The Dragon's Doom - Ed Greenwood [204]
Craer met him with two drawn daggers and a snarl. "Get backl She's done enough-"
"Aye," Blackgult agreed, using a mere wisp of power to stun the procurer for the instant he needed to burst past, "she has. Wherefore it falls to me to do this!
He landed, aglow from head to foot and almost a head taller than he should have been, bent in a crackling of energies-and kissed Tshamarra Talasorn full on the mouth.
She lay on her back in what was left of a doorway, with the signs of Craer's frantic digging to get her down and into a cellar chamber below all around her, and though her eyes were open, they were dark.
They flashed as he came down on her, and she started to shudder. Blackgult pulled his head back, almost as if he was sucking something out of her, and then broke free, cradling her around the shoulders to keep her head from crashing back onto the rubble, to gasp, "Pray forgive me, Lady, but someone has to be the Dragon."
And he sprang up into the air right in front of Craer's enraged and astonished face, fresh pain raging in him.
He was not the one chosen by the Arrada. Ezendor Blackgult no longer had the power of mind and body to properly be the Dragon. Yet he must be. Aglirta was in need.
"As always!" he finished that thought wryly, though it came out as a great roar. Up into dragonshape he spun, expanding in size almost as much as in agony. He clawed the air and spat fire helplessly, wracked with pain, before he ever got near the Great Serpent.
Hawkril had driven his warsword deep between two scales as Ambelter had rid himself of Blackgult, and was now leaping for his life about the Throne Chamber as the maddened Serpent pounced at him, biting and missing and biting again. Embra Silvertree was hurling Dwaer-bolt after Dwaer-bolt at its eyes, trying to make it miss… and, thus far, succeeding. To and fro it went between the two overdukes, arching as it tried to reach over the rubble-and Blackgult fell on it from behind in a savage fury, knowing he hadn't long to live with the Dragon-powers shuddering through him.
"Unworthy, I am," he breathed, though it came out as a long tongue of fire that seared serpent-scales and sent Ambelter writhing away. "Such a pity…"
Then the pain was so great that he could only snarl-when he wasn't biting and clawing for all he was worth.
Venom and blood spewed forth together, smoking, and Blackgult dug his fangs in deep and fed fire through them.
The Great Serpent squalled and convulsed, thrashing wildly and sending palace stones flying, in a great rain that pelted down into the Silverflow.
His tail came around in a great whipping blow that slammed the trembling Dragon to the ground. Blackgult groaned, already lost in pain, and Ambelter flung coils around him just as he'd done to Tshamarra. At the same time, he burrowed his great flat serpent-head in through a gap in the rubble into some dark cellar chamber or other, and called on the Dwaer to help him shape an old, old spell. It worked, and as the Great Serpent tightened his coils around the Dragon, his forked tongue twisted into a grotesquely overlong human arm-an arm that reached out to slap the stones.
The Living Castle enchantments were strong here, and the Spellmaster used the Dwaer to make his call upon them mightier than he'd ever been able to before-and halfway across the rubble-strewn battlefield that had been the Throne Chamber before the coming of this dawn Embra Silvertree was dragged to her knees, sobbing and struggling.
The old enchantments were blood-bound to her, and as seductive as the Dark Three had been able to make them then, with full power over her young body and an almost whimsical shared ruthlessness. Embra fought those spells as best she could, but she might as well have tried to stop all winds from blowing across Darsar. She was unable to use the Dwaer, to see, even to breathe…
The king and the men and maids watching with him saw the Lady of Jewels fall on her face, senseless. Her Dwaer rolled away from her limp hand.
Hawkril was still a good dozen running paces away from it