The Vacant Throne - Ed Greenwood [71]
Then they turned their heads, more or less in unison, to watch their armsmen cut down the armaragor and the thief. In a matter of moments, only a longfangs would be left of their foes in Tarlarnastar's wellhouse… and the Master of Bats had spells enough ready to smash twenty longfangs to blood and tatters.
Helms and armored shoulders surged and heaved, gleaming blades swept up-and abruptly the baron's swordsmen were stumbling to one side, crying out and staggering.
"What-?" Faerod Silvertree snarled, blinking in amazement. Plates of armor were flapping or flying aside, steel was ringing loud upon helms and vambraces and upflung gauntlets, and-blood was flowing!
Unseen blades were striking his armsmen down! The baron got a brief glimpse of Hawkril, fencing with a few of the foremost, and saw astonishment to match his own on the hulking armaragor's face. He swung his head to glare at his daughter-and saw the bats swirling and biting unabated, the feeble and bloodied fingers of one hand briefly and ineffectually showing through the flood. Embra was helpless to call on her Stone; the cloud of phantom swords hacking his men down was coming from somewhere else.
As the last of his bloodily diced swordsmen fell, the baron turned his raging glare on his wizard, only to find the Master of Bats staring open-mouthed at Embra. "But that was Dwaer-work!" the wizard gasped. "Who-?"
He was answered by a blast that rocked the room, hurling Hawkril and Craer back against the wellhouse wall. It plucked the longfangs from the ceiling like a dangling leaf whirled away in storm winds, and left Embra gasping in his place, smashed into a tangle of shattered boards and beams- and cloaked in a wet, sticky flood of crushed bats. Groaning timbers slowly gave way as she shuddered… and the Lady of Jewels fell to the floor, senseless before she hit.
Ears ringing and eyes swimming, Hawkril clung grimly to consciousness, dimly aware that his foes were gone.
Faerod Silvertree had been reduced to splintered bones around a wildly flickering Dwaer-Stone… and all that was left of the Master of Bats was a cloud of frantically flapping bats fleeing boots that stood empty of all but smoke.
After a few groggy moments, the numbed armaragor saw something else. A glow from the depths of the far shadows, a softly growing light by the back wall of the wellhouse. It was coming from a round stone about as big as a small cabbage-a stone that was being gently juggled in the hands of a man standing in darkness.
A Dwaerindim! Its shadow-shrouded holder stepped forward, and the last thing Hawkril saw, as he struggled to see the man's face and failed, was the gently bobbing Stone bursting suddenly into blinding brightness.
The Dwaerindim pulsed again after the armaragor's face went slack-and the fluttering bats convulsed in midair, froze, and sagged senseless to the floor. The man who held the Stone looked carefully around at all the death and the sleeping things who clung to life, and smiled.
He took another step forward, banished the spell-spun shadows from around himself with his Stone, and reached down to seize what he most wanted.
"Inderos Stormharp," he introduced himself jovially to the senseless Four, "at your service… but mostly, I must admit, at my own."
Flowfoam was an interesting place. Some of its secret ways, choked with dust and cobwebs and shriveled spiders, were obviously unused and forgotten. Others served hurrying servants as carryways between dining halls and kitchens. Velvetfoot lingered in the darkest corners, a stone with eyes watching the palace bustle around him.
There were a lot of cooks and errand-lads and chambermaids, but only a handful of guards-none of them standing sentry. The king seemed to have no chancellor or chatelaine or Master of Swords; this was a court undefended. If all the courtiers milling about in and near the throne room were swept off the island, the Lion of Aglirta would be left with fewer servants than many a grand merchant's house, let alone the household of any