"I-" Tshamarra gasped, eyes still clouded and unseeing. "I'm on fire!"
A sudden convulsion made her jerk and thrash her limbs, and from where he was standing bending over them both Craer burst out, "Embra, can't you do something?"
"Yes" Embra told him crisply, "and so can you. Get out of here and stand guard against the Glarondans you know are coming after us, and leave me alone to do what I have to do. This isn't easy, you know: I have to understand how the venom works to learn how to drive it out, and then banish what it's done. If I just attack the poison, I'm using the Dwaer only as searing fire-against Tash's blood, and inside her body!"
"Come," Hawkril rumbled firmly, taking his friend by the shoulder. "You go stand guard that way, along that track, and I'll go yonder, where the lane curves by those trees."
The procurer nodded reluctantly, then bent down quickly and kissed Embra's shoulder. "Thank you, Em," he whispered, and was gone.
Embra shook her head, smiled-and then pounced on Tshamarra as the Lady Talasorn convulsed again, moaning and jerking her limbs violently.
Wrestling with the smaller woman, Embra lost her smile swiftly. The Blood Plague and the venom were at war with each other inside Tash, and Dwaer or no Dwaer, Embra hadn't the barest beginnings of any idea how to stop the damage both were doing.
She plucked up the edge of Tash's undone leather bodice and thrust it between the teeth of the Talasorn sorceress to keep her from biting her own tongue. More venom bubbled forth.
Ever so carefully, with the point of her belt-knife, Embra made a small cut on her own forearm, let her blood drip onto the largest wood chip within reach, and then used another sliver of wood to transfer some of the venom from Tshamarra to her blood. As they swirled together with the faintest puff of vapor, she slapped her hand down on her Dwaer, cast a quick glance around to make sure no woodcutter or lurking Serpent-priest was approaching, and then worked a spell that took her down, down…
… into the hot red pool where the venom was spreading, curling out like smoke into the ruby sea from the first oily ropes of its arrival. Thus the poison changed the blood, and so it spread, changing this, and that…
But how was the plague changing both blood and venom? Surfacing from her magic into the relative brightness of the glade and blinking around again to make sure no peril approached, Embra took Tshamarra's own knife, made a similar cut on Tash's arm, used another wood chip to add this new blood to the mix, and went down into the tiny ruby sea again to watch.
Ruby sea and sky, all one, and this purple, heavy hue must be the plague-or rather, what plague did to blood, for around it the rest of Embra's blood was turning the same hue, crumbling into the spreading darkness with silent, frightening speed…
With the Dwaer she risked trying to twist the blood-mix, thus-and did something that made the wood chip shudder. Hastily she stopped, and instead strove to fight the darkness by changing it to match some of the blood it hadn't reached yet. The darkness thinned and shrank, and triumphantly she repeated the process, eating away at the still-spreading purple gloom again and again until it was reduced to a tiny mote. No matter how she tried to alter that mote, it remained, spreading forth again and again-until at last, in rising anger, she burned it with a tiny burst of Dwaer-fire… and it vanished, leaving only untainted blood behind. Venom and plague were both gone.
She'd done it!
Embra sat back on her heels and snarled wordless triumph at the leaves high overhead. Then she leaned forward to use the Dwaer on her friend-and was startled to see a tiny wisp of flame escaping from Tshamarra's lips, blackening the leather as it hissed past.
Frantically Embra called up the power of the Dwaer and dove "into" Tash, shaking her head. "Sarasper was the healer," she muttered. "I'm more like a chambermaid who only knows where to hurl buckets of water to clean by crude rinsing, and naught else."
There was no one there to hear her but the silent Tshamarra and her father, who'd come awake with the banishing of the plague from the sorceress. He looked sharply up at Embra with eyes that seemed to see nothing, and announced, "Much cleansing is needed before the Vale can be what it was. If the Vale can ever be what it was."
"You," Ingryl Ambelter told Maelra with a smile, "are going to Flowfoam for us." The Spellmaster swayed slightly as Dwaer-magic crackled in the air around him. The melt-faced men leaned forward, as if lured by it.
"I need you to fetch me some bones from there," Ambelter explained sweetly, as if to an idiot child, "and bring them back here. Oh, and kill the King while doing so, and carry his crown back to us, too."
"Some bones?" Baron Phelinndar frowned. "What magic're they for?"
"A traditional weaving," Ambelter replied soothingly. "Part of being Spellmaster. The crown, my dear Baron, is for you.
He turned back to Maelra. "Well, my dear? 'Twill be dangerous, but we'll both be with you, via spells, to guide and warn; you needn't be frightened."
Though she knew his reassurances must be false, Maelra's heart leaped with excitement. "When do I start?" she asked eagerly-and saw Phelinndar's eyes narrow.
Ambelter's excitement, however, matched her own. Nodding in satisfaction, he strode forward, put a hand to the bodice of her gown, and tore it down and away from her in one great wrench.
She looked at him with her great dark eyes, trying to read what lay behind his own fierce gaze. His eyes were on hers, not on her bared body. Hurriedly she slipped her arms out of the rag that remained, to stand before him nude but for her boots.
He was not standing and surveying her-though the baron was-but was already whirling away from her to snatch and tug plates of armor from one of the melted-faced men.
Turning back to Maelra with a battered and stained shoulder-archplate in his hands, he regarded her slender hips coolly, nodded, and held it out to her, to put on.
With a rustling of leaves, Craer Delnbone thumped down into the clearing, fresh blood glistening on his sword. He waved at Embra and called cheerfully, "Visitors! See?"
When Embra looked up, he waved his bloody sword and ran back into the trees, heading back to his tree-limb perch to await the arrival of the next hurrying Serpent-band.
"Back to the merry slaughter once more," he murmured, wiping his sword on the moss of the nearest tree trunk.
Embra watched the procurer go, her lips growing thin, and then turned and snapped, "Father!"
Her father was plague-addled; the arrow's venom was working on him differently than on Tash. Thank the Three-that was why he was still alive.
When her call garnered no reaction, she raised her voice and hailed him as Blackgult, and then as the Golden Griffon.
He turned his head. "Yes, my page?"
"Here, Father," she commanded briskly. "Help me carry this lady fair-who's delicate, and in some distress-around behind yon woodpile."
"But of course," he replied swiftly, rising to help. "I hope I had no part in bringing her to her present, ah, state?"
Embra sighed. "No, not really. No more so than the rest of Aglirta."
16
Serving the Serpent Well
T he Dwaer spun faster, singing and soaring almost a foot higher-and as if in answer, Tshamarra Talasorn arched and twisted under Embra's ringers, rising right off the ground.
Embra drew back from the floating, quivering figure, and frowned. "There's something…," she murmured aloud, eyes narrowing as she stared at the younger sorceress.
Suddenly quite another something struck Embra hard on the shoulder, driving her to the ground, chin-first.