It was the boot of a warrior, who'd leaped from atop the woodpile behind her to snatch the Dwaer out of midair. Clutching the Stone, he rolled away and up to his feet, whirling around with a grin of triumph-and as Embra scrambled to her knees, fingers moving to shape a spell that would have to be fast, other armored men came rushing around both sides of the woodpile with drawn swords.
Where were Hawk and Craer?
She let her hands fall again as the warriors formed a blade-bristling wall facing her. In unison they took a slow stride forward, faces bleak.
"Embra Silvertree," the warrior hefting the Dwaer said silkily, "your father once tortured me. I'm going to enjoy this."
Embra crouched protectively over Tshamarra. The eyes of the Talasorn sorceress were still closed, but her arms and legs had started to writhe again, slowly and fitfully, as she settled a little closer to the ground. If she'd still held the Stone, Embra would have been trying to work gentle healing on her.
At that grim thought, the Lady Silvertree turned her head to seek her father. Blackgult sat huddled nearby, rocking slightly in seeming oblivious-ness.
A sudden blaze of Dwaer-light brought her gaze back to-the Stone, glowing brightly in the warrior's hand as he paced menacingly forward, his eyes glittering…
"You gave her enchanted armor?" Phelinndar's roar echoed around the chamber. "Why?"
The Spellmaster of Aglirta quirked an eyebrow. "Enchanted, my dear Baron?"
The nobleman's sword sang out so fast that even Ingryl Ambelter flinched. "Ambelter, I may not be a mage, but I'm not a. fool. Kindly remember that," Phelinndar snarled. "You give the wench armor twice her size and it fits her perfectly, then it glows when you use the Stone to send her-what does that tell any dolt with eyes, twice? 'Tis magical!" The baron rammed his blade back into its scabbard with an angry clank and barked, "So answer my question!"
Ingryl Ambelter drew a deep breath, hefted his Dwaer, and said smugly, "The spells on it prevent anyone from successfully tracing her to us… whereas I can trace it."
He strode across the chamber with his usual air of amused superiority. "Now, my increasingly angry Baron, you're right to be unamused about all of my boldnesses, so let's sit down and discuss what I've done and why, and what we'll do next. I must introduce you to the Sword of Spells."
"A sword? Something I can wield?" Phelinndar asked eagerly, despite himself.
The Spellmaster shook his head. "Not an actual blade, but rather a series of interwoven spells."
The baron did not trouble to hide his disgust, but Ambelter only smiled thinly and said, "You know magic is the key to power these days, Phelinndar-or you should, by now."
"Oh, I know it," the baron snarled, "but nothing's going to make me like it."
"Let her down," the warrior ordered curtly, "or-" Warningly he lifted the Dwaer in one hand and his sword in the other.
Embra looked at him, and then back at Tshamarra. Did he really not know…?
"I-I'll have to undo my spell," she said, trying to sound frightened, and discovering that she really was.
Without a Dwaer-Stone, Embra Silvertree was just one unarmored woman confronting thirty-odd angry warriors. She swallowed, and found herself trembling.
He smirked and took another step forward, tossing and cupping the Dwaer like a child playing catch-stone. "You're nothing without this, are you?"
"True," she whispered, from her knees, and he took another step forward. A bare three strides separated them now, but he'd brought his sword down to point at her. He wasn't going to blunder any closer, in case the touch of a sorceress bore any nasty little perils…
"S-so, should I-?" Embra asked, nodding her head at Tshamarra, who was moaning and writhing, as if about to awaken… writhing on empty air about a handwidth clear of the ground. One of the warriors muttered something to another, and there were grins.
"Keep your hands still!" the warrior snapped, and she froze, eyes fixed on his, clinging to the faint hope that Tshamarra's rousing would alarm him.
It did. "She's waking up, isn't she?"
"Yes," Embra told him anxiously, "and I don't know what she'll do. She went mad, and she's too powerful for me to control, even with the Stone. Her family rules Arlund with sorcery."
"And if you undo your spell?"
"She'll sleep again," Embra lied, keeping her hands very still. The warrior locked eyes with her.
Tshamarra wriDied more strongly.
"Do it," he snarled, and Embra nodded, reached out for Tshamarra, and carefully cast a spell that took but two gestures and a very short murmured incantation. It was one of the few she had magic enough left to power… O, Three aid me, let this one have no feel at all for using a Dwaer!
She felt the faint creeping sensation of the spell starting to take effect, and launched herself up and over Tshamarra in a single bound, landing and springing again before the watching warriors could do more than shout. Her magic snatched at the warrior's sword, plucking it to one side as if tugged by a gale-and for the scant seconds she needed, he did as any warrior would: he held onto it, fighting fiercely to keep possession of his weapon.
That left his arm pulled across his body and his side turned toward her, as she landed right at his boots-and embraced him.
Time slowed to a thunderous heartbeat. Between one clap and the next,
Embra called on the Dwaer. The moment she touched him, an unsorcerous man with no power to use the Stone to resist her, she could feel its power, reach its power, seize its power!
With a shout that echoed in every head around the woodpiles louder than in her own she made the Dwaer fling away metal in all directions, repelling it from herself… or rather, from their locked bodies, she and this warrior who hated her so much for something done to him by a dead man most of Aglirta believed to be her father.
Blackgult was hurled away like some sort of armored ball, bouncing with clangorous crashes toward the line of warriors-who were themselves flung back to crash into trees and crumple, blades whirling from numbed fingers to flash away deep into treegloom.
Embra opened her fingers, and the Dwaer flew into them. Then she stepped back from the warrior, lifting him into the air to float frozen in front of her. Only his eyes could still move, and they darted this way and that in wild terror before staring helplessly at her.
"You," Embra told him softly, sounding far more menacing than she felt, "shall be my shield."
As if her words had been a signal, the air was suddenly full of large, dark arrows, stabbing at her in a hail-snake-arrows!
Gaping fangs first, the enchanted-rigid serpents came hissing at her from three sides, and the sorceress had no choice but to use her living shield to drive aside many of them, running right behind it so the snakes aimed at her unprotected flank would also miss.
Serpent-priests were running out of the trees now, on all sides of her but the woodpile. Embra called on the Dwaer, seeking to fell them all by flinging broken hiresword bodies at their ankles, but something met the force of her Dwaer-thrust, blunted it, and forced it to a halt everywhere on her right.
Behind her, some priests had fallen, and others were fighting for balance or crouching to hurl spells before they dared advance farther. Embra spared them no more attention-not when she had eleven, no, twelve Serpent-priests giving her various cold grins as they strode toward her, defying her Dwaer with… what could only be the power of another Dwaer!
Somewhere nearby, probably in the trees just behind these smiling Brothers of the Serpent, someone was using another Stone…
She must find out who, and get it, and to do that she had to avoid being slain by these oh-so-enthusiastic Serpents. They were lifting their hands to shape spells even now, or brandishing cruel fang-knives, their eyes all fixed on Embra Silver tree.