The Dragon's Doom - Ed Greenwood [151]
Tesmer sighed, sat back, and said, "Majesty, I'll be blunt. The Blood Plague has spread, an unknown sword has slain the Tersept of Bladelock in his bed, and the Baron of Adeln killed by the Serpents. Small armies commanded by the Baron of Glarond and the Tersept of Ironstone clashed with great loss of life and no clear victor. I've spoken with many of our eyes downvale, and it seems Serpent-priests are everywhere, bullying and making trouble-but none as yet seems eager to whelm a force of swords to directly attack Flowfoam."
"I was wondering when you'd get to the good news," Raulin said in dry tones. "My thanks, Tesmer. We'll take you to the healers and then the kitchens, and we can talk more of this much later: I'll send for you. Don't worry about falling asleep-if my messenger finds you snoring, we'll talk on the morrow."
"Thank you, Your Majesty," the warrior replied quietly, letting his shoulders slump for the first time. "A good bed will be a rare treat."
"As many a goodwife says, when her husband is beyond hearing," the Lady Talasorn murmured, causing Tesmer to look up in astonished amusement, and several guards to chuckle.
The king shook his head, arching his eyebrows. "You make wedded life sound so jolly, Lady Overduke."
"Good," the sorceress replied with a smile. "Even young kings should be fairly warned."
Embra chanced to look at her father. He gave her a savage grin, and she rolled her eyes in eloquent reply.
"Ah, yes," Tesmer muttered, so quietly that only the Lady of Jewels could hear. "I'm home all right. Back among the halfwit jesters, hey, hey."
She found that very funny, but managed not to sputter too loudly in her mirth. Overdukes are, after all, heroes of the realm.
"You'll be able to find your room again?" the steward asked anxiously.
Tesmer smiled his thanks. "I've done guard duty over these chambers before, as it happens," he said quietly, "and the kitchens, too. I'll be all right."
The steward bowed and hurried away, glad not to have given offense and in some haste to pay court to the far prettier Ragalan chambermaids who'd arrived this day. The trusted king's warrior watched him go, and when he was out of sight, turned to the stairs that led to the kitchens.
For someone who'd once guarded both the kitchens and the apartments he'd just come from, Tesmer's next actions were curious indeed. Passing a landing whose door opened into the bustle of the pantries, he continued down the stairs into darker depths. When he reached the deep darkness of the cellars, he did not pause to light a torch from the rack kept ready by the brazier, but strode away into the endless night, soft-footed and almost silent.
A pantry hatch promptly opened in the ceiling above. It let two things down into the darkness: a sack-seeking hook that was destined to find nothing because it was reaching down the wrong hatch, and a brief shaft of light.
That radiance happened to fall straight upon the warrior. He glanced up, but no one was looking down. The wielder of the fetch-hook had turned to listen to someone loudly and profanely informing him of his error.
Which was a good thing, because the familiar features of Tesmer had twisted on one side into quite a different face, with a longer nose, a sharper jaw, and lighter hair. The change was swift, and had already spread to the other side of the warrior's face when the closing hatch took the light with it again-and the changed man strolled deeper into Flowfoam's nigh-deserted cellars.
Perhaps, as King Castlecloaks had once remarked, the palace cellars were never quite deserted enough.
20
Dreams Bright and Dark
T he baron took another cautious step closer to the snoring woman, and the air flickered warningly again. Flickered, and then-another step-flared into a wall of raging flames. Phelinndar stepped back hastily from that crackling heat and studied the blistered edge of the hand he'd thrown up in front of his face.
The pain, as he flexed his fingers, told him the flames had been quite real. He stepped around a dusty, motionless Melted