by Ed Greenwood
“One death is imminent,” the warrior Tharp said in his deep, seldom-heard voice. “The other we can look for later.”
One of the priests held up his holy symbol. “Tyche bids the brave and true to chance glory,” the Hand of Tyche said sharply.
“Tempus expects adventurers to embrace battle, not slip away when strong foes threaten,” agreed the Sword of Tempus. The priests exchanged glances and grim grins as they readied weapons.
The thief Gralkyn sighed. “I knew riding with two battle-mad priests would bring us trouble, in depth and at speed.”
“And disappointment came not to you,” Tarthe said, “for which you gave much thanks. So you are now at peace, ready to speak of strategies against these globed beasts and not weasel words to try to get out of facing them!”
There was a little silence as the Blades smiled mirthlessly at each other or displayed looks of unconcern, all trying—in vain—to hide the fear in their eyes.
Elmara spoke into that quiet tension. “We are in the house of a mage, and as a worshiper of Mystra, I am closest among us to the mantle of wizardry. It is right that I make the first attack”—she swallowed, and they saw she was trembling with excitement and fear—“as I am the most likely of us to prevail against … what we face.”
“What are ye, Elmara—the Magister in fool form, perhaps, or the Sorcerer Supreme of all Calimshan, out for a lark? Or are ye really just the soft-witted idiot ye sound to be?” Dlartarnan asked sourly.
“Hold hard, now,” Tarthe said warningly. “This is no time for dispute!”
“When I’m dead,” the warrior returned darkly, “it’ll be just a blade thrust or six too late for me to enjoy one last dispute.… I’d just as soon enjoy it now.”
“Soft-witted idiot I may be,” Elmara told him pleasantly, “but sit on thy fear long enough to think … and ye can’t help but agree that however ill my efforts befall, they are still the best road we can set foot upon.”
Several Blades protested at once—and then as one, their voices fell silent. Grim faces looked out at the globes, back at the trembling young mage, and then back at the globes again.
“ ’Tis madness,” Tarthe said at last, “but ’tis just as surely our best hope.”
Troubled silence answered him; he raised his voice a little, and asked, “Does anyone here deny this? Or speak against it?”
In the hanging silence after these words, Ithym gave a little shake of his head. As if this had been a signal, the two priests shook their heads together—and one by one, the others followed, Dlartarnan last.
Elmara looked around. “We are agreed, then?” The Blades stared at her in silence until she added, “Well enough; I need every man here to have ready all the weapons he can hurl afar—but to loose nothing until I give word, whate’er befalls.”
She waved them to one end of the balcony while she went to the other. “I must cast some spells,” she said. “Someone keep an eye on those lights behind us and tell me if my work draws them hence.”
She stamped and shuffled and murmured for a long time, casting powders into the air, drawing many small objects from various places in her clothing, and from sheaths beneath garments and in and about her well-worn boots.
In wary silence, the Blades watched the young mage trace small signs in the air; each glowed briefly and then faded as she traced the next. Radiances washed over the young mage and then were gone, and though her intent, earnest expression never changed, both she and her companions-at-arms noticed that with each new spell she worked, the four silent globes hanging so menacingly near pulsed and grew brighter. The lights in the doorway winked and drifted around each other, ever faster, but made no move to spill out into the passage.
At last El bent to her boots and drew forth six straight, smooth lengths of wood. She held two end to end so their slightly bulbous tips touched, deftly twisted and pushed, and they became one. In like manner she added length to length, until she held a knobbed staff as tall as she was.
She shook it as if half expecting pieces to fall off, but all held firm. Then she brandished it against an imaginary foe. Dlartarnan snorted; it looked like a toy.
Elmara leaned the toy staff against the balcony rail and came toward them, rubbing her hands thoughtfully. “I’m about ready,” she said, casting a keen look at the waiting globes. Her hands trembled slightly.
“We gathered that,” Ithym said.
Tarthe nodded, smiling thinly. “Mind telling us just what spells you’ve worked … before all the bloodletting begins?”
“I’ve not much time to chatter; the magics don’t last overlong,” Elmara replied, “but know ye all: I can fly, flames will harm me not—even dragonfire, though I doubt the mage who wrote the spell had ever faced it when he made his claim—and spells hurled my way will come back upon the sender.”
“You can do all that?” Tharp’s voice was thoughtful.
“Not every day,” Elmara replied. “The spells are woven into a dwaeodem.”
“How nice,” Gralkyn said with light, lilting sarcasm. “That explains everything … now I can go to my deathbed content.”
“The spells are linked in a shield about me,” Elmara replied softly. “Its creation took the sacrifice of an enchanted item of power—and it drains the life from me, slowly but inescapably, more the longer I hold it.”
“Then enough idle talk,” Tarthe said sharply. “Lead us into battle, mage.”
Elmara nodded, swallowed, ducked her head just as a helmed warrior does to pull down his visor before a charge—the warriors exchanged looks and smiled—caught up her staff, and scrambled up onto the balcony rail.
Then she leaped off into space—and plunged from view.
The Blades exchanged grim looks and leaned forward over the rail. Far below, Elmara was gliding, arms outstretched, across the chamber, tilting her body as if testing the air. Her flight pulled sharply upward a scant hand’s breadth in front of a balcony, and she began to soar toward them. Her face was white and set; they saw her swallow and begin to look green even as she released her staff and moved her hands in intricate passes and finger-linkings. The staff flew along beside her, mirroring her slight shifts of direction as Elmara rose up the far side of the chamber, working a spell. She seemed to cast it twice … and drifted to a halt facing them, arms spread above her head, two ghostly circles of radiance flickering about her hands. Then they saw but did not hear her mouth a word that made the chamber itself quiver—and the radiances rushed outward from her hands and vanished.
The four spheres in the center of the space began to move. The Blades watched, warily raising weapons as the globes of light glided around the chamber—and the beings within them stirred. As if awakened from a long sleep, they turned to look about. One of the Blades whispered a heartfelt curse. The thieves ducked low behind the balcony rail, peering at their crazed comrade hanging in the air, hands moving again as she cast yet another spell.
There was a soundless flash. The mind flayer had worked some spell of its own, seeking to break free of its globe, but the glowing magic had prevailed. The tentacled thing crouched down in seeming pain. Elmara frowned and gestured at it, and the mind flayer’s prison of light scudded across the chamber, gathering speed as it spun toward the globe that held the dragon. The great wyrm was thrashing its tail, wriggling its shoulders, and roaring silently, trying to shatter the cramped confines of light about it. Its jaws flashed fire as it caught sight of the watching men on the balcony. Hatred glared in its gaze as it snarled at them.
Then the two globes rushed together, and the world shattered.
The Blades roared as a light brighter than they’d ever seen blasted into their eyes. They were staggering back even before the balcony shook beneath them, and they fell, blinded by the flash of the bursting globes. Only Asglyn, the Sword of Tempus, who’d expected spellfury of some sort and had closed his eyes in time, was able to see the mind flayer struggling in the dragon’s jaws, hissing and burbling in futile spells before those
teeth chomped down, once.
What remained of the purple body fell away in a dark rain of gore as the dragon opened its mouth and roared its rage. The third globe was already rushing in at the dragon, the beholder’s eyestalks writhing as it prepared for the battle it knew would come.
Asglyn had a brief glimpse of Elmara, face a mask of sweat, jaw clenched in effort, driving the globe along the path she’d chosen. Then the priest shut his eyes tight, just before the flash of rending globes came again. It was followed by a second flash that lit his face with its heat. When Asglyn dared look, he saw the beholder wreathed in flames as the dragon beat its huge wings and raked at the eye tyrant with reaching claws. Stabbing rays of radiance leaped from the beholder’s many eyes. The dragon’s answering roars held a rising note of fear amid its fury.
Asglyn looked about him. Gralkyn was slumped almost against him, hands jammed to eyes as he knelt behind the rail. Tarthe was shaking his head, fighting to clear his vision.
“Up, Blades!” the priest hissed urgently, and then stiffened as the voice of Elmara sounded inside his head.
“Hurl everything that can pierce or slash at the tyrant’s eyes, as soon as the gods make ye able!”
Asglyn hefted his heavy hammer, his favorite weapon borne through a hundred battles or more, and hurled it with all his might, end over end, in a careful, climbing arc, so that it might fall into the great central eye of the beholder. It spun through the air but he never saw if it struck home; he had turned to scramble about the balcony, shaking and slapping his dazed and groaning companions and hoping somehow they’d escape with their lives.
Elmara’s next spell brought whirling blades into being from nothingness. They flashed and spun about the waving eyestalks of the beholder like so many fireflies. El saw more than one eye spurt gore or milky liquid and go dark before the madly spinning eye tyrant blasted the shards into drifting smoke with a ray that leaped on to stab at a certain young mage.
Leaped—and rebounded, slicing silently back into the roiling tangle of dragon wings and scaled shoulders and claws, and the darting, spinning, snarling eye tyrant. The dragon roared in pain, but El could see none harm the beholder.
The dragon spat fire again. As before, the gout of flames seemed to splash away over an invisible shield held in front the eye tyrant. Yet that shield was no barrier to the dragon’s claws and tail. As Elmara watched, the tail slapped the beholder end over end across the chamber, its eyestalks curling and struggling vainly. It passed near the balcony where the Blades stood, and more than a few of them hurled daggers, darts, and blades just above and before it so it rushed helplessly into the stream of whirling steel. The monster squalled in pain and fry as it tumbled to a halt. What eyes it had left turned toward the nearby balcony.
Bright beams and flickering rays of feebler radiance flashed, and the Blades cried out and ran vainly about the balcony in terror. It shook and shuddered under them, and most of the rail was suddenly gone, melted away in the fury of the eye tyrant’s attack.
Yet no searing spells tore into the men, though the crash and flicker of variegated lights was almost blinding. Magic spat and crawled all along the balcony before rebounding back at the struggling spherical monster; Elmara’s last spell was doing its work.
Those Blades who could see well enough hurled more daggers, but in the fury of roiling magic around the balcony, most of these vanished in sparks and fragments or simply sighed into nothingness. Through the hail of blades, the furious dragon clapped its wings and rushed down at the beholder, seeking to slay the thing that had caused it such pain. As it came, it breathed fire again. The blackened eye tyrant rolled over in the streaming storm of flame so all its remaining eyestalks pointed straight at the great wyrm. Rays of magic leaped and thrust, and the oncoming dragon began to scream. The beholder rose a little to get out of the way as the dragon hurtled helplessly past. The wyrm crashed into the wall so hard that the Blades were hurled from their feet. The eye tyrant’s eye-rays stabbed mercilessly at the thrashing dragon.
The beast seemed much smaller by the time it managed to flap free of the wall again, smoke rising from its body. Crushed balconies fell away in rubble as the dragon moved, its scream a raw and terrible sound of agony. Then its cries began to fade. The awestruck Blades saw bits of the dragon’s straining body vanish as if it were just so much ice melting in the heart of a fire. It dwindled swiftly, lifeblood boiling away into nothing in the face of the cruel powers bent upon it. Beyond the fury of flashing magic, the Blades could see the floating figure of Elmara, arms waving in careful haste as she cast another spell.
When the dragon vanished in a last puff of dark scales and boiling blood, the beholder turned with menacing slowness toward the mage and rolled over so that the broad ray of its central eye could strike at her—the eye that drained all magic.
Caught in that spell-draining field, Elmara fell, arms waving. The watching men heard her sob in fear. The beholder swiftly rolled over again to bring its eyestalks to bear all at once on the sorceress, as it had done to the dragon. As the Blades on the balcony desperately hurled blades, shields, and even boots at it, they heard the cold, cruel thunder of its laughter.
Rays and beams flashed out again. Through that bright fury, the Blades saw Elmara raise one arm as if to lash the beholder with an invisible whip. The wand she held flared into sudden life.
The beholder shuddered under its attack and spun wildly about. The Blades ducked desperately as its rays sizzled across the balcony, but Elmara’s barrier still held, and the rending magics rebounded back at the eye tyrant.
Tarthe and Asglyn stood shoulder to shoulder at what was left of the balcony rail, tense and helpless, all their weapons hurled and their foe beyond reach. Through narrowed eyes they saw Elmara draw a dagger from her belt and soar up at the beholder like a vengeful arrow. Eyestalks wriggled, and explosive light burst forth anew. The flying mage was thrown aside by the violent force, and the dagger in her fingers suddenly flared into flames.
She hurled it away, shaking her hand in pain, but in the same motion swept her hand into the front of her bodice. There was another dagger—no, the broken stub of an old sword—in Elmara’s hand when she drew it forth. She tumbled in the air through a roiling area of intersecting rays and raced in toward the beholder.
Waiting spells burst into sudden life around the blade in her outstretched hand, coiling and flaring as Elmara struck home—and her tiny steel fang sank into a hard body-plate as if she were thrusting into so much hot stew.
The beholder shrieked like a terrified courtesan and hurled itself away from the sorceress. El was left tumbling alone in the air as the eye tyrant flew blindly into the nearest wall, snarling in pain.
Elmara snatched a wand from her belt and darted after it. Straight among the eyestalks she plunged to touch the thing’s rolling body just above the hissing, snapping jaws. Then she kicked herself away and flew clear. Behind her, the beholder began to repeat its actions backward, rolling back to strike the wall again. Then it hurtled back to where Elmara had stabbed it.
It hung there a moment—and then rolled back at the wall again to crash and then roll away in an exact duplication of its previous movements. Fascinated, the watching Blades saw the monster’s flight repeat, cycling through its squalling collision with the wall over and over again.
“How long will that go on?” Tarthe asked in wonder.
“The beholder is doomed to smash itself against the wall of the chamber over and over until its body falls apart,” Asglyn said grimly. “That’s not magic many wizards dare to use.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Ithym put in from beside them. Then he gasped and pointed out into the center of the vast open chamber.
Elmara had retrieved her staff and flown into the heart of the last, smaller globe. One skeletal hand leaped at her eyes, but she smashed it aside. The second hand was already darting in at her from behind; they saw it dig bony digits into her neck as she whirled around, too late.
E
lmara flung her staff away and spat the words of another spell, one hand flashing in intricate gestures. The skeletal hand was crawling its steady way around to her throat as she wove the spell—and the hand she’d hit away was flying at her face again, two smashed, bony fingers dangling uselessly.
Tarthe sighed in frustration. Elmara was struggling, a hand at her throat, jerking her head from side to side to keep the other bony claw from piercing her eyes. Her face darkened, but the Blades saw motes of light spring into being around her, growing brighter.
Then, without sound, both skeletal hands fell into dust, and the globe around them faded away entirely. As its magic failed, the Blades heard Elmara gasping for breath in the sudden silence—and the first winking lights drifted past their shoulders from the passage behind them.
The Blades drew aside in wary surprise. The many-hued lights that had cloaked Gralkyn emptied themselves from the doorway in a steady stream, drifting along the passage and out into the open center of the chamber, heading for their sorceress.
“Elmara—beware!” Tarthe called, his voice hoarse and cracked.
Elmara cast a look at him, saw the lights, and stared hard at them for a moment. Then she waved a dismissive hand and turned back to the floating book.
Across the chamber, the trapped beholder threw itself helplessly against the wall again and again, the wet thuds of its impacts marking a steady beat as Elmara bent to peer at the pages.
As her fingers touched the book, the moving lights suddenly rushed forward with a loud sigh. Elmara stiffened as they enveloped her.
The Blades saw the book drift out of her motionless hands and close smoothly. A band of shining metal crawled out of one end of the binding, darted smoothly around the tome, and tightened. There was a flash of light, and the book was bound shut.
The lights around the floating sorceress began to wink out, one by one, until they were all gone. Elmara shook herself, floating in midair, and smiled. She looked fresh, happy, and free of pain as she ran her finger along the metal band, tracing a runic inscription it bore. The Blades heard her gasp excitedly, “This is it! This is it! At last!”