The Kingless Land - Ed Greenwood [23]
The youngest mage was still eager and foolish enough to need to display his cleverness by answering aloud. "Keep her unharmed," Markoun Yarynd murmured, "and bring them all back. The condition of the two men matters not."
"Precisely," the baron purred. The three mages exchanged expressionless glances and returned to their corners to work magic anew.
The books-and Embra's clothes, atop them-hadn't fared well in the river, Craer feared, but the Lady Silvertree didn't seem to care. Nor did the wet nightgown clinging to her soaked body appear to bother her, or the drenched and clinging tail her long, unbound hair had become. Not that they had overmuch time to contemplate such fripperies as they stumbled through tangled trees in deepening darkness.
A pace ahead, Hawkril swore and plucked out his blade. The branches they'd been breaking through or pushing past were moving-turning like questing snakes, reaching out to strangle or bind, and curling around them, now, in a gigantic, living cage.
Craer snatched out his shortsword to join in Hawkril's enthusiastic hewing, real fear rising in his throat with a chill as cold as the Silverflow. A bough snaked past his head, and he ducked away from its strangling return, almost impaling his throat on the spearlike tips of another reaching branch. "Claws!" he swore aloud, almost sobbing; how soon would it be before living wood brought them down, blinded them, or choked the life from them?
The Lady of Jewels chanted something imperious close by his ear, and abruptly an ale-brown radiance washed out of her and away into the dark trees ahead. Boughs shuddered and recoiled from it, shrinking away… no, withering, to dwindle and then break and hang, dangling lifeless and weightless. Craer hacked his way clear of the last two branches, stumbled over a third, and found himself in a long scar of lifeless trees, a path of ruin leading off into the night. Hawkril was waving at him impatiently to take the lead.
"You know the way, Longfingers," the armaragor growled. "I've never been all that welcome in Silvertree, remember?"
Craer and Embra found themselves looking at each other. The procurer lifted his sack. "Uh-you want your boots? And-"
"Later," the sorceress told him crisply. "When we reach whatever safe lair you're taking us to. My father has too many overclever mages for us to be standing around talking."
"Just how many overclever mages does he command?" Craer asked, a trifle grimly. By the Three, but it'd have been less foolish to walk into Castle Silvertree and start snatching the baron's silver in broad daylight than going after the wardrobe of the Lady of Jewels! It was more than likely that by dawn they'dSomething clapped large wings behind them, and came through the trees in a dive of many small crashings and snappings. Something scaled and dark and bat-winged, with altogether too many snapping jaws.
"Horns! What's that?" Hawkril gasped, bringing up his blade.
"Run!" the Lady Silvertree snarled at the two men. "Run, and keep low!" She followed her own advice without delay, fleeing past them into the night like a damp, barefooted wraith. With one accord the two men raced after her, stumbling into many trees with numbing force, and rolling off without slowing to plunge onward, lurching and staggering over unseen roots and uneven ground. Ongoing splinterings behind them told that the flying horror was following with unbroken enthusiasm.
"You know…" Craer panted, when he finally caught up to the sorceress they were supposed to be guiding, or abducting, or taking far away from Castle Silvertree and the reach of its cruel baron, "what that thing is?"
"It's called a nightwyrm," Embra gasped, "conjured by one of my father's mages. It'll tear us apart if it catches us."
Neither Hawkril nor Craer had time to make any clever reply just then-the nightwyrm seemed to be able to fade in and out of solidity and was diving through trees that should have stopped it, plunging after them with frightening