Doors burst open with a sound like thunder, and liveried guards burst into the room, glaives and swords glittering, with the chambermaid who'd fled at their arrival at the head of one group. Her scream and pointing arm was ignored in the general roar of competing cries: "Hold! Surrender! Down arms!"
Embra rolled her eyes, Hulgor grinned at her, and the Dwaer flashed in her hand.
Guards sprinting across the polished floor skidded to astonished halts, and Nuelara screamed again. Hulgor Delcamper and the four armed intruders were gone, vanished as if they'd never been.
The guards stared helplessly… at a gently rocking decanter on a table, and four dark daggers floating in midair.
No one was there to stare back.
"The Three must hold this place sacred to them, for some special purpose," Ezendor Blackgult muttered, as he stood on a crumbling balcony of the sprawling ruins of the Silvertree Palace known to all Aglirta as the Silent House. The burial ground below him was an overgrown maze of trees, shrubs, and leaning tombs.
Then red and black rage rose in him again, choking-strong. Blackgult went to his knees and mindlessly clawed at the stones of a nearby stair for a few frantic breaths, ere he remembered his own name and went boiling up those same steps, to come out on the battlements.
Shuddering, he fought down the madness and stared grimly out across the Vale, to where the long green isle of Flowfoam lay in its quiet splendor out in the Silverflow.
Plague-rage, oh yes, burning strongest where he'd been bitten… poor Indalue must have been infected, and never knew it.
"So here I am at last," he told the uncaring wind bitterly. "Back in the Silent House, the haunted graveyard of half the mages and adventurers Aglirta has ever birthed-wrestling with the Blood Plague."
The rage rose again, and he started striding along the battlements, half-shouting, "If I could hold to my wits long enough, and remember a tenth of what I should be able to, I could heal myself with this!"
The rage passed like a spasm, and Blackgult held up the Dwaer he'd seized not long ago, regarded it regretfully, and whispered, "But I can't."
He walked aimlessly along the battlements, ignoring scattered human and beast bones and the black gorcraw vultures that flapped heavily away at his approach-to land again just out of reach, and watch him balefully… patiently.
Anger rose again, sudden and hot. "A weapon, yes-blast this, savage that, burn the other! Destroying's always easy… But crafting, mending, healing-why, gods, why do you make those so hard, hey? Afraid we struggling beasts will achieve something, and rob you of your entertainment?"
The wind snatched those bitter words away, but brought back no reply. Cold-faced, Ezendor Blackgult found a stair and started down. He'd seized this Stone from his own daughter.
To leave her defenseless while he died here, driven mad by the Blood Plague. Gods, to be laid low by the sneering Serpents at last! No! No!
He was roaring that aloud, he realized dimly, hammering the crumbling stonework with the Stone that could not shatter, screaming and raking the old stone blocks as if his bleeding ringers were talons that could rend…
Gasping, he found himself at the bottom of the stairs, in much pain. Evidently he'd fallen, and now had fresh bruises to add to the sickening plague-surging in his guts. He rolled over, sat up with a growl, and glared at the Dwaer.
Well, if die he must, adorned with this bauble half ambitious Darsar sought, he'd die using it, by the Horns of the Lady!
First, let it be revealed who else was in the Silent House beneath him, just now-what creatures were breathing, which ones were moving, who was making noise… and who was working magic.
Aha! Scuttling things, gliding snakes, lurching skeletons mindlessly guarding this chamber or that… an ancient, sighing awareness that was more of a seeing shadow than anything else… and a large group of frightened men in armor, busily looting an inner chamber under the snapped orders of no less than nine Serpent-priests!
Well, now. The Silent House did have a deadly reputation to maintain…
Ezendor Blackgult smiled like a prowling wolf, clutched the Dwaer to his breast in both hands as if it was a newborn babe, and set off into the darkness at a run, letting the rage build, but using the Dwaer to cling to scene after scene of the House ahead of him, and thereby hold to his wits… the Three willing…
"This, Lord Sir?" the warrior asked timidly, lifting a crumbling shoulder blade and the dangling brown bones of an upper arm. Two slim metal bracelets slid down them, green with verdigris but still displaying either runes or graven script.
"Yes! Take care, mind!" the Brother of the Serpent snapped, pointing an imperious finger into the open coffer the warriors had brought. "Wrap them twice around in those linens, so they'll directly touch nothing else we put in there!"
His glare promised the warrior death or maiming if there was any inadequacy in the wrapping, ere he spun around to shout, "You, there! Elmargh, or whatever your name is! Pry out the block just above yon carving-pry, I said, not smite!"
Ilmark of Sirlptar hid his grimace well. He'd been skilled at tapping out old mortar when this bellowing priest was spewing up mother's milk, and was doing this just as deftly now. Another two gentle taps, and an entire line of mortar fell away, allowing him to slide the flat blade of his mattock in under the wall block. Carefully he rocked it, letting the block break the rest of the mortar-and then, ever so slowly, he slid… it… out.
A large, dark space was revealed behind the block, and the priest of the Serpent fairly crowed in triumph.
"The Great Serpent rises in me!" he cried, throwing his arms wide and nearly knocking teeth from the mouths of the lesser priests on either side of him. "He has made me wise! Stand aside, warrior, and let me see what treasure awaits!"
He snatched a lantern from the nearest priest and strode forward, barely noticing the alacrity with which the warriors faded out of the way and back toward the mouth of the chamber. The other priests crowded forward behind him, murmuring, "Careful, Masterpriest Thraunt!" and, "What can you see, great Thraunt?"
Masterpriest Thraunt raised the lantern and peered carefully into the cavity in the wall, sudden wariness afflicting him. The Silent House was said to be riddled with traps, and he'd heard more than a few grisly tales of overbold treasure seekers who'd found their deaths instead of riches…
After a moment of tense peering, he could breathe again.
A few breaths later, he relaxed. There were no signs of guardian creatures, enchanted or otherwise-no spiders spell-slept to awaken when intruders disturbed their niche, nor crawling bone-things held together and given horrible unlife by spells. Nothing awaited above to slam down, or behind to fire or thrust out. Just a small statuette of an armored prince with a sword-as tall as his own head, and seemingly carved of a single, massive ruby.
There was lettering around its base, script of an archaic, elaborate flowing style little used in these more hasty days, but words he could read: Blood of Silvertree Know Better.
Hmmph. Well, they hadn't had they? They'd come to this their palace and Died, in their dozens, all struck down by the Doom of the Silvertrees! Perhaps this hidden statuette bore the anchor-spell of that ancient Silvertree curse.
He whirled around and snapped, "One of those cloths, and be quick about it!"
The priests wavered, and then one of them turned to call a warrior. Thraunt was quick to roar, "No! One of you: the Holy of the Serpent!"
The priests all looked at him with fear or perhaps respect in their eyes, and then stooped and scurried and elbowed each other in a way that brought fleeting, swiftly suppressed grins onto the faces of the watching warriors. Thraunt resolved to deal with those insolent idiots later, after…