The Dragon's Doom - Ed Greenwood [140]
"Gone!" came an answering shout, echoing from another room. Embra hissed in pain, gathered her strength, held the Dwaer to her breast-and tried again.
This time the Stone erupted in flames, bright tongues of magic that scorched nothing and chilled Embra to the bone. She lost her hold on Hawkril and fell to her knees, shrieking and clutching herself in rocking agony-and the flames that were not flames rose up in a bright blaze that lit the high gallery as bright as day.
"There!" a guard snarled, pointing up at the balcony. Blackgult crouched down behind Hawkril as the armaragor followed the guard's pointing arm.
Grinning down on them from on high were at least seven Serpent-priests with bows, and in their midst was a palace servant, a lass with a decanter of wine in her hand. As the priests reached for fresh arrows-war-shafts, this time; they seemed to have run out of enspelled snakes-she unstoppered it and poured it down on the heads of some of the guards struggling with the beast, laughing. "A little more plague, sirs?"
Embra was curled up in a ball, rocking and moaning gently, her body aglow with strange, crawling magic. Just above her, Blackgult was nearing the end of a careful, one-handed spellcasting, his other hand thrust into his daughter's lap, where her Dwaer was.
Hawk cursed at the sight of the laughing wench, and lumbered forward into a charge-but was met by a fiercer charge, as the beast that had been a guard burst over its wounded fellow armsmen, and struck Hawkril with a crash. As they struggled, talons raking and a warsword rising and falling in the midst of coils and tentacles, the Serpent-priests bent their bows and drew back arrows to their ears-arrows that were aimed at the Lady of Jewels and her father.
And Blackgult finished his spell with a brittle smile.
There was a sudden grinding rumble from overhead, a tremor that shook the room. On the balcony, priests were sent staggering, and more than one arrow flashed harmlessly away to crack against the far wall, shiver, and tumble in shards and slivers to the floor. The servant girl screamed- and went on screaming as the ceiling above the balcony split apart, in rents that ran as fast as the fingers of an anguished opening fist…
… and crashed down on the balcony, breaking it off the wall with a noise like angry thunder and shattering it in a huge heap of rolling stones on the floor below. Blackgult plucked up Embra and dragged her back from sliding, tumbling stones just in time.
Dust rose in a roiling cloud, out of which loomed a blood-spattered Hawkril, the shorn-off, pulped remnant of a tentacle still clinging to his shoulder-and a retching, softly sobbing bundle in his hand that proved to be Tshamarra.
Someone else came staggering out of the dust behind him, and Blackgult grabbed for his sword and discovered he'd lost it in the tumult.
The new arrival coughed, wiped a hand across his face to reveal himself as one of the guards, and held up the cracked, dust-caked upper half of the decanter the servant girl had been waving so mockingly.
"She must have been plying us with plague-laced wine these last two days," he gasped, "that grauling Serpent-worshipper!"
"If she's been doing that all over the palace," Hawkril growled, reaching for his dazed lady, "Raulin could be dead already!"
"Too high a price to pay for ridding Aglirta of excess courtiers," Craer agreed with a twisted smile, appearing out of the murk.
He turned to Blackgult. "Nicely done. I was almost up to them when the top of the stair broke. Let's find the next way up; 'tis the far side of yon cross-passage, I recall."
"Yes," Blackgult agreed. "Yell when you reach it. Then perhaps Embra can get herself healed without Dwaer-magic tearing her insides out, hey?" The procurer gave him a reproachful look. "I ran as fast as I could." "And you will again-right now. Why, you'll be getting good at it, soon!" Craer's reply was a very rude gesture-but