The Vacant Throne - Ed Greenwood [108]
After a moment, breathing heavily, the Lord of Loushoond strode forward into the ruined keep, his hand on the hilt of his sword. The floor of the entry hall was heaped with fallen stone, and most of the back wall of the great chamber beyond was gone, daylight spilling into the place where trees grew up from the floor and collapsed balconies spilled statuary onto the far-snaking roots.
"Wizard?" the baron asked the empty, waiting darkness. "Wizard, I am come. Where wait you?"
The Wizard of Stars, so the bards sang, was the mightiest mage Aglirta had ever known. He'd ruled the land centuries ago, invading the minds of the boldest baron and most innocent child alike, often and tracelessly, so that all were his unwitting slaves, and served him in small things and large.
No one quite remembered when he'd vanished, and no one had seen his body or heard reliably of his death, so there were many who thought that he'd never died, and lurked somewhere still, keeping silent for his own reasons. "Until the Wizard walks" was still a saying heard in the upland Vale, and there were some who believed that the Reign of the Wizard was more glorious than that of any king, rightful or no… so when the baron received a speaking-sending one night from the Wizard of Stars, the Priests of the Serpent had grown excited, and ached to close their hands on this most potent of weapons to use against a Risen King. Perhaps he'd even prove powerful enough that they need not act openly, and could work through him.
Yes, let the meeting befall, and the wizard who sought to ensnare a baron to his servitude be himself ensnared, to the greater glory of the Serpent.…
And now it was as if a warm and scaly mist had been lifted from the baron's thoughts, and he stood alone and a little bewildered in this cleft nigh the mountains, blinking at a ruined keep that stood on another baron's land, and wondering just who would truly be awaiting him.
Abruptly, someone was-a ghostly figure fading into dark solidity on a nearby stone seat, reclining at its ease and looking at Baron Loushoond with a slight smile quirking the corners of its lips. Well, it looked human enough-and it looked, if a brief glimpse and his own long memory served him well enough, like the mightiest of the Dark Three wizards who'd served Baron Faerod Silvertree, Ingryl Ambelter…
"Greetings, Spellmaster," he said quietly, and was rewarded with a look of pleased surprise. "Are you the cause of my freedom?"
The sorcerer on the seat nodded his head. "I am-and also the means by which our converse here shall be shielded from Serpent-loving eyes and ears. Be warned that your continued survival lies in pretending to still be under the sway of the Serpent in the days ahead… and that the Scaly Ones will come to truly control you again if I don't place several deep spells in your mind."
"Deep-?"
A tendril of mage-light thrust forward like a needle from the seated wizard's forefinger to one of the baron's nostrils.
Loushoond stiffened, grabbed at his sword-hilt, stiffened again-and then sighed heavily and relaxed. His eyes were still flickering when a brighter radiance swam from the wizard's hands, and the baron stiffened again, his face acquiring a faint grimace of pain this time.
"Tell me, if you will," he said slowly, his eyes drifting back from distant places to meet those of the Spellmaster, "just in what way being ridden by your spells is less slavery than being under the lash of the Serpents."
Ingryl Ambelter shrugged. "Everyone is beholden to someone," he replied. "You, now, to me. Unlike the Snake-lovers, however, I have a distaste for making men into automatons jerking to my will-and I view such servants as clumsy things at best."
He spread his hands. "Serpent-priests like to sneer at the rest of us, for being fools-and in so doing, blind themselves to their own foolishness, which far outstrips ours. Their way is that of the bludgeon; mine the swift, sharp, and sure sword. They use magics to compel you; I will not. They command