The Vacant Throne - Ed Greenwood [155]
She kept on turning, almost wearily, to see what new danger was coming down on her, as Sarasper groaned and cursed weakly under her.
"Gods, woman, if this is how you treat your lovers…" he growled, clamping one hand firmly around her injured leg to stop her from moving about.
Embra shrieked and flopped down on her face, shuddering in pain-and Sarasper got himself out from under her with several heaves and wheezes, until he could snatch another figurine from one of her pouches and finish healing a shapely Silvertree leg.
"Sass!" Craer shouted. "'Ware! Look up! Look up!"
Frowning, the old healer looked up-and his mouth dropped open. Drifting silently towards him, close enough now to be looming up over him, was a ghostly, faintly glowing cloud that had two dark holes that might be eyes, a larger hole that was probably a gaping mouth, and two outstretched arms that definitely ended in hands. The wraith looked almost comical, but it was as large as a dozen men… and it did not look friendly.
"Embra, we need a Banishment!" Sarasper growled, as he felt the figurine melt away in his grasp and healing magic surging through and out of him, into the sorceress. "Embra!"
The heir of the Silvertrees groaned under his hands, and Sarasper Codelmer realized that whatever spells Embra might be able to weave, she didn't have time to do anything. With frantic hands he hauled her up into a sitting position, ignoring her moans and gasps of protest, and tried to drag her to one side, out of the hollow, out from beneath the wraith now right above them, and beginning to descend.
"Gods above!" Embra gasped, staring up at it. "What in the name of the Holy Horned Huntress is that?"
The cloud was filling the air above the hollow now, stretching for a goodly way to either side; there was no escape from it.
Sarasper looked wildly around the room, but saw no aid to be found. Distant disturbances marked Hawkril's slow and painful attempts to dig himself out from under the stones that had battered him, and another ridge of heaped rubble separated them from Craer. The little man in leathers was struggling over shifting stones towards them, but he was going to be some time getting to them. Some too much time.
With a sigh, the old man stopped trying to manhandle Embra up out of the hollow, and tried instead to claw as many enchanted gewgaws as he could out of her pouches. Perhaps he could heal them both as the ghostly could settled over them, and so save the Lady and a certain old healer from the worst of whatever harm it did.
"Look!" Craer shouted, from somewhere close behind them. "The door!"
Sarasper dragged his gaze down from the ghostly face drifting down to envelop them with its endless, silent scream to look at the door in the pillar from whence the ghostly apparition had come. Beyond the pillar, Hawkril was slowly hobbling and stumbling towards them all, his face a mask of pain and weariness.
Slowly, very slowly, something was blotting out Sarasper's view of the struggling armaragor. That door was swinging open, propelled by the weight of something that was leaning on it. That something was… a human corpse.
It leaned farther, coming into better view: a shriveled, immobile body standing stiffly upright in mold-dappled cobwebs that must have once been robes. The mummified man-if it was a man-was clutching a coffer to his chest. He toppled stiffly and slowly, almost majestically, at first… a fall that ended in a sudden rush to the floor.
There was an explosion of rolling dust as that rigid form shattered, bounced… and was gone. In the instant of its vanishing, the wraithlike cloud seeping down into the hollow whirled up into a gale that blew to nowhere-and with a despairing wail, the ghostly guardian wraith overhead, if that was what it had been, vanished.
Sarasper and Embra blinked at each other in astonishment, and then stared again at the pillar. The door stood open, revealing a now-empty niche, but the coffer was lying in front of it,