Cautiously Shandril pulled on the door-ring, and even more cautiously peered out. The passage beyond was empty. It ended in a short flight of steps leading down onto a landing that overlooked the forehall of the inn-a landing that sported a lounge Seat for the use of patrons, and two smaller, harder seats flanking the passage. On one sat a uniformed servant, and the other was occupied by a hard-faced, openly armed guard. Thaerla of Chauntea exchanged a few polite words with the servant and towed her silent penitent back to their room.
"That was simple enough," Narm said, going straight to the window to test its frame of iron bars-old and rusty, but solid. "I'd rather stay right here until late morning on the morrow, and go seeking the Tankard and our caravan-master then."
A short, choked-off scream came in the window, and he gestured ruefully in its direction. "The local sights seem- well, a trifle too exciting."
"I hate this place," Shandril said softly. "A whole city full of folk being brutal to each other, cheating and threatening and coercing…"
Narm shrugged. "So we get away from here as soon as Orthil Voldovan will take us-and go straight to Water-deep, another den of harmony, fresh air, and public safety."
"Stop it," his lady whispered fiercely. "I'm serious, Narm. What if someone drugs or poisons our food? 'Twouldn't surprise me!"
Thaerla of Chauntea raised one chubby but triumphant finger. "Ah, there I can be of some service. Jhessail taught me a very rare spell that reveals taints and poisons to a mage-as purple glows."
"And if you cast it, there goes your disguise, just as my spellfire shattered mine," Shandril muttered into his ear. "Leaving us for all the world to see in the heart of this-this city of thieves, slavers, and brigands!"
Narm sighed. "So what would you have me do? Let you faint of hunger?"
"Narm," Shandril said in a low whisper, "I don't know. I haven't known 'the wise thing to do' since I first left Highmoon… and I don't seem to be getting any better at it. I-"
There was a sharp rapping at the door. Narm clapped a hand over Shandril's mouth for a moment and slid aside the little window shutter, asking in Thaerla of Chauntea's sniffiest voice, "Yes? You disturb us at prayer for a good reason?"
"You ordered evenfeast for two," a flat, unimpressed voice replied, "and I've brought it. Still interested?"
"Ah, now. That's different," Thaerla replied, unbolting the door again.
A hard-eyed guard entered, a loaded hand crossbow aimed at the ceiling and his other hand hovering above the hilt of his blade. Behind him came two chambermen in the maroon-and-gold uniform of the inn, bearing steaming dome-covered platters on their shoulders, followed by another guard. The foremost guard pulled on a carved knob on the wall beside the door that Narm had thought was mere decorative molding atop a pillar-and the whole affair came out of the wall as a table on edge. Expertly he kicked it up and open, and stood back to let the servants set down their platters.
As they did so, the other guard came into the room, drew the door closed, and leveled another hand crossbow at Shandril-as the first guard brought his crossbow down to menace Narm, and the two chambermen lifted the domes away from their platters to reveal small plates of roast boar on skewers-and cocked hand crossbows of their own. With swift deftness they removed wooden safety catches, laid darts into tracks, ready to fire, and pointed their weapons at the two priestesses.
"W-what is the meaning of this?" Thaerla of Chauntea quavered in outrage.
"It means," the first guard said pleasantly, "you're both going to get down on your faces on the floor in front of us, with no hurlings of spellfire or anything else-or well see if someone can wield spellfire with two crossbow darts in her throat. Or eyes, perhaps,"
"Down!" one of the chambermen snarled, gesturing with his crossbow. "On the floor now!"
"Which one of them is the spellfire wench, do you think?" the other guard muttered. "We could kill the other one and-"
Slowly the hooded, penitent priestess wavered uncertainly to her knees, and then down. After a swift glance at her, Thaerla followed, murmuring, "ChaunteadeliverusChaunteasaveusChaunteakeepandpreserveusyourfaithfulservants-"
"Silence! She's a god, so she's heard you. Now, enough!" the second guard snarled, stepping forward to aim his crossbow at Shandril's hooded head from only a few feet away. One of the chambermen did the same. The other two thrust their bows almost into Thaerla's face, and the priestess ended her supplication with a sort of peeping sound and sank floorward.
The spellfire came without warning, roaring forth with enough fury to snatch all four men off their feet and drive them, shattered to pulp, into the wall behind them-in the scant instants before that wall disappeared, and startled faces gaped at Shandril from the room beyond.
The owners of those faces promptly screamed, clawed aside their prop and bolts, and fled. Shandril rose with her face white and set but her eyes dark and terrible with rage.
From the window came a burst of fire and flame that flung iron bars like kindling into the room, to crash and bounce and roll. Shandril caught a glimpse of two faces outside, glaring in at her with expressions that were less than friendly-and as they aimed wands in through the roiling smoke and crumbling hole that had been the window, she gave them spellfire, blasting much of that wall away. uS-shan, easy" Narm hissed, still on his knees. "This building might come down on us if y…"
"So get us out of here," she said in a voice that trembled with rage. "Right now I just want to lash out at anyone in this Nine Hells of a city!"
Narm snatched up their packs and snatched the door open-to stare into the hard-eyed faces of a dozen or more warriors. He barely slammed it again before a crossbow cracked. The quarrel slammed through the closing gap and shivered its way across the room, and Narm was hurled back, the door banging open, under the fury of hard-charging warriors.
Shandril Shessair was waiting for them, spellfire leaking from her eyes and nose as she glared. "Leave me alone!" she howled, slaying them with roaring gouts of flame that seared the passage outside and left small fires raging in its wake. "Just-"
There were angry shouts from the inn stairs, and the thunder of running feet. Figures moved in the next room whose wall Shandril had breached, dark-robed figures who'd obviously come in through its window, and were now waving spells as fast as their fingers could fly.
Shandril hurled spellfire at them-but her searing flames clawed along something that wrestled with it and withstood it, something that looked like black fire. Open-mouthed, Narm watched jet-black flames rage and snarl in the face of white-hot spellfire. Then a wizard moaned, reeled, and collapsed-as if exhausted or drained, not struck by anything Shandril had sent-and the black flames sank back^
"Shan!" Narm cried, "we have to get out of here! The wall behind us-blast it!"
His raging wife turned with her hair swirling around her like so many eager, licking flames, and the wall obligingly darkened, melted away, and was gone-but her flames were faltering, now,' and in the darkened room beyond were more hard-faced warriors in dark battle armor, with drawn swords and glaives in their hands.
A cascade of lightnings crashed down around them, and Shandril drank them in eagerly, turning with renewed vigor to face the wizards, trying to draw them into hurling more spells-ere she fed a slaying sheet of spellfire at head-level out into the passage and spun around to give the same to the warriors now surging forward to try to clamber through the hole she'd burned into their room.
The boar-like stench of cooked man-flesh was rising around them now, and Narm was crouching at Shandril's feet with their packs in his hands, trying not to hamper her as she turned and spat fire again and again-brief, careful gouts now, trying to preserve what she had left. The passage was afire; there was no going out that way-and the longer she was forced to fight, the less likely stepping into either of the other rooms, wizards and fresh hostile warriors or none, would give them any easy route to escape. That left "The window!" Narm snapped. "Someone's climbing in the window!"