The Vacant Throne - Ed Greenwood [128]
Never to see the Silverflow again, never to hear the winds rustling through the trees of the Vale…
Then Kelgrael reached the place where he had to read aloud from the spellbook, and put such thoughts out of his mind. "Ammador," he said crisply-and a decanter floating a few feet from his nose sighed softly away into smoke, and was no more.
"Thalpurtim," he added, and watched a coronet collapse into dust and winking nothingness.
"Haladreeos," he read next, and a bowl died. Not for the first time, the king wondered if he had enough magic gathered here to complete the ritual. Soon now, the Serpent would feel and know what he was doing, and be able to manifest here, in the place of his Calling…
The first scaly shadows came six words later, as one of his favorite daggers melted away, its scabbard falling into glittering sparks, but Kelgrael kept his voice and pace steady, not able to break off the ritual without ruining it-and he'd have to do just that to work spells enough to drive the Serpent from this place, or even move the floating items so as to deny it space within these walls in which to manifest.
"Marindra," he said next, knowing he was saying the name of a sorceress who'd given her life, untold ages ago, to the forging of this ritual, as mages he would never know had struggled to make a magic that would snatch their bodies otherwhere, to take them and an entity of their choosing, bound to them, from dangerous times and places into a sleep that would only end when someone else freed them. Kelgrael's sword blazed with sudden fire, and the flames became drifting smoke, and the ashes of the scabbard fell away from emptiness, into emptiness…
The room was growing darker, the corners farthest from him-farthest from the sealed-off window-filling up with Serpent. It was a vast beast, far too large for even its head to materialize in this chamber… but all it needed to place here, to deal death to him and shatter the magic, was the venomed tip of its forked tongue-a pale pink ribbon of soft but sword-edged flesh that would be, he remembered, as wide as he stood tall, and swifter in its curling and darting than he'd ever been in his most frenzied sprinting.
He could only go on. "Hamdaereth," he said calmly, a moment before the first muffled crash came from somewhere behind the wall on his left.
"Tessyre," he read flatly, the name of a sorceress of flame-red hair and a temper to match, if bards long dust could be believed-and who might yet live, in a Slumber of her own, if one believed those ballads strongly enough-as another crash heralded a succession of heavy blows, as if someone was using an axe on something that was about to… give way, with another crash of rending wood.
Almost immediately there came another, much louder splintering crash, and one of the panels in the darkest corner thrust some splinters into the room.
"Halan darammareth sooloun trae crommadar," the king read on, not bothering to glance up at the bright point of the axe as it widened that hole. Besides, there were other thumps and crashes from several points about the walls now, shaking the room, and he still had more than a page to go.
That first panel flew into the room in shards, propelled by the mailed fist of a man in half-armor whose open helm showed the world another face drooping like wax. The Melted tore vainly at the wood around the panel with his fists, and then drew back and brought down his axe on the paneling that remained in his way.
Elsewhere, another panel split with a crack as deafening as thunder, and a third fell forward into the room, revealing another of the Melted behind it.
Panels all around the room were groaning under attacks from behind them as Kelgrael grimly read on, glancing up not at the armored torsos now leaning into the chamber, or at swimming ruins of faces, but looking instead