The Vacant Throne - Ed Greenwood [167]
Then, slowly, the scales became smoke, and the great body dwindled, and frantic gore-soaked men were grimly dragging down the last few fleeing Serpent-priests… and Belklarravus of Sart could breathe again.
Enough to utter a startled shout, as bare hands snatched his sword out of his grasp and hurled it, bright and spinning, across the room. The young man who'd gasped about doom moments ago ran after it, half-naked and slender, and the Wolf of Sart charged after him, too astonished to be angry.
The boy had flung the sword to strike down a warrior attacking the Band of Four. Even as Sart peered again at that fray, a snarling Craer slipped, and four warriors charged in over him, heedless of their own safety, to put their steel through Hawkril.
The armaragor's sword swept through the throat of one, and struck the blade out of the numbed hand of a second, but the fury of their onslaught bore him off his feet, and other warriors surged forward. A young boy snatched bare-handed at them from behind, spinning at least one off his feet. Belklarravus of Sart smashed into another, even as a backhand slash sent Raulin Castlecloaks reeling. He sat down hard on Embra Silvertree.
"They'll kill Hawk!" she gasped, spitting blood weakly, trying feebly to claw her way to her feet.
Above her, a deep voice laughed. "Oh, no, they won't!" Baron Blackgult said merrily, as Dwaer-fire lashed down to heal him and raced up again to the circling stone orbs above-and the third Dwaer sprang up out of Sarasper's hand to rejoin them.
"Hah!" the baron cried. The Stones suddenly blazed up in a quickening whirl overhead-and the air was suddenly shining around Hawkril, a shield of shimmering nothingness that moved with him, forcing swordtips away.
Another shield appeared around Blackgult himself, like a cylinder of hard air, and then others sprang into being around Embra, Raulin, Sarasper, and Craer-hurling Belklarravus of Sart back.
The Silvertree sorceress gasped as her wounds began to close. She closed her eyes briefly and gave in to her need to shudder, as grunts around her told her Hawkril and Craer were feeling the same relief. And then, heavily, silence fell.
Embra opened her eyes, to find the man who claimed to be her father standing beside her. He was smiling, his hands on his hips, as he looked at the warriors who'd been trying to slay him-now drawn back from him uncertainly, staring in grim silence.
"I've waited a long time for this," Blackgult announced to the silent room. "A long, long time." He raised his hands suddenly above his head, like a wizard about to strike, and his eyes were dark and terrible.
The men who'd not yet found their deaths in that chamber cowered back, awaiting their doom. The Dwaer circled, bright and menacing, above the baron.
And then, within the shimmering that shielded him, the body of the Baron Blackgult changed, flowing and slumping and shifting eerily, as men gasped in amazement… and even the Four fell back.
They were no longer looking at Ezendor Blackgult, the Golden Griffon. They were staring, dumbfounded, at old and smiling Inderos Stormharp, perhaps the greatest of living bards. His long fingers moved in gestures that said "spellcasting" to every mage who watched, and there was suddenly a harp in them.
"Three above," the Wolf of Sart gasped hoarsely, and his was not the only throat to give the room an oath in that moment.
Stormharp smiled at them all, turning his head to look briefly into the wondering eyes of Embra Silvertree, and then-in the voice they'd all heard last coming from the lips of the Baron Blackgult-announced calmly, "This calls for a ballad to resound down the years. Down steel, all, and hearken, then…"
In this dell high above the river, a little oval of shrubs and stormgrass high above the Vale, boulders as old