The Kingless Land - Ed Greenwood [12]
There was no one there to push it, no monster thrusting up from beneath it to break the earth and send the stone rolling, but it was rolling, now, slowly and in eerie silence.
Rolling out of the flowerbed, to clack against another stone it had been attached to, not so long ago. A stone shaped like a giant human hand.
A stone that rose on its fingertips like a dark, dog-sized spider to creep tentatively through shadows to touch a shattered row of stones that had been its arm. Stones that shuddered and drew together, clacking like stones bowled by gamblers that strike each other in a long, rippling line.
A line that rippled, surged, and suddenly rose into the air, the hand atop the line questing into the moonlit sky like the head of an ungainly snake. The arm swayed upright atop a strange cairn of unbalanced stones and then swooped like a striking hawk to pounce on the stone that had first rolled out of the flowerbed. A brief fire of darting sparks laced from one stone to another, and suddenly stones everywhere in the moonlight and the shadows were shifting and stirring, rolling together with sepulchral gratings. A toppled head settled onto shoulders, a fallen sword rose, and a stone knight raised its head and stood up in the moonlight once more. Like a beast sniffling for scent it stood turning its head slightly this way and that. It was seeking something. Something it had failed to slay.
***
No lamps were lit, but the procurer could see enough to tell there was a table in front of him, in a long and narrow chamber whose walls all held curtained archways. Spindles of thread stood on shelves to his left; shears hung on a wallboard to his right. This must be a sewing and fitting room-and that shape across the room was no guard, but a dressmaker's wooden lady.
Well and good. A gentle, spicy aroma of mingled scents was already telling Craer he'd entered the chambers of a lady of high station. He perched on the sill, listening and looking and deducing, until he'd decided where best to proceed. First, secure and quiet footing-so-and then to draw the shutters closed behind him.
Craer crouched in the shadows beside the table for another silent eternity, listening, and then crept catlike toward one of the archways. Parting the curtain with his knife, he peered. Ah, he'd guessed right: beyond lay a robing room. And what a robing room!
Fanlights above the draperies allowed faint moonlight into the chamber he was looking into, and by its blue-white glow he could see a low, ornate wardrobe whose glossy top displayed a row of wooden heads-all of them sporting sparkling tiaras, dangling clusters of gleaming earrings, or finely graven metal masks. Hooks on the walls and harnesses hanging on chains from the ceiling all held gowns. Scores-nay, hundreds-of vivid and stylish garments, all of them glistening with the cold fire of gems!
Cascades of gems, clusters and swashes and swirls, thumb-size here and larger there, never lone stones or paltry trios… zelosters and blackamarls and even a starburst brooch as big as his hand, adorned with the rarest gems of all: the rainbow-hued, glistening teardrops known as scarmareenes. By the Lady's Horns, what riches! More than he'd ever dreamed Aglirta or even all Asmarand held! Why-but no, tarry gawking no longer. Take and flee, before any doom could awaken…
Craer took a handful of gowns, wrapped them around his arm, and turned with infinite care, careful not to make a sound that might bringBlue fire snapped out of the darkness without warning, the fire of a spell that smashed into him, searing and piercing, and drove him reeling across the room in a numbed, gasping dance of agony.
Wreathed in lightnings, the procurer staggered through a row of gowns and another curtained archway beyond, into a chamber Hawkril must be crouching outside. With his last sobbing strength Craer ran into the curtains and tore at them, bringing them down.
Hawkril rose out of his crouch, sword in hand, and gaped through the