The Kingless Land - Ed Greenwood [76]
The older bard shrugged by way of an answer and turned to Flaeros. "You're very quiet, youngling. Feeling a ballad coming on?"
Flaeros shivered and said quietly, "Maybe, I was thinking of Lady Silvertree as a captive, and where she might be right now-alone, no doubt helpless to defend herself against any horror or indignity life may now offer her."
Heads turned to regard him again, but they were wrapped in thoughtful silence this time, and something almost approaching respect was in their eyes.
"Well, lad," the older bard said, "when it's done, mind you sing it to us. The helpless Lady Silvertree, sad amid her small sorceries… hmmm."
The blast sent flames boiling up in balls and streamers of bright fury and shook the helpless Lady Silvertree back to consciousness. Embra was hurled against a blazing tangle of shrouds. Rebounding to her feet, she rose out of the flames in a fury. Under her feet the boat rushed on through the waters, shuddering now and seeming to settle lower.
Silently thanking the Three that she'd had sense enough last night to take some of the smallest Silent House knickknacks from Hawkril's sack to the various pouches and pockets of her own, Embra snatched out a few and wove a spell with careful, angry haste. Its final word made all the flames around her flicker in unison, rise straight up-and then, slowly, begin to move as one.
The Silvertree sorceress stood slender and silent, thin ribbons of smoke curling from her scorched and blackened garments, as the flames became a moving ring in the air above her, snarling faster and faster under her will. Their winds snatched arrows up to harmlessly menace the sky-and when sweat was stinging her eyes and running off her chin in a steady stream, Embra snarled out the last part of the spell and flung up her arms.
The deck was canted under her burned boots now, and water was snarling its own song somewhere close beneath its boards. She crouched to avoid arrows and watched through narrowed eyes as her magic sent the giant whirlwind of flames spinning into the trees that had been busily birthing arrows.
Flames crashed into the forest with a vicious crackling of branches. Embra heard a single ragged shout before that riverbank erupted into a blaze that outshone the dawn. She stared grimly at tree trunks standing like black fingers against an unbroken sheet of fire, then hauled herself to her feet again, looked down the creaking deck past the boatmaster staggering along with two arrows in him, and gathered in the rest of the Four with her eyes.
"Sail this thing!" she shouted imperiously, voice cracking on the last word, as long fingers of dark river water reached across the deck for the first time, and steam arose. Embra looked around at it, shivered, her eyes flickered, and then she slid to the decks in a loose flood of collapse.
Sarasper was nearest, and went stumbling along the flexing boards of the deck to where she lay. Parts of it were awash now, as the sinking ship rushed on; it would not be long before the river tugged her away…
The healer reached her, hurled the top of a broken long jug aside, and took hold of her shoulders to drag her upright. He got the Lady Silvertree half-sitting, slipped, and caught hold of a smoldering shroud for support. Then he tried again.
Sarasper. The voice was back.
It was louder than it had been in the underways, when he'd stood alone on watch. The old healer stiffened, his hands on Embra's shoulders.
Inches from her throat, yes.
Sarasper went cold inside, and said in the silence of his own mind: You call yourself Old Oak, and yet I feel no divine thunder. Who are you, really?
YOU WOULD DEFY ME? The force of the shout sent Sarasper reeling, clawing vainly at his ears, as his body fairly thrummed to the force of the coercion now racing through it.
"I-I-I-," he sobbed, waving one futile hand as if to brush away a foe-and then the warm and angry tide rushing through him rose past his throat, and took hold of the back