The Vacant Throne - Ed Greenwood [85]
Brithra's face was white with fear as her eyes met her master's. "Lord, I'm sorry!" she gasped. "I-"
Bodemmon Sarr clutched her shoulder with fingers of fierce iron and snapped, "No, no, you did nothing wrong. Help me turn him over!"
A horrible scream and even more horrible wet, crunching sounds heralded the passing of another mule-or perhaps the other pleasure-lass-as the cook and the wizard bent to their work with feverish haste. "Back!" Bodemmon Sarr hissed at Brithra, and then shouted out a spell without waiting for her to scramble aside.
Glarth's staring body glowed a sudden sickly yellow-a hue that faded with agonizing slowness as Bodemmon Sarr knelt over him, tensely watching the crab-beast tear apart the last of the mules and turn its head towards a cook and two wizards. At last the yellow was gone from all but the apprentice's eyes; Bodemmon Sarr stammered out another spell and sprang back, even as that horrible bald head bent down.
Glarth's head and one shoulder were gone in the first bite, steaming blood pouring forth in a torrent that made the crouching cook moan and put an arm up in front of her eyes. The other arm and most of his right side vanished in the second; Bodemmon Sarr put a firm hand on Brithra's shoulder and towed her back and away, biding his time in cold calm.
The crab-beast's next bite left nothing of the apprentice but trembling, spasming legs and a blood-drenched remnant of pelvis joining them. By the sudden lift of its neck and its brightening glare at Bodemmon Sarr-the wizard could have sworn it was smiling at him-the crab-beast seemed to be finished dining on apprentice, and finding its appetite for the master.
Bodemmon Sarr let it lunge one step along the road at him-a step that the thing took with terrifying speed-and crisply spoke a single word: the sound that would trigger the last spell he'd cast on Glarth.
Then he turned and ran, abandoning Brithra and all in a frantic sprint away from-
The wet, sickening blast that shook the road under his pounding boots and sent slimy cantles of crab-beast spattering through the trees all around him. He felt the warm heaviness of its gore slapping across his shoulders, just before the main force of the blast plucked him off his feet and sent him rolling headlong through a needlethorn bush.
And then, but for his panting, the gods gave Bodemmon Sarr blessed silence.
He dragged himself slowly out of the remnants of the bush and turned to look at the slaughter, seeing nothing moving but a feeble, blood-drenched figure that could only be Brithra. The crab-beast was quite gone.
Bodemmon Sarr smiled grimly. Tharlorn's cleverness may have kept it from harm under the lash of most of Bodemmon's spells, but Glarth had enjoyed no such protection-and even that huge humped shell hadn't saved the beast from the ravages of a devoured man exploding in its innards.
As some forgotten mage had once remarked, there's more than one way to spell-dice a dragon.
Brithra and her moans could wait. He had to retrieve a certain something from his own saddle-pouch, to whisk himself across the Vale from here to safety. If another something was still in its place, he'd bring her with him. Good and trustworthy cooks are hard to find.
Bodemmon Sarr retrieved both somethings and stood grimly above the torn remnants of the crab-beast. "Tharlorn," he said calmly, "you are a-"
The gigantic, many-headed snake dipped its shimmer-scaled body out of the trees in eerie silence, swaying forward to let a dozen jaws gape open and then snap shut.
Eleven closed on empty air, but one harvested the head of the mightiest mage in all Aglirta in one gulp.
A headless Bodemmon Sarr danced spasmodically along the road for a few moments, risen but unhurled magic sparking and spitting from his fingers-and then toppled, twitching, into the dust.
The many-headed serpent bent, its jaws tore the writhing body apart-and Tharlorn's mage-slayer