The Halls of Stormweather s-1

by Philip Athans

  Prim, careful old Nelember had stepped into the chaos of Thamalon's heart and thoughts, and built a foundation of pride as carefully as any castle mason.

  Pride in a family that was not without its faults. Phaldinor's first son, Thoebellon, was tall and strikingly handsome. In the words of Nelember, "he looked more like a king than kings ever do." He was also a hunter, wencher, and drunkard who squandered vast treasuries of family coins on dragon hunting, a sport at which the flower of the Uskevren was (luckily for him) an utter failure.

  He hunted gentler prey with far more success, leaving a trail of outraged fathers and scandalized mothers clear across southern Sembia. That tactical error might well have hastened his doom.

  Someone who was never found or even named stabbed Thoebellon in a forest one night whilst he was on a stag hunt, and his young son Aldimar became head of House Uskevren.

  Aldimar was Thamalon's prim-lipped, disapproving father. His eyes were as hard and unyielding as two sword-points, and his tongue never spoke to wayward sons save with cold, biting contempt.

  Nelember had seen Thamalon's hard face as they talked of his father and had fetched forth the chalice from its locked cabinet at the end of the room.

  "Think of your father, and touch it," the old man had commanded.

  He'd never been allowed near the family heirloom that the servants called "the Burning Cup" before. More out of curiosity than anything else, Thamalon touched it____________________

  *****

  "Uncle," the young man stammered, blinking, "can you count coins at all?"

  The great bear of a man belched, waved one blunt-fingered, hairy hand vaguely and rumbled, "By the handful… why?"

  "Uncle Roel," Aldimar said in exasperation, "this chest was full a tenday ago! Brim-laden with Chassabra's housekeeping money; the servants' pay for a year. Where is it now?"

  Roel belched again, thunderously. "Gone," he admitted sadly.

  "Gone where?"

  The bearlike man lifted the goblet that was never far from his hand, pointed into its depths, then upended it toward Aldimar. Nothing ran out. It was empty.

  *****

  Thamalon found himself back in the high gallery, young again and drenched in cold sweat, blinking at the chalice on the table in front of him instead of the empty depths of Roel's unsteadily dangled cup.

  Nelember wordlessly handed him a tankard of something warm, wet, and steadying-pheasant broth-and offered the dry words, "Rich fathers always have such easy choices to make, hmm?"

  Thamalon stared up at his teacher, then back at the chalice. After a long, silent time, he mumbled, "Just tell me; I'll hear and heed. I'd not touch that again."

  The old tutor smiled grimly and said, "Think of it as truth, waiting at your elbow for whenever you disbelieve."

  Thamalon listened and learned. Aldimar had been a quiet, studious youth who let his boisterous, hard-riding uncles Roel and Tivamon run the affairs of the Uskevren-until Tivamon was killed in a tavern duel fighting half-a-dozen fellow drunkards, all of different families, and none of them "noble." The day after the crypt had been sealed on his casket, the hitherto-quiet Aldimar firmly set his Uncle Roel aside and assumed control of the family.

  Aldimar had by then grown into a man both young and inexperienced but lettered and shrewd enough to run a family. All he dreaded was Roel's revenge, but the old bear snarled once or thrice then took happily to spending all his waking hours (than just half of them or so) at wenching, drinking, and falling drunkenly out of saddles as he rode from one Uskevren hunting lodge to another.

  In the fullness of time, Aldimar took a wife, Balantra Toemalar, a stunningly beautiful, soft-spoken lass from a Saerlunan family of old and respected lineage but declining wealth. They had two sons, Perivel and Thamalon, before a third birthing killed her and what would have been a daughter. Thamalon remembered best her crooning songs, dark starshot eyes, and the long tumbling wildness of her hair.

  The elder son, Perivel, was his father's favorite. He was a handsome, strapping youth every bit the horseman his Great-uncle Roel was, but with wits as sharp as Aldimar's own. In his brother's shadow, Thamalon became the quiet, studious watcher… and, after Nelember's teaching on the heels of his wild days, the family coin-counter. He had a horror of empty chests.

  Under Aldimar, the Uskevren clan soared to new prosperity, outstripping even its former greatness. Aldimar took a second wife, and grew steadily more gaunt and short-tempered even as his influence made him the uncrowned ruler of Selgaunt. Perivel seriously contemplated conquering Battledale. This contentious realm northeast of Sembia proper was to be Perivel's own province, what he hoped would be the "breadbasket to the realm," as well as his own source of endless riches.

  Then it all came crashing down. A dying pirate revealed Aldimar's dark secret. Behind all the lawful land deals and loans to shopkeepers and cart-merchants, the Uskevren wealth was based on piracy. Through Aldimar and the family fleet, the Uskevren bought ships for pirates, fenced their stolen goods, and in return prospered from smuggling and from pirate gold.

  Like a pack of wolves swarming a falling stag, rival families rushed in for the kill. Old business foes like the Soargyl and Talendars and grasping new-coin climbers such as the families of Baerodreemer and Ithivisk hired wizards to uncover the truth. When Aldimar ignored their visits and failed to appear before the probiters they complained to, they met to plan war, hammered out an agreement, and forthwith attacked Stormweather Towers seeking to seize-or butcher-Aldimar.

  Being an Uskevren, of course, he defied them.

  *****

  With a flash and a roar that split the night, the gate guard and his hut cartwheeled up into the sky amid rolling blue flames.

  "What by all the bright gods-?" Perivel shouted, springing up from his game of chethlachance with a violent surge that scattered the pieces across the board and sent old Nelember ducking hastily away from the swing of the heir's scabbarded sword.

  "Unless I'm mistaken," Perivel's father said quietly, standing like a dark statue by the windows, "that will be our friends of House Soargyl and House Talendar, come to call on me, and in a mood to demonstrate that they've forgotten how to open gates."

  "Why, those beggars!" Perivel was almost speechless in fury, but not quite. A Sembian could give no higher insult than the word he'd chosen.

  "Father," Thamalon asked urgently, his book flung down and forgotten, "what shall we do?"

  Aldimar Uskevren shrugged, the weariness of the gesture leaving both his sons gaping at him in shock. "What else?" he replied. "Fight, and sell our lives dearly. If two of us fall, mind, the third must win free, to keep the Uskevren name alive for a day when revenge can be taken. I've no more the strength or the inclination for fleeing and dodging. Let it end for me here."

  He drew a wand from one sleeve and a long knife from the other and strode forward, never seeing the stunned looks his sons traded with each other behind his back.

  A moment ago the brothers had been idling away an evening waiting for their father to confide in them the details of his latest schemes. They waited for him to tell them just how startlingly steep the bribes he was going to have to pay to avoid being jailed over this piracy scandal would be. Now, it seemed, they were standing on their own battlements in a doomed siege, staring into their father's waiting grave… and perhaps their own.

  Shouts and crashes rang faintly up the stairs from below, and the sounds of frantically running feet suddenly smote the ears of the three, as the House Guard whelmed in haste. Their sounds seemed to remind Aldimar of something.

  "Nelember," the head of House Uskevren commanded curtly, without turning his head or slowing, "get the Lady Ilrilteska and her maids away to safety as swiftly as you can. To Storl Oak by morning, if possible, but out of the city forthwith, regardless of what befalls hereafter. Hear you?"

  The old tutor, as pale as the wax of the nearest candles, had to swallow twice before he managed to gasp, "Aye, Lord. Storl Oak it shall be."

/>   Whatever Aldimar said next was lost in the splintering crash of the forehall ceiling coming down amid the shrieks of pantry maids below. Lightning flashed up the stairs, spitting sparks, and stabbed at the three Uskevren.

  The Lord of Stormweather Towers sprang back and cast two swift, hawklike glances over his shoulders. His eyes flashed at what he saw and he snapped, "Stand away from me, both of you! What bright future will there be for House Uskevren if one bolt fells us all, eh?"

  Perivel was shaking his head in disbelief as Aldimar's sons traded glances again and obediently drifted apart. Thamalon simply stared, open-mouthed and mute, at the horror so swiftly overwhelming his world.

  There were heads bobbing amid the rolling clouds of dust below-helmed heads, advancing purposefully up the broad steps.

  "Aldimar Uskevren!" a man shouted. "Miscreant and pirate! Yield to us!"

  Aldimar flung up one hand in an imperious gesture commanding silence from his sons, and planted himself at the head of the stairs, thrusting his knife back in its sheath and shaking a second wand out of his sleeve.

  Like the one ready in his other hand, it was a weapon neither of his sons had ever seen before, or known their father could use.

  A lance of black magical fire leaped up the stairs. Where it struck, crackling, Nelember's head vanished from his shoulders. As the spasming body danced and reeled, another shout rolled up the stairs from below. It was a voice all three Uskevren knew.

  "Aldimar," Rildinel Soargyl roared, his voice as deep as the snorts of the bull he resembled, "you are a dead man! Too craven to yield or stand forth and fight. I swear, we'll pull this place down until we find you or its falling crushes you. Where by all the coins Waukeen has ever forgotten are you?"

  "Here, Rildinel," Aldimar called, in the mocking tones of a young lass teasing someone who searches for her. "Here."

  As his old friend Nelember crashed to the floor beside him, both of the wands in Aldimar's hands burst into life, flooding the stairs with a sheet of white flame.

  The men-at-arms rushing up the steps shrieked as they died, hurled off their feet and away by the power that seared them and melted their swords and armor alike. Below and behind the soldiers the three Uskevren saw a dark-robed figure reel and stagger amid the fading, darkening wandfire. An instant later, what was left of the forehall erupted upward through the solar, seeking the star-strewn sky. The explosion flung them all backward and smote their ears into ringing cacophony. It seemed that a mage had been unprepared for Aldimar's magic.

  A shaggy head, dark and wet with blood, bounced on the steps beside Perivel's boots long moments later. All three men knew its staring face. It seemed Rildinel Soargyl, too, had been taken quite by surprise.

  Well, nothing would ever surprise or disturb him again.

  "I cannot but fail to observe, my sons, that House Soargyl has a new head," Aldimar murmured wryly. "Let us see if we can give them yet another before morning. Brutish ambition should be aptly rewarded."

  As Perivel chuckled at this dark sally, his father's wands spat forth white fire again.

  Only a few groans followed the second flood of flames. From beyond the shattered solar came fresh blasts of fury, and the dainty Ladyspire Turret toppled slowly past their view, flames spewing from its tiny arched windows.

  Thamalon saw Aldimar's face change, and swallowed hastily. "I-I'm sure she was elsewhere, Father," he managed to say. "The-"

  Another explosion rocked the steps beneath their feet, an instant before the turret's landing made the floor heave, flinging them helplessly against the nearest walls. Dust puffed out of the joints between those massive stones as they staggered back and away from walls that were shuddering as if they were alive.

  Perivel drew his sword with a snarl. "They're destroying the Towers around us!"

  Aldimar nodded sadly as the thunderous grating of stone rose to a momentary scream, echoed around the three Uskevren as they found footing once more, then started to die away.

  "The Talendars pay their mages well," the patriarch observed, when speech could be heard again. "They must often be consumed with a frustrated hunger to use all that hired sorcery-and lo! Here we are, villains and traitors whose presence can not be tolerated in Selgaunt a moment longer." The smile that crossed his face then was not a pretty thing.

  "Find them, my sons," he commanded, "and slay me some mages. Let them rue the price of our passing."

  Perivel strode to the head of the great stair, but the head of House Uskevren put out one hand to his elbow and plucked him back. The son was startled by the strength of his sire's grip.

  "Not right down Where they're waiting for you," Aldimar snapped. "Of what use to me is a dead heir?"

  For a dark instant Perivel looked as if he was about to return his sire's snarl with interest, but that moment passed and he nodded slowly.

  "The passage to the vaults?" Perivel asked, with a fierce grin. "Out to the stables and around to take them from behind?"

  "Brother," Thamalon said urgently, pointing out one shattered window, "I think they're around by the stables already. The-"

  A blue flare of magical light curled almost lazily up from the spread, upraised hands of a shadowy figure in the courtyard below. The light rolled forward through the dusty chaos of the Ladyspire's fall, to the gaping wound in the mansion walls where the turret had fallen away.

  Through that opening eight armsmen of Aldimar's House Guard could be seen, swords and spears in their hands, cautiously probing every corner of the shattered chamber for intruders.

  "No," Aldimar growled. "Fools-you'll all be slain! Get back! Get…"

  His voice trailed away in futility. He had no spell to send his voice to them, and there was no way to save them. The deadly radiance was already rolling inexorably into the room. As the three Uskevren men watched grimly, the blue glow surged through the chamber like a storm-driven wave crashing through a flooded coastal forest. It swept away furniture and stiffly tumbling bodies, dashed lamps and mirrors into flying shards, and hurled statuettes to the floor.

  "Tymora's… angry… talons," Perivel gasped slowly, as they watched the ravening magic roll on through the mansion, devouring stone walls as if they were made of butter, "how can we fight that?"

  "Strike down its source," his father said crisply, and pointed one arm through the broken window. "Like this."

  A ring on his pointing hand pulsed into sudden life, and the wizard who'd created the blue fire began howling and staggering in agony, his head blazing like a torch. Aldimar's sons looked at their father in fresh amazement. What else had their have-nothing-to-do-with-such-nonsense-as-magic father happened to acquire in secret through the passing years?

  "Father," Thamalon asked quietly, "isn't this your last chance to let us know secrets like these battle magics?"

  Aldimar gave him a long look. "I expect to die before morning, but gods take me if I'll plan on it."

  "We can't have more than a handful of guardsmen left," Thamalon said urgently. "The three of us may stand alone!"

  His father shrugged. "What of it? While we stand, we'll fight-until there's but one of you left to flee. House Talendar has so many mages up its sleeves that I don't want one of you trying to get away a-clanking with magic… you'd be spell-traced and hunted down."

  He turned back to the window again-just as it erupted inward in a storm of daggerlike glass shards and reaching tongues of purple and white flame.

  Aldimar flung himself over onto his back and let the blast tumble him across the room, shouting, "Get down!"

  Perivel hesitated for only a moment before following Thamalon in a dive to the floor. He was bare inches from landing when something dazzling surged over the balcony like a huge wave crashing over a beach and racing across the land beyond. The room exploded in light.

  The floor rose to meet Perivel's chin, rattling his teeth as he fell, and air so hot that it blistered his cheek howled over him.

  When he could see again, the air was full of a sharp scor
ched smell, and little fires were dancing in many places along the walls and ceiling. Somewhere in front of him his father made a horrible wet groaning sound.

  "Father?" he called.

  "I am that," came the reply, the voice so strained that Perivel scarcely recognized it.

  Perivel found his feet, somehow, the room seeming to tilt and spin crazily around him, and tried to stride forward. It was like stumbling along the deck of a ship pitching in the worst swells of a storm. A red haze seemed to be creeping in around the edges of his vision, and behind him he could see Thamalon clawing his way feebly over the jagged remnants of what had been a gilded chair scant moments before. There was blood all over his brother's face.

  "Perivel," the master of Stormweather Towers said calmly from somewhere amid the dust-choked chaos ahead, "stay back." His father's voice was raw with pain and still threaded with a wet bubbling, but at least it sounded like Aldimar Uskevren again.

  "Father?" Perivel called, clambering on over shattered furniture, and fumbling vaguely for the sword that didn't seem to be in his hand any more.

  "Perivel, keep back."

  The snap of command in his father's voice brought Perivel to a halt, blinking and peering. He was in time to see another turret, torn apart by spells, begin its deafening, ground-shaking fall to the earth below. He watched it through a larger opening than before. The row of windows was all gone, and the garden wall that had held them was also missing.

  Perivel's thoughts ran on in dull confusion. At some time during his ruminations, as other spells rent the night outside, he fell back to the floor and rolled over to find Thamalon crawling up to him. The youngest Uskevren was blinking at his brother through a mask of blood. Clutched in one of his hands was Perivel's missing sword.

  "Brother," he gasped, "I-"

  Whatever he might have said next died, forever unspoken, as they heard their father murmur something that began too low to hear, and rose with terrible passion into words they could not understand. It was a surge of rising grief and fury that seemed to pull the floor under them into a matching rise and surge, like a wave racing toward shore.