Spellfire - Ed Greenwood [23]
Burlane was suddenly shrouded in a dark, sticky web of strands that held him fast among the rocks, his roar of baffled rage almost deafening even as he struggled. Shandril had the small satisfaction of hearing the mage cry out and curse, too. He glared at her in hatred, clutching the back of his left hand where her dagger had cut him.
Cold fear settled in her, but she raised her heavy sword and climbed toward the wizard. Only a few rocks separated them, but Rymel was near, climbing over the rocks in angry haste. The mage backed away, the spear quI’vering. Its end caught and scraped on a rock. The mage gasped and stopped, sinking down briefly in pain. Then he staggered to his feet and turned away from them all.
"Oh no, you don't!" Rymel roared, leaping wildly over Burlane's webbed form and landing precariously on the rocks beyond. He drew back his arm to hurl his own sword-and then they heard the roar.
Shandril looked up. hi the sky above the valley, turning ponderously as it emerged from between two frowning crags, was the vast scaled bulk of a green dragon. Its huge, bat-like wings beat once, and then it dipped its great serpentine neck and dove down at the company.
Vast and terrible it was, and in its glittering eyes Shandril saw her death. Paralyzed with dragonfear, she could not even scream as the dragon spewed out a billowing cloud of thick, greenish yellow gas.
Shandril heard screams, saw for an instant the mage laugh in triumph as Rymel’s hurled blade missed, and then the shadow of the flying wyrm fell upon them. She could not breathe. Her lungs were suddenly burning, her eyes smarting. Shandril choked and coughed and choked again and fell hard to her knees, the searing pain spreading in her lungs.
Darkness claimed her.
After drifting through shifting, blood-red mists, Shandril dreamed of dragons dancing…
It was cold, and Shandril was lying on something hard and rough. The air itself was cold and smelled of earth and old dust and damp mold and decay. She opened her eyes, tensing herself against the pain-and was astonished to find she felt none. She was no longer hurt. How this was, she did not know-magic, most likely. Whose, and why so used, she had no idea-but she could move freely, without pain. Even her shoulder felt whole, she realized, touching it in wonder.
Shandril lay against a stone, and from beyond it, somewhere very close to her, two human male voices she did not know were speaking.
"… No, I say your men shall not have her! Her blood is too valuable to use for that-valuable, mind, only so long as she is inviolate!" The voice was excited, imperious.
"How can you be sure of that!" an older, deeper, more sour voice snarled. "These days-"
Shandril listened no more. With frantic haste she scrambled up and began searching for a means of escape. The stone was cold under her bare feet.
Someone had taken her sword, dagger, the remaining knife from her boots-and the boots themselves. She had been lying against a large stone which had evidently been rolled across the mouth of the cavern in which she stood.
The cavern was small, narrowing at one end into a crack impossibly small to pass through. There were no other visible doors, cracks, or side passages. Her prison was lit by a pale violet magical radiance which outlined a smooth, obviously carved stone block. The block lay horizontally in the center of the cavern, the height of two men or so in length and breast-high to her. Shandril was horrified to realize that the block was really a casket; she could see the edge of the lid. Two other, unlit caskets lay on either side of it. With growing despair, she wondered how, gods willing, she was going to get out of this tight spot.
She listened at the stone again but heard nothing; the men had left. She pushed futilely at the stone, felt around its edges carefully, heaved at it with all her strength, kicked at it and, in hysterical desperation, rushed at it and leaped on it. Nothing. Finally Shandril beat upon it with her fists. Still nothing.
Gasping for breath, she slumped