by Ed Greenwood
Shandril was screaming now, too. She stood with arms stretched wide and mouth agape, spellfire still roaring forth from her, and her entire body shook and wavered as if clawed by a mighty gale.
As Narm watched, her feet rose off the smoldering floorboards as the torrent of spellflame roared on. She hung in the air, body arched like a star, spellfire streaming from her in a great swath of devouring flames.
That fire raced across Haelhollow, devouring everything in its path, tumbling wagons for an instant before they disintegrated and swallowing all else whole.
Shandril turned her head toward him, and streams of spellfire raced out from her eyes. Narm sprang back, and she looked away hastily, tears of fire streaming down her cheeks. “Narm!” she screamed. “Help me! Help meee!”
“How, Shan?” he cried, running up as close to her as he dared. She hung in the air above him, and it seemed to him as if she was struggling to bring her arms toward each other, to point ahead of her. The rocks across the hollow were melting away into nothingness, trees collapsing into the conflagration without a sound.
“I—” Shandril was crying openly now, shaking her head. Streams of flame leaked from her eyes as cried, “I—I can’t control it! The spellfire is—eating me! Taking me awayyyy!”
She hung in the air, weeping bitterly … and suddenly she was flying, as Narm gaped up at her and wondered what by all Mystra’s grace he was going to do.
His lady soared across Haelhollow on a jet of spellfire, her arms shaping and directing her streams of flame once more, lofting them at last up and out of the hollow, to the line of rocks where she’d struck down the crossbowmen. Those rocks vanished into smoke and dust, followed by more trees behind them.
Narm shook his head in despair and did the only thing he could. He started running after Shandril, so at least he might be there when her spellfire burned out and she needed comfort and protection. He hoped he’d not be trying to catch a smoldering corpse when that moment came.
Behind him, Aumlar of the Zhentarim staggered to his feet in the waist-deep wagon clutter, wincing in pain. There! The lad who’d dealt him such agony! With a wordless snarl he raised his hands to work a slaying spell.
Something else stirred in the wrecked and tumbled gear behind the wizard. Aumlar ignored it, intent on pronouncing the first words of the incantation. That was all the time Arauntar needed to rise up, shedding coffers and scraps of cloak and broken keg-staves, and reach out. His hands went around the Zhentarim throat in front of him and tightened.
Choking, the throttled wizard started to kick and struggle, so the Harper set his teeth, brought his strength to bear, and broke Aumlar Chaunthoun’s neck.
“Aumlar’s down!” Mhegras Master-of-Furs hissed, clutching the wagon-flap so tightly that his knuckles went white.
“ ‘Down’ as in dead?” Sabran the Weaver asked calmly.
“Yes!” Mhegras snarled, shaking his head and then dropping the flap and turning to face the priest of Bane. “Gods, what a slaughter! That’s three Dragon Cultists at least, and five of the Brotherhood gone! They’re dropping like buzzflies at first frost out there!”
Sabran shrugged. “If spellfire was easy to take, Lord Manshoon would have had it long since and none of us would be out here in these wolf-prowled wilderlands, clawing at each other. I won’t be surprised if the Red Wizards, the Arcane Brotherhood, and half a dozen lesser cabals have their agents in the wagons—or running around out there right now.”
Mhegras shook his head again and burrowed among their things for his fourth travel-flask of ieirith-wine. Sabran watched him drink deeply of the black, salty stuff—and how does a mage of the Brotherhood come to prefer a vintage of hot, savage Mhair, anyway?—and waited for his partner’s next outburst.
Mhegras wiped his mouth, restoppered the flask with a sigh, and said quietly, “Well, if they are, they’re likely dead. A lot of them, anyway. That little minx is flying around on her spellfire right now, melting down every wagon and rock she looks at! There aren’t going to be many guards or merchants left for them to guard, if this goes on.”
“So?” the priest asked calmly.
Mhegras gave Sabran a dark look. “You were right. We take no part in this battle and go right on playing happy heads-down merchants until we’ve a better chance to take this Shandril.” His eyes strayed to a particular coffer.
Sabran smiled. “The drugs to make her sleep are fine. The full array’s unscathed; I’ve just checked. I doubt nightfall will bring us a good chance. Even if all this burning people wearies the maid, there’ll likely be Voldovan and his two head dogs everywhere, growling and prowling. Perhaps in Triel.”
Mhegras nodded, then gave Sabran a sudden grin. “After she’s cooked another dozen of our rivals, hey?”
The priest shrugged. “As tempting as I find that idea, we should do a little prowling of our own tonight. Voldovan’s sure to hire guards in Triel, and Thay and the Cult both have their own eyes and ears there, awaiting our arrival.”
“I’ve full spells ready right now,” Mhegras muttered. “Tonight it is, then.” He reached for the wine flask again.
“Hand of Talos!” Thoadrin swore, as another rock was suddenly smoke and dust, spellflames raging through where it had been to sear away stunted felsul trees and thornbushes alike. If there’d been any better forest here, the wench would’ve had it all afire already, blazing away to the horizon and choking everyone with its smoke. Instead of just strangling his warriors.
Shaking his head in grim disbelief, Thoadrin of the Cult scrambled a little way farther down from the spellfire-scorched height of rocks. He’d watched spellfire melt away most of that rampart of stone as easily as it turned Cult warriors to ashes. Even a glancing lick of spellflames had been enough to turn armor to bubbling ruin and leave the leg beneath it scorched.
Wherefore Thoadrin was limping now, and his every breath was burning pain. He dared not try to cross the road to the rocks on the other side of Haelhollow again, but there’d been no one left alive there the last time he’d checked, not unless they’d fled a good way into the wilderlands … where the leucrotta and wolves and orc raiding bands were no doubt lurking and watching the fun.
Another few ridges along this side, and he’d be sure of the fates of the rest of his men. Ashes, most of them; he knew that already.
Was he the last? Of all the hardened Dragon warriors he’d led out here?
Gods above, that one girl could deal all this death …
Someone blackened rose up from a tangle of fire-scorched branches in front of him, sword in hand, and Thoadrin felt for his own blade.
“Easy,” the man gasped. “ ’Tis me, lord: Laranthan.”
Thoadrin stumbled forward, managing a grin. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t embrace you,” he gasped, almost falling over.
Laranthan shot out a hand to steady him, and gasped, “We’re the last. Spellfire comes expensive, it seems.” He coughed, then, a raw, rasping anguish that would not stop as he doubled over, shaking.
Thoadrin threw his arm around his best warrior—by the Dead Dragons, his only warrior, now!—and held the man, helpless to do more, until at last the coughing ended. Laranthan went to his knees, spat out a lot of blood onto the fire-scorched rocks, drew in a few long, gasping breaths, and asked, “Could we … get away from this place?”
“Come,” Thoadrin said quietly, lifting him to his feet. “ ’Tis the Blackrocks for us, north and west as fast as we can go.”
Laranthan looked at his lord. “North and—Waterdeep?”
Thoadrin nodded. “Seeking spellfire is a fools’ game, but those well above us in the Followers may not believe that, from where they sit safe and distant. So to Waterdeep to hide until the time’s right to seek our masters and admit our failure.”
Laranthan nodded, looked back at the drifting smoke where a long ridge of ancient and weather-scoured rocks had been, shivered, and started walking northwest.
The flying lass and her storm of all-cons
uming flames dwindled down behind the smoking, melted rocks along one side of the hollow. Orthil Voldovan shook his head in awe and then bellowed, “Arauntar! Beldimarr! All swords—to me!”
Was anyone left to answer his rallying?
Ah, Arauntar, lumbering forward, and someone else, past yonder wagons.… Voldovan stared around in mounting horror at the smoldering ruins of his caravan, muttering all the curses he could remember. A dozen wagons, at least, and probably more than twice that many clients …
All the work of some brigands and one girl.
Distant trees crackled as spellfire roared on. Voldovan looked in that direction and growled, “Gods above, how am I going to slay her? And if I don’t, how soon before that devours all the Realms?”
In the gathering dusk, Sharantyr of Shadowdale saw the flash and glow of mighty flame in the distance ahead a moment or two before the ground shook beneath her boots.
“Shan, Shan,” she muttered, climbing onto Flamewind’s saddle and urging the weary horse into a trot, “couldn’t you have waited until I got there?”
Somewhere nearby in the Blackrocks, a wolf howled.
Her mount faltered under her, saddle leather creaking with the break in stride. Sharantyr kicked her feet out of the stirrups and murmured, “Slow, then, Flamewind. Go as slow as you want to.”
The horse faltered again under her and fell.
Sharantyr sprang free, cursing softly, and watched the ground rush up to meet her like a hard-driven fist.
Her bright spellflames first began to falter just as Narm was starting to stagger from weariness, every breath burning his lungs. He’d run a long way up and down loose rocks and over tangled thorn-vines and half-fallen, leaning trees. He had lost count of the number of small, snarling things that had scurried away from beneath his pounding boots.
He felt as if he’d run halfway to Waterdeep, but when he’d slipped, caught hold of a tree to keep from falling down a dark cleft between rocks, and ended up wrenching himself back the way he’d come from ere he could halt, he could still see the fitful glows and rising sparks of the burning wagons in Haelhollow, not all that far off.
Shandril was flying lower now, struggling in the air as if wrestling with some invisible wraith, and the jets and bursts of flame were becoming fitful as her spellfire ran out or she won her battle for mastery over it. It had been some time since she’d burned a clear trail through the Blackrocks brush. Only the occasional gout of flame set anything below her to smoldering now.
Narm caught hold of another tree, clung to it while he threw back his head and drank in deep, shuddering breaths of cool twilit air, then ran on again. She wasn’t far ahead now. One last sprint just might …
Shan suddenly put her hands down at her sides—balled and shaking fists, at once achingly beautiful and pitiful—and soared straight up into the sky. Windmilling his arms wildly to slow down, Narm ran right underneath her, managed to get himself stopped with the aid of a particularly thorny wintanberry bush, and wrenched himself around to face her.
“Shan!” he shouted. “Shan, I’m down here!”
The bright thing of fire wriggled in the swiftly darkening sky above him, writhing strangely against the brightening stars like a sandsnake he’d once seen burrowing into river mud, and made a horrible sound. A soft and yet harsh sound that went on and on.
Narm gaped up at his lady for a long, fearful time, wondering if the spellfire was turning Shan into some sort of monster, before he realized he was hearing bitter, mirthless laughter. She was choking out the last of her spellfire. He saw it billow from her nose and mouth like horse-breath on a cold day. Slowly she sank back to earth again, shuddering amid the last crackling, spitting eruptions of flame.
“Believe it or not,” she gasped, turning to face him with eyes that blazed with spellfire, “I’d noticed you crashing along, down below. Oh, gods, Narm, I love you!”
Narm reached up his hands for her. “And I love you, Shan!”
“Do you?” She shuddered, hunching over in midair and spitting forth flames as if vomiting up a sickening meal. “Still?”
“Yes, my lady,” Narm cried, catching hold of one of her feet despite a surge of power that burned, then numbed him. “Oh, yes!”
“Then end this,” she whispered. “Please.”
Narm dragged her down to the ground and embraced her, bending forward to kiss her, then recoiling helplessly before her skin-searing breath.
“W-what d’you mean?” he cried, as he staggered back, wreathed in flame, and saw his lady fall to her hands and knees, arching and convulsing. “Shan, I’ll not harm you!”
The look she gave him up through her tangled hair was that of an angry, hungry beast, but her voice was all weariness when she said, “Then knock me cold. Give me sleep—swiftly, with your fist—before I lose this battle raging inside me.”
He ran to her. “Shan? What … what’s happening to you?”
“I’m dying,” she whispered. “Or will”—her voice rose into an angry snarl—“if I give in to this fire. It feels so warm, so soothing … and gives me such power. I want it. I want it so much!”
She quivered, head down, and he flinched back from her, inches away from putting soothing fingers to her shoulders.
“If I give in,” she growled, “if I stop fighting, I’ll become a flying flame, scouring everything I see like some sort of mad, leaping star come down to the ground … until I’m burnt out and gone.” She sobbed harshly, then added in a hoarse, hissing whisper, “Gone to ashes, like all the folk I’ve slain!”
Her head jerked up, then, and her face was aflame and twisted. She looked like a fiend out of the Nine Hells as she stared at him and growled, “Do it, Narm! Do it, my love!”
Narm stared at her, clenched his hand slowly into a fist, and held it out to her questioningly. She nodded, lowering her face again, and snarled, “Damn you, do it!”
A roar built in her throat, and her body shook again. In sudden fear Narm drew back his arm and drove it forward, punching his lady’s jaw as hard as he’d ever struck anyone in his life.
The force of his blow brought sharp pain to his fingers, then numbness. He shook them, absently, as he watched his lady’s head snap back, the fires go out in her eyes, and her body start to crumple.
He grabbed for her too late, as her senseless body fell forward into a boneless roll that brought her to a stop against him, limp and heavy.
“Gods above,” he cursed—or prayed—and started to cry. “Oh, Shan, Shan … what am I going to do?”
Only the first few peeping insects of nightfall gave him answer, and Narm cradled his wife’s body in his arms, stroking her matted and sweat-soaked hair, wondering what was going to become of them both.
If only he had the spells of an archmage or spellfire to match her own—or neither of them had ever heard of Mystra’s terrible gift, and no one was chasing them across half Faerûn seeking to enslave Shan or somehow wrest her power out of her. No doubt the Zhentarim and a score of other fell, cruel wizards had spells that would slay her in slow torment as crawling magic tore spellfire out of her and into their hands. Even if they didn’t, they’d lock her up until they could find or craft such spells—or slay her, just to keep spellfire from falling into the hands of their foes.
And there was nothing—nothing—he could do about it.
Perhaps, given years of unbroken study under a kind and capable master, he could become a mage of serviceable power—no meteor of mighty magic, but a careful caster of spells in some upcountry village where no one had ever heard of spellfire or the Zhentarim, either … but he wasn’t going to have those years.
The jaws and claws of those who did not wish them well were closing around them now, despite all their capers and the many friends who’d aided them.
Harpers were just folks with a few secrets and a little boldness and a blade or two, not god-guarded workers of miracles. Even old Elminster couldn’t be everywhere. Besides, he was more one who placed a careful word here,
a crafty manipulation there, and the occasional stinging slap of a strong magic into the faces of foes when he had to. Narm could see that now.
In the end, out here in the wilderlands, they stood alone. Pray though they might, no one was going to save them. He and Shan were going to die soon at the hands of some greedy spellfire-seeker or other, and there was nothing he could do to protect his lady, or hide her, or snatch her away from all of this.
He didn’t even know if he’d dare to die for her or be given the chance to. If she was an angry flying ball of flame and archwizards were hurling spells at her like clouds of arrows, what by Tempus, Tymora, Azuth, and Mystra was he going to do? Stand and yell at them to stop?
He was supposed to defend his lady, to be strong enough to protect her, and all he had was a laughable handful of spells and soft hands that could give good foot-rubs!
There might even be wolves or beasts creeping closer right now, as he sat cradling Shan, and he didn’t even know if he could safely carry her back to the hollow or if one of the guards would just put a blade through them both if he did.
All he could do was be with her, holding her and murmuring empty comfort.
It was different in minstrels’ tales. Therein someone who had power could with a single blow or blast and a few heroic words set all the Realms to rights, cow villains into obedience, and as often as not step straight onto a throne.
No ballads told of heroes, or anyone, crying tears of fire alone after cooking friends and foes and handy trees alike to ashes—yet not running out of enemies seeking spellfire from behind every second or third rock or tree or wagon.
Shandril’s body was growing warmer! Now what?
Narm stroked her face, her chin and throat, her hands. Yes, warm, as if she had a fever. What if it was a fever? What happens to spellfire-folk when they get ill? He stole a gentle hand into the top of her bodice and felt down her front. Warm all over, but no warmer there than where she was bared to the night air, on face and hands. She was breathing slowly and shallowly, her face slack and empty. Hmmm.