Shandril drew the flames back into herself, and looked down at the blackened, smoking corpses. Beside her, Delg was fighting his way free of the scorched remnants of webbing as the next wave of Zhentilar rushed at them.
Shandril hurled spellfire again—ragged and faltering fire. She swallowed grimly and threw out one hand. Fire streaked from it to lash the Zhents bending over Narm. They staggered and fell, shouting hoarsely amid raging flames. Shandril raised her other hand to burn the warriors charging at her from the edge of the clearing. A moment later, however, they laughed in triumph as her spellfire rushed outward, then sputtered and died away in their faces.
She saw the cause: it came out of the night in front of the warriors, a band of utter darkness like a fence or an impossibly wide shield—a black band floating before them as they came. Just behind the warriors trotted a man in robes—a Zhentarim wizard!—with triumph shining in his dark eyes.
Shandril snarled and lashed out at their feet with spellfire, aiming below the dark band. The wizard hastily lowered his creation—but he was too slow to save the feet of one running Zhentilar. Spellfire blasted, and the man’s boots vanished. With a shriek of agony, the charging warrior toppled forward into the darkness and was gone, his cry cut off suddenly. As the wall of darkness advanced, Shandril could see the remains of the man, twitching on the ground—two trunkless, footless legs.
Shandril gasped in horror—and then let her hands fall to her sides as the band of darkness came to a halt an arm’s stretch away, right above the still-struggling form of Delg.
“On your knees, wench—or he dies!” The Zhentarim’s voice was coldly triumphant.
Shandril looked both ways along the band. It fenced her in against the rocky remnant of an ancient wall, and from only feet away, a dozen or more Zhentilar warriors grinned at her, clubs raised.
She sank down, bitter despair flooding her mouth. The wizard snapped his fingers, and hurled clubs were suddenly crashing in on her from all sides, even before the magical darkness winked out and was gone …
Six
Finding the True Way
Finding one’s true way in life can sometimes take an entire lifetime, for it is often the hardest task one faces—after finding out where the next meal is coming from, how to keep from freezing every winter night, where there’s a sleeping-place safe from enemies, and just who one can trust to share it with, that is. Oh, aye—and finding the time to do all of these things …
“It worked! Hah-ha!” Fimril, mage of the Zhentarim, laughed in glee as the Zhentilar hastened to truss their senseless captives. They were careful not to do the three any further damage—the orders they had been so coldly given about this came from much higher up than this capering wizard, and had been most menacingly specific.
Fimril had spent a long and hard year in private, hurling spells and modifying his castings until he’d fashioned a shieldlike band of magical annihilation: a deadly magic that sucked in light, warmth—even campfires and braziers of fire—and solid things, like stools and unfortunate captives, too.
All the way here, through the forest, a tiny voice inside him wailed that his shield wouldn’t absorb spellfire after all, that he was marching to his doom. If the spell failed him, he was doomed … even if he escaped the girl’s blazing spellfire, any of the warriors who got away would see that he paid for his folly—painfully and permanently. Magelings were not well loved among the Zhentilar fighting men.
But it had worked—and now not a one of them dared betray him; their orders had been very clear about that. Fimril chortled and gloated, watching the warriors securely truss their unconscious quarry. Ah, but this was sweet! At last, he, Fimril of Westgate, would get what he deserved, rising in the ranks of the Zhentarim … perhaps even all the way.
He cast quick glances around, checking his bodyguard. Yes, they were ready—four burly, well-armed Zhentarim standing in a crescent at his back, making sure that no harm would come to him until he was safely back in Zhentil Keep.
Fimril laughed aloud and shouted down to the man who was busily checking the knots at Shandril’s throat, “Ho! Lyrkon! How are our losses this night?”
The Zhentilar finished his task, controlling his exasperation. The knots seemed tight enough: if she struggled, she’d strangle herself. Aye, good enough. Slowly the Zhentilar stood. “A moment, Lord Wizard; I’ll see.” Gods, but this mage was going to be insufferable now …
He dusted his hands and looked around. Four—no, five; he’d forgotten Duthspurn until his eyes fell on the poor bastard’s legs lying motionless on the ground. And that should be all …. Wait, wasn’t there a sixth, over there?
Lyrkon took a stride down the ruined wall—in time to see another of his men fall as silently as a gentle breeze glides through leafless trees. He stared at the hand that had appeared over Glondar’s mouth—and as the soldier slumped, the face that came into view behind it: a fat, grinning face adorned with fierce gray-white brows and mustaches. Its blue-gray eyes met his own—and winked. Gods!
“Out swords!” he bellowed, pointing at where Glondar was being killed. “We’re under attack!”
Along the wall, his men looked up at him, snatching up their clubs or drawing swords—and the one next to Glondar promptly collapsed, a sword through his armpit. The warrior next to him turned at the muffled groan—in time to get the blade of the fat, mustachioed stranger right through his throat.
“Where?” Fimril shouted, peering down at Lyrkon. “Who’s attacking us?”
Lyrkon pointed along the wall with his blade. “He is, wizard!” he snarled, making an insult of the last word.
Fimril’s nostrils flared in anger, and he felt his face going red. That was one soldier he could do without when this was over. Right now, though, he’d show them all.
Drawing himself up, Fimril pointed at the stranger, who was now battling his way along the wall. Turning his finger to keeping it aimed at the moving man, the Zhentarim thumbed open a finger-pouch in the breast pocket of his robe and spilled into his hand a dark powder that had once been a large black pearl. He cast it into the air in front of his lips as he spoke the echoing, awesome words that would bring death to the man—and to the nearest soldiers, but that was the luck the gods gave—and drew himself up in cruel triumph to watch the slaughter.
Light that was somehow dark flashed between wizard and fat man—and back again!
The eyes of Fimril, would-be ruler of the Zhentarim, and those of his bodyguard darkened as one. The mage and his men toppled to the ground like emptied husks, dead upon the instant.
The fat, puffing stranger sighed and shook the smoking remnants of a ring from his finger, saying regretfully, “Watchful Order make … they just don’t enchant these gewgaws the way they used to, when I was a lad …”
The last few Zhents, white to the lips, fell back before his lumbering advance, and as he crossed blades with the first and disarmed the man in a skirl of circling steel, they all turned and ran.
Mirt watched the man he’d disarmed scamper after the rest, and he sighed. When they were gone, he raised his voice in an eerie, singing, wordless call. It echoed mournfully off the tumbled stones of ruined Tethgard, and a long moment later, a soft reply came to him.