The Queen of Stone_ Thorn of Breland - Keith Baker [94]
Sheshka whirled to face her, and Thorn snapped her eyes shut; she could feel the queen’s anger. “What are you doing?” she hissed.
“Possibly saving your life. Again,” Thorn replied. She’d seen it just in time. A faint ripple in the air—the telltale sign of a magical ward, and a powerful one at that. “Whoever carried the statue down here didn’t leave him unprotected.”
Thorn slowly stood up, drawing Steel from his sheath. “What can you tell me?”
“I know nothing of such things,” Sheshka replied. “I have never encountered a ward down here before.”
Thorn ignored her; it was Steel’s analysis that she wanted.
This is no simple alarm, he said. This is strong offensive magic. Poetic. It’s set to petrify anyone who crosses the boundary. Seek a statue, become one yourself.
Thorn sighed. She hated being right. A pinch of silver dust gave a momentary glimpse of the shape of the ward … a mass of wavering glyphs floating in the air like snowflakes, whirling around the Stormblade statue. It was one of the largest she’d seen; whomever had woven this trap had tremendous mystic skill. Sora Katra? Sora Teraza? Did they send Thorn expecting that she’d join the stone army?
Thorn considered her tools—the picks, powders, and oils that she used to disrupt magical energies. She let a few drops of nightwater fly across the boundary. They evaporated instantly.
It was too powerful, too well woven. She considered the pattern again; it was flawless. It had no gaps to exploit. She couldn’t break it.
But she had another option.
Tucking her tools into her cloak, Thorn stood up. “Sheshka?”
The medusa seemed to know what she was thinking. “This is not an ending.”
Thorn stepped forward, across the line of the ward. For an instant she saw the glyphs shimmering around her. Then she felt the touch of magic, chill tendrils spreading through her bones.
And then she felt nothing at all.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The Ossuary
Droaam
Eyre 20, 998 YK
She found no darkness, because she had no eyes to see. Neither pain nor the lack of pain; she had no nerves or muscles. She couldn’t even give form to these ideas, for she had no mind to channel her thoughts. All she could truly feel was a sense of loss, that everything had been stripped away from her … even though she could no longer explain what “everything” had been.
She felt no sense of time. Years might have passed, or seconds. She couldn’t trap memories in the stone pathways of her mind; she knew only that once it had been different.
Then something changed. A thousand sensations passed over her in an instant, along with the awareness that there were such things. Pain. Cold. Fear. And then Thorn was back in her body, struggling to stand on legs that were suddenly able to bend.
A stone knight stood before her, his open hands spread at his sides. He was a large man, tall and muscular. He wore no helmet, and his features were rough, but handsome. His was a face that had seen many battles, hardened by fire and steel. He was dressed in plate mail, and it was the armor of a soldier on the battlefield, not the ornate gear of a jousting knight. The only adornments on the armor were the dents and scars from the hundreds of blows it had turned aside. That the man could fight in such heavy armor was a testament to his strength. The only decoration he wore was the symbol on his tabard, barely visible on the statue. The cloth was torn, but Thorn could see the outline of a shield on his chest, bearing a simple silhouette of a crown. The Shield of the Crown.
Harryn Stormblade.
Memory followed sensation, flowing back into Thorn’s mind. With this came the realization that Sheshka stood directly behind her; a serpent was brushing against the back of her head. “Help him! Quickly!”
In studying the trap, Thorn realized that she couldn’t disable it. But she could sense the power