The Dragon's Doom - Ed Greenwood [182]
"Ah, I wa-" a voice hailed them, from across the chamber, but Orele and Embra snapped: "No!" in unintentional unison.
The Lady Silvertree added, "Lord Hulgor, please take no offense when I say that getting guests bloodily killed holds no attractiveness for we of Aglirta. We go now to a haunted place of much magic, where we'll face traps, poison, monsters, and perhaps a hostile madman with one of these!' She held up the Dwaer, and added softly, "Forgive me for saying this, Lord Delcamper, but you'd not last six breaths."
Hulgor sat back with a sigh. "No offense taken-graul you, Lady. Bring me back the tale of what befell, mind!"
"We will," Embra promised, and turned to survey the rest of the Four. "Ready?"
"As much as always," Tshamarra replied with a sigh. "Take us."
The Lady of Jewels smiled grimly, waved a hand, the Dwaer flashed, and the mists rose.
Mists curled and sank away, and the Band of Four blinked in the gloom of a great chamber, as Embra's Dwaer flashed and another Stone winked back in reply, from not far away.
It was whirling in an endless loop around a man lying unclad and asleep upon a robe on the dusty stone floor: Blackgult, looking much as they'd seen him last. At every flash of Dwaerindim, the air around the orbiting Stone glowed momentarily, outlining a great curving barrier like a sphere of armor.
"He's in trance, probably healing himself," Embra said quietly, "and that's a shield-spell around him, a powerful one. We'd best wait for him to awaken, and hope."
"Hope that he's healed?"
"Hope that what awakens is still Ezendor Blackgult, and not something else," the Lady Silvertree replied grimly, advancing to where she could peer all around the large chamber. "Find the doors, all of them. We'd best mount a guard."
"Embra," Craer said warningly, pointing. A snake had reared up in the dust just inside one open doorway, regarding them with glittering eyes. Unhesitatingly, Embra blasted it to oily smoke with a Dwaer-bolt. Blackgult's Stone and shielding both flared into answering light, but seemed otherwise unaffected.
'Just a snake, or Serpent-work?" Tshamarra asked, as Craer and Hawkril advanced on that door, blades ready in their hands.
"Serpent-work," the Lady of Jewels replied shortly. "That was a spy, spell-linked back to someone else; I hope I gave him a searing headache. Come, Tash, let's spell-seal these other doors."
The armaragor peered through the open archway- "No door left here, not for years. Dark and empty passage, opens out fairly soon… and we forgot torches."
"So we did," Embra said with a sigh, turning away from the door she and Tshamarra had just sealed, tracing it with glowing fingertips in unison with the Stone held between them. "We'll have to conjure up a door, then, and-"
Whatever else she was going to say was lost forever in a sudden hissing flood. Dozens of serpent-arrows came streaking along the passage and through the doorless arch in a deadly storm. They sizzled to ashes where they struck Blackgult's shielding, but otherwise broke from their racing flights in midchamber to whirl into separate strikes at the Four, darting like wasps.
The Dwaer flashed in Embra and Tshamarra's shared grasp, and from both sorceresses a gigantic cloak of flame snarled up-and fell over the hissing missiles.
Flaming snakes writhed and tumbled in all directions, falling as embers and whirling scraps of ash, but many of the rigid serpents still swooped and soared. Craer sprang high to slash one to ribbons in midair with two daggers, and Hawkril waited warily, warsword raised, to hack down any snake-shaft that darted through the pursuing claws of Dwaer-flame.
Only one did, and his slash struck it aside just enough for him to grasp its body and fling it to the floor. The armaragor stamped on its head, hard, and whirled away from the feebly wriggling remains-just as the door Embra and Tshamarra had sealed burst with a roar of dust, rubble and searing magic.
Serpent-priests