Stormlight - Ed Greenwood [63]
The four guards nodded, looked at each other and went to the door to drop the bar behind him. Then they went slowly and carefully around the room. They checked under the bed and above its canopy, one searching while the others watched. They found nothing Casting a look at the silver-haired woman on the bed, they leaned on their swords and tried to think how they might walk out of Firefall Keep alive.
Not many scenarios came to mind.
* * * * *
Master, I failed.
Shayna Summerstar let her master feel her bitter disappointment as she put the dagger high up on the ledge above her wardrobe, where no prying eyes would find it.
NAY. YOU DID WELL. YOU STOOD AGAINST THE WARDS AND TESTED THEM-FUTILE, BUT FEARLESS. I LIKE THAT.
Shayna felt a glow of pleasure at the praise, but tried not to show him just how much she needed his approval.
I could have had her! She was asleep-I could have found some way past the wards, if there’d been time! But the guards came…
I SENT THEM.
You sent them?
I MADE THEM THINK THER’D HEARD SOMETHING ODD IN THE HARPER’S ROOM. THEY DID THE REST. THEN I SENT THE MISTS THAT HID YOU, AND LED YOU TO THE HIDDEN WAY OUT.
But why? I thought you wanted her dead!
OVERCOME, I SAID. STORM SILVERHAND MUST DIE ONLY BY MY HAND, AT A TIME WHEN I'M READY TO TAKE HER POWERS.
Why? Her mind-voice was small and miserable.
SO THAT I CAN BECOME A GOD he replied matter-of-factly.
On her way back to her bed, Shayna stopped in midstride and began to shiver uncontrollably.
*****
When the war hound trotted down the hall, paws clicking on the stones, one of the guards knelt and said, "What're you doing here, boy? You should be back
He reached out to scratch its head, but the blade of a drawn sword reached past his hand to hover in front of the dog's nose. "You heard him, Tith," his fellow guard said almost regretfully. Trust no one, he said… and why would a hound be wandering around up here, anyway? Begone, you, or-"
The dog growled and sprang back, away from his blade-but it left two tentacles behind, lashing out at the ankles of both guards.
They cursed, slashed vainly, and fell hard on their behinds. The dog that was not a dog swarmed in over them, taking their frantic thrusts through its shoulders as it stretched out two sets of impossibly long jaws and bit their faces off. The blood of three beings mingled together on the floor for an instant before fires rose from the bodies.
The dog reared up among the blazing bones and became manlike… a dog-headed man with two thin, hooked blades of bone where its hands should have been. It thrust them between the door, and sharply up, lifting the door bar. Then the blades of bone slowly lengthened, moving the bar away from the door so that it could be swung open.
A third hand grew from the belly of the thing that was not a man, and did just that, revealing the bed beyond. Standing on it, eyes red-rimmed and unshaven jowls set grimly, was the boldshield of Northtrees March, with a loaded crossbow in his hands. It snapped.
The quarrel thrummed across the room, plucked the dog-headed man off his feet, and drove him hard against the far wall of the passage.
"Come on," Ergluth Rowanmantle told it, dropping his bow and unsheathing his sword. "You want me? Come in and get me!"
But the eyes that met his were as dark and knowing as the old Summerstar matriarch's had been. The shapeshifting thing let his flesh melt and flow until the crossbow quarrel fell out. He favored Ergluth with a wide-fanged and mirthless smile, and vanished down the hallway.
The white-faced boldshield hissed a heartfelt curse. Somehow it knew he dared not leave the bed, and the protection of the magic shield he'd raised there. The shieldstone was a Rowanmantle family secret only his oldest, most loyal armsmen had known about, and both of them… had been on guard outside his door.
Ergluth