The Kingless Land - Ed Greenwood [132]
She smirked bitterly. Simplicity itself for the legendary Lady of Jewels, no?
Embra retreated from the swordplay to buy herself a few more breaths to think of a way out of this. Patiently the drifting death shroud followed, looming up large and dark, opening out to receive her…
She stumbled against a fallen ceiling stone and almost fell. Wait-that was it!
Bending over to wrap her arms around the block with one of the last few knickknacks caught between two of her fingers, she strained to lift the stone block an inch off the floor, gasped out a spelljump incantation-and was suddenly straining in the air, with Huldaerus just beneath her boots. She let go of the block and arched upward, seeking to climb empty air.
The Master of Bats had time to look up as the block came down-but no time to gasp. It smashed him to the floor, driving his head deep into tiles far harder than flesh or bone. His hands, however, were moving…
Embra came down kicking at them. One out-flung forearm cracked like dry kindling as she landed on it, bouncing and gasping in pain. His other hand spasmed open in agony-and the faintly glowing, awakened Worldstone fell out of it. The dark wall of the death shroud faded away.
The Lady of Jewels rolled over, groaning from her landing, and snatched up the round and reassuringly heavy Dwaer.
The Ornentarn warriors had broken off their losing battle with Hawk and Craer to thunder toward her, blades raised. Sinister helms glared down, promising her swift, sharp death.
Embra kept rolling, found her feet, and raced across the rubble-strewn floor toward one of the stairs. Wind whistled near her shoulder as a blade didn't quite catch her, and then Craer yelled as he always did when throwing something heavy. There was a curse and a heavy thumping close behind her-as her running feet found the first step.
Hugging the Stone to her breast with one hand and snatching at the stair rail with the other, Embra burst up those steps like a storm wind, hearing the scrape of pursuing boots only on her last turn around the rising coil. She came out onto the curving balcony gasping for breath and staring at doors… closed doors.
There! One stood open, and she made for it. She had to win time to collect her wits and call on the Stone before a sword cut her open and ended all striving.
The room beyond the door was dimly lit by three tall windows and held a tangle of decaying chairs around a grand table that had collapsed long ago. Embra spun around, shoved the door shut-and discovered that its latch bar had rusted away. There was no way to secure it closed.
Hissing a curse, she hurried to a window. At least she could leap out if that swordsman got to hThe library around her shuddered as if struck by a giant's fist, and the ceiling came down in rolling thunder. Shouting in alarm, Embra threw herself desperately out the window as stone blocks poured down and the dust rolled up.
The Stone let her fly, and even hover. She swooped up from what would have been a nasty landing on tumbled rubble in a rising arc that brought her almost nose to nose with Klamantle Beirldoun, as he stood perched on the crumbling summit of another building, his trembling hands spread in the exhausted aftermath of trying to bring down the dome of the library. His face went white as he saw the Stone in her hands.
"Yes," Embra snarled, as she flew past. "So you should fear, pawn of my father! So you should fear!"
And she turned in a tight bank, seeking a perch to slay wizards from.
The din was deafening, and the very floor shook under their boots as stones crashed down all around the dome, smashing away parts of the balcony rail. Dust rose like smoke from a wind-whipped fire. In the quaking gloom, no one saw three black bats flit up from the body of the Master of Bats-or the stones hurtling down that smashed one of them back to the floor. The wizard's remaining hand twitched once, as if trying to grasp something that wasn't there, and then was still. Dust started to fall on it as the thunderous clamor slowly died away.