In the night below, down the Vale, many fires were now rising.
"So that's your game, is it?" Gadaster Mulkyn murmured. "Well, two can play at that. Flowfoam, ho!" The Dwaer flashed-and the balcony was empty.
"Claws of the Dark One," the king gasped, "is there no end to them?"
"Raulin," Hawkril growled, "get you down! A hurled blade could take your throat out in a trice in all this. Get back to guard Orele and let us fight without having to worry about you!"
Before the king could reply, several guards took him by the shoulders and ran him toward the rear, royal doors. Embra's Dwaer flashed on the far side of the chamber, momentarily making the darkened room full of howling, hacking men as bright as noonday. The flood of berserk Aglirtans seemed endless, stretching out the doors and down the passages for as far as the eye could see-and it mattered not how much they fought among themselves, if their numbers never ended. The palace guards were growing weary and being overwhelmed, one by one, overborne and hacked viciously by foes who cared nothing for their own safety, and blundered forward rather than being wary of blades. Only in the narrowest passages were their bodies now heaped high enough to block the way-but Flowfoam Palace was a warren of grand chambers, and it would take days to choke up all of its entrances with the dead.
The floor was slick with gore, in some places puddled inches deep, and still they came: a howling, madly hacking flood of men and maids armed with hayforks, belt-knives, and anything else that could crush or stab or slash. They gave battle to each other and anyone else they saw, wild-eyed and reckless. Courtiers had fallen like trampled weeds before them-if any such were left, they'd fled to cower in the deepest, darkest corners of the palace cellars and dungeons. The guards had died a little more slowly-but fallen they had, one after another, and still the seemingly endless flood of Aglirtans continued. Room by room, the defenders of the palace had been forced to give way.
By the faint gray glow stealing in through the windows, it was almost dawn. Gasping and leaning on their swords, the guards saw the king hustled out of the great throne room. Three Above, that they'd been forced to retreat this far!
At least, in the wake of Embra's latest Dwaer-blast and furious grunting and hacking on all of their parts, they'd found time for a rest at last, with the room momentarily empty of madly attacking, still-living Aglirtans.
"We must bar those doors!" one of the younger guards shouted excitedly, pointing around the Throne Chamber with his sword at the many grand and gilded entrances. His blade was notched and dripping blood that was not his own.
"No, no!" Hawkril snarled at him. "This room's a deathtrap for us, with our few blades. We fall back. Up the Wyvern Stair! We'll make our stand in the Hall of Shields, that has its own kitchens and apartments behind it, and only one back door to guard: that stair down to the cellars!"
" What stair down to the cellars?" the guardsman bellowed back, even as he nodded and waved a weary arm to beckon what was left of his command to rally around.
"The secret stair you've now been told about, obviously," Hulgor Delcamper roared, wiping away enough Aglirtan blood to let the guard see his toothy grin. In the same movement he lurched around to peer through his gore-matted hair at Hawkril and shouted, "Gods, man, but you sure know how to lay on battles here! I thought I'd been reduced to tussling over pillows and gown fastenings with chambermaids for the rest of my fading days, but this, now! Ho, yes!"
"Fun for you, Lord," a guard said sourly, "but death for us-and for Aglirta."
"Hey, now," Hawkril told the man, as they watched a terrified-looking, gasping courtier run in through one of the rear royal doors, with a pair of guards. " 'Tis the Serpent-sown plague that's done this-and we've fought down the Serpents twice before, these last few seasons, as others did many times in older years… and there's still an Aglirta for the Snake-lovers to come and attack, isn't there?"
A guard chuckled. "Well said."
Others around him, however, shook their heads wearily, and one of them muttered bitterly, "Not that we'll live to see more of it."
The doors boomed open, and a blood-drenched titan of a man in full armor came staggering in. The guards whirled around and raised their weapons, but the arriving warrior thrust back the visor of his helm and grinned at them.
"Your magic worked, Daughter!" Ezendor Blackgult roared. "I'm myself once more! Now, which of you idiots let all this rabble into the palace? They've been falling off my sword all the way from the South Armory." Espying the pale-faced and trembling courtier who'd just arrived, he barked, "You! Next time, dolt, leave my armor where I can get it, instead of prettying it up to prop in some palace passage. Though seemingly hundreds of plague-crazed Vale folk are trying to violently change my health, I'm not quite dead yet!"
The courtier stammered something incoherent and tried to pluck at the Lady Silvertree's sleeve-only to spring back with a shriek, as the glittering point of a war sword stabbed at him.
The hulking armaragor on the other end of it gave the courtier a cold look and snarled, "Unhand my lady, or die!"
"Ah-uh-uh," the courtier blurted, backing away until he ran into the flat of a guard's sword, held horizontally as a none-too-friendly barrier. "I come from Overduke Craer! He needs the Lady Embra, at once!"
"Oh he does, does he?" the Lady of Jewels sighed. "What's he gotten himself into this time? A little plundering of palace vaults gone wrong? A chambermaid not quite so willing as he'd thought?"
Several of the guards chuckled, but the courtier gabbled, "W-wouldn't say, Lady. Called through his bedchamber door… something about the Lady Talasorn…"
"Hulgor, stay with Hawk," Embra snapped, striding toward the door the courtier had come in by and plucking that startled dandy by the sleeve, to drag him along with her. "Lorivar, bring two of your best and accompany us."
A guard who until that moment hadn't known the Lady Silvertree even knew his name flushed with pleasure and surprise, and snapped, "At once, Lady!"
Embra thanked him with a tight smile, not slowing. Looking back at them as she made for the doors, she snapped, "Let there be no dispute: Follow the Lord Anharu's orders, and fall back to the Hall of Shields! Mind you bring the King and the Lady Orele as you go!" She held up the Dwaer, and added, "One thing this bauble tells me: The palace is still full of the plague-mad, and they're slaying everyone they meet!"
"Well, that's nothing new," one of the oldest guards growled. "The whole Vale's always been full of mad folk who kill everyone they mislike the look of. They've just brought their ways here to the palace, that's all."
"Nay," another guard muttered, "that's where ye're wrong. Such folk have never left the palace-begging your pardon, Lords-down all the years I've been alive in Aglirta."
Some of the guards glanced swiftly at Hawkril, expecting an explosion at these near-treasonous words, but the huge armaragor merely grinned and grunted, "May there be many more, loyal sword. Many more for us all."
"Not much chance of that, I'm thinking," the youngest guard whispered, leaning on his sword and watching drops of other people's blood drip from his drenched hair down into the puddle at his feet-but his words were very faint, and only he heard them, in all the gasping for air of that weary fellowship of mad slayers.
"Who comes?" snapped the voice from inside, as a blade thrust warningly forth through the gap between the double doors.
"The Lady Silvertree, Lady Overduke of Aglirta," Embra snapped. "Now open up, or I'll blast these doors down!"
"How do I know-" the guard within started to say, but a deeper, older voice beside him snarled, "Idiot! Help me with the bar!"
"But-" the guard offered, as the bar raided. Embra shook her head in weary exasperation as the courtier beside her cried, "Open up! It's dangerous out here!"