The Kingless Land - Ed Greenwood [39]
Many eyes turned to look at the table where the scribe pointed. A pair of war gauntlets drawn off by one of the warriors was crawling restlessly around on their fingertips like aroused spiders. Their owner shrugged and said, "Whenever strong magic is at work, nearby. Here: the shielding spell, no doubt."
The scribe nodded vigorously. "Precisely. These items show us magic because spells are cast upon them, or stored within them, to issue forth. The time will come when their magic is gone, exhausted. All items of lasting enchantment-whose magic lasts more than our lifetimes, and which can be drawn on to power spell after spell, without being extinguished-are created by spells that involve sacrificing the life of an accomplished wizard. Most mages will do anything to acquire such an item. This Dwaer, like its fellows, is of this rare, lasting sort of item."
"You have just spoken," one hooded mage said softly, "secrets I will slay you for revealing, when I can. There is no place you can hide from our spells, master scribe."
Cowering and white-faced, Urdras sat down-and promptly slumped to the floor in a faint. It could be seen that he'd soiled himself.
"Your spells work swiftly," someone commented sardonically.
"Yet the words cannot be unspoken," a warrior countered the hooded mage, "and I see no crime in unfolding truths to better us all."
"In arming you," another mage snarled, "he has disarmed us!"
The baron brought the flat of his hand down on the table with a crack that brought silence. He rushed into it with the words, "No secret stands forever, and we speak of something more important than daily concerns of power. All our lives, gentles, are forfeit should this Stone fall into the wrong hands."
"I think we are all agreed that the hands of Faerod Silvertree are the wrong hands," another warrior said, "but I doubt me if any three of us here could agree for long on whose hands are the right ones, to wield such power. Would any of you trust me, while I held such a blade at your throat?"
Suddenly everyone was speaking, raising their voices over one another to be heard; the baron stood and bellowed, "Be still!" in a roar that shocked echoes back from the walls even through the tapestries.
In the head-turning silence that followed, he said, "This is the one point upon which we all know, I think, that our converse must needs fall apart into dissension. So let it be agreed, here and now, that we not wrangle over it. The time for such dispute must needs come if the Stone is ever held by any of us. Here, tonight, let us consider the threat, and benefits, of the Stone, so that no matter who comes to hold it, the most able men in Aglirta-we who are here tonight-know what it can be used for and won't act out of ignorance. Isn't 'not knowing' what we fear most?"
"As in, 'not knowing when the husband will return'?" someone commented, and after a moment of startled silence, there was a roar of shouted laughter, almost of relief that someone had found a jest. When it died away, a hush came over the room unbidden, born of the excitement-the peril-all who were present felt.
"We are all ambitious," the baron added, "but some of us are rightly fearful. Unhood, mages of Ornentar, and speak as plainly as this brave scribe dared to. My fear is that we've no time to spare for threatening each other or speaking cryptically."
"You speak truth as usual. Lord Baron," one of the mages replied. "The lure of this Dwaer is almost irresistible to any mage-but out of habit, many wizards are as fearful as they are ambitious." His hands drew back his hood, and most in the room recognized the calm countenance of Huldaerus, the Master of Bats, whose interests included using magic to give human warriors bat wings, taloned hands, and utter obedience to him. He was known up and down the River Coiling, and feared. A minstrel had once said at a Moot that "Aglirta's worst nightmare would be Huldaerus and Silvertree, working together-a terror for Silverflow Vale one year and all Darsar, the next." That minstrel had not been seen for some time.