The Kingless Land - Ed Greenwood [21]
The sorceress turned a weary face up to his furious one and murmured, "Then kill me. Here and now. It might give you some small satisfaction before my father's mages have you screaming. I think we both want-and, by the gods, need-trust between us. My control over the guardians of the wall, I fear, is now gone. I can compel only that one."
"And?" Hawkril barked, the point of his sword still drawn back to thrust up into her throat.
"I'm sending it to battle the one chasing your-our-friend," she told him, dark eyes very steady on his, and then added with a fierce anger to match his own, "Hawkril, trust me!"
The ground shook then, and the armaragor whirled away from her with a growl, lifting his war sword to face what he knew must be coming. He glanced at two stone heads, crashing through the trees, and then back at the sorceress, clearly wondering if slaying the Lady of Jewels would bring both statues toppling into ruin.
"Wait and watch," Embra snapped, her voice wavering. "You'll see…"
Branches crackled and Craer Delnbone whirled out of the night, tumbling between them and gasping, "Sorry I led them back…"
Hawkril stared at him and then back up at the stone titans looming over them. He lifted a sword that might as well have been a blade of grass, for all the good it would do against either of those huge stone swords-and then gasped.
The guardian whose stony skin was covered with cracks swept its sword up to smite him-and the other knight struck it from behind and one side, swinging its blade around like a woodsman's ax with all the ponderous force of its shoulders behind the blow. Its stone sword struck the raised sword arm and crashed on through, in a crash of sundering stone that deafened the sorceress and the two men of the Griffon. Shards of stone and smaller rubble flew in all directions as the knight's attack carried it into the disarmed guardian.
Stone shrieked against stone, the ground seemed to groan, and the two titans toppled slowly, plunging together through a planting of white-bough trees with a crackling and booming that echoed back across the gardens from the unseen castle walls.
Hawkril gaped at the sight, but the Lady Silvertree plucked at his arm, crying out something his ringing ears couldn't hear. Craer was at her side, and she pointed as she pulled at him, urging him on.
The armaragor shook her grip free and gave her a fierce, excited smile as he sheathed his blade and gestured for her to proceed, like a court dandy indicating a lady should proceed him onto a dance floor.
Embra Silvertree rolled her eyes in the moonlight before breaking into a trot, Craer a half pace ahead of her. Grinning like an idiot, Hawkril followed, the thunder in his ears slowly fading until he could hear his own swift breathing again, and the rustle and whisper of their feet through the dark gardens.
No more guardians or wolves came at them out of the nighted woods, but when the dark shield of the wall rose before them to bar their path, it seemed alive, the stone teeth of its crenellations rippling and shifting. Hawkril almost fell in his haste to come to a halt and drag out his sword-and a moment later, they were all staggering as the ground shook again-a rolling thunder that went on and on, this time, raging up and down before the three fleeing humans.
All along the wall, knight after knight was bulging forward out of the stones, raising ponderous blades in slow menace.
"There were hands, too," Craer muttered, remembering the arms that had clutched at him. This was going to be less than pretty…
The Lady of Jewels lifted her hands and murmured something firm and careful. Her eyes seemed to flash for an instant, and then glow-a glow that seemed to roll out from her through the air like a wave scudding across sand.
Where that glow struck stone, be it hulking knight or the massive wall, the stone seemed to smoke for