The Vacant Throne - Ed Greenwood [127]
He'd unclasped it from high around his right thigh, feeling the air cold upon his bare shanks, and was reaching for his breeches to draw them on again when he remembered the last item, worn for so long that he often forgot it now. It was a leather luck-thong, worn around his hips like a belt, its ends beaded to prevent fraying and its length studded with many intricate knots. He drew it off carefully, remembering long-dead hands that had made those knots, and murmured advice given long, long ago.
He did not want to do this thing. He did not want to have Aglirta taken from him again, swept away into the long and drifting darkness that might never relinquish him once more. Would it not be better to go down fighting, to at least strive for the land he loved? Fight, rather than run and hide? Even if he failed and died, does not Darsar end for each man at his death? Why should he care, after he was gone, if flames rose and walls fell and blood flowed and the beasts came down to gnaw on the fallen?
No. He would know. He'd know what he'd done to Aglirta, purely for his own pride. The gods would see to that. Moreover, there'd be no Slumber, no chance-however slim-to awake again to a greener land. He must do this.
He would do this.
When he was dressed again and lighter-even to the glow-gems gone from the hollow heels of his boots-Kelgrael began undoing the knots in the thong. Each unbinding brought its own small and whirling cloud of lights, motes of magic that faded away to leave behind the long-stored enchanted item they had brought from otherwhere: coffers and decanters, figurines and bracelets, scepters and goblets, bowls and lamps, all of them small and beautiful of making. These, too, joined the floating array now almost filling one end of the chamber.
Last of all the Risen King drew a tiny dagger from one bootheel-the only blade he possessed that did not bear magic-and made a small cut in one of his palms. As the blood welled out, he took the thong so that its beads were pressed together, closed his palms upon them so as to touch them with his blood, and murmured three words.
It unfolded silently, and did not take long.
As the thong melted away, a book melted into visibility above Kelgrael's opened hands: a small tome, bound in plates of polished dragontooth clasped with truesilver, its pages sheets of thin metal of a bluish sheen, chased and stamped with characters that set forth six puissant spells. Just now, he needed only one of them.
The Last Snowsar drew in a deep breath, opened his hands wide in a flourish that made his spellbook turn its pages to a certain spread, and there halt-and spoke the well-remembered words that began the ritual that would send him back into Slumber.
"Lorth aladroes," he told the ceiling. "Ammanath kuleera." The tongue had been old before Aglirta had ever been thought of, the spells crafted in a land long fallen, Davalaun of the wizards, but the words shaped magic into other magic, and would bend the world to his will. He would send himself back into the long sleep, but take the Serpent away too, binding them both once more in otherwhere, to leave Aglirta free of kings and Serpents both. Thank the Three that the Fanged One woke but slowly from its torpor, or he might never be able to manage this.
It would be hard even now. The Deeping Ritual or Calling to Slumber drank magic-other magic, and lots of it. If used on someone unwilling, it needed castlefuls of enchantments to succeed. When he'd first cast it on himself, more than a dozen mages of power had cast spells for it to drink in… but he knew not a single mage he could trust now, save perhaps one, and he'd sent her off to roam the realm and be his shield and a distraction to his gathering foes while she and her companions found their own dooms… or succeeded in an almost impossible task. The Dwaerindim were the only other way he knew of, given the paltry magic men commanded in Darsar today, of driving down the Serpent.
And the Lady Embra was a Silvertree. Perhaps, if she'd been standing here in this spell-locked