The Vacant Throne - Ed Greenwood [121]
There was a faint clink of dropping stone. Sarasper nodded, straightened up with a grunt, and snapped, "Where are those two bloodthirsty idiots?"
Embra shrugged, smiled, and spread her hands-and from somewhere over her left shoulder came a sudden skirl of steel upon steel, a choked-off cry, and then a thrashing of brambles and branches.
A few breaths later Craer came into view, grinning, with a leather bottle held triumphantly in one hand, and a shouldersack that bristled with dagger-belts and scabbarded swords in the other. "Food-and toys!" he exclaimed brightly.
"Did getting them cost you Hawkril?" the old healer asked darkly. "Or were you too excited to notice?"
"No, no," the procurer said airily, thrusting the bottle into Sarasper's hands. "He's yonder, dealing with another band of greedy fools. Encamped and with a feast-fire, no less."
" 'Another'?" Embra asked, amused, as she watched Sarasper sniff the bottle suspiciously and then trickle a drop or two of its contents onto his fingertips, to feel and sniff and-touch with his tongue. "As opposed to us?"
The old healer evidently found the drink to his liking. He threw back his head and swigged enough to make him sigh loudly when he was done, and blink happily up at her. Embra shook her head.
"You don't seem approving," Craer said almost mockingly to the sorceress, adopting the effete tones and gracefully exaggerated hand flourishes of a foppish courtier.
"I'm not looking forward to bearing that child who's supposed to eat his way out of me," she replied darkly, and then turned, hands on hips, to glare into the underbrush in the general direction of where she believed Hawkril to be. "You don't suppose our mountain of an armaragor will think to delay slaying his playfriends until after they finish cooking a proper mornmeal, do you?"
Her flat and shapely stomach promptly growled loudly, causing Craer to chuckle, look at the sky, and announce, "Ah, the true Doom of the Silvertrees: gluttony!"
"If you're finished being the jester for a breath or two," Sarasper told him, firmly stoppering the bottle and slinging it about his own shoulders with its strap, "do you suppose you can help me shift this casket?"
Craer's eyebrows went up. "Seeking more exotic meals?" he asked. "Tomb-bone soup, perhaps?"
"Just push here," the healer replied sourly. The procurer shrugged and did as he was bid… and after a moment of immobility, long-frozen stone grated into motion, turning on an unseen stone peg. The casket turned perhaps half the height of a man, revealing a dark opening beneath it.
Bushes rustled, and the two men turned quickly to flank Embra-but the dark bulk that rose suddenly from behind the dancing leaves, with a smile on its face, was Hawkril Anharu. He was holding a still-warm skillet of enormous size-and in it were alternating strips of riverfin and what looked like rabbit, bubbling in the dying aftermath of sizzling.
"Gods," he said, "have you ever seen such a pan? 'Tis near as big as a shield!"
"Big enough, I'll grant, for some," Sarasper said, jostling Craer meaningfully.
The procurer eyed the skillet's contents. "Well, 'tis a safe wager that this won't stretch to fill more than one particular belly, to name no names-but Hawk did find it, and we've eaten already, so… the food's yours, Tall Post."
"Mmm-hey!" Embra burst out, reaching involuntarily for the food as her innards rumbled again. Craer and Sarasper chuckled as Hawkril wordlessly held out the pan.
The Lady of Jewels wrinkled her nose, cast the men by the casket an imploring glance that yielded her no aid, and then sighed and reached gingerly into the greasy pan.
Her eyes fluttered shut for a moment as she bit down, moaned in pleasure, and wolfed a strip of riverfin. She was still licking her fingers and wiping at her shiny chin when Hawkril