The Kingless Land - Ed Greenwood [48]
It was a little harder finding an unguarded way upward, but once he realized that guards stood only on grand stairs, and the dark and narrow servants' flights were ignored, it was but the work of a few panting moments ere he found himself in a world of tapestries and soft murmurings and scented candles. He was, of course, hours too late.
"I'd not go in this night, were I you," a voice muttered warningly on the other side of a tapestry. "You just might find yourself with a sword through your guts or a table broken to kindling over your skull!"
"But the missive I carry is most urgent. The Baron of Tarlagar desires an answer by nightfall tomorrow! I-"
"Well," the first voice said heavily, "your most urgent baron's just going to have to wait. Saw you the corpse in the chair yonder?"
"Aye-what happened to him? Looks like a pig farmer, or some forest hermit, but dried up like the last barrel apples after a hard winter! And it looks like someone broke all his joints for him, throwing him around like a doll, too! Was it-magic?"
"It was, but not against him. That was the healer Waern."
"Qelder Waern? He saved my master's youngest-the Lady Athris-once, from the brownspots. Half Tarlagar sends word to him when folk fall ill!"
"Well, he won't be heeding words sent to him any more." The voice started moving away, and Sarasper scrambled along behind the tapestry to keep within hearing. "They brought him here this morn to bring the dead back to life."
"Healers can do that?"
"Well, you saw him; they can, and they can't. Our Lord Baron had more than a bit too much to drink last night and saw things. He got down the Strongbow's Ax from the wall and started hewing his way from one end of this top floor to the other."
"Serpent in the shadows! How many did he-?"
"Thirty-odd servants, though we're still finding more. You noticed how quiet it was, up here? Some of the servants who're supposed to be waiting behind the tapestries are waiting there right patiently, if you know what I mean. Oh, and he laid open both his sons and beheaded his wife, the Lady Rhildra."
"By the Three!"
"Aye. I had to pick up her head, down below-he threw it over the balcony rail, roaring that it was one less night serpent who'd come slithering up at him when he was asleep-and bring it back here. By dawn he was sitting weeping with his dead all around him, swearing to the Three that he was sorry and that the Serpent himself must have gotten into him and that he'd do anything to have them all back. I saw them; hacked like battlefield dog feed, they were, with flies buzzing all over them. When someone suggested the healer, he sent all the armsmen the castle can muster, with orders to sword anyone who got in their way or was around to see them take Waern… and they did."
"Horns! What happened?"
"The healer saw them, and started weeping worse than the baron. I think he knew it would make him a husk, but he was crying more for them and that he might fail. He seemed a gentle man."
Sarasper found something perilously close to a sob rising in his throat. He bit down hard on his knuckle, and trembled, straining to make no sound-and to hear every last word.
"Lord Dorn and Lord Bravyn, he brought back. I know they were dead; I helped lay them out, guts and splintered ribs and all-but he did it. They coughed a lot, and they stumble and tremble now and then, but… they're swaggering around with all their old bluster and sneering, right now. The healer was near a husk by then, but he tried with the Lady Rhildra. He did. I guess even the best healer in Aglirta can't put a head back on."
"He died trying?"
"Aye, and after he'd collapsed, damned if the two lord sons didn't snatch him and shout at him and shake him, with their father crying and beating his breast not an arm's reach away, and then start hurling him about, clubbing him against the walls