Aerindel felt a painful tug on her scalp. Something was pulling her hair—oh, gods, no!
Rammast smiled down at her. “It’s eating your hair, Lady … and mind: You’re getting your best gown all dirty, rolling around like that. Show a little dignity. Come up at least to your knees. My little pet will take care of your gown after it’s bared your scalp. Then you’ll be wearing shoes, too, won’t you? It should be a good while before it gets around to eating your eyelashes.”
Aerindel screamed, rolling frantically in an attempt to dislodge the thing. It was leaving a wet, slimy trail through her hair, and went on biting and tearing as if she’d done nothing, even when she drew her knife and stabbed it repeatedly. It was a thing of magic, immune to her steel.
Rammast smiled indulgently at her then strolled around the room, looking critically at the tapestries and statues. “Your father’s taste wasn’t as bad as I’d heard,” he said grudgingly, ignoring Aerindel’s sobs then frantic rise to cast a purging spell on herself.
“Get out of my house!” she snarled at him, as she finally felt the gnawing serpent fade away to nothingness. “You cold-blooded bastard!”
Rammast turned to meet her furious gaze, shook his head with a disapproving sigh, and opened his hand again. Another serpent flew from his hand, and as she screamed in despair, he chuckled heartily and strolled in her direction.
“Perhaps your gown first, and the hair later,” he suggested. “I suspect you’re the superior of any of these rather contorted maids on pedestals your father collected. Was your mother particularly ugly, or did he just have odd tastes?”
Through tears of utter fury Aerindel spat her last battle-spell, sending a ravening purple cloud of flesh-eating radiance in his direction.
“Oooh,” Rammast said in appreciation. “My, my.” And he faded away, leaving her spell with nothing to slay. It rolled out over the lake, vainly seeking something to kill.
Abruptly the darkly handsome Lord of Grand Thentor was standing beside her, a mocking smile on his face, as his second serpent flashed down over her shoulder to sink its fangs into her bodice.
Aerindel screamed.
“On your knees, lady,” Rammast suggested gently. “Remember?”
He waved a hand, and she felt an unseen force pressing her down. With a snarl she hissed her last dispel, wiping it away along with the sharp-fanged serpent.
He smiled even more broadly, and opened his hand again. Another serpent flapped its wings in his palm, eyeing her with glittering amusement.
“Perhaps one eyelash,” her foe said calmly, “to remember me by.”
And as the serpent sprang from his hand, Aerindel found that she had no spells left. Clapping her hands protectively over eyes that streamed tears of rage and despair, she snarled a certain word.
On the wall beside the shattered window, the Stormstaff flashed into life and lightings lashed forth like great tentacles to encircle the Thentan intruder and drag him up into the air.
Even as he struggled in the grip of its awesome energies, and the white fire of its fury burst forth from his skin, Rammast smiled down at her. “So that is how paltry your spells are—and those are the words that awaken your father’s staff. My thanks, Aerindel. You’ve been most helpful, if far more feeble a foe than I’d thought. Don’t bother taking your own life; I shall merely bring you back from death to serve me.”
The lightnings were beginning to tear him apart now, but the Lord of Grand Thentor showed no pain as he added, “You might fix your hair and change your gown, though. I will come for you.”
Then, with a last sneering smile, his false body faded away, leaving her lightnings nothing to ravage.
The Lady of Dusklake sent them racing out over the lake before they could do any harm to the hall or any of her folk, then went to her knees and wept for a long time in the shattered chamber.
When she could weep no more, Aerindel fell silent and threw herself full-length onto the floor. Lying with the smooth stone cold and hard against one cheek, she murmured the words that would bring the comforting length of the Stormstaff into her hands.
It flew to her, and she clutched it like a drowning sailor clings to a spar as she went down into haunted darkness…
* * * * *
“L-lady? Lady Aerindel?” one of the chamberlasses called tentatively.
The woman who lay curled up like a child around a staff clenched in her hands moved her head and murmured something.
“Lady Aerindel? Great Lady… are you well?”
Abruptly the wild-haired figure in the tattered black gown sat upright and stared into the moonlight. The staff in her hands thrummed once, and tugged at her grasp.
Aerindel screamed in anguish. Rammast must be calling it from afar!
It was her last weapon… her last hope. The staff moaned and wrenched at her numbed fingers again, and Aerindel came to her feet with another raw scream, wrapping herself around it.
She stood panting in the pitiless moonlight, staring around the ruined hall and wondering just what she could do against the ruthless Lord of Grand Thentor. The staff snarled against her bosom again, and Aerindel snarled back at it in frustration.
In the brief silence that followed, she heard the frightened sobs of the fleeing chamberlass echoing back to her down one of the kitchen passages, and drew in a long, shuddering breath.
She had fought and had been overmastered with contemptuous ease. There were no hidden tricks or lurking spells left to her. She was doomed, and Dusklake with her.
As her father had once said to an excited Dabras, looking down at a battle in Glimmerdown Pass from the top of Mount Glimmerdown, with Aerindel sitting huddled against her nurse, “It’s all over now but the praying.”
But the praying…
Well, what else could she do?
Aerindel tucked the Stormstaff under her chin and rushed from the hall, padding through the darkened passages of the castle toward a certain dusty and neglected back stair. Many of the torches were unlit, and there were neither guards nor servants to be seen. Had they all fled? Or had some dark magic sent by Rammast slain them all?
Their fates were worries for later. Right now, she had to find, in the deepening darkness beyond the pantries, the way down to the family crypt.
In the end, though she feared to awaken it, Aerindel was forced to use the Stormstaff to conjure a faint radiance, or risk breaking her neck falling down unseen steps to the gate adorned with the split oak Summertyn badge.
Her father’s staff made a strange, muted sound, like many voices chanting a wordless, endless chorus, but obeyed her, with none of the tugging it had displayed in the feast hall. Perhaps Rammast’s spells couldn’t reach it down here.
Aerindel lacked the key that others would need, but she was of the blood of Summertyn, and a quick bite of her hand brought forth red blood that she could dab on the badge. At its touch, there was a faint singing sound, and the gate opened.
The door beyond had no lock or fastening, and she pushed it inwards with her foot, smelling the familiar damp, earthy smell that always clung to the resting place of her forebearers.
There was the long, slender casket of Haerindra, the mother she’d never known. Beyond it, the high canopied tomb of Orbrar, and to the right, the great black coffin of her father.
The Stormstaff hummed, a deep groan that was echoed by the black stone that enclosed her father’s ashes—and Aerindel nearly turned and fled. This had never happened before.
A light—a faint glow of the air, not a spark or flame— occurred suddenly in front of her, in the open space between the three caskets she knew. By its brightening radiance she saw other coffins, stretching back into dark, vaulted distances, and the source of the light: a blue-white star glowing on a simple stone marker.