"Stop blubbering," Thamalon said. "The gods know, we have good reason to wish you ill, but we may forgo our vengeance if you tell us what we want to know."
Nuldrevyn shook his head. "I no longer care what happens to me, Uskevren. I weep because my son is dead."
Shamur peered at him quizzically. "Do you mean Oss-ian? What makes you think so? I gather he looked healthy-enough when he left the castle earlier tonight."
"No," Nuldrevyn said, brushing ineffectually at his eyes. "That wasn't really him. He's gone. Marance murdered him."
Thamalon blinked. "You don't mean your brother Marance, whom I slew thirty years ago?"
"Yes," Nuldrevyn said. "He came back from the tomb to settle his score with you, and may the gods forgive me, I welcomed him." Fresh tears slid down his cheeks.
"Can this be true?" Shamur asked.
"I… think it may be," Thamalon replied, amazement in his voice. "I told you Master Moon's voice was familiar, and Marance always fought by whistling up beasts and demons to do his killing for him." He turned back to Nuldrevyn. "Tell us everything, and perhaps we will avenge Ossian for you."
Half mad with grief and the agony he'd endured under the cold, unblinking gaze of the snake, Nuldrevyn related the tale in a disjointed and only partially coherent fashion. Still, Shamur grasped the essentials. At last she fully understood how the masked wizard had tricked her into trying to kill her husband. But the Talendar patriarch's final revelation crushed such insights into insignificance.
"Midnight on the High Bridge?" she demanded, appalled.
"Yes," Nuldrevyn said.
Shamur looked at Thamalon. "It must be nearly midnight if it isn't already, and the bridge is halfway across the city." Even as she spoke, her mind was racing. If they dragged Nuldrevyn along with them, the old man could countermand the false Ossian's orders and call off the Talendar guards. But no, that notion was no good. In his present state of collapse, Nuldrevyn would slow them down too much. Nor was there time to locate another high-ranking Talendar, explain the situation, and prevail on him to intervene. All the Uskevren could do was commandeer a pair of horses, race to the High Bridge, and pray they'd arrive before the trap closed on their children.
Thamalon sprang up from Nuldrevyn's side. "Let's find the stables," he said.
Chapter 21
Shamur and Thamalon galloped through the streets at breakneck speed, never slowing. They veered around other riders, wagons, litters, and carriages. They scattered pedestrians, who shouted insults after them.
Shamur felt like cursing them in return, cursing them for idiots who ought to be home in bed, not cluttering up the avenues late on a snowy winter night, not impeding her progress when she was flying to her children's aid. The delight she often found in reckless escapades was entirely absent now, smothered by fear for Tamlin, Thazienne, and Talbot and an iron resolve not to fail them.
She wished she could think that Nuldrevyn had been mad, his tale, false, at least in certain respects, for there was a particular horror in the notion that the Uskevren's chief adversary was a dead man. But that comfort was denied her, for in fact, the Talendar lord hadn't seemed demented, merely distraught. Moreover, Thamalon manifestly credited the notion that Marance had returned, while Shamur herself had discovered in the course of her youthful adventures that the world could be a shadowy, haunted place, and the boundary between life and death more permeable than most people cared to imagine.
She tried her best to scowl her trepidation away. Mortal or wraith, judging from the way he always held back from the thick of the fighting, Marance was wary of his enemies' swords, and that ought to mean that she and Thamalon could cut him down and send him back to the netherworld.
Hooves thundering on the cobblestones, the stolen war-horses plunged out onto the broad thoroughfare that was Galorgar's Ride. From here, the Uskevren had a straight course north to the High Bridge, and Shamur prayed they would now make better time. She squinted against the icy wind now gusting directly in her face, straining for a first glimpse of the Klaroun Gate. Finally, after what seemed an eternity, the ornately carved arch emerged from the darkness ahead. A line of men, weapons in hand, stood across the opening.
Shamur knew the Talendar warriors wouldn't close up their end of the killing box prematurely, for then the children couldn't enter. Their present state of readiness could only mean that Tamlin, Thazienne, and Talbot were on the bridge, and that the other would-be assassins were closing in on them, if they hadn't done so already.
Though the guards were facing north, it would have been absurd even to hope that they wouldn't discern Thamalon and Shamur's approach, because, of course, the destriers' drumming hoof beats gave them away. The warriors turned and eyed the riders with an air of uncertainty. Shamur could virtually read their minds. They'd been ordered to hold the Old Owl's fledglings on the bridge, not to keep anyone off it. Still, the newcomers' frantic pace alarmed them, or else the guards reckoned they shouldn't allow anyone onto the span to witness their comrades committing murder. In any case, one of them waved a sword over his head, signaling the strangers to halt.
Thamalon had happened upon a rack of lances on the way to the Talendar stables and appropriated one for himself. He couched the weapon now. Meanwhile, Shamur drew her broadsword, and, recognizing the riders as a genuine threat, the warriors hastily readied themselves to receive a charge.
With his longer weapon and his steed a length ahead of Shamur's, Thamalon drew first blood. The lance punched through the torso of the warrior in the middle of the line. Thamalon dropped the now-immobilized spear and rode on. Other warriors lunged from either side, and he caught a sword cut on his battered buckler.
Shamur lost track of him after that, because her mount crashed into the line, and she had her own fighting to think about. She split the skull of the foe on her right, then cut at the man on her left. But across the body was the more difficult stroke for a rider, and the warrior managed to skip back out of range.
Shamur tried to push clear of the guardsmen. Had she succeeded, she could either have sped on up the bridge or turned and attacked anew with the momentum of a full charge to her advantage, but her horse suddenly balked. Something had evidently hurt or spooked the animal, but she had no time to wonder what, for now the surviving warriors were driving in from all sides.
Pivoting back and forth, Shamur slashed madly about with the broadsword. The destrier bit and kicked. One by one, the Talendar warriors dropped or reeled back with bloody wounds, until Thamalon, long sword in hand, rode back into the fray and dispatched the last pair of footmen from behind.
The Uskevren wheeled their mounts and galloped on up the High Bridge, past homes, shops, and a guardhouse where, according to Nuldrevyn, the sentries lay magically slain or at any rate incapacitated. Shamur peered into the gloom until she caught sight of the next contingent of men-at-arms, and then she felt a pang of relief, because the enemy warriors had not yet skulked all the way up to the tavern called the Drum and Mirror. The actual attack had yet to begin, and therefore, the children must still be alive.
Some of the warriors had evidently heard the hoof beats, cries, and clangor of blades arising behind them, because they were looking back in the couple's direction. Not giving them time to organize a defense, the riders charged them. A javelin streaked past Shamur and clattered down on the cobblestones behind her. Then she was in the midst of the foe, and, leaning out of the saddle, whipped her blade in a cut that tore open a warrior's throat.