Geran frowned, unwilling to let the matter rest. Despite the hard day’s travel in the cold weather, he was not yet ready for bed. Still, he was certainly in need of a change of clothing, and a warm bath wouldn’t be amiss. The three Hulmasters said their good nights to each other, and parted ways-Kara to make her rounds of the manor and its grounds, seeing to the Shieldsworn guards, and Geran and Grigor to the wing of the manor where their rooms were. They climbed the stairs to the second floor, Grigor moving slowly and carefully as Geran tried to hover nearby as unobtrusively as possible.
At the top of the stairs Grigor paused to catch his breath. “The winters are growing harder every year,” he said, leaning heavily on his cane. “The cold never leaves me, it seems. Ah, well, that’s the price of seeing so many of them. It’s good to have you back safe and sound, Geran. We worry about you when you’re away.”
“I try to be careful.” Geran hesitated, weighing the question of whether to push again on the issue of more direct action against Marstel. He decided to try one more time. “About Marstel … I believe there’s more we can do than you might think, Uncle. In a tenday Kara and I could muster a hundred riders to harry Marstel’s frontier posts and borders. It might not be much, but it would show friends and foes alike that we’re not beaten yet. Even just a show of resistance might be enough-”
“Not yet!” the harmach said sharply. He fixed his pale, watery eyes on the younger Hulmaster. “I have spoken on this matter, Geran. There is no point in spilling more blood if we don’t yet have the strength to win.”
Geran fell silent, meeting his uncle’s gaze for a long moment before he reluctantly nodded. “I hear you, Uncle. There’s to be no fighting for now.”
“Good,” Grigor said. He smiled again, and turned toward his chambers. “Good night, Geran. We’ll speak again tomorrow.”
“Good night, Uncle Grigor,” Geran replied. He watched his uncle limp away on his cane, then headed for his own rooms.
TWO
4 Hammer, the Year of Deep Water Drifting (1480 DR)
Geran was sound asleep when the assassins came. Only the fact that he’d carelessly left his boots lying on the floor near the foot of his bed saved his life.
A soft stumble in the dark roused him from a dreamless slumber; he awoke just as iron-hard talons were reaching for his throat. Flailing wildly, he caught his attacker’s arms in his hands. He felt rough, scaly skin that was as hot as a firepit’s stone in his grasp, and heard a hiss of anger from the thing leaning over him. The air reeked of warm sulfur, acrid and strong enough to choke his cry of alarm.
“He wakes!” a second voice hissed from nearby. “Slay him swiftly!”
The first creature did not reply, but bent all its strength to seizing Geran in its talons. It was horribly strong, and it steadily pushed its claws closer to his neck. He saw carious yellow fangs gleaming in the shadows above his face, and a beard of thick tendrils that writhed and dripped inches from his chest. Wherever its saliva dripped on his bare flesh, his skin burned and smoked. He couldn’t hold the creature’s talons from his neck for much longer, and he was defenseless against its companion as long as he dared not let go of the creature’s arms.
A desperate idea came to him, and before he could think better of it, Geran gambled on its success. Somehow he found a still center in the midst of his pain and panic, focusing on the arcane symbols of the spells locked away in his mind. The featherlight touch of magic gathering to him stirred the bedchamber’s cold air and the sheets entangling his flailing limbs. “Sieroch!” he shouted, finishing the spell as he released his foe’s arms. The creature’s lethal claws lunged forward, but Geran was no longer there. His teleportation spell had carried him across the room. He scrambled to his feet as the monsters screeched in frustration and whirled to face him again.
“Clever, mortal,” the first creature snarled. It was little more than a jagged shadow in the darkened room. “You would have been wiser to die in your sleep.”
What in the Nine Hells is going on? Geran thought furiously. He blinked the last of the sleep from his eyes, coming fully awake. His hands throbbed from the heat and jagged scales of the creature’s hide. The Nine Hells indeed-if these creatures weren’t devils of some kind, he would have been astonished. Some enemy had summoned infernal assassins to slay him in his sleep. Other questions crowded in after that, but he thrust them aside. There would be time for answers later, if he managed to survive the next few heartbeats.
First, he needed to see better. “Elos!” Geran said, casting a minor light spell. A globe of pale gold shimmered into existence a few feet from him, its soft illumination filling the room. The two monsters facing him winced and recoiled, surprised by the sudden light. They were roughly man-sized, covered in dull reddish scales and sharp barbs of horn at knees, shoulders, and elbows. Their feet were great raptorlike talons, and they had long, lashing tails studded with more sharp barbs. Coiling tendrils of darker red jutted from their chins, giving them foul, twisting beards of a sort. Geran hadn’t faced their like before, but he’d heard of them before-barbazu, or bearded devils, fierce and deadly foes. How they’d gotten into Lasparhall he couldn’t imagine, but their purpose was all too clear.
“Rend him to pieces!” the second devil growled. The two launched themselves across the room in a sudden rush, claws stretching out for him. Geran looked past the monsters to the place where his sword hung in its scabbard by his bedstand.
He reached out his hand and called out a summoning spell of his own: “Cuilledyr!” His elven backsword shivered once in its scabbard before lurching free and soaring hiltfirst to his hand, just in time to meet the devils’ furious charge. Dropping beneath the raking claws of the first devil, he drove the point of his blade into the center of its torso, just under the breastbone. The ancient sword rang shrilly as it pierced infernal flesh; long before in Myth Drannor’s Weeping War its makers had enchanted it with spells of ruin against hellspawned monsters just such as these. The creature shrieked horribly, impaled on the blade, then burst apart in a noisome black cloud. But its companion hurled into Geran, its sharp claws raking him deeply across the chest and shoulders as it slammed him into the cold floor.
Sizzling venom from the devil’s writhing beard-tendrils splattered Geran’s cheek, and he howled in anguish. The monster pinned his sword arm with one talon and mauled him with the other. Somehow the swordmage found the strength to throw the barbazu to one side. The devil didn’t release him, but with its weight off his chest he was able to roll to one side and seize the hilt of his sword in his left hand, which wasn’t pinned. Before his assailant could seize that arm too, Geran dragged the gleaming edge across the devil’s scaly flesh in a single long draw. The bearded devil hissed in pain and scrabbled back from the bright steel. Geran surged to his feet and set upon the creature with a furious hail of blows. Yet its scales resisted all but the surest of his attacks.
“Ah, how delicious.” The creature sneered. “While we dance, the rest of your family dies. Perhaps I should let you go to them before I slay you.”
“You lie!” Geran retorted automatically. He had to believe the monster was toying with him, trying to urge him into a rash attack. If more devils were loose in Lasparhall, stealing into the harmach’s chambers-or worse yet, Natali’s or Kirr’s-then every moment he was delayed here might come with a horrible cost indeed.
He traded passes with the barbazu again, his steel striking sparks from its ironlike claws as they exchanged places. Quickly he cleared the welling fear for his family from his mind, and summoned up the calm for spellcasting. This time he charged his sword with a crackling aura of blue-white lightning that threw garish shadows against the walls as it danced along the edge. The bearded devil bared its fangs in defiance and leaped to meet him again, but this time its hard scales did not stop the sword’s bite. Lightning seared its red flesh, freezing it in place with powerful convulsions. Before the monster could recover, Geran slashed it through the throat. It, too, vanished in a sudden burst of black smoke, and the bedchamber fell still for a moment.