The Dragon's Doom - Ed Greenwood [116]
All fools, and all doomed. Yet if one was a priest of the Serpent, life was good… and could only get better.
The spears came down to bar his way. "Your name, and business in Flowfoam?"
"Suldun Greatsarn, loyal warrior of the King, reporting back to His Majesty under royal command to do so," growled the grim, exhausted man in mud-smeared and battered armor.
"Whether you are or are not a king's warrior, I very much doubt if he'll see you if you try to enter the inner rooms of the palace dressed like that," the guardcaptain told him coldly.
Suldun lifted an eyebrow-and then took a pace away from the guards, back down the steps. Spears swung around to menace him, so he descended below the guards' reach, and took a horn from his belt.
Its call brought a dozen warriors racing down the steps, swords drawn. The shieldsar who led them glared at the guardcaptain. "What're you doing with a royal horn?" he snapped.
The grim officer waved at the bedraggled and helmless figure down the steps. "Nothing, for I have none. He sounded it."
The shieldsar's head swung around. "And who are you, brig-oh. My pardon, Greatsarn. Come up! Our orders are to take you straight to the King at any hour!"
Suldun bowed his head and mounted the steps past the guardcaptain's frozen face, gently pushing aside spearpoints to do so.
He was very weary, but the shieldsar's guards practically swept him up in their enthusiasm and haste, rushing him through guarded doors, along back passages, and through more guarded doors, until they arrived quite suddenly at an unmarked door guarded by warriors in glittering plate armor, and stopped.
The shieldsar and the officer commanding this doorguard bowed solemnly to each other, and the shieldsar and his men withdrew. The gleaming officer regarded Suldun expressionlessly for a moment, then opened the latch of the door and waved the bedraggled knight through.
The small, narrow room inside had no other doors and rather sparse furnishings, but was afire with the first rays of sunset spilling their gold through two tall, narrow windows onto a manyshields board on the table between King Castlecloaks and the bard Flaeros Delcamper.
As the door closed behind Greatsarn, both looked up, and Raulin smiled, hooked a third chair out from under the table with his boot, and said heartily, "Sit down, Suldun. Your look at the Vale appears to have been less than leisurely. Tell us!"
Greatsarn waved warningly at the bard and the five glittering-armored guards ranged around the walls of the room, but the king just grinned, propped his elbows among the miniature forest of carved, spired manyshields pieces, and commanded, "Speak freely."
Suldun sighed, and said, "Your Majesty, I know of no soft way to say this: Widespread violence, death, and unrest now rule the kingdom."
There was a sudden stillness in the room, but King Castlecloaks merely nodded and gestured for more, so Greatsarn unhappily added, "The Blood Plague seems everywhere, even in Sirlptar-and so are the Serpent-priests, preaching that they can end the plague if the people support them… support them, that is, in slaying you and all your nobles and courtiers. They gather armies, promising immunity from the Malady to all who fight under their banner, and prepare to march on Flowfoam."
"Again," Flaeros sighed. "And who've we left to defend it this time?"
A guard coughed. The bard and the king looked up at the sound, in time to see that guard give them a menacing smile-and drive the point of his sword through the throat of another guard.
That startled victim toppled to the floor, gurgling, and all of the other glittering-armored guards grew smiles, drew steel, and advanced on the three aghast men around the manyshields table.
The guard commander looked at his king over the glittering point of his drawn sword and said almost gently, "Not us, kingless-and soon to be lifeless-fools. We serve the Serpent."
The dawn mists were racing across the fields like hurrying ghosts when the Overdukes of Aglirta rode into Glarondar.
Folk gave them fearful or sidelong glances as