The cloud resolved itself into a dark, glittering forest of swordblades, spinning point-first down in deadly spirals.
"No!" Korthauvar Hammantle shouted. "Don't slay her, you fool!"
"Who-?" Hlael snapped, leaning forward to see, but Korthauvar gave him no answer. The taller Zhentarim was too busy leaping to his feet and casting the strongest shielding spell he knew, as fast as his fingers could fly and his lips gasp out the incantation.
"No!" Hlael said, face paling, as he realized what Korthauvar was going to do. "You can't…"
Korthauvar could, and did. He hurled his spell into the depths of the crystal, even as Hlael threw himself and his chair over backward, scrambling to get clear before The crystal exploded in a bright roar of force and tinkling of razor-sharp crystal shards that peppered the walls like hard-driven hail before raining down all over the chamber.
Korthauvar lowered both his hands, seeming not to see that they were streaming blood and bright with glistening shards in a score of places. He'd shielded his face and throat, and that was all that mattered. "Hlael," he muttered, "get up. It's your turn to weave a farscrying. We've got to see what happened. I saw her face-she knew she hadn't enough spellfire left to disrupt that spell."
"She had enough to defend herself, surely," Hlael protested, clambering up from behind his chair.
"Yes, but she has her husband to think of and the two guards she healed earlier. She dotes on folk so easily, remember."
Hlael sighed. "She's young."
"Aye, and she'll die that way, right soon, if we don't cast just the right spells," Korthauvar declared, striding over to his scattered heap of spellbooks. "Now spin me that farscrying! I have to see what happened-now!"
Hlael nodded hastily, shook himself, and started to stammer out the spell. Korthauvar growled out wordless frustration and started flipping pages of the oldest, most powerful spell-tome he owned. Unless he was mistaken, Haelhollow was boiling with a storm of spells right now that would make a mistake at a MageFair look like a mere trifle!
The sky low over Haelhollow erupted in a sudden bright conflagration. Boiling brightness tore apart the dark cloud of descending blades like bright lantern beams slicing through nightgloom. Lightning bolts sprang out of that roiling, spraying here and there among the wagons. Men screamed as they stiffened in death, outlined in blue fire with every hair on their bodies standing out like bristles. Corpses toppled, trailing plumes of smoke, unregarded in the shout-filled confusion of tiny, dying lightnings crackling across the ground like restless claws, spiraling swords fraying away into drifting plumes of smoke, and spheres of snarling flame bouncing and tumbling out of the sky.
The brightness overhead died away swiftly, lashing out in a few parting surges. Floods of ruby and blood-pink radiance washed over trees and wagons and running men, and left strange things in their wakes.
One stunted tree tore itself up by the roots and spiraled up into the sky every bit as enthusiastically as the vanished spell-blades had been coming down. Another turned to ice and promptly began to shed branches in singing, bouncing clatterings. A third became water, crashing to the ground in a foaming flood that spat short-lived, licking flames at the air as it drained away. A wagon turned bright green and glowed. The trader on its perch stared down at his green-glowing hands in disbelief, then fled in howling terror.
Like a frantic wind he raced past a merchant frozen forever in mid-stumble, a motionless body turned to something akin to sparkling stone. It changed again as Shandril scrambled up to stare at it, becoming a man-shape made of coiled and hissing groundsnakes.
The pillar of writhing, thankfully harmless creatures promptly collapsed into slithering chaos, causing several guards to snarl fearful, astonished oaths and flee from the wriggling, hurriedly dissipating groundcarpet of snakes.
"Down, Shan!" Narm snapped, catching hold of Shandril's arms, hurling himself to the floorboards and swinging her up and over him as he fell. With a startled mew she tumbled into the depths of the ready-wagon as the perch exploded into deadly splinters and sight-searing brightness. Narm bounced down the wagon on his back and elbows, lacking the breath to even hiss curses, as the spell that had sought their lives died away-and the wagon was rocked by another blast that was very loud and very near.
Something bloody that had been alive a moment ago tore through the fabric above the wooden wagon-sides and on out through the cloth on the other side of the ready-wagon, slowing not a whit.
"What-?" Shandril demanded a little dazedly, as she slithered down a collapsing heap of tarpaulins and small kegs of axle grease, to join Narm on the littered floor. "Who's trying to kill us now?"
"Nay, nay-who's not trying to kill us now?" Narm snapped, cradling her in his arms. "They've all gone battle-crazed out there! I don't know who tried that spell of blades or who broke it with that cloud of lightnings that went all wild, but every last merchant with a wand and every hiddencloak wizard in this caravan is trying to deal death this very Mystra-blessed moment!"
A weird high singing sound was rising over his words, pierced by many screams and shouts, and through the gaping hole where the perch had been Shandril saw an entire wagon whirling up into the sky. Vicious cracklings and flashes of light marked the unleashings of other magics all around them, and the thuds of running boots sounded on all sides, peppered with oaths and the occasional clang of sword upon sword.
"Narm," Shandril said, struggling free of her husband's grasp, "I've got to see." She rolled over beneath him to crawl to where the perch had been.
"Nay, lady love," Narm protested, catching her by the elbows and throwing his full weight onto her back, to pin her to the floorboards again, "stay down, and quiet-and mayhap alive, hey?"
Shandril sighed, growled at him, shook her head to get a tangle of hair out of her eyes, and said firmly, "Look, every last masked Zhent wizard along on this run knows exactly which wagon we're in, and-"
The world erupted just outside to their right, and the ready-wagon was suddenly turning over around them, raining down rope-ends and hand-kegs and any number of small, hard, pointed things on Narm and Shandril as they shouted, tried to catch hold of each other, and Another blast drove away all vision for a moment, brightness flaring blindingly before their eyes. Shandril's ears rang. Narm was shouting something, but she couldn't tell what.
She shook her head, still seeing nothing but brightness as the ready-wagon landed with a bone-shaking crash, bounced, bounced again to the sounds of things breaking, and rocked to a halt on its side. Every last loose thing inside the wagon crashed teeth-numbingly down to its own resting-place, Narm and Shandril included.
Resting places that would last only until the next spell-blast. Bursts of magic and shouts were still raging outside as Shandril blinked her way back to seeing things… she hoped. She shifted gingerly amid the heap of tumbled and broken gear and couldn't help but moan in pain. Were her left shoulder and right thigh shattered or did they just feel that way?
From somewhere lower down Narm hissed, "Shan, are you all right? Keep low-voiced, and lie still!"
"Lying still," Shandril gasped into the blurred, darkening world around her, "is something I could probably master about now. I… I think nothing's broken." She moved her arm with some difficulty, shifting several coils of rope that were lying atop it, and started to laboriously walk her fingers down her own flank, toward her thigh.
Halfway there her fingertips encountered something wet and sticky. The smell told her it was her own blood even before she found the tangle of torn garment and ruined skin beneath. She hissed in pain, set her teeth, and called up spellfire.