Spellfire

Even if Manshoon did return now, he would find himself isolated, with only upstart magelings-all too eager to betray him for their own advancement-to stand with him against the loyal of Bane, who served Fzoul. The beholders cared not which humans they dealt with, so long as their wants were met. The city would be his at last.

Until someone took it from him.

Fzoul never noticed the wizard eye floating above and behind him among the dark spires, keeping carefully out of sight. He could not see its invisible owner, regarding him from the dark window of a tower nearby.

He did hear the commotion in the courtyard below, as the warrior-priests of the High Imperceptor crept over the wall, and were met by alert and waiting underpriests of the Altar. Fzoul leaned forward and indiscriminately cast a blade barrier down into the growing fray below, caring nothing for the fate of his own acolytes. Let them see Bane the sooner, all of them.

Sememmon heard the clash and clatter of many whirling blades and screams below, and suddenly saw the bloody slaughter as one of the attackers boiling over the temple wall cast magical light upon the scene. He leaned out swiftly before Fzoul could leave the balcony and attacked with his Ring of the Ram. He struck with all the force that the magical ring could muster, draining it of multiple charges to do the task quickly and surely. He did not aim directly at the Master of The Black Altar, for he knew Fzoul would be well protected, but struck instead at the balcony.

It shivered and cracked, as if struck by a battering ram, and then fell away, crumbling in midair, down into the shrieking and death below. It seemed to fall with awful slowness, but Sememmon watched Fzoul’s fall closely; The cleric had no time to use an item or utter a word of recall- unless he managed to do so after the first blade had sliced crimson across his red mane of hair. A falling chunk of stone blocked Sememmon’s view seconds before the balcony crashed to the ground.

Sememmon turned away in satisfaction, resolving that the attack on Shadowdale would begin and end with the destruction of Casildar, at least until the spellfire-maid was out from under the eye and thumb of Elminster.

He never noticed another wizard eye that floated just above the dark window.

The eye was gone, however, some six breaths later, when a great round shadow drifted out of The Black Altar’s depths, its many eyestalks coiling and writhing like a nest of serpents. Then the slaughter really began.

The night was cold. Overhead, Selune was scudding amid a few tattered gray clouds. Lower down there was little breeze, but Shandril had shut the windows against the chill. She sat on the bed, facing Narm. “Well, my lord?” Shandril asked. Narm shrugged and spread his hands.

“What do you want, my lady?” he asked. Shandril looked at him, eyes dark and beautiful, and spread her own hands.

“To be happy. With you. Free of fear. Free to walk as we will, and neither cold nor hungry. More, I care little for, as long as we have friends.”

“Simple enough,” Narm agreed, and they both laughed. “All right, then,” Narm continued, “we must travel west, as they all say. But, advice be damned, let us go by way of The Rising Moon and Thunder Gap, so you may see Gorstag once more. What say?”

“Yes! It if pleases you, it pleases me. But what of the Harpers?”

“Well…”

Outside in the night, Torm strained to hear, but slipped. He breathed a curse upon fickle Tymora as he slid slowly backward on the wet slates despite his splayed, iron-strong fingers. He soon ran out of roof and fell over the edge.

Desperately he swung himself inward as his fingers left the slates. Then he was falling, mind racing coolly. His fingers closed on a window ledge as he plummeted past it.

With a Jerk that nearly wrenched his arms from their sockets he brought himself to a halt and hung grimly in midair. It was then that he noticed his left hand had come down hard upon a nesting evendove and crushed its frail body against the stone ledge.

“Ugghh,” he said, suppressing an urge to snatch his hand away.

“How do you think I feel?” demanded the crumpled bird, opening one eye sourly.

At that Torm did fall. The bird sighed, became Elminster even as Torm fell helplessly away below him, and created a fan of sticky web-strands. These lanced down to the grounds far below, enveloping Torm on the way.

The thief came to a slow, rubbery halt only feet from the ground, and hung there helplessly. He began to struggle. “Serves you right,” Elminster muttered darkly, and became a bird again.

Above the two eavesdroppers, Shandril and Narm had decided to join the Harpers. “After all” as Narm put it, “if we don’t like it, we can back out.” “Shall we tell them now?”

“No. Sleep on it, Elminster said.” Outside, Elminster smiled quietly, though one couldn’t see it for the beak.

“And so to bed again, you and I-and this time I would not hear your life story.”

Outside, on the window ledge, the bird that was Elminster looked up at the stars glimmering above Selune. The Silent Sword had ascended above the trees. The night was half done. The bird’s beak dwindled. It grew a human mouth, and sang, very softly, a snatch of a ballad that had been old when Myth Dra

…and in the wind and the water the storm-king’s fire-eyed daughter came a-rotting home across the sea leaving none on the wreck alive but me…

The sun rose hot that morning over Shadowdale, glinting on helms and spearpoints atop the Old Skull. Mist rose and rolled away down the Ashaba. Narm and Shandril rose early, and lingered not in the Twisted Tower, but set out for a brisk morning walk accompanied by six watchful guards that Thurbal insisted on sending with them. Their bright armor flashed and gleamed in the sunlight, and reminded the two lovers constantly of danger lurking near, and of spellfire.

They found themselves hungry again, despite a good breakfast of fried bread and goose eggs at the tower. They stopped in at The Old Skull I

Shandril blushed, but Narm said proudly, “As soon as can be arranged, or even sooner.” Their escort of guards developed sudden thirsts for ale that made Shandril shudder with the earliness of the hour, but all soon set forth again up the road toward Storm Silverhand’s farm.

The dale was quiet despite the morning vigor of workers in the fields. All Faerun seemed at peace. Birds sang and the sky was cloudless. Narm realized that he and his lady had only a vague idea of where Storm SUverhand’s farm was. He turned to the nearest guard, a scarred, mustachioed veteran who bore a spear lightly in his hairy hands. “Good sir,’ Narm asked, “could you guide us to the dwelling of Storm Silverhand?”

“It lies before you, lord-from this cedar stump, here, on up to the line of bluewood yonder.” Narm nodded and said his thanks, for Shandril had already hurried ahead. The guards trotted with him until they caught her again.

It lay behind a high, crown-hedged bank of grass-covered earth. Over the hedge could be seen the upper leaves of growing things. All was lush and green. On this bright morning, bees and wasps danced and darted among the curling blossoms of a creeper that coiled in gnarled loops. The men-at-arms walked watchfully and carried their blades ready, but Shandril could not believe that there could be anything lurking to offer ready danger, in such a place and on such a morning as this.

They turned where a broad track cut through the hedge, and followed it up a line of old, twisted oaks to a large, rambling house of fieldstone. Its thatched roof was thick with velvet-green moss and alive with birds. Vines on tripods and pole-frames stretched away from them in rows, like choked hallways amid the green, rustling walls of a great castle. Far down one they saw Storm Silverhand at work, her long silver hair tied back with a ragged scrap of cloth.