Ed Greenwood - The Halls of Stormweather

"Because I know," she said.

He shook his head. "I don't understand, and I don't believe you truly do either, you're ill and confused. Consider what you're doing. You have no idea how to wield a sword. Even if we did fight-"

She deftly cut him on the cheek. "Draw, old serpent. Draw, or die like a sheep at the butcher's."

For an instant he stared in amazement at her manifest skill with her weapon. Then he stepped back and reached for the hilt of his long sword.

Something slammed into Shamur and knocked her staggering along the edge of the roof. One heel came down on empty air, and the weight of the rolled pieces of tapestry on her back tried its best to drag her over into space, but with a convulsive effort, she managed to throw herself forward onto the tiles.

She realized that, transfixed by her vision, she'd frozen, and Tazi had had to give her a push to keep her away from the stone warrior. She pivoted back toward the confrontation.

Smiling, Tazi advanced and retreated with such surefooted panache that one might almost have imagined she was fencing on the level floor of a training hall, not fighting on an incline where any loss of balance could result in a fatal fall. Her adversary crept after her clumsily. Guerren Bloodquill's music had granted it a sort of life, but here so high above the ground, not to the same degree as the gorgon. It hadn't transmuted the creature's substance into flesh.

Unfortunately, that very fact rendered Tazi's long sword all but useless. It rang and rebounded without leaving a scratch, or at least none large enough to see by moonlight. Meanwhile, other animate rainspouts and statues, some in the form of humans and others bestial, were converging on the scene. Once they surrounded the girl, her superior agility would no longer suffice to keep her safe from harm.

Shamur sprang up and rushed the stone warrior, who turned and swung his sword in a sweeping horizontal cut. She dived beneath the blow and rammed into him, wrestling him backward until he toppled over the edge of the drop.

She nearly went with him but caught herself in time. He shattered on the ground below with a satisfying crash.

"Don't bother to deny that you nodded off on me that last time," said Tazi, a little out of breath.

"Well, perhaps for a moment," said Shamur. "Our friend there advanced on me so slowly, I got bored."

The two women scrambled up the roof. Meanwhile, the stone noose around them tightened, the gaps between the living statues closing one by one until, Shamur observed, none remained.

"All right, then we'll break out," she said. "Help me pull down the fox." The statue in question was an anthropomorphic character from a fable, walking on two legs and clad in a foppish doublet and plumed hat. He carried a yarting in his hand, brandishing the stringed musical instrument like a war club.

The Uskevren women sprang at the fox, and, narrowly dodging both a swing of the yarting and the attacks of the figures on either side, grabbed him, dumped him on his upturned nose, and ran over him. Glancing back, Shamur saw the statues awkwardly turning to pursue. A couple lost their balance, toppled, and rolled rumbling down the roof.

Now that she was no longer in immediate peril, she wondered at her last vision. It certainly hadn't been an episode from her past. Was it possible it had been a glimpse of the future?

No, of course not, because the Thamalon in the glade had spoken the truth. She'd never loved him. Sometimes she'd felt that she despised him. But certainly never enough to kill him, the head of her house and the father of her children. Surely the experience had only been a meaningless phantasm.

Better to forget it, then, and concentrate on the task at hand. The mob of statuary was still hunting her and Tazi, and similar menaces shambled through the darkness ahead. Silently darting and freezing, availing themselves of the cover provided by the complex topography of the roof, mother and daughter managed to make their way toward the Hunting Garden unseen, even when they passed so near their foes that they could have reached out and touched them. Shamur grinned. She'd always enjoyed a good, perilous game of hide-and-seek.

Her pleasure shriveled when the music swelled. Bizarre as the chords and rhythms were, she, who had sat through hundreds of operas, could nonetheless discern that the performance was building toward a climax and she and Tazi were running out of time.

"Come on!" she whispered. "We have to hurry!" She strode forward. Something hissed, and the tiles gave way between her feet, creating a crater three yards across. She toppled helplessly forward until Tazi grabbed her, and, with a grunt, yanked her back to safety on the rim.

The hissing continued. Looking about, Shamur saw that holes were spontaneously opening all across the roof, with no discernible pattern and in such abundance that one could easily believe the whole surface might disintegrate in a matter of minutes.

"I never thought I'd say this," Tazi remarked, "but I may have had enough excitement for one evening. I'm ready for this chore to get easier."

If one of the holes opened directly beneath the women and dropped them down inside the Palace, they'd suffer broken bones at the very least. Before they resumed moving, they needed to discover some sort of warning sign that a given section of tiles was about to collapse. Finally, after several seconds of scrutiny, Shamur observed a subtle shimmering, nearly indistinguishable from the gleam of moonlight, which seemed to presage dissolution.

"Follow me!" she said.

Leaping, zigzagging, and backtracking as necessary, she and Tazi managed to avoid the yawning craters, but it was impossible to do that and keep away from the living statues at the same time. They had to rely on pure speed and agility to see them safely past their enemies. Sometimes these barely sufficed. An alabaster harpy with gilded wings clawed at Shamur, ripping her gown at the shoulder and lightly scoring the flesh beneath.

At last, when so much of the roof had already collapsed that the remainder resembled a spider's web, the Uskevren women reached the eastern edge. Without breaking stride, they leaped into space, grabbed branches of two of the nearest trees, and hauled themselves onto secure perches. A stone axeman clumping along in pursuit stared after them in seeming frustration, then dropped from sight when the tiles eroded beneath him.

Shamur looked down and gasped in dismay. The cloud of violet sparks was brighter than ever, and it was pulsing like a living thing, extruding arms of light and pulling them in again. She suspected that in another minute or so the tendrils would stop withdrawing. The mass would expand and expand until it drowned all Selgaunt in death and madness.

Recklessly, for there was no longer time for even a modicum of caution, she and Tazi scrambled through the treetops like squirrels, working their way to the limbs that overhung the front of the amphitheater. Once in position, they unslung the rolls of tapestry from their backs, spread them, and dropped them over certain of the singers and instrumentalists below. If the gods were kind, the squares of cloth, by cutting the performers off from the starlight, would so weaken the magic that it could no longer fling the interlopers away.

Tazi jumped down among the orchestra and started wresting the players' instruments from their grips. Shamur leaped onto the stage and moved to club the singers with the flat of her blade.

She silenced a tenor, then a mezzo-soprano, and still Bloodquill's sorcery hadn't displaced her. Tazi was right, she thought, grinning, it's a daft scheme, but by Mask, it's working!

Then a portion of the cloud spiraled high into the air, coalescing into a vaguely manlike form. The giant raised its huge, luminous fist, and she stood motionless, sneering, daring it to attack. Its hand plummeted, and she sprang aside. Despite the spark creature's insubstantial appearance, the blow shook the ground. She kept her feet, and, before the colossus could poise itself to attack again, she clubbed a member of the chorus who was just floundering clear of a section of tapestry.