Crown of Fire

Something small and white floated in the air beside the tower porch. One of her guards lay sprawled in the dirt beneath it. As Tessaril stepped forward, raising the wand, the eyes of the floating thing-a human skull, by the gods!-flashed, and part of the front wall of tier tower simply vanished with a little sighing sound. Lamplight spilled out through the breach, accompanied by frightened curses. The Purple Dragons within hauled out blades and peered out into the night.

A sudden bright bolt of lightning spat from the skull. Trailing sparks, the bolt danced from man to man, making each in turn convulse, stagger, and fall. Smoke rose from their armor.

Tessaril mouthed a curse and triggered her wand. Fire shot through the night, shrouding the skull in bright flames. It turned slowly to face her, quivering in the air as flames raced over it. Then its eyes flickered, and it spat another bolt of lightning from its bony jaws.

Tessaril dived to one side, but no one in the Realms could have dodged that leaping lightning. With an angry snapping sound, the bolt struck her, and she reeled, gasping, and fell. Her veins crawled. She could not breathe. White needles pierced her eyes, and the smell of burnt cloth and hair was strong in her nostrils. Only the hard dirt against her check told her she was still alive.

The bolt that had almost slain Tessaril awoke the slumbering Mirt. He sleepily shuffled out of the audience chamber, blade in hand, then skidded to a halt when he saw that the entire front wall of the entry hall was gone and that a skull floated in the night outside. Purple Dragons lay sprawled about the room amid fallen blades and splintered furniture.

Mirt snatched up a discarded sword and hefted it to throw. As he moved, the skull turned to confront him, fire flashing where its eyes should have been. With a chill, Mirt recognized the same leaping flames in its empty sockets that he saw in Shandril's eyes when she was angry. Spellfire lived in this undead thing.

The skull laughed hollowly as it drifted slowly into the room. the twin, coiling flames of its gaze bent on hint. "I'm getting much too old for all this," Mirt grunted sourly, squinting up at the glowing skull.

On the road below, a weak and dazed Tessaril fought her way slowly to hands and knees. Pain raged inside her, and from somewhere nearby, she heard a frightened, querying mew. With weary detachment, she looked down at herself and saw the cause of her tressyni's alarm: smoke was rising in lazy curls front her body. Biting her lip, the Lord of Eveningstar caught her breath, struggled to a sitting position, and frowned in concentration to gather her wits for another spell. As she fought to make the intricate gestures, she heard and saw the battle above.

"All right!" Mirt growled, waving both blades. "Come on, then! Let's be at it!" A voice from his memory female, and mocking, but he was damned if he could recall just who, at this tense moment-echoed in his head:

Heroes can't choose which fights they will win. That is why all of them die in the end.

The light within the skull flickered. The air was suddenly full of the bright, deadly pulses of flame the Old Wolf had seen many triages hurl down the years-the bolts that ca

So this damned dead thing could work spells. Thanks be to the gods! Mirt held that sour thought as he steeled himself against the pain he knew would come, and threw his borrowed sword at the skull as hard as he could.

The bolts struck him, lancing into his body with shuddering pain. As always, their energy made his limbs tremble violently. The Old Wolf set his teeth, staggering back under the force of the attack, and blinked back tears to see what happened to his hurled blade. It missed, whirling away harmlessly into the night as the skull rose smoothly up out of its path.

Mirt snarled, plucked up a stool from the wreckage nearby, and hurled it at the skull, lurching into an ungainly charge in its wake. His eerie foe bobbed again, and the stool hurtled harmlessly past it and shattered against a wall. The skull's hollow laughter rang out around the old, wheezing merchant.

Then the skull spat something at him that glowed with tiny, sparkling motes of light. Panting in his haste, Mirt dived aside and rolled on the floor-but not fast enough: some of the spittle struck his arm and shoulder.

Aaargh-acid! Gods, but it burned! Roaring in pain, the Old Wolf twisted on the floor and clutched his shoulder. It felt like slow-moving fire was crawling along his flesh: Mirt whimpered at the pain and writhed helplessly.

Unseen, the skull soared past him, heading for the stairs. The grand stair climbed from the entry hall to a gallery on the floor above, where many statues stood. Among them were warriors of Cormyr, a mermaid rampant upon a wave, and a sleeping dragon. As the skull floated amid these, a dagger suddenly spun at it, striking chips from the curved bone of its jaw- before glancing off.

The lich lord turned menacingly and saw a servantwoman on tire landing, her face white with fear. She was frantically trying to raise a sword that was far too heavy for her.

A tongue of flame slid out of one of the skull's eye sockets, and the woman moaned in fear. She swung the sword weakly at the flames, shrank back, and cried, "Tempus aid me!"

Iliph Thraun laughed aloud and struck at the woman with its whip of flames. She screamed, waving the sword ineffectually as the fire raged around her. The lich lord lashed the woman with flames until she crumpled and fell, hair smoldering. Then it flew on into the upper levels of Tessarits Tower.

At the top of the next flight of stairs, Narm and Shandril sat together on a bench, weapons in hand, uncertain of what to do as crashes and cries came up to them from below. At first, they didn't see the silently floating skull drifting up the darkened stairs. Then Narm scrambled up with a startled curse and hurled a hasty swarm of bright bolts at it.

Shandril stared at the skull. "What is it?" she asked of the world at large as Narm's missiles hit home. Bright pulses struck bone and burst and flared around the skull, but it seemed to ignore them. It opened its mouth and spat spellfire at Shandril.

Narm leapt between Shandril and the reaching spellflames, shuddering as spellfire struck him and swirled around his shoulder. The young mage staggered, but the skull rose quickly to direct its stream of flames over him-and into Shandril's breast.

Shandril gasped in surprise. It was spellfire! Then her face hardened, and her eyes and hands began to flame. "Yes! Yesss "' the skull hissed, as she hurled the conflagration back at it. Narm lifted a face tight with pain to peer at the skull, and he gasped-it was feeding on the spellfire Shan was using on it.

Shandril hurled streams of spellfire at the thing. It chuckled, teeth clattering hollowly. She set her jaw and wove the blaze into a bright net of flames, cutting the air with so many arcs of fire that the skull could not avoid them.

The skull plunged into the fiery net and spun there among the strongest flames. Where spellfire touched it, the burning fury darkened and died. The residue slid weirdly into the fissures and gaps in the bones-all except the eye sockets and gaping mouth, which poured an ever-increasing stream of spellfire back at her.

Spellflames engulfed the girl, raging and roaring. Shandril shuddered under the attack-every inch of her seemed to be trembling uncontrollably-and then struggled to advance against the skull's stream of spellfire. Her eyes were narrowed to slits, her face contorted with pain.

"Shan! Nooo!" Narm screamed, but she seemed not to hear. He gulped, took two ru