The energy and booming thunder threw Raegar and his weapon into the street. Ears still ringing, Raegar quickly grabbed the fallen blade as thunder echoed down the street. He stared at the three gold diamonds emblazoned into the blade, wondering what might have happened if he'd held onto the sword. "So much for subtlety," he muttered. All around him, people yelled and pointed at him or stared upward at the path the lightning took. Others still stared at the uncharacteristic holes in the defenses of Blackstaff Tower. Raegar also looked through the hole in the wall, straining to see what secrets he could glean from this distance. All he saw through the settling dust was an injured woman in a gray woolen dress lying on the floor, staring at him with deep hazel eyes-Tsarra Chaadren, the half-elf who had caught his eye earlier.
Until she fell unconscious, Raegar froze in place, kneeling as the magic and dust swirled around him. Once he shook his head clear, he slipped the short sword into the torch loop on his belt and got to his feet. The thief looked across Swords Street, and his stomach sank. He stared directly into the face of the Blackstaff as the archmage staggered from the smoking crater in his tower. Break into Blackstaff Tower and plunder its secrets? Raegar thought. Good idea, if done discreetly. Face its master? Better idea to leave quickly. Raegar used the magical ring on his left hand to wrap the street in a shroud of fog. As always, the ring allowed him to see through it, and he slipped backward to the edge of the cloud and behind the Tavern of the Flagon Dragon. Whispering thanks to Tymora, he watched Khelben and realized the archmage was too stunned to notice much, let alone note him and his part in the chaos. Raegar heard someone yelling across the alley.
He had rented rooms for the past two months at Sapphire House, an expensive rooming house across Swords Street from Blackstaff Tower.
The speaker was a neighbor-Kemarn, a professed scribe buying materials for a wizards' consortium outside of Nesme. He showed his true colors boldly, as he hissed, "The tower is breached, men, and the Blackstaff is wounded! Take them both! That sword shall be mine!" Kemarn pointed at the tower, but his attentions were on the fog. Raegar had met many wizards before and found most to be arrogant, over-reaching, and convinced beyond all reason of the rightness of their causes. He stayed cautious, as he knew he was a target. Even if he didn't know his sword's capabilities, the thief knew that anything that could make a hole in Blackstaff Tower was something every power-mad fool in the North would want. Raegar thickened the fog, filling Swords Street with it to keep from being found too soon. Panicked vendors abandoned their carts, and even the natives backed away from the fog and the troubles that once again enveloped their city's archmage. Raegar climbed up the side of the tavern and hid among the roof eaves to watch and wait.
Let's see how this plays out before I get an explanation from Damlath, he thought. The Blackstaff slumped against the shattered gate, his robes scorched and smoldering. Kemarn cast an intricate spell from his third floor balcony above the fog cloud. Raegar watched four jet-black wolves leap from the mists in the wizard's hands, growing as they descended until they were much larger than normal wolves. The massive beasts loped across the street, undeterred by the fog, and surrounded the wounded Blackstaff Sudden movement from above drew Raegar's attention to two young men flying down from the tower's roof. He pulled himself a little closer under the eaves as the older one shouted, "Duty patrol to the wall! Tower under attack!" The younger one's hands twisted in casting, and the fog cloud dissipated. He spotted Kemarn across the way and pointed a wand directly at him. A green ray struck the balcony, but the wizard no longer stood upon it.
Raegar smiled ruefully as he heard the roof above him creak. Kemarn had blinked to the back slope of the tavern's roof, just out of sight of the tower's defenders. Raegar pulled a small mirror from his belt pouch and held it carefully to watch what the wizard did without revealing his presence there. His grin increased as he overheard Kemarn mutter, "Where did that man and his sword go?" On the tower wall, the apprentices skillfully dispatched two of the fiendish wolves. I don't know what those wands are, Raegar thought, but I want one. The other wolves bowled Khelben over, biting and clawing at his robes and outstretched arms. Raegar found himself almost feeling sorry for the archmage, who seemed incapable of defending himself at the moment. From his vantage point, Raegar could also see a few figures moving among the tower's shadows. Even without the fog, he knew they would not be seen by the two apprentices, who were distracted by the danger threatening their master. Raegar followed their progress along the northern wall away from the gate and the battle there to slip into the northwestern shadows. Raegar smiled as more apprentices-two young women and a halfling male-appeared atop the wall with wands at the ready. In seconds, they used their wands to dispel the summoned wolves. The halfling leaped off the wall to land by the Blackstaff in a defensive crouch. Blackstaff Tower's students are well trained to respond to trouble, Raegar thought. Too bad their master seems incapable of living up to his reputation today. The thief's attention returned overhead when Kemarn began casting a spell. From his robes, he drew a red, fist-sized globe, which glowed for a moment then blinked out of existence. The tower's young defenders yelled. A red haze grew around the shattered gate and the two figures there. Raegar shuddered at the writhing mists filled with teeth, eyes, and grasping claws-a nishruu. The halfling used his wand quickly, but its purplish ray melted into the nishruu's growing scarlet mists, its claws and teeth happily pulling the magic apart and into itself. The eater-of-magic engulfed Khelben and his apprentice, swiftly wrenching magic and life from them. The stunned archmage grunted, and his young aide screamed in pain under the assault, as the monster ripped magic from their minds and bodies. The elder boy shouted orders easily heard from Raegar's vantage point. "Triam, be sure that no one's trying to breach the walls from other sides. Send up a signal if there is.
Jalarra, Sarshel, destroy that thing before it gets into the tower!
Pikar, do what you can from there!" The trio blasted the creature beneath them. The nishruu drank up the magic, its floating mouths smacking disembodied lips with sounds that reminded Raegar of gutting and cleaning a hog. The nishruu growled as the halfling slashed with two glowing daggers. The blades reduced some maws and hands to mist, only to have them reform in other places. The nishruu moved over the fallen wizards and drifted toward the tower, which was a vastly more powerful source of magic than any wielders in or around it. Khelben had collapsed, but Pikar still slashed away at the creature's tendrils and teeth, yelling in anger and pain, "Keep it from the tower!" In swift response, Sarshel gestured, and a mist rose at the breach in the tower itself. By the time the nishruu reached it, the opening was sealed by a wall of solid ice. Two more apprentices joined the others atop the wall in the blink of an eye-gold elves both. "Foolish humans-don't feed that thing magic! That's all it eats!" The female's voice dripped with disdain toward the others. "Watch and learn, n'tel'quess. This rod of absorption should kill it, Maeralya," the male said proudly, "and the master will know which students of his deserve his praise." Raegar had tailed a number of wandering apprentices of the Tower over the past tenday. He had seen that haughty gold elf before-Fhaornik. The elf threw the magical rod into the nishruu, and it appeared to burst one of its floating eyes as it entered with a muddy splash… and the mist continued forward, stretching thinly as if torn between feeding more on Khelben's internal magic or the powerful forces in the stones of the tower.