The Kingless Land - Ed Greenwood [105]
Markoun's eyes were wide and staring, and he was shaking in rage and terror. If his fingers had slipped…
He shuddered and then wheeled his dragonlike mount savagely around. Twice the nightwyrm turned in the sky over the Glittering City before its rider regained enough control over himself to work magic again. Futile arrows leaped up at him in some places, falling far short, and the flashes of spells too slow and too timidly aimed shook the sky in other places.
Markoun ducked his head away from the magics and thanked the Three that the city seemed to be so empty of mages at the moment. When the nightwyrm responded to him again, his first, snarling act was to hurl a handful of fire back down at the wizard standing in the heart of the inferno. The only one who'd touched them with his spells, smashing Klamantle's spell-spun wyrm out of the sky. Thankfully, his second strike had missed Markoun, though not by much.
It was a spell not known in Silvertree. Who was that mage down there, alone amid the flames?
Had the Silvertree wench run to this stranger? Had he hidden or transformed or spelljumped her away out of a whim or to draw Baron Silvertree into battle?
Or was it just the laughter of the Three that he'd been staying at this inn right now?
Then the young wizard's mind came to the most important of his string of questions: It didn't really matter now, did it?
If Markoun didn't claim that wizard down there was to blame for Embra Silvertree's escape-after destroying him utterly in what must look like a city-shaking battle, the hide that would pay the price of Silvertree fury would be one that answered to the name of Yarynd.
As horns blared again in the city below, something purple suddenly burst in the air close by to his right.
Markoun flinched and set his wyrm tumbling away without waiting to see if it had been hit. Even the mightiest battle-spell couldn't harm what it couldn't hit…
He had to destroy this stranger-mage, the inn, and a lot more besides. Perhaps if he whisked aloft those barrels of cooking oil from three streets over, caused them to hang above the inn, and then tore them apart…
At his thought the nightwyrm climbed, its powerful wings stroking the air like the oars of a racing boat, that obsidian back undulating with the power of its wing-beats. From somewhere among the taller houses on the ridge another spell streaked out, tracing a slow green arc across the sky… and falling short.
Arrows sought him, a few wingbeats farther on, but a sharp bank and slip to one side, and they clawed emptiness and fell. Chuckling in delight and rising battle-rage, Markoun clung to his perch and cast the spell that would snatch aloft the barrels. It worked as smoothly as a bard's ballad; he urged his mount away only just in time.
Behind his nightwyrm's curling tail, the air erupted into a ear-shattering torrent of flames that the gods themselves might have been proud of. Markoun couldn't even hear his own shouted laughter as he turned his mount from the height of its frantic race out of harm's way, looked back, and waved his fist in exultation.
Jaerinsturn of Elmerna, the Wavefyre Inn, and several surrounding buildings of fair Sirlptar vanished as one, in the heart of a blast that hurled citizens into the air like rag dolls, splattered them against walls like so much rotten fruit, and smote the ears of everyone else in the Glittering City with a ringing, muffled tumult that would take hours to pass.
The nightwyrm bucked and shuddered in the roiling air, but Markoun held his seat with a grim smile, waiting for smoke and dust to clear enough to be sure that no sly adventurers would be creeping out of inn cellars with tales of reckless wyrm-riding mages.
Something streaked up out of the city to burst nearby; the nightwyrm recoiled in the air and almost fell over into a wild rumble.
Another spell soared up from another street-and another; Sirlptar seemed full of angry mages, all seeking revenge for the disturbance on the man in the air.
Markoun raised a hasty shielding, and almost immediately