The Kingless Land - Ed Greenwood [104]
"Aid!" Klamantle shouted, clawing at air that would not hold him. "Markoun! A rescue!"
The younger mage swept past, their eyes met-and the nightwyrm flapped on, trailing Markoun's cold laughter.
Dark Olym take him! As the cobbles rushed up to meet him, Klamantle desired only that he could whisk himself away from here, to a safe hideawaBy the Three! Yes!
Klamantle mouthed three words he'd almost forgotten-and the world changed around him, whirling away mere instants before he would have struck the ground, and whirling him back into utter darkness. Dank, dust-filled darkness, a smell he knew-and did not know. What was that… musk?
There was a grunting sound very close by. The mage turned and in frantic haste made the air glow with light, revealing a boar, perhaps six paces away, hooves slipping as it began a charge!
Klamantle shouted the simple spell that births flames for campfires and hurled it down a tusked throat before diving aside. Crumbling tomes of his own long-ago making tumbled around him as he rolled, the boar growled its way past, and flames erupted with a dull, wet booming.
A hoof struck the wall and rebounded past the dazed wizard, dust rolled up like stormclouds, and a little silence fell over Klamantle's hideaway.
He crouched on hands and knees, blinking into the gloom, for what seemed like a long time, listening and just gathering his wits. He'd prepared this little hideaway when? Twenty years ago? That long?
Long enough for something to find and roll aside the boulders that held the door shut and for a boar to lair here. Long enough for his simple novice spell writings to crumble, even before he'd worked magic in the little cavern to blow the boar apart.
He should find his way to the entrance and see if there'd been changes outside-in the abandoned, overgrown village wherein his little cave had once been a root cellar… or in the fallen barony of Tarlagar around it. Soon.
The last echoes of the tumult faded beyond hearing, and Klamantle shrugged, clambered upright, and started around familiar rough stone walls, picking what fragments of cooked boar he could find off the stones. It'd been months since he'd tasted good cooked boar, without all of the strange, sweet sauces the baron liked to smother it with, and knowing the temper of the master of Silvertree, it might be a long time before certain wizards tasted decent meals again.
Wait! Hadn't he-yes, here! Up the little fissure, feel up and back-the thong was still there! He plucked and pulled, gently, until the tiny, crumbling leather bag fell out into his cupped hand and yielded up the dull, fire-spoiled ruby he'd enspelled so long ago. Probably the only thing of worth left here, beyond healing potions: the proud achievements of a sweating year of castings and mistakes and endless recastings… a scrying gem. His scrying gem. Klamantle found a tiny pedestal table he'd forgotten existed, dragged it over to a cold stone seat set into the wall, and set down his gem on it.
Sitting down to stare into ruby depths, he thought of the burning inn in Sirlptar. Flames roaring up, smoke rolling up into a long, greasy plume over the ridge that rose into the tallest turreted houses in the Glittering City… there. There in the ruby deep: a tiny, gleaming scene growing steadily larger, nearer…
The nightwyrm convulsed in agony, almost spilling Markoun Yarynd from his perch.
The youngest of the Dark Three wizards of Silvertree clawed at glassy black scales to keep from falling to a tumbling, helpless death, recovered himself with a desperate snarl, and turned to look back with the sweat of fear running off