The Dragon's Doom - Ed Greenwood [176]
The two torn and bleeding Bowdragons saw the transformation too.
"Duped!" Dolmur snarled. "We've been tricked to our dooms!"
Ithim screamed again in fear and despair-and he was still screaming when Dolmur did something that abruptly snatched them elsewhere, leaving the Koglaur alone to shudder as Blackgult sent another Dwaer-blast through him.
"Skill and savagery, that's the way!" the Golden Griffon called jovially. "You faceless, sneaking rogue, you!"
The Koglaur turned his smooth, eyeless face toward Blackgult, and the Griffon felt the weight of coldly seething scrutiny. Then, abruptly, the Faceless One vanished, leaving the chamber dark and lonely once more. Inconsiderately, he'd neglected to leave his Dwaer behind him.
"Ah, well," Blackgult told the walls around him, "Victorious, the Golden Griffon can get on with dying in peace, then."
Or perhaps… just perhaps… He held up the Dwaer and cast a careful shielding-spell, three-layered and intricate. Blackgult was shaking with weariness when he was done, and dark anger was rising in his belly again, so he made haste to work a last, healing magic, and let go of the Dwaer.
It drifted away from his upflung arm, and gathered speed as it went, curving along the inside of his shield-spell. Blackgult tore off his robe and laid it out as a bed as near to the center of the shield-sphere as he could quickly judge. He laid himself down hastily, closed his eyes, and pictured the Dwaer whirling around above him in a steady orbit, clinging to images of its speeding glow as the anger surged.
If he was to live, he had to rest. In trance, if he'd recalled Sarasper's instructions aright, the Dwaer just might be able to purge the Blood Plague from his body. "Well, now," he muttered, sinking down into the dark warmth where the rage rolled and snarled, "to be rid of the plague and healed hearty again… wouldn't that enrage a few Serpent-priests? They might even do something foolish and violent… But then again, how would the rest of us tell?"
Chuckling, he let the darkness take him.
23
Great Serpent Rising
Ingryl Ambelter smiled politely at the dozen or so elder Serpent-priests facing him as the underpriests who'd brought him here scuttled hastily out and closed the doors. Protective magics sang almost audibly in the air; every one of these old men must have shield-spells active. The room was small and bare: stone benches faced the oratory floor he was standing on, amid two large pillars. There was but the one visible door-and, rearing out from the wall to his left, a stone statue of a snake poised to strike.
The Spellmaster gave it a long glance to make sure it was sculpted stone and not a spell-frozen snake of monstrous size, and then regarded the priests again. "You know who I am. And you would be-?"
One of the oldest men spoke, without rising from his bench. "All of us hold the rank of 'Lord of the Serpent,' most exalted in our Brotherhood beneath the Great Serpent himself. We are not all the Lords, but rather the oldest and largest faction among rival groups of Lords who hold differing views on who the Great Serpent is, and how we shall find him."
Ingryl nodded. "Forgive my ignorance, but beneath you in the ranks of the Church are… what titles?"
Another priest spoke. "Beneath us are a handful of Masterpriests, below them a very much larger mustering of senior clergy who are styled 'Priest of the Serpent,' then again a smaller whelming of priests called Scaled Masters, and then the great bulk of the Brethren, who are all 'Brothers of the Serpent.' Below them are Fangbrothers-such as those who conducted you here-and beneath them come lesser ranks of no account, down to the novices. Under every Great Serpent the titles and standings have changed somewhat."
"And you are all, if I understand things correctly, truly wizards, using spells known to mages