The Kingless Land - Ed Greenwood [22]
A little grit eddied around the armaragor and the procurer, and then drifted past their ankles and was gone. The two men stared at the empty, trampled turf where the statues had been, and at the gap in the wall beyond, with moonlight dappling the river silver… and then back at their newfound companion.
Lady Embra Silvertree lifted an eyebrow as she met two dumbfounded gazes and announced crisply, "Now we must be swift indeed. Hence, sluggards!"
"So tell me, Spellmaster, what you think Silvertree's next move should be," Baron Faerod Silvertree bade, raising raven-dark brows. He looked like a sleek, handsome bird of prey as he set down his glass with almost silken delicacy, smiling at his most senior mage across the map graven in the table.
It was a familiar smile but not a nice one. The fat, softly sinister Ingryl Ambelter was deep in the last and most succulent mouthfuls of his spitted bustard's mushroom-and-butter sauce, but he knew better than to displease the rage-driven man who employed him. The master of Silvertree could storm hot or cold, but neither was comfortable to see, and both were humors better left slumberous-even by the mightiest wizard in three baronies.
So Ingryl wiped his chin and his pudgy, many-ringed fingers with every evidence of eagerness, plucked back the full sleeves of his robe, and leaned forward to look up and down the winding course of the Silverflow on the table map for a moment before speaking. His words would have to be both sure and precise to sway his employer; madmen chafe under the steerage of others.
"Lord Baron," he said, catching what he judged was just the right note of restrained excitement, "I think we've a rare chance…"
Across the room, a deep booming erupted, followed by the high, musical tinkling of falling glass.
Two heads snapped around to watch the shards of the spell telltale tinkle and scatter across the floor. The rightmost head was missing from the row of grinning glass gargoyles: something had breached the enchantments on the outer wall of Castle Silvertree.
A golden row of dragon heads was set into the baron's edge of the high table; he snatched and pulled two of them before the gonglike echoes of the riven telltale had faded, then reached for his glass with rather less delicacy than he'd set it down.
He'd scarce had time to drain it and sigh at the burning its contents left in his throat when two arched doors opened in the walls of the chamber. Armed guards issued from one, and two robed wizards hastened in the other. None of the arrivals was foolish enough to blurt out questions; the baron had rung for them and would issue his orders in his good time.
He did not disappoint their expectations or keep them waiting long-though they attended him with no particular eagerness. They'd all seen the scattered glass without making any show of looking at it and knew it betokened a night of hard work… and more than one of them still held sleep in his eyes.
"The Castle wall has been breached, probably at the far end of the Isle," the baron snapped. "Follow whoever has left us, and bring them back to me-without delay and as alive as possible."
Armaragors bowed their heads and hustled back out the door they'd entered by. Lord Silvertree raised his eyes to the three robed men still in the room and asked quietly, "And you're waiting for-?"
Nothing beyond those words, it seemed. In a swirling of sleeves, all three mages sped to their benches in respective corners of the room, to work magic.
It wasn't long before Ingryl Ambelter hissed, "There!" He spread his hands, leaving a glowing eyeball spinning and floating in the air before them. It darkened, rose, and burst into a mist that flowed up in iridescent chaos along the ceiling, a crawling carpet of magic.
Its colors winked, spiraled, and then abruptly twisted into a sharp and lifelike image of three dripping figures clambering up the far bank of the River Coiling.
"My daughter," the Baron said softly. "How interesting."