Realms of Shadow - Lizz Baldwin [112]
Gods! This couldn't be the phaerimm, surely, so what was it?
Alusair was snarling, more anger than fear on her face, but one of her arms dangled uselessly, shattered somewhere below the elbow. The other was plying a dagger as fast as she could, keeping those deadly coils from her throat, but a dozen snakelike arms were already tightening around her, and she was being bent back like a straining bow.
In a moment, Maerlyn knew, he would hear Alusair's spine make the same sound that her arm had.
"Caladnei!" the princess cried. "Aid! Aid, unless you want to be regent, too!"
Tightening tentacles slapping around her breast, she had breath left only for a scream of rage and pain.
Gods, yes, Caladnei! He was supposed to be-
Maerlyn whirled back toward the Mage Royal, bringing the cloak up again-but Caladnei, her eyes two dark flames of fury, was rising from a hastily-clawed-open drawer with a wand in her hand, shouting something.
A beam of flame scorched across the room so swiftly that the air made a sound like parchment being torn- and the black, glistening shape exploded in a rain of gore and tangled tentacles, flinging the Steel Regent over a couch and away.
There would be time to make sure of her later. His task remained clear before him. Maerlyn flung the useless cloak aside with a snarl and snatched out his blade-in time to see Ilryn Merendil, a soft smile on his face, slash aside Caladnei's vainly-warding hand with a vicious sword cut, and bring his slim, bright steel around in an elegant thrust that plunged right through the Mage Royal's midriff-to emerge, glistening, from her back.
Her eyes widened in astonishment and agony, Maerlyn Bleth grew a smile of his own as he stepped forward in a perfect thrust and made his own hole in yielding flesh, crossing his blade over Merendil's to come out the witch's side and pin her arm.
Caladnei reeled, and her eyes found his-eyes awash in pain and sadness and regret. Trembling lips drooled blood, and gasped, "Throne."
The word seemed to rush away across the room, echoing as if across vast distances-and to roar back into a thunderclap that shook the Chamber of Frostfire Candles. There was someone else in the room-a man Maerlyn had never seen before. He was tall and very thin, wore robes of strange cut and dark but shimmering hue, and his skin was the color of smoke. His eyes seemed almost milky-white as he glanced at the dying woman and at Maerlyn and Merendil. Almost lazily he raised one hand. and it seemed to the astonished noble that shadows clung to it, somehow shadows that shouldn't have been there, in all this lamplight.
The man smiled a cold, unlovely smile, and something bright blue and bubbling sprang out of his empty palm, washing over Cormaeril and Merendil and-Maerlyn himself!
The youngest son of House Bleth felt a moment of intense cold, and a burning that rose savagely to choke him-and as the world slowly went dark and he stared at the exposed bones of his own sword arm, Maerlyn felt nothing at all.
Done. The mind-voice was calm and triumphant and somehow sneering, Caladnei thought, through the red claws of agony, as the wizard of shadows watched her sag back against a couch with two swords through her. She struggled to reach out a hand to him, and he calmly watched her efforts, smiled that cruel smile, waved a hand, and was gone as if he had never been.
Despairing, Caladnei let the pain take her, shuddering around the swords whose sharp points would not let her lie back against the splendid upholstery and rest.
So this is what it feels like to die…
There was noise, fast approaching, an uneven running that ended in a skidding crash into one end of the couch. Spitting blood as the world darkened around her, the Mage Royal felt no pain from that jarring-nothing more than the raging wall of agony that was bearing down, crushing her.
Silver flashed in front of