Ричард Байерс - Dissolution

When Pharaun returned to House Mizzrym an hour later, his hair and garments were as immaculate as ever, but he reeked of wine and walked with a slightly weaving and excessively careful tread. Evidently he'd been drinking his troubles away. Perfect. As it had been instructed, the zombie stepped out of a doorway at the other end of the hall. Its arms were extended in a beseeching gesture. Pharaun took a few steps toward it and faltered. Drunk or not, he had finally noticed that, despite Greyanna's efforts to keep it warm, it was moving stiffly, awkwardly, as Sabal, even in the throes of her illness, never had. But he'd spotted the anomaly too late. He'd already advanced to the very center of the trap. Greyanna whispered a spell of paralysis. Pharaun staggered as his muscles all clenched at once. The fighters swarmed out of their hiding places, surrounded him, clubbed him repeatedly, and threw him down beneath them. She laughed with delight. Then her henchmen, more or less clumped in a pile on the floor, cried out in surprise and consternation. They started to stand up, and she saw that Pharaun did not lie crushed, bloody, and helpless on the floor beneath them. Impossible as it seemed, somehow he'd resisted the paralysis, then used his wizardry to extricate himself from the midst of his attackers.

Knowing that Sabal was dead, Pharaun must likewise assume that without the aegis of a high priestess he could no longer survive in House Mizzrym. Certainly he couldn't count on his vicious mother, who hadn't bestirred herself to save one daughter from another, to do more for a paltry son. He was surely running back toward the exit. «That way! Fast!» Greyanna shouted, pointing, goading her agents into motion. When they rounded a corner, they saw Pharaun sprinting along ahead of them, his piwafwi billowing out behind him. He wasn't weaving or stumbling—evidently desperation had cured his intoxication—but he was clutching his head, and leaving a trail of bloody drops on the polished floor. Evidently all the bludgeoning had done at least a little good. Greyanna's minions shot their hand crossbows, but the darts bounced off the wizard's cloak, which had obviously been enchanted to serve as armor. She stopped running long enough to conjure a blaze of fire under Pharaun's feet. Her assassins cried out and shielded their eyes against the glare. Though surely burned, her brother stayed on his feet and kept going. The flames winked out behind him as suddenly as they'd appeared. The chase rounded another corner. Ahead of Pharaun was an adamantine double door, which swung open seemingly of its own accord. In reality, Greyanna knew, the wizard had used his silver-and-jet Mizzrym House token to open it. She tried to use her own insignia to slam it shut again, but she was just out of range, Pharaun plunged through the exit. He was on the landing, a sort of balcony from which the occupants of the stalactite castle that was House Mizzrym could look down on the city. As was the custom, a company of guards stood watch there, and Greyanna screamed for them to stop the mage.

They no doubt intended to be obey. She was a high priestess and he, a mere male, and manifestly trying to run away to boot. But alas, since their primary function was to look for miscreants trying to enter the castle, Pharaun had taken them by surprise. He had time to conjure some sort of hindering spell and dash on.

When Greyanna made it to the door, she saw what manner of hindrance the fugitive had chosen. The guards were all bewildered, some standing stupefied or milling aimlessly, a couple fighting with each other.

A clattering, followed a split second later by grunts and cries of pain, snapped her head around to the right. At the far end of the landing, a second contingent of sentries also looked at least temporarily incapacitated, these because Pharaun had pelted them with a conjured barrage of ice. He disappeared down the exit they'd been guarding, the winding crystal staircase, gorgeous with magical luminescence, which connected House Mizzrym with the cave floor below. Greyanna felt a twinge of annoyance, but only that. Apparently she wasn't going to get a chance to torture Pharaun, but he was unquestionably going to die. He really had nowhere to run, and if the wretch weren't mired in a blind panic, he'd know it. At least she could deliver the stroke that would seal his doom. She hurried to the edge of the landing, saw that the blistered, bloody-headed fool was better than halfway down the radiant diamond steps, and pronounced, as quickly as possible, the long, awkward arcane word that would make the staircase vanish. That alone wouldn't kill him unless he lost his head. The ability to levitate granted by the same brooch that allowed him to pass through the House's doors would keep him from falling. Limited to strictly vertical movement, however, he ought to make an easy mark for spells and arrows. She spoke the final syllable. Just as the steps seemed to pop like a bubble, Pharaun leaped, his long legs making him look like a pair of scissors spread to the maximum possible width. He barely made it onto the flattened apex of the gigantic stalagmite that served as the stairs lower terminus.

Greyanna was impressed. That jump was an impressive display of athleticism for a battered scholar of hedonistic habits. Not that it would do him any good. He really had run to the end of his race. She leaned out and shouted for the foulwings to kill him. Winded, still stumbling off-balance from hurdling across the empty space, Pharaun surely couldn't fend off both of them at once.

Grotesque winged predators that commonly reeked of their caustic ammonia breath, the foulwings bespoke the Mizzryms power and magical prowess and lent the first step on the path to their citadel a certain style that mere soldiers could not match. They also made terrifying watchbeasts. With a snap of their clawed, batlike wings, in no wise hindered by their lack of legs, they spun their long-necked bodies around to loom over Pharaun. Forked snouts with fanged jaws at the end of either branch came questing hungrily down. From her perch, Greyanna looked on with a rapacity no less keen than theirs, albeit a rapacity of the soul. Pharaun shouted something. Greyanna couldn't quite make it out, but it didn't seem to be a magical word, just a cry of fear or a desperate plea for mercy—a plea the giant beasts would not heed.

Except that they did. They hesitated, and he lifted his hands. Their deadly jaws played delicately about his fingers, taking in his scent. She cried again for the brutes to kill him. They twisted their heads around to look at her, but he spoke to them once more, and they ignored her command.

Greyanna stared in amazement. Pharaun had no doubt had some limited contact with the foulwings, for after all, he lived in the same castle with them, but she knew he'd never ridden one. Only the females of House Mizzrym enjoyed that privilege, and it was only by riding that you established genuine mastery over the creatures. How, then, could he possibly enjoy a rapport with them deeper than her own?

Pharaun scrambled onto a foulwing's back, and both it and its fellow sprang into the air. Obviously her brother had managed to dissolve the enchantment that made the beasts want to sit contentedly at their post. The wizard managed his mount more deftly than Greyanna herself could have done without benefit of saddle, bridle, and goad. He shot her a mocking grin as he turned to flee. The other, riderless foulwing soared and swooped aimlessly, enjoying its liberty. Greyanna shook off her stunned disbelief. She still desperately wanted to know how Pharaun had learned to ride the creatures—probably Sabal had taught him, but how had they managed it without anyone else finding out? — but she wasn't going to stand there pondering the question. The answer was less important than the kill.