The Kingless Land - Ed Greenwood [54]
"We head for Sirlptar, to talk to some bards-while cloaked in whatever magical disguises you can spin for us, Lady-about where legend places the Dwaerindim. The quest, remember?"
"Sirlptar?" Hawkril asked sharply. "Just how far do these catacombs go?"
The healer plucked up the glowing stone from the floor and held it aloft like a lantern. "A long way," he said softly. "You'll see."
Their eyes met in silence. It was a long moment before three pairs of shoulders lifted in shrugs, and their owners moved to follow the healer.
Sarasper turned with the stone held aloft like a priest bearing a relic toward an altar, and led them through the door he'd opened, along a passage that turned twice and ended in a blank wall.
After he did something to the stones in a certain spot beside that wall, it slid aside with a deep rumbling, revealing a large, dark space beyond.
Hawkril regarded it with deep suspicion before he shouldered through the opening. There were no signs of handles or pull-rings to move the wall again, and he glanced back along their trail twice as he followed Sarasper into the echoing gloom of a large, grand chamber.
In the center of the room beyond the sliding wall stood a massive but much-hacked stone chair. It had a high, ornate back, and-through thick dust and cobwebs-fist-size gems gleamed along its arms.
"And so the Band of Four set forth," Craer murmured, "unheralded-and into darkness."
***
Hawkril cast a swift glance around-at stairs going up, a table in a far corner, a stout support pillar, a rotting row of tapestries, closed doors here and there, and at the monster-bereft ceiling-and then peered at the chair. "That looks like a throne," he said slowly.
"It is," Embra said simply, walking around it with her arms folded.
Craer looked at the set of her jaw and told Hawkril in low tones, "Behold the Throne of Silvertree-which served the family until Baron Brungelth Silvertree died sitting in it, hacked to raw meat until his blood ran out all over the floor."
"Craer," Embra said plaintively, "please. I can see ghosts here that are hidden from the rest of you."
"You can?" Hawkril asked hesitantly.
"Yes," she snapped, and stalked past him without another word.
A man was sitting in the chair, his arms bloody stumps, his lap filled with a blood-drenched, glistening mass of organs, one leg a twisted ruin of protruding bone and the other a stump that ended at one dripping ankle. Only his noble face was unmarked by the blades of the helmed, plate-armored men who surrounded him in a grim ring of ready steel, and it was drawn with pain. Amulets flashed and dwindled at his throat and on the circlet that he wore about his brows, and as they faded, so did the life they struggled to preserve.
"I have no magic left to strike you down," he said almost wearily, "and it won't be long, now. You can put your swords away. The rings that could have slain you went with my arms."
One of the men facing him moved restlessly, but the ring of warriors said nothing.
"Well?" Brungelth Silvertree asked faintly. "No taunts? No cries of 'Blackgult triumphs'?"
"We're not of Blackgult," the man who'd moved almost spat. "Father." He tore off his helm to reveal tangled black hair and eyes that were two dark coals of anger. Brungelth Silvertree tilted his head back and regarded that angry face with a faint air of puzzlement. "'Father'? An ambitious armaragor of mine, surely?" he asked. "Or-are you adventurers from outside the Vale, seeking to take a land of your own?"
Men were doffing helms all around the circle, now, their swords still in their hands. Their faces were different, but they all shared the same smoldering eyes.
"We're all your sons. Baron Silvertree," the first of his slayers snarled "Your bastards, that is, the ones whose mothers you didn't strangle or hunt down with your dogs, when you discovered they carried your seed. The ones who've lived all their lives in hiding up and down the Vale, or farther-with mothers who cowered in fear at the very sight of the badge of Silvertree."
"We're the ones you missed,"