Cloak of Shadows - Ed Greenwood [91]
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The Castle of Shadows, Kythorn 19
The Malaugrym was swift, and there was no telling what sort of spell he was weaving, so Belkram regretfully shot out his tail, wrapped it around the Shadowmaster's ankle, and pulled. An instant later, a flash of violet radiance washed over them all as the magic took hold, and the two Harpers found themselves swaying and dazed but in their true forms again, tails and horns and such gone.
Their state made Sharantyr's cold reply to the Shadow-master's question about the shapes they wore an unintended irony. "Our own," she said crisply, tossing her saddlebag aside without taking her eyes from him.
Suddenly released from Belkram's grip, the Malaugrym swayed but thrust out half a dozen sucker-covered tentacles to brace himself against the wall and steps. He snarled in anger, a snarl that became a lunge of snapping fangs as his neck lengthened with lightning speed. Sharantyr turned her face away from those gleaming fangs and struck at him frantically. The serpentine neck reared back, but once her blade had flashed past, the Malaugrym struck, plunging his teeth toward Sharantyr's breast.
Inches before the shapeshifter's fangs would have touched home, a Harper lunged to the rescue. Belkram's punch glanced off Sharantyr's forehead as it drove the Shadowmaster's head aside, and the lady Knight staggered back as the Harper and the Malaugrym struck the wall together.
The shapeshifter put a hand on Belkram's face to pin his head against the wall, and grew talons to put out his opponent's eyes, but Belkram sat down suddenly and vanished from under the shapeshifter's grasp just as Itharr's blade burst through the Malaugrym's body, sword tip spraying blood.
The Malaugrym merely sneered and stepped back, his flesh flowing away from around the blade to leave it bare. "Mortals in our castle?" he hissed incredulously, and seemed almost gleeful as he added, "There can be only one proper punishment for such effrontery!"
"Death, I suppose?" Belkram asked, launching himself from the landing in a kick that drove the feet out from under the Malaugrym.
The shapeshifter fell on the stone steps and rebounded, rising to keep Itharr's blade at bay with a flailing wall of saw-edged tentacles.
"Blinding, dismemberment-and other enjoyable diversions," he replied pleasantly, pressing forward. His tentacles fenced with both Harpers, and behind the wall they wove, the Malaugrym raised his hands almost leisurely to cast another spell.
Sharantyr set her mouth in a grim line and sprang forward, her blade flashing. Where it touched a tentacle sent to intercept it, smoke rose and the shapeshifter grunted in astonished pain. The lady ranger dove through the hole she'd cut and found herself face to face with the furious Malaugrym as her blade whipped through his throat once, and then back across it again on her backswing.
Blood sprayed her, and the shocked Malaugrym staggered back, choking on his incantation, wisps of smoke curling up from his throat. "Usss-" he hissed. "Oorthhh…," and he coughed weakly and shook his head, backing away.
"Do we dare let him go?" Belkram muttered, sword in hand.
Itharr shrugged. "I don't think it pr-watch out!" The Malaugrym sank down swiftly into an octopuslike sprawl on the stairs, shooting out a small forest of tentacles that snatched at the ankles of all three rangers. Belkram fell helplessly and heavily, hacking at whatever he could reach, and found tentacles slapping over his mouth, striving to suffocate him.
Itharr went to one knee but caught hold of a stair post for balance, sawing at the tentacles wrapped around Belkram.
Sharantyr plunged into the heart of their foe, hacking and slashing. Although tentacles rose up all around her in an effort to snatch or twist the blade from her hands and bear her down, she kept hold of her weapon with both hands and cut glowing blue lines of death through ever-thicker smoke.
Where Belkram and Itharr cut the Malaugrym, its cuts flowed together again and healed, but the wounds made by Sharantyr's