Stormlight - Ed Greenwood [83]
The fortress shook again. Something even larger crashed down into ruin. Ahead of her, a curving staircase broke into chunks and dropped slowly out of sight, one piece at a time. A rolling, shattering sound arose from below. Moonlight shone down into the dusty air where the stair had been. The foe must be shattering the battlements above! Well, it wasn't as if she didn't know where he was.…
For the moment, the shapeshifter would keep. So much for grand schemes of spying out where he was and tracking him! Right now, she'd best get the few living men she'd need out of the place before he brought it down on their heads! What poison might fail to do, a nice heavy stone block might succeed at, all too well…
“Why me? Mystra, all I ask is, wht me?” Storm said as she started back down the passage.
As if in reply, the ceiling broke away and fell into the rooms beside her-and moonlight stabbed down from the open night sky above. Two floors that had been above her were gone!
Well, yes, Mystra, this wasn’t the first time in her life that she’d made this very complaint. Sorry. Storm sighed and ran on.
* * * * *
"I am-I am-Yes!" And with that final, exultant shout, the man with three heads and eight arms flung his limbs up in triumph and hurled all the crowding chaos back where it belonged, clearing his mind at last Balls of fire streaked up from two of those limbs, striking through the shattered stone and moonlight Where they struck, a leaning turret broke away from the shattered stone around it and hurtled down into the open space that had not been there an hour earlier.
Down, down like a tumbling mountain, down to a crash that shook the entire vale and threw back echoes from the mountaintops…
Down to bury the place where the exultant many-limbed man had been standing, and on its way, scrape open an entire wall, and lay bare rooms and passages that had been walled away and hidden for many long years…
The ravaged wall creaked and buckled and bulged, threatening a great collapse. Leaning pillars held, and the slowly shifting stone ground ponderously to a halt, sending down only a little rubble. Out of one long-hidden cavity, something gleamed in the moonlight as it fell.
Something metallic and sticklike, with a single great eye as its head. The dragoneye scepter hit the rubble, bounced once, and slid to a stop, blinking up at the moon. Somehow, it looked angry.
*****
Corathar Abaddarh clutched Dowager Lady Zarova's coronet and wished it would stop emitting little magical flashes. Was it going to explode, or burn him with lightning, or transport him somewhere unknown perilous? Worse, would it attract the attention shapeshifter who was so busily blasting apart the keep on all sides?
The gods-cursed coronet was definitely flashing a little brighter and faster than it had when he'd found its hiding place and snatched it into the light. Pearls and emeralds and gods-knew what else had spilled out with it in a glittering flood. He'd swept them all back behind the hidden panel and slammed it shut again. At least, he hoped he'd found them all. With the room shaking all around him, some of them had taken long and interesting journeys. And, of course, the tumult had shattered his lantern!
He wouldn't have dared keep it lit on the journey back, anyway. Not with a howling-crazed shapeshifter laughing like a loon and blasting everything that moved!
Corathar sighed. He felt his way cautiously forward in the darkness. The dowager lady, the boldshield, and the safety of the heavily guarded kitchen rooms were a long way off… and he was growing weary.
He'd been a little suspicious of this errand at first. The whole thing could have been just an excuse to send him out across Firefall Keep right into the clutches of this murderous shapeshifter. The boldshield, however, had assured him that ranking nobles did have such enspelled items. Some of them were best handled only by their rightful wearers or by war wizards, because of enchantments laid on them by Lord Vangerdahast or his predecessors.