The Vacant Throne - Ed Greenwood [38]
"Stagger is more like it," Craer called back to her. A moment later, she heard him grunt in pain as a flailing limb struck him sprawling, his knife clattering away. He rolled over once and then rocked back and forth, moaning in pain and twisting on the cold stone floor. The longfangs growled in triumph and stalked forward.
Without thinking, Embra ran towards it, waving her arms. The shaggy head lifted from looking at the fallen procurer, to fix her with hungry golden eyes. That buttery stare sharpened, as she met it, into a white glitter, until those eerie, spell-spawned orbs of death were staring at her once more. A deep rumble came from its throat, and it surged towards her.
Embra frowned. The pain they'd caused the beast must have weakened the bone-wizard's hold over it, so that sometimes it was a longfangs on the hunt, and sometimes the servitor of a wizard outlasting death to struggle for control over it. Just now, the bone-wizard was riding the wolf-spider's own angry mind… for which, Embra supposed, she should be grateful. Thanks to the wizard, the longfangs was moving to strike her down before snatching up Hawk or Craer to wrench off their heads and make sure they were dead… or to feed.
Embra backed away, shouting wordless defiance at it-and then turned and ran. If she could get to Sarasper's pouch in time…
"Lady," the old healer hissed, his face a mask of sweat and his teeth clenched, "get back. Give me time!" One of his arms was longer than it should be, and had gone a strange yellow color. Gray fur was sprouting here and there along its thickening length, growing thicker as she raced up to him.
"No, Sarasper!" she cried. "It's twice your size-if you can even make fangs-shape before it gets its teeth into you!"
He shook his head as if to sweep her words away, his body shuddering. As Embra snatched at his pouch, the old healer's eyes rolled, his mouth went slack-and he fell over sideways, dragging her along. Embra wormed her way desperately atop Sarasper, raking through the pouch between their bodies by feel. He'd had no time to shift his shape-but she really didn't have time to work any sort of battle-spell. As the old ballad went, "Too little time and too much need."
Even as Embra sighed out her exasperation, her fingers closed around the smooth hardness of one of the figurines. She clutched it hard and rolled furiously away, not caring if she tore the pouch to shreds.
The longfangs loomed above her, its eyes still those cold, cruel white points of light, and its drooling jaws opening. Its limbjaws, now two bristling fists of broken, ridiculously overgrown teeth, were raised high in the air like clubs, waiting to crash down.
Embra kept on rolling, trying to get past it before it could smash her against the stones of her own palace, knowing she couldn't possibly get clear.
The floor boomed right beside her, and the Lady Silvertree felt sudden, sharp fire in her scalp as her frantic tumbling tore pinioned hairs away. Showers of fang-shards peppered her face as the limbjaws rebounded from the great blow, and the wolf-spider turned to face her squarely, those gaping jaws lowering and thrusting towards her.…
She barely knew six rooms beyond this one, and almost nothing of the unsprung traps of the Silent House. Sarasper was the only one who could use its defenses against this beast-and Sarasper was lying senseless or dead right behind her. It was up to the Lady of Jewels to defeat this beast that could bite and rend them all to blood and bones.
It was always up to the bloody Lady of Jewels.
She hadn't realized she'd shouted that aloud until Craer's voice came mockingly out of the dimness on the far side of the longfangs. "Of course. Some people take so long to grasp life's little lessons."
The stream of furious obscenities she shrieked at him then awakened echoes all around them. The wolf-spider paid no attention to the procurer, who was on his feet and stabbing again, but kept after Embra, smashing