The Vacant Throne - Ed Greenwood [14]
Brown bones clawed at the air desperately as the armored warrior spun among them-and abruptly two bony legs were standing alone, joined by pelvic bones but staggering like a drunken man, as the cursing armaragor rolled on rubble-strewn stones beyond it, bony arms shivering under him, and a skull snapping its teeth into his face ineffectually.
Solid stone was under Embra's boots again, and she tottered thankfully forward, bracing herself to stand straight and speak the enchantment she needed.
Her throat was raw, and ached as if those bruising fingers were still tight around it, but she husked out the words somehow, letting her pain and disgust give them force as she spread her hands and desired of Aglirta that no bones walk in this place.
There was no roaring wave this time, no wash of light, but only a chorus of small sighings, as bones collapsed into dust here and there. The bundles of bones that had scuttled and leaped and shaped themselves into hands crumbled and were swept away, Sarasper coughed weakly and started to curse-with just enough vigor to tell her without looking that he'd live-and the half-skeleton Hawkril was struggling against suddenly became a disjointed cluster of separate bones thrashing and bouncing away in dozens of attempts to flee.
The armaragor rose snarling among them and lashed out with his fists and boots and blade, seeking to smash every bone he could see into dust. Embra saw the two bony hands a little way beyond him, wriggling as they sought to shape a last, desperate spell, and opened her mouth to cry warning.
She closed it again a moment later, her shout unvoiced, as Hawkril's blade slashed through those spell-glowing fingers. He flung himself forward on the remnants while they were still falling, and rolled around on the ancient stones, grinding and lashing out with his gauntleted fists. The flickering red and black radiances soon died away, and stillness came to the ruined library-a stillness broken only by the swift, ragged breathing of Four who were grimly taking in yet another warning of just how swiftly death can reach out in Aglirta, and harvest the unready.
Even as the eyes of four panting adventurers sought each other out in the grandest surviving chamber of Indraevyn, red and black radiances blossomed somewhere not far away in that ruined city. Somewhere deep, dark, and dripping.
The spell-glows blossomed like dark stars in the void, pulsing and dancing above eyes that widened in alarm… and then narrowed in fury.
Those golden orbs belonged to a wolf-headed beast as large as a horse. It clung spiderlike to a ledge in what had once been a cellar. Its long and powerful legs were thickly cloaked in reddish, grayish fur, cruel bony spurs jutting from the joints that on a human would have been elbows and knees.
Even in bards' tales, few longfangs were as big as the one now shrinking back from the ruby and ebony lights, snarling in a vain attempt to scare the radiances into flight.
Instead, they swooped and settled-and the large golden eyes of the shuddering longfangs dimmed, until two cold and tiny points of light glittered out at the world from dark sockets.
The longfangs had fed not long ago, and hadn't planned to move from its ledge until the gloom of night was dark upon the land. That which now rode it, however, had a hunger to hunt.
The wolf-headed, spiderlike predator stretched its hairy limbs like a cat, arched itself, and then advanced at a steady pace. For something so large, it moved in uncanny near-silence, its feet falling upon the stones with velvet softness and almost fastidious delicacy. Crossing one cellar, it turned without