The Halls of Stormweather s-1

by Philip Athans

  The two brothers tumbled together in its wake, rolling over and gasping in ragged unison at the fresh pains of being dragged over splintered furniture.

  They fetched up against a toppled, now armless statue of a winged woman who'd always displayed more artful drapery than modesty, and found themselves facing the missing wall again-and their father.

  Aldimar Uskevren was straddling a rising, rolling knoll of stone like a rider urging a galloping horse forward in a race. Bent low over floor tiles that were flowing as if they were made of sap or syrup and not rigid stone, he was moving away from them, surging forward on a magical wave.

  He was heading for the huge opening where the solar windows had been, toward the courtyards below where the Talendar and Soargyl mages were standing. The stones moving with him were making horrible groaning, deep-voiced creaking sounds that almost overwhelmed the strange little voice coming from Aldimar.

  The head of House Uskevren was humming contentedly to himself.

  "Father?" Perivel called, "what're you doing?"

  "Dying, son," Aldimar said deliberately, as the flood of stone took him out of the room and up into the sky. "I'm busy dying. Please don't bother me now."

  The sons of the Uskevren found themselves clawing at pillars and the edges of rolling, broken rocks to keep from being carried out of the solar by the ongoing stream of stone. Aldimar was high above them now, the wave of stone blotting out the moonlight as it arched up and on.

  There were shouts from the grounds below, and the flashes and crackles of several spells. One of them sent a web of crawling, clawing lightning across the huge tongue of moving stone. His sons saw Aldimar reel and writhe as its blue fingers washed over him.

  "Father," Perivel cried, "why are you doing this?"

  The head of House Uskevren twisted to look back at his sons. "A man is but memories of deeds done, in the end," he bellowed. "Deeds measured by promises kept! Don't forget, both of you: Uskevren keep their promises!"

  He gave them a wave that became a brutal, chopping signal to the magic he rode-and the wave of stone crashed down with sudden, terrible speed.

  The shattered solar rocked as that fist of the stones hit the ground. Perivel and Thamalon clawed and sprinted and stumbled forward in desperate haste.

  They were in time to see the terrible crash that transformed Marmaeron Talendar, head of the house of that name, and almost thirty armsmen and hired mages around him, into bloody pulp. They were in time to see their father's contorted body, reeling atop it all, consumed by the rushing, glowing energies of the magic he'd raised. They heard Aldimar's last, ringing cry, "Die, Soargyls! Die, Talendars! And know you full well at last: Uskevren keep their promises!"

  The words were a roar above the rising dust, a call made loud by magic after the lips that had uttered it were burned to nothingness, and gone. Aldimar Uskevren was no more.

  Perivel and Thamalon stared at the rubble-strewn courtyard through glimmering tears. Nothing moved in it now but the lazily curling dust-and one injured bird, who fluttered away from the cracked, crazily leaning fountain and flew drunkenly, in obvious distress, up into the ruined room where the guards had died, and out of view.

  "F-father," Thamalon whispered. "You shall be avenged. This I swear."

  "This we swear," Perivel echoed, in a voice like a gem-knife cutting glass. He raised his hand, and sketched a salute with the sword he held in it-not his own blade, lost again by Thamalon somewhere in all the tumbling, but the warsword that had hung in its case on the solar wall for as long as either Uskevren son could remember.

  Blue fire ran along the blade, gathered in a cloud of spitting sparks at its tip, and spat a bolt of lightning across the courtyard. Perivel and Thamalon exchanged astonished glances.

  "What other secrets does this house hold, I wonder?" the younger son breathed, watching the runes glowing along Perivel's sword.

  His brother gave him a dark look. "Don't worry," Perivel muttered. "We're unlikely to stay alive long enough to find out."

  He leveled the sword at the distant, leaning fountain, set his jaw, and watched the leaning stone topple slowly into complete collapse in the heart of leaping lightning.

  On the other side of Stormweather Towers, another young, angry man with a sword in his hand glared at the lightning and snarled, "I thought you said there was no one left alive back there."

  The panting, bleeding, bearded man crumpled against the gatepost shuddered as his shattered arm sent fresh agonies through him, bent his head for a moment to struggle against the pain, then sobbed as the man with the sword kicked him impatiently.

  "C-crave pardon, Lord Talendar," the injured man gasped, "but I spoke truth. There was none but me and heaped stone there when I flew away."

  "Then that must be Uskevren work," another of the men standing nearby growled, hefting his own sword in his hand. "So they do have a tame wizard."

  "Aldimar Uskevren always claimed he wanted nothing to do with magic," a third young noble protested, waving a jeweled hand axe.

  "Aldimar Uskevren made a lot of false claims, it seems," snapped Lord Rajeldus Talendar. He'd been head of his house for a bare handful of minutes, but already he was sounding more bitter, more serious. Ruling families did things to people, it seemed. They became far swifter at hurling orders about, for one thing. "We'd best be going. I'm not stumbling through a house roused against us, in the dark, if they've got mages awake and ready for us."

  "It'll be worse on the morrow," rumbled the Lord Loargon Soargyl. He, too, had been lord of his clan for mere minutes, but it seemed to have sobered him as well. "They'll be ready for us. Just a pair of servants with crossbows could make scouring the house a very unpleasant experience." His brother Blester laid his jeweled axe back against his own shoulder, and nodded mute agreement.

  "I've no intention of setting foot in this place," Rajeldus said grimly, staring up at the dark bulk of Stormweather Towers above them. "I intend to bring a ring of our own bowmen and stand well clear, behind it, as we burn it to the ground with all the Uskevren inside. We shoot down any who try to flee, and let the rest cook-at first light tomorrow."

  He smiled bleakly at his own brothers, Marklon and Ereldel, received their nods of support, then turned again to face the two surviving Soargyl. "Are you with me?" he asked. "Or do our ways part here?"

  Loargon Soargyl cast a longing glance at the mansion, seeming to realize that he'd never get an undisturbed chance to pillage the fabled wealth within. If the Soargyl were elsewhere, however, there'd be nothing to stop the Talendar from entering Stormweather in force, to plunder-and no argument he'd dare to raise later, to this cold-eyed young head of the Talendar, about their having done so.

  The hand of a wealthy Sembian never hesitates to help itself to unguarded valuables.

  "We'll be here," he grunted. "No fighting between us, and mind your bowmen know we're coming. First light in the morning it is. We burn Stormweather Towers and all the Uskevren together." He glanced again at the mansion. Smoke was still drifting from some of the holes in its shattered walls. "May the gods grant the Uskevren the fates they deserve."

  "No need for that," Marklon Talendar growled. "We'll send them to their fates while the gods watch-and make sure of it all. This house must fall, both loudly and dramatically, so that none miss the lesson and dare to challenge our rightful supremacy in Selgaunt again."

  Lord Soargyl gave him a long, dark, considering look, but made no reply.

  *****

  The hard, familiar smoothness of the black, star-adorned hilt was growing warm under Thamalon's fingers. Those fingers that itched to pluck it and throw the dagger hard and straight into a few of those furious remembered faces.

  Burn Stormweather and all the Uskevren together. They'd have succeeded, too, if it hadn't been for Roel's philandering. He'd evidently been seeing Aldimar's second wife, Teskra, for some time…

  Thamalon found himself shaking his head slightly in disbelief, as he always did when faced with this par
ticular little truth. Ilrilteska, a delicate little beauty from House Baerent, was a subtle, superb actress and a practiced deceiver, though Thamalon had never seen so much as a hint of malice in her ways. He and Perivel had both been awed by her, and he could still scarcely believe that she'd found Roel's boisterous brutishness attractive. But, oh, thank the gods that she had:

  *****

  "Thamalon-wake up, damn you!"

  The voice was female, and as frantic as it was angry. Out of an endless inferno of dying Aldimars and burning Stormweather Towers, in which he ran and ran through rooms of screaming, dying men, and could never find a way out, Thamalon came slowly, blinking, up to the light.

  It came from a candle held in the bare and trembling hand of the Lady Teskra Uskevren, wax dripping down over her dainty fingers to spot his own bared shoulder. Someone-Teskra, no doubt-had bandaged the worst of his hurts, and put him to bed in one of the guest rooms, but his sword and armor lay ready on serving tables beside him.

  Wordlessly Thamalon sat up and reached for the belt of the breeches he still wore, to have them off ere he donned his war harness.

  "There's no time for that,". Teskra snarled, eyes twin flames of fury. "They're here already, and I've used up all of my arrows. I haven't the strength to pull any of the war bows. Get your sword and come on! Perivel can't hold them off alone forever."

  Thamalon discovered his boots were still on his feet. He scooped up his sword and a belt of daggers, and ran for the door, Teskra at his elbow. A slender sword bounced at her hip, and there were daggers strapped to her forearms. A House Guard's buckler bounced on the low-cut front of her silk blouse, serving as a crude breastplate, and another buckler was belted crazily to her right side. Thamalon recalled grimly that neither guardsman was likely to be alive enough to ever need either buckler again.

  "How many?" he asked, letting his stepmother slip past him to lead the way.

  "Sixty or so, at the start," Teskra called back, as she shouldered through a hanging and the usually closed panel beyond, into one of the secret passages. She had to slow down and cup the candle to keep it from going out, as they descended its steep, damp stone steps. "It was dark, then, before dawn, and hard to see. I think we've taken down more than half, though, and all of their bowmen. They're standing in a ring all around us, trying to work up dragon-fire enough in their bellies to charge us. They wanted to burn us out from a long bow shot away, but they'll have to carry their little fires right up to us, now. Blester Soargyl tried a few fire arrows, but he can't use a bow. One of them came down almost in his own boot."

  They shared a bark of hollow laughter at that, an instant before Teskra burst out into a ravaged room that had once been a linen cellar. She led the way, vaulting heaps of rubble, through a breach in the walls to where Perivel was crouching behind the spell-scorched remnant of a wall, grimly putting arrows in distant men.

  He gave them a wild look, and snapped, " 'Ware either side, you two! They're creeping around along the walls where I can't see."

  Thamalon looked obediently to the right, saw nothing, then looked to the left. Teskra was already crouching, slender and beautiful, and leaning out on one knee to peer around a corner.

  Thamalon saw the blade flash down at her even before she screamed, and he got his own sword out in time to catch it and take it, ringing, into the wall scant inches from her hip. Teskra sprang up beneath the bound blades with her flickering candle still in her hand and thrust it into the face of the bearded swordsman.

  His beard caught light with a vicious crackle. The arms-man screamed hoarsely as he staggered back, waving his sword wildly to keep them at bay. Teskra flung herself around his ankles like a striking snake and heaved.

  One of her daggers flashed out as the man fell-ready to stab as she climbed along his body-but the man's head struck the wall with a wet, heavy sound. His lolling neck as he plunged the rest of the way to the flagstones told her there'd be no need to slide steel into this foe.

  Thamalon was already striding along the wall, anger rising in him and with it a hunger-a need-to strike out at one of these men who'd slain his father and despoiled his home. He got his wish soon enough, striking aside a spear to take its wielder by the throat, spin him around into another armsman who'd been following him, then thrust his blade in, low and through, to pin him there. He took the man's own sword as the pinioned armsmen screamed and thrashed together. Thamalon used the sword to slash open the throat of the second man, then hurriedly retreated to where Perivel and Teskra were fencing with men who'd come at them from the other direction. Lightning leaped away from the tip of Perivel's blade as Thamalon arrived, and where it cracked, men danced and died.

  "I've been trying to get Rajeldus or Loargon, but they keep well back and out of my view," Perivel gasped. "How fares it, brother?"

  "Not well," Thamalon told him truthfully. "There's lots of smoke back there-and yonder, too. They must have set fires against the walls to burn down the house while we fought them here."

  "I find myself unsurprised," Perivel told him grimly. "Recall you what father said about earning a stiff price for our deaths? Well, that's my work now. You're going to be the one to run-with Teskra-to carry on."

  "Run, and leave you to die alone?" Teskra asked, color high in her cheeks. She flung a stone into the face of a Talendar man-at-arms and followed it with her dagger under his chin. His blood drenched her before she could spin away, but she never wavered. She used her knife as a handle to drag his sagging body sideways into the path of the next attacker. "Whose idea was that?"

  "Lady, you do us honor," Perivel told her as he grunted and slung steel with all his might, fencing with a huge Soargyl warrior whose mustache and beak of a nose made him look like a walrus, "but we are bound to obey Father's last command to us. One of us is to bear you to safety, and stay alive this day to sire other Uskevren."

  "To die in other battles, in years to come," his stepmother replied bitterly. "While I watch, without my Aldimar."

  She spat in a warrior's face then drove her sword into the man, leaping high to put her shoulder against the wall and her boots into his chest. He reeled away with a raw cry of pain as her kick drove him off her blade. Teskra growled like any man, and bounded across the littered floor to drive her bloody sword into the neck of the man Perivel was fighting.

  The smoke was growing thick around them, and from somewhere above and behind the three struggling Uskevren a roar was growing. It was the hungry roar of flames, sweeping through the rooms of Stormweather Towers… the roar of a family being swept away.

  "You'd best be thinking about getting away," Perivel called to Thamalon, coughing as his cry took in some smoke. "I don't think they've got any mages or bowmen left here, but I can't see to shoot any more arrows."

  Thamalon turned his head to shout an answer of defiance. Though fighting frankly scared and sickened him, it was not right to leave yet and abandon Perivel to the blades of a score of men on all sides, seeking his blood.

  He never got that refusal out of his mouth. With a sudden boom, a beam gave way overhead and fell, trailing sparks. Blazing rubble cascaded down, forcing Teskra into a frantic leap for safety. Her knees took a startled Blester Soargyl in the throat, and he was still choking for breath when they hit the ground together. The Lady Uskevren's dagger busily rose and fell into his face and throat.

  Thamalon made his own desperate, lurching run away from the blistering heat, shouldering aside a man who didn't even see him in the smoke, to drive aside the blade of a Soargyl armsman before he could run Teskra through. As it was, his steel laid open her left side, leaving her sobbing and twisting in pain, Thamalon rained blows on the man's face until he fell, giving the youngest Uskevren room enough to stab the man.

  Stormweather Towers was blazing away in earnest, heat shimmering everywhere the smoke didn't cloak all vision. Cinders were whirling in the heat, and somewhere nearby a warrior, caught under a fallen beam, was screaming as he burned to death.

  "I should b
e thinking about getting away," Thamalon hissed aloud, as he floundered in smoking rubble, trying to fend off the blows of another Soargyl swordsman.

  There was a sudden roar of flame and doubled brightness behind him. The heat suddenly intensified. Thamalon choked and staggered helplessly sideways before he dared to step away from his foe and look whence the fire flared.

  Teskra was crawling toward him, gasping. Her long hair had come unbound, and was smoldering. Beyond her he saw a wall of flame, with two beams settling into it, like bright bars, as they burned through and sagged. Something dark was floating in midair in the heart of those flames.

  A large, plain metal goblet, black but seemingly otherwise untouched by the fire. Could it be… the Quaff of the Uskevren? His father had talked about it, had mentioned something about it catching fire if someone not of the family blood touched it.

  Thamalon set himself to meet a charge from the shouting Soargyl, intercepted both the man's sword and dagger with his own. Almost instantly he was forced to give ground, slipping and stumbling in the rubble underfoot as their bodies crashed together and the Soargyl's size and momentum drove Thamalon back.

  A sudden burning to outstrip the pains of his real blisters made the youngest Uskevren grunt in pain and arch his bare biceps away from the swordsman's blade that had sliced it. Grinning fiercely, the Soargyl bore down, forcing the steel closer to Thamalon again… and closer…

  Teskra rose behind the man like a vengeful shadow and flung herself into the air to reach high and hard with her dagger. She cut his throat.

  The Soargyl turned, gurgling, as his blood sprayed forth, and stared at her in disbelief as his eyes slowly went dark. He sank down and died. Teskra favored him with a mirthless smile, then looked up at Thamalon.

  He was stealing another glance at the dark, eerie, floating chalice. She followed his gaze, drew in breath in a whistle of amazement, and said, "I'd forgotten it did that. Aid-your father showed me once, when we'd had too much to drink." Grief washed across her face for a moment. She swallowed, tossing her head as her lips trembled, then snapped, "Enough! It's high time you obeyed the orders of your father and your brother and took yourself away from here."