Stormlight - Ed Greenwood [84]
The cursed thing was flashing ever faster. He didn’t see why he should die or be maimed just because some lazy noblewoman got all concerned over the fate of her coronet. After all, she’d left him behind. It was still in her castle, not out rolling around the countryside. Why couldn’t it just have sat safe behind its stone panel until all this was over? Of course, there might not be a stone panel when this was all over, if-
Ahead, he heard a distant shout, and peered into the darkness. A many-armed figure was exulting in the moonlight, shouting and waving its arms in defiance at the night sky. Corathar swallowed and came to a hasty halt. This must be the foe!
Gods, if he looked over this way-! Corathar hastily cowered down, flipping up the tail of his robes to cover the winking coronet. There was a flash of fire from the distant figure-balls of fire, streaming up from those waving arms at some unseen enemy above. The bursts heralded a deep groaning that gave way to sharp cracking sounds… and then a growing, rumbling, thunderous roar.
The figure and the moonlight and all were gone as the world leapt and rocked all around Corathar. It flung him about like a child's ball. He gulped, grunted, cursed, and tried in the bruising darkness to keep the coronet and himself both unbroken.
At last his tumbling in the gloom came to an end, and he staggered to his feet and peered up and down the passage. The damned coronet was still blinking and winking. Where the moonlight had been he could see nothing-that way must be blocked.
"Mystra spit on it all!" he snarled, fear stoking fury.
He was trapped, and would have to go back into the cracked and lightless keep to dare one of the unsteady stairs and somehow find a way around all this. And was the mad foe dead? Or was the shapeshifter still lurking close by, in the dark-?
Something stumbled at him, and he shrieked and flung up the coronet in his hand. It flashed, obligingly. He briefly glimpsed a dust-smudged, wild-haired face, above a gown torn half off to reveal one gleaming white shoulder-and emerald eyes that were large and afraid and beseeching.
"Gods!" he swore hoarsely. It was the Lady Shayna Summerstar.
Or was it?
"Stay back," he shouted, in sudden, frantic fear, holding up the coronet in front of him as if it was some sort of weapon.
"Who… who's that?" her quavering voice came out of the darkness-a weak and frightened voice that ended in a cough. It was followed by another, and another. Judging by the racking sounds, her coughing fit had taken her to her knees. Corathar stepped back and pulled a sleeve over the flashing coronet, unsure of what to do.
"Thalance?" she asked weakly, out of the darkness. It certainly sounded like the noble lady he'd watched down the feast table--
Impulsively he stepped forward, wanting to see again the beauty he'd looked at so longingly that first feast night. He held out the coronet.
It blinked, and so did a pair of eyes very close to it- bewildered green eyes, that had trailed tears across the dust on her cheeks. That settled it. If this was the shapeshifter, it was an actor worthy of an easy meal.
"Lady?" he asked, reaching out into the darkness. "Will you tell me your name?"
The coronet flashed again, and he had another glimpse of her frightened, dirt-smudged face, eyes brighter now with hope.
“Shayna,” she said. “Shayna Summerstar.” The coronet winked. By its radiance he saw her lower lip tremble. She wiped dust and tears away from her eyes with one hand. “Who are you?” she asked as darkness descended again.
“Corathat, lady. Corathar Abaddarh; one of the war wizards.”
“Wizards,” she said slowly, as if it was a word she’d never heard before. “Not… Insprin?”
“Insprin is one of my companions, yes,” he said eagerly.
He froze as a gentle hand tentatively touched him. It probed, ran up his arm-and the coronet flashed again, showing him fresh tears of hope. She looked up at his face, seeing him clearly for the first time, and opened her mouth to cry. He smiled at her reassuringly,