Lord Lyrose smiled and took a step forward, dropping one hand to the hilt of his sword. A gem in its pommel promptly took on the same glow as his ring. "You may try to play the traitor as you threaten," he added softly, "but I promise you death will be your reward for any such attempt."
A tension had built in the room as each of the little glows had waxed brighter; now, every dim corner of the little turret chamber crackled with power. Although it could be seen that there was nothing but dust under the high, uncurtained bed, this risen power seemed to gather there, pulsing or thrumming in a way that could not be heard, yet made all ears ache.
"Loyal son," Pelmard's mother sneered in quiet triumph, "there's one thing more. Your father's sword and this locket of mine can both fly after you, seek and find you no matter where or how you hide, and smite you down from afar. If ever you succumb to treachery, you are doomed."
"They blaze up prettily the more you wave them at me in clumsy threat," Pelmard replied, "yet forgive me if I believe not your claims. Malraun said noth-"
"Listen, brother," Mrythra said scornfully, "and learn. Learn to believe, or you'll soon be very dead. Your ring is the least of the Doom's tokens, because he trusted you least. We all bear two of Malraun's favors, thanks to your carelessness over stripping magics from the bodies of your dear brothers. Behold, before you in folly cling to further defiance, what my 'other' can do."
A glow kindled in her bodice, eerily lighting her face from below, and Pelmard abruptly became aware of a burning pain in his manhood, a searing so intense that he choked, reeled helplessly, and found himself panting and clutching at his cods as he staggered across the room, whimpering.
"Every gladsome inch the sullen son and heir," his mother murmured sarcastically.
"Scorching from a distance," his sister announced, her voice idle and carefree. "Have you ever worked with your ring, Pelmard, and truly mastered all it can do? This ring was Eldred's, and in but moments I learned how it can burn from afar. Stop whimpering long enough to heed me, and hear this: brother, I promise you far worse agony if you displease me in any way, from this moment on."
On his knees, drenched in sweat and lost in teeth-chattering pain and terror, Pelmard barely managed to gasp out, "Mercy! I hear and heed! Oh, by the Three Thorns, stop!"
"Am I hearing you promise your obedient loyalty?" his father asked gloatingly, from very close by.
Through welling tears Pelmard stared at his own left hand, splayed on the flagstones in front of his nose. It was bone-white, which surprised him not in the slightest.
"Y-yes," he managed to sob. "I'll lead your mad-foolish attack on Irontarl. And die heroically, along with loyal Lyrose knights you'll thereafter urgently need, but then no longer have. You're hurling us all to our deaths."
No one replied to that bitter opinion, but the air crackled above Pelmard, and he felt the roiling, vaguely sickening flows of restless magic. His father's wards were all active, no doubt to prevent a desperate heir erupting in knifings-or a tripping followed by frantic flight.
Pelmard shook his head, sweat spattering the smooth stone floor nigh his nose. He could barely stand; violence and sprinting out of his family's clutches were… far beyond possible.
Somehow he found his feet, the floor yawing alarmingly in front of him as he clutched at nothing… then bent low to keep from crashing face-first back to the floor.
"Come," his father said, the sharp note of impatience barely overriding an overall smugness. "If it's falling you crave just now, many steps await yonder to afford you more spectacular descents. I'll take you to join the knights I've chosen. You are to prepare this foray, so you can move in at dawn and take Irontarl before the sun's truly up-to say nothing of yawn-a-bed knights of Hammerhold. Show me a true Lyrose, son, and I might just manage to forget most of the words I've heard out of your mouth here this day. Might, I said."
Shaking, Pelmard mumbled out a few words more foul than anything he'd ever said before.
"I'm the stranger here," Rod said politely, as they came to another fork in a narrow forest trail, and took the smaller and more tangled way on, "but surely the Lyrose lands lie back behind us? Down the valley from Hammerhold, across the river?"
"They do," Syregorn said curtly. "Yet it is not Lord Hammerhand's will that all of us be slaughtered when the echoes of our boots on Hammerhold's cobbles have barely died away. We're making a wide loop through the forest, along older, nigh-forgotten back trails, to come at Lyraunt Castle from a less-than-expected direction."
Rod's stomach rumbled loudly. Again.
"Nor has it escaped my attention," the bald, scarred warcaptain snapped, "that you are more than a little hungry, Lord Archwizard. Hungry men have little patience, and do foolish things. This way will take us along the flank of a hill to a clearing-where we will eat, and wait for night to come. Now, silence. Idle talk carries far, and warns many."
Without another word the small band of leather-clad knights set off again along the trail, flitting like shadows through the tree-gloom. The way was barely more than a line through the thick thornbushes, and the lead knight stalked along it slowly, peering carefully and stopping from time to time. It dawned on Rod, with a little shiver, that the man was seeking snares and trip-lines and hidden pitfalls.
None were found, as the trail rose along the hillside, then forked again. Without hesitation the lead man turned left again, upslope. The slope became steeper, then rock-strewn, and then came out into a place where rising rocks burst out of the trees at last, and bright sunlight dazzled.
Syregorn tapped Rod's chest and pointed where he should go, across a drift of loose, tumbled stones that were sprouting tiny vines and creeping flowers. Rod followed one of the knights, and found himself in a little hollow amid the soaring rocks.
Shaded by a great toothlike slab that soared overhead, it was about the size of Rod's kitchen-minus the cupboards, fridge, and stove. Two leaping strides could have taken Rod from one end clear to the other, and halfway up the waiting stone wall there. Amid the lowest rocks underfoot, a spring gurgled faintly, rising up to run away again to unseen depths.
"Can we talk now?" he muttered, as Syregorn and his six knights settled into the rocky bowl around him, all facing each other.
"Yes. You have questions," the warcaptain said flatly, accepting a helm from one knight and various small cloth-wrapped bundles from others. Upending the helm to make it a bowl, he set to work mixing together various powders and green leaves from the bundles in it. "I'll give few answers, so ask sparingly."
"I-well, forgive my asking, but if darkness is cloak enough for a foray like this, why isn't every night full of knights creeping about Ironthorn, daggers drawn, and every morning after having its harvest of corpses?"
"Once, they were," Syregorn told the bowl, "and many Ironthar died. Then came the wizards and their nightmists, and cold iron seared and poisoned at a touch, wherever light or wardings did not reach."
He looked up with a glance both cold and sharp. "How is it that the Lord Archwizard knows not such things?"
"Nightmists," Rod replied in a voice that was as grim as he could make it, as he invented magical "facts" off the top of his head, "are not my way. They poison the land. What price a feast, if you've tainted all the food to get it?"
Several of the knights nodded acceptance of that, and Syregorn's voice was the barest shade warmer when he said, "You use words as swords." It cooled again when he added, "Like the Lord Leaf."