"Which herald was this?" Blackgult asked quietly.
"Thorntrumpet. He passes through Stornbridge often-so often, in fact, that we've often suspected him of keeping a very close watch on us for some reason. To report to the King, of course, but our loyalty-"
"Is above question," Embra said firmly. "At Flowfoam, Lord Stornbridge's regarded as one of the most diligent and loyal of tersepts."
The Tersept of Stornbridge blinked at her in delighted surprise, and grew a broad smile. "Well, my lady," he said grandly from the head of the table, "it gladdens my heart to hear you speak so highly of my conduct. I assure you that Stornbridge stands ready, and ever shall, to… toooooo…"
Embra turned her head in time to see the Lord of Stornbridge Castle, already nodding over his sinking goblet, topple in earnest-and land nose-first, splashing gravy in all directions, in his roast boar.
"My lord?" she asked politely, as if minor nobles of Aglirta fell into their food and started snoring at table every evening in her presence. Embra took some small satisfaction in seeing the startlement of the four Storn officers, even the hitherto imperturbed Coinmaster. Seneschal Urbrindur even looked scandalized again-and for real this time.
For a moment she thought Stornbridge was dead, or at least in the process of suffocating in his food, but he promptly gave the assembled diners proof that he wasn't, in the form of a soft and fluttery snore.
It was followed by another, succeeded by many more. They didn't stay gentle or muted, by any means.
"Sounds like a boar in rut," Craer commented amusedly, saluting the snoring tersept with a raised goblet. Hawkril and Lornsar Ryethrel chuckled politely, but the seneschal looked enraged again, and the Tersept's Champion seemed scarcely less hostile.
Seneschal Urbrindur lifted one hand in an obvious sign to the chamber knaves, who advanced in silent unison.
Blackgult and Hawkril clapped hands to sword-hilts, and Embra made her visible hand glow with sudden warning fire-cold flames that scorched nothing, but proclaimed ready power.
The seneschal shook his head sourly. "Such won't be necessary, revered Overdukes. We mean you no harm, but we do desire that you retire to your chambers now, as shall we. Our Lord Tersept has been taken ill, and ‘twould be the height of rudeness to continue our feasting and chatter with him lying stricken in our midst."
He nodded gravely to the lornsar and then the Coinmaster, both of whom rose, nodded farewells, and strode out.
Eirevaur spoke to someone unseen as he entered an archway, and four cortahars hastened forth from it to lift Champion Pheldane, chair and all, and convey him from the chamber. By his startled movements and furious expression, this assistance took the Tersept's Champion entirely by surprise.
"Until the morrow, then?" Seneschal Urbrindur asked Stornbridge's guests, in tones that were not-quite-a firm dismissal, as the overdukes rose and glanced at the chamber knaves they each seemed to have suddenly acquired. Those servants carefully looked over overduchal shoulders, never meeting the eyes of Tshamarra or the Four.
"Until the morrow," Blackgult agreed, showing no outward sign of the faint nausea that was now clear upon the faces of his daughter and Lady Talasorn. Craer and Hawkril both wore unreadable expressions, but their unaccustomed silence bespoke their own troubled innards.
As the overdukes and their silent escorts set off together, the Golden Griffon asked the seneschal, "We're bedded in adjacent rooms, I trust?"
"Ah, I fear not," Urbrindur replied, his voice archness laid soothingly over quiet triumph. "The architecture of Stornbridge Castle unfortunately makes such a courtesy impossible."
"I'll bet," Craer commented in clearly audible tones, and noticed a fleeting smirk come and go on the face of the nearest chamber knave.
"No strangers to impossible courtesies, we," was Blackgult's formal reply. Uneasy silence fell, and in its throes they were led up a spiral flight of worn stone steps, in an echoing shaft that reached from an undercellar past six or seven floors to unseen battlements above.
Ascending two levels, the overdukes were conducted down a long, dimly lit passage. Its walls were studded with arched, magnificently carved doors, some of which were flanked by pairs of lit lamps hung from ceiling-rings, each with a cortahar standing guard beneath. "Behold me clearly, for I'm a target," Craer murmured to Hawkril, who smiled almost as tightly as the chamber knaves who bent close to hear.
Embra was ushered through the first such guarded door, and had just time to give Hawkril a silent look of alarm and appeal as she left them. Tshamarra was taken through the next, some sixty paces on and around a slight jog in the passage from Embra's chamber.
The servants took their three male guests up a back stair to another level; Blackgult's door awaited them across the passage at the top of it.
"Sleep well, my lords," he told Craer and Hawkril dryly, as he left them.
The procurer and the armaragor traded glances and shifted their gaits, Hawkril striding ahead so that his chamber knave had to hasten to stay with him, and Craer slowing so that the servant accompanying him unhappily fell behind his fellow.
"This door is yours, my lord," the Storn servant told Overduke Delnbone with clear relief in his voice, as they reached another lamplit and cortahar-guarded door. He swung the door wide.
An oil lamp glimmered softly on a stone-topped table flanked by a tall, narrow chair carved into the likeness of an arch of leafy vines. A canopied bed of similar style stood to the right, and a matching wardrobe to the left. Screens in distant corners discreetly concealed a tall mirror and a "thunder-chair," respectively.
On a large table to Craer's left stood a ewer in a bath-bowl, and another ewer with a pair of goblets. Before them on the gleaming tabletop Craer's battered saddlebags and their contents had been arranged in a neat row. Nothing seemed to be missing.
The chamber had neither connecting doors nor windows. Unbroken walls of elegant dark wood paneling rose to a lofty ceiling on all sides.
Craer smiled at those panels. They were relief-carved in splendid scenes that offered a hundred hiding places for spyholes-and had no doubt been liberally endowed with such features. Some might fire dart-traps to dissuade prying eyes or fingers, or even permit access to small storage drawers. A room like this was great entertainment to a procurer.
"May I be of assistance, Lord?" the chamber knave asked the ceiling carefully. Craer followed the servant's gaze upward, seeking traps, entrances, and additional evidence of spyholes. None were evident.
So Overduke Delnbone gave his most charming smile and said, "But of course. Tell me where the various secret passages, traps, spyholes, firing ports, and the like are hidden, around this room."
"I… uh… I…" The servant gaped at Craer as if he'd made an indecent personal suggestion involving horses and gamefowl and possibly the Tersept of Stornbridge himself, reddened, and shook. Craer watched with a quizzical smile, awaiting an answer.
The chamber knave regained his composure, gave the procurer a look of anger, and in utter silence wheeled around and marched out of the room.
"Have a pleasant evening," Craer called merrily after him, and then sighed and began his examination of the room for those features he'd just mentioned, muttering, "Which is more than I'll do, if my gut gets worse. Embra's magic can't catch everything, it seems. Something in the food." He shook his head, and then his fist. "If I die spewing and filling yon thunder-bowl, I'll haunt my slayer and send him the same fate-only worse. This I
swear"
He cocked his head and listened, gazing at the ceiling, but if the Three had heard his declaration, they gave no sign of it. As usual.
So here Craer Delnbone stood, in a den of foes who'd happily murder him and his four fellow overdukes-whilst some false overdukes were evidently traipsing around the Vale, working mischief… mischief they'd be free to go right on doing if the real overdukes quietly disappeared here in Stornbridge Castle. The Faceless might impersonate a person here or there, for a short time, but not five nobles riding around openly. The false overdukes were magically disguised Serpents, of course… and the road ahead was what it had always been, in all of these dark little dances for the throne of Aglirta: stay alive, and slay the Serpent-priests responsible.