by Ed Greenwood
All of the wizards were staring at her now, aghast. Hundarr was quivering in the grip of a rage even greater than Broglan’s. The leader of the war wizards stepped back one deliberate pace—half to keep himself from throttling this outrageous woman, and half because he expected the stone to spit lightning around the room.
The stone flickered and pulsed with sudden light. Then the four wizards heard Lord Vangerdahast’s voice say quietly, “My apologies, Storm. What is happening at Firefall, and how can I help you?”
Jaws dropped in disbelief all around her as Storm said crisply, “We’re facing an entity who can shapeshift and burn out the brains of its victims. They’re blindbarred to all magic we’ve tried thus far. Since the two initial deaths, it’s slain two of your junior wizards and the seneschal of the keep. On my arrival here, I enjoyed a feast that was one long parade of poisons and magical traps, too. You’ve got problems with a rotten noble house, and this slayer who can walk right through the ranks of the noble and powerful in Cormyr and keep going. The boldshield—Ergluth—is willing to do whatever it takes, but Broglan here has to have your permission before he’ll even be civil to me. Will you tell him I’m his commander for a tenday, so we can get to work … before it’s too late?”
“Lord High Wizard!” Broglan shouted. “There’s—”
“Broglan, I presume you heard her,” the voice rasped out from the stone. “Obey her as you would me, and tell all of the mages under you to do the same.”
“I—yes, Lord High Wizard,” Broglan said with a sigh.
“May I cast spells on your mages?” Storm asked.
“Gods, woman,” the stone said, a hiss of exasperation in the voice, “I can see why you want to, but that’s one rule I never break … only war wizards can enspell other war wizards, and then only for certain specific things—else the Dragon Throne would’ve faced attacks from hostile mages long since …”
“These are not normal times,” Storm said quietly, “and I’ll not misuse this grant of power. More than that, I’ll drop in on you soon and scratch your ears and the small of your back the way you like, and dare not trust anyone else to—”
The stone harrumphed very loudly, and said, “Consider both the offer and the grant of power accepted. I don’t think we need say anything more about such matters, do you?”
Storm smiled. “I guess not. Fare thee well, Thunderspells.”
“Don’t call me that, blast it! A man has to have some dignity,” the stone said, quivering. It started to sink down toward its cushion, “And keep safe, Storm. Deliver our kingdom to us and save the day and all that wind and roar … but keep safe.”
“You, too,” Storm said gently as the stone settled onto the black velvet. She gave it a last smile, and then looked up at the four silent men above her and said brightly, “Now, this won’t hurt a bit.…”
* * * * *
Orling the Bold unhappily strummed his harp, eyes on the bright—and empty—display case beside him. This was the last string that needed tuning. When it was done, he’d have to go tell someone about the ring vanishing. That would be the end of his night of revelry, over before it began—and perhaps of his career as a Harper. Or even his life, if they took it really amiss.
Orling gulped as he plucked the last string repeatedly. He certainly didn’t feel ‘Bold’ right now, or even just ‘bold.’ No one would believe he’d not even touched the case, and the ring had just up and—
He blinked at the case again, and let out an uneasy laugh. His forehead was suddenly wet with sweat, and outside the room he heard the first trumpets echoing through Twilight Hall to start the fun. He looked in wonder at the case, shaking his tense fingers to loosen them and hardly daring to believe his eyes.
The ring was back. Floating there, turning slowly, as it had been for years. The little electrum dragon, the silver orb under it, and the plain gold band. Orling smiled.
The ring was back, as silently as it had gone. It winked almost mockingly at him—turning just as it had been turning for years.
* * * * *
The poison was rather more subtle this time, but it was still there. In the stuffed pheasant, the lemon juice and the pepper overwhelmed the burning, oily taste that Storm’d come to expect from the kitchens of the keep. There was nothing wrong with the good, sharp stonemountain cheese on her side dish, and the white sauce for the birds was simply exquisite.
Storm ate with gusto, washing down bird after bird with wine, and enjoying the sniping attacks of the Summerstars down the table. It was good entertainment—even if the chilly atmosphere was made even colder by the retention of the same seating arrangement, with empty seats where the seneschal and the two dead wizards had sat. Uncle Erlandar had also decided to miss the meal for some undisclosed reason or other. Pheirauze was preoccupied, and that left the mice free to play.
Just now, the two maiden aunts were taking turns sharpening their tongues on the outlander guest.
“Have your … kind … lived in Shadowdale long, dear?” Margort asked with kindly condescension.
“Humans?” Storm asked brightly. “Oh—for centuries, now.”
“Oh, surely not as long as there have been Summerstars in Firefall Vale, dear,” Nalanna put in. “We’re a very old family, you know.”
Not far from them, Thalance rolled his eyes, favored Storm with a sympathetic look, raised his glass to her, and drained it, all in one smooth motion. He got up from the table. Both of the dowager ladies favored him with frowns, but neither said anything as he loped down the feast hall and departed.
“A Summerstar was at King Galaghard’s side when he went in to see the Last Elf, on the eve of the battle where he broke the power of the Witch-Lords,” Margort said haughtily.
Storm nodded. “I remember that,” she said, tapping her goblet. “I wanted to see Othorian myself. He was very rude to Thanderahast, as I recall.”
“You don’t expect us to believe that you were there, dear? I mean, really!” Margort said in pitying tones.
Pheirauze said coldly, “I’m sure this could go on all evening, but in defense of our … distinguished lady guest, it must be said that all she has done is answer your questions, Margort and Nalanna. Is there some point to this … inquisition? The lineage of our house is a matter of record, you know.”
Margort darted a glance down the table, and hissed, “Not in front of her, Pheirauze!”
“Yes, in front of her,” the elder dowager lady said with a sigh. “I’m tired of this. Next you’ll be telling me that old tale about her sleeping with Pyramus again!”
“Yes!” Nalanna squeaked.
Margort nodded, and said fiercely, double chin quivering, “That’s it exactly! She’s here to try to steal the vale and the keep and all away from us!”
“What?” Pheirauze shot an incredulous look down the table at Storm, who shrugged and spread her hands in a baffled gesture.
“There she goes!” Margort cried, bouncing up and down in agitation and pointing with a wrinkled hand whose wrist dripped long ropes and hoops of gems. “Acting all innocent! Why, I caught her sitting up in the Twilight Turret with Pyramus—late one fall, it was, when the sunsets were long. And they didn’t even act ashamed!”
Heads turned all along the table to look at Storm, who smiled faintly, and waved a polite reply to all the curious stares.
“I confronted him, later, with Nalanna, and—”
“Yes!” Nalanna said, bobbing her head up and down in violent assent. “With me!”
“—he said they were lovers, and that he was going to marry her!”
“So you fear we have a Lady Storm Summerstar in our midst,” Pheirauze mused aloud. “I’m sure the aunts have only the interests of our family at heart,” she said to her guest. “To save a lot of time and sidelong comments, could you satisfy them—and, I confess, the rest of us—by telling us straight out if any such wedding ever did take place?”
Storm looked down the table, from the fascinated faces of the war wizards to
Shayna’s fearful gaze, and saw the young heiress clasp her mother’s hand. She smiled inwardly at the two aunts, who were practically falling into their platters as they leaned out impatiently to hear what she’d say. Then she shrugged. In cases like this, the whole truth, however brutal, was best.
“Pyramus was very kind, and both a good man and a good lover,” she announced clearly, “but we did not marry. How could we, after he’d secretly wedded Princess Sulesta, Rhigaerd’s daughter?”
In the uproar that followed, the Dowager Lady Zarova quietly fainted and fell on her face into her soup. The Dowager Lady Pheirauze looked as if she wanted to, as well. Across the table, Storm could see at least three war wizards struggling not to laugh.
* * * * *
“S-Storm, help me!”
The scream cut through her reveries. Storm leapt out of bed, thrust both feet into her boots, and sprinted for the door, snatching up blade and gown from the table as she went.
She was well along the passage, with startled Purple Dragon armsmen pounding along in her wake, when she looked down at herself and realized that she wasn’t yet wearing anything to belt the scabbard to.
Not that she was going to be in time. Her spell had shown her a dark and dusty room somewhere in the keep, and a beautiful woman’s face—for just an instant, before flames leapt from both its eyes. The magic was shattered.
Shattered with a backlash that made her head nearly split. Hundarr Wolfwinter’s brain was now ashes.
She sprinted on into the darkness anyway, snatching her blade out of its scabbard just to be safe. A moment later, she tripped over the wizard’s sprawled body.
Parchments flew from Hundarr’s dead hand—some of Athlan’s notes, by the look of them—and as she rolled over and came up running again, Storm twisted and snatched one out of the air.
“The dragon of the keep, watching over me,” she read—and then flung it away as something large slashed at her with talons. She dodged and ducked and drove her sword through glowing nothing. It was an illusion.
Cold laughter welled up ahead of her. She sprinted toward it. A moment later, the floor gave way beneath her boots. She was falling. A deep, grating rumble overhead told her that the stones tumbling down on top of her were no illusions at all.
There were six—no, seven. All of them were as big as she was. Storm hit rough stone, and bounced bruisingly. She struck once more and felt ribs splinter like kindling. Then the first of the huge blocks crashed down on top of her.
As bones shattered and the breath was smashed out of her, the last thing she knew was the sword shattering in front of her face.
Then the other blocks came down.
Eight
THE KISS OF EVIL
The pain drove her back to wakefulness—raw, shattering pain. Tears glimmered in Storm’s lashes as she tried to see past the rock that had crushed her chest. Every breath was a searing, tearing agony of bubbling froth and grating ends of bone. Her back was broken, and her right leg seemed to be either missing or shattered to rubbery nothing just above her knee.
Into every life, a little pain must fall.… By the gods, fall was right. She’d had a bad one.
Patiently, Storm called on the fire within her—rising, cool, cleansing, divine fire of Mystra. She sent it flowing into places where pain throbbed, or stabbed … or where she felt nothing at all.
The fire went where she bid, rushing into crushed and mangled places. The sudden, sharp jabs of agony made her hiss bloody huffs of breath, shouts such as an angry, wounded badger might make.
She smiled at the thought, her eyes dark with pain. From just beyond the crushing rock, Maxer—or something that wore Maxer’s face—grinned back at her. Seeing that face hurt most of all. Tears blinded her.
“Not quite dead yet?” It—no, he; the manner as well as the voice were male—laughed, and said, “An oversight easily corrected. Give me a kiss for old times’ sake, Beloved.”
With those mocking words, the face of her dead lover leaned down over hers … giving her the revulsion and anger she needed.
Storm blinked back tears and glared up at it. “You’re not my Maxer. Your charade disgusts me, whoever you are. Such tricks won’t make me lower my guard.”
That brought on a real laugh. “Lower your guard? Why bother when you’re smashed like a hurled egg? Oh, that’s rare!”
The false face of the man she’d loved so much, and missed so terribly, mastered its mirth and leaned close again to whisper, “Your back is broken, isn’t it? Who’d have thought kicking a wedge away from a few blocks of stone would destroy one of the legends of Faerûn? You’re going to die, my pretty one … and I’ll feed on all you have been, and all you would have been. Just as soon as you’re weak enough.…”
Storm closed her eyes, shuddering as fresh agonies blazed out within her. Boast and taunt just a little longer, shapeshifter. Give me the time I need to grow whole again … and then strong once more.…
“Ah, but you still hope for a rescue, I see,” the murderer said. “You Chosen have always been so arrogant, so secure in your power—and so unused to hiding that triumph in your eyes. I saw that look!”
Brutal hands rocked the stone atop her chest, forcing half-knit bones to grind and turn in their sockets. Storm shrieked in torment, tears bursting from her eyes and blood from her nose and mouth.
Cold laughter rolled around her again as the stone rocked back and forth, back and forth. The false face leaned close over her again.
“Dying yet? Not quite? No? Time for a little more fun, then!”
As the stone jostled more violently, Storm gasped, opened her eyes, and flexed the fingers she’d need. They moved slowly, still numb, but—well, they’d have to do.
She waited, gathering her will. As that face bent over her again—and actually opened its jaws to bite her!—she whispered the phrase that unleashed her Galkyn’s bolt spell. Silver fire leapt within her as the magic surged forth.
At this range, she could not miss. The shapeshifter was lifted off his feet, squalling. Magic thundered into him, tore open his front, and rushed down his body and out his nether end.
Storm watched him crash against the far wall of the rock-filled pit. With more satisfaction than she’d felt in the fall of a foe for quite some time, she called again on the silver fire.
It roiled and cascaded within her. She set her teeth and pushed with all the strength she had. Tears came, but the stone block atop her stayed where it was.
She sank back with a groan, lips trembling. Perhaps the stubborn immobility of the stone was a good thing. Sudden shouts came from overhead, and a rock whistled down into the pit, cracking off the wall just beside the shapeshifter’s head.
The murderer ducked away—straight into the path of another slung stone. He reeled, gasped out a curse, and crawled toward the rocks that lay atop Storm, seeking their shelter.
Storm heard a barked command, and almost smiled. The pursuing Purple Dragons must have found the pit and decided this stranger was the murderer. They were busily employing their slings right now—and buying her the time she needed.
The murderer must have thought so too. He snarled another curse, cast a spell, and soared up out of sight.
Storm bent all her will to healing herself, gasping and shuddering in agony as limb after limb jittered and ballooned back to its proper shape, shifting the massive blocks of stone. She’d not have much more time.…
The first armsman made a short, despairing cry as he pitched down. Close above Storm, he struck the wall with a wet, pulpy sound, and said no more; his limbs convulsed once or twice after his body landed on the rocks and slithered down their far side.
Storm drew in her breath, thankful for the small mercy of the corpse’s location, and found the strength at last to shift the stone atop her. She expanded her lungs and begin to heal them and the splintered mess that was her rib cage. The expected second Purple Dragon corpse fell limp and silent, his neck already broken, and crashed down hard on the upraised
edge of her stone.
The impact made her gasp in fresh agony—but the stone rolled slowly away from her, crushing the armsman with sounds both brittle and wet. Storm shuddered, but dared spare no time for sorrow or revulsion … her foe would be back for her soon enough.
A third guardsman fell into the pit, roaring out his despair. Storm was still too weak and pain-racked to do anything to save him. He fell at her feet, smashed on the rocks, and stared at her beseechingly before his eyes grew dull and distant. In an ear that could no longer hear, Storm whispered, “You shall be avenged.” She bent over the man to draw forth his sword. By the smiling mercy of the gods, it was unbroken.
Not so the dagger—but the man had a second one in his boot. Storm was fumbling it forth when another armsman crashed down beside her, limbs jerking in agonized spasms.
A familiar form jumped up from a crouched landing on the soldier’s gut.
“On our feet so soon? My, but Mystra must love you!” the man who was not Maxer said merrily.
Storm pounced, her borrowed blade flashing. “I’d love the world around me just a trifle more if it held just a few less meddling Malaugrym!” she snarled, thrusting. Her steel caught in cloth that tore as her foe twisted away. He was as fast as she, maybe faster.
A dodge, a duck, and they were both sure of that. He was fast enough not only to leap clear of her seeking steel—but to mutter out a spell.
Luckily for Storm, the pit was full of loose stones. There was a sliding and clicking of rubble behind her as the big stone that had crushed her once—a boulder as tall as a troll—lifted into the air under the bidding of her foe’s magic. She spun around as it rose. The shattered body of a Purple Dragon peeled limply away from it.
“There are far greater powers in the worlds than that clan of proud, self-important feuding fools,” he said mockingly from behind her. The stone thundered down.
Without looking, Storm thrust viciously behind her at that voice. She spat out silver fire at the stony death above her. The blood-smeared boulder shattered into a thousand shards.
“Such as?” she snarled, and spun around. Her blade touched nothing but air.