A Dragon's Ascension - Ed Greenwood [51]
"Trying to catch us right here, before we can reach shelter," Halvan grunted, swinging up onto the saddle of his big bay. It snorted and stamped in complaint, sore and weary.
Blackgult looked at the scarred and bleeding flank of his own warhorse, then turned and lifted his voice in a merry shout: "Farewell, loyal men of Aglirta! I'm proud to have fought at your side! If Sarth be our doom, let it be one the bards sing of with awe, a hundred summers hence! This night, I'll see you again around the deadfires, where the Three wait for us all!"
He raised his sword, but few of the armsmen of Aglirta looking back at him saluted him in return, or even managed a bitter or weary smile. It's hard to find mirth when you know you're doomed.
Chapter Nine
Skulls Grin Easily
Magic flashed as bright as lightning, snarling along the shattered wharf.
Sarasper hunched as low as he could in wolf-spider form, Craer hurled himself behind a tangle of boat timbers and splayed boards-and, on her knees beside Raulin, Embra murmured, " DIV let it be Lady enough!?As delicately as a mother's caress, a bolt of searing sorcery stabbed out at the Lady of Jewels as it passed. Raulin yelled in fear as his hair tingled and he felt the flesh on his face creep, cringing back before the slaying force surging so close-surging into Embra's cupped hands, and the tiny pendant there.
That jewel had been too paltry to bring them all hence in her spelljump, or she'd never have sacrificed the baron's copper hand… and Raulin thought he knew the sort of enchantment it held: a little glow, such as many high ladies could call forth from their gems, to light them in soft evening-gloom as if with soft candles, and make their jewels sparkle. That was all-just a spell glow, to be turned on and off by the wearer's will. What help could it possibly be against this?
In the next roaring instant, Raulin's despairing question found an answer. Though the Lady Embra bit her lip and threw her head back in obvious, trembling pain, the magic shocking into her didn't hurl her dying out over the waters, or melt away her hands to bony stumps in a flash.
Instead, it plunged into her cupped hands, trailing fire, and roiled there, impossibly held and caught-only to spill out from between her fingers as a bright, leaping net of spell-strands.
Two of those strands arced out, almost as if by accident, to snare a bolt that had scorched a line of upthrust timbers into flame and driven a groaning Baron Brightpennant reeling out from behind one of them, clutching his shoulder in staggering agony.
The strands whirled around that bright lance of slaying sorcery-and then plucked it and hurled it out across the Silverflow, straight and true, towards Flowfoam. "Lady!" Raulin gasped, as Embra shuddered again, her face wet with tears. "What befalls? How can I-?"
"Help me?" Embra panted. "Touch me not! Just… leave me be… an instant longer…"
Something snapped back from Flowfoam with a bright flash that made the armaragors on the bank shout in pain and dismay, and clutch at their blinded eyes.
Raulin's own gaze swam, but through his tears he saw Embra smile in grim satisfaction-as a flood of ravening magical fire twice as great as the bolt she'd snared came howling back from the distant island, to crash into the blue Talasorn fire with a crash that sounded as if every bell in all Darsar had been shattered with one brutal blow.
Raulin spun around, in time to see a fallen, tumbling wand blaze into ash in the wake of four sorceresses, as they were hurled end over end over the dead horses and sprawled armaragors into the trees, trailing screams.
Four blue flames blossomed there-and vanished abruptly, one after another, as the Talasorn sisters snatched themselves elsewhere.
Embra gave Raulin a weary smile. "A spell net-one of the few useful enchantments of all the Living Castle restraints and lashes laid on