Dust, darkness, and linens: a closet. Craer snapped his garotte into the gloom like a whip, encountering nothing. The moment he could see it was empty of cowering chamber knaves, he rebounded across the passage again to the third door.
This one crashed open to reveal three startled needle-wielding maids bent over a sewing frame. They screamed in unison, so Craer gave them a rakish grin, slammed the door on them, and sprang to the fourth door.
It was bolted, and shuddered under his attack. From behind it came a feminine gasp of alarm and a low, furious man's voice: "Notjyrf, Thalas! You promised this room until candletrimming, graul you!"
Craer grinned and flung himself at the fifth door. It opened-and he hurled himself to the floor as something fanged and hissing spun right at him!
His plunge took him to the very toes of his attacker, so he snapped his garotte around handy ankles, jerked, and then shoved.
The man cursed, flailed his arms for balance, and caught at someone else to keep from falling. By then Craer was up the man's legs and stabbing hard with one of his handy knives.
The Serpent-priest shrieked and snatched out his own dagger-only to really scream and come to a shuddering, quivering halt, as Craer's knife transfixed his other hand. The dagger clattered to the floor.
Craer twisted his blade, sending the priest to his knees in a sobbing howl. With his free hand the procurer grabbed the throat of the other man: the chamber knave he'd been chasing.
"Is this the man who cast the spell on you?" Craer hissed, shaking his knife so the priest's bleeding hand was dragged cruelly through the air, trailing its weeping owner. "Aye?"
"Y-yes," the servant choked, trying to shrink back through a wall to get away from the procurer… and failing miserably.
"You know him?" Craer snapped, his hand tightening.
"N-no, Lord, truly! H-he only arrived… castle… two days ago. I don't even know his name!"
Craer shoved the chamber knave, sending the man stumbling in search of balance. The procurer used that time to pluck up the priest's fallen dagger-a wavy blade with an open-jawed fanged serpent-pommel-and menace the servant with it, to make sure the man had no weapon and no chance to draw it if he did.
The knave shrank back, paling. "N-no! Mercy! 'Tis poisoned!"
Craer shook his own knife to keep the pain-wracked priest helpless, and held the snake-dagger up to the light. A stain that should not have been there-a deep greenish-purple distincdy different from blood, fresh or old-covered its keen point.
Craer thrust it at the chamber knave. As the servant screamed and tried to claw his way up the wall away from it, Craer reversed it and brought the rearing serpent-head down hard on a cringing skull. The servant collapsed without a sound, blood trickling from his nose.
Craer nodded approvingly-and then turned and drove the poisoned blade hilt-deep into the belly of its owner, point-first this time.
The Serpent-priest didn't even have time to scream ere he pitched forward on his face and bade farewell to all pain, forever…
"Well, Craer, you're the best," the procurer exclaimed-and then mockingly replied to himself: "Why, thank you. I hope they haven't eaten everything that's free of poison before I get back."
Jerking his knife free, he strode back the way he'd come, pausing only to rap on a door and growl, "Thalas. Come out, or by the Three, I'm coming in!"
"Thalas, you bastard!. You black-pizzled, lice-dripping, misbegotten son of a she-boar!" came the muffled but frantic reply, amid wordless feminine wails of alarm.
Craer grinned and set off down the passage before anyone could emerge. "Yes," he told himself fondly, "this is certainly going to get me killed some day. But not this day."
He paused a swift step later, thinking of the first guard, who must have recovered by now. "I hope."
In a palatial chamber of high dark bookshelves, blood-red walls, and many gilded wyvern-head carvings, a black-bearded man sat alone at feast.
The wine in his golden goblet was a shade darker than his crimson robes-and much darker than the flames of hot anger in his eyes.
The servants knew better than to tarry once they'd set his steaming platter before Multhas Bowdragon; the "Blackheart" (a name known across Arlund, though never uttered in its unwilling owner's hearing) possessed both a hot temper and a cruel, violent streak.
Multhas dined alone by choice, for it was his practice as he lingered over favorite dishes to gaze into saying-crystals and see what was unfolding across Asmarand. Their shifting glows lit a sharp-nosed, thin, and handsome face that might have belonged to a king or a high priest, if not to a mighty wizard-but to no softer man.
Multhas the Blackheart often brooded over real and imagined slights that both men and gods sent his way. He was brooding now. Why was his elder brother Dolmur the more powerful? Dolmur the quiet, who wasted so much time on fripperies like flowers and kindnesses and the cares of others. How was it that such a one commanded so much more respect than his brothers without ever resorting to open threats?
Oh, men respected Multhas Bowdragon well enough. They just all seemed to want to do it without ever meeting his eyes or dealing as friends or even coming within his sight if they didn't absolutely have to. They treated him with careful, wary courtesy, no trace of love-yet not the abject, terror-driven haste a mighty wizard should command by his very presence, either.
He must study men of power more closely. What they said, their small mannerisms, their stride, garb, and manners of dealing. What good is being a great wizard if you must blast men to have them obey you? Other mages need only smile or frown, and men leaped to do things unbidden, to keep them pleased or make them satisfied.
"That's the secret of the Three I must learn," Multhas muttered, looking up at the grimoires he kept closest. Old, thick spellbooks penned by the most powerful archwizards of long ago: Coraumaunth, and Meljrune, and-
"The Three reveal their secrets in their own good time, Multhas. Is hunting them in old tomes your wisest course?"
Multhas Bowdragon whirled around, almost upsetting his platter. "Who dares-?"
An intruder clad like a traveling mage stood at the far end of the room, facing him. Black hair, a soft and wise smile-and one hand hidden from view in a slit-pocket of wizardry robes.
Unfamiliar, yes, but Multhas had seen him before… through a scrying-sphere. Yes! Years ago, when he still dared to look upon Aglirta, before-
"My name," the man said pleasantly, "is Ingryl Ambelter. I come in peace, to make an offer I trust you'll find both profitable… and enjoyable."
Fear struck a chill deep in the Blackheart Bowdragon. It was only by the strongest of trembling efforts that he kept from flinching, or showing terror on his face.
Yet his unbidden guest smirked, as if every racing thought Multhas wrestled with was shouted aloud. Oh, he knew of Ingryl Ambelter, darkest of Silvertree's Dark Three, and quailed-and Ambelter knew it.
Multhas Bowdragon shook, willing mounting rage to overmaster his fear. How had Ambelter reached this innermost spellgirt chamber, passing wards without contest? What awesome power-?
The man had proclaimed himself Spellmaster of Silvertree-of All Aglirta, now, if Sirl gossip heard through the crystals could be believed-and some said he'd killed Baron Silvertree, the Risen King, and even the Great Serpent!
Certainly he'd butchered dozens of Sirl mages, decades back, sending slaying-spells by night… stealing through their wards unchecked, just like…
The Blackheart drew a deep breath. It might, after all, be his last.
"Ambelter," he echoed, keeping his voice steady, slow, and without any hint of weakness-or welcome. "I've heard that name before. Faerod Silvertree's mages… you were reckoned the most powerful of those 'Dark Three.' "