Hand of Fire

The stars overhead ventured no opinion. Sharantyr smiled, unsurprised, as she stowed the gems, reclaimed her pack-the blades were crumbling already, and she tossed their hilts into the ditch-and resumed her walk.

Narm sprang up from his stool and sniffed. There it was again.

Smoke, very close by… woodsmoke. There was a hiss and crackle, like the sound he'd made dousing their embers. Someone had sloshed water on flames, to put them out-but quietly, with no shouts nor ru

The smell was strong now, and his view of the stars out the front of the wagon increasingly hazy. Water to quench flame, or to make more smoke!

Narm shook Shandril awake, muting her sleepy question with a firm hand. "Fire," he murmured in her ear. "Our wagon, I think, and set by someone waiting outside."

Shan took his hand away and murmured back, "We're being smoked out?"

Narm nodded, and she purred, "Crouch low by the entrance. Do nothing until I shout your name or someone comes inside."

Narm nodded again and did as he was bid. In his wake, Shandril went flat to the floor, hoping no one outside was pla

The wood was hot. No blades would come from beneath. There must be a fire there. Very soon, the floor would burst into open flame with a roar, and consume them and the wagon together, unless…

Shandril felt around for the drain-the finger-sized hole in all of Voldovan's wagons, covered by a swivel-plate of metal, that was there to let water and spilled cargo out. There! She eased the plate open a trifle, ignoring the pain-and a tiny tongue of flame rose up into her face. Shandril called up her spellfire, opened her mouth, and sucked it in.

It was hot, scratchy going down her throat, and inclined to tickle her nose… but it went in without setting her to choking, or searing her as it should have done.

Shandril spread herself out flat and willed the fire into her. So long as she bled spellfire into it, to enfold and absorb the flames, she could drink it in.

Her scalp prickled. Sweat was all over her in a sheen… she was getting hot, all over. Her fingertips ached… "Shan!" Narm whispered. "Are you all right?" She nodded vigorously and waved at him to keep quiet, but he held up his own hand in a "heed me here" signal, fumbled in her things, and came up with her hand mirror, which he held up so that she could see herself.

Flames were licking out of her mouth and eyes! No wonder he was concerned.

She nodded, smiled, and waved to let him know she was fine and went back to sucking fire.

In the brief time she'd lifted her head to look at Narm, a tiny ring of dancing flames had risen beneath her throat and breast. If this worked as before, only her bared flesh could take in flame-at least until roaring fire had engulfed her, and she hoped whoever was waiting outside to capture or slay them would have grown impatient by then.

Rather than spend time disrobing, Shandril wriggled backward along the floor a trifle to take in these new flames. Smoke curled up thickly around her, and for the first time she coughed.

Hastily she crawled forward again to suck flames, hoping that the floor wouldn't give way before the firesetter's patience did. There was always the chance that someone had just set fire to the wagon and gone away in hopes that they'd be asleep and dead of smoke before waking, but somehow that didn't sit with how she saw these spellfire-seekers. Kill, and so destroy what you prized? No, he'd be out there waiting-if, of course, it was a "he." Were there any other women along on the caravan? Oh, yes, one of the merchants had a wife, as fat and ugly as himself… of course, it could be neither he nor she, but "it." Shandril quelled such thoughts, resisting an impulse to laugh at a sudden vision of a gigantic dragon curled up like a cat before a hearth, breathing flame at her in a long, slow, steady stream.

She was starting to feel bloated now, like the day so long ago when she'd bet Gorstag she could consume an entire great blandreth of soup and had, then had wished she hadn't. There was pain now, too, in her joints and fingertips and toes, an ache that grew steadily greater.

"Shan," Narm said quietly, "you're starting to glow."

"Why thank you, kind sir," she replied tartly, making light of his words. "Every lady should glow when at her best." She would have said more, but a sudden shudder set her to coughing, and this time, as she'd feared, she couldn't stop.

Every hacking explosion gouted forth flame, and she had to turn her head hastily to avoid scorching gear. There was too much cargo for sudden rushes anywhere, or she'd have run out the door regardless of arrows or waiting spells and spewed fire into the night, but…

Outside, someone snarled, "At last! I thought they'd never-"

A man's voice she'd heard before on the run. Well, no great surprise there.

Shandril threw back her head, teeth clenched. Her knees, elbows, and breasts were starting to ache now. If she didn't rid herself of the fire she'd swallowed soon, someone was going to get a great surprise. She hoped it wouldn't be Narm, deafened by a mighty blast and suddenly wearing a wetness that had been his Shandril a moment earlier.

No, she dare not stay in here a moment longer. Trusting to spellfire to keep her safe, she crawled unsteadily to the front of the wagon, flames crackling from her hands as she went. She hoped Narm would have sense enough to get out fast, whatever happened next. This wagon would probably go up with a roar, very soon.

Calling on spellfire, she flew, bursting out through the doorway on her side and arrowing up sharply into the sky.. "Hah!"

Mhegras of the Zhentarim was standing below, a look of triumph on his face and his fingers already weaving a spell. Shandril vomited fire at him and out of the heart of its spectacular flood blasted him with spellfire, an angry white shaft of force that ate into the ground in an instant, leaving nothing in its wake but a pair of empty, slightly smoking wizard's boots.

When Narm burst out of the wagon with a yell, daggers in both hands, his lady was just landing after an angry (and futile) foe-seeking flight around the wagon and going to her knees to suck flames from its underside. The look on Arauntar's face as he came ru

So, Narm suspected, was his own.

Sabran let fall the wagonflap and shook his head in the suddenly lonely darkness.

"Not so special after all," he remarked to the empty air. "Just like all the others."

He took a few restless but sure-footed steps in the lightless wagon, and asked the unheeding cargo around him softly, "Manshoon, when will you see Lord Fzoul's way is right? Belief and training and obedience-not ambitious hunger for great power, without delay!"

He stopped, wondering again if the Dread Lord of the Zhentarim had really whispered in the ears of Mhegras, ordering the attack that had just failed. Oh, someone in the caravan had, someone who'd come from the blandreth-dealer's wagon. But who had it been, really?

He whirled and strode back to the wagonflap, then stopped and shook his head. If it hadn't been Manshoon, it didn't matter now who it had been. If it was Manshoon, there was no need to go looking. The Dark Master of the Brotherhood would quite soon find him.

"Sabran." The cold voice came from just beyond the wagonflap. Quite soon, indeed.

The priest caught his breath, and leaned forward to murmur, "Yes, Lord?"

The bowgun-bolt that took him in the face wasn't large- but then, it didn't have to be.

It only had to be small enough to be readily hidden amid blandreths.

"So who d'you think'twas?"

"A wizard," Arauntar growled angrily, V course. Just which jolly merchant that mage was I won't know until we go looking an' counting, come morn-I'm not doing it now. The lad'n' lass are safe, the wagon floor is charred but should hold if we lash a few beams under it, an' blast me if they didn't wait until I was bedded down, with you lot about forty strides off, an' race in to do their butchery. Beshaba damn them!"