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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 ru
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 pi
The Stone flashed in the hands of the stranger-and abruptly she was gone, the force that pi
"Graul it, doesn't Darsar have enough mysterious and beautiful sorceresses?" Hawkril growled.
Craer gri
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, ru
Boazshyn of Ool was fast. He managed to conjure the clawed and fanged begi
Ingryl Ambelter gri
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," a