An advancing whirlwind of teeth and talons was spinning around and around in a towering, emerald-green cloud, shredding the bodies of dead men as it came. It was heading right toward their wagon!
The wizard thrust himself upward, spitting curses and tumbling Narm into some coffers. "Little bastard mageling!" he hissed, eyes blazing. "You're going to die!" His hands stabbed down at his belt.
Where Narm could see at least two wands. He snatched up a shattered lantern and hurled it into the wizard's face.
The mage stumbled back, slipping on the clutter underfoot, and Narm launched himself forward.
Shandril came boiling up out from under her cloaks, forcing Aumlar to turn to face her, his hand rising with a wand in it. Narm smashed into him, driving him back into the tripod poles with a clattering crash.
The impact sent fire through Aumlar's elbow, and he almost dropped the wand. Snarling, he snatched it with his other hand and whirled to fire it right into Narm's face Just as Narm's boot, driven with all the force the young mage could put behind it, slammed into Aumlar's crotch. The two men fell heavily onto shifting coffers and the last of the tripod poles, the Zhentarim emitting a scream that was really more of a strangled chirp of pain. Narm snatched a wand from the wizard's belt, tossed it to Shandril, and grabbed with both hands at the one the finecarver was holding.
Aumlar held on grimly, so Narm punched him in the throat. As the wizard convulsed, he ended up with the second wand. The keening of the whirlwind was very close now, and Narm took it to Shandril rather than daring to throw it.
His lady thanked him with a look, her hair whipping around her and her face as white as bone. The first wand he'd given her was already glowing in her grasp, tiny flames racing around it and up her arm to her shoulder, and she faced the spell of spiraling fangs and started to drain the second wand, snapping, "Narm! Get back! Behind me!"
"No!" he shouted back in sudden anger, as the gale rose around them. "You can't always be doing this alone! I'm your man-I stand with you!"
Why by all the gods were people always attacking them? Why couldn't folk just leave them alone?
"Narm, no!" Shandril cried. "I need you out of the way!"
Narm obeyed with a growl, wading and clambering through heaped coffers until he stood just behind her. The whirlwind was already shredding the front boards of the wagon with a shriek and moving hungrily nearer.
The finecarver lay still in the wreckage in front of Shandril, as she stood facing the whirlwind. From somewhere a crossbow bolt came racing at her-only to be caught in the spell-winds and whirled up into the sky.
Narm wondered desperately what magic he could use to help her, knowing the answer was "none at all." For lack of anything better to do, he drew his dagger, watching Shandril anxiously.
First one wand, and then the other crumbled into dust that fell away between her fingers into the air. Shandril opened a mouth that had spellfire raging in it and shrieked, "No! Once and forever, nooooo!"
Spellfire roared forth like raging waters bursting a dam. The bright flood of flame thundered into the whirlwind and overwhelmed it, streamers of spellflame spinning off in all directions for a few deadly moments ere the emerald radiance was quenched and scoured out of the air, spellfire racing away from it to curve into a nearby wagon, which exploded with a roar.
Malivur and Krostal of the Cult of the Dragon were hurled high into the air with spellfire raging through them. They screamed as they died, but Malivur's face wore an expression of excited awe before it burst apart… awe at the feel of more raw, raging power than he'd thought possible.
Shandril was screaming now, too. She stood with arms stretched wide and mouth agape, spellfire still roaring forth from her, and her entire body shook and wavered as if clawed by a mighty gale.
As Narm watched, her feet rose off the smoldering floorboards as the torrent of spellflame roared on. She hung in the air, body arched like a star, spellfire streaming from her in a great swath of devouring flames.
That fire raced across Haelhollow, devouring everything in its path, tumbling wagons for an instant before they disintegrated and swallowing all else whole.
Shandril turned her head toward him, and streams of spellfire raced out from her eyes. Narm sprang back, and she looked away hastily, tears of fire streaming down her cheeks. "Narm!" she screamed. "Help me! Help meee!"
"How, Shan?" he cried, running up as close to her as he dared. She hung in the air above him, and it seemed to him as if she was struggling to bring her arms toward each other, to point ahead of her. The rocks across the hollow were melting away into nothingness, trees collapsing into the conflagration without a sound.
"I-" Shandril was crying openly now, shaking her head. Streams of flame leaked from her eyes as cried, "I–I can't control it! The spellfire is-eating me! Taking me awayyyy!"
She hung in the air, weeping bitterly… and suddenly she was flying, as Narm gaped up at her and wondered what by all Mystra's grace he was going to do.
His lady soared across Haelhollow on a jet of spellfire, her arms shaping and directing her streams of flame once more, lofting them at last up and out of the hollow, to the line of rocks where she'd struck down the crossbowmen. Those rocks vanished into smoke and dust, followed by more trees behind them.
Narm shook his head in despair and did the only thing he could. He started running after Shandril, so at least he might be there when her spellfire burned out and she needed comfort and protection. He hoped he'd not be trying to catch a smoldering corpse when that moment came.
Behind him, Aumlar of the Zhentarim staggered to his feet in the waist-deep wagon clutter, wincing in pain. There! The lad who'd dealt him such agony! With a wordless snarl he raised his hands to work a slaying spell.
Something else stirred in the wrecked and tumbled gear behind the wizard. Aumlar ignored it, intent on pronouncing the first words of the incantation. That was all the time Arauntar needed to rise up, shedding coffers and scraps of cloak and broken keg-staves, and reach out. His hands went around the Zhentarim throat in front of him and tightened.
Choking, the throttled wizard started to kick and struggle, so the Harper set his teeth, brought his strength to bear, and broke Aumlar Chaunthoun's neck.
"Aumlar's down!" Mhegras Master-of-Furs hissed, clutching the wagon-flap so tightly that his knuckles went white.
" 'Down' as in dead?" Sabran the Weaver asked calmly.
"Yes!" Mhegras snarled, shaking his head and then dropping the flap and turning to face the priest of Bane. "Gods, what a slaughter! That's three Dragon Cultists at least, and five of the Brotherhood gone! They're dropping like buzzflies at first frost out there!"
Sabran shrugged. "If spellfire was easy to take, Lord Manshoon would have had it long since and none of us would be out here in these wolf-prowled wilderlands, clawing at each other. I won't be surprised if the Red Wizards, the Arcane Brotherhood, and half a dozen lesser cabals have their agents in the wagons-or running around out there right now."
Mhegras shook his head again and burrowed among their things for his fourth travel-flask of ieirith-wine. Sabran watched him drink deeply of the black, salty stuff-and how does a mage of the Brotherhood come to prefer a vintage of hot, savage Mhair, anyway? — and waited for his partner's next outburst.
Mhegras wiped his mouth, restoppered the flask with a sigh, and said quietly, "Well, if they are, they're likely dead. A lot of them, anyway. That little minx is flying around on her spellfire right now, melting down every wagon and rock she looks at! There aren't going to be many guards or merchants left for them to guard, if this goes on."