Elaine Cunningham: Realms of Mystery

The door closed behind the merchant, its bolt sliding solidly into place, a few breaths before the tramp of heavy boots in the corridor heralded the approach of a half-dozen guards, sent to find and bring back “that dangerous Harper.” They thundered right past the closed, featureless door.

Rhauligan peered and thumbed scrolls and ledgers, and flipped pages. It wasn’t long before something became obvious through all the scrawled signatures and expense entries and reassignments of funds. The Paertrover coffers were well-nigh empty. He sat back thoughtfully, stroking his chin, and only gradually became aware that the room behind him seemed brighter than before.

He turned with smooth swiftness, hand going to the hilt of the throwing knife strapped to his left forearm, but nothing met his eye save a fading, swirling area of radiance, like a scattering of misplaced moonlight. He dancing, blinked once and it was gone. Gone-but had definitely been there.

After a brief tour of that end of the room, poking and tapping in search of secret doors and passages, Rhauligan shrugged and began the quick process of returning the room to exactly how he’d found it. When he was done, he blew out the lamp and slipped out the door again.

Alone in the darkness, the radiance silently returned, and with it what Rhauligan had been too slow to turn and see: a disembodied head, its face pinched and white, the plumes of the long helm it wore dancing gently in an unseen breeze. It was smiling broadly as it looked at the closed door-and abruptly started to fade away. A breath later, the room was dark and empty once more.

Guards hunted Glarasteer Rhauligan around Taverton Hall for a good hour, shouting and clumping up stairs and down passages, but found no sign of the merchant. Their failure came as no surprise to their quarry, who spent his afternoon in happy slumber deep in the shade of an overhang high up on the roof. If Rhauligan was right, things would happen at the Hall soon, in the dark hours, and he had to be awake, aware, and in the right spot then. Unless, of course, he wanted to see more murders done.

Guards are notoriously lazy and unobservant after a heavy meal and a bottle of fine vintage each (contributed by the seneschal with a rather morose shrug and the words, “You may as well. My master, who gathered these, is a little too dead to miss them now.”), and it was at that time, with sunset looming, that a certain much-sought-after dealer in fine turrets slid down a pillar and sprang away into the trees. He left in his wake only disturbed bushes for a bored guard to glance at, peer hard, shrug, and return his attention to a hard-plied toothpick.

Rhauligan circled the Hall like a silent shadow, keeping among the trees and shrubbery as he sought other sentinels. Armsmen guarded the gates and the grand front entrance of the Hall, but none stood like ridiculous statues in gardens or wooded glades any longer, to feed the biting bugs.

Not far from the closed and little-used cart-gate around the back of the Hall, however, something was stamping on the moss. It was a saddled horse, hampered in its cropping of grass by four heavy saddlebags. Rhauligan checked their contents and its tether, smiled grimly, and noted that the horse was just out of sight of the Hall windows. A little path wandered off from where he stood to the back doors. The merchant looked up, found a bough that was big enough, and swung himself aloft to wait.

It did not take all that long. The last golden light soon faded and the crickets began their songs. Night gloom stole through the trees, dew glistened as servants lit the lamps, and the dark shadow on the branch shifted position with infinite care to keep his feet from going numb.

The first sharp whiff of smoke came a breath before a long tongue of flame flared up, like a catching candle, inside a nearby window. There followed a sudden, rising roar, and then a dull gasp as flames were born around something very flammable; draperies or clothes well soaked in lamp oil, no doubt. Then came the shouts, the shattering of glass, and men pounding here and there in the sudden, hot brightness with buckets and valuables and much cursing. The shadow never moved from its perch. All was unfolding as foreseen. Taverton Hall was afire.

The roaring became a steady din, and sparks spat forth into the night in a glittering rain. Draperies at one window erupted in a flame so bright that Rhauligan could clearly see the faces of the hurrying, jostling men. Lord Jalanus was among them, bent over an open book that an anxious-looking guard was holding open and up to him.

There was a crash and fresh flames as part of the roof fell in, and flaming embers rained down around the war wizard. Jalanus staggered back, snarling something. Then he snatched at a spark in the air, caught it, stammered something hasty-and all over the Hall the flames seemed to freeze for a moment, falling silent and turning green.

A breath later, they started to move again, crawling towards the stars with lessened hunger. The war wizard shook his head, slammed the book shut, and sent the armsman to join the bucket-runners. Then he raised his hands as if about to conduct a choir, and cast quite a different spell.

Several rooms suddenly vanished, fire and all, leaving a gaping hole in the darkness. The flames that remained were in two places, lesser remnants small enough that stable-buckets of hurled water might tame them. Every hand would be needed, however, and the night would be a long and sweat-soaked struggle. The shadow on the branch stirred, but did not move. It was waiting for something else.

The war wizard opened his book again and strode to where a lamp afforded better light. That was what someone had been waiting for…someone who slipped out of a window not far along from the flames, crossing the ember-strewn lawn to the trees in a few darting strides.

The tether was undone and hand-coiled, and then saddle-leather creaked just beneath Rhauligan, who flexed his fingers, waited a moment more, and then made his move.

The saddle had a high crupper. He lowered himself gently down onto it with one hand, steadying himself against the branch with the other. The faint whisper of his movements was cloaked by the roar of the fire and the sounds made by the unwitting man in front of him, leaning forward to shake out the reins. Rhauligan delicately plucked a dagger from its sheath on the back of the man’s belt and threw it away into the night.

That slight sound made the man turn in his saddle and reach for his sword. Rhauligan turned with him, placing one firm hand on the man’s sword-wrist, and snaking the other around his throat. “Warm evening we’re having,” he murmured politely, as the man in front of him stiffened.

His next few breaths were spent in frantic twisting and straining as the two men struggled together. Rhauligan hooked his boots around those of his foe to keep from being shoved off the snorting, bucking horse, and the night became a confusion of elbows and sudden jerks and grunts of effort. The merchant kept the man’s throat in the vise of his tightening elbow, and frantic fingers clawed at his arm once they found the dagger-sheath empty-clawed, but found no freedom.

The man kicked and snarled, and abruptly the horse burst into motion, crashing through rose-bushes with a fearful, sobbing cry of its own. Trees plunged up to meet them in the night, with an open garden beyond. Rhauligan grimly set about kicking at one flank of the mount, to turn it back toward the flames.

He was failing, and taking some vicious bites from the man in the saddle in front of him, when firelight gleamed on a helm as a guard rose suddenly into view almost under the hooves of the galloping horse. It reared, bugling in real fear, and when it came down, running hard, the blazing wing of the Hall was suddenly dead ahead and approaching fast.