Hand of Fire

by Ed Greenwood

  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 fire-setter’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 running up, sword in hand, was priceless.

  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, “o’ 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!”

  “Huh. Well, Shandril undoubtedly did,” Beldimarr said dryly, pointing at the men shuffling uneasily around the fire he’d told them to stay by. “Well, you’ve seen our new blades. Impressed as much as I am?”

  “As they all seem to be able to walk without falling over an’ wear swords as if they know how to use ’em, I’d say about half of them’ll be Thayan snakes under orders from the Red Wizard Thavaun,” Arauntar grunted. “But we expected that. I distinctly remember you telling me we’d be up half the night talking over how to mount guards with so few blades, an’ not a new one we can trust. What’s really gnawing you?”

  Beldimarr cast a wary glance over his shoulder, and then muttered, “Voldovan. He looked at me like he didn’t recognize me for a moment, and when he talks his words are stiff an’ somehow careful … something’s not quite right.”

  “Was he out of your sight at all?”

  “For a few breaths when a Harper I’ve never seen before signaled me and gave me a message for Twilight Hall: ‘Soon the Three Laws will apply in every city.’ Mean anything to you?”

  Arauntar shook his head. “No doubt ’twill—in time to come, an’ too late to save us any trouble.”

  He sighed, and shook his head again. “Gods above—Voldovan, too?”

  Beldimarr scratched at some private itches. “You expected this life we’ve chosen to be easy?”

  “No,” Arauntar grunted, “but I was hoping the gods would serve up the worst entertainments no more’n three disasters at a time, if y’know what I mean. I’m not getting any younger.”

  Beldimarr shrugged. “If we
don’t handle this just right, my friend, we’ll neither of us be getting any older, either.”

  “Marlel,” said the cold, calm voice out of empty air in front of him, “your patience impresses me.”

  The Dark Blade of Doom stood very still as icy terror gripped him, but he managed to keep his own voice soft and steady. “And so?”

  “And so I believe I can use you in this little matter of spellfire, rather than destroying you right now. Sit down and pour yourself some of that vile thrusk you’re carrying. We must talk.”

  Marlel was neither a foolish man nor a slow one. He sat down.

  Her breath had barely slowed from facing down the shadow-wraith when she heard it again.

  Not slowing her quiet, steady walk, Sharantyr felt her little gem-pouch with her fingertips until she’d trapped a particular stone. Drawing it out, she broke it in the approved manner and let its gentle tingling wash over her.

  When the gentle feathery feeling was done, the ranger swung her backpack off her shoulder and spun around under the uncaring stars.

  A particular bush trembled just a bit more than it should have.

  “Come out, whoever you are,” she told it wearily. “You’ve been following me for a long time, and I’m growing tired of your clumsy rustlings.”

  Silence was her reply.

  Sharantyr let it stretch, then sighed and added flatly, “Come out or I’ll blast you.”

  More silence.

  Keeping her eyes on the bush, she raised one hand to counterfeit the gestures of a spell, wiggled her fingers just so, and a crossbow bolt whipped out of the night—right into her!

  Ironguard or no ironguard, a battle-hardened ranger moves when death comes reaching out of the air. She twisted away with lightning speed—too slow by far—and the war-quarrel flashed through her, biting through her belt right beside Lhaeo’s gift and catching in the leather baldric down her back. If she’d been whole, it would have torn right through her. As it was, it certainly looked like it was stuck through her.

  Sharantyr scowled at it and snapped, “Get out here, or I’ll blast the whole hillside!”

  The bush trembled reluctantly, and a man slowly rose into view, lifting his empty hands tentatively.

  It was Tornar the Eye.

  Sharantyr nodded, her lips thin. “I thought so. Sent by the Master of Shadows to slay me because I Know Too Much, aye?”

  It was Tornar’s turn to nod.

  “My patience for being followed is at an end,” Sharantyr told him, showing no signs of pain from his crossbow bolt, though it protruded boldly enough from her belt. “Turn around and go home, or I’ll slay you.”

  “But … but …”

  Sharantyr drew a tiny bone knife from inside the cuff of her left boot, and slashed off a lock of her hair. Her next slash, as she kept her eyes steadily on Tornar, was across the back of her own hand. She licked her little fang clean and put it away again, then held the hair in the blood welling out of the wound she’d made.

  His eyes widened, then narrowed. Sharantyr strode straight to him, and held out the bloody lock of hair. “Take Belgon this, tell him you succeeded, and look to see me no more in Scornubel.”

  Tornar looked startled, but he nodded, gingerly took the hair, and hastily backed away.

  Sharantyr nodded again. “Now go.”

  Tornar scrambled up the hillside, dodging between bushes, until he reached a bare rocky place a good way off. There he turned in the growing moonlight, smiled crookedly down at the ranger, and called, “Oh, I’ll be telling him of my success, rest easy on that. My bolt was poisoned.”

  “I know,” Sharantyr replied, plucking it nonchalantly out—Tornar’s eyes widened—breaking it between her fingers—Tornar’s eyes grew even larger—and then tossing it into the ditch. “Bloodbite. You should refrain from using a venom half Faerûn takes no harm from. All it does is make me itch—to slay idiots who use it on me.”

  She ended her words with a pleasant smile and advanced steadily up the hillside at Tornar, until he whirled around and sprinted away.

  The lady ranger watched him go, head to one side to listen.

  When she was quite sure he wasn’t circling around again—not nearby, at least—and no other large creature was on the move close at hand, either, Sharantyr resumed her long, solitary walk.

  A few paces along the road she told the stars softly, “The gem-dust on that hair will force you away from me for as long as you carry it, Tornar. Wasteful magic, perhaps—but if that wraith comes back, these gems will probably end up as so many crumbling pebbles, and it’ll be just my wits and blades against the world.”

  Her voice was wry, a few steps later, when she added, “That’s what it always comes down to.”

  Another few strides of road fell away behind her before she lifted her head again and asked the stars softly, “I wonder what mages do when their magic fails them or runs out in a fight, and they’ve never learned swordplay or how to hide or anything else?”

  As usual, the stars declined to answer.

  18

  FIRE IN THE NIGHT

  When fire leaps up in the night, best have blade ready to hand. Dwarves, men, and elves all seem to feel better when they die doing something—even if it’s just screaming and running. Considerate orcs and dragons know this and blow trumpets or roar to give their victims time to get properly ready.

  Belmast Thaurondur, Scrollmaster of Suzail

  Don’t Let It Be Forgot: A Scribe’s Life

  Year of the Haunting Harpy

  Few folk in Triel had even seen the grandest table in town. It gleamed mirror-smooth and bright in a heavily guarded upper room of a granary Elvar had died thinking still held the best cheeses, wines, and smoked meats he’d been able to assemble.

  Its new owners had tossed the foodstuffs down the stairs like so much rubble, readying the room for more important uses.

  Sitting around a great table staring at a lone flame dancing in the air by their heads, for instance.

  A man with a face like coldly angry stone and the smallest of razor-straight beards tufting the corners of his jaw leaned forward and asked, “Highest, what should we do now?”

  “Unfold to me who on this caravan and harrying it is seeking spellfire—agents, not dreaming-of-luck merchants or hireswords. Everyone from the outset at Scornubel, not just who’s still in the hunt now.”

  The stone-faced man cast a glance along the table. Another man caught it reluctantly, leaned forward with a nervous throat-clearing, and said, “H-highest, here are all the ah, players, as we see them. Firstly, those attacking the caravan. Thoadrin of the Cult of the Dragon, and his warriors. He and one survive and have turned back, or so we believe.”

  “As do I. Proceed.”

  “Rendilar Bluthlock of Scornubel, leading a force of rogues of his city, probably at the behest of the Master of Shadows. All now perished or fled. The Master sent two other agents after the caravan—a woman unfamiliar to us, openly on horseback, and his most trusted spy, Tornar the Eye. They’ve not yet caught up to the wagons.”

  “You know of no one else lurking in the Blackrocks, preparing attack?”

  “N-no, Highest. A second group are those keeping watch over the caravan. We suspect someone of the Arcane Brotherhood is aware of the movements of Shandril Shessair but know no one for certain. Yet.”

  “Other watchers being the Cult, independent rabble of no account, and the Zhentarim?”

  “Yes, Highest. So far as we can tell, no one oversees the Cultists along on the caravan. They are left to their own devices and report back later.”

  “If they can.”

  “Ah—yes, Highest, indeed. This leaves the Zhentarim, and of them we’ve managed to farscry the wizards Korthauvar Hammantle and Hlael Toraunt, who are working together and reporting to the mage Drauthtar Inskirl.”

  “A veteran of internal Zhent skirmishes, not to be understimated by the sensible.”

  “Indeed so. Inskirl seems to be under the command o
f Eirhaun Sooundaeril, called ‘The Maimed Wizard’ by his fellow Zhentarim.”

  “Whom he spies on, seeking treacheries to report to Manshoon. I hear hesitation in your voice. Hold back nothing!”

  “Y-yes, Highest. There’s another wizard of the Zhentarim involved, but we know not how: Hesperdan. They all seem to fear him, yet he spurns orders and lackeys.”

  “Ah. Yes, he’s to be feared, perhaps even more than Manshoon and Fzoul, though he has a habit of vanishing for decades at a time, leaving all affairs untouched. Watch him as closely as you dare.”

  “Ah—it shall be done, Highest. This brings us to agents in the caravan. We may not have uncovered all but are confident we’ve found everyone of consequence.”

  “Unfold them to me.”

  “Indeed. The Cult may have lost all its spellfire seekers. They numbered four warriors—one named Brasker, another Holvan—and a wizard and a thief working together, Malivur and Krostal. Krostal was well known to us; a capable and dangerous man. He told Malivur he recognized a ‘far more powerful’ Cult mage posing as a merchant of the caravan, but we’ve not yet identified who. This unknown wizard is probably the only Cult agent left.”

  “And the Zhents?”

  “Reduced to three ambitious but weak magelings, we believe: Deverel, Jalarrak, and Rostol. We don’t yet know which of the caravan merchants each is. Dead already are two priests of Bane, Stlarakur and Sabran—the most formidable Zhent, in our judgment—and the wizards Mhegras, Praulgar, and Aumlar.”

  “The last won himself a not inconsiderable reputation … but such accomplishments usually pave roads to early graves.”

  “Indeed, Highest. He nearly slew our Pheldred, after Pheldred attacked him; a personal matter, we believe.”

  “I agree. Anyone else?”

  “Y-yes, Highest, there is one other.”