'What by all the bright gods-?' Perivel shouted, springing up from his game of chethlachance with a violent surge that scattered the pieces across the board and sent old Nelember ducking hastily away from the swing of the heir's scabbarded sword.
'Unless I'm mistaken,' Perivel's father said quietly, standing like a dark statue by the windows, 'that will be our friends of House Soargyl and House Talendar, come to call on me, and in a mood to demonstrate that they've forgotten how to open gates.'
'Why, those beggars!' Perivel was almost speechless in fury, but not quite. A Sembian could give no higher insult than the word he'd chosen.
'Father,' Thamalon asked urgently, his book flung down and forgotten, 'what shall we do?'
Aldimar Uskevren shrugged, the weariness of the gesture leaving both his sons gaping at him in shock. 'What else?' he replied. 'Fight, and sell our lives dearly. If two of us fall, mind, the third must win free, to keep the Uskevren name alive for a day when revenge can be taken. I've no more the strength or the inclination for fleeing and dodging. Let it end for me here.'
He drew a wand from one sleeve and a long knife from the other and strode forward, never seeing the stunned looks his sons traded with each other behind his back.
A moment ago the brothers had been idling away an evening waiting for their father to confide in them the details of his latest schemes. They waited for him to tell them just how startlingly steep the bribes he was going to have to pay to avoid being jailed over this piracy scandal would be. Now, it seemed, they were standing on their own battlements in a doomed siege, staring into their father's waiting grave… and perhaps their own.
Shouts and crashes rang faintly up the stairs from below, and the sounds of frantically running feet suddenly smote the ears of the three, as the House Guard whelmed in haste. Their sounds seemed to remind Aldimar of something.
'Nelember,' the head of House Uskevren commanded curtly, without turning his head or slowing, 'get the Lady Ilrilteska and her maids away to safety as swiftly as you can. To Storl Oak by morning, if possible, but out of the city forthwith, regardless of what befalls hereafter. Hear you?'
The old tutor, as pale as the wax of the nearest candles, had to swallow twice before he managed to gasp, 'Aye, Lord. Storl Oak it shall be.'
Whatever Aldimar said next was lost in the splintering crash of the forehall ceiling coming down amid the shrieks of pantry maids below. Lightning flashed up the stairs, spitting sparks, and stabbed at the three Uskevren.
The Lord of Stormweather Towers sprang back and cast two swift, hawklike glances over his shoulders. His eyes flashed at what he saw and he snapped, 'Stand away from me, both of you! What bright future will there be for House Uskevren if one bolt fells us all, eh?'
Perivel was shaking his head in disbelief as Aldimar's sons traded glances again and obediently drifted apart. Thamalon simply stared, open-mouthed and mute, at the horror so swiftly overwhelming his world.
There were heads bobbing amid the rolling clouds of dust below-helmed heads, advancing purposefully up the broad steps.
'Aldimar Uskevren!' a man shouted. 'Miscreant and pirate! Yield to us!'
Aldimar flung up one hand in an imperious gesture commanding silence from his sons, and planted himself at the head of the stairs, thrusting his knife back in its sheath and shaking a second wand out of his sleeve.
Like the one ready in his other hand, it was a weapon neither of his sons had ever seen before, or known their father could use.
A lance of black magical fire leaped up the stairs. Where it struck, crackling, Nelember's head vanished from his shoulders. As the spasming body danced and reeled, another shout rolled up the stairs from below. It was a voice all three Uskevren knew.
'Aldimar,' Rildinel Soargyl roared, his voice as deep as the snorts of the bull he resembled, 'you are a dead man! Too craven to yield or stand forth and fight. I swear, we'll pull this place down until we find you or its falling crushes you. Where by all the coins Waukeen has ever forgotten are you?'
'Here, Rildinel,' Aldimar called, in the mocking tones of a young lass teasing someone who searches for her. 'Here.'
As his old friend Nelember crashed to the floor beside him, both of the wands in Aldimar's hands burst into life, flooding the stairs with a sheet of white flame.
The men-at-arms rushing up the steps shrieked as they died, hurled off their feet and away by the power that seared them and melted their swords and armor alike. Below and behind the soldiers the three Uskevren saw a dark-robed figure reel and stagger amid the fading, darkening wandfire. An instant later, what was left of the forehall erupted upward through the solar, seeking the star-strewn sky. The explosion flung them all backward and smote their ears into ringing cacophony. It seemed that a mage had been unprepared for Aldimar's magic.
A shaggy head, dark and wet with blood, bounced on the steps beside Perivel's boots long moments later. All three men knew its staring face. It seemed Rildinel Soargyl, too, had been taken quite by surprise.
Well, nothing would ever surprise or disturb him again.
'I cannot but fail to observe, my sons, that House Soargyl has a new head,' Aldimar murmured wryly. 'Let us see if we can give them yet another before morning. Brutish ambition should be aptly rewarded.'
As Perivel chuckled at this dark sally, his father's wands spat forth white fire again.
Only a few groans followed the second flood of flames. From beyond the shattered solar came fresh blasts of fury, and the dainty Ladyspire Turret toppled slowly past their view, flames spewing from its tiny arched windows.
Thamalon saw Aldimar's face change, and swallowed hastily. 'I-I'm sure she was elsewhere, Father,' he managed to say. 'The-'
Another explosion rocked the steps beneath their feet, an instant before the turret's landing made the floor heave, flinging them helplessly against the nearest walls. Dust puffed out of the joints between those massive stones as they staggered back and away from walls that were shuddering as if they were alive.
Perivel drew his sword with a snarl. 'They're destroying the Towers around us!'
Aldimar nodded sadly as the thunderous grating of stone rose to a momentary scream, echoed around the three Uskevren as they found footing once more, then started to die away.
'The Talendars pay their mages well,' the patriarch observed, when speech could be heard again. 'They must often be consumed with a frustrated hunger to use all that hired sorcery-and lo! Here we are, villains and traitors whose presence can not be tolerated in Selgaunt a moment longer.' The smile that crossed his face then was not a pretty thing.
'Find them, my sons,' he commanded, 'and slay me some mages. Let them rue the price of our passing.'
Perivel strode to the head of the great stair, but the head of House Uskevren put out one hand to his elbow and plucked him back. The son was startled by the strength of his sire's grip.
'Not right down Where they're waiting for you,' Aldimar snapped. 'Of what use to me is a dead heir?'
For a dark instant Perivel looked as if he was about to return his sire's snarl with interest, but that moment passed and he nodded slowly.
'The passage to the vaults?' Perivel asked, with a fierce grin. 'Out to the stables and around to take them from behind?'
'Brother,' Thamalon said urgently, pointing out one shattered window, 'I think they're around by the stables already. The-'
A blue flare of magical light curled almost lazily up from the spread, upraised hands of a shadowy figure in the courtyard below. The light rolled forward through the dusty chaos of the Ladyspire's fall, to the gaping wound in the mansion walls where the turret had fallen away.
Through that opening eight armsmen of Aldimar's House Guard could be seen, swords and spears in their hands, cautiously probing every corner of the shattered chamber for intruders.
'No,' Aldimar growled. 'Fools-you'll all be slain! Get back! Get…'
His voice trailed away in futility. He had no spell to send his voice to them, and there was no way to save them. The deadly radiance was already rolling inexorably into the room. As the three Uskevren men watched grimly, the blue glow surged through the chamber like a storm-driven wave crashing through a flooded coastal forest. It swept away furniture and stiffly tumbling bodies, dashed lamps and mirrors into flying shards, and hurled statuettes
