"Hope that he's healed?"
"Hope that what awakens is still Ezendor Blackgult, and not something else," the Lady Silvertree replied grimly, advancing to where she could peer all around the large chamber. "Find the doors, all of them. We'd best mount a guard."
"Embra," Craer said warningly, pointing. A snake had reared up in the dust just inside one open doorway, regarding them with glittering eyes. Unhesitatingly, Embra blasted it to oily smoke with a Dwaer-bolt. Blackgult's Stone and shielding both flared into answering light, but seemed otherwise unaffected.
'Just a snake, or Serpent-work?" Tshamarra asked, as Craer and Hawkril advanced on that door, blades ready in their hands.
"Serpent-work," the Lady of Jewels replied shortly. "That was a spy, spell-linked back to someone else; I hope I gave him a searing headache. Come, Tash, let's spell-seal these other doors."
The armaragor peered through the open archway- "No door left here, not for years. Dark and empty passage, opens out fairly soon… and we forgot torches."
"So we did," Embra said with a sigh, turning away from the door she and Tshamarra had just sealed, tracing it with glowing fingertips in unison with the Stone held between them. "We'll have to conjure up a door, then, and-"
Whatever else she was going to say was lost forever in a sudden hissing flood. Dozens of serpent-arrows came streaking along the passage and through the doorless arch in a deadly storm. They sizzled to ashes where they struck Blackgult's shielding, but otherwise broke from their racing flights in midchamber to whirl into separate strikes at the Four, darting like wasps.
The Dwaer flashed in Embra and Tshamarra's shared grasp, and from both sorceresses a gigantic cloak of flame snarled up-and fell over the hissing missiles.
Flaming snakes writhed and tumbled in all directions, falling as embers and whirling scraps of ash, but many of the rigid serpents still swooped and soared. Craer sprang high to slash one to ribbons in midair with two daggers, and Hawkril waited warily, warsword raised, to hack down any snake-shaft that darted through the pursuing claws of Dwaer-flame.
Only one did, and his slash struck it aside just enough for him to grasp its body and fling it to the floor. The armaragor stamped on its head, hard, and whirled away from the feebly wriggling remains-just as the door Embra and Tshamarra had sealed burst with a roar of dust, rubble and searing magic.
Serpent-priests came leaping through that fog. With a shout of glee Craer sprang to meet them, his blade flashing and Hawkril right behind him. A half-seen priest stopped and raised a bow. Before he could fire a serpent Embra sent a Dwaer-blast into his face-and then whirled to fire another, larger bolt at something large, bony, and bestial that was crawling slowly in through the doorway.
It quivered, seemed to shudder soundlessly… and kept coming, as large as a one-horse cart, its low body covered with angled plates of bone.
Tshamarra cursed softly and backed away from the advancing bulk. "What is it?"
"Hawk!" Embra called sharply. "Back here, please! I like not the look of-"
Another monstrous something loomed up out of the drifting dust of the felled door, gliding through the ranks of Serpent-priests, and a soft green glow of magic wafted out from it, washing over the procurer and a priest he was busily slaying.
They stiffened and groaned in unison. Then the Serpent-man toppled, trailing blood, and Craer ducked away, falling heavily amid the rubble and losing the gory dagger he'd just used. On his hands and knees he scrambled clumsily but hastily back to Embra.
A Serpent-priest ran after the procurer, but Hawkril plucked up a fallen stone and hurled it hard, taking the man in the face and hurling him back into a hard landing on the floor.
Craer slithered to Embra's feet, his voice a raw gasp. "Whatever that is, its magic numbs… weakens… Three Above, it still hurts…"
Tshamarra hastily snatched the Dwaer from Embra and bent down to touch Craer's shoulder with it.
The Lady of Jewels eyed both advancing monsters, and frowned. "Hawk," she asked quietly, "what are these beasts?"
"Fearsome monsters, Lady," Craer offered brightly, shaking still-numbed hands as he smiled his thanks up at the Lady Talasorn. Embra didn't even bother to sigh.
The armaragor pointed at the bone-plated, crablike creature advancing slowly toward them from the archway. Serpent-priests could be seen advancing in its wake, keeping well back. "Yon's a dargauth, moving about as fast as such things can move. 'Tis like a gigantic scorpion without a stinging tail. Those two pincer-claws up front are what it slays with; they can easily crush warriors, armor and all. See the dark syrup dripping from its barbs? Smeared on… poison, methinks."
"Plague-taint," Tshamarra murmured. "Let's blast it."
Embra nodded, and they directed the full fury of the Dwaer on the crablike dargauth as they backed away, eyeing the other monster now. Blackgult's circling Stone flashed at each orbit, tugging at the fire the sorceresses of the Four were sending.
"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.