The Kingless Land - Ed Greenwood [145]
17
No Stone Unburned
The sizzle of burning flesh was loud enough to be heard over the splashings of three men clambering out of the tub to reach for the sorceress hanging from the Stone of Life.
"Don't touch me!" she screamed at them, through tears of pain. "Get back!"
Flames roiled up from around her blackened fingers, and Embra wept, her trembling lips barely able to grasp out, "S-show me the cause of this!"
The Dwaer flashed, and suddenly a scene hung in the air beside the naked sorceress: a room where a cowled man held another Stone on high as many folk danced around him. They seemed almost drunken, reeling with their heads lolling, but their limbs jerked with wild speed. The innermost dancers were naked save for flailing and thrashing snakes coiled around their bodies; the outer dancers wore all manner of garb, but looked decidedly…
"Sweet kisses of the Three!" Hawkril gasped. "They're all dead!"
The song of the Stone was deafening now, and the Priest of the Serpent sang worldlessly along with it, borne along in utter triumph. There came, suddenly, a deeper boom than before-and the song died away almost to a whisper.
Above his head, the Stone of War erupted in red and then black pulsing flames, fire that did not sear the priest's hand. He gazed up at the fiery tongues in delight and wonder as they spat outward… and seemed to cause ripplings through the slowing ranks of dancers.
He looked to see what those ripplings might be and saw that they were waves of change wrought by the Stone. Scales were appearing on the bodies of priests and priestesses, and the tongues lolling beneath those dark, dead eyes were suddenly long, forked, red, and darting.
The priest laughed aloud, glorying in power-and he was still laughing when the dancing corpse of the wizard Jaerinsturn, its face and breast still blackened and blistered from the fires of his death in Sirlptar, shuffled up behind the serpent-man, drew a massive bone club from under scorched robes, and dashed the back of the priest's scaly head in, so hard that the brains met the serpent-man's nose.
With a sniveling, bubbling sigh, the priest fell dead to the floor, the flames dying away from the Stone in his hand like a snuffed candle.
Somewhere in a seacoast inn, flames died around another Stone, and Embra Silvertree gasped in relief as she fell back into the tub with a mighty splash.
Not caring where the waters went or how many wine bottles were swept to ruin, she sobbingly called on the Dwaer to heal what little was left of her fingers and tried not to let go of the precious thing in her shudders.
Three men plunged back into the pool to hold her and murmur comforts. She smiled tremulously up at them through glistening tears.
***
There were thuds and thumpings in the Silent House as dancers slumped to the floor in a lifeless ring. Snakes glided swiftly away, heading for shadows.
None slithered toward the center of the ring, to menace the only being left standing in all that chamber. The dead wizard lowered the club that had slain the priest and turned away-and as he did so, the burned face of Jaerinsturn melted away into a featureless, fleshy mask.
As the faceless man picked his way through the circle of the dead, his face slowly began to acquire the features of someone else…
Lying in the cooling waters of the tub in Urngallond, Embra went white.
"What is it, lass?" Hawkril asked quickly, one large and hairy arm tightening protectively around her shoulders.
The sorceress looked at him and then back at the scene hanging in the air above them. "There was a book in my father's library," she said, voice trembling. "An old history; large and embossed, with locks and latches I loved to work and fondle… Yet the pages, within-I was always scared of the tale they told. Something about 'The Faceless shall deliver thee…'"
"The Koglaur," Sarasper whispered. 'Those who walk among us, weaving a design we know not, always watching… even in the temples of Forefather Oak, we were taught to fear them, for they serve none of the