The Dragon's Doom - Ed Greenwood [84]
The response was predictable: another furious volley of arrows along battlements that-as far as Craer and Hawkril could see-were occupied only by a few openmouDied Storn cortahars on wallguard duty. The few who survived that hail of warshafts vanished in the heart of another ball of flames.
"We're wearing them down until they fall asleep, or we the of old age, is that it?" Hawk whispered.
Craer grinned. "You might just be right about that. Time to spice up the cauldron." He drew a steel vial from inside one boot, another from his belt, and a strange little glass globe from behind his belt-buckle-a globe that bulged at the center of a short glass tube. Uncorking one vial, he slid it carefully onto one end of the pipe. Then he repeated the process with the other.
Hawkril smiled. "My arm's long enough to reach down and throw yon assemblage to the floor inside the turret. The glass has to break, hey?"
Craer's answering grin was fierce as he handed over his contraption. "I can't admit that. Professional procurer's secret, this."
Hawkril's snort was eloquent, as he leaned over-and threw. "Close your eyes!" Craer snapped.
Someone snarling orders inside the turret broke off and screamed, "Down! Get-"
And the night exploded into bright white light. Hawkril waited for the turret top to heave upward or shatter under them… but instead, all of the turret's occupants began screaming.
" 'Tis only blindflash," Craer hissed. "Time to get down there and thin Storn ranks. The best way's to guide them out the doors with lots of 'This way, my lord' stuff. If they're cortahars, just keep going and tip them over into the moat. Snake-priests we slay right away, and Lord Stornbridge we save in case Embra wants to use magic on him. Oh-and watch out for priests turning themselves into snakes and slithering away. One of them just told another to try that magic."
Hawkril smiled and started down the ladder.
"Ambelter," the Baron Phelinndar said bluntly, from the chair by the window, "you're at it again."
The Spellmaster halted abruptly in his swift striding across the dimly lit main cavern of their shared lair, his mind full of something complicated and as yet incomplete called "the Sword of Spells." Putting such thoughts away with an inward sigh, he swung around. "At what, my good Baron?" he asked politely.
"Scheming and meeting with folk and casting spells and manipulating events all over Aglirta and not involving me in the slightest, or telling me a single thing. We have agreement on this, remember? I am not a piece of furniture."
Ingryl Ambelter forebore to make the obvious reply linking baronial usefulness and immobile items of furniture. Instead, he came forward into the light of the window he'd tunneled out of the earth, glanced out at the pleasant vista of the Vale it afforded, and took the other chair. "You're most correct, Phelinndar. My apologies; this is but long habit and no deliberate attempt to belittle you or leave you ignorant or uninvolved. I assure you that I've done a lot of drinking and scrying, but made very few… ah, aggressive actions beyond the Bowdragon visits. You observed every moment of those, I trust?"
Phelinndar nodded. "I did. Your spells worked admirably. Yet here I sit, eating eggs and fryfish-I kept some warm for you under yon dome-whilst you scurry and mutter. Wizards aren't the only folk in the Vale with brains or imagination-or Dwaer-Stones, either."
"Point taken," the Spellmaster agreed gravely. "Well, then, here's what I've been thinking about-thinking, mind, more than doing. Thus far, I've met with failure in all attempts to sway the Bowdragons into action. Much of my present scurrying, as you put it, involves trying to discover how to move them into aiding us-or if the powers