The Vacant Throne - Ed Greenwood [55]
Thick it was, its shoulders as huge and heavy as a horse. "Shoulders," the apprentices had dubbed them, because they could think of no other word for the huge, corded mass of muscle where the shimmering scales ended, and what was sinuous and serpentine bulged out into a gigantic fist of flesh. A dozen slender, eel-like necks sprang from those shoulders, each ending in a golden-eyed head that was little more than an impossibly large set of jaws. Those sharp-fanged maws snapped at air, gaping in an endless, hungry, vain reaching for the wizard who'd shaped them.
The mage-slayer quivered. Great rippling spasms ran the length of its body as it tried to undulate forward, strove to wriggle its coils into movement-and failed, fighting the wizard's will.
Its golden forest of eyes glared at Tharlorn with a hatred that could be felt. Cathaleira was trapped behind them, awake and aware now-and silently screaming at her imprisonment, raging against his tightening control.
Locked in the mad depths of the monstrous body Tharlorn had shaped, twisting living flesh and bone as he fused several creatures together with spell after hissed spell, growing them into something out of nightmares, Cathaleira Bowdragon was damned as few humans had ever been. Her only crime had been ambition, her only mistake being too handy to her master's reach.
A thrumming that was deeper than growling droned about the room as the struggling mage-slayer tried to roar, or even hiss. No matter how many dripping jaws she'd been given, Cathaleira couldn't even scream.
The two apprentices stood like stone statues. Their faces were expressionless, two careful masks, as they watched Tharlorn of the Thunders tremble.
Their master was trying to bring his creation under his will as surely and as completely as he controlled his own hands. The taming, it seemed, was not going well. The snake hadn't managed to move any closer, but its tremblings hadn't eased, either-and now Tharlorn was trembling, too. His robes were sticking to his sweat-drenched body as he mind-wrestled in an invisible web of magic, seeking to overwhelm and conquer Cathaleira's mind as he so often had, betimes with tenderness as well as cruelty, her body.
Neither apprentice dared move for fear wizard or monster would notice them and lash out. Breathless and trapped, they swayed, fear-filled eyes glittering. They dared not move-but they dared not stay. If their master failed, would the many-headed snake bite and crush them in her haste to rend Tharlorn, or in triumph thereafter, before Cathaleira realized she'd need their aid to have any hope of inhabiting her own body again-or mastered her own red rage?
Their master, on the other hand, had sacrificed his most loyal and capable apprentice without warning. Would they be next, once Tharlorn controlled the mage-slayer, and desired to let it practice striking down prey-or wanted to feed its hunger?
The Lord of the Thunders straightened, and a smile spread slowly across his face, revealing clenched teeth.
"That's better," he gasped, his voice a strained parody of its usual casual arrogance. "You're mine, Cathlass… as you always were. Mine. Never forget it!"
He threw up a hand, and the great bulk of the snake reared over backward, its many heads snapping in unison at the ceiling, their darting tongues a brief, flickering forest. Tharlorn watched the heads fall back to regard him in baleful chorus, and smiled.
Without warning the mage-slayer whirled around and thrust its jaws at the two terrified apprentices. Golden eyes glared into their brown ones from about a foot away, glittering with malice-ere turning away in swift unison, as Tharlorn's smile broadened.
"Yes," he told them, "I think, and she obeys-without pause or demur." As he made the many-headed snake hasten in front of him, tracing a tight circle on the tiles