A Dragon's Ascension - Ed Greenwood [123]
Craer was still two desperate running steps away when the priest's hand closed around the Stone-and he vanished, leaving the procurer pouncing on nothing and sliding along the floor again.
Cursing, he glanced down into the throne chamber-and sprang to his feet with a snarl and leaped into space, aiming himself for the largest heap of bodies below…
His landing was a bruising crash that left him limping, but Hawkril was already charging towards the same danger.
Tshamarra had snatched up Embra's Dwaer with a smile. She held it up as they ran towards her, and it began to sing, softly.
Holding it, she knelt over Embra, and did something.
"Back, Lady!" Hawkril roared, "or-!"
Without waiting for a reply, he hurled his war sword.
It struck home, deep and true, and Tshamarra Talasorn reeled on her knees, threw back her head and sobbed, and then moaned, "Pluck it out! Pluck it out! I can't use this to heal us both!"
"Oh, gods!" Hawkril gasped. "What've I done?"
He reached her a stumbling moment before Craer. "Hold me up," she gasped at them both. "If we break apart, we'll both die, she and I…"
With as much tenderness as they could muster, Hawkril and Craer held the sorceress just as she was.
For a long, trembling time the Dwaer-glow pulsed from sorceress to sorceress, ere Tshamarra sat back with a sigh, and said, "She's well. Now, please, take your sword out of me. Three, but it hurts!"
"Lady," Hawkril said, his face agonized, "I'm so sorry…"
"You couldn't know," she said softly, and then gasped and bit her lip as the warsword came out. "Hold me, as before!" she snapped, almost crumpling in the armaragor's arms.
Hawkril and Craer held her, as Raulin danced anxiously around them and the Dwaer pulsed, until Tshamarra drew in a deep breath, smiled, and said. "Done. I, too, am whole."
She looked up. "Whither now? Run and hide, to heal and whelm and then fight again as every ambitious fool comes Throne-seeking, or shall we go gathering barons and force them to accept a new king?"
"Why do you care for Aglirta's kings, Lady?" Craer asked softly.
She met his eyes and shrugged. "I'm of Aglirta, too."
"You're Sirl," Hawkril growled slowly.
She whirled around in his arms, to face him. "I was born in Glarond and grew up in the woods and hills there, not in Sirl town." Her tone was fierce, but her words barely louder than a whisper as she stared into his eyes, and added, "I am Aglirtan, and-and I stand with you. For the first time in my life, I'm doing something of worth, something that matters?
"Be welcome," Embra said faintly, from beneath her. "And… thanks."
"Hey!" Raulin cried suddenly. "Help!"
They looked over at him. He stood pointing down at something amid the tumbled stones, something blackened and smouldering.
"I-it was the tip of the Serpent's tail," the bard said, his face white. "And then it turned into this"
By then Hawkril was beside him, warsword in hand. Amid the stones lay the tattered, blackened body of a man, its face little more than a sheet of bubbled flesh with two eyesockets and a mouth. That mouth moved, trembling, trying to speak, and one stump of an arm-the only arm it had, the overduke realized-reached up towards him.
With a snarl of rage and revulsion Hawkril hacked at it, shearing through that arm and then cleaving the head, again and again, until-
His warsword exploded in ringing, riven shards that spun past his face and sent him staggering back.
"Hawk! Craer shouted. "Here!"
Hawkril turned, blinking-and a dagger spun towards him, turning lazily, tossed by the procurer. Hawkril plucked it out of the air and raised it to stab down-but the body of the mage who'd become the Serpent so long ago was burning as he stood over it… dwindling, as he watched, to nothing. Dead and gone.
Just like Sarasper and Brightpennant.
Chapter Nineteen
Entertaining the Gods
The light of the scrying spell faded, and the man staring into it snarled in irritation. It flared back brightly once, showing him an enraged armaragor hacking at the charred, feebly moving remnants of a man,