Hand of Fire

by Ed Greenwood

  From somewhere lower down Narm hissed, “Shan, are you all right? Keep low-voiced, and lie still!”

  “Lying still,” Shandril gasped into the blurred, darkening world around her, “is something I could probably master about now. I … I think nothing’s broken.” She moved her arm with some difficulty, shifting several coils of rope that were lying atop it, and started to laboriously walk her fingers down her own flank, toward her thigh.

  Halfway there her fingertips encountered something wet and sticky. The smell told her it was her own blood even before she found the tangle of torn garment and ruined skin beneath. She hissed in pain, set her teeth, and called up spellfire.

  Amid its tingling she felt other places on her body that were wet and somehow … cold, even as the spellfire rose to warm the rest of her.

  Narm groaned, deep in his throat, and she asked swiftly, “Are you hurt?”

  “Ughh. My bruises have bruises of their own, as Torm once said,” he muttered, “but nothing bad. Lie quiet.”

  “ ‘She died quietly’? Is that what you want to carve on my headstone?” Shandril gasped in amused protest, as spellfire washed through her, soothing and healing.

  “Nay, I was hoping your remembrance would be something more like, ‘Beloved of the gods, she saw two centuries, and her twenty children gave her seven-score grandchildren, who in turn—’ ”

  “Twenty children? Narm, you rutting boar!”

  “A man can hope,” came the reply, in a voice of morose self-pity.

  Shandril snorted. “If it’s to be Candlekeep platitudes, here’s an appropriate one: ‘Keep your hopes to a size you can carry.’ Are we finished lying still and silent yet?”

  A spell-blast outside promptly rocked the wagon, and something inside with them broke and collapsed into small, clattering fragments. “Nay,” Narm replied brightly, “I think not.”

  A thump outside was followed by a creaking of torn wood, and then a rough voice said, “This was the spellfire-wench’s wagon. Quick, now!”

  A dark form shouldered forward, scraping leather-clad shoulders on the side of the wagon now serving as a ceiling. It was followed by another, who spoke again in that rough voice. “D’ye see her?”

  The man in leathers leaned forward, looming over the tangle of ropes where Shandril lay. Reflected daylight gleamed along the edge of a long, cruelly curved dagger. The man plucked aside the shattered ribs of a keg—and stared right into the eyes of the maid from Highmoon.

  “Aww,” Shandril complained, blinding him with a short gout of spellfire, “and I was lying so quietly, too!”

  The man staggered back with a roar and fell over as Narm hamstrung him neatly from below.

  “Why, you little vixen!” the rough-voiced man snarled, raising hands upon which rings flashed with awakened magic. “I’ll—”

  “You’ll die, that’s what you’ll do!” another voice said calmly from just outside the wagon. A burst of green flames outlined the rough-voiced man in sudden, convulsed agony. Burning, he fell forward on his face without a sound, revealing to Shandril a sudden scorched vista of daylight where wagon-timbers had melted away before those green flames.

  A man in robes was standing outside, his hand still raised from hurling his spell. Three grim-looking men in leather armor were clustered around him, looking nervously in all directions and clutching swords in whitening, helpless fists. No blade could defend them against the restless spells warring on all sides.

  Warriors and merchants alike had swords and daggers and even stools in their hands as they ran. Some hacked at everyone within reach, and others aimed wands or fists that winked with rings.

  Shandril saw the sky suddenly vomit forth whirling blades in a short-lived swirl that shredded a man spurring a horse among the wagons, then diced the horse, too. A ghostly dragon’s head as high as eight men reared up into the sky, jaws gaping wide—but then collapsed and blew away as two blades met in the chest of the wizard who’d spun it. Sudden pillars of flame struck from the sky to immolate screaming warriors, and a lone crossbow quarrel sprouted in a man’s head and snatched him from his feet, sword and dagger spilling from dead hands as he fell from view.

  Ignoring all this tumult, the man who’d hurled green flame bowed smoothly to Shandril.

  “Lady Shessair,” he said pleasantly, “you may have noticed me earlier as Nargalarr the pot-seller, a somewhat half-witted man. Know that I am in truth the wizard Praulgar, and I desire to defend you against all who would take spellfire from y—”

  A dagger flashed end-over-end past the nose of one of Praulgar’s guards, and burst into nothingness against an unseen shield—but the dagger that spun in its wake sped right through where the exhausted shield had been, and bit through the wizard’s throat.

  Praulgar staggered, choking on blood, clutched at his throat, and took a few helpless, failing steps, his face suddenly pleading with Shandril as he struggled to speak … and managed no more than a bubbling scream.

  “You’ll defend no one, Zhentarim,” said the man who’d hurled the dagger, striding into view with a sword ready in his hand. There was a second man at his elbow, and together they glared at the wizard’s guards.

  “D’you want to die, too?” the newcomer asked them softly. The nearest guard shook his head, turned, and drove his sword firmly through the dying wizard. Praulgar slid forward off that darkly glistening blade into a boneless heap on the ground.

  “Nay,” the guard replied, “not now you’ve rid us of this tyrant. We’ll begone. Tymora smile on all!” He backed a few hasty steps away from the newcomers and then turned and fled, the other wizard’s guards with him.

  The two newcomers promptly buried their swords in the fallen Zhentarim, just to make sure, and gave Shandril smiles that were meant to be reassuring. “Well met, lady,” one said in a deep voice. “I’m Brasker, and this is Holv—”

  Shandril sighed and fed them both spellfire—short, swift jets, right at their eyes.

  Her aim was improving. Screaming, they staggered back, blindly slashing empty air with their swords. Brasker promptly tripped over fallen wagon gear, and Narm sprang up out of the wreckage, dagger gleaming, and pounced on the man. Setting his teeth, he stabbed down, hard.

  Shandril struggled for breath, shuddering. She had almost no spellfire left, yet it tugged at her, calling for more of her, trying to pull her into oblivion in its wake.

  Feeling empty and weak, she swayed, mastered herself, and sighed, “From the Zhentarim to the Cult of the Dragon. You were right, love—we should have gone on playing dead longer.” She looked around the ruined wagon, largely so she wouldn’t have to watch Narm clambering forward to gingerly slay Holvan, and sighed again. “ ’Twouldn’t have worked, though,” she added sadly. “They’ve torn this wagon apart around us.”

  Narm came back toward her, pale-faced and gasping, bloody dagger in hand, and was promptly sick all over the split and splintered remains of a water-cask. “I-I—sorry, Shan, I—”

  “Don’t ever be sorry you’re not good at slaying,” she told him gently. “I hate it just as much as you do. I’ll never be good at battle-tactics and lures and being ruthless and all that—and still this fire Mystra gave me eats men I should be fleeing screaming from, and I slaughter them in their tens and dozens.” She shivered and managed a weak smile, putting her hand on his arm.

  Narm drew in a deep, shuddering breath, nodded, and tried to smile. Someone shouted—a short, desperate, cut-off cry—and he looked back over his shoulder.

  He couldn’t tell who’d just died or who’d slain them. Several wagons were burning, and others lay scattered in shards and ashes, blown apart by this magic or that.

  Narm shook his head, felt around in the wrack at his feet for a leather water-flask, and asked, “Why don’t we find ourselves a wagon that’s still intact and go play dead there?”

  Shandril smiled slowly. “As Torm might put it: you say the sweetest things.”

  Narm winced, took a swig of water, and cro
uched low as magic flared out from behind a wagon. Small, sizzling balls of flame streaked across trampled, body-strewn Haelhollow at someone else, for once.

  “On the other hand,” he gasped, sitting down hastily amid the wreckage, “we could far more convincingly play dead right here!”

  His lady burrowed through the tumbled heap of gear like a small whirlwind, hooting with laughter, to put warm arms around him.

  Arauntar trotted into view, breathing hard and drenched in too much blood for it all to be his own. He held a drawn, dripping sword in either hand, and looked grim and dangerous. Peering at the heap of shattered gear, he scowled at the giggling mirth rising from it, and growled, “That’s all we need! Dead men everywhere, a dozen wagons wrecked or gone, an’ now the lass has gone mind-shattered on us!”

  He glared at the sky. “A crazy woman with spellfire! Mystra, forgive me, but I really don’t recall doing something so bad to you that I deserved this!”

  The heap of wreckage surged with wild, redoubled laughter, and this time, helplessly, a second, slightly deeper voice joined in.

  Shaking his head and growling, Arauntar waded forward into the hulk of the ruined ready-wagon.

  “Dead Dragons preserve!” Thoadrin cursed softly, watching spells flash and men hack at each other—and more than one wagon cartwheel up into the sky, almost lazily shedding goods and merchants and harness. The ground shook as spell-blasts spat men and horses away into the Blackrocks like so many torn and dirty rags. More men came boiling out of nigh every wagon with wands leveled or rings winking on their hands or spells snarling from their lips.

  The few Cult warriors who’d survived Shandril’s attack to cower behind spellfire-scorched rocks with Thoadrin all gaped at the spellstorm below. Not a few of them drew back and cast him quick glances, as if judging the best time or chance to flee.

  “We retreat when I give the order,” he told them softly and held up a last cocked and loaded crossbow where they could see it. “Fleeing the Way can be so dangerous.…”

  One of his men looked at him, then at a knob of rock where spellfire had melted away a height like a small turret, leaving nothing of the four men who’d been crouching behind it but dark, greasy smears on stone. “So dangerous,” he echoed, and laughed bitterly.

  Thoadrin gave him a stony look but put the crossbow down again, unfired.

  When the cursing priest of Bane ducked into the shelter of the dark, silent, horseless wagon bearing the sign that said “Haransau Olimer’s Best Blandreths,” a quick glance was enough to reassure him that it stood empty. Any number of black-armored men might be lying still and flat on their faces amid all the blandreths, of course, but nothing moved, and he could hear no breathing but his own—great loud gasps that told the watching world Stlarakur of Bane was terrified, unaccustomed to hastening anywhere, and in need of a little time to catch his wind before hastening anywhere else.

  Stlarakur of the Zhentarim wasted a little of his precious wind in a muttered, heartfelt flood of curses that branded Bane the cause of the bloodshed, affray, and ruin raging all around the wagon—and Bane’s response to such an insult was swift and sure.

  The shadows behind the wagon-curtain grew an arm with a blandreth clutched on the end of it—an arm that swung around in a vicious arc.

  The dull, wet thud of Stlarakur’s skull shattering was echoed by just as damp a splattering of Zhentarim brains on the wagon wall. The priest fell heavily to the floorboards, writhed in a momentary convulsion, and fell limp forever.

  “Well met,” the shadow murmured, bending down to wipe the blandreth clean on dark robes. “Rejoice in the holy thought, priest, that you are but the latest victim of the Dark Blade of Doom.”

  Marlel snorted in wry amusement at his own ridiculously overblown words and started to nudge the corpse off his wagon with the toe of his boot. He thought better of it and left the Zhent lying with one arm dangling over the edge, to discourage others from seeing the dark wagon entrance as a handy refuge.

  With his horses gone in someone’s dark necromancy and slaughter everywhere, it was a good time for Marlel to lie low, awaiting a better, later chance at snatching spellfire. He dragged Olimer’s most comfortable seat to a better location for watching the battle outside the wagon, uncorked another bottle of Olimer’s best firestorm, and sat down to enjoy the rest of the show.

  “Are you well, lord?”

  Aumlar Chaunthoun bit back a sudden wild urge to shriek at the man—of course he was a dolt; he was a Zhentilar guardsman, wasn’t he?—and said curtly, “I fare very well, and require only privacy. Just the two of you see to keeping everyone out of this wagon, so that interruptions disturb me not.”

  He lay back down on his improvised bed of blankets and closed his eyes again, trying to pay attention to the whispering thoughts in his mind. His spell seemed to be yielding snatches of both Narm’s and Shandril’s thinking, but with all mind-images, the remembered faces and places and what items looked like, leached out …

  Drifting down to the murmuring … yes, here …

  [elation] Mystra’s blessing flowing back into me need it soon sure [alarm] what if it drowns my control, takes me over? what then? Oh gods what then?

  [contentment] Shan happy again even in all this just to hold her just to feel her close warm soft that lovely smell love you lady love you

  [worry] less control each time now but they don’t stop attacking they’ll never stop attacking

  [apprehension] she’s tense again she’s worrying I wish she’d rest easy but no mayhap she feels something I can’t knows something’s coming feels a foe near “Shan?”

  The mageling was speaking again—and as dreamwhispers always did, the mind-murmurs went thunderous, echoing, and distorted when someone spoke aloud. Aumlar winced and tried to endure through the shouting without letting go his attention and losing hold of the interwoven thoughts.

  Bah! He’d lost them again. His spell wasn’t ended, but he’d fallen out of the right reverie, his awareness thrust back to the here and now of Aumlar Chaunthoun lying flat on his back in this wagon, with spells still whistling and roaring and bursting outside, men screaming, and a single floating eye regarding him from the darkness above, near the wagon ceiling. A floating eye staring at him?

  Aumlar thrust himself up, snatching at the hilt of his best enspelled dagger, trying to reach the spying orb before it—

  —winked out, that white glistening regarding him one moment and utterly gone the next, the gloom of the wagon roof unbroken again, defying him with its own dark mockery.

  Panting with fury, his dagger drawn with no one to thrust it into, Aumlar glared around at the empty darkness, saw nothing at the entrance but the lazily leaning shoulders of his two helm-headed guards, and slashed wildly at the air where the eye had been, knowing as he did it that his attack was futile. He should burrow into his lockchest, get out the right tome, and cast a tracing spell—but ’twas already too late, and he’d have to let the dreamwhisper go, and …

  “Blood of Mystra!” he cursed, snatching up his blankets and stalking to a far corner of the wagon, in case whoever had been spying on him sent a spell from afar to stab down at where he’d been lying. Who could it have been, anyway?

  Hmmph! In this caravan, who couldn’t it have been?

  Shaking out his blankets in a savage temper, he kicked aside chests and coffers to clear space enough to lie down again, wondering darkly just which rival might be lurking near. Perhaps if he spun a spell-disguise and got himself to somewhere safe where he could watch who came calling on this wagon while still listening to the thoughts of the spellfire-wench and her ma—

  There was a sudden flash from the wagon entrance, a high, thin scream, and the head of the worst dullard of his two guards came bouncing wetly down the wagon toward him.

  With a snarl of revulsion and fear Aumlar whirled to face the light, springing sideways out of long habit as he did so.

  His feet came down in a hard yet slippery confusion of chest
s and coffers even as his shoulder slammed bruisingly into the wagon side—but the stabbing blade of shimmering magic drove through nothing but air where he’d been and faded before it could sweep sideways and reach him.

  His attacker cursed softly and asked, “You weren’t particularly fond of these Zhentilar, were you? I’d hate to upset you unduly, Chaunthoun. Your clear head and unfettered judgment are such assets to Manshoon’s little Brotherhood of tail-biting vipers.”

  The somehow familiar voice came from behind a slowly advancing wall of drifting silver sparks, a spell every bit as deadly as the spellblade that had slain the guards. Aumlar eyed its inexorable promise of doom and sighed. He should know that voice.

  The lure he’d prepared to overwhelm Shandril Shessair had to be used now, on this more immediate foe—or there wouldn’t be another night or day beyond that, or any more of either days or nights, for Aumlar Chaunthoun. Oh, Blood of Mystra indeed!

  He murmured the word that sprang the trap, sprang back across the wagon, and in midair said aloud, as recognition came to him at last: “Pheldred!”

  “In full glory! Well met again, Aumlar, after all these years. I’ve come to pay you back for maiming me.”

  “Of course—if you can,” the Zhentarim told his unseen attacker calmly. “It must be hard to win respect in the ranks of the Red Wizards when your arms keep changing into manacles. My best curse; how did you manage to break it?”

  “The same way you set it. The hard part was finding what fiend you’d bound into it and by what names I could command it. I went through years of torment for that, Aumlar. Now, so will you!”

  “I think not,” the Zhentarim snapped, as the first of his wands rose into view and fired, its burst shredding Pheldred’s deathwall spell and revealing the floating man behind it. Dark hair, glittering black eyes, dark maroon robes, two plain finger-rings of course, a dagger and a whip thrust through a richly made belt … nothing unexpected there. Good; the Red Wizard was right inside the wagon. He could feel those crackling shieldings around Pheldred, so they couldn’t be illusory. Right in—as the old, old saying put it—the very jaws of his trap.