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.
In the grinding heart of their destruction, Ingryl Ambelter whirled, his rage and Dwaer-fire rising together.
Lord of the Serpent Rauldron grinned at him, the glowing web of his next Dwaer-weaving already flashing out toward the Spellmaster-and for just a moment, it seemed to Ingryl that he was looking into two mocking, glittering lights in the empty eyesockets of a skull rather than the flat, brown eyes of the priest.
And then his foe's Dwaer-attack fell on him with the crushing force of a hammer, stabbing through his crackling, flaming shieldings in a dozen places.
The Spellmaster shrieked in fear and spun frantic Dwaer-fire around himself, whirling it in a spiral that-yes, thank the Three! -caught up the bolts reaching for him and whisked them around and around him to augment his own armor.
Ambelter's own slashing counterbolt went hopelessly awry, twisted by the maelstrom of magic around him, and cracked its way along the front wall of the room, slamming the door open and scorching its way into the far corner, where it clawed mightily at the stones and spent itself.
His foe lashed him with a Dwaer-spell that rent his whirlwind as if it was nothing-a nothing that flashed blindingly and rocked the chamber again with the shrill shriek of its dying. The Spellmaster flung himself aside and spun himself a better shield, hurling another bolt at his foe-or so he desired Gadaster to think.
In truth, this bolt was but a shell of the one he'd hurled before. It took the same flashing path as its predecessor, as the man who was not Rauldron strode forward, weaving another Dwaer-spell, but veered out the open door while just a small and snarling offshoot raced on to the corner.
The other priests were in the audience chamber outside, eyeing each other in open fear as the battle raged in front of them-and Ambelter's draining bolt fell on them like the clutching fingers of a desperate man, splitting to strike every man there.
One of them had time to hurl a magic back into the chamber, a net of fanged serpent-mouths that Gadaster casually destroyed. He sent back a flood of lightning, and as the priests stood rooted, struggling against Ambelter's draining magic, that river of lightning struck them all at the knees, hurled them to the stone floor, and slew them. Ambelter's drain-tendrils greedily took their lives.
Even as Gadaster struck at him again and the Spellmaster was forced to retreat, his shieldings faltering and failing in showers of sparks and blossoming darkness, Ingryl Ambelter felt new energies-the stolen vitality of the priests on the threshold-come raging into him, followed by something else.
Something large, and deep, and dark. Something that made him tremble at its very touch. More power than he'd ever tasted before, shuddering into him, making him strong, and cold, and… and…