The Vacant Throne - Ed Greenwood [8]
The look the mage gave his host was venomous, but his lips remained firmly closed.
Maerlin filled the silence with the jovial words, "You bring us to the traditional crazed-wits of importance in the Vale. Are men not wizards because they desire to wield great power in their own hands-and are such men not always defiant of others? I take care that my mage benefits from his service to Maerlin, just as I take shelter within the cloak of his spells. Others have not been so careful."
Glarond nodded. "Who is undeclared for baron or tersept just now?"
Maerlin smiled. "I doubt my agents see other things than yours do."
Glarond wordlessly gestured to him to continue despite that, and his visitor set to pacing again. "If you mean those truly of the Vale, and of proven power, leaving aside all the rainbow-cloaks who swagger the streets of Sirlptar working trickeries for fistfuls of coins… there's Tharlorn of the Thunders, and Bodemmon Sarr. Oh, yes-and Embra Silvertree."
Audeman Glarond lifted one elegant eyebrow. "What of this 'Band of Four'?"
"The king's ragtag blades and backstabbing spellhurlers," Maerlin sneered dismissively. "A handful of louts hired by Silvertree's dainty daughter, hoping to worm her way into the royal bed and thereby keep her head on her shoulders."
Glarond frowned. "I'm not so sure." He moved for the first time, striding slowly to his bookshelf and back. "Silvertree was the strongest of us all, in both blades and spells-and his daughter slew both him and his Spellmaster after the Four fought their way through all of Castle Silvertree's guards."
"Bah!" Maerlin replied. "She used magic to take herself past all those guards, and somehow caught them both unawares. Probably with wands or the like they'd stored in some room or other. What have she and her three bedmates done since then, eh?"
"Undertaken this oh-so-secret royal mission," Glarond replied, "that seems, if certain watchers are to be believed, to be bringing them to Glarond right now."
Baron Maerlin's eyebrows rose, and then descended as his eyes narrowed. "Is this why you contacted me?" he asked softly. "You fear four vagabond fools?"
"Rather," Glarond replied calmly, "I believe the secret your wizard has crafted will serve to destroy them just as readily as it should-and you hope it will-fell the Risen King."
"And just what secret would that be?" Maerlin asked, even more softly, as behind him Corloun lifted his hands into view, his eyes dark and steady as he glared at the Lord of Glarond. The hungry glows of roused magic were licking and flickering up and down the wizard's hands.
Awakened magic licked and flickered like shadowy flames up and down the Lady of Jewels' hands. Things had moved-with the slightest of dry scrapings, to be sure, but certainly moved-in the dark shadows and tumbled stone ahead.
"I don't like this," Hawkril muttered, in a deep, unhappy rumble. "Things are not as we left them. The roof is restored, and much that was fallen raised again; someone's used a lot of magic here…"
"Perhaps it restores itself," Sarasper said slowly, trying to peer past the six silent shafts of light, into the dimness beyond. "Still, I'd be happier if I really believed that."
Craer nodded grimly. "So," he agreed, moving ahead like a lithe and crouching shadow, his blackened throwing knife a dark fang ready in his hand, "would I."
In the darkness not far away, two skeletal hands made a last gesture. The dark red glows around them were overwhelmed by a sudden, boiling rush of dark fire, the cold black flames of a finished spell whirling away into nothingness.
It was the second spell to whirl away from those brown and bony fingers in swift succession.
A sudden, eerie roaring echoed around the riven library, shouting back from every wall and rubble-heap. The four intruders halted tensely, darting glances in all directions.
Dark red and black fires blazed balefully as Phalagh heard the