The Dragon's Doom - Ed Greenwood [129]
"Now bend down-don't let the breastplate touch stone-and pass one of your bracers over the threshold and as much of the floor within as you can easily reach."
No glows, Maelra reported, doing so.
"Step into the room, and then stop. Touch nothing, including the door and the doorframe. Look around-with your eyes only-and tell me what you see."
Sagging shelves, stones fallen from the ceiling, smashed and opened coffers on the shelves, a few books whose pages look to have melted away, some empty niches cut into the wall-and a trestle table with an open casket in it. I can see bones, within.
"Approach the casket, but step back at once if you hear a singing or see a glow."
No such, Spellmaster. I'm beside the casket. There's a human skeleton in it, a few bones crumbled away, but largely intact. Not disarranged. There's a sort of wooden frame built over them, inside the casket.
"Good. Are you afraid of bones?"
These are just bones.
"Pass a bracer over the casket-do any of them move? Any glows? Are the eyesockets of the skull still dark?"
All is dark and still.
"Good. Step back from the casket and strip off all your armor. Get bare-take off everything."
Wondering privately what stripping, here in the dusty, chill darkness, had to do with "bringing back" these or any bones, Maelra did so. As she did off the last piece of armor, darkness returned in a rush, leaving her blind.
Spellmaster, I'm bare-but I can no longer see.
" 'Tis of no matter. You know where the casket lies? You can find it without blundering into it? Do so."
Done.
"Climb up onto that frame, and lie there, facedown. Try to avoid putting your hands and feet down among the bones."
Maelra started to do so-and then froze, teetering on the brink of falling back into the darkness. Ambelter, the bones are glowing!
"So they will. Have no fear. I myself have done what you are doing, without any harm at all. Get onto that frame."
Swallowing in the darkness-how could one at once be so cold and yet sweating so fiercely that one's skin was slick?-the young Bowdragon sorceress did so, tingling with excitement as she lowered herself onto the latticework of cold, dusty boards. The fell glow from the skeleton beneath her was bright enough to light up the room around her now… and as she steadied herself just above it, though its eyesockets remained empty and dark, it seemed to be looking at her. Maelra swallowed again, the frame creaking as sweat rolled down her nose and she hurriedly swiped it away to avoid letting it fall onto the bones beneath.
Done, Spellmaster.
"You'll have noticed that the frame keeps you from crushing the bones, but allows you to reach them. They're the remains of Gadaster Mulkyn, once a mighty mage, and you must not pull one bone apart from another. To have the power to slay the King and hurl aside his guards and courtiers, you must do as I say: Reach down with both of your arms, and your mouth, and embrace the bones as if they were a living man and he your lover."
Maelra lay above the skeleton, staring down into its dark and empty gaze and eternal grin, and wondered what would truly happen when she touched it. What was Ambelter keeping from her?
"Be not afraid, lass! You'll feel power passing into you, naught else. Maelra Bowdragon, I command you-"
My, but the Spellmaster suddenly seemed more fearful than she did! With a shrug and a smile, Maelra Bowdragon reached down and embraced the unknown.
Pbwer! Magic more than she'd ever felt before slammed into her, so sudden and clear and cold that Maelra arched up and back from it, shrieking soundlessly at the ceiling at the same time as she unthinkingly kicked at the frame, seeking to grind her pelvis down into the heart of what was flowing into her.
The skeleton shot bolt upright, passing like a ghost through the boards, and suddenly was embracing her, cold bones sliding hard and smooth over her trembling flesh, grinning right into her face with eyes that had kindled into two arctic stars floating in darkness, dry bony jaws parting as if to bite or kiss her… and then, just as she sought