Crown of Fire

by Ed Greenwood

  Manshoon hissed the word that unleashed the most powerful killing spell he carried. There was a flash, and the stones around them rocked and shook.

  Below, Mirt looked up and swore. “Manshoon—and Elminster! Run! Both of ye—move! There’s no telling how much of that mountain’ll come down if they start blasting each other in earnest. Come on!”

  Snatching up Shandril bodily, the Old Wolf broke into a heavy run, Narm at his side. He paid no heed to Shandril’s sharp words of protest, but lumbered along like a draft horse gathering speed for a gallop, wheezing lustily in her ears as he went. Furious, Shandril tried to claw at his face and win free of his grip, but Mirt ignored her nails until Narm could cast a hasty magic that slowed and hampered her struggles. Shandril snarled at them both, and then—as the Old Wolf thundered on—gave up, shrugging and spreading her hands with a weary, apologetic smile.

  Atop the cliff, Elminster’s image only smiled as the spell that should have torn him asunder spiraled into him and roared away into vast distances. Through the dark hole rent in the Old Mage’s middle, Manshoon could see the rocks of the summit beyond, could feel a whirling wind drawing him forward.

  “Spelltrap,” Elminster said mockingly. “Fooled again, Manshoon.”

  The roar of the vortex grew louder, and Manshoon found himself being sucked off his feet toward the phantom image of his enemy. As Elminster’s crooked smile rushed up to meet him, Manshoon had just enough time to speak one word: the one that summoned aid so costly he used it only in dire need.

  Now, for instance.…

  Elminster tossed something small into the fire, stepped back from its flames, and said, “Scratch any itches ye have right now, lass—things’re apt to get a mite busy around here in a breath or two.”

  Storm’s hands went to the hilt of her sword.

  Elminster nodded, and her long sword slid out. “We were within a breath of losing Shandril,” the Old Mage told her, “and from the Zhentarim gaining spellfire. Instead, Manshoon should be paying us a visit any time now.”

  His hands moved in the intricate gestures of a spell, and a score of silvery spheres sprang into being around him, drifting upward like so many bubbles. Some floated toward Storm. Behind her, the horses snorted. Storm turned from watching Elminster’s spheres twirl and rise to see what had startled their mounts. And she froze.

  Three huge, dark beings hung in air that had been empty moments before, eyestalks curling malevolently. The trio of beholders were floating behind the High Lord of Zhentil Keep, who stood facing Storm, his eyes dark with fury.

  Storm gasped. “Tymora and Mystra, aid us!”

  “Have they gone?” Shandril asked softly, lips at his ear.

  The Old Wolf shuddered to a stop, breathing heavily, and turned.

  “Set me down,” Shandril added—and was alarmed to feel him stagger under her as he bent to let her feet touch the ground. The Old Wolf was wheezing like a lustily plied bellows … she’d heard more than one fat man breathing like that back at the inn in her youth, just before they dropped dead.

  The Old Wolf gasped fast and often as he looked back the way they’d come. “I can’t see them, lass,” he replied at last. “And more … than that; even if they both appeared right here … in front of us … I can’t run a step more … for a bit …” His breath came in gasps, and he put a hand to his chest before he noticed her anxious gaze—and angrily snatched his hand away again.

  Shandril watched the sweat roll down his face and said gently, “Sit easy for a bit, Old Wolf. I have to—er, visit the bushes. I don’t think we’ll see two mages of that power again until their battle’s done—and a spell-fight like that might have no survivor.”

  “Or it might have a winner,” Narm said grimly, staring back up at the bare peak where they’d seen the two wizards outlined by a spell-flash. “I just hope it’s the right one.”

  “I’ve always thought … Elminster could handle Manshoon … any day,” Mirt puffed, “but in things … of magic … nothing is certain.” He struggled to get up. “We must be … away from here, while we can! There’s—”

  Shandril pushed him back down again. “Today still holds plenty of time for walking, when you’ve breath enough to do it. I need you.”

  Mirt stared at her, sweat dripping off the end of his large, red nose. “Lass,” he asked quietly, “what for?”

  Shandril looked fondly at the fat old man, and her mouth crooked into a smile. “To protect me, of course.”

  Mirt’s snort would have been louder if he’d had the breath to put behind it, but it was still impressive.

  The fire crackled and flickered calmly in the aftermath of the reflective magic Elminster had cast into it. It had no way of knowing what was about to erupt around it.

  Manshoon sneered at the archmage and the bard and snatched a wand from his belt. Behind him, the three beholders were drifting apart, moving to the sides of the fray where nothing could get in the way of their magical gazes.

  Elminster’s hands were moving. Storm looked to him for instructions, but he paid her no heed. A dozen of his spheres were drifting around her now.

  Manshoon’s wand spat lightning. The bolt writhed and stabbed through the air—until it reached the fire. There it dipped sharply into the burning wood, as if dragged down by something unseen. Flames crackled; sparks flew in all directions. Then the bolt of lightning leapt up out of the fire again, arrowing back at the leader of the Zhentarim. Storm raised her blade as she heard him gasp. Lightnings whirled and struck home; Manshoon staggered.

  The air was suddenly full of humming, bone-shaking beams of force as the eye-powers of one of the beholders lashed out at both Elminster and Storm.

  The silver spheres created by Elminster’s earlier spell were everywhere—darting and whirling to intercept the magics hurled at the bard and the old archmage. Whenever a sphere came into contact with magic, it flared in a sudden, silent pulse of silver-blue light—before sphere and spell disappeared together. Elminster finished his magic and nodded in satisfaction. Feeling Storm’s eyes upon him, he turned his head and wiggled his eyebrows at her. Then his hands were moving again.

  The air in front of Manshoon was abruptly cut by a crooked line of snaking darkness as wide as a man’s head. Wind whirled violently toward this rift. The advancing darkness approached the frantically casting Zhentarim, and then the dark vortex split into two ebony, reaching arms. The newly formed fork of whirling chaos lashed out past Manshoon, stabbing at the drifting eye tyrants. Their eyestalks bent in chorus to gaze upon it, but the advancing lines of darkness never slowed. The rifts widened. Glimpses of a whirling, winking otherwhere were visible within them. Wind rushed into them with the quickening roar of thunder, and the bladelike points of the rifts each touched a beholder.

  The eye tyrants whirled and spun helplessly, eyestalks flailing the air with frantic futility as they were dragged into the planar rifts. Amid flashes and angry, ground-shaking rolls of thunder, they spun faster and faster, until Storm could no longer distinguish them from the whirling chaos of the rifts; they were gone.

  The vortices promptly collapsed and vanished. Manshoon snatched time enough to glance back over his shoulder, and his jaw dropped. Only one eye tyrant remained, rising above him to gain a clear path to strike down at Elminster.

  The Old Mage smiled tightly and let his hands fall again, his next spell done.

  Zulthondre was an old and powerful eye tyrant; its chitinous body plates reflected the firelight in dancing green tongues of radiance. It knew the scent of the old, bearded man facing it across the small campfire. That smell had emanated from the very floor of the chamber in the Citadel of the Raven, where it had met with Manshoon and Sarhthor. Zulthondre seethed with rage. No human had ever outwitted it before.

  The beholder ceased its futile eyestalk attacks; each beam it had lashed out had been absorbed by a silvery sphere and utterly wasted. Instead, Zulthondre bent its large, rage-reddened central eye balefully on those silvery spheres. The
power of the eye destroyed the old man’s spheres one by one, and each winked out of existence.

  And then Zulthondre’s world exploded in flames.

  The Old Mage watched in satisfaction as eight blazing fireballs spun into being around the beholder—and then burst in unison, with a roar that made Storm’s ears ring. The eye tyrant darkened, writhing in obvious agony. Plates of chitin were flung away from its convulsing body as its skin wrinkled, melted, and burst open. Jets of bodily fluids boiled forth from within. Mouth gaping in a soundless scream, the beholder crashed to earth, flames rising from its body.

  Manshoon had been frantically snarling spells, two wands crossed over his head. They flickered and vanished an instant after the beholder’s death crash, leaving the sorcerer’s hands empty, but outlined in dancing sparks. Ignoring the tumult behind him, Manshoon straightened in triumph, eyes flashing, and snarled, “Now you’ll pay, Old Mage! Die!” Many lightning bolts raced from his crossed hands then, tearing the air with vicious snarls of their own to strike at the Old Mage.

  Elminster stood unmoving as they came. An arm’s length in front of him, the bolts struck an invisible, protective shield of force, and crawled futilely over its surface.

  “One day,” Elminster replied calmly, “ye’ll anger me overmuch, Lord High and Mighty—and I’ll make time enough to hunt down and blast to nothingness every last crawling clone of thine, thy every last hiding-hole—and wipe ye from the Realms entire; aye, and all the other worlds, too. So take care, Manshoon, to ne’er grow too powerful or too persistent in angering me—or I’ll lose my temper, and it’ll be too late for thee.”

  He turned deliberately to the bard and said, “Now, Storm.”

  Storm let fall her sword, and spun to face the High Lord of Zhentil Keep.

  Manshoon’s hands were already darting through the gestures of a spell, obviously aimed at the Old Mage. But the Zhentarim gaped in surprise as a spell leapt first from Storm’s hands.

  Storm felt an exultant thrill as the tingling magic rolled out of her, more power than she’d ever felt before. She laughed in pleasure. It felt good to finally be able to lash out with magic at a man whose spells would normally easily hold her at bay, however hot her hatred of him.

  Radiance danced around Manshoon briefly and then disappeared. Had the spell failed? Storm bent anxiously to snatch up her sword, all her exultation gone.

  The Zhentarim’s hands faltered and fell, and he seemed to stagger for a moment. “What—what have you done?” he roared.

  Elminster grinned. “Charge at him, Storm.”

  Storm launched into a run.

  The Old Mage smiled at Manshoon and waved a hand. His pipe obediently rose from the ground where it had been quietly smoking by itself, and drifted toward his lips.

  “I held down thy defenses, idiot,” Elminster told him calmly, “while Storm wiped out half thy spells, or so. Oh, by the way: I’m still doing so. If ye try to use a spell against her, ye’ll end up feeble-witted, and we’ll just leave ye here.” He smiled. “I know ye won’t be able to resist trying some magic now.”

  The Old Mage puffed on his pipe and added, “Ah, yes: Storm may want to cut off thy hands, too, to keep ye from casting too many spells if ye ever recover.”

  The Zhentarim looked open-mouthed at Storm. A blank expression washed over his face.

  Storm knew from the horror that replaced this look that Manshoon had tried to use a spell to whisk himself away from the battle—and had discovered it was gone.

  The High Lord of Zhentil Keep grabbed at a rod at his belt, saw how close Storm was, and tried to turn and run at the same time. Storm’s blade caught him under one armpit and spun him around.

  “Defend yourself, wizard!” Storm spat at him.

  Manshoon stared at her for a moment, then snatched something from his belt, leapt back, and hurled it at her.

  Storm’s blade struck it aside. The bard saw the Zhentarim’s dagger flash with a dull green light as it spun away.

  “Poisoned?” she said contemptuously. “You snake!” Her long sword slashed out.

  Manshoon shrieked as some of his fingers went flying.

  Elminster called, “ ’Ware, Storm—his contingencies are likely to harm ye and save him!”

  Storm ruined Manshoon’s other hand with a quick chop.

  “Kill him from a distance, eh?” she replied, stepping away. Manshoon fumbled a wand out of his belt—but Storm cut it out of his bloody hand, and her backhand slash laid open Manshoon’s face. Her eyes were hot, and with terrible speed that bright blade was reaching for him again. The High Lord of Zhentil Keep staggered back, coughed wetly, and, snarling, aimed another wand at her. An instant later, he was gone—leaving behind a burst of black, evil-looking flames that reached hungrily from the wand for Storm.

  She fled, dived past the fire, rolled, and fetched up at Elminster’s feet, panting.

  “Easy now,” Elminster said, “Ye hurt him badly enough that ye triggered one of his contingency spells; it whisked him away. I’ve raised a spell-shield around us. Whatever else he planned, we’re safe here, for now.”

  Storm looked up at him, shaking silver hair out of her face. “You seem to take this very calmly.”

  Elminster watched the beholder burn. As the oily smoke drifted away from them over the hills, he said softly, “It never lasts, ye see.… I’ve had to kill him—oh, is it twenty-and-one, by now? Aye—that many times.”

  “Why didn’t you slay him again this time?”

  Elminster shook his head. “He’s prepared for that—half a day after he dies, his next clone’s skulking about somewhere in the Dales, and death’s hardly a setback at all. This way, I pulled him across Faerûn, away from Shandril and the spellfire he’s so hungry for, hurt him, and broke his power for a time … a good afternoon’s work, I’d say. Besides, a certain lady has a prior claim on Manshoon’s life—and I’d hate to deprive her of a chance to do some real good with her spellfire.”

  For the first time in years, Manshoon knew fear. Maimed, wincing at the burning pain from his hands, he whirled through mists and shadows for a moment, and then the world rocked and changed again. He found himself back on the clifftop where Elminster had first spelltrapped him.

  Manshoon staggered and raised hands to his dazed head. Only a last defense had saved him: the contingency spell he’d worked long ago, which whisked him away when death came too close. It took him back to the last place he’d left by any sort of traveling spell. It was a powerful, expensive magic that had snatched him back from certain death only three times in all the years he’d ruled Zhentil Keep.

  Well, four times, now. Or so he thought for the space of slightly more than one deep breath.

  “Well met, butcher,” came a cold, clear voice from close at hand.

  Manshoon turned in time to see Shandril standing amid the rocks nearby. Her eyes kindled into twin flames. “For Delg,” she whispered fiercely. Her lips curved into a wolfish smile as she raised flaming hands.

  He did not even have time to scream.

  13

  DARKER DREAMS THAN THIS

  Weep not, child—whatever terrors your night dreams hold, someone somewhere in the Realms has faced and fought worse. Wizards who raise monsters from nothing, or twist them from simpler beasts, or call them from far and strange places, you see, are tormented by the evil they work—and all of them dream darker than you can. That is their worst punishment—no matter what horrors keep you awake, all of them must nightly face darker dreams than this.

  Laeral of Waterdeep, quoted in

  Words to an Apprentice

  Ithryn Halast, Year of the Weeping Moon

  You will be subject to my will, Iliph Thraun. You will follow and feed only as I direct, and you will challenge no one. You will take care not to be seen or felt by the one you drain. You will …

  The voice that Iliph Thraun had come to hate so much in these last few days, the voice that had echoed through its being, leashing it with irresistible a
uthority, faded at last—forever stilled. The speaker was dead, and the lich lord was free.

  “And,” the hollow voice hissed, rising in triumph, “so passes Manshoon of the Zhentarim—and I am free again.”

  The skull rose so suddenly out of a tangled ravine deep in the Stonelands that a dunwing flying past squawked and shed feathers as it darted away in fear. The skull laughed. The chilling sound trailed behind it as it flew, breaking free of the last, fading traces of Manshoon’s control, and racing west—heading for Shandril, filled with hunger.

  Thrulgar, the older of the two doorguards, stiffened and brought his spear down, and its tip caught the lamplight in a gleaming arc as it moved.

  Azatlim, the guard who stood at the other end of the porch, turned when he saw the flash.

  Out of the night, three folk were approaching Eveningstar. A fat, aging rogue with a disquieting look about him; a young man in the robes of a mage; and a bedraggled wisp of a girl in torn clothing. Travelers, aye—but were they fallen afoul of brigands? Were they beggars? Pilgrims—or thieves themselves?

  Thrulgar made sure his back was against the double doors that led into the main hall of Tessaril’s Tower, braced his spear against the bronze door plates behind him, and cast a quick look down the porch to make sure Azatlim had seen them, too.

  Azatlim was hastening toward the tower doors, spear at the ready. Good. This could mean trouble. Thrulgar cast a glance in the other direction, judging just where the alarm gong was in case he had to strike it in a hurry.

  Then the three stepped up onto the porch.

  “Who are you three, and why come you here by night?” Thrulgar kept his voice calm and his eyes on the empty hands of the intruders.

  The fat man rumbled, “We’ve come to see Tessaril Winter, Lord of Eveningstar, on a most urgent matter. We cannot wait until morning, and must see her now.” When these words were out, the man shut his mouth as if it were a steel trap.