by Ed Greenwood
'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.
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…
INGRYL AMBELTER, a god whispered in his head.
"Y-yes?"
YOU KNOW ME, AS ALL MEN KNOW ME.
"Yes, Dark One!"
YOU HAVE SEIZED POWER ENOUGH. I AM PLEASED. BE NOW THE "GREAT SERPENT," IF IT AMUSES YOU TO BE SO.
And the Thrael opened out around him, thrumming and vast and-thrilling. In the heart of clashing Dwaer-fire, even as Gadaster's attack stabbed into him and agonies that should have slain him surged through him, Ingryl Ambelter beheld… and gasped. So this was what he'd been missing! Not just Stones of trapped and frozen power, but a living web of magic, with awareness of its own, great-
AMUSE ME.
And suddenly that great weight of darkness was gone from his mind, without even bothering to utter, "Or else."
Ingryl Ambelter rose out of what he now realized had been an awestruck daze, and gathered his newfound power around himself. So this is what it was, to be a Great Serpent!
With a bellow of exulting laughter, the Spellmaster of All Aglirta hurled a bolt that should easily destroy his former master, Dwaer and all!
A flash was born beyond his spread fingertips, and then a mighty ro
ar arose and went on and on, as the far wall of the scorched chamber vanished, the ceiling fell into his bolt and suffered the same fate, and sunlight flooded in to show him room after passage after great chamber of the building beyond vanishing into rubble and emptiness, the sheared-off edges slowly collapsing inward with ground-shaking thunder.
The sunlight also flashed back from something small and bright and whirling, that hung in the air much closer to him. At a spot where Gadaster-in the Bowdragon maid's stolen body-might well have been.
Ingryl peered at it, and then nodded grimly. Gadaster had teleported away and left behind a shimmering wildfield-just as he himself had done when fleeing his lair, to keep the cursed Band of Four from following. Should he try to use his Dwaer to trace and follow, he'd be whirled away to a random elsewhere.
Ah, but what if he called on the Thrael instead?
Shimmering in his mind, it waited, but Ingryl saw in a moment both its lure-he could spend oblivious days racing along its flows, examining this new magic, and that-and its unsuitability.
No doubt he could trace his foe's teleport, given hours of looking or lucky anticipation of where Gadaster might be headed, so that he looked first in just the right place… But what, during those hours, would his onetime master be doing? Teleporting again almost immediately, for one thing…
Bah! What need had he now, to concern himself with such trifles? Let the skull-wizard strut around in his stolen wench-body! Ingryl Ambelter might have had to worry about a walking skeleton with wiles and a Dwaer, but the Great Serpent could laugh at the worst Gadaster Mulkyn could do!
Ambelter's own Dwaer blazed with a fierce, triumphant flame in his hand, and he laughed as he looked down at it, half-drunk on the dark, whispering power raging in him. It would always rage there, making him as restless and as mighty as he was now…
Letting him do-this!
He gave in to the whispering urgings and grew, transforming himself, towering up over what was left of the riven temple walls, becoming serpentine and giant, a Great Serpent in truth.