The Vacant Throne - Ed Greenwood [23]
The sphere he had not expected. It could only be some magic or other, and could not bode well, but Berias Loushoond kept his face serene and his tongue still as his mysterious visitor moved fingers beneath the concealing sleeve in an intricate pattern, seemed to listen intently for a moment, and then said, "We are alone. This is well. I had no doubt of your honor, Lord Baron, but I had feared your idiot of a tersept would spy on us."
Loushoond smiled thinly. "So he would have done, had I not sent him to the far end of the barony with hints of a brigand raid."
His visitor nodded in satisfaction and took a swift step closer, to stand well in the light of the lantern. Then it threw its head back, the cowl fell away-and the baron found himself staring into a darkly beautiful female face. No scales, and certainly not a man.
"You're not-" he said sharply, hand darting to a bellpull and grabbing for his sword.
The woman did not move, even when the tip of his blade was gleaming near her breast. The alarm-gong did not sound; he pulled again on its cord, and found himself holding a severed length of tasseled rope. His visitor smiled, but made no move.
The baron's eyes narrowed. "Who are you?"
"The one you expected is-elsewhere. I, too, serve the Serpent," she said, her voice now lighter than before. A slender hand slowly drew open the robe, to reveal bare flesh beneath. Unhurriedly she showed him herself, from throat to ankle. "Look well, and see: I bring no weapon here against you this night but the truth. There'll be no need for guards and wizards and alarm-gongs."
The baron swallowed, his throat suddenly dry. Dark, glistening eyes melted into his with an unspoken promise, and shapely limbs caught the lantern-light as his visitor glided a few paces back, to lean against his decanter cabinet in a pose that swept the robe behind her to display all… and smiled.
"For now," she purred, "I ask you only to watch."
Almost lazily she tossed the glass sphere up into the air-where with a flash of silent spellfury it became a shimmering mirror. The fires within it became shaped-the shapes of people, as if seen through a window. Loushoond bent forward in his seat, peering.
He was looking into a dark-paneled chamber very much like his own, at two figures he knew. One was an old rival, the Baron Eldagh Ornentar, and the other was the man he'd expected to meet here this night…
"Unfold to me, then, your concerns," the hooded figure commanded softly.
Baron Ornentar's fabled face of stone had cracked hours ago; the many-ringed hand he waved at his hovering saying-sphere trembled visibly. "All of my mages are lost!" His shout rang back off the ceiling and the polished shields on the walls. "Ornentar now stands unprotected against the armies of Silvertree and all the other roused, whelmed baronies!"
"Sssoftly," the Priest of the Serpent hissed. "I, too, have been watching the battle of Indraevyn and elsewhere, besides. Ssso impressively have the ranks of mages in the Vale been thinned these last few days that you need not worry overmuch. More ssserious is a gathering of minor wizards from many baronies, in Sirlptar. They meet to agree on what to do about the peril of Silvertree's runaway mages."
The baron sat frozen in his high seat. It was a long and uncomfortable time before he whispered, "We weren't invited. Ornentar wasn't even told of this."
The cowled priest nodded his head. "Even ssso," he granted, his voice calm and flat.
"All of the baronies risen together against me," Baron Ornentar whispered. "We are doomed."
The priest shrugged. "Not if aid is forthcoming."
"Aid?" The baron gaped at him. "From where?"
The Priest of the Serpent spread one hand in a slow gesture.
The baron stared at him. "You would? Yes, yes," he said, voice rising almost to a babble of relief-and