"Make way!" Craer called this time, as he ran. "Overdukes of the King command you!"
The guards lifted their glaives, but one of them snapped, "Wherefore?"
"We hunt Serpents!" the procurer snapped back. "Where's the King?"
Their suspicious frowns told Craer all he needed to know, but by then Hawkril had lumbered into view, and the guards gave way before his more familiar-and formidable-figure. One of them even offered, "Ah, Lords, we know not!"
The overdukes ran on through Flowfoam Palace, brushing past startled-looking envoys and courtiers they'd never seen before, in search of someone they knew. The palace was busy in some areas but curiously empty in others, and guards' challenges were fewer than they should have been.
Blackgult was shaking his head in puzzlement by the time they reached and then left behind the guarded but deserted throne room. As they ran
down another passage, he growled, "Something's not right. Huldaerus must be chortling. Have the Serpents-?"
He never finished that question. They came to a high, many-balconied gallery where guards should have been looking down on other guards standing beside desks where scribes and Clerks of the Royal Person mounted a last line of defense against uninvited visitors trying to burst in and "just see the King for a moment." The hurrying Overdukes of Aglirta found no scribes or clerks, and no torches blazing along the dark balcony above-but instead literally ran right into a frightened ring of guards.
The armsmen whirled around with shouts of alarm, swords flashing. Craer and Hawkril parried, yelling, "Turn your blades! Overdukes of Aglirta command you!"
Then they saw what the guards had been menacing, and gasped: "Horns of the Lady!" in ragged unison.
The guards were clustered warily around a snarling, already wounded beast; the massed points of their glittering blades had been keeping it against the passage wall. The monster was a chaos of talons, scaly serpentine arms, tusks and fur, an undulating thing with the head of a boar and the build of a bull-and it was wearing torn scraps of armor that looked as if, before being torn or burst apart, it had been a match for what the guards were wearing.
The monster roared and charged. As the guards shouted in fear and leveled their blades against it, Hawkril ran to meet it, swinging his war-sword in a great slash that caught in those snarling jaws and drove the beast back to cower against the wall once more.
Talons clawed the air as the beast drooled blood and growled, but it made no move to rush forward again, now that the unbroken ring of steel had returned.
Blackgult eyed the dangling, clanging fragments of metal it wore and asked, "This was one of your fellows, hey? How did he-?"
A guard shook his head. 'Just groaned and hunkered down-and then started to… change. He screamed a lot, but we didn't want to… I mean…"
"Plague," Tshamarra said grimly. "Embra, can you-?"
"If Craer gets himself well away from me, perhaps. Every plague-healing's just a little different from those before," Embra replied sourly, peering at the wounded beast. "Three Above, hasn't Aglirta suffered enough?"
One of the guards staring at her started to tremble so violently that his fellows turned to look-whereupon foam burst from his mouth, his eyes started to weep blood, and he burst into a wild, lilting scream and swung his blade wildly-nay, blindly-in all directions.
As his fellow guards drew back from their newly stricken fellow and the beast saw room to move and started to growl its way forward again, something hissed down amongst them. It was swiftly followed by more somethings: strangely thick arrows tipped with gaping fangs!
"Serpent-arrows!" Hawkril bellowed, chopping at them with his war-sword as Craer cursed and dodged ahead, seeking to get under the place where the deadly hail of snakes was coming from-yon balcony!
"Three spit!" Tshamarra raged, ducking behind a screaming guard whose face had sprouted a snake. "Is there no end to this?"
Beside her, Embra sobbed out her own curse as she tore away a snake that had bitten her arm, and flung it as far as she could, reeling. Her arm was burning already, and she just hoped Craer was far enough away…
Crouching over her glowing Stone as more snakes rained down around her, striking many of the guards, Embra called on it to purge her of poison. It flared up in a brilliance so bright and sudden that she knew the other Dwaer was too close-even before its power shocked into her from behind, meeting the healing magic within her, and left her writhing, blinded, and gasping for breath on the floor.
"Em!" Hawkril roared, as if from a great distance-though she knew somehow that he was standing over her, shielding her with his own body. "Lady mine, are you well?"
"Now that," she snarled through her tears, shuddering, "was a stupid question." A fresh wave of pain made her whimper and twist uncontrollably, and then it ebbed and she could claw her way to her feet, enough to cling to him and scream, "Craer! Get away! Get away!"
"Gone!" came an answering shout, echoing from another room. Embra hissed in pain, gathered her strength, held the Dwaer to her breast-and tried again.
This time the Stone erupted in flames, bright tongues of magic that scorched nothing and chilled Embra to the bone. She lost her hold on Hawkril and fell to her knees, shrieking and clutching herself in rocking agony-and the flames that were not flames rose up in a bright blaze that lit the high gallery as bright as day.
"There!" a guard snarled, pointing up at the balcony. Blackgult crouched down behind Hawkril as the armaragor followed the guard's pointing arm.
Grinning down on them from on high were at least seven Serpent-priests with bows, and in their midst was a palace servant, a lass with a decanter of wine in her hand. As the priests reached for fresh arrows-war-shafts, this time; they seemed to have run out of enspelled snakes-she unstoppered it and poured it down on the heads of some of the guards struggling with the beast, laughing. "A little more plague, sirs?"
Embra was curled up in a ball, rocking and moaning gently, her body aglow with strange, crawling magic. Just above her, Blackgult was nearing the end of a careful, one-handed spellcasting, his other hand thrust into his daughter's lap, where her Dwaer was.
Hawk cursed at the sight of the laughing wench, and lumbered forward into a charge-but was met by a fiercer charge, as the beast that had been a guard burst over its wounded fellow armsmen, and struck Hawkril with a crash. As they struggled, talons raking and a warsword rising and falling in the midst of coils and tentacles, the Serpent-priests bent their bows and drew back arrows to their ears-arrows that were aimed at the Lady of Jewels and her father.
And Blackgult finished his spell with a brittle smile.
There was a sudden grinding rumble from overhead, a tremor that shook the room. On the balcony, priests were sent staggering, and more than one arrow flashed harmlessly away to crack against the far wall, shiver, and tumble in shards and slivers to the floor. The servant girl screamed- and went on screaming as the ceiling above the balcony split apart, in rents that ran as fast as the fingers of an anguished opening fist…
… and crashed down on the balcony, breaking it off the wall with a noise like angry thunder and shattering it in a huge heap of rolling stones on the floor below. Blackgult plucked up Embra and dragged her back from sliding, tumbling stones just in time.
Dust rose in a roiling cloud, out of which loomed a blood-spattered Hawkril, the shorn-off, pulped remnant of a tentacle still clinging to his shoulder-and a retching, softly sobbing bundle in his hand that proved to be Tshamarra.
Someone else came staggering out of the dust behind him, and Blackgult grabbed for his sword and discovered he'd lost it in the tumult.