Stormlight

by Ed Greenwood

  And so, of course, they ran headlong into a waiting net of coiling arms, which fell on them from above. Insprin cursed, caught up a fallen torch, and threw it high and hard. It struck stone and spun away in a cloud of sparks, but it had shown him enough. The source of the tentacles was somewhere back there.

  He aimed and fired his wand carefully—and was rewarded with a roar of pain. The armsmen suddenly bounced aloft in unison, kicking their boot heels, as the tentacles around their throats convulsed. One man slashed the tip of a tentacle. He fell, but scrambled up to stagger away. All the others came down atop him in a deadly rain of flesh, thudding against stone. The tentacles had made their victims into large, living flails to batter down the escaping man.

  The Purple Dragons made wet, wordless sounds as their bodies were broken. Insprin cried out in his own revulsion and rage. He fired his wand—the tentacles quivered—and again. This time the tentacles withdrew, leaving a heap of blood-drenched, unmoving warriors behind. The war wizard backed away slowly, knowing he’d be next.

  “Mystra watch over me now,” he prayed aloud, “and grant that I die well.”

  Mystra was hard of hearing, it seemed. The next thing he knew was the smashing strike of a tentacle leaping out of the darkness to send him flying into the nearest pillar. He struck it hard, and staggered away, trying to clear his wits of red pain. The next blow stung his fingers like fire, and snatched his wand away.

  He watched a burst of radiance that must have marked the breaking of his weapon, and drew himself up. This must be his time to ‘die well.’ So be it; he’d not go to the gods weeping or pleading. He strode away from the pillar to take a stance where the floor was free of rubble, corpses, and blood, and asked sternly, as his hands began the gestures of a silent spell, “Have you no mercy?”

  “Hah! Mercy! Kindness! The pursuits of fools!” came a laughing reply out of the darkness. Its source advanced slowly to gloat: a man whose skin was the same dusty blue-gray as the night around him, but whose eyes gleamed like those of a great cat. He smiled as he grew a tentacle that slid forward.

  Insprin’s eyes narrowed. He was suddenly surrounded by a glowing ring of spheres, the fruit of his spell—spheres of winking, dancing sparks. One sped toward the tentacle and burst, clinging to it with bright motes that burned and melted away the dark flesh.

  The tentacle quivered, but slid on through the air, its tip questing for the mage. Insprin backed away and began to hurl the other spheres in a frantic stream—only to see the tentacle wriggle deftly through his dweomer.

  “Power is a better goal!” the foe told him in tones of cold triumph.

  “Mercy and kindness are power,” Insprin replied firmly, weaving another spell as he backed away from the slowly advancing tentacle. “The slowest sorts to reward, but among the most mighty.”

  “What nonsense d’you speak?” the shapeshifter asked scornfully as Insprin spread his hands. Something that glowed drifted up from between them. “Tell me—how are they mighty?”

  “They separate the truly just and noble from all others,” Insprin replied softly, dodging away from the tentacle and drawing the dagger from his belt.

  “And why,” the foe asked, as his tentacle lashed out with the sudden speed of a striking snake and snapped around Insprin’s throat, “would I want to do that?”

  “What manner of monster are you?” Insprin gasped, feeling the coils tighten and knowing his dagger would be too little a fang to cut it in time.

  The shapeshifter shrugged. “Once men worshiped me,” he gloated, “and called me Bane.”

  Insprin Turnstone’s face turned pale, and he closed his eyes.

  The shapeshifter shook him by the throat as if he was a rag doll. “Hah! Not so noble now, are you, dead hero! I’ll have your spells first, and then …”

  Insprin opened his eyes again and gasped, “You … shall … not.”

  And from above Insprin, the glowing blade he’d wrought with his spell arrowed down to strike his own head.

  Bright radiance burst in all directions, and the foe roared in pain as lightning spiraled down his tentacle. Hastily he severed it, reeling back as it dropped off to writhe and lash the floor like an agonized serpent.

  “If that is what mortals mean by mercy,” he croaked aloud, “ ’tis a power yet beyond me!”

  His voice twisted into the icy fury of Pheirauze Summerstar. “Stole his spells from me in the end, did he?” Tentacles grew hands and pointed in unison—and the reeling, headless body that had been Insprin flew apart in all directions, bloody bones clattering against the walls.

  The man-thing who once might have been a small, twisted part of the god Bane did not wait to see the remains of his victim. He whirled about with a roar of rage that echoed back from the keep all around. Wings grew and took him racing down dark passages, seeking the last wizard. Like a loosed thunderbolt, he swooped.

  Men cowered away in fear and shielded their guttering torches.

  There’d be time to slay them later, when he was done hunting wizards. A wizard, Broglan Sarmyn—leader of these ineffectual dolts. A man who must have some spells worth hurling. A bit of a coward, who’d probably be somewhere near the boldshield and the largest band of Purple Dragons, a man who was … there!

  Broglan saw death coming for him, and knew it for what it was. He fired his wand carefully, but did not wait to watch its blue-white bolts strike home. If any of the men around him were to survive, he had to get clear of them, and die—if Mystra willed it—alone.

  He broke into a run, bellowing, “Ergluth, stay back! Keep your men back!”

  Stones loomed up ahead of him, half-seen in the darkness; he leapt over them, stumbled on loose rubble, and ran on, staggering. Behind him he heard wild, triumphant laughter. He spun, fired his wand at a flicker of movement, and ran on.…

  On into the Haunted Tower. In the distance, a pale phantom glided from doorway to doorway. Broglan shrugged and turned toward it, heading for a faint glow of moonlight. That must be the place the foe had blasted open to the sky.

  Tentacles slapped at him and smote stones from the crumbling edge of a broken wall.

  Broglan dodged desperately, his own breaths deafening in his ears, and kept going. An archway, a glimpse of Shayna Summerstar’s face—wearing a crown?—from the gaping darkness of a chamber overhead, and he was clambering up a huge heap of stone.

  A ball of fire burst ahead of him, hurling him back and blistering his face. He fell hard and tumbled on stones, losing his scepter somewhere in the fall.

  He could see nothing but the afterimages of that flash. He was blind, and the foe was laughing somewhere nearer … and nearer.…

  He struggled to sit up and clear his head, shaking it violently. It throbbed. The golden dancing radiances became red, fading ones, but still he could not see!

  Something touched him. He dived away frantically, burying his face in sharp stones. Another touch, and another—tentacles! He rolled away, kicking at their rubbery, ropelike strength, fighting to get free. Bleeding fingers clawed for something to hurl at that cold, close laughter.

  “Pitiful fool,” the scornful voice of Pheirauze Summerstar said from above him. “I’ll have your spells before you can waste any more of them. Farewell, Broglan Sarmyn, oh-so-capable leader of the Sevensash.”

  Tentacles came down like clubs upon his wrists, and ankles—and throat. Broglan bucked and wriggled, clawed frantically at the stones beneath him, and cried out for help.

  All that came out was a hoarse rattle—but his fingers found something long, and cold, and hard. A poker? A mace-haft? He swept it up and thrust it desperately at a dark face above him—a dim face that was two red eyes and a gleaming, grinning mouth.

  His improvised weapon seemed to have an eye of its own: a huge orb that winked at him knowingly as he thrust it out. Then its red eyes became two flames, and the flames lashed out.

  As the real pain began, Broglan used the last breath in him to call on Mystra to claim his soul. He ho
ped she would hear him in time.

  Sixteen

  TO AWAKEN A DRAGON

  Flames seared Broglan Sarmyn like two needles driven into his eyes. All he could do was stare, unable even to blink. A whirling chaos of lights and sounds and flashing images rushed toward him. The cold, cruel laughter of the foe laced every contorted image in the confused cacophony of shouts and cries and gasped words of agony and passion. The wizard could do nothing, nothing at all, as his thoughts, dreams, and memories were dragged away. In a another roiling moment, he would be gone, swept back into the stream of chaos and out of his own skull.…

  “Storm,” he struggled to say, with his last breath, “I have come to love and respect you—Mystra, please tell her thissss.…”

  The stream sucked him down, past the place where he could speak and think and cling to anything he knew and loved.

  Suddenly, though, its quickening rush stopped, eddying in confusion—broken by the calm, lazily blinking scrutiny of a dark eye as large as all the world. An eye that slid across to block the stream.…

  The stream struck that eye and rebounded, something that could not happen, a raging voice within Broglan shouted. From somewhere nearby, the foe screamed.

  The scream was long and raw and wild. It trailed off into howls of forlorn loss and agony, that in turn became wild giggling and sudden yips and barks and cries. This insane gibbering burst into screams once more when amber light flared into a sudden halo of flames around the dark eye, and a voice that echoed and re-echoed through the wizard’s mind spoke.

  AT LAST I AM AWAKE AGAIN. YOU HAVE MY THANKS, MAGE, FOR FREEING ME—EVEN IF YOU DO SERVE THE ACCURSED ONE.

  “The Accursed One?” Broglan asked before fear told him silence might have been safer. Might.

  SHE WHO IMPRISONED ME!

  Mystra? Broglan gulped, and asked the question he had to: “Who are you?”

  The eye seemed to twinkle as a laughter so deep that it hurt the ears boomed and rolled. DO YOU NOT KNOW ME?

  Broglan had no defense but the truth. “N-No,” he whispered.

  THEN KNOW ME YOU SHALL!

  The amber flames around the great eye suddenly flared to a blinding white radiance, and stabbed into Broglan far more keenly than the stream of chaos had done. This time, there would be no escape.

  * * * * *

  Storm turned toward the flash of white light. “What’s that?” she murmured aloud. Elder magic, to be sure. Something of great power had just been awakened, back in the shattered heart of the Haunted Tower.

  She broke into a run. She had to be there.

  The stone hurled from above struck her so hard that she saw only dazzling golden sparks. Storm knew she fell sideways, but thought that she kept running—or at least her legs kept moving.…

  When the sparks faded, she found she was lying on her side, and Shayna Summerstar was leaping down from a ledge above her, tossing aside an unnecessary second stone as she came. The Summerstar heiress was grinning maniacally, a tattered gown trailing behind her and the coronet askew on her tangled hair. A drawn dagger was gleaming in her hand.

  On light feet, she danced toward the bard. A low chuckle of delighted anticipation rose from her throat as she came. Storm tensed, gathering herself for a desperate kick and roll. Shayna looked down at her and shook her head; she knew full well what the bard planned, and was enjoying the momentary taunt.

  White light suddenly flared so brightly that it lit up the heart of the keep, and men cried out all over the fortress.

  Shayna Summerstar threw back her head, the cords in her throat standing out like flesh-cloaked spines. She screamed in raw, rising agony. Her eyes rolled up in her head, her hands became claws that raked vainly at the air, and she shuddered so hard that the flesh along her ribs rippled in visible waves.

  Then Shayna’s head fell forward, and her body went limp. She whimpered, drew in a slow, tremulous breath, and seemed to see the blade in her hand for the first time.

  She hurled it down in disgust, looked around wildly, a wordless quaver of fear rising in her throat. Her eyes fell upon Storm, and she cried, “Lady Storm! Lady Storm! Lady Storm!” over and over again and went to her knees, arms outstretched.

  Storm rolled up to a sitting position and embraced the terrified girl—who clung to her and burst into wild, racking sobs. Her coronet fell off and rolled. Storm stopped it with one outstretched foot, and stroked Shayna’s hair as the young heiress wept in grief, remorse, and shame.

  “There, there, little one,” Storm said softly, hugging the shuddering, heaving body. “You impressed us all.” Well, that was certainly true.

  She went on murmuring reassurances as her eyes went slowly from the coronet to the discarded knife and back again. The white light at her back pulsed, faded, and then brightened. Storm tried not think of what it might herald.

  * * * * *

  Like an ungainly spider, the shapeshifter writhed on his back. His many tentacles did an endless dance around him. As he screamed and gibbered, the tendrils whipped wildly against nearby stones, coiling and shooting out to lash pillars and crumbling walls.

  Their owner shrieked and babbled wordlessly as the powers he’d subsumed were torn away. His linkage with Shayna Summerstar was gone in an instant, and spell after spell followed. His darkening mind became a pitching place of spilling images. He clung grimly to two things: awareness of who he had been—and would become again—and the power to subsume. All he was losing could be replaced some day, if he survived still able to drink the knowledge, memories, and powers of those he slew.…

  Those Bane slew. Yes, Bane! The Black Hand would rise again to smash all who stood against him! “Bane!” he roared in a voice flung back at him by that the riven innards of the Haunted Tower. “Fear Bane once more!” The gigantic spectral eyeball floating above the scepter turned slowly to look at the howling shapeshifter. The white radiance around it flared to blindingly once more.

  The man who had once, perhaps, been a part of Bane roared in fresh pain. Tentacles blazed up into nothingness or were sheared away by ravening fires that hurled him back, back. He tumbled end over end down a dark hall, trailing a helpless scream, until he came to the inevitable closed door.

  There was a heavy, splintering crash, and the center of the door was suddenly gone. Shattered panels swung crazily and then fell. Stones clattered down to keep them company. Something tentacled rolled over once in the darkness, shuddered, and lay still.

  * * * * *

  The huge orb turned slowly to face him once more, trailing motes of magical radiance. Broglan Sarmyn trembled, but somehow could not move from the pose he had been swept into: kneeling as if in homage to a king, holding the dragoneye scepter upright as if it were a holy thing.

  SUCH IS MY POWER.

  Broglan swallowed. Was he supposed to speak?

  IS IT NOT PARAMOUNT, MAN?

  Forgive me, Mystra, Broglan prayed, but to serve you, a man must betimes save his own skin. “Y-Yes,” he mumbled.

  WITHOUT TREACHERY, I COULD NEVER HAVE BEEN MASTERED. The black eye drifted a little nearer. HAVE YOU GUESSED YET WHO I AM?

  Helplessly Broglan shook his head. “No, Most Mighty One.”

  The eye drifted nearer still, ominously silent. Broglan quivered, unable to move but desperately wanting to scream and leap and flee, as fast and as far as he could.

  MOST MIGHTY ONE, the thunderous mind-voice said slowly, as it was considering the sound of those three words. MOST MIGHTY ONE! YES …

  MOST MIGHTY ONE, INDEED! A FITTING TITLE, MAGE! YOU HAVE OUR FAVOR!

  Broglan set his teeth. He was leader of the Sevensash wizards of war, and his duties in a situation such as this were clear: find out all that can be learned about any unknown magically powerful force or being. “Who are you?” he asked again.

  HER SHAME MUST HAVE DRIVEN HER TO KEEP MY ENTRAPMENT A SECRET.… THAT MUST BE WHY YOU KNOW ME NOT. MAN, I AM DENDEIRMERDAMMARAR!”

  “Den-Dendeirmerdammarar?” Broglan asked, wonderi
ng if he dared smile.

  AYE. LORD OF THE THUNDER PEAKS. MOST MIGHTY OF THE OFFSPRING OF ARNFALAMME REDWING.

  Something glimmered at the back of Broglan’s mind. The wisp of a memory, of reading that latter name long ago in a lore tome in the court in Suzail, on a hot and sunny afternoon.…

  “You’re a red dragon?” he asked.

  OF COURSE, DOLT! NEXT YOU’LL BE ASKING ME WHO BOUND ME INTO THIS SCEPTER!

  “Well,” Broglan heard himself saying, inner dread growing with every foolish word, “ahem … yes.”

  THE ACCURSED ONE! THE SHE-MAGE! THE WOMAN YOU SERVE!

  The mind-shout almost bowled him over—but the power of the radiant field held him where he was. His trembling died away, and the brilliance forced him back to the exact pose he’d been in before. ’Twas time to try again. “Mystra?”

  NAY, FOOL! The mind-voice was scornful. SEEK NOT TO SHIELD HER WITH CLEVER TONGUE-TRICKS! AMEDAHAST, THE ROYAL MAGE OF CORMYR!

  Amedahast! Gods above! The dragon had been in the scepter for a long time. Seven hundred years, if Broglan’s memory of the royal mages held true. This was probably not a good time to tell the freed sentience that the woman he wanted vengeance on had been dust—or, some among the war wizards whispered, a kindly guardian and sometimes guiding spirit, as well as dust—for five centuries or so.

  Beings with power enough to be called Most Mighty One are all too apt to lash out at whoever is handy when something displeases them.

  The eyes drifted ominously nearer. YOU ARE LONG SILENT, O MOST BOLD AND CURIOUS OF MAGES! DO YOU, PERHAPS, PLOT SOME FRESH TREACHERY?

  “Most Mighty One,” Broglan answered truthfully, “I lack the wits to successfully plan any treachery, great or small, even if I had the desire to. It is all I can do to serve my realm and my superiors, most times—and as it is, I have failed my friends over and over again these last few days.…”

  The pupil of the huge floating eye seemed to expand. A MAN WHO IS HUMBLE? AND TRIES TO SPEAK TRUTH? HAVE MEN TRULY COME SO FAR IN THE LONG TIME OF MY IMPRISONMENT?