The Kingless Land - Ed Greenwood [46]
She was falling, tumbling shoulders-first into heaving darkness, and landing with a crash, on a tangle of sharp points and things that crumpled under her.
There were grinning skulls and curving ribs and less identifiable bones bouncing up all around and collapsing under her like crushed eggs, with a queer sighing sound. Bone dust swirled up around Embra as she fell through what must have been several feet of piled bones, pulverizing them. Even after she shuddered to a stop, she could not seem to stop sneezing.
Through streaming eyes she saw stones whirling around the chamber far above. She was wedged into the narrowing pit, with her boots up in front of her face and a pile of bowls and statuettes on her throat and chest. Well, at least there'd been no killing spikes in the bottom of this pit… or had they turned to rust and collapsed, long ago?
This was no time for fanciful speculations; the whirlwind had moved on, and in its wake the nightwyrm had returned. A long, snakelike neck peered down the shaft at her, and dark-fanged jaws parted hungrily.
Bruised and winded, Embra juggled a statuette in her hands, frowning up at the conjured beast with mounting anger. She had no more spells stored ready in her mind-but with items to drain in her hands, she could call up any magic she could remember.
A firebolt, for instance. As the nightwyrm folded its wings back and thrust both of its heads down the shaft together, so as to use the full stretch of its snakelike body to reach her, the Lady of Jewels held up the statuette and carefully cast her spell.
The figurine crumbled to dust in her hands, its preservative magics gone, as ravening fire burst forth from its collapse and roared up the shaft. The flames beheaded the nightwyrm-twice, of course-broke the spell that gave it existence, and then faded away to nothing, in mere moments.
The gory black form wriggling down to crash lifeless upon her faded away just as it brushed her boots.
Embra let out a breath she hadn't known she was holding and started to cry.
Sarasper Codelmer clawed his way along a wall as the howling winds tugged and tore at the aging robes he wore. Stones and dust hissed and cracked around him, and for a terrifying moment it seemed the sucking whirlpool of spellwinds was coming in the door after him. "Graul, graul, graul!" he sobbed, clawing his way along the wall with bleeding fingers, heedless in his haste.
And then the fury of the spell-driven storm slammed the door shut with such force that the walls around him shook… and there was sudden stillness.
Tiny stones clattered to the floor here and there, and he could still hear a deep booming and roaring behind him, but a closed door now stood between him and the fury of whatever the baron's mages had sent after them.
The baron…
"Craer?" he called, apprehensively. "Anyone?"
There was no reply. He was alone again, his newfound friends swept away. His healing wasted, and worse. They must have been spying with their spells to know where to send this storm. They knew where he was, his name and likeness, and his long-hidden healing. They'd never stop coming after him now.
"Claws of the Dark One!" he hissed bitterly into the empty passage, watching dust swirl and settle. After all these years of hiding and lurking, more beast than man… his secret was out, in a few frantic hours, and the doom he'd long dreaded was here.
Or would be. He should have torn out her throat when first she burst into the house. Fled with her head deep into the catacombs, and eaten it down to a bare, gnawed skull so there'd be no wits to spellcall back.
He shivered, seeing her beauty again, and then snarled. "The baron's daughter-his daughter! Only heir, too, so of course he's reaching for her, and me too close. Too close. She could be after me and everything else here as weapons to wield against him or even to take back to him as his dutiful daughter."
Sitting himself against the wall, he added bitterly, "Who's