The Kingless Land - Ed Greenwood [139]
It was long past time to leave this shattered library, with its ghosts and fresh corpses alike shrouded in new dust. They moved without further word or ceremony, Craer at the fore all peering and stalking grace, intent on seeing that lurking shadow-man before he saw them, and Hawkril bringing up the rear, peering back warily over his ready war sword to ensure that nothing was following or rearing up to spit one last deadly magic at their backs.
When they were gone, the library of Ehrluth knew a single moment of stillness before a hitherto blank stone wall opened, and the man in leathers stepped out of the darkness behind it. He took one step amid rubble and the next into air, striding smoothly up through the empty air to the books floating in their shafts of light.
Reaching into those steady glows, he turned the pages of all the tomes, touching them where the hands of Embra and the others had passed vainly through, until all six displayed different writings.
The man stood on nothing reading them for a moment, nodded as if satisfied, and went down to the wall again, leaving the open books hanging in the air like so many white birds frozen forever in flight.
Suddenly they were standing on a slate-and-pitch roof with empty laundry racks all around them and a seabird eyeing them suspiciously before it waddled a little farther away. The smell of the sea was strong, and a city fell away on all sides. Craer stared around suspiciously. "I should know this place," he said, and looked to Embra. "So where are we?"
"Urngallond. The roof of The Lion Looks Seaward, a luxurious inn," the Lady of Jewels replied. Hawkril eloquently raised his eyebrows, and she added, "One must spelljump to a known place. I once stayed here, when my father had business yonder in the Coinhalls."
"He let you leave the barony?" Sarasper asked, looking down over roofs to where the forest of tall masts in the harbor began and gulls wheeled and shrieked. The open sea lay like a gray line beyond headlands cloaked in old, tall, many-balconied buildings.
"I was an infant then," Embra told him. "All I knew how to do was watch things."
"A superior sort of infant," Hawkril growled, and jerked his thumb at Craer. "All he knew how to do was snatch things."
His voice acquired sharp alarm as the sorceress strode toward him. "What're you doing?"
"Healing all hurts," Embra told him crisply, touching the Stone to his cheek. He seemed to shimmer before their eyes, growing at once shorter and fatter. "Oh, and making you look like an old, fat merchant."
Sarasper and Craer stared at a bulbous nose, dangling jowls, and a pout that would have served a whole household of petulant folk-and burst into laughter.
"A little less mirth," the armaragor growled at them. "You're next."
The old healer looked gravely into Embra's eyes as she drove away the pains in his back and arms and made him an overly rouged trader in purple silks, and asked, "Casting magic… is your pain all gone?"
The Lady Silvertree gave him a quick smile. "Yes," she murmured, and beckoned to Craer. "Little man," she said in a voice of doom, "it's time."
"I seem to recall a lady saying just those words to me, once before," Craer remarked slyly. "Now, was it in Sirlptar? Or-"
"'Twas in some place where you had to lay down coins, I'll warrant-or where she got a good look at all of you," Hawkril grunted.
His eyes widened as Embra turned and he got a good look at all of her. A bewhiskered and sneering man in well-worn vest and breeches stood squinting back at the armaragor from under a broad sun hat.
"Rundrar the trader can shuffle off elsewhere after we take rooms," she explained crisply, in a voice that wasn't far off a man's. "Then he can send in his lady partner to deal with you three."
There was a chorus of welcoming chuckles and explanations, which she quelled with a rather withering glance.
"Just acting like merchants, Lady," Craer explained with a quick smile. "I-"
"What's this 'Lady' talk? It's Rundrar,