The Kingless Land - Ed Greenwood [128]
"Fine words," Huldaerus purred. "Can you make them more?" He did not lift his hands, but from the rings on his fingers dark lightnings spat, snarling across the open space of shattered shelves at the Silvertree mages.
Halfway there the dark bolts struck an unseen shielding, clawed along it, and then expired in swirling black sparks. Klamantle acquired a stiff smile and brought his upraised hand down.
A stone block larger than a man obediently tore itself out of the ceiling right above Huldaerus and crashed down-but the body that was smashed to the floor beneath it wore the armor of a warrior, and the wizard of the bats suddenly stood some distance away along the shelves, where an Ornentarn warrior had raised a sword but a moment before.
The Master of Bats barely had time to twist his lips into a scornful smile before Markoun of Silvertree raised his hand and hurled a raging sphere of flames at Huldaerus. The Ornentarn mage lost his smile and ducked around the end of a shelf with rather more haste than dignity. Markoun's magic burst with a roar-a roar that was immediately echoed by the flames it birthed, as they tore hungrily along deserted shelves.
"Impressive," the other Ornentarn mage commented, raising an eyebrow. "Phalagh, by the way, at your service."
Hawkril swung his war sword even faster than the Silvertree mages could snarl spells, but his blade passed right through the smiling Phalagh as if the mage had been made of smoke.
Phalagh gave him a tight smile, murmured, "Await my revenge, thickskull," and stepped through the shelf he'd been leaning against, out of sight.
An instant later, that entire course of shelves vanished into whirling splinters with a roar. Klamantle stood at one end of it with the hands that had cast that rending spell still raised, peering through the dust, but Phalagh's laugh came back to them from somewhere in the dark shelves beyond. Shelf after shelf crumpled and sighed into nothingness in the distance, more and more slowly as the spell spent itself.
A last shelf groaned and fell, and the wizard Huldaerus stood revealed, trying a small and ordinary door in a wall none of them had seen before-a wall that stood amid the shelves, enclosing a wedge-shaped room. The mage glanced up at them, face tightening in anger, and hissed something. When he touched the door next, it vanished in a gout of smoke, and Huldaerus darted into the space beyond.
As Markoun raised his hand again, an Ornentarn warrior sprinted after the wizard of the bats.
"Ehrluth's spell chamber?" the younger Silvertree mage asked, his eyes narrowing.
"Whatever it may be," Klamantle replied, "he enters to win time to work magics against us-or to seek new weapons to slay us with. Come!"
The room Huldaerus hurled himself into was dark and dusty, but it sang with the echoes of countless forgotten, long-cast spells, their jangling rising anew as the mighty magics of the spell-battle flooded in on the heels of the hurrying mage. This was Ehrluth's spell chamber-and if the Three were kind, it just might hold some spell or scepter that he could hurl against these Silvertree mages.
His bats squeaked around him, telling him that the room stood empty, and Huldaerus made candles of his own fingers to peer at the walls for runes or storage holes or handles. Nothing. Curses of the Three, had he raced into a trap?
He turned and wove the strongest shielding he knew with shaking fingers, almost humming in his haste, and barely had time to curse the Ornentarn warrior who blundered into the room with drawn sword and wild eyes before the older of the two Silvertree mages could be seen beyond the door, weaving a spell of doom.
Huldaerus cloaked himself in his shielding and stood tall and still, feeling every curve