Stormlight - Ed Greenwood [78]
They chuckled hollowly, and Storm turned away again.
Thalance watched her go and murmured, "There goes a woman I'd go on my knees to wed…"
"After me, boy," Erlandar told him. "I'm th-"
"No," Broglan said firmly from beside them, startling them both into silence. "After me."
*****
With unhurried confidence, the Bard of Shadowdale strode past the guards-after all, if your enemy can be anywhere, why run? She went up the first flight of stairs she found, and then down the next staircase toward the cellars, only to double back and climb again. There was an unused closet she'd seen on her way to the fire… a gown-room, by the looks of it
There it was. Storm looked up and down the deserted passage. She cautiously hooked open the door, and found herself looking at the dead, burnt-out husk of a Purple Dragon. She sighed and caught the corpse as it toppled past her, cradling the dead warrior to lay him gently down. The sightless eyes of an empty skull stared up at her.
"Helm or Tempus guard you, soldier," she murmured, and dragged him into the nearest room along the passage-a dusty, sheet-draped guest bedchamber. It would not do for anyone to find him right outside the closet shed chosen.
She cast swift glances up and down the passage again, but the fear that now gripped servants and armsmen alike meant that they went nowhere alone. No one had even replaced the burned-down torches along this hallway. She wondered briefly if the foe had subsumed the servant who usually did that task, and then shrugged and started to undress.
When she was bare, she dropped her pectoral into one boot, snatched up the scabbarded sword and bundled everything else up around it, and stuffed them all down behind a bucket at the back of the closet. Then she stepped into the small room after them and firmly dosed the door, shutting herself into the darkness.
She did not need light to work her spell, just a moment of peace to call it forth. In a drifting moment, she would become an unseen, flying phantom that could wander at will around the keep, spying out shapeshifters and their mischief.
A moment of unguarded dreaming… she was adrift amid fire, both amber flames and silver. Out of them swarm the red-scaled head of a dragon, watching her. Its great, dark eye blinked at her… and then seemed to dwindle through the mists… no, it was growing smaller, and turning to become-a vivid, glistening teardrop on a brassy handle: an ornate metal scepter surmounted by the dragon's eye. She slid past it. It was gone in the mists, and she was starting to be able to see the dark walls of the gown-room around her.
As she rose, featherlike, to fly out into the keep, Storm shook her head in puzzlement. What did the dragon have to do with this?
*****
"Saw through my scheme, did she? Hah! 'Twas but I an idle tactic! No one shall escape me! None shall leave Firefall Keep alive! Hahahahahahaha!"
The figure shouting those echoing words lashed out with hands that spat lightning from each finger, scorching the stones of the dark chamber around him. A phantom flew away, as if startled by the outburst, and was chased by deep, bellowing laughter.
The capering, tentacled man making that sound suddenly fell silent, and asked in the icy, patrician tones of Pheirauze Summers tar, "What buffoon disturbs my home?"
He whimpered for a moment, and then said in quite a different voice, "Have they fallen yet? Well, see to it, man! See to it!"
And he raised his hands and hurled fire-a raging, white-hot ball that roared across the chamber and crashed into the far wall, sending flames flying about the room. The man sighed.
"Please," he said in infinitely bored tones, examining nails that swiftly grew into talons. "Spare me."
Then he howled like a hound in despair. He set off at a run, cackling and howling by turns, blasting stone walls, steps, and statues around him with golden-green flame. Stone exploded into rubble on all sides as he raged, trying to sing and bark and spit out words all at once.
"I'm rich,