Guardians of the Lost (55 page)

D
amra and her companions emerged from the Portal into the eastern fortress that guarded it. She was tense and nervous, not knowing what to expect—more questions, certainly, or perhaps a battle with the guards of House Wyval. She did not expect to find the Portal deserted.

No guards remained inside the vast fortress. The magic that had defended the Inner Ring had been lifted. No soldiers walked the ramparts. Everything was in disorder and disarray—papers still burned in the fire pits, half-eaten was food left on the table. Evidence that the elves had departed in haste. Either the Shield had ordered them to leave or they had made that decision themselves, on hearing reports of the army that was then marching through the Portal.

The silence of the empty fortress was unnerving. Damra did not linger. She and those in her care must put as many miles between them and the approaching army as possible.

She had hoped to borrow horses, but no horses remained and it was at that point she very nearly gave up. She was exhausted, as were the human and the pecwae. The Grandmother was gray with
fatigue. She stumbled as she walked. Bashae yawned and blinked like an owl in the sunlight. Jessan made no complaint, but twice Bashae had been forced to put more healing stones on the young man's hand to help ease his pain.

“We cannot go much farther,” Damra said to herself. “Yet we have to. We dare not stay here.”

The eastern end of the Portal was located in the side of a mountain. A broad highway led from the fortress that surrounded the Portal to a valley below, not far from the headwaters of Arven river, where the elves had built a large harbor. Commerce in and out of the Portal traveled by boat.

Damra trudged wearily along the highway, wondering if it were actually possible to fall asleep on one's feet. She had about come to the conclusion that it was, when Jessan jostled her arm.

“What?” Damra lifted her head.

Jessan pointed. Four elves had ridden out of the woods. They did not approach, but remained at the edge of the highway, watching her, waiting for her to come level with them.

Damra eyed them warily. Were these the Shield's men? She recognized the ritual masks, but those didn't tell her much about their allegiance, for one was from House Tanath, another from a minor House, Hlae, and two more were from another minor House, Sithma-Oesa. Any of those Houses might be allied with the Shield.

Cautiously, hand hovering near her sword hilt, she continued on her way. Coming near, she was about to give the requisite polite greeting and keep going, but one of the elves urged his horse out from the woods to block her path. She had no choice but to halt.

“Dominion Lord,” he said, addressing her in respectful tones. “You and your friends have come a long way. You must be hungry and tired. Our master extends an invitation for you to rest and refresh yourselves at his manor.”

Damra was too exhausted to take the time for polite nothings. She pointed behind her. “An army of creatures the likes of which have not been seen in this world is coming through that Portal. Do you know that?”

“Yes,” the elf said, “so we heard from the sons of cowards of
House Wyval who fled with their tails tucked between their legs. All the more reason you should take advantage of our master's hospitality.”

“Who is your master?” Damra asked.

“The Baron Shadamehr,” the elf replied.

The elves had not brought extra horses, but two elves offered theirs, saying that they had orders to stay behind, to see what this famous army might do. Damra wondered how they planned to remain alive long enough to report once they'd seen the army, but they did not seem concerned. She concluded that they must have some other means of transportation hidden away in the forest—hippogriffs, perhaps.

Mounting the horses, they rode to the harbor, where they boarded long boats. Damra knew nothing of the journey. Lulled by the lapping of the water and the knowledge that for once she was not expected to be in control of the situation, she fell asleep.

She woke to another ride overland and then a climb up the steep slope of a cliff-face known, she was told, as the Imperial Escarpment. Above her, she saw a castle, a towering structure of gray rock that seemed to float among the clouds, for it was built on the highest point for miles around.

“What is that place?” she asked.

“Shadamehr's Keep,” was the reply.

 

As Damra rode nearer to Shadamehr's Keep, Ulaf—once known many months ago as Brother Ulaf—was wandering about the bailey of the Keep, searching for his lord and master.

“Where is Shadamehr?” Ulaf demanded of everyone he met.

“I haven't seen him,” was the invariable answer.

At last, Ulaf found a stable-hand, who made a vague gesture in the direction of the Keep. “I saw him go in there, but that was hours past. He came round to the stable, asking for all the rope we had on hand.”

“Rope?” Ulaf repeated, puzzled. “What did he want rope for?”

The stable-hand shrugged and grinned. “You know his lordship.”

“Indeed I do,” muttered Ulaf. “All too well.”

He hastened off across the stable yard, heading in the direction of an enormous castle that was known throughout the Vinnengaelean empire—sometimes with curses, sometimes with praise—as Shadamehr's Keep.

Built on the Imperial Escarpment that runs east of the Mehr Mountains, the original Keep had consisted of four walls, two towers and a gate. Constructed in the year 542, twenty years after the fall of Old Vinnengael and ten years after the founding of the city of New Vinnengael, the Keep stood at a strategic point in the northern part of the Vinnengaelean Empire, only about two hundred miles from the eastern end of the Tromek Portal.

Even back then, the Shadamehrs were considered to be “eccentric.” The first Earl of Shadamehr had been an impoverished knight serving in the household of King Hegemon. Having nothing to give His Majesty except blood, Lord Shadamehr cheerfully shed that for His Majesty's cause during the Battle of the Plains, the war started by the dwarves when they discovered that the humans intended to build their new capital on land claimed by the dwarves.

Such was his heroism in battle—he saved the king's life—that Lord Shadamehr was named Baron Shadamehr and given an earldom. Instead of choosing land around the proposed city, as everyone else was doing, the Baron declared that he had seen a site not far from the elven border to the north that looked to him to be an excellent place to build a castle. He was very nearly laughed out of court, for there was nothing to the north but elves and giants, and relations were not so good with either that any man would choose to willingly live near them.

The king had tried to persuade Baron Shadamehr to accept an earldom that was more valuable, but the Baron persisted in his desire and, finally, the king gave in. Loading up several boats with men and supplies, the Baron traveled up the Arven, looking for a good place to build his Keep. He found it on a steep cliff about thirty miles from the headwaters of the Arven. The escarpment being highly defensible, the baron set about building his castle.

A short time later, the elves announced that they had discovered a Portal through their lands, the eastern entrance of which
Portal was within a day's ride of the Vinnengaelean border. Relations between humans and elves improved markedly when elven merchants began to clamor that they wanted to take their goods into the wealthy city of New Vinnengael. The river provided easy access. The Baron established an outpost on the river and charged a modest fee to those passing through his lands. The merchants might have balked at this, but, in return, Baron Shadamehr took care that river travelers were not molested by giants, dwarves or other nuisances. He was known to be a man of honor, whose word was good on anything, and even the elves spoke of him with grudging respect.

Certain envious barons, who watched the Earl grow wealthy almost overnight, said spitefully that Shadamehr must have known of the existence of the Portal in advance and that, if so, he should have told the king. Shadamehr would never say yea or nay to this, but since he always gave generously to the king whenever His Majesty was in need of funds, the king was not one to press the issue.

The Shadamehrs continued their eccentric ways down through the ages, scandalizing the New Vinneng-aeleans with their outlandish mode of life. They married for love, not for money, for they had plenty of that. They raised healthy children who went out into the world and made names for themselves and were invariably loyal and loving to each other, disappointing those who had hoped to witness the family's disintegration.

The tolls they charged were modest. They were fair and open-handed in all their dealings.

The current Baron of Shadamehr's Keep had acted with an eccentricity that broke all previously held family records. A man known to everyone to be generous, brave, intelligent (some said too intelligent for his own good), and noble, he had been granted the very great honor of being permitted to take the tests to become a Dominion Lord. Shadamehr had taken the tests. He had passed them with ease, but for a few minor problems, dealing mainly with his tendency to speak a bit too lightly of the gods and to burst into laughter at solemn moments. He had been granted the right to undergo the Transfiguration. Everything was in preparation for the
ceremony when, at the last moment, Shadamehr refused to take it, something no one had ever done in the glorious history of the Dominion Lords.

Shadamehr had a blazing row with the Council of Dominion Lords and another blazing row with the king, during which the Baron was stripped of his Earldom and ordered to cede his lands to the crown. Shadamehr responded by seceding. He removed his lands from under Vinnengaelean control, declared himself to be an independent nation, and challenged anyone to try to take his Keep from him. He then departed in high dudgeon.

The king in his fury did send one force to try to take the Keep, but his knights and barons, many of whom were friends of Shadamehr, either refused outright to fight or did so half-heartedly. The battle was a dismal failure. The king decided that it would be prudent from then on to simply ignore Shadamehr and pretend he didn't exist.

Some said that after his own wrath cooled, Shadamehr felt badly about the way he'd acted. He did not feel badly about refusing to undergo the Transfiguration. He rarely spoke of it, but when he did, he always made it clear that he had no regrets. He felt badly about severing his ties with the people of New Vinnengael and it was then that he began to do what he could to make reparation, to try to increase the safety and security of his people.

His interest in humanity began to extend to the rest of the world, to other races. He saw that the world could be a much better place if people would only learn to live together in peace. Most people thought this, or at least claimed to think it, but Shadamehr, with true eccentricity, decided that he would do something about it. He set about recruiting people of all races to help him attain this goal and whenever he heard rumors of war or discord, he sent in his agents to observe and report so that he might be able to do something to help defuse the situation. Sometimes he succeeded, other times he did not, but he never gave up hope.

The Keep was now a rambling structure that sprawled over the cliff face, various Shadamehrs having built towers, erected walls and added wings with little regard for fashion or architectural design.
One Baron had been fond of spires and there were lots of these, sticking up all over the place, adding an air of whimsy to the building. Another Baron had taken a fancy to flying buttresses, while a third had delighted in stained-glass windows. The Keep was always bustling with activity, with agents and friends coming and going at all hours of the day and night.

Ulaf passed a group of orks gathered around their shaman, looking at him anxiously as he read the omens of some incident that had apparently just occurred, for more orks were coming at a run to hear the outcome. Ulaf glanced into the circle of large bodies, trying to see what was causing all the furor.

The orks were staring in consternation at a cat that had a live mouse in her mouth. Orks are fond of cats. Orks consider cats lucky and woe betide anyone who harms a cat in the presence of an ork. Whether or not this cat with the mouse was a good omen or a bad one, Ulaf couldn't tell. Ordinarily he would have stopped to ask, for he found orken superstitions highly diverting, but this day he had news of too much urgency to wait.

He entered the south door that was one of six leading into the Keep's main hall, an enormous chamber hung with tapestries and banners. A fire pit stood in the center. The ceiling was spanned by large beams, blackened from decades of smoke. The sun shining through the stained-glass windows made colorful splashes on the floor. The chamber echoed with the sound of raised voices and clashing steel. Several young knights practiced at swordplay in one corner, while a different group argued philosophy in another.

Or perhaps, Ulaf thought, those with the swords are arguing philosophy. Skirting both groups, he nabbed a young squire, who was watching the combatants with envy, and asked if he had seen Lord Shadamehr.

“I saw him go up the stairs with several large coils of rope,” the squire reported. He had to repeat himself twice before Ulaf could hear over the uproar.

“What stairs?” Ulaf bawled, for there were as many staircases as there were entrances and each led to a different part of the castle.

The squire pointed. Ulaf wound his way up a staircase that carried
the climber to the hall's third story. Having lived here off and on for five years, Ulaf could still get turned around. Reaching the top of the stairs, he searched the area, trying to regain his bearings and hoping to find Shadamehr.

He saw no sign of his lord, but he did recognize where he was. This corridor led to the Baron's private quarters. Several of his long-time friends had their sleeping rooms here, to be nearby in case they were needed.