The Vacant Throne - Ed Greenwood [125]
And then those large and dark eyes rolled up in the sweating Delcamper face, and Flaeros Delcamper fell, dragging his visitor over and down with him.
"My Lords!" Kaulistur cried frantically, as old men and guards with drawn swords closed in around him like vultures. "I did nothing to him! I meant no harm! I-"
"Ease yourself, youngling," a Delcamper uncle snapped. "We know that! 'Tis the pain of a fool trying to walk on unhealed bones that struck him down."
As they hustled Kaulistur Peldratha to where a gleaming forest of decanters awaited him, and the same uncle gruffly bid him slake his thirst after all that talk, he looked back over his shoulder past hard-eyed and vigilant guards.
Kaulistur saw the other Delcamper uncle, amid a welter of priests and attentive guards, lifting Flaeros back into bed with infinite care and gentleness.
As that uncle joined them at the decanters, taking a large one by the neck with a contemptuous disregard for proffered goblets, he told the world gruffly, "A true bard, not a wayward pose on the lad's part. The Delcampers have a songster at last."
22
When Magic Fades Away
A man walked the corridors of Flowfoam under that same bright sun, and was not happy. He strode unopposed and oft-saluted, for he was the man called in Aglirta "the Risen King."
He loved the Vale, every tree and sward and bend of the Silverflow of it, and yet held no love for what the men who led Aglirta had become. In the time of his long Slumber the land had fallen into a ruin of warring baronies, ruled by barons hard or decadent, but every last one of them deceitful.
Nor was that ruination banished. After restless miles of polished tiles and pillars and echoing vaulting ceilings and servants turning discreetly away, Kelgrael Snowsar leaned at last upon the sill of a high window built by one of the most cruel barons of all, looked out on the endless silver sparkling of the wide river, and sighed.
The realm now was very much as it had been at his Rising, his writ extending only as far as his own eye and hand-but the days ahead held far worse for Aglirta than the days since his Awakening. His fair Vale was going to be torn apart in war while he sat helpless to defend it.
That meant death not so much for barons and those rich enough to take ship away from Sirlptar, but for the farmers and carters and shopkeepers, the honest faces of the Vale be they merry or grumbling, who carried the realm on their backs. They were Aglirta, and all Kelgrael did-no matter what grand enchantments had been worked long ago to anoint him and confirm him and enable him to make magic swords and the like do more than they could in the hands of others-was for them, and was as nothing if it did not aid or defend or better them.
Kelgrael sighed, and told the passing breeze that he was heartily sick of barons and those so eager to become barons-or kings-that they'd slay their own mothers and climb over the cooling bodies to better reach the prize they sought.
Around him the court was well nigh deserted, for everyone knew what was coming. Some barons were even openly ordering war-banners in the shops of Sirlptar. Most of the fawning courtiers were fled out of Aglirta, or to defend their own holdings, or to join conspiracies in time to be seen as staunch allies on the day when certain victory came.
Kelgrael smiled grimly. It almost seemed a pity that such a triumph would only come to one cabal… and if he somehow lived to see it, 'twould be a matter of interest and dark amusement to see how long it took that victorious cabal to savage itself, until only one traitor to the realm was left standing to make himself its next king.
And behind them all, every mighty wizard or ambitious tersept or arrogant baron, staying silent just now but showing itself more and more, was the darker, slithering shadow of the Serpent.
A Serpent Rising because the king was Risen.
There came the smallest of sounds. Kelgrael Snowsar turned from the window with his lips set in a grim line,