Ed Greenwood - The Halls of Stormweather

"Well, when I persisted in my objections, he discharged me," Quyance said, "and before I left the palace, I purloined a copy of the score. I'm not merely a performer, you see." He drew himself up a little straighten "I'm also an initiate of Milil and a scholar of music in both its exoteric and esoteric aspects. I hoped that if I studied the opera, consulting the texts I've collected over the years, I might find out exactly what was going on with it, and I felt I had a duty to attempt precisely that."

"What did you come up with?" Tazi asked.

"Something more terrible than I could have dreamed. Guerren wove a sort of ritual into the score, which, when it reached its conclusion, would create a permanent region of primal chaos here on the earthly plane."

As a rebellious scapegrace of a girl, Shamur had seldom cared to study, but, gifted with intelligence and a good memory, she'd often assimilated her lessons more or less despite herself. Now she recalled her philosophy tutor explaining that on those levels of reality where chaos, a fundamental force of the cosmos, reigned unchecked by the counterbalancing principle of law, all things were possible, and therefore, nothing was stable or permanent. Under such conditions, human life could not long endure.

"Why in the name of the Abyss would he want do that?" she asked.

Quyance dredged up another weary little smile. "Well, the tales do say that he was mad. But perhaps it was intended as a weapon. You make your enemy a gift of the opera, he has it staged, and it destroys him. In any case, it was only tonight that I finally discerned its purpose. I raced back here, slipped in through a side entrance… but you know the rest."

"How big a region of chaos are we talking about?" Tazi asked, restlessly toying with her knife.

"I can't be altogether certain," Quyance said, "but I think it might engulf the entire city."

A chill oozed up Shamur's spine, and the music jangling in the air seemed to laugh at her. She pushed horror to the back of her mind and forced herself to concentrate on practicalities. "There's one thing I still don't understand. During rehearsal, you people must have performed the opera from start to finish. Why didn't the ritual take effect then?"

"It draws power from starlight," the little musician said. "That's why Guerren specified that it be performed outdoors at night. We always rehearsed inside, to avoid the winter cold."

"The important question," Tazi said, "is how do we stop it? The difficulty is that it senses we're trying, and every time we approach the performers, the magic grabs us and flings us back here."

Quyance shook his head. "I'm afraid I have no idea."

"Perhaps I do," Shamur said. "Tazi, we saw the violet sparks filling the amphitheater, and spilling out across the grass, like a ground fog. And when we descended into the cellar, we didn't find as many oddities down here."

"The plant was a fairly impressive oddity," the black-haired girl replied, "but still, you're right."

"Doesn't all that suggest that the magic is most potent at ground level? Conceivably most aware at ground level? Perhaps it we came at it from above, we could sneak up on it."

Tazi frowned. "Maybe, but I can't imagine that buying us more than a second."

"What if we used that second to sap a measure of its power? Then it might not have the ability to displace us."

Shamur told the girl the specifics of her plan.

Tazi grinned. "It sounds completely harebrained to me. Let's do it."

They hastily made Quyance as comfortable as possible, then returned to the ground floor, where they discovered that in their absence the chambers and corridors had rearranged themselves into a veritable labyrinth. At last they found their way back to the foyer.

Here they yanked down one of the tapestries-a panorama of life in Selgaunt, with merchants trading, watermen ferrying passengers and cargo about the harbor, beggars begging, and the like-and cut it into manageable, blanket-sized pieces, which they then rolled and secured to their backs with strips of fabric. Shamur wondered fleetingly just how many hundreds or thousands of fivestars the hanging had been worth.

Considerably less than the entire city, one could be certain.

"I intended to find one of the staircases that would take us to the roof," she said, "but given the alterations to the interior of the building, that could take hours even if they still exist. It makes more sense to go up the outside." She smiled at Tazi. "Given your facility with a lockpick, I suspect you know how to climb."

The girl blinked. "Ah… yes. But do you?"

"I'll race you to the top."

The two women hastened out the door, then started up the wall beside it. Ridges in the stonework bit into Shamur's bare feet, but the discomfort was a small price to pay for the pleasure of conquering a vertical surface in the dead of night, and she almost wished the ascent could be more of a challenge. Thanks to the Hulorn's abominable taste and the excess of ornamentation it had produced, she found easy hand- and toeholds nearly every inch of the way.

"I've been thinking about what you said," Tazi remarked, climbing along beside her, just the slightest hint of exertion in her voice.

"What?"

"That we shouldn't go for help, because the music might just put any newcomers to sleep, or turn them into snails. How do we know it isn't going to turn us into snails before we're through?"

"We don't," Shamur said. "That's part of the fun." She grasped the black marble balustrade of a balcony. For a moment it felt like solid stone, but when she trusted her weight to it and started to pull herself up, it turned to mush in her fingers, and she fell.

Tazi cried out. Shamur glimpsed the ground four stories below, waiting to smash her plummeting body to pulp. She clutched desperately at the wall and grabbed a fragile bit of cinquefoil molding. It crumbled, and she dropped once more. Certain it was her last chance, she snatched for the narrow protuberance at the top of a cornice.

To her own surprise, she managed to catch and hold on to it. Her momentum dashed her against the wall, and there she clung, heart pounding, her fingers with their torn nails and her wrenched arms and shoulders throbbing.

Tazi peered down at her, then asked, "Was that part of the fun, too?"

Shamur grinned, made a lewd gesture at her, and, once she'd caught her breath, climbed upward again.

The Uskevren women reached the roof without further mishaps. An expanse of fish-scale tile studded with chimney stacks and spires, it rose and fell with a confusion of domes, gables, hips, and pitches.

Shamur rotated her shoulders and swung her arms, trying to work the soreness out. Tiles groaned and rattled. She turned, her hand dropping to the hilt of her broadsword, and a warrior whose immobile face, hauberk, and greatsword were all made of pale stone lumbered stiffly from the darkness. She drew her blade*****

The lantern in his upraised hand, Thamalon peered about the benighted forest clearing. Standing behind him, Shamur silently lifted her skirt and removed the broadsword she'd concealed beneath it. It would have been simplicity itself to drive the blade between her husband's broad shoulders, but that had never been her way. Besides, she wanted to watch his face as he breathed his last.

"All right," he said, puzzlement in his voice, "where is this marvel you insisted I must see?"

"In my hand," she replied.

He turned, and his brows-still black, unlike the snowy hair on his head-knit when he beheld the weapon. "Is this a joke?" he asked.

"Far from it," she replied. "I recommend you draw and do your level best to kill me, because I certainly intend to kill you."

"I know you haven't loved me for a long while," he said, "if indeed you ever did. But still, why would you wish me dead?"