Shadow War - Deborah Chester [130]
Elandra opened her mouth, but with impossible quickness it surged closer, engulfing her.
Its ghostly fingers reached for the cord around her neck.
Elandra screamed and flailed against it, trying to drive it back. But her hands passed through it as though it was made of air.
She screamed again, rolling away from its unearthly touch, but it snagged the cord in its fingers and held fast.
She did not know how it could do so, but this was not a time to question what she was witnessing. The tug of the cord around her throat frightened her, and she suddenly feared this creature meant to strangle her.
She screamed a third time, but its dark fingers dug instead inside the pouch for the topaz.
“No!” Elandra shouted, but a burst of light shot forth from the jewel, filling the interior of her bed and almost blinding her.
She heard a scream inside her head, scree-thin and horrifying.
The shadow dropped the pouch. The topaz was blazing now, and Elandra cupped her hand protectively over it as she scrambled back.
She seized pillows and flung them at the shadow, only to see them pass harmlessly through it. Then she was tumbling off the opposite side of the bed, landing in an awkward tangle on the floor, as frightened as she was furious.
Where was her protector?
“Majesty!” Rander cried, crashing into the room. Holding a lamp aloft with one hand, he ripped open the bed curtains just as she picked herself up and came around to the foot of the bed.
“Rander, take care!” she tried to warn him.
The lamp fell from his hands, shattering on the floor and spilling burning oil across the carpets. Little flames danced up like imps, reaching for the floor-length bed curtains. One blazed with a sudden whoosh of fire up to the canopy.
Rander went stumbling back from the bed with the shadow on top of him. It had him by the throat, and he grunted in increasing desperation, hurling himself about in an effort to throw it off.
Chairs went crashing as he flailed and fought.
“Rander!” she called in horror.
The protector staggered and dropped to his knees, gasping and wheezing. Elandra ran for the door, wondering where her ladies were, wondering where the guards were; then she ran back toward him, her long hair flying.
Rander had drawn his dagger, but the weapon had no effect on the shadow that perched on his chest. His body convulsed violently, then went slack. The dagger fell from his fingers.
“No!” Elandra cried.
She dodged the flames that were now roaring in the middle of a fine carpet and knelt at his side. Taking the jewel pouch in both hands, she pulled open the top and touched the topaz to the shadow.
Again she heard that thin scream in her mind. It flew off Rander and went sliding across the floor, flowing up one wall with liquid rapidity.
Elandra bent over Rander, gripping his sleeve. But his protruding tongue and staring eyes told her she had not been quick enough to save him. Protector less than a day, dead already in her service.
“No!” she cried, shaking him although she knew it was futile. “Please, no!”
The shadow leaped onto her back, clinging cold and surprisingly heavy. She nearly fell across Rander from the impact of its landing and caught herself just in time.
The cord around her neck drew tight, and in a panic she twisted around to thrust the topaz at it.
The shadow sprang off her and flowed away.
An eerie sound from behind her made her spin around, crouching low even as she picked up Rander’s dagger.
More shadows spread into the room through the open doorway, sliding across the floor, half-seen against the leaping flames and thickening smoke.
Coughing, Elandra crept backward until her back bumped against the wall. The shadows converged on her, driving her down one side of the room toward the doorway leading to the secret passageway. She thought about plunging into it, realized how easily these things could trap