The Kingless Land - Ed Greenwood [147]
Ingryl clutched the Stone of War to his chest, book and all forgotten as he backed away from the table, fumbling a scepter from his belt with his free hand.
Embra's mouth tightened. She called on the Stone of Life and her years of spell-servitude to awaken her control of the Living Castle once more, her will rushing along well-worn links and enchantments and half-sleeping warding magics… and as the scepter rose to aim, a flood of painted tiles tore free of the ceiling and came crashing down on the Spellmaster, battering his arm back down to his side.
"You've got to advance on him, lass!" Hawkril roared, by her ear. "It's the only way our blades can reach him! Walk with us while working your spells!"
And he stepped forward. Frowning and nodding, Embra took a step forward to stay with him, and then another. Like a plodding turtle, the Four advanced together through a whirling storm of spells.
Tapestries battered the Spellmaster, and more tiles, smashing aside his scepter time and again as leaping lightnings snarled and spat between the Stones glowing on two breasts. The men of the Four reached for Ingryl Ambelter with their weapons as they came, and the angry snarling of lightnings rose ever louder in their ears.
Ingryl retreated, back through a door curtain and across a room until he passed through another curtain, moving from the garden side of Embra's chambers into the rooms overlooking the river. When his hip met the dark-polished table where her father had always met with her, the Spellmaster smiled for just an instant, and the Lady of Jewels wondered just what doom he was seeing for them.
An instant later, she saw-too late. There was another scepter lying on that table. The wizard made no move to try to snatch it up; he simply tapped it with the scepter he held, despite the whirling storm of tiles and tapestries she was hurling at him, and triggered the magic he already wielded.
The Stone of War flashed as it kept the Spellmaster from harm-and an instant later, the castle all around them exploded.
The sound smote their ears like a hammer, deafening the Four so that what happened next seemed to befall in something of a peaceful hush. All was blinding brightness, and hurtling through the air, striking unseen things very hard-and then being half buried in rubble.
The death of two scepters, one in his hand, should have torn Ingryl Ambelter apart. Instead it reduced most of the Lady Silvertree's riverside apartments to rubble, hurled the Band of Four back the length of a room, and then flung them in all directions.
Desperately Embra caused what was left of the walls and sconces and tapestry rails to rain down on the last of her father's mages, but through their battering Ingryl cast a spell as fast as a striking snake.
Out of his hands roared the purple fire that turns flesh and bone to jelly-straight at the only one of the Four still standing: the staggering Hawkril, doggedly launching himself into a charge.
Embra frantically called on her Stone to work a spelljump on the armaragor-and managed to snatch a startled Hawkril out of the room onto its adjoining balcony, an instant before Ingryl's deadly fire would have swept him out of Darsar forever.
Something else flashed across the room then, bounding and somersaulting amid the dust and rubble: Craer Delnbone, with a dagger in his mouth and death in his eyes. He'd seen his oldest friend charge the wizard and disappear; Hawkril Anharu had to be avenged.
Ingryl was clambering free of the wrack Embra had pelted him with-the only things her control of the castle could reach in that room, a control lost once they'd been torn free of the walls and hurled. He barely had time to snap out a flamefist spell.
The procurer ducked away, rolled, kicked a shattered chair up into the path of the pursuing spell-flames, bounded into the air, and when he came down somersaulted again and launched himself into a dropkick that caught Ingryl low in the belly, hurling the Spellmaster back through the Lady Silvertree's largest