Death of the Dragon - Ed Greenwood [87]
Dauneth shivered. "You would really do that?"
Azoun spread his hands. "You can see another choice?"
He let the silence stretch-a silence in which the warden opened his mouth thrice to speak, then frowned and shut it again. A silence broken by a long, despairing scream from the streets below, and a horrific crashing sound as flames ate away support beams, and three floors above a shop collapsed and fell into the street in front of it with a roar.
All three of the people on the balcony turned their heads and watched the first of the flames lick up from the tall, arched windows of the nearby palace, creeping like dark tongues up the ornately carved stone.
Azoun watched the first of its painted glass windows explode into the street in molten tears before he added bleakly, "This is what it is to be a king, Dauneth. You might tell your more rebellious kin that."
A thin smile crossed the king's face, and he added almost playfully, "Someday, that is, when we all have time for such things."
* * * * *
"Now!" a bristle-mustached lancelord shouted, his eyes on the dark form of the dragon gliding through the smoke.
The catapults let go with deep thumps, their rocking making the rampart shudder underfoot as they let go their stony loads. Most sailed short to plummet down into the ruined western city, but a few thudded home. Nalavara the Red wheeled away in anger and vanished behind the smoke.
"Work those wheels!" the lancelord bawled. "She'll be back, and we'll look pretty silly if she can just glide down here and tear us to dog meat. Leap to it, lads!"
The sweating crews swarmed over the catapults, sweat-drenched muscles rippling in their bared arms and backs, but Alusair turned away. "Those won't touch the ghazneths," she snarled. "Too slow-and probably no harm to them if they do take a load right in the face."
"We're ready for them, Highness," a stern-faced war wizard assured her. "All of us are ready."
"Oh?" the Steel Princess said, whirling around to face him with one gauntleted hand on her hip and the other holding a warsword it appeared she was itching to use. "And just how do you intend to deal with them, sir wizard? They'll eat your spells like a wolf biting down a rabbit."
"If Your Highness pleases to see," an older wizard said calmly, "the gate is opening right about now. The ghazneths'll be here soon enough."
Alusair looked at him, lifting an eyebrow at his confident tone… then her eyes fell to the end of his graying beard. His fingers were locked in it, twisting nervously, already so badly tangled in the locks that most of them would have to be cut out of it.
"I'll stay," she said softly, "and be of what use I can."
An unearthly shriek rose up the nearest vent shaft, from somewhere in the citadel below, and the Steel Princess whirled around to face it. "What by all the waiting hells was that?"
"That," said the older war wizard, with something that might almost have been satisfaction in his voice, "would be the lady mage's pain as she opens the spell gate."
* * * * *
"They're starting," the swordcaptain muttered unnecessarily, licking his lips.
"Just stay back against the wall," the old swordlord growled, "where she told us to stand-no matter what you see. Watch, and be still. Pass the word."
That was a clear order, so the word was passed, redundant though it was. If the wizards could be believed, a magical door was to open here in Suzail-in the open space right in front of them-and the folk of Arabel would flee from that beleaguered city, flooding into this hall. The warriors waiting here would then step through the gate to Arabel and ply their blades as needed to get every last citizen out.
Every man's eyes were fixed on the two women standing alone in the center of the cavernous main hall, as they had been since the Lady Laspeera and the sorceress