The Kingless Land - Ed Greenwood [53]
Power enough to bring back the Sleeping King-or call up the Serpent in the Shadows.
The twenty-strong band of mages and warriors in the midst of the stinging, whining cloud understood power, wherefore they were here, far from the comforts of Ornentar-but far, too, it seemed, from lost Indraevyn.
"So if your spells can keep us going in one direction," the armaragor Rivryn of the Black Blade grunted sourly, "why can't they just whisk us to the library doorstep, hey?"
"In the days when Indraervyn stood proud and populous," the wizard Nynter of the Nine Daggers hissed in reply, "mages knew how to work spells to keep uninvited and unexpected neighbors from arriving anywhere nearby. A flying or spell-jumping trip to any long-settled place that old is likely to be a final journey. You generally burst into flames and burn like a torch in midair, at about the time you're breaching the wall wards. Along with anyone you're carrying with you, of course."
The conspirators trudged on in grim silence for a while after that.
"Do your father's mages ever sleep?" Craer called down the shaft, around the dangling chain. Its links had once been as thick as his forearm but were rusted away to a third of that, or less; Embra blinked as showers of red rust came down on her.
"I wouldn't rely on that," she spat, tasting iron, "if he thought by flogging them he could crush us right now." The chain tapped her knee and then her forehead; the Lady of Jewels caught hold of it, wrapped it around herself and then wound her ankles around it to keep from being curled over on herself and stuck against the walls of the shaft when Hawkril hauled on it. The armaragor nodded approvingly and pulled on the chain.
"Oh, really?" Craer replied, reaching down with a stick he'd found somewhere to keep her from bumping the sides of the shaft. "I thought he was too busy flogging us."
"Is this what passes for wit between you two?" she asked, over the rattle of chain.
"No," Hawkril growled. "Generally we do things like drop clever-tongued sorceresses back down shafts on their heads and then dance around chortling."
"I hope you're jesting," Embra told him, hearing a quaver in her voice that she'd hoped would not be there. An instant later, a strong hand took her by the waist and bodily turned her right side up in midair.
"I'm not sure," the armaragor told her levelly, staring into eyes that the sorceress had firmly closed. Shaking his head in mingled relief and contempt, he set her down gently on her feet.
There was a clink and then a clatter beside her, and Embra blinked her eyes open and looked down to see the chain on the floor, in several separate lengths, broken links still rocking gently around it amid the red dust of their dying. Hawkril kicked one aside. "Well," he growled with some satisfaction in his voice, "it held as long as we needed it to."
Embra shivered and looked away. "Is Sarasper all right?"
"My wits took another bruise or two," the healer grunted, from somewhere behind her. "But I don't suppose you'll notice the damage."
The other two men chuckled, and Embra shook her head. "The Band of Four Idiots, that's what we are," she told the nearest wall-and, for just a moment, it seemed to hold a half-skeletal face that grinned back at her.
Oh, yes. The ghosts. Settling the precious bowl she'd thrust into her bodice earlier so that it rode more comfortably over one of her breasts, Embra looked back at the channel of ruin through the house, and thought she could just see a glimmer of the day outside. "Are we agreed to move on now, before more spells come?" she asked.
Sarasper nodded. "I'll take us down into the catacombs."
"And