The Kingless Land - Ed Greenwood [131]
"The hall is cleansed?" Huldaerus asked.
A helm shook in a reluctant "no," and a scarred gauntlet rose and pointed down an aisle. "The sorceress lives and has rejoined her companions."
"Kill them for me," Huldaerus said mildly. "Or have you seen fit to change my orders?"
"No, Lord," the warriors assured him hastily, and stalked off to deal death. They'd gone perhaps halfway down the aisle when a bright blade stabbed at them out of one of the rows; when they charged thence to give battle, a bookshelf was thrust over on them, crushing one Ornentarn.
The man's high, shrill scream brought a scowl to the face of the Master of Bats, who plucked up a piece of wood from the nearest fallen shelf. Touching it to the Stone, he closed his eyes and murmured something.
When he opened them, all wood in the part of the library he was facing melted away, leaving his two warriors facing four adventurers across a bare stone floor.
Four bedraggled adventurers. One was a mountain of an armaragor, eyes bleak and battle-calm, shoulders and arms as broad and as mighty as many a castle door-but the others were but wisps: one was old, one was little larger than a boy, and one of them was a dazed, limping woman. As the Ornentarn stalked forward, Huldaerus smiled grimly, awaiting butchery to come.
But it was one of his own warriors who came crashing down on his back, after an agile procurer had rolled hard into the man's legs-and the other who retreated in fear before the armaragor's shrewdly swung blade.
The Master of Bats snarled. Hefting the Stone, he worked a spell to make many whirling axes appear out of the air to race and spin through the area. The fully armored warriors of Ornentar should suffer little, but as for their foes…
He'd barely drawn breath for a grim chuckle when his conjured weapons, fading into view, flashed and fell and were no more. His spell was broken.
Beyond the flashing swords of the fighting men, the young woman stood glaring at him, no longer dazed. Then her lips twisted in a smile that promised doom.
Huldaerus gave her a sneer in answer and lifted the Stone, causing blue fires to play about it to show her what she faced. A moment later, the tiles beneath his feet abruptly heaved upward, as if punched by a huge rock fist-and he landed hard on his own backside. The smile on the face of the sorceress widened.
Huldaerus snarled, lifted the Stone over his head without bothering to rise, and willed forth bolts of lightning to lash and tame this arrogant woman.
Armored figures staggered in the sudden blue-white cracklings, but he hadn't even managed to spit out a curse at his own stupidity when the lightnings died away, and the groans of his warriors became gasps and grunts-and the clash of blades began anew.
"Horns of the Lady!" Huldaerus snarled. "Die, sorceress! Die!"
And he reached down deep into the Stone and called forth the strongest slaying spell he knew. He'd have a headache to outsing bards soon, and weariness to overmaster wakefulness, but if it slew this woman and let him walk free of Indraevyn with a Dwaer stone, 'twould be worth it…
Like a black and vengeful ghost his cloud of slaying left him, rippling as it rose, and he saw his foe's face go pale as she recognized it.
Huldaerus smiled. Fitting, 'twas, that she'd know her doom just before it took her. The Silvertree mage, then Phalagh, now this one… he was going to enjoy destroying wizards up and down the Vale this season, until none but the Master of Bats could hurl a spell from Sirlptar and the sea to the singing headwaters in the wastes, wherever they might lie. He'd…
Embra thought furiously, watching death come for her. She had no effective counterspell. The only way to end a death shroud is with a death-either of the caster or the target. So all she had to do now was slay an accomplished wizard who commanded