"We're turning into a lot of fearful shy-at-shadows," Embra told her man ruefully as the trees grew thinner, and the piercing rays of sunlight more prevalent. Tangleleaf and thrushtarn bushes grew thickly where the light fell, making hedges on either side of the trail, and they could hear the thock of axes on chopping blocks ahead, and the creaking of cartwheels. Hawkril made a small, noncommittal sound and raised his shield higher.
The next sound they heard was a loud hissing from the trees all around-and a startled grunt from Craer as an arrow struck his shoulder and snatched him out of his saddle, its bloody, glistening point coming out right through his back as he fell.
Tshamarra screamed and tried to ride right through Hawkril to reach the fallen procurer. As their horses jostled, the armaragor's shield raided under the crashing strikes of three arrows-and an arrowhead burst half through it, to quiver not far in front of Tshamarra's nose.
At about that time a shaft thudded into her horse, and it reared. The Lady Talasorn clawed at its mane to try to keep her saddle as Embra snarled an incantation, Blackgult shouted something else, and Hawkril sprouted an arrow of his own.
As she saw hooves kick at leaves overhead and started the long, slow tumble down into darkness, Tshamarra screamed again. Arrows came hissing down like storm-driven rain…
4
A Stornbridge Welcome
The circular window of the study overlooked the finest and most extensive gardens in all wealthy and sun-warmed Arlund. A gray-bearded, dark-browed man in simple but expensive robes stood gazing in the direction of Aglirta, thinking of that nigh-Kingless Land.
Dolmur Bowdragon did a lot of that, these days.
There were great disturbances in the flow of the Arrada, as if mighty magics were being worked in secret… somewhere in Silverflow Vale. Of course. Such things always befell in Aglirta, land of reckless mages and those fell wizards who called themselves "priests of the Serpent." Which was why Dolmur kept spell-watch over that long, narrow green realm that had one great river at its heart-and not much else to remark upon.
So who in Aglirta was working sorceries that shook all Darsar… when the priests were dabbling in poisons and bribery, and the forces of the king were rounding up every wizard they could find?
Such puzzles were why he'd always watched Aglirta, and always would… even if it hadn't been a place that had made his heart dark and heavy with grief.
Accursed Aglirta-the realm that had swallowed most of the younger Bowdragons. Cut down in eager youth, their bright magic lost before they could quite achieve mastery… just a handful among the ranks of all the dead and forgotten wizards who'd fallen in the ongoing strife that had been the true ruler of the Kingless Land for as long as Dolmur could remember.
As long as his parents could have remembered, too, and probably their parents before that. Senseless, so senseless.
"They fled," he murmured to the unheeding window, "because they were fools who went looking for trouble. Fools near and dear to me, but no less foolish for that."
The window was taller than a man, its frame set with gems inside and out-massive cabochon-cut stones there to hold enchantments that warded birds from the glass and kept the single huge pane from breaking under the sharpest weapon-blows Dolmur Bowdragon had been able to test it with. He smiled at the memory of the largest, strongest armaragor he could find running full-tilt down the long cellar passage in full armor, before leaping into the air to put his entire weight behind a great swing of his two-handed battleaxe. In the crash that had followed, the weapon had been chipped and its wielder numbed and winded, but the glass had held firm, unmarked. It was a good, strong spell, one of the last powered by the slowly ebbing life of the spellbound wizard entombed alive deep under this house. Someone called Eiyraskul, who'd been a foe of Dolmur's father.
Dolmur would have preferred to source his lasting spells from an enchanted ring, wand, or stone he could control rather than a slumbrous mage who might someday be freed of the binding enchantments and come looking to slay Bowdragons-but wizards weren't obligingly sacrificing their own lives to craft such treasures, these days.
Dolmur sighed aloud and told the window, "We must work with what we have. Yearning after desired dreams of what can never be is how the weak-minded waste their lives."
"Is it now?" came a quiet voice from behind him. A voice that should not have been there.
Dolmur Bowdragon whirled around. To a wizard, such surprises are armor-chinks of carelessness or misfortune that usually mean death. But no man can help but want to see his slayer or fate.
The ward-spells on the study and the house around it should have hurled away non-mages and warned Dolmur of the entry of any wizard powerful enough to break them… yet this robed man facing him, with the raven-dark hair and the soft, knowing smile, could be nothing else but a wizard.
An intruder standing in his own study, boots only a stride from a flagstone that bore one of Dolmur's hurl-hard spells-that would snatch the man straight up to impalement on the spikes of the huge iron dragon-head candle cluster thrusting down from the ceiling above.
His visitor smiled more broadly, and carefully stepped around that flagstone as he paced forward. "Forgive the abruptness of my intrusion-and for that matter the intrusion itself, Lord Bowdragon. I come with peaceful intent, to make an offer, not to try spells with you."
"Then be welcome, Lord Nameless," Dolmur said calmly, gesturing to the lounges by the fireplace as he turned and walked toward them. "Offers always interest me. Will you take wine? Or hot serbret, perhaps?"
"Neither, thank you," his guest replied, following. The stranger's route took him across a certain cluster of flagstones-as Dolmur had intended it to-but no alarm flourish of horn music swelled to fife. This was no intruder, then, but a "sending." Solid-seeming but illusory, and so of course unable to drink. Able to spy on him for months, though… and wanting Dolmur to know it, by the avoidance of the hurl-hard flagstone.
"Then take your ease, and unfold your offer." The Bowdragon patriarch waved his hand toward the fireplace, offering his unexpected guest any of four lounges-or the more likely choice of standing against the mantel. Again his guest surprised him, taking a seat. There came a slight rustling of robes and a creak of furniture as he sat down, but Dolmur smiled inwardly. He knew of no natural way to make that lounge creak in that manner, given what it was made of-so his visitor must be using magic to "supply" sounds, to fool Dolmur into thinking this sending was solid. My, to have magic to waste so lavishly…
Dolmur took a seat of his own, briefly entertaining the notion of using the lingering spell that amplified his voice to summon servants to echo perfectly the rustling and creaking, to signal to his guest his recognition of their falsity, but-no. Mages whose greatest need was to impress did such things, and Dolmur Bowdragon was years beyond the need to impress.
Or so he hoped. Assuming a relaxed pose, he waited.
"I'm Ingryl Ambelter, a wizard once in the service of Baron Silvertree of Aglirta. I supported him in his ambitions to rule the Kingless Land, and confess myself less than enamored of the new King, the boy Raulin Castlecloaks-and of the overdukes and former regent who crowned him. They've done me much injury, though my sorcery has been powerful enough to keep me alive and allow me to flourish since. These foes of mine have also done much injury to you, slaying more than one Bowdragon without cause, warning, or so much as fair salutation. Now they're hunting wizards, slaying or imprisoning without cause-and when they've scoured Silverflow Vale clean of mages, they'll look in this direction and others, and reach for you. Not for nothing do your countrymen have the saying, 'Beware wizards of Aglirta.' The overdukes watch you even now, and remain a menace to you so long as they live."