The Dragon's Doom - Ed Greenwood [6]
In the heart of the light his incantations gasped and stammered on. Sweat drenched him, and his racing fingers were trembling now, his body shuddering as if fighting to stand against the snatching gusts of a gale.
A spell burst into a sudden shower of sparks, and there came a sudden, brief murmur-part consternation, and part satisfaction-from the watching clergy as the bald priest convulsed, shrieked something despairing, and clawed at the air as if to ward off a pouncing monster.
Sparks fell, and there came another explosion, bright and then dark, motes of fire raining down in all directions as the spellweaving priest sobbed bitterly. Burst after burst, in swift succession, tore the dancing serpents into a swirling cloud.
At its flickering heart the lone, sweat-soaked figure frantically waved fingers grown impossibly long, trying to shout words with a voice that had suddenly tightened into a loud hiss. A forked tongue darted from grimacing lips as the sparks raced aloft to shape many bright serpent heads-which then struck in unison, lashing down at the wildly gesturing man with terrible speed.
The bald priest screamed under those fangs of light, high and shrill. His suddenly long and rubbery arms flapped helplessly in the brightly boiling radiance-and then caught fire in a long gout of flame.
He screamed again, dancing grotesquely in the rushing conflagration, flesh melting and receding from bones with horrible swiftness. Smaller explosions bloomed and rolled all around that capering figure, and in the wake of each a freed spell fell away from the doomed priest and became a ghostly white serpent of flickering force, writhing and undulating in uncanny silence.
Within this ghostly circle of swaying heads and lashing coils, the dying priest danced on, his flesh melting. His screams became raw, faint and feeble… and he sank to the floor, still dancing-jerking back and forth, helplessly and horribly, like a stick puppet flailed about at a market fair for the amusement of small children.
Sprawled on the dark stone, the priest melted swiftly down to near bones-and as he became more skeletal, the freed, slithering spells dancing around him moved in, coiling into and out of the writhing bones. Where they passed, bones parted, dissolving into streamers of smoke, and shifting… twisting…
The skeleton was soon little more than a flaming skull atop a whirlwind of tumbling bones-remains spun into the undulating shape of a serpent by the ghostly Serpent-spells.
The fading serpent-shape coiled, reared menacingly-and the skull atop it exploded in a puff of bone-dust. The bones below faded, and out of that writhing collapse rose the last glowing wisps of magic, drifting up to whatever it was that hung high overhead in the darkness.
There they shone for one whirling moment around a mottled, hand-sized stone floating alone in midair. Glowed, and then sank into the stone, to glow no longer.
As darkness returned to the ceiling, the watching priests looked down from where the wisps had gone, tightened lips grimly, and sighed-some with wistfulness, and many more with relief.
"This failure was not unexpected," one man said into the silence, his cold tones loud, firm, and flat. "Shall we resume?"
Another priest lifted a hand. "We shall- and with Ghuldart gone, and his boasts and claims with him, one thing is certain: None of us has the might to master the Thrael. The Great Serpent is come not back among us. Yet."
A third, younger priest asked, "Could some of us not cast a few spells of the Thrael each, and so weld together a ruling council from among our ranks? Need it be one man?"
The first priest rose to his feet and replied, "There I hear the voice not just of you, Lothoan, but of all your ilk: the young, eager, and restless amongst us, who thirst for power and see change as no concern at all if it wins us more power