The Vacant Throne - Ed Greenwood [72]
The man called Velvetfoot-his grinning mask long since discarded, and his face acquiring its own thoughtful frown-looked and strolled until he found the royal bedchambers at last. Unguarded, unless one counted a young girl setting out bowls of flowers and retrieving the fallen petals of their predecessors. Unbelievable!
There was even a guardless passage that ran from a reception hall adjoining a main stair to a closet in the royal bedroom!
Shaking his head in disbelief, Velvetfoot crossed that room, stepped around a large potted talathtria, and set his fingertips against a panel of polished marble that was of a lighter hue than the surrounding stone. Now, if I was stupid enough to trumpet to all that I'd constructed a secret passage, I'd mark the door thus…
His lightly tracing fingers found the catch, and the panel sank inwards without a sound. Hmm; in recent use, at least.
This way should run on to just above and behind the throne room-and doubtless, thereat, to a private royal stair. Obviously the Barons Silvertree, whose house this had been, feared no one, and cared not to defend themselves overmuch, or conceal their vulnerabilities. Unless, of course, the tales he'd heard of a "Living Castle" that watched intruders and struck at them on its own were true.
Now, that was a thought to send ice down one's spine…
Velvetfoot stood for a moment, listening to utter silence, and then went on. He was not surprised to find what was underfoot just inside the passage-but the muted thunder of hurrying strides in the dark way beyond did make him draw back into the reception hall, leaving the panel open, and hasten to acquire the habits of a patient statue behind the nearest hanging.
Gods smile, but the hanging even had eyeslits cut into it by some spying predecessor! Velvetfoot watched through them as King Snowsar came to a sudden halt at the mouth of the passage, sword in hand, and stared down at the body sprawled in its own blood there.
The light from the reception room showed both king and lurker who the dead man was: the steward Snowsar had sent to spy on the Serpent-loving courtier.
As Kelgrael Snowsar lifted the man's wide-eyed and staring face in his hands, a bat left its perch high on another hanging and flitted away.
Velvetfoot watched it go with his heart pounding. Bats just didn't flap leisurely around at midday. This was… wrong.
A moment later, he almost gasped aloud. The surface of a wall-buttress near the king had swirled and spun in the silent grip of magic, to reveal two eyes in the depths of the stone that regarded the king with cold, dark, and unfriendly amusement. The face in which they were set could be seen for just a moment, and Velvetfoot felt cold fear worm its way through him for the second time in a handful of breaths. Hadn't the Spellmaster of Silvertree died?
Evidently not. The slayer was still quaking behind the hangings, knowing that the mage in the pillar, legendary in the Vale for cruelty, could quite well know that he was there, when a panel farther down the wall slid silently open-and another face peered out, this one belonging to a bearded man with bright green eyes, who wore stained travel-leathers… and whose features melted, like the wax of a collapsing candle, as Velvetfoot gaped at him.
King Snowsar noticed none of these. He was staring down at the crumbling ruin of his drawn sword as it dropped, shed flakes that vanished ere they hit the floor, and then sighed into dust all at once.
Where the dust struck the floor tiles, smokes arose, trailing away down the dark passage the king had used. Kelgrael Snowsar hefted the useless hilt in his hand, watched the last wisps of smoke stream away as if in a hurry to be out of the palace and away from Flowfoam, and murmured, "It's failing so fast-and for such trifles! This can't go on, or Aglirta is as doomed as if no one stood against the Serpent!"
14
Debate, Decisions, and Death
It was cold and