by Ed Greenwood
Lightning cracked overhead as Shandril ran across the smoking road. She did not look up; she had eyes only for her man. A heart-twisting, blackened tangle of horse's legs met her gaze. Where once she would have turned away, sick, she now ran forward without hesitation, peering anxiously into the smoking slaughter. Narm! Oh, Narm!
He had no protection against dragonfire. He could well be dead. Their child would never know its father… Shandril snarled at herself. None of that! Find him, first!
There he was, moving weakly, half-buried under scorched baggage. He was alive! Oh, gods be praised!
Tears ran down Shandril's face as she knelt beside him, tearing aside smoldering straps and canvas with frantic haste. Narm moaned. His hair smoked; the left side of his face was black and blistered.
"Oh, Narm! Beloved!" Shandril wept. Cracked lips moved; lids that no longer had lashes flickered open. Watery eyes met hers, lovingly-and then looked beyond, and widened.
"Look out, love!" he hissed, painfully. "The dracolich comes!" Shandril followed his gaze.
The great Shargrailar wheeled directly above them, vast and dark and terrible. For all that it was only empty, hollow bones, the undead creature was awesome. Shandril shivered as she gazed up at its fell might. It turned and dove silently down the sky at them again.
"Run, Shan!" Narm croaked from beneath her. "Get you hence! I love you! Shandril, go!"
"No," Shandril said, in tears. "No, lord, I will not!" As the great bony jaws opened, she carefully climbed forward until she lay gently atop Narm's blackened body, shielding him as much as she could. Narm groaned in pain. She braced herself to lift her weight off him, and said softly, "I love you."
As the roar of the dracolich's approaching flame grew in the air about them, Shandril put her lips to Narm's and gathered her will. Then blasting flame swallowed them again.
"Clanggedin aid me!" Delg muttered, as the mule bucked beneath him. The road before him was one great smoking ruin. A roaring cone of fire had just raked it again. In a moment the swooping dracolich would be above him. The mule bucked again. "Oh, blast!" Delg burst out, as he found himself somersaulting forward in the air. His frantic grab for the saddle-horn missed. Well, at least he still had hold of his axe. He tucked it close against him so that it would not be chipped in the hard landing to come.
So the mule's saddle was empty when the raking claws of Shargrailar swept the poor beast skyward, rending and tearing. The dracolich let out the first sound it had uttered in many long years as it rose into the air-a long, loud hiss of anger and frustration. It shredded the mule as if it were a rotten rag, and wheeled again. Destroying an enemy had never taken this long before.
Shandril desperately drew in all the flame that struck her, and strained to reach the dragonfire that ravaged Narm's helpless body and draw it into her, too. Through their joined lips she felt the fierce energy flowing; sluggishly at first, then faster and faster. Gods, the pain! Her lips were seared as if by hot metal; tears blinded her. Her body shuddered at the pain, but she held fast to her Narm as the last of the flames swept over them and were gone.
Still energy flowed into her. She realized with a start that Narm's own energy was stealing into her now; she was killing him, draining him to death! Hastily she broke their kiss and stared anxiously down at the slack, silent face. Oh, Narm! She had no art to heal him! What had she done?
Bitterly, Shandril felt the swelling energy burning within her. Her veins were afire; she was bloated with more than she could hold for long. The pain…
Into her mind then came Gorstag's voice, telling of her mother: "… to heal or harm…!" Heal! Could she heal as well as burn? She gathered her shaking limbs to lie tenderly upon Narm again, and set her lips to his. Closing her eyes, Shandril willed energy to flow out of her gently, slowly, like a cooling flow of water, through her lips. It did.
Through their kiss she could feel her released energies flowing into Narm. She willed it so, fiercely, and felt his feeble heart grow stronger, and his body began to rally. He moved beneath her, struggling to speak.
Shandril shed fresh tears as she poured still more energy into her beloved, until he was whole and strong and-
Bony claws raked shrieking agony across her back. Shandril was torn free of Narm and flung to the road beyond by Shargrailar's angry strike. Pain almost overwhelmed her; she shrieked aloud, flame gouting from her mouth in her agony. Ohhh, Tymora, the pain!
She had ignored the strike of another bolt of lightning and the numbing impacts of a shower of magic missiles while healing Narm, but the great dracolich could slay her this way, destroying her as surely as if she had no spellfire. Shandril twisted and writhed in the dust of the road in her agony. She could feel her blood flowing out of her. Blood, blood… she had seen more spilled these last tendays than in all her life before this, and she was heartily sick of it!
Well, now she could do something about it. Shandril opened her eyes and looked for the dracolich. A fierce anger was upon her. Exultation rose within her to join it; she could heal! She could use spellfire to aid as well as to do battle! On hands and knees, Shandril turned and saw Shargrailar sweeping down again, its cold eyes glimmering at her from its cruel skull, its claws outstretched to rend and tear. The onetime thief from Deepingdale met the dracolich's chilling gaze and laughed.
From her eyes flames shot forth, in two fiery beams that struck the undead dragon's own eyes. Smoke rose, and Shargrailar screamed.
Bony wings sheared away to one side in agony; Shandril was still laughing in triumph as she spat a white inferno of flames into the blinded dracolich. It reeled backward in the air, blazing, and crashed to earth.
She ignored its snappings and thrashings and turned back to heal Narm. Shandril felt a tingling in her own torn back. She bent her will to cleanse and heal herself as she crawled back to join her husband where he lay among all the dead horses. She sighed at the soothing relief from pain that spread across her back. Ahhhhh…
Her energy was much lessened, now, and Shandril became alarmed as she gave more of it to Narm. She shouldn't have healed herself… she had too little left, and the dracolich was still dangerous. It was not wasting spells on her any longer; she could not gain any more spellfire from it. Oh, Tymora! Was her luck always to be bad?
No, a small voice said within her, it could be fatal just once-now, perhaps-and all her worries would be over. Shandril got up, hastily, looking for the dracolich. If it clawed her now…
She could hear a strange smashing and hollow splintering sound from where Shargrailar had landed. Peering cautiously over the unfortunate horses, she saw an axe rise and fall amid the dracolich's weakly crawling rib cage. Bone chips flew. The dracolich had already lost its wings and two claws. It was trying feebly to turn its head to blast its attacker with flame, but the bones of its neck were smashed in two places, and smoke still rose from its blackened skull where Shandril had burned it.
A hearty kick sent more pieces of bone flying. The descending boot was planted firmly on one of Shargrailar's claws, and its owner chopped brutally downward.
"Delg!" cried Shandril in happy astonishment, and then she was laughing and crying at the same time as. she hurried toward the small, burly figure whose gleaming axe still chopped and smashed methodically up and down the splintered bulk of the helpless dracolich.
The dwarf grinned up at her. "Well met, Shandril! Long days pass, and you've gotten into trouble, as always… only this time you're in luck: Delg's here to lay low your dracolich from behind!"
Then he was swept up into a happy embrace, clear off his feet, before Shandril let out a whoof of effort and staggered forward to set him down again.
"Delg! Delg-I thought everyone of the company was dead!" Shandril cried. The dwarf nodded soberly for a moment before his fierce grin came again.
"Aye. So did I," he said, beard bristling. "But I've found you at last."
"Found me? Do you know what's happened to me? This bone dragon you're destroying is but the latest. Sc
arce a day passes without someone trying to slay us because of the spellfire I wield."
"Spellfire, aye, so they've all been telling me."
"All?"
"Aye, Elminster and Storm and the knights and Harpers and all. I rode the legs of my mule a good two fingerwidths shorter following you. You've become important indeed, lass, in less time than I've seen most heroes and legends rise, in my years." The dwarf waved his axe. "So let's see this spellfire again, before we move Narm somewhere safer."
"Well enough," Shandril said, and turned to where the dracolich lay. "Do you know this one?"
"Never seen it before I buried this axe in it," Delg replied, raising an eyebrow. "Does it matter?"
"No, I suppose not," Shandril replied, and let fly with roaring spellfire that blasted Shargrailar's helplessly flopping skull to bone shards. As the smoke died away, Shandril looked at Delg and shrugged, expressionless.
"Beware, Delg, I'm not safe to be near, these days," she said with a sigh. "So much killing, since first I left The Rising Moon… Is butchery what all the legends are built on?"
"Aye," the dwarf said gruffly, "Didn't you know?" He turned to Narm. "Let's drag your lord a goodly distance from all this carnage, and see what we can salvage before sunset."
"'We?' You'll come with us?"
"Aye, if you'll have me. On your bridal journey, and all."
The dwarf looked embarrassed, and then squinted at her defiantly, hands twisting nervously on his axe as he spoke. "I am a friend to you, Shandril, and will stand true by you and your lord. Few enough such you'll find, mark you, and you need but little more in life than good food and good friends. The company's gone now, all save for you… so old Delg'll ride with you.
"If you make it to Silverymoon all well, and are sick of me by then, I'll leave you. I hope you won't be… it is a trial indeed, when you be my age, befriending pretty girls anew to ride with… folks get all the wrong ideas, y'see."
The old dwarf handed her his axe. "Hold this, while I carry your mage here-easy, lad, you'll feel better soon enough; I know, I've lived through battles enough to tell, by now-down the road apiece. The sun waits not for all my talking." Nor did it, but it was a happy camp that sunset.
In the morning, the dwarf walked with the young couple as they headed west up into the mountains. It was a clear day, and the green Dalelands spread out behind them as they went up the rolling hills toward the Thunder Gap. All was peaceful. A lone black falcon soared high above in the clear blue air, and the day passed on with no attack or hurling of spellfire. Delg told Narm fierce tales of Shandril's daring with the company, and Narm, recovering, told Delg of the struggle in Myth Drannor and Rauglothgor's lair, and how she blasted apart the mountaintop. The dwarf looked at Shandril with new respect, and chuckled, and said, "I won't ask you to hold my axe, next time!"
Near sunset, on the heights of Thunder Gap, they turned at last and looked back over the marching trees, and the road dwindling down, down, down from where they stood to Highmoon, hazy in the distance.
"Who could know, looking at it, that this beautiful land could be so dangerous?" Narm asked quietly. Delg looked, and smiled, and said nothing.
"Never mind," Shandril replied, putting a hand on his arm. "We found each other, and that is worth it all."
They walked off into the evening together, and thought on many mornings ahead as the soft stars came out above them, and were very happy.
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