The Dragon's Doom - Ed Greenwood [179]
The Dwaer flashed under the concealing scarf, just for a moment, and the flagstones beneath the shouting Masterpriest moved, rippling like living things. They drew back into huge serpent-jaws, jutting up into fangs with a yawning mouth between-a mouth inhabited by the now frantically spell-weaving Masterpriest, whose booted feet seemed to be stuck in the heart of the opening maw.
As the other priests watched in pale-faced silence, the mouth widened almost lazily-and then closed with a snap, snatching the shouting man down into the floor. Stones rippled again and then lay flat and seemingly solid once more.
"I'd hoped to avoid unpleasantness," the Spellmaster said quietly, "but the authority given to me was absolute. Go and fetch some other priests, one of you; I'm sure you know as well as I do that I haven't assigned devout faithful to fetch all of the Lords of the Serpent yet, and now I'm short one fool of a Masterpriest. He was going to bring Kelhandros here from Sart, so now I'll need someone else for that task. And mind you bring them without delay, Brothers; the urgency is such that the Church cannot wait. Go now, all of you. The only one I expect to see again without his assigned Lord of the Serpent is the one fetching me more Brethren to serve me as summoners."
The scramble for the lone door was as frantic as it was fearful, and Ingryl Ambelter barely had time to smile before he was using the Dwaer to draw the door firmly closed behind the last fleeing priest.
He spell-sealed that door for time he needed to conjure a floating mirror in the air before him, work a very complex and exacting magic on himself, study his reflected result critically, and make a few adjustments.
When he banished the mirror, unsealed the door, and turned to face it once more, a stealthily invisible shielding-spell gathering strength around him, the Spellmaster of All Aglirta sported a green-scaled snake's head in place of his own. He flashed his yellow eyes with a smile, tasted the air with his flickering forked scarlet tongue, and waited for the new group of priests to appear.
If he served all of the Lords of the Serpent the same deadly fate, priest after priest, he could hardly help but become the Great Serpent in truth. Well, he'd always been good at crafting magics against poisons and venoms-and it was a better way than many of gaining the throne of Aglirta.
The mists fell away, and the world around them had changed. They stood in a high-vaulted, arch-windowed chamber hung with rich tapestries, a floor of gleamingly smooth marble beneath their feet. Guards in bright-polished silver armor whirled around to face them, glaives flashing in their hands as they dipped. Their wielders gasped, straightened again, and bowed their heads. The nearest one said swiftly: "Fair greeting, Lord and Lady Overdukes."
"Fair greeting, Braeros," the Lady Silvertree replied gravely, for all the world as if she wore naught but a nightrobe, sash, and boots every day, and customarily went about the world collecting unlovely and aging naked men. "Where bides the King?"
"In the Southern Sunchamber, Lady," the guard replied swiftly, "with the Lord and Lady Delcamper."
Embra nodded her thanks and the overdukes hastened to the southern doors of the room, with Hulgor padding along barefoot in their midst frowning and asking Flowfoam around him, "Lady Delcamper? Has the lad married, then? Why, the scamp! To manage a courtship without laying a hint of it amongst us, his dearest kin…"
As they trotted along a passage, crossed a larger, grander one, and mounted a broad flight of stairs, servants and courtiers alike cast swift, startled glances at the unclad stranger among the four hurrying overdukes, and then as quickly looked away again and continued about their business.
Craer took silent note of those few who froze and then hastily ducked away in a different direction than they'd been proceeding-and