Friends-those poor children were all replaced by spawn. Except Tatrina.'
'She won't remain the exception long,' the false Hardisty said. 'She'll be very helpful in persuading her self- righteous old fool of a father to accept your authority when you return to the surface. Except, of course, it won't be you at all, but another of my children.' The head laughed uproariously.
'What about the king?' Zaranda asked..
'Useless fool. I shan't even bother to duplicate him.'
Head and body went rigid again. Then Hardisty said in his own voice, 'Kill… me.'
Zaranda stepped forward. Crackletongue flared and sparked and it lashed out. The king's head sprang from his shoulders and bounced to a stop at her feet.
The mouths hissed. Fool! the Voice exploded in her mind.
Two sucker-studded tentacles-as big around as the ones that bore the mouths, but vastly longer-shot from the pile in a spray of treasure to seize Chen and Zaranda. Zaranda felt another magical compulsion try to claim her, but bent all her will to fighting it and felt it pass.
Resist as you will, the Voice said in her mind. It only adds spice.
A third tentacle erupted forth. As Zaranda tried to hack at the tentacle that held her, the tip of the other grabbed her wrist and bent it cruelly back. Her fingers went numb; the sword slipped free.
Now I will exact the price of your meddling, the Voice said. Rejoice that I must assimilate your flesh to replicate you, else your suffering would be protracted indeed.
From outside the door came a drumming as of giant wings. Then screams, none in Stillhawk's voice.
A guardsman appeared in the doorway. He took three steps forward on wavering legs. In the torchlight, Zaranda saw that his eyes stared between bloody parallel slashes that ran down the front of him from crown to crotch. He fell upon his face.
A woman walked in. Black hair cascaded past slender shoulders and down the back of a midnight-blue gown. Her austerely beautiful face bore no expression.
Nyadnar, the Voice hissed. You have picked a curious mode of suicide. The free tentacle quested for her.
She raised a hand. 'Don't even try. Look into my eyes, L'yafv-Afvonn, gaze upon my true soul. You can never hope to best me.'
Never is a long time, mage.
'We'll see.'
'Who is this?' asked Chenowyn, squirming fruitlessly to free herself of the tentacle wrapped about her slim waist. 'Are we saved?'
'No,' Zaranda said in a leaden voice. 'This is Nyadnar. She'll do exactly nothing.'
'It is not my way to act directly on the world,' the sorceress said. She gestured at the dead guardsman at her feet. 'Unless, of course, I'm compelled to defend myself.' She walked to the wall opposite where Tatrina crouched, and stood as if carved.
Now, said the Voice, where were we? A mouth-arm darted forward and seized Zaranda's feet in its jaws.
'No!' Chenowyn screamed as the horror began to feed her friend into its maw. Zaranda thrashed violently, but was swallowed up, inch by inch.
The girl turned a tear-drenched face to Nyadnar. 'You've got to help her!' she pleaded. 'Please!'
'That is not my way.'
'Let me go!' Chen drummed impotent fists on the tentacle that held her. Then to the sorceress: 'I've heard her talk about you. You were her friend.'
'I have no friends. I can afford none. My responsibilities are too great.'
'You used her! How can you just let her die?'
'I employed her services from time to time. She was rewarded suitably, even generously. Where she is now, she came to by her own choice.'
Slobbering, the toothed jaws had worked their way to Zaranda's hips. 'She'll die! You have to do something!'
'I cannot.' A pause. 'But you can.'
'Me? I'm just a girl! What can I do?'
'You are not just a girl, Chenowyn,' the sorceress said. 'As to what you can do… whatever you choose.'
The jaws were about her friend's waist. Zaranda uttered a hawk scream of rage and frustration.
'Damn you!' the girl flared. 'Damn you, damn you, damn you! And damn you, too, you great big wad of filth!'
Her body went rigid with rage. Her hair rose, and her eyes began to glow. Her lips peeled back from her teeth in a grimace of fury…
And her jaws extended forward, telescoping.
Chenowyn's scream penetrated Zaranda's despair and brought her head around.
Her apprentice was transforming before her eyes. Her skin was darkening toward a brilliant, shiny, red; at the same time it grew visibly thicker, scaly, with an oddly crystalline quality. Face and limbs grew longer, became toothy jaws, forelimbs and legs wickedly clawed. Her skull flattened and broadened, and two long back-curving horns sprouted from its rear. Nubs formed on her back and grew into great ribbed wings.
The deepspawn found itself holding a small but very angry gem dragon. A mouth-arm darted for it, jaws spread wide. The dragon uttered a furious, piercing scream. A spray of brilliant red dust, like rubies ground to sand, gushed from its mouth.
Tough hide and muscle were scoured from the deepspawn's mouth-arm. Skeletonized jaws fell to the floor. The monster drew back a stump gouting green blood.
The dragon-Chen clawed at the tentacle about her waist. What an adolescent girl's fists could not achieve, an adolescent dragon's talons made light of. Ruby talons shredded the tentacle. It let Chen go and jerked away.
Chen's wings exploded from her sides, beat tentatively. She fell on her rump. Rising up on her hind legs, she thrust her head forward and breathed her spray of ruby dust against the neck of the mouth that had worked its way to Zaranda's armpits.
The abrasive spray cut through the arm. The head fell to the floor, jaws working spasmodically. Zaranda began to struggle free.
A tentacle lashed at Chen. Her jaws snapped it through. Then she flung herself at the monster, buffeting it with her wings, lashing it with her tail.
The remaining tentacle snaked out, looped back, wrapped itself around the young dragon's neck. She uttered strangling sounds and beat at it with her wings. It held her up in the air while the surviving mouth-arm trumpeted a cry of triumph.
Zaranda had extricated herself from the still-spasming jaws. Crackletongue lay on the floor nearby. Her right hand would not respond; she snatched the sword up with her left, screamed, 'A star!' and slashed at the tentacle that was throttling Chenowyn.
With a flash and a crack, a stink of ozone and burned fetid meat, the magic blade cut through the tentacle. The severed end dropped from Chen's neck to writhe on the floor like a snake with a broken back. The stump, spewing foulness, flailed wildly, knocking Zaranda against the wall.
Chenowyn braced her legs, gathered herself, and breathed.
Corundum spray enveloped the monster. The spawn-heads growing from it opened wide their eyes. They began to scream in a horrid cacophony of voices.
The bulk heaved and flopped, trying to escape the awful torrent of ruby dust. Its skin abraded away, and then its flesh, and that which served it as bones, and its pulsating inner organs. The sprouting bodies withered to skeletons and went quiet.
A psychic scream burst like a sun exploding inside Zaranda's skull. Consciousness left her.
When she opened her eyes, Nyadnar was standing over her, gazing down with neither curiosity nor compassion.
'Oh,' Zaranda groaned. She sat up. She felt like Death on a bender. But she was alive, and nothing seemed broken. 'Chenowyn?'
