Blistering fire burst among shrieking courtiers. Men who'd been enthusiastically plunging daggers into a Red Wizard vanished into crackling columns of ash.
Among the terrified sprinting and shoving, a serving-maid let fall her silver tray with a crash as a devil's talons clawed at her bodice. Thrusting a slender arm, she drove her hand right through the grinning pit fiend. It vanished with a roar of blue flames and a terrified shriek.
A Red Wizard stared at the maid in astonishment as she reached for the next nearest devil, her eyes aglow, and snapped,"This is quite enough."
There was a double flash this time. Maid and devil vanished together... but where Mystra had been, nine stiver stars floated, tracing an upright circle around a blue flame.
There was barely time for all the color to drain out of the Red Wizard's face before that flame died and the stars rushed to the floor and vanished. Where each touched the tiles, a startled being suddenly stood, staring around at the raging battle.
"Khelben Blackstaff," the Red Wizard gasped, eyes bulging,"and-the Seven! All of them!" He was to be forgiven for not announcing the arrival of the mages Vangerdahast and a wraithlike lady elf, where the last two stars touched down-
A moment later Khelben lashed three devils with howling bolts of lightning. A certain Red Wizard, caught in the wrong place, ceased to care about anything ever again.
Rage blazed on the face of the Lord Mage of Waterdeep. With a growl, he tossed his black staff into the air. It hung there, motionless and horizontal, crackling with magic. Many of the beams and bolts snarling across the room veered to it and blazed in harmless spell chaos.
That left the air clear enough for everyone to see the Simbul, on her knees shielding Elminster. She thrust up her hand to send silver fire out to all of her sisters. In turn from each of them a beam spat forth, vaporizing any devil it touched.
"Sister," Dove gasped, "what're you doing? Mystra forbids-"
"Not now she doesn't," the Witch-Queen of Aglarond snapped grimly."Behold!"
Her hand this time pointed to the shimmering air above Khelben's staff.
The trapped, roiling spells were rapidly being transformed into a shining spider web of magic. Glowing, ever-shifting lines of power rapidly rilled the air. The ghostly form of the Srinshee raced along and among them. The web winked as it swiftly grew, and was already almost too bright to look at.
"The Weave!" the Simbul snapped. She swung her arm around to point to the entry arch, where shadows gathered. "And our foe!"
No, not shadows-a web of dark lines that mirrored the Weave. Strangers were entering through the archway below it: mages wielding wands and staves, who chanted, "Shar! Shar!"
"An anti-Weave?" one of the older courtiers gasped."Can there be such a thing?"
A dark-robed courtier beside him gave the gaping man a snakelike smile-and slapped a tentacle around the elder man's neck, snapping it with casual ease. "Indeed there can," he remarked almost merrily to the toppling corpse. "And some of us who walk in shadows see our bright future in it!"
All down the chamber men and women and devils were dying as spell wrestled with spell. Magic slew with terrifying speed. Three devils pounced on the Simbul, trying to wrench her head off. One frantically thrust talons into her mouth to stop her shouting spells.
The dirty, trembling man she'd been torn away from lay forgotten on the tiles.A titanic crash nearby roused him to wakerulness. He peered around at the spell battle, shook his head in disgust or despair... and started to crawl forward. He passed among sprawled bodies and the rubble falling from the ceiling. The walls of the room were rippling, goaded by wild, clashing magic.
The Simbul struggled against determined devils. Bolts of dark magic spat from the Shar-worshipers and smote the tiles around the crawling man, showering him with stone shards.
He seemed not to notice, but struggled on, slithering across the room in a manner not all that different from the maggots of Avernus.
"Who-?" shouted a Sharran mage, as he caught sight of the crawling man."Stop him!"
That cry came too late for those who trust in dark dreams. Elminster Aumar, who long ago had herded sheep in the forgotten land of Athalantar, fell forward. His battered, pain-racked face touched the silver tray that had fallen from the hands of Mystra.
A roar echoed around the throne room. Everyone stopped and turned. Even spell blasts and the screams of the dying hushed. It was the roar of massive magic unleashed, Mystra's power left behind for her Chosen.
In its blue, raging heart stood a man, a wizard made whole again, a figure of white fire tinged with blue around its edges.
He strode from where the tray had been, swaying in the throes of power that made the very air throb.
Beams lanced out from Elminster's trembling fingers and glaring eyes-to smite devil and Red Wizard, Malau-grym and Sharran alike, consuming them in sighing instants until none were left in the throneroom.
The Old Mage leveled both his hands to point at the shadowy web filling the end of the room. Blinding flames of blue-white and silver roared forth from his palms.
The explosion that followed left only bright sky and crumbling ashes in that end of the palace. Elminster blinked at the destruction with the same awe felt by the others still alive in the throneroom. In the ringing silence that followed, the shattered roof above them groaned loudly and started to fell.
Blocks of stone rained down, ponderous and deadly. If it hadn't been for bright bolts fired so frantically by the crouching Seven and the blasts emitted by the Black-staff, the roof might have claimed the lives of everyone in that place.
Instead, dust rained down, thick and choking, bringing with it an almost ominous quiet.
***
The sky was darkening into purple dusk before true peace came to the dust-shrouded throne of Aglarond. Gone were the courtiers, corpses, and those sent by Mystra. The throne room stood open to the sky. Fallen stone blocks lay strewn here and there beneath the winking stars.
Elminster and the Simbul stood together in each other's arms.Three regals knelt a little distance away, awaiting their queen's command. The fourth regal was missing, but they kept their thoughts away from her face and name. There would be time enough for grieving yet.
"Oh, my love," the Simbul said fiercely, "When I thought I'd lost you..."
"Gently," Elminster murmured, kissing her nose and brow and ears." 'Tis done-and hear this, lady of my heart: I vow henceforth to spend more time with thee and let Faerun run more of its own affairs without my meddling."
"That shall be my vow, too," the Queen of Aglarond said in a trembling voice. She reached for his lips with her own.
"Well said," hissed a voice from rubble nearby.
Phaeldara lay trapped with Thaergar of the Doors, pinned under a slab of roof thrice their combined size. It had been prevented from crushing them outright only by the twisted ruin of his sword and a shield he'd snatched from the wall in the heart of the fray. Even so, the weight upon them prevented their calling out. "Let this... be a vow both of you... keep!"
"Aye," Thaergar gasped, wincing as Phaeldara squirmed beside his shattered arm."I cleave... most heartily... to the same view!"
The three kneeling regals heard them and shrieked- cries that brought Elminster and the Simbul running.
As the spells that would free them were hastily chanted, the fainting man and the woman under the fallen stone thought they heard something else.
A strange echoing mirth that just might have been a god and goddess of magic chuckling, not so far away...