Jhavarr smiled eagerly. "So Aglirta is doomed?"
The eldest Bowdragon's answering smile was somewhat fainter. "Well, now. Perhaps we should say rather, 'Aglirta as we know it.' "
The mists that always attended teleportation fell away from their eyes. The Band of Four crouched, weapons ready, a smooth, hard floor underfoot- and found themselves staring down the length of a palatial, lofty-ceilinged bedchamber, its walls all white plaster relief carvings and gleaming closed doors. The towering bed was unmade, its linens and overfur slumped onto the floor. A frightened feminine face stared at them for a moment around the edge of a door beside it, and then vanished.
Tshamarra raised a hand to send a spell arrowing after she who'd fled, but let it fall again without making any futile casting. Her fellow overdukes were already spreading out and trotting forward-toward a desk where a man who was neither young nor slender was sitting naked, a large decanter of drink in his hand, staring at… a hand-sized, faintly glowing rock that lay on the polished wood in front of him.
Fear and bewilderment were in that man's stare as he put the decanter to his lips and quaffed deeply. He seemed not to hear the overdukes until Craer was less than a handful of racing strides away.
Then he looked up with a growl, snatched a dagger from the bench beside him with surprising speed, and sprang to meet the intruders, bare as he was.
Gray-white hair covered much of that unlovely, paunchy body, below a face reddening with rage as well as drink. Its owner glared at his four unexpected visitors with no trace of fear as he brandished his blade, dodged aside from Craer's racing attack, and whirled with that same swiftness to slam himself into the speeding procurer and send Craer crashing through the bench rather than letting his outstretched hand snatch the Stone from the table.
The naked man snarled a word-and there was suddenly a dagger poised above Craer's throat, and three more knives floating point-first before the eyes of the rest of the Four.
"Who are you?" the man demanded. "Speak, or I'll start slaying!"
"We're the Overdukes of Aglirta," Hawkril rumbled. "Come here seeking yon Stone. We know you not, nor mean harm to you; please accept our apologies for this intrusion. What is this place?"
The naked man took another swig from his decanter. "This is Varandaur castle, nigh Ragalar, seat of the Delcampers, and this is my bedchamber in it. I am Hulgor Delcamper-one of the many aging wastrel uncles Flaeros has doubtless told you about. He spoke well of you Band of Four." His eyes ranged across them, and then he spun around, went back to his desk, set down the decanter, and laid a hand on the Dwaer sitting there. "You want this. Why?"
" 'Tis one of the most powerful things of magic in all Darsar, and we need it to defend the Vale against the priests of the Serpent," Embra replied. "We lost ours in a battle not long ago, and hoped to recover it. How came you by this one?"
Hulgor shrugged. "It appeared in the air, just here-not long ago, as you say." He picked up the Stone and hefted it. "I'm not one for magic-yon floating knives are a casting laid ready here by a hired mage, not any doing of mine-and have been sitting here wondering how to get rid of it before slaying mages came for me." He grinned. "Fair greeting, slaying mages. I'd like to bargain with you."
"Speak," Tshamarra said softly.
Hulgor leered at her as if she was the one standing naked and not he, and said, "I've a restlessness in me. I've wanted to go and see how young Flaeros is getting on, and visit Flowfoam-I saw it once, years back-but I hate sea voyages and spewing my guts over the rail for days, into storms that hurl it all right back over me. If you offer me no violence, and take me there with you, I'll give you this lump of rock that's so important to mages."
The Four looked at each other. Then Embra, a disbelieving smile tugging at her lips, nodded at the naked noble. "Agreed. By the realm we all serve, I swear this."
Hulgor Delcamper looked at them all, one after another, and received murmured agreements as he went. He gave Craer an extra glare, and received a sheepish smile and spread hands in return.
Hulgor grinned at that. Then he nodded to them all, strode forward as if he was a grandly robed ruler and not an aging, sagging, hairily naked man, and put the Stone carefully into Embra's hand.
Doors burst open with a sound like thunder, and liveried guards burst into the room, glaives and swords glittering, with the chambermaid who'd fled at their arrival at the head of one group. Her scream and pointing arm was ignored in the general roar of competing cries: "Hold! Surrender! Down arms!"
Embra rolled her eyes, Hulgor grinned at her, and the Dwaer flashed in her hand.
Guards sprinting across the polished floor skidded to astonished halts, and Nuelara screamed again. Hulgor Delcamper and the four armed intruders were gone, vanished as if they'd never been.
The guards stared helplessly… at a gently rocking decanter on a table, and four dark daggers floating in midair.
No one was there to stare back.
"The Three must hold this place sacred to them, for some special purpose," Ezendor Blackgult muttered, as he stood on a crumbling balcony of the sprawling ruins of the Silvertree Palace known to all Aglirta as the Silent House. The burial ground below him was an overgrown maze of trees, shrubs, and leaning tombs.
Then red and black rage rose in him again, choking-strong. Blackgult went to his knees and mindlessly clawed at the stones of a nearby stair for a few frantic breaths, ere he remembered his own name and went boiling up those same steps, to come out on the battlements.
Shuddering, he fought down the madness and stared grimly out across the Vale, to where the long green isle of Flowfoam lay in its quiet splendor out in the Silverflow.
Plague-rage, oh yes, burning strongest where he'd been bitten… poor Indalue must have been infected, and never knew it.
"So here I am at last," he told the uncaring wind bitterly. "Back in the Silent House, the haunted graveyard of half the mages and adventurers Aglirta has ever birthed-wrestling with the Blood Plague."
The rage rose again, and he started striding along the battlements, half-shouting, "If I could hold to my wits long enough, and remember a tenth of what I should be able to, I could heal myself with this!"
The rage passed like a spasm, and Blackgult held up the Dwaer he'd seized not long ago, regarded it regretfully, and whispered, "But I can't."
He walked aimlessly along the battlements, ignoring scattered human and beast bones and the black gorcraw vultures that flapped heavily away at his approach-to land again just out of reach, and watch him balefully… patiently.
Anger rose again, sudden and hot. "A weapon, yes-blast this, savage that, burn the other! Destroying's always easy… But crafting, mending, healing-why, gods, why do you make those so hard, hey? Afraid we struggling beasts will achieve something, and rob you of your entertainment?"
The wind snatched those bitter words away, but brought back no reply. Cold-faced, Ezendor Blackgult found a stair and started down. He'd seized this Stone from his own daughter.
To leave her defenseless while he died here, driven mad by the Blood Plague. Gods, to be laid low by the sneering Serpents at last! No! No!
He was roaring that aloud, he realized dimly, hammering the crumbling stonework with the Stone that could not shatter, screaming and raking the old stone blocks as if his bleeding ringers were talons that could rend…
Gasping, he found himself at the bottom of the stairs, in much pain. Evidently he'd fallen, and now had fresh bruises to add to the sickening plague-surging in his guts. He rolled over, sat up with a growl, and glared at the Dwaer.