A Dragon's Ascension - Ed Greenwood [49]
Bright blue-edged flame kindled before their faces, hurling armaragors and their mounts aside like toys. Tall and terrible, it loomed like a wagon where there'd been nothing moments before. The force of its presence struck Hawkril to his knees, and the baronial foreguard shouted in alarm and scrambled back, abandoned lances bouncing and clattering, as the flames grew vivid blue, with a white, searing heart.
Searing, yet cold. Icy cold. Hawkril scrambled back, shaking numbed hands, as two horses fled, on the bank beyond, in a wild thudding of hooves. Out of that whiteness stepped four tall, slender dark-gowned figures he'd seen before. The Talasorn sister-sorceresses. His heart sank as he saw hostility on their faces.
"We know, now, just who serves our father's killers," Olone Talasorn said coldly, "and who seems to always be eager to hack down wizards, wherever you ride in Aglirta. Die, meddling fools!"
Four wands aimed-and spat dazzling fire along the dock at the over-dukes and the two who stood with them.
His arms felt like battered clubs, too heavy to lift-and his head seemed like the scorched aftermath of a cookfire, black and ravaged and smoldering. Weak, numbed emptiness rode in him as he sat in his saddle atop a hilltop in Sarth Fields strewn deep with the dead, and amid the flies, high-wheeling vultures, and men too weary to smile in victory, the Regent of Aglirta struggled to keep from swaying and falling right out of his saddle.
He wanted to lie down and rest. Three Above, speak truth: no, he wanted to lie down and die.
The Dwaer spun silently above him, and with a cold ruthlessness he jerked his hand in a beckoning gesture. Two burly but pale-faced armsmen of the Royal Host of Aglirta brought forward the next struggling Serpent-priest, turning their heads aside for fear that his spittings were poisonous. More than one had been, and men kicked their heels and arched in shuddering agony right now as they died, not far off, with their swordbrothers powerless to help them.
He'd let the Dwaer ravage him, using them too long-but being Regent of Aglirta meant doing such things. If the Vale needed him to be a taloned monster, the Golden Griffon in truth, men a taloned monster he would be.
But he was damned if he was going to let his frightened but still-loyal warriors think he was enjoying the murders he was doing now.
Blackgult stared into the hate-filled eyes of the Snake-priest and said grimly, raising his hand like priests did in benediction, "I do this for Aglirta. For justice and for the need of our fair land. Die, traitor, that Aglirta may live!"
And then he bent his gaze on the man's eyes, and called on the Dwaer for their darkest fire.
Not to sear and melt flesh, as he'd done earlier, but to drink life, stealing it into him as the man gasped. Glittering eyes slowly went dark above whispered prayers and curses as the priest sagged in the fearful grasp of the armaragors, and died.
Ezendor Blackgult drew in a deep breath as the stolen life force surged through him, soothing and strengthening all at once. Ignoring the grim gaze of the warcaptain Halvan, he said quietly, "Bring the next one."
He didn't want to meet Halvan's eyes, and see the carefully shielded disgust lurking there, amid the fear-and more: the growing resolve that, personal death sentence or not, it might be best for all Darsar if the Sirl Swords were commanded to hew down the Regent of Aglirta before he stole more lives with the fell Dwaerindim.
Deliberately, he dismounted and turned his back to the stout Sirl war-captain, standing within easy reach. Best to let Halvan see his chance, and decide for himself not to take it. Even a Blackgult gone magic-mad and deadly with power was preferable to bullying barons snatching at the Throne, and Serpent-priests smirking at the resulting ruination and slyly provoking fray after fray, until all the Vale was an emptied, death-choked battlefield…
There were stirrings, all around the hilltop. Blackgult ignored them, too: the sounds