The Vacant Throne - Ed Greenwood [166]
The Smiling Wolf of Sart strode nearer, his sword ready, and saw a wounded man struggling up from his knees. Baron Blackgult, by the Three!
More than that-the Lady of Jewels was lying bleeding at his feet, and so the rogues around him must be the Band of Four.
Even as Belklarravus of Sart peered, a Serpent-priest snarled something desperate. Glows of magic promptly appeared around a close-helmed, armored warrior who'd been standing slumped against one wall of the chamber. The magic ran like fire along burly limbs, and the warrior stiffened, tottered forward-and screamed.
Heads turned in time to see, and gasp, and swear. With frantic hands the shuddering warrior tore away his helm and gorget. He seemed almost to pulse, and grow with each flicker of magic, and ragged cries of pain came from his throat.
He was growing taller, and broader, too, as armor bulged and snapped and sang its way from his thickening limbs, springing away from blood-soaked underpadding and leathers that themselves were groaning under the strain. Through the twisting that pain brought to the warrior's revealed face, Sart recognized those features.
It was Ornentar, the baron widely rumored to be captive to the Serpent's venom. Looking at foam now coming from between-were those fangs?-lips in a mouth that was wider than it should have been, in a purpling face, with the skin below that gone blue with veins throbbing all over it, Sart could well believe the tales of poisonings and dark Serpent magic.
Wailing, his eyes wide with horror, Baron Ornentar was growing into some sort of monster before their eyes. Wavering upwards like an erect snake, his arms dwindling to boneless streamers, scales racing all over his mottled and thickening body now, as the last of his armor and garments fell away in shards around legs that had become the restless coils of a giant snake.
Serpent-priests were chanting something triumphant all over the chamber, something hissing and in unison, as the last humanity slipped away from Eldagh Ornentar's face and it lengthened into a serpent's snout… and his last, despairing cry of "NnnnoooooooOOOO!" became a wet, burbling hiss.
"Divine creature!" the Serpent-priest who'd cast the spell shouted. "Heed me!" Even before the strange, hissing words that followed had finished streaming forth, Sart-like many other men in the chamber-had hurled a dagger at the priest. The man went down under a hail of biting steel, clawing at the air as if it would shield him, but the monstrous serpent no longer seemed to need him.
Rearing up almost to the cracked and sundered ceiling, it swooped at the struggling fray in front of the pillar-and opened its jaws, fangs gaping wide as men cowered away, as that terrible head came down.
Biting air, not men, and snapping up-the Dwaer!
The old man holding the third Stone staggered and fell, still holding on to it, as the great serpent reared up again, tall and dark and terrible, with two of the Dwaerindim in its gullet.
"Gods above, it's doom for us all now!" a young voice gasped nearby, and Belklarravus of Sart could not find fault with that judgement.
The serpent looked down at them all, with triumph glittering in its eyes-and opened its jaws almost in a yawn, fangs as tall as men gleaming, as it turned to survey the chamber, as if deciding whom to devour first.
And then, as if night had come early, the very air in the room dimmed, and the look on the face of the serpent somehow changed.
Two lazily circling stones suddenly kindled like twin lamps, as if the serpent around them were transparent-and then blazed up into blinding brightness.
And the serpent exploded with a roar.
Hot black-and-green gore drenched the chamber, spattering down walls and sobbing men, and the headless serpent body writhed and then cracked like a whip, smashing men to pulp against the walls as it thrashed.
Sart turned to run, boots slipping