The Dragon's Doom - Ed Greenwood [166]
"Was that an artful way of asking something else, Lady?" Craer asked the ceiling, as he set his goblet down carefully.
"Lord Delnbone, surely you've learned by now that when I want something of you I ask for it-directly. My back?"
With a sigh, Craer reached for the bowl of scented lave-oil and the scraper, and set to work.
Tshamarra almost purred. "There's an itch there, just a little high-ahhh, yes. That's it. Just keep-"
"Morning," Hawkril Anharu rumbled, from above. Something in his tone made them both jerk their heads up to stare at him.
"I need you now," the armaragor told Tshamarra. "Hurry!"
Wordlessly she extended her hand, bare as she was, for him to haul her up out of the bath. Craer swiped oil from her as she went and followed hastily in her wake, snatching the warmed robes the servants had left ready to dry himself with, and stamping his feet back into his boots as he came.
"Could Aglirta just possibly arrange to need rescuing next time after we're dressed?" he asked Hawkril, as they hurried to the door and out, scattering servants and guards. The armaragor had already caught up Craer's leathers and dagger-belts and Tshamarra's boots and breeches, but the procurer hastily snatched a few more items-including something to adorn his lady's upper half besides the sharp edge of her own tongue.
" 'Tisn't Aglirta," Hawkril growled, " 'tis Embra. Em and her father."
Craer winced. "This isn't going to be one of those bad jokes, is it?"
"I don't know what it's going to be," the armaragor snarled, as they hurried down passages together. "That's why I came for you."
Craer put a robe over his lady's shoulders, and they both rubbed themselves as dry as they could as they hastened around corners, past grim-looking guards, and through archways where more guards waited.
"This is not filling me with carefree joy," Craer observed, as the crowd of courtiers and palace armsmen following them grew. They passed a room where the smells of fresh food wafted forth, and Tshamarra threw her lord a look that at once bade him firmly to behave himself, and at the same time told him that she knew what he was feeling, and felt much the same.
Flaeros Delcamper and six guards stood in front of the closed doors of Blackgult's chamber. They stepped aside wordlessly as the three overdukes strode up-and Tshamarra swept off her wet robe and unconcernedly laid it in the bard's hands.
Flaeros barely had time to stare at her bared flesh, drop his jaw, and flush furiously ere Craer took off his robe, too-and cast it over the bard's head.
"Keep these closed behind us," Hawkril told the guards, as he shouldered his way through the doors. Craer and Tshamarra followed-and halted with identical anxious gasps.
Blackgult's chamber was burn-scarred, riven, and strewn with heaped, broken furniture. The dead chambermaid's blood had dried, but she still lay sprawled and skull-headed in the wreckage. The center of the room was filled with a humming, glowing, slowly turning cage of magic, greatly grown from what Embra had Stone-spun to imprison her crazed father the night before.
Blackgult hung awake at its heart of the force-cage, the Dwaer glowing like a sleepless star to his right, and Embra-disheveled and fast asleep, her hair dangling around her-hung in a lesser cage beside her Stone. Both Blackgult and his daughter were wrapped in nightrobes that looked to have been thrown over them rather than donned. Blackgult gave them a brief, intent look as they entered, and then cast his eyes down at the floor below.
"She's been here all night," Hawkril growled, as Craer and Tshamarra hastily dressed. "Trying to heal him-'mind mend,' she called it. Yon cage has been growing all the while. At first it was thrusting out new bars at her bidding, but she fell asleep sometime in the night-after I did, for I didn't see slumber take her-and then I think he was commanding