Hand of Fire

by Ed Greenwood

  They came in a whispering flood as the great wraith-cloud dwindled and died and … faded away. Caring little, Shandril let them rush over her and into her, imparting their secrets like storm-blown leaves slapping her weary face.

  Rathrane, the gloating ghost had been, a wizard of Netheril—of course; were not all these awakened ancient evils from that fell time and realm above realms, where wizards had thought themselves kings? This Rathrane had drunk magic as some carters gulped ale, and grown strong, and in his towering, this last little while, had touched many minds …

  Shandril shivered at some of those thoughts, even as she realized dimly that her striving had worked—once spellfire had slipped from her control and raged unchecked, the magic-draining phantom was doomed.

  Narm, none of this will bring back my Narm, she whispered bitterly into the darkness, as thoughts opened up like night-blooming flowers around her, catching her unwilling interest as if they had hooks, and showing her …

  … Orthil Voldovan had been slain in Triel, and his likeness and place taken by the Red Wizard Thavaun …

  … Alustriel of Silverymoon and Laeral of Waterdeep had ridden her spellfire here, bringing her friends Mirt and Asper to her aid—and now she’d harmed them all …

  … Sharantyr had been hurled away, wounded, by magic, somewhere into the night …

  … the man staggering up to his feet in front of her, tossing down the empty vial that had held the third healing potion he’d poured down his throat in swift succession, was a worm of a wizard. “Hlael of the Zhentarim,” she named him aloud. A man ruled by terror, who’d been ordered to seize spellfire by the mage Drauthtar and sent here into this battle by a fell, much-feared Zhent, the wizard Hesperdan.

  Narm is gone, she hissed into his mind, as Hlael became aware of her regard and stiffened in alarm, and you shall pay for it! You’ll all pay for it!

  Shandril reached down into herself so deep that it hurt her sorely, dug her fingers like claws into all the spellfire she could handle, sobbed with the pain of that heaving, and hurled it at Hlael Toraunt.

  The Zhentarim managed to open his mouth to scream before his mind and then his body burst apart, but Shandril scarcely noticed his dying. She rode her bright and deadly flood on into the darkness, leaping along a scrying-linkage to another cold-hearted wizard—the one who’d been watching Hlael from afar.

  “Drauthtar,” she snarled as she reached him, “die!”

  Spellfire roared and swirled, and the lass who was its source and its rider turned away without another glance, seeking the next Zhentarim to slay, gathering her energies to seek Hesperdan.

  Power in plenty, but no spells to seek a man hidden. Shandril screamed in rage when the energies roiling around her served her not, and hurled herself like a lightning bolt back across miles of wolf-haunted night to where Alustriel of Silverymoon was emerging from a self-spun fortress of silver fire to seek her stricken Sister, Laeral.

  “Child,” Alustriel told her gravely, as their gazes met, “let fall your flames, and know comfort.”

  There was no trace of fear in the High Lady’s voice, but Shandril heard pity and let it spur her on to greater rage.

  “Show me Hesperdan!” she screamed, shaking.

  Spellfire and silver fire snarled and clawed each other once more, but Alustriel nodded through their striving and with the barest trace of a smile replied, “I can do that.”

  Silver fire swirled into a tunnel. Shandril looked down it and then flung herself at the distant figure she saw there, riding her flame a long, dark way.

  Halfway to that distant robed man, he became aware of her. Glittering dark eyes widened, hands wove frantic spells, and the tunnel she raced down began to come apart.

  “No!” Shandril screamed through fresh tears, hurling spellfire in frantic haste. “Mystra, let him not escape me! Lady of Magic, hear me!”

  Her cry seemed to roll out across vast distances, echoing and booming, but the figure ahead was fading into darkness. As her spellfire leaped after it, she could not see where the flames went.

  Everything was dissolving into darkness and tears, the stink of smoke and burned flesh growing stronger around her.

  Flames burst forth out of empty air where no flame should have been able to kindle, and men drew back in murmured alarm to leave the gleaming black tiles before the high seat of Manshoon bare.

  A line of black flames outlined by angry red fire descended to the floor—and vomited forth a blackened man in robes, his hair afire.

  “Spellfire,” Drauthtar gasped, shuddering in the aftermath of his desperate teleport, “destroys all! Seek it not!”

  Many priests and mages gaped at him as he staggered a few paces across the floor of the Zhentarim stronghold, leaving footprints of flame in his wake.

  By the time he turned to face Dread Lord Manshoon—who’d risen hastily from his throne, rings winking into life—Drauthtar was little more than a husk filled with raging flame. As his face twisted into a smile and he opened his mouth to deliver a dying curse on the leader of the Zhentarim, he toppled forward.

  His last magic unworked, Drauthtar Inskirl collapsed into swirling, spitting flames that scorched out to almost lick the boots of Lord Manshoon.

  The leader of the Zhentarim stared down at the dying flames until they were gone into drifting smoke, and then turned without a word and walked away.

  A young mageling named Imvoran shivered, then was violently ill all over the gleaming black tiles in front of him. He’d heard of spellfire and seen many a mage die by magic, too—but it was the first time in his dozen years of service to the Brotherhood that he’d ever seen fear on the face of Dread Lord Manshoon.

  The old man ascended the lightless shaft like a racing wind, hurling aside shield-spells and helmed horrors alike, and sprang into the midst of the startled gargoyles before the mage with serpent-fingers and floating eyeballs could do more than snatch up a long, dark-spired scepter with a heartfelt curse.

  “Hesperdan, you—” the Maimed Wizard began, but whatever colorful description Eirhaun had intended to snarl was lost in the flash and roar of spellfire leaping up the shaft, tumbling helmed horrors into smoke and shards, and stabbing into the shadows.

  A blue-white web of force suddenly glowed around Hesperdan, and the spellfire that clawed at it rebounded across the room at the wizard with the scepter.

  His shielding was a thing of mingled crimson and emerald fire, and it wrestled desperately with the spellfire. The scepter smoked and burst apart, followed into oblivion by two rings that took Eirhaun’s hissing snake-fingers with them. Spellfire scorched and sizzled about the walls, shattering pillars and gargoyles alike, then faded and fell back down the shaft.

  The two wizards looked at each other—Hesperdan’s cold and dark smile meeting the glare of the Maimed Wizard. The older wizard had deflected the spellfire that sought his life at Eirhaun Sooundaeril, who’d in turn thrust it aside into the walls of his stronghold. That massive peak of stone was old and huge and girt with many spells, but there was no one and nothing it could deflect spellfire into.

  Wherefore cracks had already appeared in the walls and the vaulted ceiling, and the floor beneath the two men was shuddering and starting to move. Explosions rumbled far below, and ravaged stone screamed like a man in anguish. A chasm opened in the rippling floor between the two wizards.

  Stone fell away with a rush and a roar. Hesperdan and Eirhaun the Maimed stared at each other across the gulf as rooms fell away beneath them, one after another, crashing down into the dust and screams below.

  “Oh, dear,” Hesperdan remarked mildly. “I do believe your stronghold is collapsing.”

  The Maimed gathered the spell around him that would whisk him away and replied menacingly, “We will meet again, Old Man.”

  Hesperdan smiled again. “Indeed. I’m counting on it.”

  He vanished an instant after his longtime foe—but just before the shattered floor he’d been standing on cracked and fell away wi
th a roar.

  Shandril went to her knees as she wept, spellfire raining down with her tears. More spellflames raced along her arms to roll away into the night. “Oh, Mystra, aid me!” she cried.

  “Shan?” a voice as grief-ridden as her own asked her, from very close by. “Is there anything I can do?”

  Asper was also on her knees, facing Shan across smoking ash from about an armslength away. Shandril stared at her in horror.

  “Get away!” she snarled. “Go from here before I burn you, too!”

  “No,” Asper told her, her face white with fear but her voice firm. “My Mirt lies wounded behind me. I’ll not leave him. I’m his only shield against—oh, Shan—against spellfire!”

  Shandril burst into fresh tears, shook her head, got up, and fled blindly into the night.

  Men cowering amid the smoke watched her go, a stumbling, sobbing figure wreathed in flames, who left blazing footprints behind her.

  She stopped atop a bare knob of rock on the edge of camp, and there turned, tears glimmering in her eyes and splashing in flames to the rocks below. On a curl of spellfire like dragons’ breath her voice rolled softly back to Asper: “Farewell!”

  Asper stood up and reached out to her. “Shan, no!”

  “No?” Shandril cried wildly. “I’ve killed Narm! My man is gone, dead by my hand! Dead by this cursed spellfire that feels so good!” She shook her head, flames swirling in her hair, and sobbed bitterly. “Beldimarr too, and the Lady Laeral, and dozens more! I slaughtered them all! Everywhere I go, people die—and still wizards keep trying to get their hands on this fire inside me! One day they might succeed in taking it—and what then? Shandril Shessair causes the rest of Faerûn be swept away?”

  “Shandril, ’tis not your fault!” Asper cried, taking a few reluctant steps closer.

  “Nay? I say it is,” Shandril howled, her eyes two flames. “And I am done with slaying, done with fear and running and fighting, done with it all!”

  She threw back her head and told the stars, “Gorstag, forgive me … Mystra, take me!”

  Drawing in a deep breath, she gave Asper a little wave and a half-smile, and went to one knee. Propping both elbows on her raised knee, she put her fingers in her mouth—and fed herself spellfire.

  There was a moment of silence, then a trembling—a shuddering of earth and air and blood pounding in the ears that began as a sound so low it shook bones rather than being heard, but built swiftly to a din greater than any dragon might make.

  No one could stand or wage war or be heard in that trembling tumult. All over that bloody field men fell, tumbling helplessly, and lightning snarled out from the lone lass on the rock, playing like restless blue snakes from blade to shield and back again, until men threw away their swords or tore off their armor, to lie wincing, cowering, and wondering when they would die. Asper fell, tried to get up again, and found herself once more on the ground, one shoulder to the scorched earth. She kept her eyes on Shandril all the while, and it was as she was rolling over onto her stomach again that she saw the maid from Highmoon rise up into the air, trembling in the thrall of the furious white stream of spellfire leaking from her mouth to roil around her as she went on feeding it to herself.

  Perhaps forty feet off the ground her hands fell away from her mouth as she stared at the empty air beside her and gasped in wonder, “Narm? M-Mystra? Gorstag?”

  And then Shandril exploded, in a burst of radiance so bright that Asper saw nothing for days afterward.

  “Oh, lass,” the High Lady murmured. “You saved him and healed him, and never knew. He but collapsed from the pain and lives yet. Unlike you.”

  The Weave flashed and shook itself, as if rid of a great burden. Alustriel Silverhand, weeping with grief and pain amid leaping tongues of silver fire, let go her shielding spells at last.

  In Shadowdale, Elminster looked up sharply from an old map as Mourngrym frowned across the table at him and Illistyl and Jhessail winced in unison and grabbed for the backs of chairs, for support. “She’s gone,” the Old Mage said slowly, shaking his head. “She lasted longer than I’d ever thought she would.”

  Torm’s eyes narrowed. “Who?”

  “Shandril,” Rathan said heavily, and reached for a decanter. “Gathered, as the gods gather us all.”

  “Mystra preserve her,” Jhessail gasped, and threw back her head as if starving for air. A single tear fell like a wet star on the map before her. Torm reached out a finger and drew a prayer-rune with it, right across the face of Elminster’s map.

  Mourngrym waited for the Old Mage to erupt, but no storm came. Elminster merely shook his head again, looking off into a distant otherwhere that only he could see, and murmured, “Mystra will provide.”

  “Sharantyr?” Florin asked quietly, from his end of the table.

  The Old Mage almost smiled. “Someone else has already provided for her. Someone who could teach Torm, here, a thing or two.”

  “What’s wrong, Tess?” the Purple Dragon asked, coming awake in an instant and reaching for her with one hand and his ready sword with the other.

  Tessaril Winter trembled under his touch like a little girl, and he swiftly wrapped a comforting arm around her smooth curves. “I know not, King Azoun,” she said formally, her voice empty and despairing. “I only know someone has died—and in dying, reached out to me.”

  “Who?” the king of Cormyr asked softly, enfolding her in his arms.

  Tessaril whispered, “She. Young, and of great power … it can only be Shandril Shessair. She never made it to Silverymoon, after all.” She swallowed. “Oh, Az—hold me.”

  “I will,” Azoun said gently, not bothering to point out that he already was. Kindness is a rare quality in a king, understanding another, and caring a third. Tessaril lay still and thought on all three, and her eyes filled with tears.

  “At least I have you,” she whispered, and the Purple Dragon’s answer was a simple whisper.

  “Yes.”

  They lay together in silence for a long time before his Lady Lord of Eveningstar twisted free of the royal grasp and of her bed in one smooth movement, to stand bare and magnificent in the moonlight.

  “Where—?” Azoun asked, hefting his sword.

  Tessaril turned from a jewel-box on her dressing table with a pendant in her hand. As she held it out, the great jewel seemed to glow slightly. “I must tell Fee without delay,” she explained almost apologetically. “She’ll have felt my—my upset, and be lying awake now, wondering.”

  “Filfaeril? Are your two minds often linked, when you and I are together?”

  Tessaril smiled a little sadly at him. “I would consider it treason on my part if they were not,” she said quietly. “We also talk often with this.”

  She heard his sigh as she bent over the jewel, and turned her head again to add, with a thin half-smile, “And yes: often about you.”

  Azoun lay back with another sigh and told the moonlit ceiling, “I might have known.”

  Lord Manshoon stopped in midstride, the whirling magic that had brought him to this chamber in Zhentil Keep still dwindling behind him, and snapped, “Send for the priests! Something has happened—something that has made the Weave itself tremble!”

  As wizards scrambled to do his bidding, he murmured, “So if the wench is dead, who has spellfire now?”

  In the Stonelands a cool breeze was quickening, but despite the leaves it rustled and the branches it bent, a swirl of ashes rose and stood against it in the air, whirling up briefly into a shape that might have been an armored dwarf.

  The shape turned, peering northwest over the puddled flow of stone that had once been a spire called Irondrake Rock as if straining to see something. No one was there to see the ashen phantom, and after a time it collapsed with a sigh and was gone again.

  Peace returned to Delg’s Dell, though the breeze blew no more that night.

  Oprion Blackstone looked out of a high window in a certain tower of Zhentil Keep and murmured, “Another scheme fallen to
ashes. Manshoon will send his spell-dogs to summon us to parley. What would happen, I wonder, if I simply refused to come?”

  “We’d slay you, of course,” a deep, wet voice said from the air outside a moment before its owner drifted into view from around the tower’s curve. “Many humans are that stupid, of course, but I was hoping we’d weeded out the worst dolts already.”

  A second beholder shuddered as it drifted after the first. “One human she,” it said, “and so much slaughter of our kind. It will be long before I rid myself of that memory.”

  The priest carefully made no comment about seeing the cobbles below awash in beholder blood. He was in no hurry to follow Shandril Shessair into the waiting arms of the gods.

  A scrying-spell collapsed back into the surrounding shadows, and a slender hand put down a goblet. “Well, that was spectacular,” its owner said calmly. “Perhaps the younglings will return from their misadventures, now that their prize is gone.”

  “I think not,” another voice replied. “Once freedom is tasted …”

  Into that place of shadows burst the sudden light of a spell, bringing back those very tasters of freedom far more swiftly than even the most optimistic elder had hoped.

  “By the blood of Malaug in us!” one newly returned Malaugrym burst out excitedly, tendrils snaking out toward a handy decanter. “Did you see?”

  “We did,” the owner of the goblet replied politely.

  “Indeed,” the second elder agreed, holding up another goblet in a hand that shook more than slightly.

  The Red Wizard Thavaun let his spell-guise fall away. Caravan Master Orthil Voldovan would be needed no more.

  Surveying the smoking ruin of the camp, he drew in a deep breath and hissed, “So much for spellfire. Well, at least I’m still alive.”

  “Not for more than a breath longer!” came a growl of doom from right behind him.