The Kingless Land - Ed Greenwood [82]
"I know this," the healer said in a small voice. "This fear kept me in hiding for far too long… until you came." His eyes were suddenly bright with tears, and he hung his head.
"Stop that," Hawkril told him roughly, "and look to the lass, here. What's wrong with her?"
"Nothing," Craer said brightly. "She sleeps, resting that sword-sharp tongue of hers, and that's fine. Let sleeping lady sorceresses lie, that's what I say."
Both Sarasper and Hawkril gave him sour looks and grunts of exasperation, united once more in their thoughts. Craer smiled at them, shrugged, and then plucked the tiniest knife either of them had ever seen out of his belt buckle, picked up one of Embra's limp hands, and started to do her nails. He ignored the glances of the other two men, even when they turned from irritated to incredulous.
A bright and pleasant morning, as the old saying went, was lighting the ruins of Indraevyn as Phalagh of Ornentar stumbled sleepily out of the shattered chamber, which he'd shared with two other wizards, to relieve himself. One of them snored with a very loud, irregular boarlike snorting, and when he found out who…
Phalagh rounded a heap of loose stones in search of some trees to water and found the veteran warrior Rivryn standing in the stinking armor he'd not taken off for three days, one hand on the hilt of his blade and a sour expression on his battered face.
The wizard raised an eyebrow. "That's a stormy look," he said, wetting a helpless nearby sapling. "Wherefore?"
"A most vigilant watch you spellhurlers mount, I'm thinking," Rivryn replied with deadpan sarcasm, gesturing around at overgrown rocks and encircling trees.
"Hum?" Phalagh asked, shaking the last cobwebs of slumber out of his head. He looked where the warrior's out-flung arm indicated. "What're you pointing out?"
"Behold," the warrior said shortly. "Absence of wizard."
Phalagh looked around again, a little chill awakening in him. Rivryn was right; there was no sign of the wizard who should have been standing there on watch.
The mage frowned. "Nynter drew last watch," he said slowly, "and should have been right here-or over there, by yonder thrusting rock."
They clambered toward the rock together and then, exchanging grim glances, around it, peering this way and that… only to come to a halt in silent unison and stand staring.
Nynter was standing in the dark and doorless entrance of a nearby ruined building. Or rather, the lower half of him was standing there, facing them: legs and pelvis, still upright, but the body above them bitten clean off and devoured or carried away. Blood had flowed down the legs from those terrible gnaw marks to pool and dry around the mage's booted feet, and one of his winged daggers was orbiting the grisly remains, endlessly looping in a slow, lazy circle like a patient blowfly.
Phalagh swallowed and tried to speak. Finding his throat too dry, he swallowed again. "What could have done this?" he asked, his words coming out in a hoarse whisper.
The warrior shrugged. "Almost anything," he said shortly. "We haven't explored this place well enough, what with all your driving hunger and haste to find a floating stone, remember?"
The mage turned on him with a snarl. "Do you dare to mock me?"
"Oh, no," Rivryn replied calmly, hefting a dagger the wizard hadn't seen him draw in one hand, "I'd never be so foolish as to do that." The dagger rose with a little twirl and flash, to be deftly caught in callused fingertips and hefted again. "I need you too much; you're one of just two mages we've left, remember? And mages are so useful, and so vigilant. I sometimes wonder what we'd