The Dragon's Doom - Ed Greenwood [134]
When they reached the well-Craer glancing down into its dank darkness, just to make sure-Embra doused her magical radiance once more. Nothing; the darkness was utter, unbroken.
"Claws of the bloody, blood-spitting Dark One," she began softly. "To lose them now, when-"
"Em!" the procurer snapped, hearing a tiny shriek close by his ear. "Give us light!"
With a sigh, the sorceress did so-and found five bats circling her head. As soon as she stared at them, they flew away across the chamber, and through a certain archway. Without hesitation she ran after them, murmuring, "My thanks, wizard. Remind me to free you much sooner than I was intending to. Perhaps even before we've both died of old age."
A bat screamed in her ear, then whirled away to join its fellows. Embra Silvertree gave it a savage grin as she hurled herself around a corner, down a few broad, unexpected steps, and on along the unfamiliar, winding passage.
It ran for a long way without doors or side chambers, during which time a determinedly sprinting Craer caught up to Embra, gave her a reproachful look, and took up his former station ahead of her, with Hawkril moving to join him… all at a dead run.
They'd just started to really gasp for breath, and slow with weariness, when the passage suddenly descended sharply, hooked to the right, and opened into-a large cavern that shouldn't exist.
Embra stared, slowing in bewilderment now as much as exhaustion. She'd been bound to all of Flowfoam by the Living Castle enchantments of the Dark Three, unfinished as they were, and… and this place was not part of them. It should not be here, it -presently held crates upon crates of what looked suspiciously like a ready armory of weapons, and two warriors racing around them, after a staggering, panting-to-exhaustion king!
Running out of curses, Embra stopped, held up her Dwaer in a grip so hard her fingers turned white around its rising glow-and hurled a paralyzing spell upon all three distant running figures.
The air around her flashed, and then flowed crazily… and Embra felt her own limbs tightening and stiffening.
Shuddering, she forced herself to hold tight to the Dwaer, and used her last breath to snarl one of the oldest spells she knew, calling on the Stone to power it.
The Dwaer flashed strangely, and she could suddenly move freely again. Around her, an explosion of gasps told her that her fellow overdukes had also been freed from paralysis.
Something had hurled her magic back at her. Something had stood against the ravening power of a Dwaer-Stone, in a defiance she'd begun to think was impossible unless the gods themselves Another Dwaer. Eyes narrowing, Embra looked at the saddlebag on
Craer's back. It was ahead of her, directly between her and the fleeing king- and his would-be slayers, too.
She ran on, trying to keep the procurer in view as he ducked and dodged around and over the crates, hurling daggers at the warriors ahead- until at last he ran across an open space, and she could snatch the two breaths she needed.
Holding up her Dwaer, Embra gasped out an enchantment-and her Stone blazed up brightly.
Craer staggered in mid-run as something tugged sharply upward at his saddlebag-and then burst right through its leather, spinning up into the air and blazing as brightly as Embra's own Stone.
Something flashed and crackled back and forth between the two Dwaerindim, like a double-ended arrow sent flashing from one deadly bow to another and back again.
Still running, Craer looked up at the sudden explosion of light over his head-and promptly sprang up onto the nearest crate, leaping high and… closing his fingers around the stump of the severed priest's hand holding the Stone. Craer's weight dragged it down, the sheer flowing force of magic passing between the two Dwaerindim making his entire body shudder, and landed hard on the crate, falling forward to the floor and rolling to his feet still running…
Just as Hawkril's warsword stabbed desperately out-and a scant