The Vacant Throne - Ed Greenwood [92]
From the other side of the door came the furious snarl, "You fool! We need her unhurt!"
A year ago, the Lady of Jewels would have raised her hands and blasted the door, passage beyond, and all to ashes, not caring if the Flagon then caught fire and burned to outshine the stars. Now, however, she was much more than a year older than she'd been then. She whirled around, marched across the floor, and flung open the other door, not caring if her three companions-and every other man at this end of the Vale-saw her skin. "What by all the Three Blazing Gods is going on ou-?"
She ended her question in midshout when she saw Hawkril shorn of his armor, a hairy muscled colossus in sweat-soaked leather breeches, hacking for all he was worth with the blades he held in both hands at three thrusting swords, or more, that were stabbing into the room from the dark passage outside. The armaragor was standing just inside the doorway, with the splayed shards of the room's outer door tangled around his feet. He, too, hadn't gotten around to taking off his boots.
How had they-? The door must have been riddled with rot, to collapse at a single blow that hadn't shaken both rooms. But-
And then something twisted on the floor nearer Embra, drawing her eye down.
Sarasper was sprawled senseless on the floorboards. A huge splinter of wood from the shattered door had burst through his shoulder like the blade of a halberd, and a white-faced, trembling Raulin was scrabbling to stanch a dark and swift-spreading flow of blood over the old man's chest, whilst snatching from time to time at the flickering bedside lamp on the floor beside him, to move its light where he needed it to be.
As she watched, he whimpered in rising fear. He shuddered as he stared down at the man dying under his hands, looked up at Embra in startlement-and then stared at the bare-skinned sorceress in gaping earnest as she strode deliberately forward and murmured the lone and feeble healing spell she knew, pressing her fingers into Sarasper's gore.
Magic flowed over the old man in a wash of spidery radiance, light that faded almost before it began.
Embra smiled almost fiercely into Raulin's astonished face, and said to him, "Whatever you're going to say, don't. Say something else instead."
The young man's mouth opened, and then shut, as his bone-white face suddenly went as red as Sarasper's blood. "Uh," he said finally, "nice boots."
Embra rolled her eyes, bent to lay two bloody fingers across his mouth before he could say more, and snarled into his face, "Find me all the little figurines and coffers and suchlike that Sarasper carries-I need them now!"
Raulin blinked, nodded, and started to scrabble again, this time among the healer's discarded belt and pouches. "Is this for your magic?" he murmured, not looking up from his frantic snatching and unlacing and unbuckling. "Do y-"
He sensed, rather than saw, the lady standing over him tremble suddenly-a scant moment before she spat out a single word that echoed in his head like bells jangling amid thunder.
Wincing, Raulin stared up at Embra, just in time to see fire race from her mouth like the bards said dragons could do. The flames snarled over him like a hurled lance, and he twisted around in time to see them race past Hawkril's busy shoulder and burst right in the face of one of the men out in the passage.
That man screamed, high and shrill, like a young girl scalded-and incredulous about it. Raulin saw him stagger back, sword clanging to the passage floor, with fire leaping up from his face. The man's eyes could not be seen in the bright inferno; the flames seemed to stream from his mouth upwards, to lick at the ceiling.
"Raulin," the Lady of Jewels said with terrible, gentle care, "please find me those little figurines."
The lad's head snapped around. He gave the glowering sorceress an emphatic and very swift nod, and set to work even more frantically than before.
In a handful of seconds he slapped a figurine into Embra's waiting hand, and followed it almost