The Kingless Land - Ed Greenwood [51]
Flame that danced wildly in the breezes roiling down the shaft, but showed her enough to make her scream.
6
Odd Bottles and the Stone of Life
Embra Silvertree was standing in a little chamber that opened off the bottom of the pit she'd fallen into. A half-height stone door had swung open to spill her and the bones of many, many intruders into a small stone chamber… a crypt. What were probably stone caskets stood on all sides, some of them cracked and discolored, and stains on the walls and floor told her waters had seeped into this place in vanished years.
The thing that had made the sound was perhaps seven running paces away, or a little more. It was the skeleton of a man, brown and gape-jawed and shuffling-and despite its eyes being empty sockets of darkness, it was moving toward her. When she stepped to one side, biting her lip, it turned its head as if it could hear the faint crunchings of whisper-dry bones under her boots and redirected its slow, patient advance.
Embra lifted the crumbling figurine and let her fear shape a slaying bolt of flame that snarled forth to smash into dry brown bones.
Bones that kept coming, that dangling jaw lifting for a moment in what seemed like a soundless laugh. When the figurine had quite crumbled away, Embra's flame died… and the skeleton was still advancing on her.
It was glowing slightly, now, as if it had stolen some of the radiance from her flames, and it seemed somehow taller. Less stooped-no, larger. Embra's eyes narrowed. Then she took two swift steps and plunged into the scattered chaos of old bones that had slid into this dark and secret chamber with her, clawing among the brittle brown and yellowed things again for one of those metal bowls.
Her fingers found the eye sockets of a skull, and she flinched back. There was a dry scrape behind her-too close-and she snatched up the skull, spun around, and threw it, as hard as she could.
The skeleton was a bare three strides away, its long brown fingers reaching. Her hurled skull smashed its jaw, the pieces tumbling away to clack and clatter down stone caskets to the floor, but it kept coming, as silent and patient as when she'd first laid eyes on it.
Gasping in sudden terror, Embra kicked and clawed her way through the bone rubble away from it, and-thank the Three!-heard the ringing sound of metal on the stones. A bowl! She snatched it up, whirled around, and danced three quick steps back and away, stumbling up against the cold stone of a wall. She could flee no more.
Not that the Lady of Jewels would have to. The enchantments on this bowl, whatever they'd been meant for, were strong, and she could give this shuffling skeleton more fire than dry bones should be able to withstand.
"Burn!" she shrieked at it, sudden rage boiling up in her. Was she fated to be fleeing and weeping in fear for the rest of her life?
"Burn, graul you!" And she gave it fire-white-hot and as furious as she was, flashing forth like a hurled spear, smashing into brown, advancing bones with force enough to hurl them back, shattered, against the far wall.
Fire that she let die away beneath her disbelieving chin as the skeleton loomed up over her, blood red and glistening now, its bones covered with a webwork of stringy sinew. It stood a head taller than before, brown and dry no more, and the riven, dangling shards of its jaws were growing, lengthening as she gaped at it to reshape, and join each other, and grow little gnarled bumps that would soon be teeth.
"No!" she protested, dancing away from its reaching hands. Her magic was feeding it!
Fingerbones clawed at her long, tangled hair, and she clutched the bowl to her breast and shrieked, tearing herself free in utter terror and darting away blindly, not slowing as she glanced bruisingly off caskets she could not see.
Far above her the spell-driven winds howled, swirling up dust from the bony rubble as