The Dragon's Doom - Ed Greenwood [120]
With the Dwaer she risked trying to twist the blood-mix, thus-and did something that made the wood chip shudder. Hastily she stopped, and instead strove to fight the darkness by changing it to match some of the blood it hadn't reached yet. The darkness thinned and shrank, and triumphantly she repeated the process, eating away at the still-spreading purple gloom again and again until it was reduced to a tiny mote. No matter how she tried to alter that mote, it remained, spreading forth again and again-until at last, in rising anger, she burned it with a tiny burst of Dwaer-fire… and it vanished, leaving only untainted blood behind. Venom and plague were both gone.
She'd done it!
Embra sat back on her heels and snarled wordless triumph at the leaves high overhead. Then she leaned forward to use the Dwaer on her friend-and was startled to see a tiny wisp of flame escaping from Tshamarra's lips, blackening the leather as it hissed past.
Frantically Embra called up the power of the Dwaer and dove "into" Tash, shaking her head. "Sarasper was the healer," she muttered. "I'm more like a chambermaid who only knows where to hurl buckets of water to clean by crude rinsing, and naught else."
There was no one there to hear her but the silent Tshamarra and her father, who'd come awake with the banishing of the plague from the sorceress. He looked sharply up at Embra with eyes that seemed to see nothing, and announced, "Much cleansing is needed before the Vale can be what it was. If the Vale can ever be what it was."
"You," Ingryl Ambelter told Maelra with a smile, "are going to Flowfoam for us." The Spellmaster swayed slightly as Dwaer-magic crackled in the air around him. The melt-faced men leaned forward, as if lured by it.
"I need you to fetch me some bones from there," Ambelter explained sweetly, as if to an idiot child, "and bring them back here. Oh, and kill the King while doing so, and carry his crown back to us, too."
"Some bones?" Baron Phelinndar frowned. "What magic're they for?"
"A traditional weaving," Ambelter replied soothingly. "Part of being Spellmaster. The crown, my dear Baron, is for you.
He turned back to Maelra. "Well, my dear? 'Twill be dangerous, but we'll both be with you, via spells, to guide and warn; you needn't be frightened."
Though she knew his reassurances must be false, Maelra's heart leaped with excitement. "When do I start?" she asked eagerly-and saw Phelinndar's eyes narrow.
Ambelter's excitement, however, matched her own. Nodding in satisfaction, he strode forward, put a hand to the bodice of her gown, and tore it down and away from her in one great wrench.
She looked at him with her great dark eyes, trying to read what lay behind his own fierce gaze. His eyes were on hers, not on her bared body. Hurriedly she slipped her arms out of the rag that remained, to stand before him nude but for her boots.
He was not standing and surveying her-though the baron was-but was already whirling away from her to snatch and tug plates of armor from one of the melted-faced men.
Turning back to Maelra with a battered and stained shoulder-archplate in his hands, he regarded her slender hips coolly, nodded, and held it out to her, to put on.
With a rustling of leaves, Craer Delnbone thumped down into the clearing, fresh blood glistening on his sword. He waved at Embra and called cheerfully, "Visitors! See?"
When Embra looked up, he waved his bloody sword and ran back into the trees, heading back to his tree-limb perch to await the arrival of the next hurrying Serpent-band.
"Back to the merry slaughter once more," he murmured, wiping his sword on the moss of the nearest tree trunk.
Embra watched the procurer go, her lips growing thin, and then turned and snapped, "Father!"
Her father was plague-addled; the arrow's venom was working on him differently than on Tash. Thank