The Dragon's Doom - Ed Greenwood [124]
"He ruined a Dwaer-Stone?" Tshamarra gasped. "Is that possible?"
Embra shook her head. "No. He misused it foolishly, breaking all magics within reach." She raised her own Dwaer, and a soft light kindled in it. "Which leaves me free to…"
She fell silent, and Tshamarra turned again to see what Embra was gazing at. Arthroon's hands were lifted to cup and hold the glow of his gathering magic, and his eyes were alight with triumph as he chanted the last few words of an incantation both women recognized. It would bring into being a sphere of raging lightnings… a sphere he'd doubtless hurl at them both.
Something else was rising behind the Lord of the Serpent, something darker and taller, gleaming in the gathering spell-glow. A figure in armor… Ezendor Blackgult, awakened from his mind-slumber. As he rose, the Golden Griffon swept his sword up in a thrust that began at his knees, and sliced the air upward with the full weight of his swordarm behind it.
The point of that blade burst through Belgur Arthroon's neck from behind and slid out of the priest's mouth like a long, rigid, bloody tongue.
The stricken Serpent-lord stared wide-eyed at Embra, choking on the last words of his incantation. His spell collapsed into fading fires that splashed into his palms and then flowed down to lick the ground and the away entirely. Blackgult pulled back his blade to thrust again, but the Lord of the Serpent said nothing more as he sank to the waiting loam in a last, reluctant kneeling.
Embra slashed out with her Dwaer, sending thin bolts stabbing like lances into warriors who were beginning their own charges toward Blackgult. Her father grinned, waved at her, and whirled to hack down the next priest.
Embra turned to face where she knew none but Serpents stood, and blasted that clump of men, hurling them back into the trees. Then she turned swiftly to make sure no one was coming up behind her, kept turning when she saw no foe until she came around to face the Serpent-men on the far right-and blasted them, too.
Her Dwaer flickered in the wake of that magic, its radiance visibly fading. Tash gasped at the sight. Embra gave her a grim look. "We'd best get that second Stone," she snapped, and the Lady Talasorn nodded and set off across the clearing.
In the heart of a fray of hacking, snarling men, Blackgult was slaying his third priest. Something rolled under a boot, and Tshamarra darted at it with a wordless cry.
Embra nodded. That was the Dwaer, dull and dark, and… that was a priest, fallen in the thrusting and jostling, reaching for it!
She raised her own Stone to give those reaching fingers a desperate blast-and something like a silver fang flashed down out of the leaves overhead to quiver deep in sundered flesh, pinning the screaming priest's hand to a root.
"That's my Longfingers!" Tshamarra shouted delightedly, running hard with Embra right behind her. Another priest abandoned attempts to weave a spell through the warriors jostling to get at Blackgult, and dived to snatch at the fallen Stone-and Craer swung down from a bough, kicking aside a priest's head to get a clear view, and threw a second dagger that flashed down under the fallen Dwaer just as the priest's hands were about to close on it-and sent the Stone bounding right past Tshamarra's elbow to where… Embra could snatch it up.
A blinding flash rocked the clearing, and two balls of lightning sprang away from each other, one of them trailing Embra and her scream of pain. Those lightnings faded in her hands as she crashed to earth, to become her Dwaer… and the others dwindled back into Arthroon's fallen Stone and crashed at the feet of a Serpent hiresword.
That warrior bent to catch it up-and Blackgult thrust his sword past the man he was fighting, into the hiresword's backside.
With a startled groan the warrior fell forward-and was almost beheaded by Hawkril as the armaragor burst out of the fray, sweeping aside Serpent-sworn bodies with his busy blade. He raced toward Embra, roaring