The Kingless Land - Ed Greenwood [130]
15
To Stand Upon A Stone
The fires raining down on the Master of Bats should have crisped him on the spot. The very stones he clung to cracked and burst in the heat, showering him with hot shards.
"Too late, young idiot," Huldaerus told his foe exultantly, standing unscathed in the heart of the inferno.
As the roaring flames boiled away, their hurler stared down at him, gulping in disbelief-an emotion echoed in the raised eyebrows of the older Silvertree mage as he came to stand beside the first and look into the pit… and swiftly lost his air of bored unconcern. Both wizards hastened to send down deadly magics.
Huldaerus did nothing as lightnings crashed and fires roiled and lances of pure force stabbed around him. He laughed triumphantly, even as stones around him melted, slumping and flowing, and the pit grew deeper. He stood patiently as stones crumbled, flames roared, and deadly gases raged around him, until at last the onslaught died away.
In the sudden stillness, Huldaerus decided it was time to raise a sardonic eyebrow of his own.
Only the younger mage was still poised above the pit. The sneering face of the older Silvertree mage was gone; its owner had fled. Huldaerus looked up at the young fool who'd used his last few battle-spells in vain and now stood with smoke curling away from empty hands, looking down at his own death with dark despair in his eyes.
Looking down at the Master of Bats.
Huldaerus gave his foe a gentle smile and, almost delicately, sent killing flames up at him in a steady, inexorable roar. His smile did not waver, nor his fires lessen, until Markoun Yarynd had become small embedded pieces of flesh sizzling in the ceiling above the pit.
Huldaerus watched scorched stone creak and shimmer as it cooled, ignoring the sounds of battle above. He was too busy exulting at so narrowly escaping death and at the sheer power he now commanded.
At length he chuckled and lifted a hand to burn footholds in the dripping stone beside him. Well, now, it seemed Ornentar might prove the mightiest barony in all the Vale, after all. A quick clamber up, a rallying of the helmheads, and then…
The removal of Phalagh, who was all too quick to see things and apt to succeed in wresting the Stone away from his colleague, a mage he hated and feared… a mage who, bats and all, still had to sleep sometime.
Huldaerus shaped gauntlets out of the air to keep his hands from burning on the searing stones, and climbed. Halfway up, the rich stink of smoldering leather reminded him to do the same for his feet. By the Three, there was no end to the spells he could spin with this power!
As the Master of Bats clambered out of the pit, he feigned weariness-and was pleased to see Phalagh run to his aid. Feigned? Well, no, he was tired. Huldaerus shook his head as the world started to spin. All that crafting and guiding of spells… the Stone might power them without stint or faltering, but his were the wits that still had to frame each magic…
His fellow Ornentarn was bending anxiously over him now. Huldaerus looked up, smiled tightly, and cast a fleshripper spell right into Phalagh's startled face. It was a magic that tore apart its caster as well as its victim, usually employed only by doomed mages desperate to fell a foe as they died.
Phalagh didn't even have time to scream. His glistening remains were still spattering down into the pit when the Stone of Life finished restoring its bearer, and Huldaerus completed his many-times-interrupted rise back into the library.
He did not have to look far to find his warriors. Ornentar helms turned toward him to receive his orders.
"Kill everyone," he told them, waving his hand casually at the shelves around. "Scour out this place; leave none living."
Obediently they turned and lumbered away to do that. The Master of Bats watched them go, smiling faintly. Now, if he ruled all the Vale, what sort of land would he desire his kingdom to be? Hmm?
The slaughter took a long time, and two more Ornentarn fell. The last one took an armored giant from Brostos with him, grunts