The Kingless Land - Ed Greenwood [135]
The baron's eyes narrowed. "And my Spellmaster caught him not?"
"Lord," his last and mightiest mage snarled, "I'll gladly discuss all this later. Right now I must work a magic on the healer."
"Your 'Voice of the God'?"
"The same," Ingryl Ambelter snapped, settling his nose against the glass globe. Laying two fingers of either hand atop it, he muttered a few soft words. The baron watched for a moment, not quite smiling, and then bent his attention to his own globe. As he peered into its familiar glow, a thought struck him: what would be left of him if his willful Spellmaster decided to make a certain glass globe burst apart?
In the depths of the glass there was frantic activity. Hawkril and Craer raked stony rubble from Embra's crumpled body in feverish haste, tossing it so wildly aside that Sarasper was moved to circle widely around them, and come at her from another way.
Sarasper, it is time.
Old Oak?
You know me, Sarasper. Now heed: seize the Stone. Take it into your hand and bear it away, smiting with its fires all who seek to gainsay thee. Take it. Now. I command thee.
Sarasper whimpered then, staring wide-eyed at Embra Silvertree's sprawled form. Craer looked up at the sound, eyes narrowing, and the healer waved his hands as if to brush that glance away.
"No," Sarasper moaned, "not my friends. Not to betray, to harm…"
A wave of well-nigh-irresistable coercion washed over him. Betray me not. Seize the Stone. Seize the STONE! Take it NOW!
The old healer shuddered and staggered forward, snarling. "Craer! Hawkril! Stop me! Stop me from what I must do!"
"What's he gibbering about now?" Hawkril growled, as he ran careful fingertips over Embra's head and back, seeking out broken bones and the sticky wetness where blood welled and-thank the Three!-finding nothing. Yet.
"A spell on him, I think," Craer said, feeling around in the rubble for a stone that would fit his hand without taking his eyes from Sarasper, who was now sobbing and protesting incoherently. "I don't think a man can hurl spells while fighting a spell sent by another… but what if he stops fighting?"
As the procurer and the armaragor exchanged grim glances, a shadow stole forward with swift, gliding strides, to pause on a balcony not far above the four adventurers.
"Luthtuth comes creeping back," the figure whispered soundlessly to itself, and smiled. "Luthtuth always comes creeping back."
The baron pushed the candelabra across the polished tabletop, into easy reach. Ingryl thrust one hand into its flames, hissing as he drew in its heat, the pain its searing brought-and fed them to the distant Sarasper. "Now," he said, his voice as deep and yawning as a fresh grave, "healer, you are mine."
And in the dusty, rubble-strewn wreckage of the library of Ehrluth, in a ruined city half Aglirta away from where the Spellmaster sat hunched in growing pain, Sarasper Codelmer's distorted voice fell silent, his eyes blazed with sudden fire, and he strode purposefully toward Embra.
Craer and Hawkril sprang up as one, charging at the older man-and Ingryl Ambelter gasped, "Now! By the Three and all the love of the Lady for dark weavings, now!"
The flames under his fingers flared to scorch the ceiling and sent the baron wincing back, a hand shielding his eyes-and then went out. The Spellmaster reeled and fell back in his chair shuddering and trembling uncontrollably, his face lined with sudden exhaustion.
And across the miles, through the spell-link, his lightnings cracked out of Sarasper's body, lashing the procurer and the armaragor with purple fire.
They were hurled away, end over end. Hawkril struggled to shout in pain but managed only