The Kingless Land - Ed Greenwood [136]
Purple fire howled on across the room, crackling among the clouds of dust and racing up spiral stairs to make the balcony rail erupt in a racing line of blue, snapping sparks. The shadowy figure crouching at that rail trembled uncontrollably, doubled up in pain-and slowly toppled off the balcony, crashing heavily onto splintered shelves below.
Sarasper reached for the Stone. He'd stumbled across loose rubble and fallen on his knees, and uncaring, had crawled on and up Embra's motionless body until now his hand was almost on the Dwaer.
Luthtuth rose out of the wreckage of the shelves, shaking off pain, and stared across empty space at the Stone he'd come so far to seize. Too much empty space to cross in time.
The old man's fingers touched the Stone, and it winked once, mockingly.
Luthtuth turned, a shadow once more, and sprang into the darkness, running awkwardly but swiftly, stumbling only once. Fleeing to await a better time. Again.
The healer lifted the Stone, and Embra's limp hand came up with it, dragging it out of his hand. Sarasper reached for it again, his hand closing around the smooth, heavy…
Something struck the old man aside and senseless with one brisk, shrewd blow.
Another hand closed on the Stone of Life. A hand that belonged to a bearded man who wore trail leathers. He had a pleasant face, and the Dwaer lit it with a soft, warm glow as the man touched the Worldstone to Embra-who stirred under its touch, the bruises and lines of pain receding from her face-and then to Sarasper, where it made the blazing light abruptly fade from his open, staring eyes.
The man put the Stone into Embra's hand, closed her fingers around it, and slipped away. He did not go into the shadows whence the shadowy procurer had fled.
There was a little silence in the library before a slender figure suddenly sat up, dust and small stones falling from her limbs, blinked, and looked around.
The six books still floated serenely above Embra Silvertree, and her three companions lay sprawled on all sides. As she stared at them, another tiny piece of the riven dome high above her crumbled and fell, plunging down a very long way to the floor. Its sudden shattering awoke rolling echoes.
Somewhere in the ruins nearby, a wolf howled-and from farther off, other wolves answered. The Lady Embra Silvertree shivered and scrambled to her feet. Her injuries and her weariness were gone, and instead she felt a rising, insistent tingling. She looked down. In her hands, the Stone had begun to glow…
16
Live by the Spell…
Screams split the air in a guarded chamber in Castle Silvertree.
Ingryl Ambelter arched back in his chair as lightnings leaked from his eyes and mouth, shrieking his agony. The chair burst into flames beneath him, shuddered, and was ashes before it struck the floor. He never felt himself crashing down with it, never saw the baron flung senseless into a stately ebon-wood sideboard or the glass globes melt into teardrops that arced across the room to splat and sizzle against distant walls-and he never noticed his safe-spell claiming the lives of the only two guards bold enough to burst into the room with swords drawn.
When the lightning died away, it left behind no sound but sizzling.
Somehow the Spellmaster reeled to his feet and staggered across the room. He went to no guarded door, but to a dark green statue of a forever-staring sorceress that stood where a side wall met the outer wall, and muttered a word to it.
The staring sorceress obediently sank into the floor, plinth and all. Ingryl shouldered through the low opening thus revealed, and gasped his way down the dark and cramped passage beyond.
White-faced and sweating, the Spellmaster staggered along through chill, damp stone to the spell-locked closet he'd hoped not to have to visit for years yet. Never again would he doubt the power of the Dwaerindim or dare to stand against them. His hold over Sarasper had been snapped in an instant, broken with such a backlash