The Kingless Land - Ed Greenwood [120]
The armaragor nodded expressionlessly, and she felt surprisingly gentle hands plucking at her tunic, dragging it out of her belt to lay bare her back. The great war sword was planted in the turf bare inches from her cheek, and she felt rather than saw him take out his knife again. There was a tap on her back. "Here?"
"Y-yes," she told the ground in front of her, and caught at her lip. There was a sudden coldness, a wet trickling, and growing pain as Hawkril carefully took the enchanted curio she'd given him and pressed it into the bleeding cut he'd made. Trembling, Embra said, "If it'll stay, stand back now."
"Back," the armaragor agreed, and she heard the scrape of one of his boots, moving away. The sorceress drew in a deep breath, felt the pain growing, and murmured the incantation.
Her back exploded with fire, as she'd known it would, and through the sudden, stinging sweat her world suddenly became a small boy frantically climbing a chain out of a dark room of death, a howling pack of war dogs racing nearer… and her father smiling down at her chained nakedness and spilling a lazy handful of gemstones onto it. "My little Lady of Jewels," he drawled, "what will you become?" His dark laughter rolled over her then, deafeningly, and left Embra blinking in a sudden chill. Wisps of spell-smoke were rising from under her fingers-fingers tensed over foreheads that had suddenly risen bolt upright, and belonged to faces now frowning at her in bafflement.
"Don't pull away," she pleaded, and poured her pain into them, urging it down trembling arms as she drew in the racing tide of magic from the vanished knick-knacks and sent it raging down into them. Almost immediately she felt Sarasper steering the flow, twisting and tugging at it as he sighed out relief and satisfaction. Cool healing flooded all three of them, and its intense pleasure made them gasp, sigh, and shudder in unison.
"If you're all quite finished," Hawkril growled from somewhere near at hand and yet a world away, "we'd best get on and into yon library. Folk-and mages, too-are trying to kill each other a mite too energetically."
Craer sprang up, all trace of harm gone, and chuckled. "When did you become so talkative, Tall and Mighty?"
"When I saw how far it took you in life," Hawkril growled, as they trotted through the last wisps of smoke to the library door.
It was an oval twice as tall as even the massive armaragor, and its stone surface had once been sculpted to present some sort of elaborate face or scene to the world. Unfortunately, years of weather had cracked and worn most of that impressiveness away; it was impossible now to say for certain what the door had looked like or proclaimed.
"Looks like a tomb," Hawkril grunted.
Craer lifted an eyebrow. "A tomb for words?" he commented archly-and then, not bothering about traps or stealth, swung wide the door, and darted in.
It must have been counterweighted and finely carved indeed; the huge slab of stone pivoted easily and without a sound. The procurer had ducked into the gloom within crouching low, and Hawkril knew his first act, if what was within allowed it, would have been to spring sideways, out of the way of the door. Probably to the right.
"Duck low and go left," he grunted to Sarasper and Embra. "Nothing clever."
The armaragor went last, casting a quick look around at the various battles raging in the ruins. Had the door banged closed behind him a single breath later than it did, he'd have seen two wizards staggering along through the rubble toward him, their robes held up like aprons before them around ungainly bundles of weaponry.
"Swords are bebolten heavy," Markoun snarled, stumbling for the sixty-third time. "Can't we just drop them?"
"No," Klamantle snapped, his eyes on the door ahead. "Hurry." A moment later he caught his foot on a loose stone and fell headlong with a mighty crash.
"Yes," he amended grimly, staggering to his feet without