Hand of Fire

by Ed Greenwood

  He set his teeth as his gorge rose, shook his head, and went on.

  There was but one guard more, draped over a corner of the wagon-perch, Voldovan’s boots beside him. The caravan master had fallen back inside his wagon where all was dark and still. The Thayan eyed that dark gap cautiously. Dare he hope the spellfire-wench and her mate slept, too?

  Best stick to the plan. The guard first, then Voldovan—then truss the young mage and have him out of the wagon and away into the night. If she awakened while he was still out hunting the two veteran guards, he’d have a hold over her … and even if the caravan went on, she’d stay to search for her Narm. ’Twould just be a matter of waiting, as she clambered and peered and called in vain, until exhaustion took her into real slumber, and he could enspell her at will.

  The Red Wizard smiled, stepped forward, raised his dagger—and the guard’s eyes snapped open!

  The armsman growled, “What the—?”

  Around them, the camp erupted into life and sound—a chorus of curses and bewilderment.

  The guard glared at the mage with the knife and bellowed, “Attack! Voldovaaaan!”

  The Red Wizard sprang back, snapped out a hasty incantation as the guard’s sword rang out, and was gone, back beside his own wagon before he’d even had time to curse. He made up for that now.

  “Beshaba spit on all!” he roared, charging up its steps and inside. The camp was in an uproar, the guard couldn’t have failed to recognize him. The thud of pounding, running feet was rising in his ears already. He had to get his spellbooks and begone, before—

  A sword slashed open the cloth across the wagon windows, and a furious voice shouted, “There he is!”

  Men in the worn leather and rusty chain of caravan guards came boiling through the mouth of the wagon, and the Red Wizard turned with a snarl on his lips and a wand in his hand and gave them death.

  The front of the wagon burst forth in a bright flood of flame and broken bodies that brought Arauntar running, and other men, too, with drawn swords in their hands. “Magic!” someone shouted. “Always bloody magic!”

  Another merchant who was also a wizard saw his chance and hurled lightning, but Arauntar wore more leather than steel, and one of Voldovan’s recent hires took the crackling bolt instead. That guard staggered, clawed the air, and went over on his back, outlined in spitting blue-white sparks.

  The Zhentarim cursed and threw up his hands to cast another spell, but Arauntar ducked behind a snorting group of hobbled, frightened horses, and bellowed, “Guards! To me! That wagon—have the man out of it, and down dead! ’Ware spells!”

  Men were shouting all over the camp now, and running with swords and daggers out. Shandril Shessair came to the mouth of Voldovan’s wagon white to the lips and fire-eyed in fury.

  Another Zhentarim hurled a fireball at her from his own wagon. Shandril saw the tiny streak of flame hurtling toward her and smashed it back with spellfire.

  A great burst of flame shot up into the night where spell and spellfire met, spitting streamers in all directions like a Lantanna firework, and billowed up in a plume of brilliance that lit the tilted field as bright as day.

  In its radiance the Red Wizard could be seen fleeing the smoldering wreck of his wagon, trotting away downslope. Shandril set her lips in a thin line and sent him spellfire.

  In all the shouting and waving of blades, no one saw a thin cloud, like a cloak of shadows, descending silently out of the night, but everyone noticed when the plume of flame suddenly went dark and dwindled. No eye failed to see when something dimmed the spellfire that was clawing at a screaming Thayan.

  Darkness roiled silently, as if in pain, spellflames whirling away in all directions. Shandril’s streamer of spellfire faded, and shrank back.

  Shandril’s eyes widened in astonishment as she watched, and from the Zhent’s wagon came a harsh laugh and another spell.

  Lightning spat across the trampled sward, seeking the life of Shandril Shessair, but the shadow swooped, and the bolt darkened, sank, and died … as if something had devoured it.

  “Get to that god-rotting wagon!” Arauntar roared, and the Zhentarim burst out of his door and fled away across the field, just as the Red Wizard had.

  Arauntar cursed, flung his sword, and watched it bounce far short. The wizard looked back and laughed. He was still laughing as he came to a crashing halt with Beldimarr’s blade through him, and the fiercely grinning Harper at the other end of it.

  “Ho!” he called, as the dying wizard gurgled and slid down his dark, wet steel, clawing vainly at it, “I don’t know what’s drinking magic, but ’tis a night for sword-swingers at last! Where’s that murdering mage?”

  “Gone that way!” Arauntar called, pointing with his dagger, as he came running to scoop up his sword. “You go after him, an’ I’ll see to the lass!”

  All around them, the fighting was getting personal and bloody. Some merchants had fear or temper enough to get out blades and join the fray. Others ordered their bully-blades to defend their wagons. Guards snapped orders, were defied, and replied with sword-thrusts.

  “Go!” Beldimarr shouted, shoving Arauntar back toward Voldovan’s wagon. “Look!”

  Arauntar spun around and saw, cursed bitterly, and put his head down and ran.

  A dozen swordsmen were whirling around Voldovan’s wagon like a dark storm, fencing with each other and the snarling, already wounded caravan master. Whenever they had a moment free from fending off hostile steel, they plunged their blades hilt-deep in the cloth sides of the wagon, thrusting hard at whoever might be within. Arauntar heard at least one startled scream from Shandril and a wild shouting that was probably Narm trying to cast a spell—and finding to his horror that nothing happened.

  As the Harper ran, faster and harder than he’d ever sprinted in his life before, he clearly heard the young mage’s next words: “ ’Tis here, Shan! In here with us! Some sort of dark—thing!”

  “My knife does nothing to it,” Shandril gasped, as Arauntar pounded nearer and Voldovan sank back on his perch with a sob of pain, bleeding in two places and with eager swordsmen pressing in for the kill. One of them—gods blast him!—was a guard just hired in Triel!

  The Harper arrived hacking a neck here, a face there and had those men down or reeling back in two swift, panting moments.

  “Try flame on it!” Shandril was crying, inside the wagon. “The lantern!”

  Narm’s reply was a roar of pain, mingled with Shandril’s scream. A moment later, they reeled out onto the perch. A moment after that, Arauntar saw why.

  Someone had got hold of a long lance—a horse lance, cargo from one of the wagons—and thrust it through the back of Voldovan’s wagon. The slashed, flapping-down back of Narm’s clothing and the bloody bared skin beneath told clearly enough where it had scored.

  Arauntar went for that man with a roar, hoping to distract him from cutting his own door through the wagon-back and clambering up inside. The moment the Harper was gone from the front of the wagon, someone hurled a blade out of the night and hit Voldovan in the face with it. The startled caravan master fell off the perch, leaving the way clear to the young couple inside.

  Three swordsmen surged forward as one, with an eager roar, and from out of the night, hair streaming behind her, came a woman none of them had ever seen before. A long, slender sword gleamed in one of her hands and there was a dagger in the other. She crashed into them from one side, driving them together into a confused tangle of steel by the sheer fury of her charge.

  “For Myth Drannor!” Sharantyr cried. “For Shadowdale!”

  Her blade clanged, crashed, and sang again. A man groaned and fell over dying. Shandril peered out of the wagon in wonder, calling, “Sharantyr?”

  One of the other swordsmen howled in glee and hurled his dagger at the spellfire-wench. Narm sprang desperately in front of his lady and smashed the weapon aside with his arm. It clanged away off the wagon, and he winced and sank down, Shandril clutching him and drawing h
im back inside.

  By then, Sharantyr had sworded another swordsman, leaving only the one who’d thrown his knife. He eyed her, took a pace back, raised his blade warningly, and acquired a sudden look of wild pain.

  A moment later he came crashing at her, running right onto her blade and hurling her aside.

  The swordsman smashed into the perch like a Waterdhavian street-puppet, loose-limbed and dangling, and fell aside, already dead. Behind him stood the two mages who’d driven him forward, the talons of a huge spell-spun claw floating in the air before them. Sharantyr tugged at her sword, trying to fend off the deadly thing, but even as she snarled and hauled it free of the dead man, a darkness fell upon the claw and it faded. The two wizards stepped back in alarm.

  The crash and skirl of swords from the rear of the wagon told of Arauntar’s battle with the men who’d been attacking there. As if avoiding that fray, Narm and Shandril came again to the wagon-mouth and saw Sharantyr advancing on the two wizards.

  Both of the Zhentarim drew daggers and threw them. The ranger shifted her blade coolly, and both hurled knives clanged away harmlessly into the night.

  She smiled grimly, took another step toward the men—and Arauntar came around the side of the wagon with a roar and hurled himself on Sharantyr.

  “No!” Shandril screamed. “Arauntar, no! She’s a friend!”

  Sparks flew as whirling blades met, two very swift steel-wielders twisted and darted and lunged. Over them, Korthauvar of the Zhentarim smiled tightly and flung another dagger.

  Narm caught this one in his arm, deep and quivering. He snarled, and before Shandril could stop him, sprang out over Arauntar in a furious leap that carried him right onto Korthauvar’s toes.

  As the wizard roared in pain, tried to leap back, and lost his balance as his pinned feet were freed unevenly, Narm snatched the man’s dagger out of his own arm and gave it back to the Zhent as he fell on top of him. Twice, hard and deep, in the neck and throat.

  Korthauvar Hammantle gasped, gulped, choked, and could not stop choking. He convulsed, flopping about on the ground like a fish cast up out of the water with his own blood like iron in his mouth … an endless flood of it. Frantically he reached up to Hlael for aid … and died seeing Hlael Toraunt shaking his head grimly and pitilessly and backing away.

  19

  A FAILING HAND OF

  FLAMES

  Even the mightiest wither and falter. It just takes longer for them to be laid low than those unfortunates they can send warriors to harvest for them. Hold this thought as consolation when the King’s blades burst through your door.

  Malivur Stonecastle

  Fallen From Grace: A Cormyrean Noble’s Tale

  Year of the Dracorage

  Hlael Toraunt ran as he’d never run in his life before. Even that young Tamaraith fool might be able to scorch him with a spell, and if the guard Arauntar caught up with him … well, he didn’t want to ever get to know what a few feet of hard, cold steel sliding through his guts felt like.

  He needed warriors—men sworn to the Brotherhood and as good with blades as these ragtag caravan guards. The Zhent magelings had some, and he needed them, now. If he had to blast a few Brother wizards to ashes to get them, well … it wasn’t as if the Brotherhood lacked a surplus of such dolts.…

  Panting, Hlael rounded the wagon that held Deverel of the Zhentarim, masquerading as a dealer in cheeses from Elturel. He skidded to a halt as the point of a ready sword thrust up almost into his face.

  “Yes?” its owner asked coldly. “You have business with Master Rinthar?”

  Hlael drew in a deep breath, met the Zhentilar’s cold regard with ice of his own, and said, “Yes. Tell him it’s his brother—the one called Deverel. I’ve come from Manshoon, and I’d like to buy some cheese!”

  “Stop!” Shandril yelled, into the storm of steel. “Stop, or you’ll kill each other!”

  She spat a tiny line of spellfire between their snarling faces, to make them heed—and it worked. Arauntar reeled back, blinking, and risked a quick glance in her direction. “Well, aye, Lass, when you take steel to someone, that’s the usual aim,” he growled.

  “Gods, no,” the maid of Highmoon cried. “Not you two!”

  Sharantyr and Arauntar stared at her, and then at each other over their blades, blinked, and asked more or less in unison, “So who by Leira the Deceiver are you?”

  Arauntar lurched up to the wagon, waved a weary arm back at the pole-lanterns flickering behind him—one of a small legion of such that now lit the camp with their glows—and growled, “That’s the last of ’em lit. Order reigns. I doubt there’s a man or maid in camp still asleep, but most of ’em are back in their wagons an’ not running around burying blades in each other any longer … for now.”

  “Good,” Orthil Voldovan grunted. “ ‘Now’ is all I’m worried about, until morning. Why by all the drunken dancing gods every man along on this run feels the need to butcher the next man every chance he gets, I know not, but—”

  He fell silent and strode past Sharantyr and her raised and ready blade to glare at a man who staggered as he approached. “An’ what by Beshaba’s bright smile befell ye?”

  Beldimarr managed a grin that would have been more handsome if blood hadn’t bubbled from between his teeth and leaked in a long stream out of the corner of his mouth.

  “Jus’ a lucky thrust,” he panted, as he reeled up to them, clutching his side with a hand whose fingers were slick with blood. “I took him down, mind—an’ he was a Zhentilar, or I’m a dead man.”

  “I hope he was a Zhentilar,” Arauntar said grimly, running to guide his friend to the wagon-perch. They didn’t make it before Beldimarr went to his knees.

  The head guard looked up from where he knelt beside his sagging comrade to ask Shandril roughly, “Lass?”

  Shandril stared down at Beldimarr, then at Arauntar’s grim gaze, and at the guards gathering around as if by magic, and all the color slowly went out of her face. “No,” she gasped, shaking her head. “Oh, no!”

  The wizard Rathrane drifted away from the lanterns, writhing and shuddering in pain. Sometimes he seemed almost solid, a dark man in dark robes, cloak billowing out impossibly long from his shoulders. More often he was but shifting, batlike shadows, roiling in pain around something bright and flickering in his midst, something that hurt him but that he cradled as if it was precious.

  Such agony, unending … but he had to have this. How could he not hunger for such power? He must learn from these last few wisps of spellflame, as they flickered out in his grasp, how to adapt himself so as to drain this peerless might without harm … like so. Yes! Thus! This was the way.

  The caravan master glared at the slip of a girl kneeling on his wagon-perch and growled disbelievingly, “Ye won’t heal him? Why not? Ye did before!”

  He took an angry step forward and found himself facing Sharantyr’s swordtip.

  “Dare to use that on me, Lady Whomever-Ye-Be, an’ ye’ll end up a mite diced by yon blades,” he snarled, waving at the gathered guards.

  “Dare to menace Shandril Shessair, and you’ll be dead, and it’ll be a mite late for you to take comfort in whatever may happen to me,” the ranger replied coolly, lifting her blade to—almost—kiss his throat.

  Voldovan jerked back as if he’d burned himself in a suddenly flaring fire, looked up at the wagon-perch, and found himself meeting Narm Tamaraith’s furious glare. The caravan master swallowed whatever he’d been going to say and took another pace back.

  “Bel,” Shandril said pleadingly, “I daren’t try to heal you. My spellfire is out of control! I could end up killing you!”

  “I trust you, lass,” he gasped, blood bubbling forth with every word.

  “You shouldn’t,” Shandril wept, shaking her head violently. “Oh, Bel, you shouldn’t!”

  “Heal him!” one of the guards snapped.

  “Aye, try it,” another echoed. “Y’did it before!”

  “Heal him,” others mutte
red, as Voldovan nodded. Shandril bit her lip and shook her head, face twisted.

  “Please, lass,” Beldimarr gasped from where he sat in Arauntar’s arms, fresh blood fountaining forth.

  “He’s a dead man if you don’t, lass,” Arauntar growled, and Shandril sighed, shut her eyes, shook her head again—and came down from the wagon.

  “I … this is not going to go well,” she moaned, going to her knees beside the stricken guard. “I don’t want to do this!”

  “We all have to do things we don’t want to do, lass,” Voldovan growled. “Get on with it.”

  Shandril gave the caravan master a tearful look, turned imploringly to the guards, and whispered, “You don’t understand, any of you!”

  “Please, lass,” Arauntar growled, leaning forward as if to put a comforting hand on her shoulder, but sitting back even before Sharantyr’s sword lifted warningly. “None of us’ll blame you if Bel goes down. He’ll be dead very soon if you try nothing.”

  Shandril nodded wearily and looked into Beldimarr’s eyes. “I … do you …”

  The wounded Harper managed a bloody smile, and said, “Whatever befalls, Shan, ’twill be a relief. Do it, an’ if the gods gather me, well then …”

  Shandril nodded slowly, swallowed, and whispered, “Very well. I’ll try.” She closed her eyes and held out one hand. Spellflames licked and flickered up and down her arm immediately, charring her tunic, before flaring brightly from her fingertips.

  Shandril bit her lip and brought her hand down on Beldimarr’s bared and bloodsoaked side.

  There was a loud sizzling, as blood scorched up into smoke. Beldimarr jerked upright in Arauntar’s grasp and screamed hoarsely.

  That long, agonized cry ended with him staring fixedly at Shandril, as smoke streamed out of his mouth—and when Arauntar laid him gently back down, his stare never changed.

  The guards leaned forward, but not a man took a step closer to the woman kneeling on the grass as she started to sob.