Страница 32 из 111
8
Many an Unquiet Knight
The moon had not yet risen over Bowshun, so the night was very dark. Wherefore boots blundered, branches snapped, and men swore softly as they gathered by Marag Spring, halfway up the trail to Emdel's Glade. They were few, but all carried unsheaDied, ready weapons.
"Eregar?"
"Aye, Thu
"Braumdur," hissed a deeper voice. "With my best blade: 'Twill be a pleasure to let air into the i
"Aye," Eregar the hunter agreed, feeling his way to his favorite stump in the darkness. Then he stiffened and leaned into the night, muttering, "Who comes?"
"Narvul," came the fierce reply, "with my ax!"
"Good. That's all of us. Time to sword this snake of a priest 'fore he has time to wag his jaws o'ermuch, and turn our wives and lads into strangers, and set them to spying on us. I had a bellyful of that last time-and this 'Brother of the Serpent' is far less sly-tongued and handsome than the snakes hissing at us then. I'll be damned by the Three if I'll let Bowshun be torn apart again by the likes of him."
"So you shall, indeed," said a new voice, dark laughter in its cold tones. The four Bowshun men barely had time to gasp before ale-brown fire blossomed all around them.
It lit up Marag Spring, and showed the men of Bowshun each other frozen in gasping terror-literally frozen, only their eyes obeying their utmost straining efforts to move. Though the brown radiance was already fading, it held them like an iron-hard, unyielding claw-and its source was a cold-eyed man in robes now stepping carefully around trees until he could set foot on the trail. Other men walked with him, some in Serpent-robes and some in the motley armor of down-at-heel hireswords.
"Fangbrother," Scaled Master Arthroon said in satisfaction, "make ready." A robed priest snapped orders, and hireswords lumbered forward to each of the four mute captives, drew a knife, and looked to Arthroon. He nodded and said flatly, "Now."
Four throats were cut with savage ease, gurgling bodies slumped and toppled, and full darkness returned to the trail.
"Kick them into the stream," Arthroon said sharply. "Off the trail, every trace of them. The moon's rising, and I want us gone from sight before the good folk of Bowshun answer the Serpent's call."
Fangbrother Khavan conjured up a glowing, floating serpent's head that moved at his bidding. The Scaled Master gave it a sour look but said no word of rebuke, as the hireswords bent swiftly to work.
By the time they were done, moans of awe and cries of "Look!" were coming from down the trail. The serpent-head had been seen.
"Off the trail," Arthroon ordered quietly. "Stop as soon as you cross the spring." Obediently the Serpent-party melted into the trees.
Cold blue moonlight was growing steadily stronger, and by its light the silently watching Serpents saw folk of Bowshun hastening past the sprawled, unseen bodies of four of their own men, to reach Emdel's Glade and hear the Serpent's call.
Maelra came out of her scheming with a start. There! A throbbing, a twinge of awakened power!
Intruding magic was trying to enter the largest scrying-crystal she'd enspelled. It couldn't be Uncle Multhas, for her own covert use of his smallest crystal was at this very moment displaying a wavering image of him hurrying up the staircase where Uncle Dolmur hung all those splendid paintings, through veil after veil of Dolmur's strong wards.
She dared not continue that scrutiny for fear of being detected by whoever was sending this new magic. For a moment she raged-she must hear what Dolmur said-and then let her magic lapse, waiting for the contact she knew would come. Maelra emptied her mind, seeking calm by holding to a mental picture of glowing flames.
For all her effort at control, she fell into a brief imagining of herself as a
baleful rat crouched at a corner where two passage walls met while a guard came tramping past… and then the contact came.
The spy was probing all of the crystals, to give himself-yes, the mind-touch felt male-many vantage points rather than one, and better chances of hiding from angry Bowdragons.
It was Ingryl Ambelter, come to spy on the Bowdragon brothers. Triumphantly Maelra pounced on his probe, riding rather than challenging it. Images flooded into her, and she waited, letting the scenes flow over her, doing nothing as Ambelter made his own reaching to Multhas, found the hurrying black-robed wizard, and witnessed the entry of the Roaring-Bearded Storm into Dolmur's i
Then she firmly withdrew her awareness, returning to herself sweating and eager. The spell lay ready, written out for this moment, and she was pleased to see that her hand trembled but little as she reached for it.
It took a moment to dare to whisper the first words of the incantation- and then the spell was unfolding, and there was no time to look back, and this was all so easy…
Alone in a plain and disused cellar of Maransur House in Arlund, Maelra Bowdragon finished her spell with a flourish, and began to magically trace the Spellmaster of Aglirta back to his lair.
"Lady look down, Hawk," Embra murmured, putting her hands over both of her breasts to keep them from getting torn by passing hilts or buckles, "not your amor!"
" 'Twould be wiser," Hawkril growled, settling heavily back down beside her in the great bed. Though she couldn't see him properly in the darkness, made all the deeper by the bed draperies, she could hear and feel that he was in his feast clothes, now adorned with the crisscrossing belts and baldrics of all of his blades scabbarded to him, and his great boots were still on his feet. "They'll have handbows when they come for us, if my guess is right."
The Lady Silvertree sighed, patted her hip as she thought about how easily a dart or arrow would pierce the leather breeches covering them or the still-unbuttoned jack she wore above it, and murmured, "And plenty of time to fire them, while I'm still buckling and hoisting up plates and tightening them around you…"
"Lass, lass, you make it sound as if I wear more barding than three horses! I haven't spells or a Dwaer-Stone to keep me safe when traipsing around Stornbridge Castle barefoot, like you do!"
"I put my boots on as I was taking the nightgown off," Embra told him teasingly. "I thought you'd be looking."
The armaragor snorted. "I was." He half-drew his sword experimentally and added, "But for secret doors popping open, and panels sliding to show me ready bows, and such, not at your feet-or a pair of boots slung fetchingly around your neck, either. You look marvelous in leather, mistake me not, but your own bare hide's far more to my liking."
Embra smiled. Ah, but 'twas nice to be wanted. By the strongest and yet most gentle man in all the Vale, too. "I wonder how long it'll take the seneschal to find my guards entranced, and charge in to hack apart the fell sorceress."
Hawkril chuckled. "Well, we're certain to hear it when he does. You left the usual blast-trap spell as your welcome?"
"I did," Embra said a little grimly. "How dare they give us rooms apart? And treat us like prisoners? After do
" 'Enemy,' probably," Hawkril grunted. "And after all, they'd be right about that, wouldn't they?"