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Flaeros Delcamper bounded up the steps before any servant could ply him with questions of fires and slaughter and marauding monsters. His haste earned him a barrier of crossed spears at the first terrace, with an officer of the guard aiming a bowgun at him from behind them. "Hold hard! Your name and business?"
Flaeros frowned. "I am the bard Flaeros Delcamper, of Ragalar; here in Flowfoam at the personal invitation of my friend, the King."
"Your 'friend'?" a spear-wielding guard asked skeptically, but his older fellow guard had already lifted his spear and stepped back.
"He tells truth," the veteran told both the officer and his fellow spearman. "This is the man who faced down the nobles, and made them swear fealty to our new King. He practically ran this palace for a month or so, until things settled down."
The enlightened guards eyed Flaeros with new respect, and the officer clapped his hand to his shoulder in salute as the bard nodded and resumed his ascent to the palace. As he glanced up at Flowfoam, its ravages now entirely repaired or concealed, he was aware of cold and unfriendly scrutiny from several sides-but who was so regarding him, he could not see. He gave his unseen observers a smile and a shrug, and went on into the waiting bustle of the court.
The request to present himself to the king earned Flaeros a hard-eyed escort of suspicious guards, before and behind, and a thorough search of his person for weapons. Lighter by the weight of his dagger, his best quill-case, and the tiny trimming knife he used for cutting quills, Flaeros was taken through three guarded doors, so weighed down by the glares of guards that he found himself moving slowly.
Even when he reached Raulin-seated behind a small desk, head down and writing furiously, with piles of parchments on both sides of him-the blades of two bared swords separated them. "May fairer days come, Your Majesty," he said gently.
Raulin Castlecloaks looked up with a frown, trying to place the voice- and when he saw Flaeros, he smiled broadly, tossed down his pen, and strode around the desk to embrace his visitor, laughing in delight.
Even then, the guards kept their blades pointed at the bard's back. When he turned, hugging the king, they moved in haste to keep behind him-until Raulin shooed them away with sharp words and waving hands.
They took up positions about four strides distant, swords still drawn, as the king gleefully swept a pile of writs and proclamations onto the floor to free up a stool, and presented it to Flaeros with a flourish. Gri
"Wine, some of that Craulbec, and apples!" the king called, to a servant nervously hovering just beyond the ring of guards.
Flaeros raised an eyebrow. "Craulbec? Since when did you take a liking for cheese strong enough to outreek dead goat?"
"Since you left some behind in the larder when you went home. Three Above, but I'm glad to see you, Flaer! I… I've been going wizard-witted here, what with all"-Castlecloaks lowered his voice abruptly-"the troubles in these halls. Writs and treaties are bad enough as daily fare, without all this…"
"Yes," Flaeros murmured, leaning in close to the king despite the stiffening, advancing reaction of the guards. "Tell me: What troubles? What's been going on? Why all the menacing swords?"
"Snakes," Raulin murmured. "Slithering into my chambers at night.
Three guards have died from their venom, and more have been bitten. They must come by magic-and you know who that means-because it matters not where I sleep, and how carefully the walls are chinked and sealed. I've even ended up in bare chambers on rope-sling mattresses with nothing but blankets, and still they come. And folk here in Flowfoam are going mad! Without warning, time and again, a servant or courtier or guard who's been perfectly pleasant to me for months will draw a blade and start stabbing and hacking-at me, or whoever's nearest!"
As if the king's words had been a cue, an approaching platter of wine, cheese, and apples suddenly went flying, two terrified servants were flung aside, and a guard burst forward, waving his sword and howling.
Astonished, Flaeros stared as the man charged right at them, wild-eyed. Two guards stabbed him from either side, were dragged along, and then frantically wrestled with the roaring man, who staggered up to the desk, battering the heads of the men clinging to him with his sword, and thrust out at the king.
Flaeros swept up his stool and smashed the steel aside-and as Raulin reluctantly drew his own sword and the snarling man tried to claw his way along the desk toward it, Flaeros swung the stool again, as hard as he could, into the man's head.
There was a dull crack, and the guard crashed down face-first onto the heaps of proclamations, riding them bloodily to the floor and trailing the pair of grimly clinging fellow guards.
The bard and the king stared at each other and then down at the lifeless man at their feet. Then they lifted gazes to stare at each other again, helplessly.
"I wish the Four were back here with us," King Raulin whispered. "They'll know what to do."
13
Too Many Monsters
Tshamarra sighed as carrion-birds napped heavily away from something sprawled in the muddy trail ahead, and slowed her nervous mount. "I knew Glarond was a populous barony, but-gods-this many corpses? Is there anyone left?"
"Yes," Craer told her brightly, turning in his saddle. "The survivors!"
"And the worst of it all is," Embra murmured from beside the Lady Talasorn, "he thinks himself fu
"He is," Blackgult said from behind them both, "so long as we're speaking purely of looks. 'Tis his words and deeds that swiftly stray from amusing to a
Tshamarra nodded. "Truth, bluntly put. So can my Beloved-of-the-gods see us all safely through this Blood Plague, do you think?" She waved a small and slender hand at carrion-birds pecking busily at several motionless lumps in a field, and added quietly, "Or repopulate Glarond?"
Craer turned in his saddle, growing a broad grin, and without sparing a glance from his ceaseless peering at their surroundings, Hawkril growled, "Lady, encourage him not! D'you know what you said? 'Repopulate' hath but one means, remember?"
Tshamarra rolled her eyes. "Spare us your comments and gestures," she told her beaming man firmly, as he opened his mouth to say something clever. "Just-spare us."
"Shields up," Hawkril snapped. "Folk watching us, in the trees."
The two sorceresses hauled at the unaccustomed weight of the shields the armaragor had insisted on strapping to their saddlebags ere leaving Stornbridge, and looked at the trees ahead. The road plunged into their midst, and the two women exchanged wary glances, remembering arrows hissing… and thudding home…
Tshamarra caught sight of fearful eyes and cowering bodies. "By the Forefather, Hawk, they're just… frightened folk, staring at us!"
"Aye," Hawkril agreed, waving his drawn sword so that everyone could see it and standing tall in his saddle to peer farther into the treegloom ahead. "The problem with this plague is-"
Someone in the trees suddenly snarled and pounced on the man beside him. An unfortunate head was jerked back by a cruel tug on hair, a throat was cut, and in its wake that same someone howled and lashed out in all directions, steel flashing under the boughs amid wild screams and the crashings of fleeing folk.
"-this sudden falling into madness," the armaragor added grimly. "Prudence is swept away, threats and good sense mean nothing, and so 'tis wise to keep your shields up!"