The Vacant Throne - Ed Greenwood [164]
The Risen King fell back onto his throne. "Loushoond!" he snarled furiously. "It's me!" His face changed, eyes first, as the armored baron drew both of his daggers and rained down blows with them on the shield of magic that cloaked the king.
"It's me, Ingryl!" the man on the throne snarled, and it was: Ingryl Ambelter sat in the royal armor. "Stop this!" he hissed. "You fool, can't you-"
Berias Loushoond redoubled his efforts, his daggers ringing like bells in a whirlwind of stabs and cuts that harmed only enchanted air, as his eyes burned into the Spellmaster's own, and he growled through clenched teeth, "I know… quite well… who you are!"
There came a brighter flash as tortured magic failed-and a dagger, plunging home at last, bit into the wizard's cheek as Ingryl twisted desperately away.
The wizard flung up a hand to shield his face-and from it poured forth fire, in a raging storm that swallowed the armored baron, and went on and on, as Ingryl Ambelter slowly stood, his face white with fury. Still the fire streamed, until melting armor plates fell clanging to the floor, and the flesh beneath them bubbled away from blackening bones… and the Lord Baron Berias Loushoond was no more.
Ingryl Ambelter straightened slowly, and let smoking hands drop to his sides. He glared down with glittering eyes at the armaragors of Loushoond standing silent before him, and snarled, "Anyone else?"
His answer was a stirring of steel as every last knight silently drew his sword… and then they were charging up the steps as one, blades sweeping up to hack.
"Back!" the wizard roared, sending forth little spinning balls of flame as light flared around his limbs. He struggled to rebuild his shield-courtiers shouting and shrieking in the distance-as the blades came for him, striking like a wall of spiked steel.
In an instant he was cut thrice, and more, and as swordpoints he could not hope to avoid slid at him like striking snakes, Ingryl Ambelter shouted a desperate word-and snatched his new body elsewhere, leaving blades and an empty crown to crash down on the throne he'd risen from, moments before.
Blades struck against blades and faltered. Cursing, the warriors of Loushoond let their swords fall. One of them took up the fallen crown, looked at it wonderingly, and was about to toss it down onto the River Throne when the warrior beside it plucked it out of his hands.
An armored hand settled the crown over a helm, and its wearer turned grandly and announced, "Hearken! I, Riovryn, am now King of all Aglirta! Let-"
His next word was lost in a wet groan, as the sword that had plunged through the gap in Riovryn's mail, under his arm, slid back out again.
"There'll be no more of that," his slayer growled, catching up the crown on a bloody swordtip as the body toppled, and setting it, alone, on the seat of the empty throne.
"Let it sit there and await a rightful ruler."
From the warriors around came a low, nodding rumble of assent.
"I doubt Embra Silvertree will be all that happy a lass, by nightfall," the Tersept of Gilth remarked to the Tersept of Sart, as they stared together at the ragged opening in the southernmost sweep of the west wall of the Silent House.
A mage had made it, not all that long ago, with a spell whose deadly shearing force had made the more restive of the warriors waiting tensely outside the ruined palace fall grim and silent for a time. No one wanted to be obliberated in an instant-or, as that same smiling wizard had done to one armaragor who menaced him a trifle too crudely, lose an arm and a leg on the same side of one's body, sheared off and cauterized in the same horrifying instant by a spell called up with a casual wave of one wizardly hand.
Hot in their armor, the fighting men had traded hard stares with each other and flicked away swarming flies and waited… and waited. Now at long last it seemed that something had happened inside the Silent