They were crossing through about the midpoint of the back half of the castle, as far as Rod could judge, and all around them was dark silence-that waiting stillness-and closed doors. Again a meeting with a cross-passage, though the hallway they were in continued across it this time, and this time the glow of light was coming from the left.
Syregorn repeated the same little tactic he'd used before, with the same result. They headed to the right, away from the guards, all striding along with apparent unconcern.
"He's trying to remember where the stair up is," Thalden muttered to Rod. "There's one somewhere around here that's not as narrow as the servants' stairs at the back, nor quite as public as the grand staircase in the great rooms at the front. As you might imagine, we don't come strolling through Lyraunt Castle often."
"And you never will again," a calm, sardonic voice remarked, out of the darkness near at hand.
Thalden and all of the nearby knights whirled, daggers flashing out, but there was no one there, despite their hard scrutiny and peerings for concealed doors or spyholes. The voice seemed to have come from empty air.
"Sorcery," one knight muttered. "Malraun."
"No," Rod told them firmly. "That wasn't his voice."
Tarth and Reld both hissed curses under their breaths, and hastened to catch up to Syregorn.
The knights were trotting hard after them before the deep-voiced knight observed sourly, "Great. Lyrose has another wizard, too."
"Well," someone else observed merrily, "at least our deaths will be interesting.'"
"So they will," the sardonic voice agreed pleasantly, from far behind them. Rod stiffened, but it seemed only he and Thalden had heard it.
And Thalden's response was to dig his fingers into Rod's arm like so many iron-hard talons, and trot the Lord Archwizard along faster.
This was fun.
More fun than he'd had in years, in fact.
Lord Magrandar Lyrose smiled to himself in the darkness, and took his hand off the speaking-sphere. It was time to join his wife and daughter, in case the more violent of the magics the Doom had given him were needed. He was wearing his best black boots and his most dashing new garb-by the Falcon, the mirror had shown him back a fine figure of a man! — and his chased and polished gorget gleamed at his throat.
His fingers strayed to the familiar, comforting lines of that curving triangle of bright chased metal. He never took it off, these days, even to bed with his lady wife and despite her caustic remarks about it. She felt it shouted to all Falconfar that he trusted her not.
He shrugged. What of that? He trusted no one, and hadn't done so for as long as he could remember. Only fools trusted in others.
And only a fool would take off a personal shield enspelled and given by Malraun the Matchless. A shield that would heal Magrandar instantly of all wounds dealt by metal weapons and the ravages of poison-though it did not spare him the agony and debilitation of such hurts, ere it banished them.
Oh, yes, he could handle a few Hammerhand raiders. Even with most of his guards gone from their posts to muster into Pelmard's Irontarl-seizing force. If the cleverness he'd thought up worked, he'd manage it without even spilling much Lyrose blood. Huh. Pelmard would no doubt see to that.
Patting the hilt of his sword and the bracer hidden beneath the splendid cloth on the forearm of his free hand, he hurried out of his study.
This was a most important social engagement. It wouldn't do to be late.
"This way," Syregorn whispered, and boldly opened the door on the right. The veteran knights kept their stares on the other six closed doors that lined the small, rounded end of the passage, but none of those doors burst open to spew Lyrose knights at them. Syregorn's door led into darkness, and silence-to Rod, that same waiting, listening silence, as tense as a taut bowstring-reigned.
One after another, doing nothing to break that silence, the Hammerhands followed after their warcaptain.
Through the door, into a large open space; a great high hall. A set of doors at one end of it stood just a thumb-width ajar, letting in faint light enough for their eyes, accustomed to gloom, to see two tiers of balconies above, a wide, sweeping staircase ascending to the first of them, tapestries hanging on the walls wherever there were no doors-and there were a lot of doors, all of them in tall, grand pairs.
Except one. It stood open, breaking the only curving stretch of wall that bowed out into the room. This was evidently the base of a tower, because the door opened directly onto a spiral staircase that ascended steeply, entirely filling a cylindrical space beyond. They could tell that much, because faint glows arose from the painted edges of each step.
Right across the room was a gap in the wall, a large open archway rather than a door. It opened into another huge room, so dark that only the nearest end of three long feasting-tables could be seen, stretching away lined with chairs.
The hall itself, if one didn't count the tapestries and four braziers clustered together near the base of the grand staircase, was empty of furniture. Its flat, smooth bare floor was glossy and new-washed underfoot, a small sea of black tiles surrounding the Three Thorns of Lyrose, inlaid in tiles of some lighter hue.
Syregorn did not stride far out across that glossy floor.
"We've been herded here," he said suddenly, darting hard glances in one direction and then another, all around the hall, as he started around the room, keeping close to the walls. "This has been too easy-time and again, no servants where there should be, and too few guards. Lure in one direction, herd in another… Lyrose has meant us to come here, to this room."
"So this would be about the time their archers would come out onto the balconies, casting torches down on our heads to make us targets, and their knights burst in on us through every door," Tarth said bitterly, as the Hammerhand knights followed their warcaptain around the walls.
They all looked up as they did so, as if expecting all of those things to happen in answer to his words, but the dark silence hung unbroken.
Except in one direction. From beyond the doors that were letting in the light, from where that bright radiance was, nearer the front of Lyraunt Castle, there rose sudden loud voices. Voices that came swiftly nearer, accompanied by a bobbing light that could only be a lantern, and the noisy scrapes of boots scuffing along the floor.
"Every one of them? Why, there must be six-score! Why can't the Master Steward rearrange his own plates? I'm supposed to set up the braziers around the Thorns, and have all the bowls polished before-"
"I don't give the orders, Greth! Just do it-braziers first, mind! — and do it right for once, and mayhap he won't break any bowls over your head, this time! Not that I can even promise that, after what you-"
Greth and his lantern were almost at the doors, bare moments away from thrusting them open and discovering a room full of Hammerhand knights. Syregorn darted for the dark feasting-hall, and his knights hastened at his heels.
As they passed through the arch, there was a white flash, a purple flickering as strange, surging power awakened and gathered them in-power that reached out a long tentacle to englobe and snatch Rod and Thalden, who were still some strides away-and then the air itself swallowed them all.
Stealthy knights or not, every last one of them, the Lord Archwizard included, shouted in alarm.
But by then, of course, it was too late.
The shouts of the Hammerhands were cut off as sharply as if severed by the edge of a descending sword. In the alcove behind the tapestry, mere steps away from the gate that had swallowed the hated foes, Lord Lyrose unhooded the glowstone and smiled an unlovely smile.