by Ed Greenwood
If Glays and the rest wete dead by then… well, there were other men who could impersonate Knights and who would welcome the backlands life of Shadowdale.
Deltalon arrived a little farther from the glowstones than the Harper.
If you appeared right beside the Knights, you found yourself in the same peril that was afflicting them-and could well taste theit own blades and spells before you had time to name yourself.
Which was the very reason he was bound for his favorite waystop glade in the heart of that part of the forest just north off the Moonsea Ride known as Hawkvale. No one dwelt there, and no eye that he knew had ever managed to discern a "vale" among all those tangled trees.
The clearing, not far from Tilverton, served the same purpose as his chosen destination. Appearing in the blink of an eye in the midst of a tavern or even just outside the walls of Tilverton warned everyone of your mastery of Art, no matter how skilled your acting to the contrary might be.
And despite what everyone remembered about the bad wat wizards, good Wizards of War always ttied to be deft and subtle.
"If you skulk out in the trees this night," the wizard Ruldroun half-murmured and half-sang. He stared at the glowing images of his conjured scrying dancing silently in midair before him. Boarblade was just beginning his charge.
Then he blinked. A man had appeared at the far end of the glade. A war wizard he knew! Lorbryn Deltalon, one of Vangerdahast's most trustedOnsler Ruldroun stood, his scrying forgotten, and whispered the strongest spell he knew.
He'd been saving that fire-gem for a long time, and it had cost him dearly, but what was that price against his very life?
The gem flashed and was gone-and the huge gout of flame blossomed from it and roared away down the clearing, fire that should sear flesh and bone alike, feeding on Art as well as mundane fuel.
Which should mean that if Deltalon was shielded in the usual ways against fire, he was doomed.
Yes, this was the place. Lush and damp and familiar. Dark now, in the depths of night, of course, but there was a spell-glow coming from the far end of the glade, andLorbryn Deltalon had just time for one final thought as Faerun exploded in blinding, white flame all around him:
So this is what it feels like to die.
Chapter 23
All the nine hells break loose Oh, aye, I tell you I'll be there When all the Nine Hells break loose Wizards burn, heroes fall, And the gods come tumbling after.
The flames howled on, toppling trees and setting them aflame. Silhouetted against that bright raging stood all that was left of Lotbryn Deltalon.
A column of gray ash shaped like a wizard who'd turned his head in astonishment faced Ruldroun with one hand half-raised. Then it slumped down and swirled away, gone forever. Beyond it, the fire snarled.
Ruldroun hastened out of the glade on the far side from the fire, seeking-and finding-a tree with two trunks and a saddle between them large enough for him to stand in.
Leaning back against one trunk, eyes on the dying flames in the distance, he swiftly cast a spell many a Wizard of War had found useful when away from the cities of the realm.
The magic made his fingertips and ears tingle briefly as it took hold. Now, and for most of the time until dawn, he would be made aware of all minds approaching him, and their direction and distance.
It might well be imperative for the continued life of Onsler Ruldroun to see who-and what-the blaze lured near.
Fire roared into being off to his left, too suddenly and violently to be anything but a spell.
Brorn Hallomond smiled, held up his bone-coated hands to more clearly see how skeletal they looked, admired them in the dancing firelight for a moment, then turned off the road into the trees, heading for the blaze.
"From beyond the grave, I come for thee," he murmured the old saying and flexed his hands again.
Even if the fire-makers didn't happen to be the Knights of Myth Drannor, he certainly felt like killing someone.
"A gray render, too? You have been busy!"
The only answer Florin gave to Dalonder Ree was a shrug, but the Hatper didn't have to look at the ranger's face to know his words had left Falconhand rather pleased.
He was just turning to begin a look all around, seeking any signs of other predators watching from the trees, when a great gout of flame blossomed out of nowhere with a roar, some way off in the forest, but racing toward them with frightening speed.
Off to Ree's left, Dauntless cursed at the sight, but even as he did the Harper could see the conflagration was small. It would die down long before getting anywhere near them.
Still, burning trees were toppling, sparks were wafting up into the night, and-what was that?
Dalonder whirled to his left, sword flashing up, and saw Florin and Dauntless doing the same.
Dark figures were racing at them, bursting out of the darkness, plunging out from between trees with swords and daggers flashing in theit hands.
" 'Ware all!" Dauntless roared. "We're under attack!"
By then, swords were clanging against swords in hasty parries, men were grunting as they tried to slash right through the swords and strength of foes, and someone was screaming as the tip of Dalonder Ree's sword slid through his hand, sending the dagger in it spinning away.
"Klarn!" the wounded man called desperately. "Klarn, aid!"
Steel clanged on steel. Dalonder Ree ducked one way and then hurled himself in another direction. The wounded man ctied out in fear as his sword missed the dodging Harper entirely. Klarn didn't come-and the wounded man was falling, life-blood gurgling out of his opened throat.
Florin and Dauntless were hacking at three men, Klarn presumably one of them, and another had burst past the fray to come racing along the base of the gravel slope.
Pennae ran after him, dagger in hand. The last thing the Knights of Myth Drannor needed just now was a foe lurking in the night to fell them from behind, one by one.
It was a man, a little taller and stronger than she was but agile father than hulking. There was something… not right about his head, as if something had shifted there, moving somehow since her first glimpse of him. A disguise slipping, perhaps.
The man came to a boulder among the scree. He dodged out and around it, which meant she had just enough time toPennae threw the dagger in her hand, straight and hard. The man stiffened, arching back and grabbing at his shoulder; reflected firelight glinted off her little jutting fang there, just for a moment.
Pennae smiled a tight little smile and hurled her second dagger.
The man cried out as her dagger wobbled in rhe back of his upper left arm. Again he clutched at it. This time, her weapon fell out just before his clawing fingers got to it.
He ran on, stumbling, and Pennae bent at the full run and plucked up that second dagger, dark and wet with his blood.
By then, he was desperately climbing the cliff, stones bouncing down into her face with the clumsy haste of his climb.
Pennae's smile widened.
Drathar peered out through the trees at the battle and shook his head. Dark figures seemed to be leaping on all sides, firelight flashing back reflections on swords and daggers here, there, and fleetingly everywhere. He couldn't tell one combatant from another, stlarn it!
No-wait-there! That was Florin Falconhand, and the man beside him must be an ally, being as they'd both had chances to thrust steel into each other and hadn't. It was someone he'd seen before, someone" Sark it!" he said. "Blast them both!"
Invisibility be htasted, he was going to hurl at least one foeblast!
There! He did the swift casting and flung out his arms in the usual triumphant flourish-and watched the night erupt in sudden green-gold flame, a burst embroidered by screaming bodies being flung into the air and away.
Heh-hah!
Right. Enough glee. Drathar crouched and went back to peering hard through the tangle of trees. In the eyeblinking aftermath of his spell, with the fire in the distant trees dying down, it was getting harder
and harder to see. He doubted he'd slain Florin or the other man. His spell had struck just short, hurling them away rather than shattering them. Unless a helpful tree had done those shatterings for him when they'd been flung against it…
Not something he could trust in. He crouched, sinking into uncertainty again. Should he just blast away and so fell Boarblade and his men along with the Knights? Or save his spells to defend himself and leave Boarblade's men be, to help him do his work for him?
Would they help him? Or was he watching himself trade the Knights for new and stronger foes, who'd have the Pendant of Ashaba and be just as determined to defend it?
Drathar shook his head again. And some folk thought Zhentarim spent all their days preening and flogging slaves and spellhurling…
Holy Fist, when was the last time he'd flogged a slave?
In his fearful determination to get out of her reach, the man she'd wounded hadn't chosen an easy way up the cliff. Pennae knew the face she'd just climbed, and she was unhurt to boot. She swarmed up the weathered stones, tasting the iron tang of her foe's blood in her mouth as she bore the dagger between her clenched teeth. She was certain she'd passed him during her ascent, with quite some time to spare.
More than time enough to plant that dagger in the turf, pluck up two rocks of the right size from among the many strewn about atop the cliff, move to just the right spot, and wait.
Still and silent in the night, she hid in the darkness beyond the fading firelight splashing leaping teflections off the cliff face. The man never saw her until the first stone, flung full in his face, broke his jaw and left him stunned, just clinging to the weathered stone and fighting to try to think.
"B-Boaiblade," he mumbled, aftet a moment, remembering his own name with some difficulty as he stared up into the merciless smile of the beautiful woman who'd crouched down to face him.
Then her second stone slammed into his nose, shattering it; the ruptured hargaunt hissed wildly in pain and erupted in oily, foul-smelling liquid all over his face-and Telgarth Boarblade lost his hold.
His despairing cry was very short. It wasn't a particularly tall cliff. But with nothing but very hard rocks awaiting him at the bottom, and his head reaching them first, it didn't have to be.
That cry ended abruptly. Pennae looked down at the sprawled, broken figure in smiling satisfaction.
Apprehension rose in her a moment later when she saw something dark and amorphous and leathery slither away from the man's face and flow away across the tocks, rippling and creeping.
Doust Sulwood darted into view, slithering down the scree slope from the ledge in some haste. He caught up to the eerie thing and battered it enthusiastically with his mace until it flapped wildly and stopped moving. Then he emptied an unlit lantern over it-and lit the dripping mess on fire.
Watching it sizzle wetly amid the flames, Pennae's smile returned.
"Want to see who you're killing?" Semoor called from what sounded like the safety of the ledge. Stlarning holynoses.
"Yes!" Dauntless bellowed back, seeing Florin staggeting gtimly back to join him. The Harper was struggling to stand somewhere farthet off-which left a lone otnrion of the Putple Dtagons, just now, to battle these mysterious men whose faces seemed to shift and even melt as they swung theit blades.
One of them was down, sliced open by the Harper earlier, and another was fighting an unsteady battle to stand up. He'd been caught in the same spell-blast that had flung Florin and the Harper over yonder.
Which still left two-two who were clearly visible as Semoor's spell banished night, crearing a sphere of bright sunlight.
Unfortunately, the two melt-faces were moving well apart so as ro come at Dauntless from sharply opposing sides at the same time. Their swords, daggers, and reeth all gleamed. They wore identical merciless smiles.
"Gah," the Harper groaned from somewhere behind Dauntless. "This light! It's like fighting on a stage in some Swotd Coast city theater!"
"We'll be… right with you," Florin gasped, reeling, from even closer at hand.
"Worry not," Dauntless called back over his shoulder. "There are only two, after all."
Florin lurched past him, swinging his sword for balance. One of the melting-faced men mistook the ranger's groggy state for clumsiness and went for an easy lunge to the vitals.
The man blinked as Florin was somehow-and quite suddenly- nowhere near the sword reaching for him. Rather, he was past the lunging man and aiming a cut at the back of an undefended knee on his way on to cross swords with the other melt-face.
That cut landed, and the knee's owner crashed to the ground, shoulders first. Winded, he was still struggling for breath when the sharpest knife Dauntless owned sliced through the shapeless thing on his face, which was rearing up like a snake-and slashed it right off his face.
Shorn of his nose, the man screamed. So did the shapeless thing on the ground beside him. Spurting gore and squalling, it had been severed into two pieces. Both of them reared up in energetic undulations, seeking to get away as swiftly as possible.
The Harper bent and deftly diced both into many small, wriggling fragments. "These should be burned," he said. "I've never seen them before, but I think I know what they are. Hrasted if I can remember the name, though. They shapechange."
"Ah," Dauntless said as he cut the fallen man's throat. In the same movement he turned to menace the last of the melting-faced men. "Useful to know. Can they change themselves into hard metal armor, or do swords still work on them?"
Florin was striking a series of ringing blows against the desperate parries of that last man, who was backing away as he saw that he now stood alone. His dazed and reeling fellow blade had just been slain by the Harper-who was now carefully butchering the hargaunt that he'd just sliced away from the dead face it was clinging to.
"Mercy!" the last melting-faced man ctied suddenly. "I am Glays Tarnmantle and can offer twenty thousand golden lions of the realm in return for my life! I-"
The masklike, drooping thing on the man's face flowed with sudden urgency, streaming into his nose and mouth.
Glays struggled to shout something through its surging, but his nose was swelling up, stuffed full. His mouth was already distended into a grotesque, froglike shape, and as he shuddered and clawed at the shapeless thing, his face went slowly reddish-purple.
It was almost black by the time he staggered, then teeled, eyes bulging.
He fell headlong, crashing down to trampled forest turf. The sword clattered from his hand, and he lay still. The thing that had choked him flowed out onto the ground, dark and shapeless and menacing.
"Hooh," Dalonder Ree said, eyeing the corpse. "It seems something was in a real hurry to collect that gold. We should burn that something."
"When we're done here," Florin said, pointing.
A large-boned skeleton was striding out of the night at them. It plucked up a fallen sword, hefted it, and then swung it with a flourish, still walking their way.
Dauntless sighed. "Some nights, you wonder what else the forest can spit up to entertain you."
Hefting his own sword, he strode to meet the skeleton.
In the chamber of scrying, everyone looked like a ghost.
Ot so the saying went, established years ago by war wizards after their first experience of seeing the glow of over two dozen scrying spheres lighting all faces eerily from beneath.
As eerily ghostlike as any of them, Laspeera raised her eyes from some of those spheres to give her superior a rather grim look.
"So passes Lorbryn Deltalon," she said. "We have few enough left who are skilled at both Art and diplomacy and truly havens for our trust."
"Tell me what I don't know, lass," Vangerdahast said. "Reduced to sending Dauntless with a few enspelled trinkets in his pouches. That's us." He crooked an eyebrow at Laspeera's busy hands. "What're you doing?"
"Avenging Deltalon, if I can. It's worth a few scrying spheres to try to harm Onsler Ruldroun. I taught him so much. All wasted…"
Watching and listening to Laspeera's casting, Vangerdahast catefully began one of his own, deftly reaching his hands over and among hers with the familiarity of long practice at spell-weaving together.
When it was done, they both stepped back and thrust their wills at the other floating scrying spheres, seeking to force them away from the quartet that were flaring brightly and about to burst. They weren't fast enough to save them all.
In the tinkling, ear-ringing aftermath, both mages rolled over from where they ended up-on the floor and driven against a wall. They looked at each other. Their upflung arms had saved their faces and throats from deadly shards of crystal, but they were bleeding from the usual countless tiny nicks and slices, and their garments now looked as if a dozen assassins had hacked at them with tazot-sharp blades.
"Before you try to think of something clever to say about my new fashion look," Laspeera said, as she struggled to her feet and held out a hand to haul him up, "consider that you look worse. Much worse."
" 'Tis the paunch and the body hair," Vangerdahast said. "So now for the rest of our evening's entertainment: the intrepid Dauntless faring into the forest."
"As all the Nine Hells break loose," Laspeera said. She murmured the cantrip that would rid her hair of a thousand tiny shards of crystal.
Vangerdahast murmured something more substantial, and his hands were suddenly full of stark black robes. With a flourish he held the uppermost garment out to Laspeera.