The Vacant Throne - Ed Greenwood [117]
In the wet noise of his dying, no one noticed the armored warrior who'd been injured by the portcullis earlier rise suddenly from his wounded sprawl-and put his blade through the neck of the wizard Darlassitur from behind.
The false House Wizard of Cardassa coughed, stared round-eyed at the dead, floating baron he'd betrayed-and then toppled to the floor, lowered on the slick sword of a man who knelt swiftly back to the floor, and feigned collapse once more.
It was the turn of the tersept to snarl and curse, but even the light of Darlassitur's last healing spell playing about the bloody, floating body could not make those staring eyes see again, or the blood dripping from dangling fingertips cease its slow, dark flow.
"Revive him!" Adeln snapped, advancing on Baerund of Tarlagar furiously. "Get me those answers!"
The tersept turned a face dark with anger to Esculph Adeln, and raised one hand in a silent warning of spells waiting to be used on other barons. Even as Adeln recoiled, going white to the lips with rage, the man who wanted to be a baron told him grimly, "It's no use. Neither Darlassitur nor I can bring men back from death, without a Dwaer or a hand-count or more wizards to aid us… at least two of whom must be mages who know far more than we do about just which enchantments have to be cast when. Magic shocks the body, you see, and life fades swiftly. He is lost to us."
"Then this has all been for nothing," Adeln said bitterly.
"Not so!" the tersept said firmly. "We've these weapons here-and Cardassa is ours, its castles and coin and warriors ours to spend in our charge to sweep clean the River Throne. Narvim lives, and can ascend to the barony as we planned." He waved his hand at the warrior lying in pain, clutching a foot from which blood still leaked-and then waved it a second time, causing blue-white radiance to speed forth healing to the stricken man. Then he saw the wizard lying sprawled in his blood, and stiffened to glare suspiciously at the warrior he'd just healed.
Inside his concealing helm, the man who was really Craer broke into a sweat, and reached for the bloody blade he'd set down behind himself. If he hoped to shatter a spell, his throw would have to be hard, accurate, and very, very swift…
Adeln nodded sourly. "This is so, and yet we could have had so much more, if Cardassa could have been made to ta-"
"Even more," Ornentar snarled, still savage from the pain of his wounding, "if he'd thrown his lot in with us, Adeln. More still if the Risen King had come to us and begged us to take the throne from him. 'If only' is a phrase that prefaces empty dreams that but waste breath in the telling of them. Cardassa is dead and his vault lies before us-you truly need a guide to help you in plundering and pillaging?"
Adeln sighed and glared again through the bars of the fallen portcullises at the man hanging in the air like a dripping sack. "We could have had so much more," he muttered, clenching his fists as if by sheer will he could wring something out of the air within them.
After a moment he turned away and snapped at the tersept, "Spend another spell to float that carrion out to the gate we rode in at. We'll spit him on a spear there, as a warning to anyone feeling great loyalty to the Cardassas of the fate awaiting traitors to the new baron."
"I've a spell that should melt those bars," the tersept said slowly, nodding, "but I'd best see to my Lord of Ornentar first."
Adeln nodded and turned away-and so it was that no one was looking directly into the vault a moment later, when the slack jawed corpse of a Cardassan doorguard impaled on the vault wall smiled, lifted a hand that had a round stone in it, and sent bright beams