Ironcrown Moon (64 page)

Calamity may happen. What was postponed in the Old Conflict.

The abomination made by the One Denied…

When debased, he called himself Dombrawnn and made it.

An abomination then called Unknown Potency, lost then stolen.

And now in a stupid brute’s gizzard, renamed! So what?

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He is not stupid. And he goes to Rothbannon’s castle.

The wise thief! He wrote down the means of activation in a book.

But never dared to bring the Potency to life.

It may yet live. Calamity may happen, and a New Conflict.

Look: the one we cursed goes to meet the brute.

Cursing may have been a mistake. He now may be our one hope!

Shall we not convert the Wrong-Named, then? Snudge?

He is not ripe and may never be. Rethink the one cursed.

The One Denied the Sky is half-free. Think of that!

Better to think of the brutes. And the Moon Crags.

BEST to think of feeding! Amusement! Irony! Paradox!

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Best…

Best for now.

There’s time. A lot of it.

He heard them laughing, laughing. The pain and fear took hold of him and he fell-But not far.

He forced his eyes open and saw the bodies. Rusgann and Hanan standing upright, looking about them in stunned disbelief. Gavlok and Induna crouching protectively over Valdos and Radd, who still lay unconscious. Maudrayne on her knees, cradling Dyfrig, whose eyes were still squeezed tightly shut. All eight of them surrounding him as he sprawled on the flagstones of the forecourt of Sealord Sernin Donorvale’s riverside palace. A squad of household guards were running towards them, shouting.

Snudge chuckled weakly, and murmured, “All of us here. That wasn’t so bad, was it?” He felt the pain blossom hideously, saw Induna crawling towards him with her face intent. “The bad stuff starts now, I guess,” he told her. His eyes, black and deep as wells, began to close again as he surrendered.

“No, you don’t!” cried Induna of the Barking Sands. She ripped the chain holding the two sigils from his neck and flung it aside, warning the others, “Don’t touch those stones. They’ll burn you.” Then she plucked forth a pearly little female image from her breast, and for the second time gave away a part of her soul. “

Now you may sleep. For as long as you like.”

His eyes opened again, and she saw that this time they were a vibrant, glinting blue, full of unasked questions. But before he could speak, he succumbed to the warm, quiet dark.

==========

Beynor watched them come with his windsight, wave after wave surging up the Darkling River estuary, over ten thousand monsters, armed with the most effective minor sigils still in the race’s possession. They had already laid waste Moss’s second-largest city, Sandport, and crushed the sealing town of Balook. They sank the six frigates and twelve fighting sloops of Moss’s small navy. They overwhelmed Salkbane Fortress and slaughtered its conjure-lord and defending wizards, and then the victorious army of amphibians closed in on Royal Fenguard itself. They expected to find Beynor waiting for them there, expected their human ally to lead them through subterranean passageways into the bowels of Rothbannon’s castle, straight to the tomb that secured Ullanoth’s sigils. There Beynor would activate the Known Potency for the Salka, initiating the reconquest of their ancestral home. That’s the way it was supposed to file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/May,%20Julian%20-%20[Bo...-%20Boreal%20Moon%202%20-

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It would not.

He sat on a tall black horse, cloaked head to toe from the rain and unrecognizable to the monsters’ relatively puny windsight, amidst rocks on a lofty hill above Fenguard Castle. From that vantage point, Moss’s one-time Conjure-King oversaw the teeming invaders, led by their Supreme Warrior, Ugusawnn. He also saw Moss’s uprisen population of native Salka converging on the capital from the Little

Fen and the Great Fen, making casual slaughter of humans as they rejoiced that a new era had begun.

Beynor saw it all taking place. As he saw his own cleverly crafted scheme in ruins.

It was not until he had nearly reached Fenguard, and his long journey’s end, that he had finally been able to scry through the castle’s thick granite walls and bedrock-shrouded cellars to perceive the debacle: Beynor discovered that Rothbannon’s tomb held only Rothbannon’s ashes.

The platinum casket that should have secured Ullanoth’s living sigils was gone, as was her enchanted body.

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He had planned to destroy that body (as he once planned to kill the living woman by stealth), and by doing so render her truly dead, and her sigils dead as well. Then, when the Salka arrived, met him, and followed him to the tomb, they would believe that the box still contained moonstones that were alive, deadly, and useless to them—until touched by the activated Potency. It was impossible for the

Salka to scry out the truth about Ulla’s stones: sigils could not be seen through talent. And no one save a descendant of Rothbannon could enter his tomb.

Beynor would have declared himself ready to fulfil his part of the bargain. He would have asked his mentor Kalawnn to disgorge the

Potency and hold it up, then he would have coached the Master Shaman in conjuring the spell that activated the Stone of Stones.

Kalawnn would never have suspected that his human protege contemplated a magical coup.

(Although Ugusawnn might have!) The

Master Shaman, like the other Eminences, believed that Beynor could not touch or use the activated Potency. He thought, erroneously, that the sigil would bond to the person who activated it, as others of its ilk did, and burn or kill anyone who tried to steal it. But Beynor had discovered that the Potency bonded to no one; and he had hoped and prayed that its sorcery transcended the Lights’ curse as well.

Beynor had planned to invite Kalawnn alone to enter the opened tomb with him. After all, there was hardly room inside for more than one of the huge amphibians! He had been confident that he could snatch the Potency from the clumsy Salka shaman, open the platinum box, and activate Ullanoth’s Concealer and Interpenetrator sigils within a split second.

He’d planned to vanish with the box of moonstones, penetrate the Salka mob in the passage, then activate Subtle Loophole to spy out the best escape route. And all of it would have been accomplished without a debt of pain…

But now it would never happen. The best he could hope for was to retrace his path before the monsters overran all of Moss, make his way into northern Cathra, and retrieve the last remnant of Darasilo’s Trove that luckless Brother Scarth had concealed in the bear’s den: another Weathermaker, an Ice-Master, and a Destroyer. Three inactive Great Stones that would become, when activated by the incantations contained in the book hidden with them, superlative and hazardous weapons… but not for him.

It was enough to make the most stalwart sorcerer weep! On the hill in the rain, windwatching the monster horde encircle doomed

Fenguard Castle, Beynor ground his teeth together and cursed the God of the Heights and Depths and the most peculiar of the deity’s creatures, the Coldlight Army.

Beynor! Beynor, where are you? Respond to Master Kalawnn!

No, he wouldn’t respond—just in case there was a chance, sometime in the dubious future, of getting the Known Potency back. It would be good if Kalawnn thought he’d been prevented from making the rendezvous through some misfortune.

Beynor of Moss, you groundling conniver, respond to Ugusawnn the Supreme Warrior!

Respond

—

or suffer the dire consequences

!

He whooped with caustic laughter, startling his horse, which gave a nervous whicker and stamped its hooves. The dire consequences were already at hand! Since the Lights’ curse prevented him from using those three hidden Great Stones, he’d have to give them up to someone else. With luck, he’d find a way to retain some vestige of control over the surrogate wielder.

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That person would not be Kilian Blackhorse.

The traitorous alchymist was already secure in King Somarus’s new court, along with his cronies, stirring up trouble for Conrig

Wincantor. No, Beynor would need to find one who was both loyal and none too clever. It was a problem that would keep until later.

Beynor! Respond to Kalawnn. We have begun our assault on the castle. Come and join me without fear, young human. The Supreme

Warrior shall neither insult nor abuse you, for I am the designated Master of the Potency, not he.

Beynor!…

He could hear human screams and death-cries on the wind now, and the triumphant roars of the monsters. With a shudder he sent his thread of oversight winging far away to the southwest, beyond the Dismal Heights and the Dextral Range to the upland moors of Cathra where the bear’s den was. The remains of Scarth and his mule had long since been scattered by scavengers, and the great brown predator himself was not at home. But the leather saddlebag was still on the rock shelf, besmirched a little now by bat droppings and mold, but safe for all that.

Beynor banished the vision. Once again he erected the ingenious spell of couverture he’d learned from Kilian. Then he backed his horse out of the rocks and set off down the hill towards the Moss Lake Highroad.

==========

Stergos heard of the Salka invasion from the High Thaumaturge Zimroth, as she and most of the other members of the Glaumerie Guild barricaded themselves in a castle tower in a last stand against the attackers. Even as she related the frightful events then transpiring, her windvoice was abruptly stilled. No other Mossland magicker bespoke Stergos after that, nor was he able to scry so distant a scene himself. In haste, he bespoke the new head of Zeth Abbey, Abbas Bikoron, and begged him to learn what he could of the disaster.

It was very late. Stergos had been reading in bed when he was bespoken, and most of Gala Palace had retired for the night. It would not be appropriate to summon the High King to him, and yet Stergos felt he could trust no one to pass on such politically sensitive tidings. So he rose from his bed, took a walking stick, and limped to the royal suite, brushing aside the Knights of the Household standing guard and pounding on the door with the silver knob of his stick.

“My liege! Sire, open to me, your own brother!”

After a few minutes the sitting-room door flew wide. Conrig yanked the Royal Alchymist inside and shot the bolt. “What the devil d’you mean by this, Gossy? Risalla and I were fast asleep.”

Stergos tottered to a chair and dropped into it. “Moss has fallen to a huge army of invading Salka. I had the news from Lady Zimroth, trapped with other ranking conjurers in a Fenguard tower. I believe she perished even as she bespoke me.”

“Bazekoy’s Blood! So the rumors were true after all.” The king perched on the edge of another chair. He’d thrown on a light robe but wore nothing else. “Lord Admiral Skellhaven heard from fishermen that a vast pod of the brutes had been sighted on the high seas off the Dawntides, but I’d hoped it was some mistake.”

“Master Ridcanndal besought the aid of our navy,” Stergos said, staring at the floor. “He feared this was coming.”

“And I could not send the navy!” Conrig said. “My promise was made to Ullanoth, and she’s dead—if not before this, then surely now, after the Salka have despoiled her unbreathing body.

Our navy, and our armies as well, must stand ready to quell a rebellion in Didion.

That bastard Somarus has ‘postponed’ coming to Gala Blenholme in order to tender his oath of fealty. He’ll come in two weeks, he says!

The uproar in Moss will now give him an excuse to put the thing off indefinitely. Our fleet will
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take to sea, Gossy, but it will sail to

Didion Bay, not Moss, to remind that saucy kinglet whose vassal he is.”

“What will you do about Moss?” Stergos asked, without much hope.

“The only thing possible for now: contain the monsters there. The fens are ideal places for them to dwell, and they may not wish to move into drier lands. But we must learn what set them off.

And if it seems that they show signs of expanding beyond the miserable corner of Blenholme they now occupy, we must look more closely into the weaponry at their disposal.”

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“Zimroth said the assault forces used minor sigils. It was long thought that the Salka had only a few of the things, but perhaps the supposition was wrong.”

“Beynor was exiled to the Dawntide Isles,” Conrig recalled. “He could be the instigator. Zeth knows he wanted revenge against his sister and the others who would not support his pilfered kingship. Ulla believed him to be as mad as their slain father Linndal.”

“The earl marshal warned of war-clouds building in the north, Con, but I doubt he foresaw anything like this. Do you really think

Somarus will disavow fealty and challenge you?“

“Oh, yes,” the king said wearily. “Once I would have thought he’d come charging headlong over Great Pass with no more thought than a stampede of wild oxen. But now that Kilian has become his adviser, Somarus may learn more of generalship than any of his barbarian ancestors. If so, he may become a formidable adversary.”

“And large numbers of his people love him,” Stergos said, “as they did not love Honigalus.”

“A more serious worry of mine, now that we know the Salka threat is real, concerns a possible alliance between them and Didion.