“Wait. One more spell each.” Khelben held the tressym and Raegar back a moment. He touched the tressym first, and after his ring flared a moment, the tressym vanished from sight. Khelben reached for Raegar, who held up his hands.
“Just a minute, Blackstaff.” He pulled both his daggers from their boot sheathes. He tucked one in his belt, held the other in his left hand, and drew the short sword in his right. Both men cringed as the flames flickered to life.
“Hyarac,” Khelben whispered. “That mutes the light of the blade.”
Raegar whispered, “Hyarac,” and the blade’s flames snuffed out. As he turned, Khelben’s hand clapped on his shoulder. Within a breath, Raegar too was invisible.
“Thanks for waiting until I had things in hand before doing that,” Raegar said, looking around at empty air.
Khelben’s whisper came from behind him: “You and the tressym are far more adept at walking silently than I, which makes me the stalking horse. Slip into the upper chamber and wait for your chance. You’ll know it when you see it, but don’t waste the surprise until we know his defenses are weakened.”
They moved forward, Raegar silently praying as he climbed the darkened stairwell toward the flickering blue-white lights up above. “Oghma, Lord of Knowledge, hear my prayer. Make my passing a whisper with your blessing. Make me a secret, so that I may share what I learn beyond this moment. Thus may I strike vengeance against one who abused your servants.”
Raegar felt calm and an image flashed through his mind of Oghma’s statue from the Font.
The three invisible intruders exited the stairs, all silent as tombs. Magic rasped across the air throughout the room as opaque black shards rang sharply against lime green razors of magic. The constant swirl and eddy of conflicting currents danced upon the air, and nearly distracted Raegar from the powerful sight above that—the pyramidal walls awash in blue lightning bolts, a blinding cluster of energy at the pyramid’s corners and peak. Despite the fury outside unleashed by that energy, only a clash of long-held hatreds made any noise within the chamber.
The two dead persons in the room, however, were neither silent nor inactive.
“By all that’s holy, I’ll see you destroyed, Priamon!”
The translucent woman who stood directly in their path didn’t block the view of the room. She hovered slightly off the floor, only the vaguest hints of an ochre gown and long floor-length russet hair outlining her existence. The only things solid about her existence were her spells. Raegar looked through her to scan the rest of the room.
The chamber was, by Raegar’s eye, ten paces across and its octagonal walls made it nearly circular. The walls sloped in as they rose, two walls each flattening together to seat the crystalline pyramid. The room culiminated in the lightning-soaked peak. Though the room was now lit by the lightning and the clashing magic, each of the eight walls of the room bore a torch. From its many tables and bookshelves Raegar assumed it was a workroom or study. All were shoved or toppled out of place, their contents scattered on the carpet-covered stone floor, apparently cleared by the spell battle in the room’s center.
There was Raegar’s enemy at the room’s core—the lich Priamon “Frostrune” Rakesk. His green robes swirled among the fury of spells, the hood fallen back from his near-fleshless skull. The inhuman creature’s spellcasting rose above the noise, and blue energy blasted at Syndra Wands, only to crystalize in the air against her shields before crumbling in sheets of frozen vapor.
Raegar moved to his left, hugging the walls and keeping his eyes glued to the lich. He ached to throw the short sword at him, followed by his two throwing daggers, but he knew to wait. Raegar smiled as Syndra wove her green magic into a flock of woodpeckers. The magical constructs settled onto an invisible barrier around Frostrune and they began poking small holes in his magical protections. Raegar had never been so close to a major spell battle; Damlath had often used magic to get them as far away from them as possible. It was fascinating, horrifying, and sobering all at once. Raegar wondered if the air always felt so pressurized during a spell battle, as if the space itself recoiled from spells or pushed against them. He noticed a few fallen books shift on the far side of the room as the invisible Blackstaff made his way around the room’s perimeter.
Is he trying to get noticed? Raegar thought, then he saw Khelben slowly become visible.
Frostrune dissolved the flock of birds on his shields just as Khelben completed his casting and came fully into view. Flames coalesced into a ball of fire that bounced around the lich, setting fire to the areas all around him but leaving him untouched.
“Blackstaff, you should have struck to kill outright,” the lich said. “I’ll not leave you the chance to cast another ineffective spell. Say good-bye to your granddaughter a second time.”
“Hardly!” Syndra yelled, and to Raegar’s ears, the voices sounded as if they were underwater.
Despite the smoke from the fires at the room’s center, Raegar managed to keep from coughing and giving away his position. The ghostly sorceress and the lich cast furiously fast spells, and while power built up at their fingertips in green and blue energies, both fizzled out without effect. He’d seen Damlath do enough counterspells to understand each had cancelled out the other’s spell.
“Khelben,” Syndra yelled, “he’s got Isyllmyth’s Bracer!”
Khelben stood in an odd position, his left hand holding his blackstaff perpendicular to the floor, rather than aiming it at Frostrune. His right hand was back by his shoulder, which seemed odd to Raegar until he heard the hum of a bowstring. The air shimmered around Khelben and the illusion melted away, revealing Tsarra holding her short bow and reaching back for another arrow.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
30 Uktar, the Year of Lightning Storms
(1374 DR)
As Tsarra let the arrow fly, she yelled, “Now!” and hoped both the tressym and the thief would know what to do.
Her arrow hit the lich’s shields, lit up the magic, and pulled it and a successive shield beneath it in its wake, forcing the magic of the shields to twist and stab into the impact point of the arrow. Frostrune screamed as the arrow caught him squarely in the chest, and he rocked back on his heels from the impact.
Raegar’s invisibility shimmered to an end as he yelled, “Hyarac!” and threw his flaming short sword at the lich.
The blade stuck Rakesk squarely in his right thigh, scorching his robes. As the lich tried to pull the sword from his leg, the flames leaped up and consumed the blade. The lich growled in frustration as flames remained on his robes. Fires leaped from Raegar’s palm, and the sword returned to his grasp!
Tsarra sent to Khelben, I hope you’ve healed up enough to stand, old man.
Nameless carried the Anyllan’s bottle in his mouth, and he stayed invisible as he silently flew behind the lich. The ceramic bottle on the necklace shattered when Nameless reached his destination and bit down on it. A gray mist rose from it behind Rakesk.
He replied, Fret not, Tsarra. You played my role beautifully, but we can’t allow our surprise to go unexploited. Ah good, my granddaughter’s quick to realize an advantage. You should learn this spell from her, should all of us survive.
Syndra Wands screamed in pain. The spell she cast made her body grow paler and more insubstantial. Tsarra recognized the casting as very similar to a spell of hers, but this obviously had more power. Green energy lanced into the lich. He roared as his animating energies warred with that new magic. As he arced away from the sources of his pains, he realized a figure stood behind him. The red glints within the lich’s eyesockets flared as he stared deep into the eyes of the Blackstaff.
Khelben’s spell was nothing more than a stare, but twin streams of silver fire stabbed into the Frostrune’s skull, and the lich doubled his howling. Khelben’s attack stopped abruptly and he bore a surprised look.
“No,” Khelben gasped, gripping the lich’s robes. “You can’t possibly dare to wake—”
“Enough!” Pria
mon Rakesk’s anger seemed to fuel the harness on his torso. Its magical pulse shoved everyone flat against the walls with a surge of crimson power. “I dare much, Master.”
“Bastard!” Raegar yelled, throwing his sword at the lich again. “You killed Damlath!”
The sword whistled through the air, aimed at the lich’s head, but it bounced off of a renewed protective shield with a crackle of red flames.
“You will join him soon. Our dark friends have been held at bay long enough. Enjoy their embrace, fools. It’s almost a shame you’ll miss the rise of the Frostlord, master of the Twisted Rune!”
Priamon raised his arms, and a silver bracer pulsed with power on his left arm. The lich floated up into the maelstrom of energy around and on the pyramid, and both he and the pyramid disappeared.
Exposed to the sky, the room filled with wind, rain, and thunder. The air above and around them swarmed with amethyst sparkles. The night skies became darker still, as sharn after sharn materialized around the top of Syndra’s tower. More and more appeared, not giving way for each other—they flowed around and into each other like water.
Almost immediately, three sharn had the stairwell exit blocked, and more than a dozen formed a ring in open air around the top of the truncated tower. Sharn dripped like thick liquid down into the chamber among the heroes.
Tsarra tried to move but found herself frozen. She also failed at speaking. Khelben? Can you move? I’m paralyzed. She looked in his direction to find him splayed across an overturned bookshelf.
I’m afraid Priamon’s obsession with the Shoon gave him rather effective dueling items. The Harness of Choramm the Cowardly generates magic that paralyzes those with arcane energy inside them for a time, if its wearer gets grievously injured. And I’m afraid we may run out of time before the effect wears off. I wonder where he found the blasted thing.…
Overhead, a huge fiery hand grabbed a sharn and boiled it in its grasp. The sharn fled before its screams faded, and Maliantor moved through the space it vacated.
She hovered above them and yelled down into the chamber, “Khelben! What happened?”
Syndra replied, “Grandfather is stunned, as is his apprentice, thanks to the Frostrune. My phantom state may have shielded me from the worst of it, but I cannot seem to cast any spells right now.”
Syndra floated about the room, checking on the two paralyzed spellcasters. When she approached Tsarra, the apprentice recoiled, as she always did from undead, until she saw her eyes. Syndra’s translucent face was pleasant, a dimpled chin with a beauty mark drawing yet more attention that way. She and Tsarra shared similar half-elf features, though Syndra’s face was disarming by having one rounder human brown eye and an almond-shaped elf hazel eye. Tsarra had never seen kindness in the face of undeath until just then.
Syndra said to Maliantor, and to those in the room, “The handsome one in red seems mostly unharmed, so he may be of some help to you. I need to go secure the relic of utmost importance right now.” With that, the ghostly Wands woman seeped into the stone wall of the tower.
Nameless hissed loudly, and Raegar yelled, “Look out! Behind you!”
Maliantor screamed and a flurry of claws rendered her white robes crimson. The wizardess fell from the air, and Raegar managed to catch her before she slammed into the stone floor.
Tsarra was surprised at how happy she felt when Raegar approached and looked down at her. He carefully laid Maliantor down next to her then stood over them.
“I don’t know if this will help any, but I’m not leaving. He drew his sword and said, “Iganris!” Flames flared up and jetted from the blade, forming a small semicircular field of flames. The sharn nearest them reared back, and Raegar kept waving the fiery shield back and forth. “Khelben … anyone … do something!”
Tsarra coaxed the tressym with her feelings, since she could barely speak, let alone in the creature’s native tongue. She urged him to flee. She couldn’t see him, but she felt the tressym’s concern for her and his reply was right near by.
“No leave mistressfriend alone. Mousesize, weflyaway?”
Tsarra half laughed and half cried inside. She couldn’t shrink herself to fly away from her friends any more than the winged cat could abandon her.
Nameless yowled a defiant response, “I stayfight nightfangdrippypointears with horsehead firesword.”
The tressym’s brave defense of her made her proud, but she wondered about his name for Raegar until she saw the rogue’s ponytail swing like a horse’s tail as he darted back and forth.
Khelben said to them both through the mental link, Loyal, isn’t he? I haven’t missed my owl Nighthunter in centuries until I felt the bond you share with Nameless. Nevertheless, bold tressym, you cannot follow where your mistress and I soon go.
The sharn arrived more and more quickly. The space within the sundered chamber began to fill up. Raegar was backed up against the wall with the two women and the tressym. The only open space left in the chamber was between the wall and his fiery shield. Tsarra had a sense of what was to come, and she tried to utter some words of comfort, but she was still frozen. She looked up to see the stars, but all she saw was the mass of sharn overhead losing cohesion and falling toward them like an oily black wall of water.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
30 Uktar-Feast of the Moon,
the Year of Lightning Storms (1374 DR)
Tsarra closed her eyes as the sharn multitude descended, bracing herself for what she assumed would be a cold, oily, and painful embrace. After a moment, she opened her eyes to see that the sharn were not advancing. The mass of sharn above them remained airborne, only dripping slight bits of blackness into what had come to fill more than two-thirds of the open chamber.
Tsarra could move slightly, and the paralysis around her throat relaxed. She touched Raegar on the leg, making him jump.
The rogue looked down at her and said, “Hey—you can move? Great, let’s get you up. I don’t know how long before they either attack or just flow over us.”
“Your fire shield was a good idea, Raegar, but you can drop it. Don’t worry about the sharn. It’s only attacking those who attack it. And while the help’s appreciated,” Tsarra said, “you need to leave and take my tressym with you. You and he will not be able to survive where Khelben and I are going.” Purring, she repeated her plea to the tressym. He was even less pleased than the thief, and the pair of them had a long moment’s hissing and growling between them.
“I’m not abandoning you or Maliantor, Tsarra.” Raegar knelt down by her, and for the first time, she looked deep into his eyes. She never expected to see nobility and earnestness, and it touched her.
Her eyes teared up, but she steeled herself and snapped at him, “Listen, Stoneblade—Khelben and I know what we’re doing! We have to collect all the remnants of the Legacy while you, Syndra, Nameless, and Gamalon have to stop the lich. Now give me a moment and I’ll give you a location.” She cringed at the hurt look that crossed his face, but she had to get them both to focus.
Tsarra slipped into a quick trance, summoning the smells and calm of a wooded glade. She let the sense surround her, and she caught a whiff of decay—that was her prey. She opened her eyes and looked at the world with different eyes.
Tsarra saw Raegar, the sharn multitude, Nameless, and Maliantor plain as day. Superimposed over and suffused through them was the Weave. To her eyes, it was a pulsing green sward filled with life and energy. Concentrations of magic appeared as trees of varying height, and other living things as random plants. Maliantor was a slender willow tree, damaged, but still alive and in need of care. She glanced Khelben’s way and saw him as a silver duskwood tree of massive size and strength, though one with its limbs bare for winter and many axe blows to the bark and wood at its base. The sharn were unlike any beings she’d ever seen. Rather than the growing wall of black amorphous flesh, she saw over a score of elves, centaurs, dwarves, gnomes, and humans assembled before her, all peaceful and smiling. All were naked forms o
utlined in purple stars, and she also saw them as Weavewood images of lush conifers.
Tsarra focused and used her skills as a tracker to scan the Weavewood. Unlike the few other times she’d cast her “weavetrack,” Tsarra saw the Weave smoldering from the lightning strikes. Lightning crackled in the skies overhead. Other disturbances—a bent sapling here, rotting leaves there, and footprints sprinkled with ash and rot—filled the vision. Tsarra looked at how far apart and in which direction the tracks led.
She couldn’t find a second set of prints, so she said to Raegar, “I still can’t move much. Can you pick me up and turn me to face south? Mind where you put the hands.”
He laughed nervously as he knelt and picked her up, cradling her in his arms and turning her south. Tsarra could see a greater forest in the Weave, dozens of tall trees and hundreds of smaller ones dotting the cityscape below. She looked hard, tracking her prey, and finally spotted a second set of prints over the City of the Dead.
Then came the tricky part of the casting, as she let her mind take flight to scan the horizon beyond where she could physically see and continue to track. She tapped into how Nameless felt during a pleasurable flight and found herself flying along the Weavewood to spot additional tracks over the northern reaches of Ardeep Forest. She looked at a trail of smoke and tracked the lightning strikes. Tsarra’s eyes followed the lightning bolts across the skies to where the smoke was the thickest. It covered the northeastern quadrant of the High Moor. She felt the spell starting to waver, so she pulled her focus back toward Waterdeep. Her eyes paused a moment over the view of Ardeep, curious about another silver tree there. It had fallen but was still alive with silver energy.
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