"Over here, Ladies!" Craer snapped.
Embra whirled, stabbing out with one hand, and brought the Dwaer-fire with her. It washed over a handful of spellweaving Serpent-priests, setting the clinging dust cloud aflame, and seemed to struggle with a fresh gout of the soft green glow spewed by the larger, gliding monster.
Craer shook his head. "The Snake-lovers certainly seem to have made the Silent House their home. Hawk, this beast would be-?"
"A sarath of the swamps. They must have used spells to tame it, but yon green light is magic of its own, that slows prey and foes, even puts small creatures to sleep or freezes them where they stand. The spell-bolts come from somewhere amid those spines along its back, but it feeds like a score of eels: with many little fanged sucking maws on its belly. We're food to it-and it can smother, too. I've only ever seen one before."
"Charming," Tshamarra remarked, as they backed away to the very tingling edge of Blackgult's Dwaer-barrier. "Any chance of getting these two horrors to fight each other?"
"Not while the priests are controlling them," Embra replied grimly. "I'll not be surprised if both these beasts turn out to be humans twisted by the plague."
"We haven't swords enough to fight both," Hawkril rumbled. "Any swift sorcery?"
"Litde time for that, either," Tshamarra snapped, watching the beasts close in. Neither the scuttling thing nor the gliding one were moving with any haste, but they were both perhaps four running strides distant now, no more, with grinning Serpent-priests behind them.
The Dwaer flashed in Embra's hand. "Close together! Hurry!"
The Lady Talasorn looked a silent question at the taller sorceress, who replied, "I'm shielding us, just as my father did himself. I'll try to link to his barrier. If I manage it, I can bring it forward to enclose us, leaving us protected by his Stone, and free ours to smite again."
The air glowed around them, a faint, pearly radiance that visibly threw back a gout of the sarath's green glow. Both monsters clawed at the air as if it was thickening around them.
Suddenly the sarath climbed the air in front of the overdukes, whirling up on its side to drift along in front of them, underbelly raised to gnaw hungrily at nothing with its dozens of lampreylike mouths.
"Well," Craer offered, studying those questing jaws narrowly, "this certainly beats getting drenched in beast-blood and wondering if you're unwittingly hacking up all the tasty bits. I-"
There was a sudden flash and roar from behind them, and the room rocked. The Four found themselves whirling through the air, away over the sarath and the rubble of the shattered door, the air around them gleaming like a great shell of armor.
Amid frantic Serpent-shouts, a strange, bubbling cry arose from behind them, liquid and slobbering and agonized. The overdukes crashed into the far wall of the chamber, drifting to slow stops against creaking, dust-spewing stone as their shared shielding-spell smote the wall and stuck there, held by a great thrusting force. With one accord, they struggled to turn around and see what was happening behind them. "Has the Griffon-?" Craer gasped, his words echoing with a strange, soft distortion.
The monsters were both torn, splattered heaps against the chamber walls, broken-bodied priests strewn among them. Beyond, in the leaping heart of Dwaer-fire…
Blackgult lay sprawled and bare, just as before-but awake now, staring fixedly at nothing above him, and screaming. His raw cry went on and on, neither rising nor falling, and its mindless anguish made all of the Four wince or shudder.
If the Golden Griffon's mind was still his own, he would surely have been staring at the slender young woman who floated just above him, barefoot and clad in a clinging black gown. Her hand was on Blackgult's Dwaer, and her eyes were on the Four.
Great flashing dark eyes, gloating openly as she smiled. She was beautiful, long raven-dark hair swirling around her as if with a life of its own as she sneered at Embra's attempts to wrestle the shielding into some sort of lance, to stab at her. The Lady of Jewels struggled against the force pinning the overdukes against the wall, snarling… and as she slowly forced the nickering shield forward, Hawkril and Craer raised their weapons and advanced with it. Three strides, four…
The Stone flashed in the hands of the stranger-and abruptly she was gone, the force that pinned the Four vanishing with her. Blackgult's screams ended in midbellow as the overdukes tumbled to the floor.
"Graul it, doesn't Darsar have enough mysterious and beautiful sorceresses?" Hawkril growled.
Craer grinned. "Ah, Hawk, there're never enough, you know! Why, I-"
Tshamarra caught hold of his arm with one hand and dealt him a stinging slap across the face with the other.
Then they were driven abruptly apart by the passage of a whirlwind between them: Embra, running hard toward Blackgult with their Dwaer glowing fitfully in her hands. "Father? Father?
Boazshyn of Ool was fast. He managed to conjure the clawed and fanged beginnings of a spell before the Dwaer swept him away-but he Died as surely as had tall and patrician Lord of the Serpent Yedren, who'd spread empty hands and said flatly, "I cannot fight you, mage, and I will not. But neither will I bow or plead to a wizard, particularly one of Silvertree's Dark Three."
Ingryl Ambelter grinned as the oily smoke that had been Boazshyn drifted away, and regarded his own tingling fingers. This was succeeding beyond his wildest hopes-if he drank the lives of these fools with the Dwaer, some measure of their power passed into him! Busily slaying Serpent-priests just might be in truth the road to truly taking the mantle of the Great Serpent.
Power… this was power, more than he'd ever felt before. Power in and of him, not Dwaer-flow… might of his own. He could feel the flows of natural energies around him now, faint but ceaseless. His adopted serpent-head felt… right, as if it had always been part of him. Yes, increasingly so, it felt fitting and proper.
There came another respectful knock at the door. "Lord Ambelter," announced the by now familiar voice of the tremulous priest he'd made doorguard, "to you have come the priests Rauldron of Tselgara, Maskalos and Cheldraem of Ibryn, Pheltarth of Adelnwater, and Old Nael of Ridirym. They await your pleasure without."
"Rauldron may enter," Ambelter called, making his voice loud, imperious, and grandly welcoming. "We shall speak alone, ere you admit the others."
The doorpriest knew by now to close the door firmly between each arrival, and keep the other priests well back from it. Long-laid and powerful enchantments made scrying into this chamber difficult; no one would be casually eavesdropping from outside. Wherefore Rauldron, like all of the others before him, was doomed.
The Spellmaster of All Aglirta smiled as the doors opened to admit a slightly frowning priest. Handsome, dark-haired, and keen-featured, with eyes that darted everywhere. Yet empty-handed, and alone. Ambelter's smile broadened. This was truly like skewering flatfish from a feast platter…
"Welcome, Lord Rauldron," he began, gesturing toward the front bench. "Though unfamiliar to you, I have been charged with a most sacred mission by Caronthom 'Fangmaster' and Raunthur the Wise. It involves you and all of the other important priests of our faith, and-"
The doors were closing. Ambelter strode to the bench, deliberately exposing his well-shielded back to his guest. When he was seated, Rauldron should be in just the right spot for an easy Dwaer-drain. Why, he was getting quite deft at this…
The fire snatched the Spellmaster off his feet, shredding his shieldings as if they were nothing more than mist, and flung him headlong into the bench with bone-shattering force.
Luckily, Ingryl's own hand was already on his Dwaer, and his hastily spun shield drove the bench before him, shattering it into great shards as it smashed into the next bench, and that one in turn to the next.