Ed Greenwood - The Halls of Stormweather

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.

The women also encountered more of the Hulorn's retainers, though never in any condition to aid them. Most had fallen victim to the same trance that had overtaken the majority of the people in the amphitheater and proved resistant to any effort to rouse them. Others lay dismembered, slain by some beast now roaming the building. One fellow-or woman, it was hard to tell-looked as if something had reached down his throat and turned him inside out. Several more had changed into inert figures of gnarled wood, red clay, glass, or, in one instance, a patchwork of all three.

Tazi studied the carnage with ghoulish fascination. "This is not a spectacle being staged for your amusement," Shamur told her in disgust. "These were innocent people, senselessly slaughtered."

"If I sniffle and dab at my eyes, will it bring them back to life?" Tazi replied. "Besides, if it's all so tragic, why are you looking so bright-eyed and chipper?"

"I'm not," Shamur said, yet, now that Tazi had prompted her to consider herself, she couldn't help wondering if the girl was right. Oh, she felt all the emotions that any ordinary woman would if trapped in the same ghastly situation. Pity for the victims of Bloodquill's magic. Anxiety for Tazi's life and her own. But along with the fear came a delicious sharpening of the senses. The addictive intensity in pursuit of which a lass from one of the wealthiest families in Selgaunt had embraced the perilous life of a thief.

She was still trying to banish or at least conceal her exhilaration when she and Tazi passed a mirror. The reflections inside the glass lay at right angles to their sources, as if the two women were walking straight up a wal*****

No. Shamur wasn't looking at her own recumbent reflection, not anymore. She was standing beside the ornately carved canopy bed of a young woman who looked exactly like her and had even borne her name. Her grand-niece, of whom she'd grown fond in the tendays since she'd slipped back into Selgaunt, and who had mysteriously and quite unexpectedly died in the night.

Hook-nosed, curly bearded Lindrian, Shamur's nephew and the dead girl's father, hammered his temple with the palm of his hand. "Why?" he sobbed. "Why, why, why?"

"To destroy us," Fendo growled. He was Shamur's brother, now hideously aged to a bloated, gouty old man and head of the Karn family. Despite his physical decline, his wits remained as keen as ever, and Shamur didn't doubt that his inference was correct. Somehow, his granddaughter had been murdered.

Once Shamur had come to terms with the fact that the interplay of magical forces in the crypt had somehow exiled her in the future, she'd decided to return home and discover what had become of her family. It ought to be safe enough if she was careful. Even after half a century, it was unlikely that the other merchant noble families had forgotten or forgiven her thefts, but they no doubt assumed her dead, or at least withered into a doddering crone.

When she'd revealed herself to Fendo, he'd welcomed her with open arms. Still, all was far from well. The Karns had recently experienced a succession of disastrous business reversals, and now stood on the brink of bankruptcy. Fendo firmly believed some hidden enemy had engineered the family's ruin, but had had no success in discovering the culprit's identity.

Shamur contemplated a new series of robberies, but the Karns' debts were so enormous that even she couldn't steal enough to keep them afloat. The only hope was an alliance by marriage with another merchant noble house willing to provide a massive infusion of cash.

Happily, Thamalon Uskevren then sued for the hand of Lindrian's daughter, the only marriageable child in the family. The Uskevren were rich, but many of their peers still scorned them for once trafficking with pirates. Perhaps Thamalon was willing to pay dearly for a Karn bride because he hoped the union would help his own house regain respectability. Or conceivably, as he professed, he truly loved the girl. Either way, it didn't matter. What did matter was that deliverance was at hand.

Or it had been. Until the Karns' unknown foe had employed poison or black magic to snatch it away. Now…

Fendo gripped Shamur's arm with his dry, feeble, liver-spotted hand. Surprised, she turned to face him, and was taken aback by the feverish glitter in his rheumy eyes.