by Ed Greenwood
Stones roared down in a dark flood of death as Taern screamed something and the laughing Red Wizard retreated. Alustriel glanced upward, then raised the staff, aiming it straight up. It winked once in her grasp, and she looked at Roeblen and announced calmly, "Pass-"
The rest of the word was lost in the thunder of tum shy;bling, crushing stone. It went on and on, hiding the ruler of Silverymoon from view amid rising dust as stones cracked and rolled.
When at last the roaring died away to echoes and the dust began to settle, Roeblen turned away from his latest frustratingly futile attempt to bring down a door ward and spat out a curse. It should have been so easy. A word, two gestures, another word, and he should have been out and roaming around a palace legendary for its stored magic. It was too much to hope that the falling stones had crushed those two idiots in the door shy;way, but at least he'd felled the much vaunted High Lady of Silverymoon.
A figure came striding out of the dust then, a tall figure with a staff in its hand, whose silver hair stirred about its shoulders as if with a life of its own.
The Red Wizard's hissed curse turned into a groan of disbelief as two more heads came bobbing through the dust. Gods, had he missed them all?
Roeblen looked from one grim and dusty face to another, then murmured something swift and anxious, his intricately gesturing fingers momentarily shaping a closed ring. As the three folk of Silverymoon advanced upon the Thayan, the dust sprang away from him, swirling swiftly to outline the outer curve of a cylinder of clear, hard space around the Red Wizard.
The elf accompanying Taern waved mockingly at Roe shy;blen and said, "Wall offeree; ring shaped."
Taern gave the elf a glance of mingled amusement and disgust, and started to weave a spell of his own. The elf grinned back and began his own casting. Alustriel gave them all a look of weary exasperation and merely lifted her hand. Blue-white bolts blossomed from her fingers and streaked up through the dust, seeking the gaping hole where the Ten Tapestries Chamber had once boasted a ceiling. Her glowing mis shy;siles turned there, in the dust-choked ruin that had once been a parlor on the floor above, and came arrow shy;ing back down inside the Red Wizard's defensive ring. She saw an amulet at his throat flash as the missiles struck. Roeblen seemed unharmed, his hands never slowing in the casting of his latest spell. The cylinder around him glowed a bright blue and sang, the ringing noise swiftly rising into a scream as the radiance blazed into a bright, iridescent green. The light quickly faded, taking the wall offeree with it into oblivion.
Taern smiled at the Red Wizard in satisfaction and lifted his hands to weave another spell as the elf let out a sudden, startled squawk and cartwheeled away across the room, outlined in red radiance. Alustriel saw the sparkling stone Azmyrandyr had thrown wink once as the elf's boots left the rubble where he'd been stand shy;ing.
"Wild magic," she called warningly, just as Roeblen of Thay's right arm started to grow.
The Red Wizard stood still as his arm became impos shy;sibly long, thick, and scaled, reaching fifty feet or more across the ravaged room to snatch with thigh-long claws at Alustriel. No human should have been able to stand upright attached to the weight of its huge bulk, let alone lift and move it, but the spell-spun limb swooped down on the High Lady as if it weighed nothing.
Alustriel's eyes narrowed. She'd never seen the likes of this spell before, and almost found herself looking at Roeblen and awaiting his proud announcement of the enchantment he'd used. No such words came, and as the claws descended, she fed it magic missiles. They vanished into it without apparent effect, the distant Red Wizard's amulet pulsing as each bolt died.
The claws tore at her, and she found them very real and solid indeed. Ducking away and lashing at the talons with her hair-each of the claws was now as long as she was tall-she managed to swallow a scream as they closed on her left shoulder and crushed it to bleeding jelly.
The pain drove Alustriel to her knees, retching. She heard Taern cry out her name, then gasp and call on Mystra.
Rolling over on stony rubble and writhing in pain as that scaly limb came down to tear at her again, Alustriel stared at her dangling, useless left arm. Where her shoulder should have been there was nothing. It was hard to see through the silver smoke streaming from the wound, but the raging fire had left her little more than clinging ashes of her gown. She could see a lot of smooth, bared flesh, flesh that was changing as she watched. In an eerie webwork, scales were forming on her skin, spreading swiftly outward from her wound.
The claws missed on their next snatch, thanks to her tumbling, and when Alustriel found her feet again, she thrust the staff at them. Roeblen snatched at it, trying to take it away from her, and she let it go. She hissed out the words that would awaken a fleshfire spell before leaping at the scaly limb.
She caught at greasy scales, slipped, then clung. Her body blazed up into bright fire. Grimly she dug her fin shy;gers in around the edges of the scales and hung on as the smaller scales on her own flesh faded away and a stench like old swamp water arose from the darkening limb around her.
Roeblen roared in pain-and the High Lady of Silverymoon was falling, her blazing arms clutching noth shy;ing. She landed heavily, slithering on stones, and found herself looking into the startled face of yet another Red Wizard.
Roeblen, his scaly limb, and her staff were gone, and the elf was moaning against a distant wall. Taern was staring at her with hope, alarm, and despair at war across his face. The pain was ebbing.
Alustriel gave the newcomer a wolfish smile and charged, her body blazing. "Welcome to Silverymoon," she spat, silver flames making her words a bubbling horror, and she saw that horror rise swiftly in the Red Wizard's eyes as he stammered out an incantation, ges shy;turing frantically.
He finished his casting a bare instant before she slammed into him, clawing at his face. She knew she'd hit him by the way the fire faded from her limbs as they rolled together. Alustriel had no clothes or weapons but her knees, teeth, and right hand. He was shorter but heavier than she was, and had no desire to be here at all. He'd flee, bringing in the next being in the cycle Roeblen had spoken of, unless she got a good grip on his throat, and..
The Red Wizard twisted away desperately as she spat silver fire into his face and tore free. Alustriel was left holding a scrap of purple cloth as sudden light blazed into being above her, taking the Thayan mage away.
She held up the cloth to keep from being blinded, and read aloud the name embroidered in a circle there, around a sigil, unfamiliar to her: "Thaltar."
When the light faded and she saw another hand beyond the cloth, she launched herself forward onto whoever it was, and found herself panting and grap shy;pling with Auvrarn Labraster.
There was fear on the merchant's handsome face as he fended the High Lady off with one arm and peered around. She saw him take in Taern advancing on him, the ruination all around, then the furious gaze of Alus shy;triel of Silverymoon but inches from his face. Auvrarn also obviously did not want to be there. In feverish haste he thrust three fingers into a breast pouch under his chin, desperately seeking something.
Alustriel punched him in the throat.
Coughing and gagging, Auvrarn Labraster rolled away from her, hoarsely trying to curse. She hurled herself upon him, not wanting him to have time to get at whatever small but fell thing awaited in his pouch. They rolled over and over as she clawed at his face, sob shy;bing every time their struggle put weight on the ruin of her shoulder.
At last Labraster struck aside her clawing hand and got both of his hands on her throat. They stared into each other's eyes, hissing in fury, as his fingers started to tighten. Her hair swirled around them, slapping across his eyes and thrusting up into his nostrils.
The merchant gagged and snarled and shook his head violently back and forth, not loosening his grip around the throat of Silverymoon's Bright Lady. He never felt tresses of silver hair tear something off the chain around Alustriel's neck and knot that something into his own hair, but he did feel h
er surge upright. She thrust upward to her feet with astonishing strength, dragging him with her. Two rough hands slapped across both his ears, making his head ring. Before Labraster could even cry out, the hands took hold of his ears and tried to twist them off.
Auvrarn Labraster screamed and let go of Alustriel's throat, staggering and ducking as tears of pain poured forth. Twist and flail though he might, those hands stayed with him, twisting.
In desperation, he threw himself to the ground and rolled-and the hands were gone. Labraster heard a man grunt nearby, land heavily on loose stone, and roll away. He wasted not an instant on seeing who it was, but snatched the teleport ring from the pouch on his breast and fumbled it onto his finger.
Another hand was at his throat again, and he punched out with desperate force, connected solidly, and heard Alustriel gasp. He twisted blindly away again. Cloth tore at his breast, then Auvrarn Labraster hissed the word he needed to say, and was thankfully gone.
As Taern clambered across shifting stones to where his lady knelt, she lifted a face still wet with tears to him, and struggled to speak through a throat dark with bruises. She held a scrap of dark cloth clenched in her hand.
"My lady!" Taern Hornblade gasped, kneeling beside her bare, blackened body. One of her arms still dangled uselessly, and pain creased her face, but she smiled at him and said huskily, "Kiss me, Taern."
He touched his lips to her forehead with infinite care. Alustriel made a disgusted sound and hauled him down to her mouth, mumbling, "No, Taern, I mean really kiss me. I'm too weak to resist you now. . and there's not much left of me that you can hurt."
Something small toppled from the floor above then, and plunged down to burst amid the stones. Blue light shy;ning played about the chamber. As Taern crouched over his lady to shield her, Alustriel looked down at the scrap of torn fabric in her hand and murmured to the empty air, "Well, it's up to you now, sister."
Sylune
The Haunting of Blandras Nuin
There is death for most, undeath for some, and a wraithlike place beyond death for a few. I was going to say "the favored few," but increasingly I suspect some of them would coldly dispute such a judgment. May the gods, in time, show mercy upon them.
Lyritar Sarsharm, Sage of Tashluta from The Roads Beyond Faerun published circa the Year of the Turret
There came a cold and drifting time of nothingness that seemed to freeze her utterly, beyond gasping, and to go on forever … but she knew from what Elminster and Alassra had said that it in truth lasted so briefly that even those watching for it could not be sure it had befallen.
There was light then, and sound again, and she was somewhere unfamiliar, looking out of eyes that were not her own; these were male eyes. She had to be deft now, and patient, so as not to be noticed by this host. It was alert and angry, and its mind was dark with rage and evil. The mind is a powerful thing, and this one was very far from an abode Sylune of Shadowdale would ever be comfortable in. Her sentience had awakened in the tiny chip of stone Alustriel usually carried in her bodice, but had somehow managed to tangle unnoticed into this man's hair, knotting its fine strands securely around the stone.
She could only live, now, out of such stones-pieces of the fire-scarred flagstones of her now vanished hut. The Witch of Shadowdale was dead, and yet, through the grace of Mystra, not dead nor yet "undead," at least not in the chilling, feeding-on-the-living manner that carried most undeath onward through timeless days. When she walked in Shadowdale, 'twas true, her feet made no dint upon the grass, and folk could see through her, and termed her "ghost," and were fearful. Usually Sylune used a body made to look like her old, true one, or kept herself unseen, unless she wanted to scare.
Sylune sighed now, a sound only she could hear, and banished such dark thoughts. She had died and yet lived, through Mystra's love and aid. She should be ever joyful, but she had been human, and it is the way of humans to complain.
The Witch of Shadowdale shook the head she did not have, and briskly applied her thoughts to the here and now. It took mighty magic to send her from one stone to another when they were not touching, and she knew, somehow, that she was far from Shadowdale. Alustriel must have spent silver fire to weave such a spell. That meant this was a matter of great importance, but then her journeys were always matters of great importance. Sylune smiled with lips she no longer possessed. 'Twas time to save the world again.
She was in the mind of a man who knew Waterdeep well, by all the images of it crowding each other in his place-memories. He was a wealthy man, a merchant, linked to other beings by some sort of slumbering but recently awakened magic. The man was standing on a rocky, windy hillside where bell-hung goats wandered, a little way outside an arc of standing stones that stood like jutting monster teeth before a dark cave mouth.
This was the abode, the man knew, of a hermit priest shy;ess of Shar. He'd been here twice before, and both feared and was disgusted by the old and ugly crone who dwelt here, and stank so, ate things raw, and whose fingers were always stained with blood that was not her own. Meira the Dark was a thing of bones and malice, half hidden in rags and an improbable fall of long, glossy black hair.
The man moved forward reluctantly and drew forth his dagger, holding it by the blade, and through his eyes Sylune saw that he had clean fingers adorned with rings. He lifted the dagger to use its hilt to strike a door gong. His mind termed it such, though his eyes told her that it was a cracked iron skillet hanging from a weathered branch that had been thrust into a hole in one of the larger stones.
"Don't bother," a voice sounded. The voice was sharp and a little rough, as if long unused. "Come within. The ward of serpents is down."
Though the voice seemed to come from someone near at hand, the man could see no one. He sheathed his dagger with a low growl of disgust and stepped cau shy;tiously forward through the grassy gap between the two tallest, center-most stones.
Something moved in the shadow of the cave mouth, sidling forward into the full light to squint up at her vis shy;itor. Meira was just as the man remembered her, fondling the yellowing curves of a squirrel skull necklace as she came forward to peer at her guest. "So, what trouble is it this time?"
"Why should you assume I have trouble?"
The priestess snorted. "Handsome, wealthy, charming Auvrarn Labraster has his pick of playpretties in half a dozen cities of Faerun, and more money than Meira has ever seen in all her life. Enough to hire spells from the Red Wizards he sports with, enough to think himself important indeed… and this would be the same Auvrarn Labraster who can barely conceal his disgust when he stands near old Meira. Trouble brings him here. Trouble is all that could bring him here."
Sylune withdrew everything from the mind of the man she rode, clinging but to his eyes and ears so as to be as invisible to magic as she dared be. Labraster shifted his feet and replied stiffly, "Yes, I have trouble, and need your swift aid."
The hermit priestess snorted. "Sit on yon rock and spill all. Even I haven't the patience to drag words out of you. Speak."
"I've just used this ring-the only teleport ring I have-to escape Alustriel of Silverymoon. My hands were around her throat in her palace just minutes ago, and I called on the cycle. She fought and survived everyone in it to bring it back to me again. We left a room afire and several of her Spellguard mages knowing my likeness. I will be hunted a-"
Meira held up a hand with a hiss of anger. "Perhaps traced already. Yet you do not need me to tell you what a fool you are. I can see that much in your eyes."
She grunted, and drew a ring on a cord from some shy;where under the rags she wore. Holding it up, she hissed in annoyance, let it fall, and fumbled around in the vicin shy;ity of her bodice until another cord fell into view. She snatched up the ring and squinted at it, made a small, satisfied sound in her throat, and with a sudden wrench, broke its cord, sliding it onto one of her fingers. Lifting her eyes to Labraster's, she snapped, "Take off your teleport ring."
Slowly, he did so, holding it
cupped in his hand. The priestess gestured with her head. "Set it down on that rock, and step back outside my porch ring."
When the merchant had done as he was bid, the priest shy;ess took the ring back off her own finger and set it down on another stone. She approached Labraster's ring and stooped to peer at it, seeming almost to sniff at it in sus shy;picion before she murmured a spell over it, watched the brief glow of her spell fade, then cast a second spell. After a moment, the ring quietly faded away.
"What did you do?" the merchant called out angrily. "D'you know how much that cost me? Where's it gone?"
Meira regarded him over one hunched shoulder with some irritation, then beckoned him to approach. "To an alleyway near the docks of Waterdeep, with a spell on it to keep someone from seeing or tracing you through it."
"But it'll be lost! Someone will see it and snatch it up! I-"
The priestess nodded. "A small price to pay for contin shy;ued life. I'd not want to have to fight off a Chosen of Mystra, even with the Blessed Lady of Darkness stand shy;ing at my side. Would you?"
As Labraster gaped at her, she snapped, "Now stand here-just here-and don't move, even after I stop cast shy;ing. I’ll need different spells for you and your clothes, so don't stir again until I say so."
"Why?"
Meira squinted up at him. "That," she snarled, "is one of the words I most hate; one of the reasons I don't stand in a temple teaching cruel young things to know the kisses of Shar. Utter it again, and you can face Alustriel alone."
Auvrarn Labraster swallowed, stood just where she'd indicated, and kept silent. Meira shuffled all around him with a little smile crooking the corners of her mouth. "That's better," she said. "Now stand you just so."
She continued her slow circling as her hands traced gestures in the air with surprising grace. She seemed almost to be dancing as her cracked lips shaped words that seemed both fluid and strangely angular, cruel and yet softly sliding, words that betimes rose to frame the name of the goddess Shar. When she was done, she stood with hands on hips and regarded Labraster. In her squint was a gleam of satisfaction.