The Vacant Throne - Ed Greenwood [35]
Craer knew a certain sprinting procurer wouldn't be-even if a thin, foot-long knife could somehow stop this man-eater at a touch.
The longfangs bit down. Embra skipped aside, leading its reaching head to one side, away from the pinned and senseless armaragor. "Gods," Craer gasped, "deliver us from this-this thing!"
He left the Three no time to answer his prayer before he charged to the longfang's neck and sank the steel fang in his hand hilt-deep. The thing roared in pain, almost deafening him, and swung its head wildly back his way. But he was in behind its jaws, right against the heaving side of its head, and there he danced, moving with it so it could never turn to reach him, hacking and stabbing.
Hawkril was being trampled beneath his boots. Sudden rage rose to clutch at his throat and make him shout. Craer stabbed and stabbed until sweat was almost blinding him, and the pain in his side was making him sob. He pummeled the beast with his fist whenever he could, circling with the longfangs as it left the sprawled armaragor behind, smashed a gasping Embra aside, and tried to slap down the little dancing man who was stinging it again and again…
Kneeling not far away, Sarasper Codelmer found the three tiny figurines he was seeking: the last handful of the enchanted fripperies he'd taken from the Silent House. Scooping two of them back into his belt pouch, he snatched a scrap of ribbon he'd found earlier from his lips and bound it around the statuette with trembling fingers, eyeing the looming wolf-spider as furry limbs crashed down very near.
All of the Four had once licked the ribbon at his insistence, leaving behind traces of themselves. The Horned Lady willing, he should now, by a spell he thought he remembered wholly, be able to snatch the king's most pressingly imperiled-and not so mighty after all, by the Three-heroes away from this beast of the backlands, across miles upon miles of Aglirta in the blink of an eye, to his favorite chamber in the Silent House. His longtime lair in his own time hiding in longfangs shape. Sarasper smiled grimly at that thought as he raised the statuette and murmured an incantation that seemed to flow into his mind from some comfortable corner of memory as if it had been just waiting to burst forth behind a door he'd kept locked for too long.
Sudden warmth surged through Sarasper, a prickling flood running up his arms and across his face, radiance leaking like sparks from his eyes and mouth as it reached up and out....
He hissed the last words of the magic and spread his arms, the better to let the spell flow forth. Its power surged and seared him, tugging at his insides, making him tremble on the dark edge of weak oblivion, the gently curving moss seeming to rise up to meet him…
An instant before Sarasper's face ploughed into the earth, the world whirled through a sudden cloak-swirl of flashing light and utter darkness-and he was suddenly elsewhere, dank stone under his knees and dust pricking his nose in the instant before it struck cold stone and skidded painfully forward. As he turned his head to one side, eyes swimming, a gray bulk reared up in the ale-hued light of the familiar cavern, and a fresh roar of pain smote his ears. A bestial roar that almost drowned out Craer's softly gasped cursing.
He was back in the Silent House, and his companions with him. Unfortunately, his spell had somehow brought the longfangs along, too…
Courtiers prefer to dwell in luxury. This demands sumptuous apartments, servants' quarters at a discreet remove, feast halls and other grand chambers, and a sufficiency of kitchens, pantries, and wine cellars. It does not demand, when the king they are there to obey, advise-and keep watch over-has not a strong count of warriors to call his own, miles upon miles of spider- and rat-roamed cold stone bunkrooms, armories, and corridors. Wherefore much of what had been the lower levels of Castle Silvertree before the return of the Risen King now lay dark and silent, behind doors that were never opened. Free of torches or lanterns and wary humans