Glen Cook - Shadow of all Night Falling

Turran grinned, remembering Marco's promise to complain. Then his eyebrows rose. The dwarf was actually doing something. Never, since his arrival, had he done anything more helpful than watch the globes, or lounge around talking in endless streams. Mostly about women. His women. Idly, as he seated himself before a crystal, Turran wondered about Marco's oft-touted, very secret "system." Probably talked till they fell asleep from boredom, then made his move.

He touched the ball in the place Marco had shown him. Visigodred's thin face, like a strange, bearded fish hurtling up from diamond deeps, swam into view.

"Marco says Varthlokkur's made his first move," he said. "We weren't watching. How'd it come out? All right, I suppose, since you're smiling."

The crystal shivered in Turran's fingers, made a soft sound like breezes in a field of ripe wheat. There were words in the whisper, words indistinguishable at more than a yard.

"It went well, with no reaction. They were unhappy at

Fangdred, but not suspicious. At least not that I could detect. Just now, Varthlokkur's railing at the Fates and Norns. The Old Man hasn't said anything. He's our real worry. He's not as emotionally involved. Nepanthe's still gloating, of course. Mocker'1I be there soon."

"Excellent! Excellent!" said Turran. "My brothers will be pleased. Now then, what did you want?" He listened to the whisper-wind for several minutes, nodding occasionally. When Visigodred finished, he said, "Right away."

"Marco! Visigodred wants you." He placed the crystal before another chair. The dwarf bounded over, said, "Yeah, Chief?"

"You behaving?"

"Don't I always?"

"Not often, but I muddle through. Somebody wants to talk to you." The wizard disappeared, to be replaced by three young women. Turran's eyebrows rose. All three spoke at once. Marco gave Turran a look that said, "This's private." Chuckling, the Storm King joined his brothers, who had just arrived and were ready to clean the goat.

When finished with his conversation, Marco came to supervise. "Poor girls!" he told the room, his demoniac eyes sad. "They're so lonely without me. Poor dear things. What'd the boss want, Turran?"

"A storm around Fangdred, so Varthlokkur can't send out any more ambushers."

Midnight. Everyone was asleep, including Valther, who had the watch. From outside, spaced in a slow cadence, came the sounds of feet breaking crusted snow. The door, not locked, swung slowly inward; limned by moonlight off the snow, a stooped figure paused there, listened. Hearing nothing but heavy snores, the man stepped inside and closed the door.

Picking his way with a staff as though he were blind, this bent old man made a circuit of the room. He examined each sleeper by the glow of the stone on the table. Before leaving each he nodded his satisfaction-till he came to Marco. There he frowned puzzledly, but soon shrugged and moved on.

Across his back he carried a bulky bundle that he quickly, deftly exchanged for a similar bundle Turran had secreted beneath a trap in the cottage floor. Carefully, carefully, like a man with a fragile jar of precious oil, he carried the object out into the Storm Kings' winter's night.

Then, once his footfalls faded, a voice, as old as time, as distant as the first dawn, "Come, my beauty of the sky. We ride home with our treasure again." A peal of laughter echoed over the snowfields. And, after a lightning flash without thunder, hooves crunched snow, then a huge white horse beat vast wings and scaled the night. Dwindling merriment trailed behind.

He always took it back once its damage had been done.

"I don't understand," Varthlokkur muttered. "He just won't quit." Behind him, like wind chimes, tiny silver bells tinkled endlessly, much louder now than in their first tentative speech of a week ago. The silver-chaised arrow pointed unswervingly westward.

The Old Man, seated before the mirror, leaned forward. He felt totally alive as he studied the man crossing a glacier a hundred miles to their west. Off and on, since the first musical intimation of peril, he and Varthlokkur had come to watch the fool fight his way toward them. A strange, unswerving man, he, frightening in his tenacity. Nothing daunted him. Not foul weather, nor mountains, nor any of the small disasters with which Varthlokkur had tried to induce despair. Snowslides, landslides, fallen trees, washed-out roads, he made his way around or over them all with a patience that bespoke an absolute conviction of final victory. And, though he had traveled fewer than fifty miles this past week, he still rose each dawn and gamely challenged the Dragon's Teeth till sundown. He might win the match out of sheer stubbornness.

"He's mad," said the Old Man. "He'll keep on coming till he gets what he wants. Or dies. You should understand."

"How so?"

"How many years to ruin Ilkazar?" And, in the back of his mind, the question still, And at what cost to yourself'.'

The wizard flinched, turned away. "Too many, all wasted. And it's been Hell's own hound on my trail ever since. Yes, I guess I understand. But for a woman?"

For what had he claimed vengeance on Ilkazar? A rhinoceros?

"He loves me!"

Both men turned. Nepanthe glared at them from the doorway, her face a mask of poorly controlled anger. Varthlokkur nodded. "Maybe so, though personally I'd bet on wounded pride."

Nepanthe's thoughts were obvious. Of course he was coming for love. Harsh events still hadn't broken the grip romanticism had on her mind, though its hold had begun slipping. "You suppose? You'll learn supposition when he gets here!"

But his remark had dampened her fire, Varthlokkur saw. "Nepanthe, Nepanthe, why can't you be rational? Whether he kills me, or, as is more likely, I..." He let it trail off, saying instead, "Well, we don't have to shout about it."

"You've kidnapped me, separated me from my husband, and you want me to be grateful? You think I should be reasonable about it? Why don't you be reasonable? Give me some winter clothes and let me go." She had tried to escape twice already. Twice she had been intercepted and gently returned to her room. "I promise to keep him from killing you."

Varthlokkur turned to hide his amusement. That was his due, wasn't it? The wicked wizards of the romances always ended up spitted on a hero's sword.

The Old Man, far from amused, assumed the argument. "You just won't understand, will you? This man, Varthlokkur, has spent four centuries waiting for you. Four centuries! Why? Because the Fates themselves say you should be his. Yet you'd defy them for so insignificant a thing as this... this actor and thief. What is he? What can he do?"

"He can love me."

"Can he? Does he? How much of that was for Varthlokkur's pay? And Varthlokkur himself, is he incapable of loving you?"

"Can he love at all?" she demanded, though weakly. Her certainties were being undermined. Wicked Doubt had begun to insinuate black tentacles through cracks in her bastions of faith. "The whole world knows what he is. The murderer of an entire city."

Angry himself, the Old Man smiled cruelly and snapped, "Dvar!"

Nepanthe's defiance wilted, folding in like a tulip blossom at nightfall. Ilkazar had been a city of antediluvian greed and wickedness. Any sense of justice had to agree that its doom hadn't been undeserved. That wasn't the case with Dvar, a little third-rate spear-carrier of a city, a mutual dependency of Iwa Skolovda and Prost Kamenets. Its single fame was a fierce, -always-doomed devotion to the cause of its right to be mistress of its own affairs. Nepanthe, who had been so exhilarated the night that tiny state had been crushed, now shut up and dropped into a chair. She turned her back on the men.