A Dragon's Ascension - Ed Greenwood [109]
Tshamarra stared around wildly. On all sides, in a tightening ring. "Embra!"
Hawkril slashed furiously at the nearest snakes, slicing hissing heads in all directions-but wherever they landed, they sprang up like leaping trees-and the severed stumps grew new heads with just as frightening speed.
Craer was hurling dagger after dagger up through the hole in the ceiling, but the snake-men were laughing at him and transforming them into wriggling snakes in midair.
The Lady of Jewels looked up through tangled hair at that cold laughter-and stared around in sudden fury, her Dwaer flaming into fresh brilliance. White fire slashed out from her hands as she rose, melting away black snakes at a touch-but the ring of snakes gave way only sullenly, and regrew a pace behind her ravening fire.
"And so the famous Band of Four feels the fangs of our little trap at last," a mocking voice floated down to them from the gallery above. It was the Serpent-priest who'd taunted Bloodblade.
He smiled into Embra's fierce glare, crooked a green-scaled little finger-and the Crown of Aglirta was suddenly gleaming upon his brow. The Serpent-priest promptly sketched an elegant court bow, smiled even more widely as Embra's Dwaer blazed brighter in her fury, and mockingly held out his hand to her, as if inviting her onto a dance floor.
There was a Dwaer-Stone glowing in his open palm.
"Lady Silvertree," the priest commanded in a voice suddenly deep and powerful, as Dwaer-fire rose around him like white lightning and his eyes glowed with sudden fire, "give me your Dwaer."
"No," Embra spat at him, "I think not." And power rushed out of her with a roar that echoed back from every corner of Flowfoam Palace like an agonized shout.
In a deep and dusty room, a glowing skeleton sat up in its casket, just for a moment, and two tiny flames kindled in its empty eyesockets. Its jaw swung open, stiffly, and worked, struggling to say something with lips, throat, and lungs that were no longer there-and then, with one arm half-raised, it fell back into the casket, to lie in silent stillness once more.
Her Dwaer-Stone danced in the air like a small star afire, so bright that it hurt the eyes-and where Embra's cone of ravening white fire struck the smiling Serpent-priest, it parted, touching him not-and snuffed out the lives and bodies of half a dozen other scaled clergy, leaving nothing behind but wisps of lazily curling smoke.
Other Snake-priests went to their knees dazedly, holding their heads, and many reeled briefly in pain.
The Serpent-priest who had a Dwaer of his own gave the Lady of Jewels a brittle smile, men began to chant a simple incantation-a few words in the hissing, fluid tongue of the Believers of the Great Serpent, repeated over and over again…
His Dwaer flamed red, then black, and men red again, raging above him-and as the priest's chant went on, and the other surviving Snake-clergy began to join in, his Worldstone grew slowly brighter.
Embra knew what that chant was-and it did not take long for Tshamarra or Craer to correctly guess what was befalling.
It was Raulin who asked, raw-voiced, "What is he-it-doing, Lady?"
"He's summoning the Serpent," Embra told him grimly, her face as white as bone, "and there's nothing I can do to stop him."
Her white fires wrestled with the black wall of snakes, and beat it back a pace or two, but could gain no further ground.
The invocation went on, louder and louder, its insistent rhythm quickening. Other voices joined in, from far down the passages that led to the throne chamber, and snakes larger man men came gliding in through some of the doors.
"Give me your Dwaer, Embra Silvertree," the Serpent-priest hissed triumphantly, as the chant rose to an echoing crescendo in the palace around them. "Give it to me on your knees-or I'll come down mere and take it, adrip with your blood!"
As his last word hissed out, a deep, thrumming roar of triumph arose all around-and the roof of the gallery