Stormlight h-14

by Ed Greenwood

  Vangerdahast gave him a grave nod, and said, "And you shall not do so alone; I won't keep Laspeera more than a few breaths before wandering off in search of my own bed. Soon enough I'll be wandering the kingdom again, and sleeping out on wet, rocky ground under the stars. Aye, lass?"

  Laspeera sighed. "Only you, in this entire palace, could get away with calling me 'lass'!"

  "Oh, lass?" Aundable teased. "What's that you say?"

  She reached out and playfully tweaked his nose.

  "Urrgh!" he replied, intelligently and happily. He sat down at his scrying crystal. Few in the kingdom knew that a peerless master of strategy and foresight lurked in this back room of the palace, keeping watch over the realm-but Vangerdahast, for one, was glad he did.

  Aundable waved away a proffered glass of amberfire wine, glanced at a map of eastern Cormyr, and ran a finger along the trails north and east of the Wyvernwater. There was the hold of Hawkhar, seat of House Indesm; Galdyn's Gorge, home of the Yellanders; and Firefall Vale, home to the Summerstars….

  The face of Shayna Summerstar swam into his mind. Aundable frowned and glanced at his wife. If he'd been one for the shining younglings, he could do worse, far worse, than the beautiful Shayna Summerstar.

  His frown deepened as he bent his will to use that vividly remembered face as a focal point to target his scrying attempt. Wasn't Firefall where the Sevensash band had been sent, to see to some sort of minor trouble? Aundable leaned forward, peering into the depths of his scrying crystal, where small lights swam and wandered….

  It had been a long day. The sun set on Firefall Vale, and the shadows inside the riven keep grew truly dark. Storm wearily clenched her teeth and, with desperate speed, wove a web of silver fire, seeking to enclose the foe once more. Her barrier around the keep had gone long ago, sacrificed to save her own skin from the shapeshifter's vicious attacks.

  Now he was teasing her, flying out from the battlements again and again, forcing her to snare him and drag him back. Each time she brought him back, he lashed her with spells that darted into her mind and sought to steal secrets and pry loose lore. This defense was grueling work. Storm was sweating and exhausted as she snared him for the fourteenth time.

  This time he laughed and flew right at her, extending a finger that glittered.

  Storm's heart sank. She knew what spell he must be using. Somewhere in the keep, there was an enchanted sword; if his extended digit struck her, the powers of that blade would injure her as if he wielded it directly.

  "Bastard," she whispered, spinning three tongues of silver fire-two to fend off any tentacles he might decide to grow when he got close enough.

  A head she had not expected to see again bobbed up from behind a broken wall, and magic missiles streaked through the air in a gleaming net of deadly force.

  The enchanted bolts struck home, and the smiling foe spun sideways in startled pain, jerking his body repeatedly. He crashed into one of the few intact walls in the heart of the keep and tumbled along it-straight into the burst of magical ice that a grimly smiling Broglan hurled last.

  Shards of ice sang and tinkled off stone. The foe fell with them, through a hole in the floor and out of sight. The war wizard gave Storm a cheerful wave, and pointed upward.

  Storm looked. Shayna Summerstar dangled head down from the edge of a broken-off ceiling. Broglan's spells had made her gown into a gag, lashed her hands to her mouth, and transformed a cloak into the binding that held her ankles to a spar. The heiress hung, red-faced and helpless; if she struggled too much, she might plunge to the floor below and be struck senseless-or even swing herself out into a much longer drop, and almost certain death.

  Storm grinned in appreciation, waved, and then set about using the time Broglan had bought her. She had to cast and hang three of her spells in a stasis-sphere, and make the sphere itself seem attractive.

  She turned away from Shayna to obscure the young noble's view of what she was doing, and crafted a gleaming golden sphere about twice as large as her head. It floated, turning slowly as she pumped spells into it, casting them quickly and carefully: a ward-away, a manyjaws, and a blood lightning. In a few flickering instants, the silver fire triggered them, held them hanging, and closed up her sphere for her.

  Two long-fingered hands rose from a distant rent in the floor and wove a spell of their own.

  Part of Broglan abruptly became a spineless, glistening, pale-white mass of tentacles. The wizard's face went just as pale. He gasped, clutched at his heart, and collapsed back out of view behind the wall.

  Shayna kicked and wriggled furiously in celebration, but the foe didn't notice her-or didn't care.

  Storm slashed at the hands with a stream of silver fire, but she didn't expect to strike them before they vanished-and she didn't. She sent her silver down to carve the floor in a neat line from the hole where the hands had been toward where she stood, hoping to reveal the foe beneath her.

  She'd managed only a few feet of that work when tentacles rose up all around her in a silent, sudden forest.

  Fast as those seeking tentacles were, Storm was faster. She turned her hands straight down and used streams of silver fire to blast herself up into the air, seeking the floor above and hoping her little act would work.

  The golden sphere lagged behind. She gained her footing in a shattered room, turned, put a look of apprehension on her face as she saw the globe trailing, and swiftly called on Mystra's fire to catch it and draw it up to be with her.

  The foe swallowed the bait. A tentacle shot out, its tip glittering. He'd not dropped his fingerblade spell, and was going to use it to slice open the sphere.

  Storm yanked the sphere away from him, and then seemed to lose her grip on it. Silver fire swirled, but the sphere drifted free, moving slowly away. Like a carnival knife-thrower, she drew back her hand and hurled silver fire after it, but the darting tentacle got there first.

  The sphere exploded in a spray of golden light-and the very air boiled.

  Storm felt the sudden tingling of the blood lightning settling on her, just as she'd planned. Her gaze, however, remained intent on the foe. The shimmering of the wardaway was already coiling down the tentacle, but the shapeshifter had no time to worry about that. Disembodied jaws were appearing all around him. They streaked in to sink fangs into his ever-shifting body. Storm leapt high, as she'd seen the witches of Rashemen do when diving into pools from a height, jackknifed, and dived down into the heart of the foe, trailing silver fire behind her.

  She protected her face and throat from the whipping tentacles, but left the rest of herself unshielded. Sure enough, a trio of tentacles that had suddenly acquired sawlike bony edges slashed across her breast and flank.

  Blood flowed. The blood lightning burst forth, snarling angrily down into the struggling shapeshifter. Tentacles convulsed and flailed.

  As she plummeted, Storm's hands spat silver fire in a dagger of ravening force. It punched right through the screaming foe.

  She landed hard in a pile of rubble, rolling over and over and coming up with blood on her chin from a bitten lip, but there was a smile to go with it. At last the foe was tasting what he should have been feeling all the time, these last few days.

  The roars of pain twisted very soon into wild, giggling laughter and a cacophony of gabbling voices shouting different things at once. The foe's overloaded mind was afire again.

  Storm slipped away through the shadows, quietly rebuilding her barrier around the keep. He'd start blasting things soon enough, but she did not want to be the one to provoke him into wreaking more devastation. She was aching all over, limping slightly, and restlessly moving one arm to loosen a stiff, battered shoulder. Others in the ruins around her had fared far worse. Her time for healing and taking ease would come when this menace was ended.

  The explosion she'd been expecting tore through a pillar not far behind her. A column of three rooms tilted slowly, turned-and with heavy grandeur fell down into the rubble below. The crash shook the entire f
ortress.

  Shrill laughter arose above the din of clashing and rolling stone. A man with four arms capered amid the dust, Shayna Summerstar swinging high above him.

  The mad shapeshifter threw out a blazing bolt of force that smashed through a wall. As stones sprayed and tumbled, shattering the room beyond, the foe bayed like a hound, punching the air with exultant fists. He stiffened, whirled around-and fired another bolt at a shard of wall that had been behind him.

  The shard was narrow, but tall-a spindly fang of jagged rock that stretched up to where the battlements had been. It shivered, broke apart-and fell straight down on the shapeshifter, burying him.

  Storm raced toward the spot, hardly daring to hope. Was he-?

  Then, of course, Faerun truly blew up around her.

  Broglan was suddenly himself again, sobbing for breath, as a huge, roaring shaft of blazing power burst into being not far away. It smashed through all the floors of the keep, stabbed into the darkening sky, and hurled stones to the stars.

  "Gods, what a stormlight," Broglan gasped, wincing at the sheer brightness of the blast.

  The Bard of Shadowdale was flung end over end like a rag doll through the ruins. Her body flared with silver and white flames, then went dim, then blazed forth again, for all the world like a lantern flashed by sailors in a storm.

  "I must go to her," Broglan muttered to the air.

  He stumbled along the wall that had sheltered him. . and then the bound body of Shayna Summerstar smashed down on him in a bruising tangle of bone. The world whirled its way into darkness and silence.

  There came a flash of light, a scream of tortured crystal, and then the almost musical sound of shards whistling apart and tinkling off the table and the ceiling.

  Aundable Inthre matched the scrying-crystal's scream and reeled in his chair. He struck its high back, bounced, and then slumped back again, his head lolling to stare at the ceiling.

  "Aundable!" Laspeera shrieked, hurling down her glass and leaping toward him. The royal magician was close behind.

  As they clambered past the furniture, smoke curled up from where the scrying-crystal had been. It was matched by two smaller plumes rising from Aundable's eyes.

  "Gods above," Vangerdahast gasped.

  Brightness gathered in the night sky above the darkened ruins of Firefall Keep. Motes of light danced like excited fireflies, spun, and flickered, drawing together into a cloud almost as fierce in its radiance as the shaft of energy that roared up in its midst.

  As a few awed farmers gaped at it from afar, the cloud suddenly coalesced into the form of a dragon-a winged dragon with a mane, two backswept horns on its head, and scaly jaw winglets. It looked cruel and wise and utterly confident in its power. It lazily flapped its wings, watched its long tail uncurl smoothly behind it as it turned, and then gathered speed, beating its wings in earnest.

  The gigantic, glowing phantom of the wyrm flew down Firefall Vale, swooping and darting like a gleeful dragonet at play. With a triumphant roar, it circled near the mountains, and then soared up high into the sky and raced southwest.

  Cowering farmers watched it go, a bright and surging line among the winking stars, and wondered where it was headed. If he'd been conscious to see its eager flight, Broglan could have told them. It was bound for distant Suzail, to bring down doom on the woman who'd imprisoned it. She'd been dead for centuries, so the war wizard worried about just what it would do when it arrived. Lord Vangerdahast was not likely to enjoy a peaceful evening.

  At that moment, Lord Vangerdahast had hold of the bodice of his second-in-command and was shaking the hysterically screaming woman until her teeth rattled.

  Laspeera bit the tip of her tongue, stared at him in shock, and then fell to sobbing silently as the lord high wizard snarled at her, "Stop that! I need your help, not your tears!"

  He thrust a decanter at her. "Pour that down his throat, and work his chest to see that he swallows at least some of it!"

  Laspeera snatched the healing potion from him, clawed the stopper out, and let it fly across the room. Vangey thrust back his sleeves, went to a certain carved panel near the door of the Hall, and did something to it. The square of wood swung open, and he took a squat jar from the space behind the panel and tossed it across the room.

  "Catch, lass!" His snap of command seemed to steady her; Laspeera snatched the hand-jar out of the air without even looking at it. "Now daub some of that over his eyes, and wherever he seems hurt. Cover each eye entirely, but don't waste it."

  Then he stepped back, closed his own eyes, calmed himself, and carefully cast a spell he'd been carrying for a long time. When it was done, he stepped forward, touched Aundable's ear, and watched his body jump in the chair.

  Laspeera looked up at him almost reproachfully. She'd long since smeared the ointment over her husband's face, and was visibly calmer. Only the edge of her lip, firmly caught between her fine white teeth, betrayed how upset she was. "And now?" she asked, her voice so low and quiet that it was almost a whisper.

  "Mind-speak to him," Vangerdahast said briskly, handing her the other thing he'd taken from behind the panel. Laspeera recognized the circlet at once, donned it, gave him a thin smile of thanks, and bent over her husband's slack face.

  Satisfied, Vangerdahast turned away and strode across the room to its door. Instead of opening it, he touched a certain spot in the relief carving of the mounted knight that adorned it, and then turned his head to watch a certain carving glow on another wall. Stepping smartly across the room to touch the lit spot before it faded, he spoke a word under his breath-and then turned again to face the door that was slowly appearing on a solid section of wall.

  He ignored its handle, instead touching a bottom corner of the door with his hand as he muttered another word. The wall faded into invisibility, leaving a dark opening lit only by two gleaming, winking eyes. Vangerdahast stepped fearlessly straight into them. As they vanished, the hidden chamber beyond was flooded with light.

  It was not an impressive place: a storeroom with a central table and walls covered with row upon row of shelves crammed with boxes, coffers, and chests of all sizes and descriptions. Vangey thrust the table aside to clear the floor area, selected seven boxes without hesitation, and from each one scooped out a crystal sphere similar to the one Aundable had been using, setting them in a ring on the floor around him.

  Unless he was totally mistaken, Laspeera's husband would be fine; it was now Vangerdahast's pressing duty to see just what had attacked him so. He fished a slim, dark staff out of a recess behind the door-molding, touched each of the crystals in turn, and murmured a long-unused phrase.

  The storeroom darkened. Glowing brightly, the seven crystals rose in unison around the old wizard. Vangerdahast closed his eyes to picture in his mind what he was about to scry.

  Aundable had been looking at northeastern Cormyr, if the map he'd been running his finger over was any indication. So just what was it, in that forgotten and largely wild outlying arm of the kingdom, that had struck out at him?

  Standing quietly among the scrying stones, the lord high wizard of Cormyr sent his awareness questing out through all of them. He was leaping north and east in little bounds, through the eyes of bats and awakening night birds and the bolder birds of the day, making their last flights as full night came down. … It was just a bit beyond Immersea that he saw something that flashed and glimmered through the sky on wings he could see through.

  An onrushing dragon, wings spread in ghostly glory-a red wyrm, once, by its shape and the look of its head. The owl he was using wheeled away in mounting fear, and Vangerdahast ceased scrying to fix the sight of the high-flying dragon firmly in his mind.

  He wheeled around and said, " 'Speera? Touch my mind."

  Laspeera looked up, unsmiling. Her husband's head was cradled in her hands. She met her master's gaze squarely-and Vangerdahast's questing thought flashed between their eyes.

  In a trice, he was in Aundable's mind, seeing what Laspeera saw, a
nd giving his own warm greeting. The man was now unhurt, and completely fearless-but had totally forgotten what he'd seen or where he was scrying when he saw it.

  Not for long: one glimpse of the dragon in the royal magician's mind made him cry out. Vivid memories flashed through the linkage. "That light!" Aundable cried aloud, half-rising from his chair despite Laspeera's restraining grasp. "Gods, what is it?"

  "The ghost of a dragon, I fear," Vangerdahast replied, and withdrew from contact as he saw fresh tears course down Laspeera's cheeks again. There'd be forgiveness to be begged from her by the cartload when this was over, to be sure.

  Right now, he had to see if the kingdom could be saved. Again.

  Dragons didn't fly about Faerun as ghosts … they just didn't. Something about their magical nature, he supposed. Wherefore this phantom dragon must be magically compelled, or shaped, or created. . Vangerdahast's eyes narrowed.

  His hand went to a certain shelf, and found something that he touched to the staff. Hitherto-hidden runes up and down its slim length gleamed. Vangerdahast patiently let the power build as he linked with the crystals again and searched along the line of his first scrying, until he found the phantom dragon again. When he could see it clearly, Vangerdahast unleashed the spell that would make it also able to see him.

  Spectral eyes widened in fury and spectral jaws gaped to gout flame.

  The floating head and shoulders of the royal magician said firmly, "Be as you were again. Go down."

  His own sending faded and was gone, and the furious dragon craned its neck this way and that, looking for the mage who had appeared to it. The wyrm did not find him, but did not tarry to search.

  Through his crystals, Vangerdahast watched it approach Suzail, slowly growing fainter and fainter, until at last it was … gone.

  The royal magician of Cormyr let his crystals sink down, and shook his head to clear it of the spell, yawning wearily. There was Aundable to see to, and Laspeera to placate: he did not remain to see the last spark of the dragon's sentience falling to earth, a dragoneye gem once more.