos Pethmur, attend us!"

  Without waiting for any reply, he ordered, "You are all to return to your castles and there, within three days and nights, muster all your knights and armsmen, and more, every last man and woman on your lands who can swing a sword or fire a bow. Marshal them all, and on the fourth day march them. As directly as you can, through each other's lands without brook, delay, or resistance, you are to march them to the lands of the traitor Deldragon, defeating all resistance and foraging on what you can seize there, and make war on Deldragon, besieging Bowrock and slaying every last dog, cat and servant within its walls, excepting two persons: an Aumrarr whose wings have been severed, Taeauna, and a man who walks always at her side. They are to be brought before us alive and unharmed; the man who harms either of them is himself a traitor to Galath, and his life is forfeit."