Lord of Stormweather

CHAPTER 16

Thamalon leaned heavily upon the marble railing, panting in the rain-cooled evening air. His heart galloped in his chest, and he was fairly sure that some of the lightning he saw bursting against the night sky was a reflection from within his pounding head.

What was I thinking? he berated himself silently-because he had no breath to speak aloud. I didn't think I was too old for this.

For a man of his years, Thamalon considered himself fit and hale. He still enjoyed a long stroll or a vigorous ride on horseback. While his weapons of choice were the contract and the ledger, he had lately proven that he could still wield a blade with the best of them when necessary.

But there he was, about to expire from climbing a long stairway.

Earlier in the evening, Thamalon heard the same haunting tune that had welcomed him to the bleak streets surrounding the castle.

"What is that song?" he'd asked a servant.

"Lady Malaika calls the skwalos."

"But where is she?"

The servant pointed upward and said, "She sings from her observatory in the uppermost chamber of the west tower."

The guards at the base of the stairway didn't turn him away, as Thamalon had half-expected. Instead, they suggested he take advantage of the mechanical litter attached to the railing. At that moment, Thamalon considered the device the sort of novelty reserved for invalids and ladies who avoided any risk of perspiration. When he spied a faint smirk upon the lips of the servant who offered him the conveyance, pride demanded he refuse it.

Soon he felt the smug guard had outwitted him, and a mere flight of stairs threatened to do what none of his enemies had yet achieved with assassins, poison, and magic.

Thamalon didn't much appreciate that irony.

Somewhat defensively, he noted that there was nothing "mere" about the titanic stairway. He must have climbed more than twice the height of the tallest tower in his own home, and still he'd arrived only at the lower balconies of Castle Stormweather. Even from that height, he could barely perceive the giant bonfires that sizzled to either side of the grand entrance to the stronghold. From the balcony, they looked like fireflies drowning in a murky pond.

Another wave of thunder rolled in and broke against the castle walls. Thamalon felt the vibration in the air. The wind swept the rain into the sheltered balcony, and Thamalon stepped back. A sudden vertigo swirled in his head, and he nearly stumbled as he reached out to lean against the wall.

"Father?"

He turned around but saw no one else standing on the landing. Torchlight danced upon the wall stairway walls. On the wall opposite the balcony, a long tapestry stirred in the breeze. Upon its rippling fabric, elves danced among deerlike creatures while strange birds and colorful jellies floated in the trees above.

"Who is there?" Thamalon said.

The voice had sounded like the Sorcerer-or Thamalon's own eldest son.

Lightning briefly illuminated the dark corners of the landing. Still, Thamalon saw no one.

"Hello?" the voice called.

It seemed to emanate from behind the tapestry. Thamalon looked for some signs of a lurker-a bulge in the fabric, a pair of boots protruding from the bottom-anything-but there was nothing.

He pulled back the tapestry and put his hand to the wall. Lightning flashed again, banishing the shadows for an instant.

Still, Thamalon saw nothing behind the tapestry.

He hesitated for a moment, then he glanced up and down the stairway. No one was coming.

He felt the cool stones, pressing and pulling here and there. On the eighth try, the stone he pressed sank several inches into the wall, and a secret door groaned opened to reveal a dark, narrow corridor.

The mechanism worked almost exactly like those governing the hidden passages in Thamalon's Stormweather. He hoped that was yet another proof of a purposeful connection between the places, and not an indication that the design was common. He hated to think that any of his guests might snoop around his home as easily as he was about to do there.

Checking once more for intruders on the stairs, Thamalon took a torch from the wall and entered the secret passage.

Inside, he located the counterweight and closed the secret door.

He followed the passage barely more than ten feet, where it ended at an oak-and-bronze portal of unmistakably dwarven craftsmanship. Set in the wall beside the door were a similarly ornate bronze lever and wheel crank.

Spotting no handle nor lock on the door, Thamalon tried turning the wheel. It remained obstinately fixed. The lever rose as he lifted it, snapping into place directly perpendicular to the wall. The burring of gears emanated from beyond the door.

Thamalon hoped it made no greater noise elsewhere in the castle, especially near suspicious guards.

Never mind the guards, he thought. Worry about the Sorcerer.

Seconds passed like minutes, until finally the muted clamor ended with an emphatic clunk behind the door. When nothing else happened, Thamalon tried the wheel once more. It turned smoothly, and the two halves of the door parted to the perfect cadence of metal gears.

Beyond the door was a small room, no larger than a privy. Its walls were lined in red velvet. A hundred pewter studs cast gentle light from the walls and ceiling. In either of its far corners was a tiny seat, and upon its inner door were smaller versions of the lever and wheel.

Before entering, Thamalon set aside the torch. He might need it to navigate another secret passage, but he was wary of setting fire to the pretty little room.

Thamalon had already divined the chamber's purpose. He'd seen a much cruder version of the mechanical lift in the warehouse Presker Talendar reserved for the most precious of his imported porcelain, jade, crystal, and similarly fragile objects. Thamalon knew that the fantastic device cost Presker far more than it saved in labor expenses. Still, it was the talk of the town for a tenday, and tours of the new wonder gave Presker a fine excuse to curry favor with prospective partners.

The lever inside the lift jutted straight out from the wall. Thamalon pushed it upward, found it stuck fast, then wheeled the doors shut before trying again. As he'd predicted, the lift began to rise.

As he ascended, Thamalon thought on Presker Talendar and his many other rivals in Selgaunt. They'd fought each other for decades, sometimes in the pursuit of the most beneficial trade concessions-and sometimes to the knife over ancient feuds. In that time, Thamalon had thwarted dozens of attacks on his businesses, his reputation, and even his life and the lives of his wife and children.

He wasn't above retribution. He had not fingers enough to count the Talendar and Soargyls he'd ordered murdered in dark alleys. He regretted none of them, for each had a hand in the deaths of his father and brother, or else they'd actively strove against the life of an Uskevren.

Even so, Thamalon remained proud that he never allowed his wrath to descend to the level of petty vengeance. No one had died upon his word for an idle threat, nor for a mere insult. Indulging one's ire was a quick path to damnation, he believed. That was one of the lessons he feared he hadn't imparted to his sons-and he'd lately added to his prayers a plea that they not murder each other.

The gods smiled upon the Uskevren, at least so far. While a few dear friends and several key members of the household had perished in defense of the family within the past few years, none of his kin had fallen to an assassin's blade.

Thamalon meant to keep it that way, and for the past ten months he'd been working secretly, tirelessly to that end. If only he could complete the negotiations he'd so carefully crafted, then he would go gently into his final slumber, knowing that his sins and those of his father could be washed from the hands of his children. If he succeeded, he need no longer fear that the lives of his sons and daughters would end upon a rival's blade.

What infuriated him was that only when he was so close to achieving that goal, one of his foes had hurled him a thousand miles-if not farther-from where he needed to be.

The rattling chains slowed, and the lift chamber came to a gentle halt. Thamalon listened for a commotion on the other side. If he heard voices, he planned to descend again and hope investigators could not arrive before he fled.

He heard nothing, so he opened the door. Beyond was a passage similar to the one he'd entered below, and he immediately spied the lever operating what must be from the outside another secret door. He closed the door to the lift behind him and turned the lever all the way down, sending the lift back to its original place.

The second secret door also opened behind a tapestry. Thamalon blessed his luck that he remained concealed, for he heard sobbing from beyond the fabric. He lay down to peer under the tapestry.

The room beyond was unlighted, but the moon shone through a breach in the storm clouds and filled the glass chamber with silver light. It curved around the tower to either side from the central spire. Flowers overflowed their vases on low tables between an intimate trio of couches. To one side of them was a small round dais on which stood a stringed instrument that must have been a harp, despite its improbable geometry. On the other side of the furniture was a basin carved of a seamless chalcedony.

The chamber's sole occupant was a slender elf woman. He knew at a glance that the woman had been starved by illness, or more likely by despair.

As Thamalon spied upon her, the woman heaved a sigh and sat up. With an economical swipe of her handkerchief, she dried her cheeks and assumed an imperial composure, head erect, eyes firmly forward, focusing on nothing. With a fine brown hand, she replaced the coal-black tresses that had spilled across her face.

Unveiled, her face was even more youthful than Thamalon had imagined. She appeared even younger than his daughter, except for those wise, dark eyes. She might be twice or thrice Thamalon's age, he reminded himself.

After a moment, the elf rose and went to the basin. With an arcane pass of her hand, she evoked an image in the air. Miniature clouds formed above the basin, and wild lines of electricity arced between them. Simultaneously, lightning flashed above the dome.

As the woman observed the image of the sky, Thamalon left the secret passage. He closed the door just as the thunder crashed over the tower, then he slipped out from behind the tapestry.

In the silence between the thunder, he cleared his throat.

The woman looked at him, one fine black eyebrow arched.

"If I am disturbing you, my lady… Malaika…?"

She didn't reply, but Thamalon took the slight raising of her chin as acknowledgement of her identity.

He waited a moment more for an invitation to stay. He didn't wish to take her silence for consent, so he tried another tack.

"Then, alas, I shall have to await rescue. I am afraid I depleted my supplies on the second day of the climb, and my guide perished not five hundred steps below the summit."

A flicker of concentration smothered Malaika's smile before it could form. Still she didn't speak. She turned back to observe the image she'd conjured.

As Thamalon approached, he noticed that the woman was even smaller than he had realized. Her thin body gave her only the illusion of height. The crown of her head didn't reach the height of his shoulders.

Thamalon joined her at the basin. A dark, rippling liquid filled the bowl. Motes of colored bight rose and popped like bubbles on its surface.

Thamalon looked from the clouds above the basin to those outside. They looked identical in every way but scale.

Turning back to the basin, Thamalon saw something new. A vast shadow floated through the clouds. Its tip pierced the foggy shroud at last, and vapors trailed from the ridges of its body as it emerged into the clear sky.

From their vantage, the creature looked less like a whale than a perfectly symmetrical island. From its back sprouted a veritable forest from which glowed tiny red fires. One of the fires winked out, and a barely visible orange thread ran out from the greenery. As the line grew longer, it curved back in the wake of the monstrous creature. A few seconds later, its leading point exploded into a ball of flame.

"The fools," whispered the elf, her tone urgent and pitiful.

Before Thamalon could ask a question, lightning leaped from a point near the fireball to strike at the spell's origin. A few seconds later, a nearly identical bolt struck the same spot.

The elf reached to the basin and plucked at the image of the soaring creature. With her gesture, the vision grew larger. Thamalon could see a tiny image of the Sorcerer, his crimson cloak snapping in the wind. He gripped his winged scepter in one hand. In the other he held a fiery blue ball of spitting lighting. Beside the gargantuan creature, he appeared no larger than a gnat.

"What is that?" Thamalon asked.

He pointed to a long green shape emerging from the forest atop the skwalos. From its hunched back rose a pointed fin, beyond which a flatworm of a tail tapered to a ragged little fluke. Its yellow wings were wider than its body was long, and its hind claws were enormous even for the creature's great size. A fleshy, spiral horn sprang from its long skull. The faintest aura of witchfire played along its length.

"Yrthak," said Malaika.

Trepidation soured her dulcet voice, and Thamalon wondered whether she feared more for the Sorcerer or for his foes.

The yrthak cupped its wings and floated steadily down toward its prey. Its eyeless head was split with a crocodilian smile. Between its yellow teeth, its tongue curled up to form a fat pink knob. The creature held its mouth open, as if tasting the storm.

"He doesn't see it," said Thamalon.

He watched as the Sorcerer flew toward the surface of the skwalos. From his outstretched fingers, five dazzling sparks raced toward unseen targets beneath the tangle of flora upon the back of the creature.

The elf's fingers danced above the image, evoking quick views of each successive target of the Sorcerer's spell. Two of the magic missiles struck and slew elf archers crouching amid the shelter of the foliage. Another wounded a white-haired elf and shook him from the concentration of his own evocation.

Another wave of thunder broke over the tower, shaking the metal casement. A sympathetic vibration set the glass humming all around Thamalon and Lady Malaika.

The place is called Stormweather for a reason, Thamalon told himself. Still, he counted the paces between his position and the relative shelter of the stairs.

"No!" Malaika cried.

She gripped the edge of the basin as the yrthak folded its wings and dived toward the Sorcerer. Even before it reached him, an invisible force shook the Sorcerer's body and tore the cloak from his shoulders. Thamalon heard nothing except the wind and rain, but his teeth ached as if someone had scratched fingernails across a slate.

The Sorcerer's great helm buckled beneath the force, and his limbs trembled as if in seizure. For an instant, his muscles strained against the attack, but then his arms and legs went slack.

The Sorcerer fell, and the yrthak dived after him, jaws agape.

Thamalon felt a grip on his arm. Malaika didn't look at him, but her tiny hand squeezed tighter as they watched the Sorcerer plummet.

The Sorcerer's arm reached out in a gesture so casual that Thamalon wasn't sure whether he was conscious of it. Then came a dark, flapping blur, and the crimson cloak few back into its master's grip. With a dancer's graceful flourish, the Sorcerer rolled his shoulders back into his mantle. In the instant he fixed the clasp about his throat, the shapeless fabric billowed out in the fullness of its enchantments.

The Sorcerer stopped falling so abruptly that the yrthak plunged past him before realizing its prey had recovered. As the creature spread its wings, the Sorcerer was already unleashing a hail of white fire. Fierce meteors shot through the yrthak's wings and tore black rents along its flanks.

The creature flailed helplessly. Before it could turn its tumble into a glide, a lightning bolt flew from the Sorcerer's fist and sheared away one of its crippled wings.

The Sorcerer started to pursue his fallen foe, but then he paused and looked all around. He spotted two more yrthak descending from the skwalos. He flew up long before they could reach him, flinging white beams of lightning and red balls of flame at his opponents. One of the fliers blackened and fell, while the other turned its seared back to its foe and plunged into the obscuring clouds.

Triumphant, the Sorcerer turned back to his original prey. He mirrored the course of the skwalos, shocking its enormous flank with lightning to spur it closer and closer to Castle Stormweather.

When Lady Malaika looked up through the ceiling, Thamalon followed her gaze to see the terrible silhouette of the skwalos through the glass. He discerned the Sorcerer's location by tracking the white streaks of energy he cast.

Thamalon turned back to the basin for a better view, hardly noticing that Malaika withdrew. He saw the Sorcerer shake his scepter at the skwalos. From its bright ruby shot a barbed spear. The weapon sank deep into the creature's hide, and immediately a ribbon of red lightning shot down from the wound to the ground. The crackling light persisted even after the initial flash, coruscating in a constant line between earth and sky. It wriggled and contracted, tugging its skyborne prey toward the ground.

The Sorcerer raised his scepter, and in a hot red flash, another spear appeared above the pulsating ruby. He flew to the other side of the skwalos, alert for further defenders.

None came.

He cast the second harpoon, and another red line of energy bound his prey to the ground. Slowly, the skwalos began sinking below the clouds. The Sorcerer followed until Thamalon could see neither of them through the basin's cloudy image.

He spared a glance through the ceiling windows, but all he could see were dim eruptions of red light through the clouds. The thunder began to subside, leaving only the sound of steady rain upon the glass.

Malaika sat beside her harp, head bowed as she leaned upon its neck.

"It's over," he said, thinking it might console the lady.

"No," she said. "It is only beginning. Soon my lord's servants will catch it with their flensing hooks." Malaika looked at Thamalon as if seeing him for the first time. She said, "You are the traveler."

"You may call me Nelember," Thamalon said, making a courtly bow.

"Yet that is not your name."

He repeated his bow, this time with an apologetic hand over his heart. He didn't question how she perceived his obfuscation.

She gestured an invitation to sit, and he obeyed, then she rose to stand close to him, looking down into his face. Her eyes searched his features for long seconds. She touched his brow and ran a finger down the straight line of his nose.

"What secret do you keep from my lord?"

Thamalon smiled at her remark. He affected a casual tone and said, "What makes you think I have a secret from him?"

"Because everyone has a secret from the Sorcerer," she said. "That is his curse."

Where she had seemed at first frail and frightened, she was transformed into a daunting inquisitor. Thamalon feared that she might be the more dangerous of his hosts.

"What secret do you keep from him?" he countered, already regretting the bluntness of his riposte.

"Not a one," she replied. "That is my curse."

"Does he know you weep for his enemies?"

"Rather say, 'for his victims.' Yes, he knows. Nothing pleases him more than forcing me to call the skwalos, then to watch as he enslaves and butchers them."

"Are you his prisoner?"

"No," she said.

"Then why do you endure it?"

"Because I remember him as he was," she said, "as a boy whose heart was filled with dreams. You know my curse. My blessing is that I can still remember him as he was, and I can hope that he will become that boy again. Perhaps you will succeed where I have failed these many years."

"What possible influence could I have over-"

"You are his father, are you not?"

Her words came as no surprise to Thamalon, and more than ever he accepted the likelihood that this Sorcerer was the dark reflection of his son, just as Castle Stormweather was a vast shadow of his home. It was a simple puzzle on its face, but he still had no idea of its key.

Thamalon began to suspect that the woman was somehow reading his thoughts.

"Did he tell you so?" he asked.

"No," said Malaika. "I believe he suspects it but is not certain. You humans change so quickly over so short a time. Still, I see you in him. He has your eyes."

"He does look very much like my eldest son," admitted Thamalon. They could be twins, but he's not Tamlin."

"Hush!" Malaika glanced urgently at the stairway and said, "Let no one hear you say that name."

"Let me guess," said Thamalon. "It is forbidden."

"It is no matter for jest. You have not yet seen what he is capable of doing to those who displease him."

"Even one he suspects could be his father?"

"Especially to him. The Sorcerer guards his power jealously. He keeps it secure in a vault beneath the castle."

"Keeps what secure?"

"His dreams," she said. "Once constrained, they gave him the power to hunt the skwalos and destroy all who would oppose him."

"I assure you, I have no designs on his dreams, my lady," said Thamalon. "All I wish is to return safely to my own home and my own family. What possible reason would I have to offend my host by disturbing his precious vault?"

"Because it is the gate through which he first came to our world," she said, "and opening it is the only way for you to return home."