The Dragon's Doom

22

The Many Uses of Dwaerindim

By the Three," Craer said thankfully, stumbling sleepily into the waiting bath, "but I could get used to being an overduke!"

Tshamarra smiled up at him from the scented waters. "Servants have their uses." She offered him a goblet from a tray beside her, shielding it with a hand against his splashings. "Warm mulled Arl-wine?"

Craer made a face, and then changed his mind and snared the goblet. "I'd better accept. The way our lives have been unfolding this last while, safe food and drink is best snatched whenever offered by opportunity-or pretty sorceresses who aren't wearing any clothes." He paused, just before reaching the dregs. "This wine is safe, isn't it?"

Tshamarra shrugged. "I'm still alive." She sat up and rolled over, dripping-a delightful sight that Craer stopped to appreciate-and cast a rather sly look back over her shoulder at him. "Seeing as you're up and you've been watered, how about washing my back?"

"Was that an artful way of asking something else, Lady?" Craer asked the ceiling, as he set his goblet down carefully.

"Lord Delnbone, surely you've learned by now that when I want something of you I ask for it-directly. My back?"

With a sigh, Craer reached for the bowl of scented lave-oil and the scraper, and set to work.

Tshamarra almost purred. "There's an itch there, just a little high-ahhh, yes. That's it. Just keep-"

"Morning," Hawkril Anharu rumbled, from above. Something in his tone made them both jerk their heads up to stare at him.

"I need you now," the armaragor told Tshamarra. "Hurry!"

Wordlessly she extended her hand, bare as she was, for him to haul her up out of the bath. Craer swiped oil from her as she went and followed hastily in her wake, snatching the warmed robes the servants had left ready to dry himself with, and stamping his feet back into his boots as he came.

"Could Aglirta just possibly arrange to need rescuing next time after we're dressed?" he asked Hawkril, as they hurried to the door and out, scattering servants and guards. The armaragor had already caught up Craer's leathers and dagger-belts and Tshamarra's boots and breeches, but the procurer hastily snatched a few more items-including something to adorn his lady's upper half besides the sharp edge of her own tongue.

" 'Tisn't Aglirta," Hawkril growled, " 'tis Embra. Em and her father."

Craer winced. "This isn't going to be one of those bad jokes, is it?"

"I don't know what it's going to be," the armaragor snarled, as they hurried down passages together. "That's why I came for you."

Craer put a robe over his lady's shoulders, and they both rubbed themselves as dry as they could as they hastened around corners, past grim-looking guards, and through archways where more guards waited.

"This is not filling me with carefree joy," Craer observed, as the crowd of courtiers and palace armsmen following them grew. They passed a room where the smells of fresh food wafted forth, and Tshamarra threw her lord a look that at once bade him firmly to behave himself, and at the same time told him that she knew what he was feeling, and felt much the same.

Flaeros Delcamper and six guards stood in front of the closed doors of Blackgult's chamber. They stepped aside wordlessly as the three overdukes strode up-and Tshamarra swept off her wet robe and unconcernedly laid it in the bard's hands.

Flaeros barely had time to stare at her bared flesh, drop his jaw, and flush furiously ere Craer took off his robe, too-and cast it over the bard's head.

"Keep these closed behind us," Hawkril told the guards, as he shouldered his way through the doors. Craer and Tshamarra followed-and halted with identical anxious gasps.

Blackgult's chamber was burn-scarred, riven, and strewn with heaped, broken furniture. The dead chambermaid's blood had dried, but she still lay sprawled and skull-headed in the wreckage. The center of the room was filled with a humming, glowing, slowly turning cage of magic, greatly grown from what Embra had Stone-spun to imprison her crazed father the night before.

Blackgult hung awake at its heart of the force-cage, the Dwaer glowing like a sleepless star to his right, and Embra-disheveled and fast asleep, her hair dangling around her-hung in a lesser cage beside her Stone. Both Blackgult and his daughter were wrapped in nightrobes that looked to have been thrown over them rather than do

"She's been here all night," Hawkril growled, as Craer and Tshamarra hastily dressed. "Trying to heal him-'mind mend,' she called it. Yon cage has been growing all the while. At first it was thrusting out new bars at her bidding, but she fell asleep sometime in the night-after I did, for I didn't see slumber take her-and then I think he was commanding it, at least sometimes."

"You sat guard against the doors, sword in your lap, didn't you?" Tshamarra asked softly, tugging her last garment-a silk jerkin-into place.

"Of course, Lady. 'Twas needful."

There was a gentle chiming as the slowly, silently rolling cage changed again, some of its bars shifting to join other bars in brief flashes of magic, opening up some of the barriers around Blackgult and drawing him in closer… closer to the glowing Stone.

Craer's eyes narrowed. "Who's causing that?"

Hawkril shrugged. "She's asleep, and I dare not try to wake her-so I'd say 'tis the Griffon. It's been proceeding like this since I awakened and fetched you. He was right over yonder, up nigh the wall."

Tshamarra frowned. "So unless Embra's dream-guiding this, or the Stone itself is doing it, or someone unknown is influencing the Dwaer from afar, Blackgult is bringing himself somehow closer to the Stone."

She chewed on her lip for a moment, and then added reluctandy, "There's a spell that might…"

Hawkril shot her a glance. "Do it."

Craer held up a hand in a "stay all for a moment" gesture. "What befell the Griffon? Do we know?"

The armaragor shook his head. "Plague come again to bring rage upon him, or some doing of the Dwaer or the skull-sorceress… Em knows not. She did this to hold him until she could go into his wits and find out, so as to heal."

"I heard him tell Embra about being mind-blasted in a Dwaer-battle," Tshamarra said quietly. "His memory and reason have been coming and going, all this time since. Yet just yestereve I heard an old servant here say the Lord Blackgult now seemed like his old, old self, years younger and smiling again." She shrugged and waved at the chiming, shifting cage. "So if he's doing that, what do we do?"

Craer glanced at her and then called: "Blackgult! Lord Blackgult!" The caged man did not look up, or give any other indication that he'd heard. The procurer frowned, and then shouted: "Old Slyhips!"

Hawkril gave Craer a swift, sidelong look. That had been a name none of Blackgult's troops had dared to use to his face, for fear of being personally beaten before dismissal-a beating that usually involved jaw-breaking, or the removal of teeth, or both.

Again, the Golden Griffon seemed not to have heard.

Craer, Tshamarra, and Hawkril looked at each other grimly as the cage chimed and changed again. Blackgult was definitely being brought closer to the center… where the Dwaer was.

Hawkril gazed up at his longtime lord. The Golden Griffon, for years considered the most desirable, dashing-and dangerous-man in the kingdom. For much of that time Hawkril Anharu had been his most trusted armaragor.

And now, trust was… Hawk sighed, absently tapped the pommel of his sword for a breath or two as he thought hard, and then turned to Tshamarra. "You had a spell?"

The Lady Talasorn nodded. "A way to touch your lady's mind. 'Twill make sure she's unharmed, see if Blackgult or anyone has her in spell-thrall, and wake her if we deem awakening best. It should also tell us if she's still in control of this cage. Whatever we find, the touch of my magic should do her no harm."