No glows, Maelra reported, doing so.
"Step into the room, and then stop. Touch nothing, including the door and the doorframe. Look around-with your eyes only-and tell me what you see."
Sagging shelves, stones fallen from the ceiling, smashed and opened coffers on the shelves, a few books whose pages look to have melted away, some empty niches cut into the wall-and a trestle table with an open casket in it. I can see bones, within.
"Approach the casket, but step back at once if you hear a singing or see a glow."
No such, Spellmaster. I'm beside the casket. There's a human skeleton in it, a few bones crumbled away, but largely intact. Not disarranged. There's a sort of wooden frame built over them, inside the casket.
"Good. Are you afraid of bones?"
These are just bones.
"Pass a bracer over the casket-do any of them move? Any glows? Are the eyesockets of the skull still dark?"
All is dark and still.
"Good. Step back from the casket and strip off all your armor. Get bare-take off everything."
Wondering privately what stripping, here in the dusty, chill darkness, had to do with "bringing back" these or any bones, Maelra did so. As she did off the last piece of armor, darkness returned in a rush, leaving her blind.
Spellmaster, I'm bare-but I can no longer see.
" 'Tis of no matter. You know where the casket lies? You can find it without blundering into it? Do so."
Done.
"Climb up onto that frame, and lie there, facedown. Try to avoid putting your hands and feet down among the bones."
Maelra started to do so-and then froze, teetering on the brink of falling back into the darkness. Ambelter, the bones are glowing!
"So they will. Have no fear. I myself have done what you are doing, without any harm at all. Get onto that frame."
Swallowing in the darkness-how could one at once be so cold and yet sweating so fiercely that one's skin was slick?-the young Bowdragon sorceress did so, tingling with excitement as she lowered herself onto the latticework of cold, dusty boards. The fell glow from the skeleton beneath her was bright enough to light up the room around her now… and as she steadied herself just above it, though its eyesockets remained empty and dark, it seemed to be looking at her. Maelra swallowed again, the frame creaking as sweat rolled down her nose and she hurriedly swiped it away to avoid letting it fall onto the bones beneath.
Done, Spellmaster.
"You'll have noticed that the frame keeps you from crushing the bones, but allows you to reach them. They're the remains of Gadaster Mulkyn, once a mighty mage, and you must not pull one bone apart from another. To have the power to slay the King and hurl aside his guards and courtiers, you must do as I say: Reach down with both of your arms, and your mouth, and embrace the bones as if they were a living man and he your lover."
Maelra lay above the skeleton, staring down into its dark and empty gaze and eternal grin, and wondered what would truly happen when she touched it. What was Ambelter keeping from her?
"Be not afraid, lass! You'll feel power passing into you, naught else. Maelra Bowdragon, I command you-"
My, but the Spellmaster suddenly seemed more fearful than she did! With a shrug and a smile, Maelra Bowdragon reached down and embraced the unknown.
Pbwer! Magic more than she'd ever felt before slammed into her, so sudden and clear and cold that Maelra arched up and back from it, shrieking soundlessly at the ceiling at the same time as she unthinkingly kicked at the frame, seeking to grind her pelvis down into the heart of what was flowing into her.
The skeleton shot bolt upright, passing like a ghost through the boards, and suddenly was embracing her, cold bones sliding hard and smooth over her trembling flesh, grinning right into her face with eyes that had kindled into two arctic stars floating in darkness, dry bony jaws parting as if to bite or kiss her… and then, just as she sought to try to shove it away and scream and struggle, the bones softly sighed into dust, and a wall of ruby fury rolled into Maelra's head. A voice that left her quivering in cowering silence in a small corner of her own mind announced gloatingly: HELLO, RASH YOUNGLING. I AM GADASTER MULKYN, AND THIS BODY WILL DO JUST FINE.
In a cavern where many men with melted faces stood silently, staring at nothing, Ingryl Ambelter gasped in horror as his mind-spying was severed as if by the slice of a knife. Gadaster was aware, and as powerful as if Ingryl Ambelter had never slain or bound or spell-drained him! He'd poured himself into the young wench, now, and-
"Claws of the Dark One," the Spellmaster gasped, hands shaking, and then mastered trembling fingers enough to shape a quick, imperious gesture with one hand, his Dwaer flaring into full life in the other. The armor was his only hope! If Gadaster was dust and this Maelra's body now his, he could be slain!
The body that had been Maelra Bowdragon knelt upright in the casket, head almost scraping the ceiling, and murmured two words she'd never known before. Then, quite suddenly, she was gone and something changed, all over the walls-scant instants before the discarded pieces of armor on the floor glowed with Dwaer-light and then burst with a violent roar, shredding the casket and shelves and everything else in the chamber in a frantic whirlwind of shrapnel that shrieked and rang off floor, ceiling, and walls with force enough to shatter stone blocks and send many deadly shards slicing down into the slow, drifting dust.
The cellars of Flowfoam shook briefly around the shattered, long-hidden room, and then, slowly, grew still once more.
Ingryl Ambelter muttered anxious words over his Dwaer, and peered into the roiling whirlwind. Did he dare send light to follow his farscrying?
He dared not fail to do so.
He must know if this oldest, yet most unlooked for peril had been destroyed at its birthing… or was coming for him, even now…?
He must know, must see what had befallen in the chamber where he'd kept his most secret and darkest magics for so long…
With both hands clutching his Dwaer in a clawlike grasp, Ingryl Ambelter stared into it, trying to wrap its power around him in a shield, and gazed through it at-ruin. Coffers, shelves, and casket were all but small and twisted shards among the dust. Nothing was left. The glow of fresh magic hung in the air, reverberating in waves of silent brightness… a violent casting, just before his own… and there was another enchantment crawling all over the walls. Crawling and dripping from the ceiling… blood. The walls were adrip with blood!
His eyes narrowed. A splendid wench, to be sure, tallish and yet supple, but-so much blood in her? And not a single hair, of all that long mane of hers, left behind?
A ruse, or so he must assume. Knowing his old master, it could very well be.
In a sudden pale, shaking fury, Ingryl slammed a spell into his Dwaer that would sever his scrying and slap down anyone trying to ride the spell-link to him.
Sweating, he sagged back into his chair and whispered, "Horns and kisses of the Great Lady, sap-spitde of the Forefather… bebolten dung-slung talons of the Dark One!" Staring unseeing at the Melted who stood in what was left of the armor he'd stripped from them, looking unseeingly back at him, the Spellmaster went on swearing.
It lasted a long time, but the Baron Phelinndar waited until Ambelter's curses died away into half-heard hisses before he said grimly, "I told you, wizard, that this was a fool's plan from the start. Your towering arrogance always gets us-"
"Be still or be dead!" Ingryl Ambelter snarled, plucking up the Dwaer as if to hurl it into Phelinndar's face.
Then he halted, and the two men sat in the cavern staring across a table at each other in hard-breathing silence, rage and fear warring in both their gazes.
The Dwaer-glow faded and left them looking at the beautiful lawns and gardens of Flowfoam-and two low, grassy mounds right in front of them.