The Dragon's Doom - Ed Greenwood [164]
The Golden Griffon's hairy, broken body was flung up at the ceiling like a child's doll-and Embra Silvertree called on the Living Castle enchantments to pull open the floor beneath the skull-sorceress.
Her foe fell a few feet into the hitherto-solid stone floor, off-balance and startled-and Embra slashed at the sorceress with all the power she could quickly snatch out of her Dwaer.
Something splintered, a scream burst from skeletal jaws-and Embra's magic struck the far wall of the bedchamber, shattering it in a long, stone-splitting crack, and rebounded back into the skull-sorceress from the other side.
The sorceress screamed again, sudden flames of twisted magic roaring up her limbs as she shuddered in agony. Embra's attack had disrupted a Dwaer-magic her foe had been shaping-and the skull-sorceress was caught in the roiling result.
Embra promptly thrust upward with the Living Castle enchantments, and the floor spat the skull-sorceress violently at the ceiling.
As the shoulder of the sorceress slammed into the stone overhead, the Dwaer fell from her spasming hands. She grabbed at it, once, hopelessly, and Embra used her Dwaer to make her own snatch at the Stone.
A mistake. Magic exploded between the two Dwaerindim in a thick white arc of snarling lightning that numbed Embra's arm and sent Blackgult's Stone ripping across the chamber, trailing sparks and flames of magic. In a far corner it spun itself crazily into a burst of magic that hurt the eyes… and was gone.
"Graul!"Embra spat. "Transported the Three alone know where!" She whirled and blasted the falling skull-sorceress again… but this time that cold grin seemed to hold triumph, and all the fury she sent at her foe was snared in a spinning that ended in another burst of magic.
The ruined bedchamber suddenly held one less mysterious skull-headed sorceress.
"Graul," Embra panted again bitterly, holding her Dwaer close as if its familiar curves and hardness could console. She felt in need of comfort just now. "Gone, and Father's Stone too, and now we have a new foe and don't even know wh-"
She bit her lip and called on her Dwaer to try to trace the vanished Stone, as it had done before. In the heart of all this spell-chaos, 'twasn't likely… Yet, if it hadn't gone far, there was a chance… just a chance…
There was a bestial snarl from behind her, and someone slammed roughly into Embra and clawed at her throat, tearing the cloak away.
She backed into her attacker, hard, and those hands didn't manage to close on her throat. She blasted him away as gently as she could, and turned to face Her father, of course. Blackgult crouched naked, wild-eyed and panting, clawlike hands reaching for her. With a roar he gathered himself and came at her again-and with a sigh, Embra dodged aside and spun a cage for him out of Dwaer-fire.
He howled in pain as its bars of fire burned him, and hurled himself against them again and howled all the more. Embra stared at him helplessly as he went on hurling himself into pain-and then, as guards flooded into the room with many torches and a gaping Raulin and Macros, she sat down on the floor, bare as she was, and started to cry.
Screams split the night in an otherwise pleasant bedchamber in Varandaur. Two shrieks, either side of him, ear-shatteringly close. Hulgor Delcamper came awake bewildered and bolt upright in bed, half-deafened by the frightened cries of… oh, aye: the two chambermaids he'd bedded for the night, Nuelara and… and the other one.
They were staring at the same thing he was. Hulgor Delcamper blinked at a stone-a rounded, palm-sized lump of fieldstone like any of the thousands of such he'd seen up in the high meadows. But none of them had ever shown the slightest signs of doing what this one was: blazing with white light, and chiming and humming, too, as it floated in the air above his bed, spinning slowly.
Hulgor found wits enough to curse-though he still couldn't remember