Страница 111 из 111
Hawkril growled deep in his throat and laid a hand on the hilt of his warsword-and the folk of the docks melted away from around him with a deft wariness that bespoke familiarity with many brawls and spilled blood, leaving the regal party facing their foes.
A dozen men. Sirl mages, by their garments, wizards for hire. Behind them stood a row of wealthy merchants from the Isles of leirembor, smiling in triumph.
Although she knew very well that the leiremborans still sought revenge for Blackgult's failed invasion, and probably saw this as a perfect opportunity to either slaughter the ruler of Aglirta, or win from him concessions or a rich ransom, Tshamarra Talasorn assumed the role of the bewildered outlander, and asked crisply, "Yes, sirs? What is the meaning of this?"
The wizards merely smirked. One man of the Isles cleared his throat importantly, stepped forward to speak, and-kept silent as Craer and Hawkril drew their blades with a flourish and stepped forward to defend the regent. Behind them, Raulin swallowed nervously and drew his own sword.
Tshamarra raised her hands with a ready spell crackling warningly around them, and stepped forward. "Desist, wizards," she warned, "or there'll be slaughter this day on the docks of Sirlptar."
The mages sneered at her and shook back their sleeves to lift their own hands. The fires of risen magics crackled around them, too.
"Not so mighty without your Dwaer-Stones, are you?" one of them chuckled.
Embra Silvertree smiled back at him. "Oh, we manage," she replied softly-and soared up into Dragon-form, towering great and terrible amid the chaos of their bursting enchantments and frantic slaying-spells.
Screams broke over the docks of Sirlptar, and folk fled in all directions. Tshamarra smote one mage reeling with a spell, Craer brought down another with a hurled dagger to the throat, and above them the Dragon leaned down and breathed fire.
Her huge gout of rolling flame broke over three of the mages… and left nothing of them but dancing cinders. Others abruptly remembered important business elsewhere and vanished-either in a winking of mage-light or in a terrified sprint toward the nearest alley.
In the space of a gasped breath twelve Sirl wizards were gone from the docks, leaving a handful of terrified leiremborans frantically beating at their blazing robes and garments. One of them ran along the wharves with a terrified wail until he reached a spot where he could leap into the sea and douse the flames.
Embra let him go, but lowered her great head to look straight into the eyes of the remaining merchants, and said, "Come to Aglirta with hostile magic, or the words of the Serpent on your tongue, and you can expect a like reception." She used the power of the Dragon to magnify her voice so that it rolled out across Siriptar like thunder, carrying to every ear and for some miles beyond. "Those who come in peace, to trade, we welcome-but never mistake our welcome for weakness."
Embra's words boomed clearly in the taproom of the Sighing Gargoyle, causing every man there to stiffen and fall silent.
In a table in one corner of the room that Flaeros Delcamper would have recognized, four drinkers smiled a little ruefully at each other across a small forest of empty winebottles. Maelra Bowdragon shuddered, too, but Uncle Dolmur patted her thigh comfortingly under the table, and her father clapped her shoulder reassuringly above it, and she sighed a long sigh and then managed another smile.
"I suppose this means we'll have to invent something to trade in, or keep clear of the Vale henceforth," the Master of Bats observed.
"Oh, I don't know," Craer Delnbone replied, stepping forward out of the brief flash of a teleport-spell with Tshamarra Talasorn at his side. "We're short of bats in Aglirta."
He handed a chittering, wing-flapping bat back to Arkle Huldaerus, and added a trifle archly, "Though we won't be, if you keep sending them to spy on us in such excessively obvious numbers."
The four mages around the table eyed each other in startled silence for a moment-and then, suddenly, everyone started to laugh.