The Halls of Stormweather s-1 Page 7

  "Nonsense. I can manage for myself, and I'll do so more easily knowing you're safe."

  "Nobody will be truly safe until the enchantment is broken," Tazi retorted. "Anyway, I'm not missing out on the excitement. I'm coming with you, and that's that."

  Obviously no argument could dissuade her. Shamur would simply have to hope that no further dangers would present themselves. "Very well," she said, then turned to the Foxmantles. "My dears, if you'll accompany us, we'll find you some shelter."

  The four noblewomen proceeded down a promising-looking corridor and soon found a small storeroom with a sturdy door. Blubbering, Pelenza clutched at Shamur when she tried to leave. The Uskevren matriarch extricated herself as gently as her impatience would allow; then she and Tazi made their exit.

  "And that's what you want me to be like," said Tazi as she and her mother headed back up the hallway, "those two weepy, addle-pated geese."

  "I concede, they're high-strung," Shamur replied, peering about, checking for potential threats. So far, she saw none, though strangely, the temperature in the corridor seemed to fluctuate with every stride, cold one instant and hot the next. "Even so, they've never brought discredit on their families by drinking to excess in the lowest, filthiest taverns on the waterfront or lifting their skirts for every likkerish dolt who happens along."

  "What happened to turn you into such a dried-up prig?" Tazi retorted. "Is it because you're jealous of Father's dalliances? I can't imagine why. You certainly don't show any sign of wanting him in your own bed." They reentered the foyer, where the madman still lay unconscious on the floor.

  "We are not going to discuss my relationship with your father," Shamur said icily.

  A groaning, grinding sound arose from the center of the chamber.

  Shamur pivoted toward the noise. Bands of color-gleaming, metallic blue and black-streamed through the creamy marble form of the gorgon half of Rauthauvyr's statue. In a matter of seconds, it became a living creature, a scaly bull-like horror that stepped off its pedestal almost daintily, its scarlet eyes glowing, its tail twitching, and greenish vapor puffing from its nostri*****

  Suddenly Shamur was facing a different monstrosity, a huge, vaguely man-shaped thing seemingly made of darkness. Only its fangs and long, jagged claws reflected the light of the lanterns.

  It had appeared out of nowhere shortly after the explorers entered the ancient crypt, but even so, everyone reacted quickly. The men-at-arms readied their weapons, and the priests and sorcerers cast spells.

  The guardian spirit pounced in among the adventurers and started killing. Neither their blades nor their incantations seemed to hinder it in the slightest. But the magic did have an effect. Around the vault stood immense yet intricate constructions built of bronze rods and faceted crystal spheres. No one in the party, not even canny old Anax of Oghma, had had any idea of their purpose. Now, however, it became obvious that they were apparatuses of some sort, charged with arcane energies. The adventurers' sorceries had somehow roused them. Dazzling, crackling bolts of power flared from the orbs and arced about the chamber, adding to the general confusion.

  A swipe of the demon's inky hand sent Sorn Notched-blade's head flying from his shoulders. Then the horror dropped to all fours, lunged, and caught Kavith the Blue in its teeth. It reared up, lashing its head back and forth, and the magician dropped from its jaws in pieces. Meanwhile the sizzling blazes of power leaped brighter and brighter, faster and faster. The crypt itself began to tremble.

  Stalking on silent feet, wishing she hadn't needed to sell Albruin two months ago to extricate her comrades from a predicament almost as dire as this, Shamur circled to take the shadowy colossus from behind. The demon, however, rendered her efforts useless by abruptly plunging away from her and through the ranks of its nearest opponents to charge Eskander, who was piercing it with arrow after arrow. Shamur knew it wasn't cowardice that had prompted the thin, easygoing brigand-turned-treasure-hunter to hang back and use his longbow. He'd done it because his sword wasn't magical, but his silver-headed shafts were.

  She also knew, as she abruptly recalled that she'd lived through this ordeal before, what would happen next. Perhaps she screamed even before it did.

  Eskander tried to dodge the demon, but he was too slow. The spirit struck with its left hand and impaled the archer's torso on three of its claws. That had likely been enough to kill him instantly, but, perhaps enraged, its head and shoulders bristling with his arrows, the shadowy giant swung him up and down, up and down, battering the only man Shamur had ever truly loved-or ever would-against the heaving sandstone floor.

  Shamur charged the guardian, in her anguish scarcely noticing that the vault was now shaking so hard that it was no longer possible to run in a straight line. The silver amulet she'd stolen from Gundar's hoard bounced against her breasts. Suspecting it to be magical, she'd paid a sage to examine it shortly after her hasty flight years before. He hadn't been able to determine its precise purpose but opined that it might be some manner of protective device, and so she'd elected to hold on to it.

  The demon whirled to face her, its agility uncanny in so hulking a creature. Its dark hand lashed out. She dived forward, trying to dodge the blow and get inside the giant's reach. She did avoid the spirit's claws, but its palm smashed into her, flung her off her feet, and tumbled her across the quaking floor.

  For a moment she lay stunned, watching stupidly as jagged cracks spread across the rib vault of the ceiling, and the tortured stonework groaned like a god in agony. The demon loomed above her, claws poised to seize her, rend her, and she remembered that she had to keep fighting. When she tried to raise her sword, though, she found it was gone and her limbs were sluggish from shock and pain.

  The guardian reached for her, and chunks of stone began to rain down from the ceiling. One of the flares of power from the sorcerous mechanisms struck the pearl in the center of the amulet, and abruptly everything was different.

  The demon was gone, and the cave-in was over, though it had buried much of the chamber before it ran its course, demolishing the bronze-and-crystal constructs in the process. Evidently it had also opened some fissures from the crypt to the surface, because a bit of wan gray light was leaking in from somewhere to replace the illumination of the lanterns, none of which were burning anymore.

  Dazed and bewildered, Shamur struggled to her feet and cast about for her companions. And she found them, those who weren't buried beneath piles of rubble, anyway.

  They were all dead. That in itself grieved but failed to surprise her. The enigma, the grim marvel that made her blink and wonder if she was dreaming, was that they all looked as if they'd been dead for decades. Their remaining flesh was withered and leathery, their eye sockets empty, their garments rotten, their weapons and armor rusty and corroded. Dust covered all.

  Numb with shock and sorrow, she couldn't even guess what the condition of the corpses might portend. She walked to the heap of stone that presumably covered Eskander's remains and stood there with her head bowed for a time. Then she made her way out into the daylight.

  *****

  "Get back!" Tazi said.

  Shamur did back slowly away from the gorgon, meanwhile giving her head a shake to clear it. It had been excruciating to relive the slaughter of Eskander and her friends, but she was back in the present now, facing a beast that might well prove as formidable as the guardian of the crypt had been, and this time, her daughter's life was at stake.

  The scaly, taurine creature, a third again as tall as a man, turned about, eyeing its surroundings dubiously. Perhaps, Shamur thought, it was feeling so perplexed that it would let a pair of human women withdraw unchallenged. But then, cautiously, stealthily as they were moving, they somehow attracted the gorgon's attention. It glared directly at them, its blank crimson eyes flaring brighter. It bared its mouthful of fangs and stamped its hoof, cracking the terrazzo.

  Grinning fiercely, the long sword in one hand and the throwing knife she habitually carried about her
person in the other, Tazi interposed herself between the blue bull and her mother. Of course. The girl believed that of the two of them, she was the only trained combatant, and it was unquestionable that she was the only one armed.

  Shamur peered about the chamber, seeking a weapon. There was an abundance of art objects that might serve to bludgeon another crazed lackey but nothing that could possibly harm a towering predator with a hide of natural scale armor.

  The gorgon bellowed, lowered its head, and charged. Tazi poised herself to meet it. Hard as it was to abandon the girl to fight alone, Shamur forced herself to turn and dash down the corridor that led to the theater.

  There had been guards in the Palace of Beauty before the opera commenced. Surely they-and their swords-must be somewhere on the premises still. She prayed Tazi could hold out long enough for her to find one.

  Shamur peered into one chamber and alcove after another, to no avail. Until an orc emerged from a doorway immediately ahead of her.

  The squat, pig-faced creature in the garish leather rags of orange and purple no more belonged in Selgaunt than had the yellow spider. Perhaps it too was a work of art come alive, or conceivably some other door or window in the Palace of Beauty now opened on one of the wilderness areas such semihuman marauders normally inhabited. In any case, Shamur didn't care where it had come from, only that it had a broadsword in its dirty-nailed, greenish hand.

  Not giving it time to come on guard, Shamur sprang in close and kicked it in the crotch. She grabbed it by the front of its filthy tunic and butted it in the face. The impact hurt her own head a little, but the orc's legs buckled beneath it, its bloody snout flattened and skewed to one side, its red eyes crossed. Shamur jerked the broadsword from its grasp, then allowed the orc to drop to the floor.

  As she raced back to the foyer, she couldn't help wondering if she was up to the task before her. It had been child's play to trip the befuddled fellow with the antlers, and she'd been lucky enough to catch the orc by surprise. But only a highly skilled warrior could hope to best an adversary as fearsome as a gorgon, and until this moment, she hadn't touched a sword in twenty-six years.

  Yes, damn it, rusty or not, she would win! She could tell from the sounds issuing from the archway up ahead-the grunting and snorting, the clatter of hoofs, the clank of steel against the bull's armor-that Tazi was still fighting, still alive, and with the girl's welfare at hazard, failure was unthinkable.

  Her skirt flapping around her legs and the slick soles of her gray dress slippers skidding on the polished floor, Shamur plunged back into the chamber. At some point during the struggle, the gorgon had knocked over the remainder of the sculpture that had given it birth-Shamur was fleetingly surprised that she hadn't heard the crash-and now the creature and Tazi were fighting amid the pieces. The girl's bodice was torn, displaying a long, bloody graze across her ribs, while the gorgon bore a pair of shallow cuts, one atop its nose and the other on its flank.

  Hearing Shamur's arrival, Tazi glanced around. "No, Mother!" she panted. "Stay out of-"

  The gorgon took advantage of the girl's distraction, stepped in, and tossed its head, sweeping its horns in a murderous arc. "Tazi!" Shamur screamed.

  Tazi barely jerked back around in time to parry. But the impact of horn on blade sent her staggering, and the gorgon trotted after her, head held low for a thrust at her belly.

  Shamur plunged forward, yelling at the top of her lungs to draw the beast's attention. Thanks be to the gods, it spun in her direction, and now all she had to worry about was preserving her own life.

  The giant bull loomed over her like a mountain. She dodged its first stroke clumsily, but after that it was all right. Something woke inside her; she could feel the tempo of the gorgon's movements and anticipate what it would do next. Her hand remembered how to cut, thrust, feint, and parry, and her feet fell into the deceptive dance of advance, sidestep, and retreat. She actually managed to nick the behemoth's neck, and when it finally attempted an all-out charge to smash her down and trample her, she spun lightly out of the way and cut it again.

  Tazi attacked the gorgon from the other flank. The two women worked as a team, one distracting the bull while the other slipped in an attack or retreated out of danger. Confused, grunting, its sweat and blood suffusing the air with a vile fetor, the gigantic bull pivoted back and forth. Finally it whirled, ran across the room, then turned to face its human foes once more.

  "Ha!" Tazi cried. "We scared it!" The gorgon's chest swelled as it drew in a deep breath.

  At the last possible instant, Shamur, who had never before encountered a gorgon, remembered the stories she'd heard about them. She dived at her daughter, tackled her, and carried her to the side.

  The gorgon blew a cone of green, streaming vapor from its mouth and nostrils. The roiling fumes missed Shamur and Tazi by inches, but the unconscious man on the floor was less fortunate. When the monster's breath washed over him, his flesh turned dull gray, petrifying. In seconds, he became a lifeless figure of stone.

  The gorgon bellowed and charged. The Uskevren women scrambled out of its path, leaped to their feet, and resumed fighting.

  After another minute, Shamur's heart was pounding, and the breath rasped in her throat. She was tiring, beginning to slow, and no doubt, her youth notwithstanding, the same was true of Tazi. Their immense foe seemed as strong and quick as ever. They needed to dispatch it quickly, before the tide of battle turned against them.

  The problem was those cursed scales, which blunted the force of every sword stroke. The creature's only vulnerable spot seemed to be its eyes, but it guarded those so well that despite repeated efforts, neither woman had managed to strike them.

  Where else then? Shamur wondered as she sprang backward, narrowly evading a strike that would have plunged a horn completely through her torso. Where else can I hit it and make the blow count? Her memory conjured up the sculpture as it had looked at the beginning of the evening.

  The sculptor had depicted the mounted Rauthauvyr laying his long sword across the gorgon's back. If the spot hadn't spontaneously healed over when the beast came to life, there might be a sort of groove up there, free of scales.

  "Keep it busy!" she cried. Tazi did just that, assailing it so furiously that she left herself not the slightest margin for error. One slip and the gorgon would surely bury its horns in her vitals.

  Shamur clamped her sword between her teeth, ran at the creature's flank, and leaped high, grabbing for the ridge of its spine as, in happier days, she'd grabbed for windowsills or dangling strands of ivy that would help her climb a wall.

  She found her handhold and heaved herself up, straddling the gorgon as she would a horse. The bull gave an almost comical grunt of surprise and turned its head to peer at her.

  She looked for a notch free of scales and couldn't find it. Unable to reach her with its horns, the gorgon sucked in air. In another second, it was going to breathe on her, but having gotten this far, she had no intention of abandoning her perch. She doubted the brute would permit her to vault up on its back a second time.

  She twisted around and found the groove behind her. Gripping the broadsword with both hands, she drove it down.

  The bull screamed and tossed its head, the green vapor fountaining harmlessly up against the ceiling, then collapsed. Shamur frantically dived clear, rolling when she hit the floor.

  She wrenched herself around to scrutinize the gorgon. It lay motionless, and after a few seconds, she concluded it was dead.

  A smile crept over her face. It was good to know she could still wield a sword. Over the years, she had wondered if her old skills had deserted her for want of practice. Evidently not.

  "Mother!" Tazi said. She was so winded, she was wheezing, but even so, there was no mistaking the astonishment in her voice. "How… where, when did you learn to fight like that?"

  Shamur's satisfaction withered into dismay. Obviously, there had been no help for it-though one could squash a spider and feign clumsiness at the same time
, slaying a gorgon was a different matter-but still, here was precisely the question she'd wished to avoid.

  "I don't know how to fight, of course. I simply did the best I could in an emergency. I suppose I'm fortunate that my dancing and riding lessons have kept me limber."

  'That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard," Tazi said, picking up her throwing knife from the floor. "Nobody handles a weapon the way you did without training and experience."

  "Well, I've watched your father and brothers fence," Shamur said. She took hold of the broadsword's leather-wrapped hilt and, with considerable effort, dragged it from the gorgon's corpse. "I tried to copy what they do."

  "And I still say that's a load of pig manure." Abruptly Shamur noticed something had changed. Changed for the worse, almost undoubtedly, though at that moment she welcomed anything that might serve to divert Tazi's attention. "The music is louder," she said.

  Tazi frowned and cocked her head, listening for herself. "You're right. I suppose it means the magic's getting stronger."

  "Yes. Which makes it even more desirable that we stop the opera without further delay, and certainly before it reaches its conclusion. If my suspicions are right, and it's weaving a kind of spell, then chances are excellent that all the oddities we've encountered thus far are merely preliminaries. The truly potent effects will occur at the end."

  As they headed for the rear of the building and the amphitheater beyond, they encountered a series of disquieting marvels. The orc Shamur had beaten unconscious was gone but had left a tarry, malodorous stain on the floor, as if it had simply melted away. A tantan floated jingling down a passageway. Small pine trees grew from the molded ceiling of one chamber, and a troop of piebald imps played kickball with a severed head in another. Andeth's theater had become a realm of coral formations and green water in which countless iridescent fish swam to and fro. Tazi gingerly poked her forefinger into the doorway, and the digit came away wet.