Spellfire

Cautiously, Narm went on. Off to his right he could see a leaning stone tower, its needle-shaped spire still grand. Much heaved, tilted pavement choked with shrubs and clinging vines lay ahead. He saw steps leading down in a broad sweep from the street into unknown depths. A slim woman in purple robes was dragging someone thin and long-haired along the ground by a rope. The hapless captive was completely entangled in its coils. Narm heard tinkling, mocking laughter as they descended from view down the dark stair.

By the time he reached the stair, nothing was visible below. Narm hardly stopped to think before he followed. The art! Strong magic, undoubtedly. Just what Marimmar had wanted to find in this place!

The-underground way led on fairly directly to a place where Narm could at first see only a fitful glow. He walked quietly and cautiously in the dimness toward it, until he could see that the cellars had opened into a natural cavern. Within it, the lady in purple and her captive stood before the source of the fight. An oval of glowing radiance hung like a doorway in midair. Magic, indeed.

The woman in purple was stronger than her slim frame suggested. By main strength she was holding her captive upright. It was a girl, who was struggling violently. The rope that bound her seemed to move by itself to fight her. She managed to tear its coils free of her face and throat. Narm could scarcely believe it-he knew her!

She was the girl from the i

The woman in purple let go of the rope, laughing mockingly, and the girl fell hard to the cavern floor, still struggling. Seeing her face so set as she battled the rope made anger burn within Narm, and he raised his hands and pointed at the woman in purple and spoke the word of the spell Marimmar had forbidden him to study, the spell he had studied while his master slept. The magic missile burst from his finger like a bolt of light and flashed at the lady.

It struck her, and she turned, startled, and then laughed, her hands already moving. Narm dodged aside, thinking how feeble the rest of his art was. The mage stopped her casting and locked her fingers in Shandril’s hair. As Narm watched in dismay, she dragged the struggling girl through the oval of radiance and vanished.

Then, with a shattering roar, the fireball exploded all around him.

The Grotto of the Dracolicb

There in the darkness many a wyrm sits and smiles. He grows rich and lazy and fat as the years pass, and there seems no shortage of fools to challenge him and make him richer and fatter. Well, why wait ye? Open the door and go in!

Irigoth Mmar, High Sage of Baldur’s Gate

Lore of the Coast

Year of the Trembling Tree

The radiance faded and left her somewhere cold. She was lying on stone again. Shandril sighed inwardly as she twisted against the ever-tightening, ever-slithering rope.

“Where are we?” she hissed at her captor, almost in tears. The relief she had felt when the power to move her own limbs had returned was gone.

The Shadowsil shrugged. “A ruined keep. Come.” The rope had shifted backward to more securely bind Shandril’s arms to her torso; she found she could get to her knees, and, painfully, to her feet. The mage led her down a curving stone stair, but not before Shandril got a good look out the window. She saw mountains that looked cold and jagged- and many days’ journey from Myth Dra

“I told you he’d poke his nose into something straight away, and buy a swift grave before we’d even got to your next sausage!” said a familiar voice, swimming somewhere above Narm. “That’s why I followed, not for treasure.”

“Well, ye’d be the one to know about poking one’s nose,” said another. “By the gods, but he caught it squarely! Do ye think he’ll live?”

“Not if you don’t use some healing magic quickly, leviathan belly! Don’t wag your jaws-waggle your fingers! He grows weaker with each breath you waste. Look at the smoke coming off him; he smolders still! No, lie still, Narm. I can hear you.”

Narm struggled through excruciating pain to tell them of the girl from the i

“Lie down, Narm. You want us to rescue the pretty girl bound in the rope of entanglement that the mage-with our good fortune she’s an archmage, no doubt-just pushed through that gate. Well, lie still; rest easy. You’re lucky enough to have found the greatest reckless fools in all of Fasrun, and we’ll do it for you. Oh, by the stars, don’t cry! It gives me the shivers!”

“Hush,” said Rathan. “How can I work healing when ye’re blaspheming Tymora?”

“I never!”

“Ye did! ‘Our good fortune,’ I heard ye say in a slighting tone. Now hold this healing potion; he’ll be able to drink it after this.” There was much murmuring, and through the watery red haze before his eyes Narm saw a flash of radiance. Then sweet coolness spread slowly through his limbs, banishing the shrieking pain. He fainted.

They descended the crumbling stairs for eight or more turns around the i

Symgharyl Maruel pushed her firmly toward the largest opening, which led steeply downward into darkness. Shandril came to a stop. “I can’t see!” she protested. The Shadowsil chuckled softly behind her.

“You do nothing in your life, little one, that you ca

The Shadowsil had kicked her.

“Up and on,” came the cold voice. “My patience grows short.” Shandril struggled to her feet in the tight coils of the magical rope, in angry silence.

Up and on. Under her feet as she descended, the uneven ramp became broad stairs cut out of the solid rock, and the air grew cooler. There was some sort of dim, scattered light ahead, beyond the pale globes. Shandril turned to find the left wall and descend with it, but Symgharyl Maruel twitched the rope that bound her sharply, and she turned back to her original course with an inward sigh. The twinkling lights were farther away than they appeared and were all about when the stair ended.

A great open cavern lay before them. Its walls were studded with the fist-sized, sea-green gems which Shandril recognized as the fabled beljurils, for at odd intervals one or more would give forth a silent burst of light just as the storytellers had said. Shandril could tell by their light that the cavern stretched away to her right, but of its true size she had no idea. It was big, she knew-and suddenly she shivered in the twinkling darkness. Would the mage slay her here, leave her in a cage to be tortured later, or killed or deformed by magic in some experiment or other? Or did something lair here? Shandril could hear only the soft sounds of the mage behind her and the noise of her own passage as she descended into that winking display of lights. Where in the Realms was she?