Glen Cook - Shadow of all Night Falling

Only to arrive and find that Haroun, by cunning, was getting his job done after all.

But the goal of it all, Nepanthe, was missing when the smoke cleared from the ruins of Varthlokkur's second great destruction. On a snowy morning, after frantically casting spells among the countless dead, the wizard found her halfway down the mountain. He caught her and concealed her, and when the way was clear he set out for Fangdred. A month later, with a still furious Nepanthe in tow, he returned home.

The affair had been a fiasco. Nothing had been gained but death. Varthlokkur's abandoned employees were in an uproar both over not having been paid, and over the abduction of Mocker's wife. Several of Nepanthe's brothers, with the Windmjirnerhorn and their storm-sending equipment, had evaded destruction and were loose, and driven by a bitter thirst for revenge. The wizard had captured his prize, but the matter was far from closed.

And Varthlokkur knew it. He had hardly returned, gotten Nepanthe installed in her new apartment, and had made his presence known when he summoned the Old

Man to the Wind Tower. "The goal has been reached," he mumbled. "She's here. But I've left enough loose ends to tie into a rope to hang me."

"'A patch in a shroud to bury me,'" said the Old Man. Varthlokkur didn't recognize the line immediately. It came from The Wizards of llkazar, from King Vilis' final lament, spoken while he watched the very heart of the Empire dying around him. He had complained of his ruined estate and of how things were hemming him in. Especially Varthlokkur, the patch.

"I have to prepare. Silver and ebony, moonlight and night, these were ever mine. Do we have a craftsman who can make me silver bells? Here, here," he said, digging a small, aged casket from clutter piled in a corner. Bits of dry earth fell to the floor when he opened it. Perhaps two dozen ancient silver coins lay within. "These. Make me bells of these, each marked with my thirteen signs."

The Old Man did not, for a time, respond. He hadn't ever seen Varthlokkur this way. His friend was overflowing with deeds and moods.

"And I'll make the arrow myself." He quickly scrounged a billet of ebony and a kit of small tools from the corner pile. He kept two silver coins from the old casket. "Go! Go! The bells. Get me the bells." Mystified, the Old Man went.

Days later, he returned with the casket of bells. Varthlokkur was fletching an arrow at the time. It had a shaft of ebony. Its head was a coin hammered to a point. Silver from another coin had been inlaid into the shaft finely, in runes and cabalistic signs. "Here. Help me rig this." The wizard had collected a strange pile of odds and ends on the table.

Following Varthlokkur's instructions, the Old Man assembled a mobile of tiny, clapperless bells. They would ring off one another. The arrow turned lazily beneath them.

"My warning device," Varthlokkur told him. "The bells will ring if someone comes after me, starting while he's still fifty leagues away. They'll ring louder when he gets closer. The arrow will point at him. And so it should be easy to find him and stop him." He smiled, proud of his little creation.

It was a pity, the Old Man thought, that Varthlokkur was so single-minded about Nepanthe. Marriage had radicalized her. From a rabbit she had grown into a tigress. She was having no man but the one who had liberated her. That actor. That thief. That professional traitor.

Varthlokkur's face, those days, often expressed his silent agony, over what he had done, over what he seemed to have lost. The Old Man tried to make Nepanthe understand when he wasn't around.

She did, a little, but she was a strong-minded woman. As it had taken her ages to accept a man, so might it cost another decade to swing her affections around.

He shook his head sadly. The Director played a cruel game.

The Old Man abhorred pity in all its forms, yet he was forced to pity his friend Varthlokkur.

A month had passed. Ragnarson, bin Yousif, and their associates had become certain of what they had suspected for some time: Varthlokkur wouldn't appear for the payoff. For at least the hundredth time, Ragnarson asked, "Are you sure he said he'd meet us here?"

And bin Yousif, gazing out an open window at the morning sun, replied as always, "I'm sure. He said, The Red Hart Inn, Itaskia.' You think it's too early for ale?"

"Ask Yalmar. It's his tavern. Yalmar!"

An aging man limped from the kitchen, without speaking drew and delivered two mugs. As he left, though, he smote his forehead suddenly and said, "Oh. Meant to tell ye. There were a fellow here after ye last night..."

Both jerked to attention. "Dusky old man with a nose like mine?" bin Yousif demanded.

Yalmar considered Haroun's aquiline beak. "Nay, can't say so. Fortyish, black hair, heavy sort."

Bin Yousif frowned. Ragnarson was about to ask something when Elana descended the stair from the rooming floor, her step portentous. "He's gone," she said. "Sometime during the night."

"Mocker?"

"Who else?"

They had been keeping him tied for his own protection, to prevent his charging off after Varthlokkur and Nepanthe-which might also compromise their chances of getting paid.

Bin Yousif sighed. "Well, it's come. I was afraid it would. A mad stab at a hornet's nest, and us without legs to run on."

"What do you mean?" A vacant question. Ragnarson's interest was all in Elana, who had gone to stare out a side window. She seemed terribly distant of late.

"I mean that Mocker's making us help him, like it or not. He knows damned well that to Varthlokkur we're a team. So, whether or not we're involved, he'll take a shot at us when he finds out Mocker's after him. Just in case. Wouldn't you? What's Elana's problem?"

"I don't want anything to do with Fangdred. But, if we're going to get killed anyway, it might as well be facing the enemy. I guess she's worried about Nepanthe. They got pretty close."

Elana wasn't worrying about Nepanthe. Nepanthe's predicament had become secondary. Her problem was her newly discovered pregnancy. How could she tell Bragi and not get herself excluded from his plans? She did feel a little guilty, though, because she was concerned with herself when Nepanthe's problems were so much nastier.

Ragnarson called for more ale, asked the innkeeper, "The man who asked about us. What did he want?"

"Would'na say. Did say ye were friends."

Ragnarson scratched his beard, which had faded to its normal blondness, and asked, "What was his accent?"

"No need to go on about it. He's here."

Haroun glanced up from his drink. Ragnarson turned...

The latter dove to his left, stretched out like a man plunging into water. He rolled, tripped Yalmar intentionally, shouted, "Elana!" Bin Yousif rolled into cover behind a table Bragi was overturning, thundered, "Haaken! Reskird!"

Four men in monkish garb halted in the doorway, startled by the explosive reaction to their appearance. One suddenly fell to his knees, tripped from behind. Before he could rise, a hand was beneath his chin and a blade across his throat. Both were Elana's. In hard tones she told the others, "Turran's dead if anybody even twitches!"

They believed her. They might have been stone for all the life they showed.

Ragnarson, slipping from table to table in a crouch, reached a rack where swords hung, tossed one to bin Yousif, drew another for himself, and moved toward the door. A rapid clumping came from the stairs. Blackfang and Kildragon, half dressed, arrived. They took stations to either side of Elana.

Ragnarson and bin Yousif closed in.

Rolf Preshka appeared behind the Storm Kings, sword in hand. "Damn!" he grumbled. "Jumped out that window for nothing. Ah. Nothing like old friends dropping in." He stared at the four both with frank curiosity and wry amusement.