Barbara Hambly - [Darwath 08] - Elsewhere by Hambly

Author:Hambly
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2017-04-20T05:00:00+00:00

*

“Here.” Gil bent and picked up her gloves, turned sharply again. No doubt about it, there was something else in the ruins – a couple of somethings. One of them at least was large enough for her to hear the scratch and click of its claws on the overgrown stone underfoot, the crackle of vegetation. Ingold passed his hands swiftly along the walls to their left, the ruinous heap of stone to their right, while Lord Sketh whimpered.

“I sent Tarpaeis to keep the Guards away,” he keened. “He didn’t see me enter – Sisa came in soon after. My lady is jealous of even a word, a smile…”

Gil refrained from pointing out that the interaction she’d seen in the vestibule of the transporter room had been considerably more than a word or a smile. “You figure she saw Sissy go in and got Tarpy to to activate the transporter room by means of this other sigil?”

Greenish moonlight slipped along the slick curve of His Lordship’s retreating hairline as he nodded. “The boy would not have dared refuse her order. His sister is crippled from birth, and their mother stripped of her mind by the Dark Ones during the flight from the cities of the valley up to the Keep. It is only our patronage which keeps them from destitution. We—”

“Merlacks!” a male voice shouted, and whirling, Gil saw three men emerge from the inky shadows of the ruins. They wore dark jumpsuits – moonlight glinted on multiple zipper-tags – and held short swords that gleamed like ice. Hoods were pulled down close around their faces and what she at first thought was simply darkness within them she saw on second glance to be matte, non-reflective goggles and dark filter-masks over their mouths and noses.

All this she took in within half a second as they attacked, and one of them yelled “Keep the girl for questioning—“ in a language that only Ingold’s Spell of Tongues, laid on her long ago, let her comprehend. Sketh wailed in terror and would have bolted into the labyrinth had not Ingold grabbed him by the back of his night-shirt. With his free hand the wizard raised his staff and summoned a blinding bolt of witch-light that seemed to go straight through Gil’s eyelids – she had learned to shut her eyes when Ingold raised his staff like that. When she opened them the three black-clothed soldiers were falling back in confusion.

Ingold shouted, “We are here in peace—“ but the men were already fleeing. Gil wondered if they heard. One had dropped his sword, and it lay gleaming, and smoking very slightly, on the cracked pavement. “Don’t,” cautioned the wizard, as Gil reached for it. “It has spells of some kind on it, magic unfamiliar to me—”

He turned his head, listening. Not far away, among the ruins – the night seemed ten times blacker, after that lightning-flash – Gil heard one of the men scream. Another yelled in their alien tongue, “What the fuck is—?” and another gasped, “Oh, God—oh God—”

“Medic!” someone bellowed frantically.

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