Ed Greenwood - Band of Four 02 - The Vacant Throne

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The Vacant Throne
Book 2 of Band of Four series
By Ed Greenwood
Scanned by Highroller
Proofed and formatted by BW-SciFi
Ebook version 1.0
Prologue
The old minstrel shook his head. " 'Tis hard to believe, lad," he said to the depths of his empty tankard,
"even for such as us. Legends come to life—four vagabond adventurers, one of them the Lady of Jewels
with her spells swirling around her like fire, rousing the Lost King back to us."
Flaeros Delcamper nodded, eyes shining. "I know," he almost babbled, "but it did befall, just as I've said!
I was there! I stood in the throne room on Flowfoam Isle and saw the barons kneel to the Risen King!"
His voice was rising, he knew, but Flaeros cared not. So what if the remembered thrill made him
babble? He was home in Ragalar, in the tankard-hung back room of the Old Lion, and the man across the
table from him had been house minstrel to the Delcampers for near a century, and tutor to Flaeros since
he'd been a muddy-faced boy.
Old Baergin smiled and shook his head again in disbelief, even though all Darsar had heard by now that
the king had returned to Aglirta, and a shining future of peace and prosperity could well be opening up
before every last jack and lady who saw the sun rise and the moon fall.
The hands that had guided the fumbling fingers of Flaeros on their first tentative pluckings at harp-strings
and travels up and down pipes set down their tankard, and their owner asked softly, "So what of these
famous Four now, lad? What was the last you saw of them?"
Flaeros took a generous swig from his own tankard and replied happily, "The Risen King summoned
them for a private audience, just before I left the Isle, and then sent them forth on a mysterious errand!"
Baergin nodded again, glanced once over his shoulder at the folk in the Lion who'd drifted closer to
stand listening while trying not to be doing so, and asked with the wry beginnings of a smile, "And have you
begun your ballad about it all?"
"Not yet," Flaeros told him, a little embarrassed. "Soon, but not yet."
Baergin lifted his shoulders in a shrug, and said in a voice that was barely more than a grim whisper,
"That's a pity. I'd have liked to hear it."
He rose in a smooth, unhurried surge to lean forward across the table—and in the arm that was drawn
back at his side, ready to thrust forward, gleamed the long, wicked length of a drawn dagger.
It flashed down, and almost by accident the astonished Flaeros struck it aside with his tankard.
His longtime mentor stabbed again, viciously, and Flaeros flung himself desperately sideways in his seat,
kicking out at Baergin's knees and cursing in surprised dismay.
The bright steel fang bit into the paneled wall a few fingerwidths away from the young bard's ear, and
Flaeros dashed the dregs of his tankard into Baergin's face as the old minstrel tugged his blade free.
Baergin spat out beer and slashed blindly, but the young bard was whirling away around the end of their
table, headed for the nearest door.
And waiting trouble.
Even before Baergin shouted, "To me!" from behind him, Flaeros was twisting aside from the greasy
leather stormshields that hung in front of the door—as a grim-faced armaragor burst through them, sword
drawn.
There was another battle-knight behind the first, and both of them wore full armor, without any sigil on
their breastplates. Some of the patrons of the Lion had their swords out now, too, and were advancing on
Flaeros with warily intent faces. From the far end of the many-pillared taproom came the glint of more
armor, and the bobbing helms of more armaragors.
Gods, he was going to die.
Something flashed past the young bard's eyes, caressing his shoulder with the lightest of touches as it
hurtled past, to ring and clang to the floor past the nose of a farmer cowering low over his tankard. Flaeros
turned with a snarl in time to see Baergin drawing another dagger, and then whirled again to the only way
still open to him: the stairs.
He pounded up the creaking treads into the darkness of the Lion's rental rooms, heedless of who he
might bowl over or shoulder aside, and shouts arose in the room below as the armaragors charged after
him.
Panting now, Flaeros leaped up the next flight of stairs, heard with momentary satisfaction the crash of
the foremost armaragor running straight into the edge of a door flung open by a bewildered renter, and
raced like the wind along the low-ceilinged top floor of the Lion. There was a back stair down the outside
wall, and if he could only just...
The door was barred. The young bard whimpered in fear as he franti-cally tore aside the bar and its
holding-chain, flung up the latchpeg, and—
Found himself staring into the wolfish grins of three—no, five—armaragors who were mounting the last
flight of the stairs, their well-used swords drawn.
Flaeros gaped at them in despair, and then in desperation swung him-self around the top step, onto the
little balcony where Kessra was wont to hang the washing from. Her line was far too old, gray, and
fur-flimsy to hold him, and it stretched out a very long way across a deep gulf of cobbled stableyard, but the
next house over had a balcony of its own, and its rail was much closer. A dozen feet away, perhaps.
Or more. Flaeros stared at the gap between the two balconies as feet pounded up behind him, and
wondered if it would hurt more to smash down onto the dung-slick cobbles, or take a few swords through
his guts. . . .
An armaragor shouted in exultation right behind him, and Flaeros snarled a desperate curse and sprang
up onto the rail, gathering himself—
As the young bard's despairing cry echoed around the stableyard of the Lion, a cowled figure strode out
onto a balcony high above the swarming armaragors and their ready blades, looked down, and hissed in
anticipation.
The hand that closed on a balcony rail for support as the observer leaned out to see the fate of Flaeros
Delcamper was gray and covered with scales.
1
No Shield Like Loyalty
Birds whirred, called, and shed droppings copiously in the ruined, riven place that had until recently been
a high-domed library (though it had been a very long time since its shelves had known books, and its aisles
the tread of folk intending to read them).
The deep wood had closed its green grip again around the ruins of abandoned Indraevyn almost uneasily,
as if expecting more warriors and wizards to boil up out of the overgrown stones at any moment and split
the soft forest sounds with the ringing of blade on blade and the ear-shattering cracks of striking battle
spells.
But days and nights had passed, and no more such combatants had come. The carrion-eaters had
plucked and crawled and gnawed at the sprawled bodies of the fallen, cracking and scattering bones, and
no new alarum arose.
The creepers had advanced their patient tendrils, and things that squeaked and slithered had done so,
and the Loaurimm had closed its hand over Indraevyn again. The forest had stood unbroken before men
had come to Silverflow Vale to hew and burn and plough—and if the day came that all the men were gone,
it would as slowly and surely reclaim the cleared banks of the Silverflow, and in the end swallow every last
road and tower.
Soon after bloody battle and the hewing and burning that had preceded it, laying bare so many walls and
doors, Indraevyn looked more like a forest-cloaked rockpile than something men had built. The casual eye
would have seen raw nature, not the failing hand of man.
Except for six eerie shafts of glowing light that hung in a silent, vertical row in the heart of the riven
library, a book floating immobile in each.
Something moved among those pillars of glowing nothingness. It shuf-fled often into the nether reaches
of the shafts, to stand looking up vainly for silent hours before lurching over cracked and scorched
flagstones to the next shaft, and the next. It was something that might once have been a man, though it
looked more like the mottled brown reassembled remnants of a bad and once-shattered sculpture of one,
with spindly arms of differing lengths, lopsided shoulders, and a head that was too long, thin, and jagged.
None of which kept it from lurching and shuffling its slow, eerie way around the ruins, returning always
to the library, and those six silent shafts of light—just as it was shuffling into the northernmost column of
glowing air now.
To stand as always, head turned up to the books floating beyond reach, the books impervious to its small
magics ... just as they were "not there" to every rock and branch it had contrived to throw up, at—and
through—them.
Yet it had nowhere else to go, no other magic to sustain it but the end-less glow at the heart of
Indraevyn, and little magic at its command when it moved out of the library—so here it stood again, waiting
with a patience that owed less to sanity than to burning hunger.
The rags of robes not its own hung from its shoulders, as tattered as the flesh beneath. Withered flesh
and sinew as brown and as dry as old fallen leaves clung to its shattered bones, though someone who'd
known the wiz-ard in life would have had to stare long and hard at the withered brown skeletal thing to
recognize Phalagh of Ornentar—though he was closer to his old vigor now than when he'd died, torn to
glistening gobbets pattering bloodily down into the pit that had held the Stone of Life for so long. Time
enough to leave behind weird weavings that had reshaped a man with ago-nizing slowness, building bone
and rotting flesh together in a rising heap that had one day stood, and lifted arms, and climbed.
Up into the shattered hall above the pit where Phalagh had died the silent thing came, to endlessly,
almost mindlessly, stumble around its gloomy rubble, exploring. Examining every crack and corner, every
fallen stone and collapsed shelf, for days upon days it shuffled, until it knew them.
Basking betimes in uncovered magics as if they were warming pools of sunlight, it stretched forth
sudden hands to work faltering magics, raising a wall here and the fallen rubble, like a shower of rock in
reverse, springing upward in an eerie flow, to restore an arc of the dome there.
It was rebuilding the place where it had met its death, as if raising its own mausoleum. And all without a
word uttered, and no sound but the lurchings and shufflings of its lopsided journeying.
That silent something now turned its head suddenly, stiffening like a dog that has scented something.
Two cold and tiny points of light kindled in empty eyesockets. Some-thing was coming—something had
disturbed its warding spells. The death-less skeleton that had been Phalagh shuffled forward a few paces,
and then drew back into the nearest shadows like a thief disturbed by returning owners.
Two men stepped into the roofless library, their cautious strides almost as soundless as those of the
skeletal thing whose eyes now glittered watch-fully in the gloom. One was a short, slender, graceful man,
the other a hulk-ing warrior as tall and wide as many a door, the sword in his hand almost as long as his
companion stood tall. Two others followed these forefarers, and all four moved warily, looking around at
ruined walls and tumbled shelves as they came.
All of the Band of Four remembered well their last visit to this place. As they came to where they could
at last see the shafts of light clearly, Craer even murmured, "Almost getting ourselves slain last time wasn't
enough, Lady? You've brought us back to try again, until we do it properly?"
Even as the lone woman in the group twisted wry lips to frame a reply, the deathless wizard in the
shadows raised clawlike hands, the radiance of a building spell flickering around them. Dark red and black
were those glows, hues that betokened nothing good. As their angry leapings flared, the glit-tering eyes
behind them flickered red and black too. The undying thing that had been Phalagh seemed to grow, standing
taller as destroying magics raged up and down its arms, and skeletal fingers spread to point at the four
intruders. ...
"Your Majesty," the Tersept of Helvand said, almost snapping his words, "I cannot speak for the
continued loyalty of the merchants of Helvand if royal assent is not given to our—their—plans to launch
new trading barges. With every day Helvand waits, coins slip away!"
"Yet," the Tersept of Yarsimbra snarled, from the other side of the River Throne, "Your Majesty can
hardly fail to have noticed that fires struck the barges of Yarsimbra at their docks on three successive
nights. Lightning strikes, Helvand claims—yet no storms rode the sky on those nights. Light-nings out of a
clear sky? When Helvand just happens to have opened a new shipyard? Me, I doubt the Risen King is
quite so stupid as Helvand seems to think he is!"
"Majesty," the Tersept of Helvand hissed, "must we listen to the unbridled lies this man speaks? Does his
title give him leave to impugn and sneer and slander freely?"
King Snowsar kept his face as blank and calmly patient as stone, mov-ing only his eyes to fix a dark and
level gaze on each of the two wrangling tersepts in turn. Anger and the desire to yawn rose together behind
his face, but he let that inward roiling touch only his eyes.
Helvand took no notice of such subtle warnings. Like the men he served, Ul—Ulgund, that was the
man's name!—strode straight forward through life, trampling or thrusting aside anyone who stood in the
way. Hel-vand was the north shore of the Silverflow just upriver of Sirlptar, a succes-sion of wooded
estates owned by merchants rich enough to rise out of the crowding of the Glittering City and build secure
castles of their own. Not that such pursuits meant they were retiring from the slap-and-dagger ways of
Sirlptar ... or bending their knees overmuch to a king who stepped out of legend to sit on a dusty throne far
upriver. "What Helvand wants, Hel-vand gets," this strutting tersept had warned the king a few breaths ago,
his tone adding the unspoken threat or else loudly enough for some of the sur-rounding courtiers to wince
visibly.
Yarsimbra was hardly better. The long-independent point of land that jutted north from Sart to force the
Silverflow into one last pair of bends ere it reached the sea had years ago attained the wealth and
sophistication the merchants of Helvand were now so eagerly seizing—and it seemed Yarsim-bra would do
just about anything to keep not only its abundant coins, but its dominance over lower river trade. Poisonings
and the summoning of hireswords had already befallen—and the king could well believe no one had paused
for an instant to consider the danger such things brought to Aglirta.
Not caring about consequences: a problem for a king when almost all of his appointed rulers, as well as
every last swaggering one of the nobility, suf-fered from this disease. These two tersepts had probably
forgotten that he could dismiss them at will—or were prepared to ignore any dismissal he might order,
according him all the authority granted to the flapping mouth of a dowager aunt shut up somewhere alone to
rail at servants where once she'd lectured a baron daily.
Abruptly he was very tired of it all. King Kelgrael Snowsar rose like a rearing lion, in a single graceful
bound, and spread his hands, flat and palms down, in a vicious chopping motion that brought sudden silence
to the room.
This, at least, he was able to do: dominate his court by sheer presence and the heavy threat of his
displeasure. A hundred eyes were locked on him now, seeking to read meaning into his smallest movement,
gesture, utter-ance, or shift in expression.
He left them little room for sly interpretations. "Both of you have raised valid points, lords—points a wise
ruler needs time to ponder, so as to dis-pense justice as fair and farsighted as it is royal. Blustering will not
bring me to decisions any the faster, my Lord of Yarsimbra—"
He bent a colder gaze than before on the older, shorter tersept, who met it with an impassive stare that
held far too little fear ... or respect.
"Nor, my Lord of Helvand, is threatening your king likely to force his tongue into wagging the way you
want it to."
The younger tersept was seething with boiling rage, and looked it; the king had expected no shame or
deference in those glittering eyes, and found none.
He continued on, his voice calmer than he felt. "You may protest that you intended neither to bluster nor
threaten, and that I misjudge you. Be reminded that misjudging is a royal prerogative—and more: that both
of you are my Lords, to appoint or dismiss at my pleasure. Barons may claim to have some blood right to
watch over, and fight for, that part of Aglirta that knew the rule of their fathers, and forefathers; you,
Lords, do not. Be my agent in your demesne, not its advocate before me. Be that—or be nothing."
"But—" The Tersept of Yarsimbra saw his straying into overboldness the instant he'd launched himself,
and fell firmly silent, bowing his head in apology or genuflection. His rival tersept was not so prudent.
"My father was Lord in Helvand before me," the younger tersept snarled, his face white with anger and
his voice trembling, "and his father was Lord before that—while Aglirta had no king, and barons and
brigands alike did as they pleased. We did what we had to do, for our people, and asked no one for 'royal
permission' about anything. So now, before you demand that I plead and crawl before your throne, King of
Aglirta, tell me this: just what do I, and the good people of Helvand who stand behind me, gain from having
someone sitting on the River Throne again? What good is a king to me?"
Those last words echoed around a room that had otherwise fallen utterly silent. The tense silence of
warriors waiting, with hands near sword hilts, for battle soon to come. A young boy among them—a boy
with jet-black eyes, now grown large and awed—seemed to be trembling on the edge of tears.
All eyes were on the king, watching and waiting. Kelgrael Snowsar slowly raised himself to his full
height, towering over the tersept a step below him—the Lord of Helvand who'd drawn back one wary
pace, but who now stood with his hand at his own belt... on the pommel of the long knife scabbarded there.
Ready for a fight.
The king smiled into the heavy, deepening silence, and said, "You ask a very good question, Ulgund of
Helvand: what good is a king to the folk of Aglirta now? This is a question the entire realm deserves an
answer to—but you ask it of the wrong man. I am king, as I was king before the grandsire you speak of
was tersept over Helvand—"
The Risen King gave the young tersept a look that had quiet steel in it before he lifted his eyes to gaze
around the throne room.
"—and my answer can't be seen, by most of you, as anything better than self-serving. You are the
proper folk to answer this ... for who better than the people of Aglirta to say what good a king is to them
now?"
He set the Scepter of Aglirta in the crook of his arm and strode to the edge of the throne dais, arms
crossed, to stand looking down on them all, as tall and menacing as a drawn sword. "Wherefore you shall
have your time to think on this, from now until the turning of the year. At that time a recor-onation shall be
held in this chamber. I hope that all Aglirtans who've thought about it, and decided they do need a king, will
attend. On that day I shall expect all barons and tersepts of the realm to swear fresh oaths of fealty to me.
Those who choose not to, or choose not to attend, may well be replaced."
King Snowsar let his calm, level gaze travel slowly from face to face among the throngs of
dumbfounded courtiers, and added, "Of course, if sufficient Aglirtans of rank choose to stand against me
rather than to reaf-firm their loyalties to the rightful king, it shall be my duty, for the good of the realm, to
both stand aside from the River Throne—and to name my suc-cessor. To do anything else would be to
plunge fair Aglirta into war. Those who would have no king, or no king of my choosing, would do well to
think on this last point, and decide how well they could defend the realm if they cast it forth into the hazard
of lawlessness. Or rather, the wild 'law' of barons, brigands, and wizards that arose during my long
slumber."
What might have been the beginnings of a smile tugged at one corner of the king's mouth as he looked
around his royal court. The same busily whispering men whose soft tongues and heartless schemings had so
beset him with intrigues were—for just a few moments more, he was sure—united in their stunned silence.
He had surprised—shocked—everyone.
One of the two tersepts who stood closest to the throne stirred, opened his mouth as if to say something,
and then fell silent again, a puzzled frown large upon his features.
"Yes, Pelard of Yarsimbra?" King Snowsar asked gently, letting a real smile onto his face for the first
time.
As the courtier shook his head, not able to frame the words that would be politic amid his racing
thoughts, the smile on the face of the Risen King grew and grew, until it shone as brightly as any of the
many clusters of gems worn by the splendidly garbed courtiers of Flowfoam Isle.
"An eerie place, to be sure," Hawkril murmured, taking a step back and waving at his companions to do
the same.
Something tiny but black-spined scuttled from behind one fallen rock, ahead, and darted in behind
another.
Craer nodded. "Perhaps so, but I'd rather be here—even with monsters or brigands waiting behind every
third archway—than in that pit of vipers around the king."
Embra lifted an eyebrow. "You speak of the royal court of Aglirta, I presume?"
"The same. I wonder how many barons' wizards simply melted into other faces and names, and rushed
to be courtiers so as to stand as close to power as they'd been before."
Sarasper frowned. "Now, that's a thought. Where did all those dandies and snaketongues come from,
anyway? They couldn't just have risen in full finery up out of caves and cottages on Flowfoam Isle—not
when the Bloody Baron himself—sorry, lass—"
"No apology needed," Embra murmured, waving at him to speak on.
"—had a guarded and vigilant fortress on top of the whole thing!"
"The Koglaur?" Hawkril asked.
"There're that many of them? And why would they step so boldly into the heart of things, when their
way is to hide and work unseen?"
"Boldly into roles of greed and stupidity and self-serving scheming, too," Craer added. He caught a
knowing look from the armaragor, and smil-ingly added, "A god's joy-bower for some of us, aye, but not the
way of Koglaur, I'm thinking."
"So where did they all come from?" Embra Silvertree asked softly.
Sarasper nodded. "I'll grant we may be very wrong in thinking them all an army of allies rather than foes
and rivals locked in endless dispute, but, lass, you really mean three deeper queries: who are they, who do
they really serve, and what are their plans for Aglirta?"
Embra nodded. "Indeed. I'm thinking that finding those answers may be the task the king really needs us
to do, rather than the Dwaer-hunting mission he sent us on."
"And I'm thinking," Hawkril rumbled, resuming his wary advance with his warsword raised and ready,
"that our king is no fool—and that the task you name is one and the same thing as our royal mission."
2
No Wizards Without Secrets
Tall candles were flickering low in their rows of gleaming, man-high wooden holders as a man whose
face was as beautiful as many a maid's threaded his way between them, for the hour was late, later than
Baron Audeman Glarond was wont to be still dressed and striding about; the Lord of Glarond wasn't known
as a man of stamina or firm purpose. Yet his large, dark eyes seemed hard and purposeful enough now, as
he adjusted a lamp above a lectern and set down the book he was carrying in its glow, opening it to a
marked place.
" 'Forsooth the flimflam jabber rose spearescent against the sun, mark-ing its bright flight with clangour
o'erwhelming the very orbs of those who so wretchedly beheld its bold career,' " he muttered aloud, before
slamming the book shut and adding almost fiercely, "Great bard or no, I can't under-stand a word of it!
Drivel—all around me, drivel!"
The light behind him changed, and the Baron of Glarond whirled around with an abruptness more suited
to a man of war than a lover of poetry. This tense alertness was not lost on the man whose approach had
blocked the light of the candles along the passage, and his soft-voiced mur-mur was swift. "Me, Lord. Only
Margurpin."
"And what, good Mar, brings you hence at this hour?" the baron asked calmly, sounding very much as if
he already knew.
His steward carefully did not raise an eyebrow at his master's tone, but they'd known each other for
long years. His careful lack of expression, as their eyes met, meant very much the same thing.
Margurpin was swiftly growing gaunt and old beyond his years in the service of Glarond, plagued by
constant small troubles—like the matter that was troubling him now. "Lord," he said without pause, "you
have visitors. Two men, cowled, by their voices strangers to me. They stand now at your garden gate,
saying they are expected and would have words with you, and will say no more. Three guardposts they
must have passed or forced pas-sage through, to get so far—without a horn-cry or even a shout."
The steward's weary gray eyes were almost accusatory as he lifted a habit-driven hand to stroke his
thin moustache.
The baron merely nodded, and said, "Show them in, to this room, and then withdraw for the night, good
steward. All is well, and shall be."
Those last words were empty, a phrase that fell from the baron's lips twoscore times a day or more, but
Margurpin seemed to take comfort from his master's confidence, and bowed gracefully as he echoed,
"Well, and shall be." The three flying swans of Glarond embroidered tastefully on the foreshoulder of his
tabard caught the candlelight as he turned to go.
The baron plucked up the offending book of poetry with one hand, and made a certain signal with the
fingers of the other; in answer, a curtain far across the room twitched aside, to reveal an old, pinch-faced
man with a long, sharp nose and magnificent high-collared robes. As he stepped forth, for all his splendor,
there was something furtive in his gait and manner. Not for nothing was Rustal Faulkron, Court Wizard of
Glarond, called by some (behind his back and in dark streets) "Old Man Rat."
"Mar seems perturbed," the baron said, mild amusement in his tones.
"He always is," Faulkron replied, doing something deft in the air with his fingers that caused sparks to
wink into brief life around his hands, "and yet the sun always rises the next morn, unmoved by his
worryings."
The wizard was shrinking as he spoke, dwindling down into something gray and hairy. Something low
and sinuous, that stretched, catlike, while the baron watched with a kind of fascination. It was only a matter
of moments before a gray cat paused to regard Audeman Glarond thought-fully before slinking under the
baron's chair. The wand the wizard had placed ready there was winking with tiny witchlights of aroused
power, but the cat curled up on top of it as if it had been the softest of sleeping-furs, hid-ing it from view,
and settled down in feigned slumber, its eyes mere slits.
By then the baron had made his own preparations for the receiving of important guests. The book of
poetry had been set flat on the wide, bare lip of a high bookshelf—and from behind the books crowding that
shelf their owner had drawn forth something small and spiked that nestled easily into the baron's palm. He
put that hand behind his back as he turned to face the candlelit passage.
The flames there were already aflicker, Mar's careful face seeming almost to float among them as he
came. The cowled heads behind him seemed to glide along with sinister grace, like too many self-important
priests the Lord of Glarond had seen, as the steward stepped into the room and stood aside.
"My lords," he announced, "behold the Lord Audeman Glarond, sun of all our days in this fair barony."
Two heads tilted in brief acknowledgment, but spoke no words. The steward turned from them to his
master, and added blandly, "My Lord, two guests for you," before pivoting smoothly and setting off back
down the pas-sage. One of the cowled heads turned to watch him go; the other measured Baron Glarond,
seeing a tall and muscled man wearing a magnificent green silk evening robe with the easy grace of the lion
who knows his looks are splendid. Flawless skin, a mane of long, flowing, curly auburn hair bedewed with
much perfume, framing a face dominated by large, nearly feminine dark eyes—orbs that almost distracted
the eye from a knowing, faintly mocking smile beneath.
The rearmost guest turned his head from watching the passage, and he and his fellow doffed their cowls
together.
"Maerlin," Baron Glarond greeted the foremost man politely. They shared faint smiles that their eyes did
not echo, and the Baron Urwythe Maerlin lifted a many-ringed hand in an almost idle wave. "My Court
Mage," he said, "Corloun."
The wizard was burly, with hair the hue of dirty straw, and pale gray eyes like chips of ice. His greeting
was a blunt question. "You are alone?"
Glarond smiled faintly. "Hardly."
The mage's hands moved in hurried gestures, shaping a shielding magic that would foil those who
watched and listened both from a nearby chamber or by spell, from afar. Its flowering became a sudden
flurry of flamelike radiances in the air around Corloun, a sign that it was clawing vainly at an already active
shielding magic that would prevent it from form-ing. The wizard lifted his head to give the Baron Glarond a
frown. "You work magic?"
The baron gave him that same faint smile once more, and said almost gently, "Evidently."
Corloun's face darkened with irritation and he opened his mouth to speak, but Baron Maerlin put a hand
on the wizard's arm in what was evi-dently a command for silence. His neat goatee and round face gave
him a feline look as he advanced a step and asked, "You've heard the latest, I pre-sume?"
Glarond nodded. "My eyes at court are as attentive as yours. I was spellspoken no more than a few
breaths after our Risen King finished shocking the assembled."
"As was I," Maerlin said, turning to pace across the room. "Fresh oaths for us all—fresh insults—and a
recrowning that must not be allowed to happen."
Maerlin's wizard took a smooth step to one side, to where he could face both men clearly. Corloun kept
his hands out of sight in the folds of his robe, doubtless holding some magic ready, but neither baron spared
him a glance.
The Lord of Glarond folded his arms calmly across his chest. "Making this meeting rather more urgent."
Maerlin shook his head in mounting anger rather than disagreement, and let bitterness creep into his
voice. "He'll put his toadies into Silvertree, Blackgult, and Brightpennant, and probably Phelinndar and
Tarlagar, too, cow Adeln and probably Loushoond into doing whatever he says—and we'll never have room
or coin enough to whelm swords against him."
"Whelm we must," Glarond replied, and lifted his lip in a sneering smile as he added, "as any prudent
Vale ruler must do forthwith, with Serpent-priests on the move again, bustling here and everywhere with
blades and dark spells and hired cabals. Defending our land is but our duty."
Maerlin let a smile devoid of mirth pass across his face. "Excuse enough," he agreed, "because it's true.
Without the Scaled Ones, our vigi-lance could be much less—and any of us recruiting hireswords would
sound a clear warning of war. Whereas Ornentar's desperate entreaties reveal that one of us has already in
secret hired the famous Swords of Sirlptar .. . and this news leaves us all unsurprised." He fixed the other
baron with a level gaze and asked, "Think you any of us are foolish—or desperate—enough to try to take
the Serpents as allies?"
Glarond shrugged. "Ornentar, perhaps. Stripped of his wizards and his warswords, he may prefer holding
a treacherous blade to facing us all empty-handed."
"The Serpents rise and fall, but I've never heard them saying the Snake itself will roam the Vale before,"
Maerlin said, pacing again. "Is this them merely using fear as a sword, d'you think?"
Glarond shrugged. "The tales say if the Sleeping King is awake, so is the Serpent. True or not, it forces
us all to hire and train and warm our armor-forges—and when we're all excited, our ears are ready for the
whis-pers of priests seeking to set us at each other's throats."
"Are they mad?" Maerlin snarled. "Why destroy Aglirta? How does that win them anything worth
having power over?"
Glarond shrugged. "Wizard," he asked the watchful Corloun, "why do mages strive ever to work new
and stronger spells, when they could far more safely work within the known arsenal?"
The look the mage gave his host was venomous, but his lips remained firmly closed.
Maerlin filled the silence with the jovial words, "You bring us to the tra-ditional crazed-wits of
importance in the Vale. Are men not wizards because they desire to wield great power in their own
hands—and are such men not always defiant of others? I take care that my mage benefits from his service
to Maerlin, just as I take shelter within the cloak of his spells. Others have not been so careful."
Glarond nodded. "Who is undeclared for baron or tersept just now?"
Maerlin smiled. "I doubt my agents see other things than yours do."
Glarond wordlessly gestured to him to continue despite that, and his visitor set to pacing again. "If you
mean those truly of the Vale, and of proven power, leaving aside all the rainbow-cloaks who swagger the
streets of Sirlptar working trickeries for fistfuls of coins . .. there's Tharlorn of the Thunders, and
Bodemmon Sarr. Oh, yes—and Embra Silvertree."
Audeman Glarond lifted one elegant eyebrow. "What of this 'Band of Four'?"
"The king's ragtag blades and backstabbing spellhurlers," Maerlin sneered dismissively. "A handful of
louts hired by Silvertree's dainty daugh-ter, hoping to worm her way into the royal bed and thereby keep her
head on her shoulders."
Glarond frowned. "I'm not so sure." He moved for the first time, strid-ing slowly to his bookshelf and
back. "Silvertree was the strongest of us all, in both blades and spells—and his daughter slew both him and
his Spellmaster after the Four fought their way through all of Castle Silvertree's guards."
"Bah!" Maerlin replied. "She used magic to take herself past all those guards, and somehow caught them
both unawares. Probably with wands or the like they'd stored in some room or other. What have she and
her three bedmates done since then, eh?"
"Undertaken this oh-so-secret royal mission," Glarond replied, "that seems, if certain watchers are to be
believed, to be bringing them to Glarond right now."
Baron Maerlin's eyebrows rose, and then descended as his eyes nar-rowed. "Is this why you contacted
me?" he asked softly. "You fear four vagabond fools?"
"Rather," Glarond replied calmly, "I believe the secret your wizard has crafted will serve to destroy them
just as readily as it should—and you hope it will—fell the Risen King."
"And just what secret would that be?" Maerlin asked, even more softly, as behind him Corloun lifted his
hands into view, his eyes dark and steady as he glared at the Lord of Glarond. The hungry glows of roused
magic were licking and flickering up and down the wizard's hands.
Awakened magic licked and flickered like shadowy flames up and down the Lady of Jewels' hands.
Things had moved—with the slightest of dry scrap-ings, to be sure, but certainly moved—in the dark
shadows and tumbled stone ahead.
"I don't like this," Hawkril muttered, in a deep, unhappy rumble. "Things are not as we left them. The
roof is restored, and much that was fallen raised again; someone's used a lot of magic here. . . ."
"Perhaps it restores itself," Sarasper said slowly, trying to peer past the six silent shafts of light, into the
dimness beyond. "Still, I'd be happier if I really believed that."
Craer nodded grimly. "So," he agreed, moving ahead like a lithe and crouching shadow, his blackened
throwing knife a dark fang ready in his hand, "would I."
In the darkness not far away, two skeletal hands made a last gesture. The dark red glows around them
were overwhelmed by a sudden, boiling rush of dark fire, the cold black flames of a finished spell whirling
away into nothingness.
It was the second spell to whirl away from those brown and bony fin-gers in swift succession.
A sudden, eerie roaring echoed around the riven library, shouting back from every wall and rubble-heap.
The four intruders halted tensely, darting glances in all directions.
Dark red and black fires blazed balefully as Phalagh heard the din of his first spell—the noise that was
all that it did—roll around him, cloaking the unavoidable noises his second magic would make.
Now. The skeleton in its tatters of robes shuffled forward to confront the intruders. Now, while the
bones of the many who'd perished in the library were drifting and slithering together amid the tumbled
stones, wreathed in crawling red and black spell-flames.
Their eyes were fixed on him, yes, and not on the two darkly flickering skeletal hands rising up from the
dust and wreckage behind them, almost as tall as the thief in the forefront—gigantic hands made up of the
floating bones of the fallen . . . now drifting forward to strike, fingers spreading wide. . . .
The shuffling skeleton spread its arms in a dramatic flourish, and they saw spell-glows raging up and
down its bones.
"Horns!" Craer cursed, hurling his blade and then diving to one side.
摘要：

TheVacantThroneBook2ofBandofFourseriesByEdGreenwoodScannedbyHighrollerProofedandformattedbyBW-SciFiEbookversion1.0PrologueTheoldminstrelshookhishead."'Tishardtobelieve,lad,"hesaidtothedepthsofhisemptytankard,"evenforsuchasus.Legendscometolife—fourvagabondadventurers,oneofthemtheLadyofJewelswithhersp...

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