Prophet of Moonshae - Douglas Niles [133]
The stooping figure rose stiffly from the bed and pulled Malawar's robe over his scrawny form. "Must serve the needs of dignity," he noted, with an obscene edge to his laugh.
Suddenly Deirdre's stomach heaved in revolt. She turned away from the grotesque form and vomited onto the floor, retching until she could barely breathe.
"I hope you're quite finished," announced the now-hooded priest, his tone acid, "because we have a lot of work to do."
But Deirdre could not bring herself to rise. Instead, she turned toward the window, curling herself into a protective ball. The world swam around her, and then it felt as though she was swallowed up by blackness.
* * * * *
King Sythissal drove his finned legion with all the brutal authority of his command, yet he knew that the sahuagin could never match the pace of the flying dracolich. Still, the fish-men slipped through the sea a hundred feet below the surface to avoid the turbulence of the storm.
Yet by the time the Army of Kressilacc reached the coast of Alaron, the sea battle was over. The ravenous sahuagin discovered, much to their delight, the wreck of the Vulture. The bodies of her crew served as splendid sustenance in restoring the creatures' stamina.
Beyond this wreck loomed rainswept Alaron. Here Sythissal would not go. Too often in the past his warriors had ventured upon land, only to meet with gory disaster before they could reach the protective refuge of the sea.
Instead, the sahuagin turned back from the battle, swimming to their deep home in Kressilacc. His forces intact, the King of the Deep would await a more opportune time to work the will of Talos.
* * * * *
"Hey! That's not fair!"
Pryat Wentfeld started backward, interrupted in the casting of his spell. He had attempted to summon an air elemental in order to set the creature against Hanrald and quickly end this duel between the brother knights. But now this high-pitched voice from nowhere distracted him, and the spell was wasted.
"Who speaks?" he demanded. "Show yourself or face the vengeance of Helm!"
"It's not fair, I told you!"
The priest gaped in astonishment, for the speaker was a tiny dragon, bright blue and hovering on wings that belonged more appropriately to a great butterfly.
"How dare you destroy my spell!" snarled the pryat, lunging toward the creature, who instantly blinked out of sight as the man stumbled through the place he had been.
"I didn't destroy your spell!" The now invisible dragon was indignant. "I just made it more interesting!"
Staring in shock, which quickly blossomed into mind-numbing horror, the cleric saw that the diminutive dragon spoke the truth: The spell had in fact already begun to work.
The summoning and control of an elemental by a spell-caster is a two-stage procedure, and it is always dangerous. These beings, representing the fundamental forces of air, water, earth, and fire, are called only reluctantly from their respective home planes. Vengeful and mighty, they constantly seek a way to release themselves from the bondage of their sorcerous masters.
Once summoned, the caster must maintain careful concentration in order to shape its unwieldy slave to the controller's will. Pryat Wentfeld had successfully concluded the summoning portion of his enchantment, but Newt had distracted him at the very moment when he should have been asserting his control over the invoked being.
In the case of this air elemental, it had been dragged summarily from a windy display of exuberance with hundreds of its kin, the usual pastime of the creatures on their home realm in the Inner Planes. Now, alone, confused, and compelled to enter a hateful world of unpleasant solidity, it reacted with forceful resistance. Then it suddenly found itself freed of its summoner's will.
The full vengeance of the air elemental swirled into the vale. Immediately it saw the two knights bashing at each other, the hounds and the men-at-arms all awaiting the outcome. It sensed the druid staked to the pole, and even the pilgrims who watched the fight from above. But most of all,