The Vacant Throne - Ed Greenwood [138]
"How long," he wondered aloud, shaking his mangled hand, "does it take that mage to make himself a new body again? Hey?"
And then he felt a hand clawing at his shoulder, and whirled around, springing away in case the desperate Baron Brostos had found a dagger somewhere.
He found himself staring into madness.
The corpse held the formerly floating scepter in one of its hands as it toppled stiffly to the floor, still staring blankly at nothing, in the wake of the flailing, sweating Baron of Brostos.
Thanglar Brostos, with his quivering jowls, untidy fringe of beard and tousled hair, and swimming eyes, had seemed less than in command of his wits from the first moment Inderos had laid eyes on him-but now he was barking and jerking his arms in sudden, convulsive movements, his hands closing around unseen things and his lips trying to shape words that never emerged.
Inderos kept his distance, deftly snaring the floating ring on his swordtip and taking it well clear of fat and sweaty fingers that seemed to be reaching for it one moment, and flailing aimlessly the next.
He didn't bother to tell the ruin of Thanglar Brostos to keep back-the man was clearly beyond hearing anything as he struggled inside himself. The man in dark leathers backed quickly away, looking for things that might bear an enchantment.
Shrieking and sobbing and snarling nonsense half-words, the drooling Baron of Brostos followed, step by staggering step.
Inderos Stormharp cursed softly as the clash and clang of swords crossing other swords came through the robing room, from where he'd passed the guards. He hadn't much time left. Hurriedly drawing off one of his rings and slipping it into a belt-pouch, he put on the heavy bluestone monstrosity from the end of his sword and smiled wryly as it slowly showed him, as was the way of many rings, what it could do. The Silent House indeed. That would be useful-very useful, and very soon.
"You're not going to be able to tell me anything, are you?" he asked the staggering husk of the baron aloud. Someone screamed at the other end of the robing room. Sargh and bebolt, it was time to go. A warding-ring gone, and this one of fartravel gained; not much of a magic-gathering success.
And then the Baron of Brostos pulled on a gilded cord and sprang back with a look of lucid triumph in eyes that were suddenly darker than their former brown hue.
The bed was huge, and it came thundering down from the ceiling as it always did, a way for fat and perfumed Thanglar Brostos to impress the young ladies paid to visit his private bedchamber. Inderos Stormharp leaped for his life-and almost got clear.
One massive lionclaw-carved corner struck his shoulder and side, smashing that arm into uselessness. As he bounced-gods, the pain!-and rolled over, his sword clanging away, he saw his foe leaping at him.
"I know," the fat man howled, in a raw voice far deeper than that of Thanglar Brostos, "who you are!"
A hand closed cruelly on Stormharp's throat, and hauled hard. The bard tucked his chin against his chest, knowing what was coming. His head was going to be struck repeatedly against the floor…
"You're Blackgult," the fat man spat into the bard's face, not clashing his head against anything, but instead dragging him along the floor around the many-pillared, ornately canopied bed that now filled the center of the room, "and your body will do me much better than this fool's!"
The man who was sometimes Stormharp and sometimes Blackgult hissed something desperate then, and felt whatever ring he was touching with fingers thrust desperately into his belt-pouch sigh into nothingness. The shimmering began.
Faerod Silvertree stopped and smiled down fiercely into the face of his old enemy. "More than that," he snarled, "I know how to use the scepter properly now. You'll be Thanglar Brostos, enough to feel everything they do to his body when