A Dragon's Ascension - Ed Greenwood [58]
The taller Koglaur sighed. "Wizards," he muttered. "They seem to be everywhere in Aglirta!"
"You're not the first of us to make such an observation," the whorl-caster said wryly. "Magic lures them-and baronial gold. Steady employment, that is, as walking weapons for one baron to threaten another with… and barons of Aglirta, it seems, are always threatening other barons of Aglirta."
"This much war is usual?" The Koglaur from Sarinda spread his hands. "I must confess a certain bewilderment: given such bloodshed, how is it that any crops get harvested, and the land survives, king or no king, down the centuries? It should all have become beast-roamed waste by now!"
The whorl-caster smiled. "Tension and intrigue are constant, yes, but such open battle-no. The people whelm behind Bloodblade, their new hope, all of the barons seek the Throne-and behind it all are the Serpent-clergy. They've finally risen in earnest, to make a concerted bid for the Throne."
"And if they succeed?"
"If they take Aglirta, Sirlptar will in turn fall. Then, city by city-unless some as-yet-unknown foe arises from nowhere to foil them-they'll take all Darsar. A bard sang of it, once: 'a cloak of death and tyranny flung across the land.' Fear will then drive some to flight before them, and freeze others into helplessness, to be mastered where they cower."
"You soothe me," the taller Koglaur said bitterly. "So why have we wasted our time down the years meddling with lesser foes and matters, when alongside us, the Snake-lovers have grown into something much greater?"
The Koglaur bent over the whorl did something with his hand, and the whorl sank, slowed, and began to go dark and fade away. "We've struck at the clergy of the Great Serpent again and again," he said grimly, "but have often been slain or foiled… as if our foe knew just how, when, and in what shape we'd be acting."
The Sarindan Koglaur made a restless movement. "Well, it can't have been the Serpent, asleep. Is it these confounded wizards again?"
The whorl-caster looked even grimmer. "No."
"Who, then?"
"Who better to fight us than one of our own?"
The tall, spar-headed creature raced through dry, dead underbranches in a loud chorus of snappings, fragments tumbling in its wake. As it ran, leaping fallen and rotten tree trunks and vine tangles, it murmured, "Swifter, Thuulor, swifter! This Flaeros will be halfway to the ends of Darsar before you catch him, at this rate!"
There came a place in the green and shaded gloom where the forest fell away in tumbled rocks beneath its pounding feet, and the hurrying figure plunged into space. There was a twisting and blurring, and then a frantic flapping of huge wings, ere the crash of crushed bushes came. A leathery, winged thing sprang up from that hard landing and flew on-and with each wingbeat its wings grew smaller, and its body longer and more slender, until a gigantic many-winged eel or snake was darting between the trees…
* * *
Every breath burned like fire, his legs felt weak and wobbly, and Flaeros Delcamper had no idea where he was running to-or where he was. In this confounded forest, yes, utterly lost and blundering along where bears and worse dwell, yes, but he must go on running-or die.
Something was crashing along after him, something that could change its shape, something large and fast that was hunting him.
Twice he'd deliberately made a sharp turn and headed in a new direction-and twice it had followed, sometimes running, sometimes flying… and always drawing a little closer.
Flaeros gasped for breath, stumbling and almost falling for the hundredth time, staggering on he knew not where, through dark, old, moss-covered trees and wet leaves underfoot, roots like gnarled boulders wandering under his boots like rope strewn across a barge deck, and oh, Three Above save me, when would