"Get Laeral!" Qilue roared. "Bring her to me, or I'll start really destroying things." In sudden fury she tore a crawl shy;ing guardian hand from her breast, waved it at the sphere, and hurled it to the floor, bounding onto it with all her strength and ignoring the lightning it spat around her boots as it died. "Are you deaf, duty apprentice?"
"You hear? She knows our duties. She must be-"
"Half Waterdeep has heard of the defenses of Black-staff Tower," the young man said scornfully. "She's a dark elf, and I'm not letting any dark elf into this room with us."
"But-"
"But nothing. You've always been too soft, Araeralee. You'd let Szass Tam of Thay in here, if he put on the body of a beautiful maid and whimpered at the door! How do we know that isn't him now? Or Manshoon of the Zhentarim, up to another of his tricks?"
"Well, I'm rousing Lady Laeral to decide for-"
"Araeralee, don't you dare! This is my duty watch, and-dark gods take you, wench! You've done it! You've burning well gone and done it. It'll be the lash of spells for you, once I tell Khelben. Now I'm going to have to rouse all the apprentices. . don't you know we're sup shy;posed to do that first, before bothering the masters? Drown you!"
"Drown you, enthusiastic young idiot," Qilue snarled at the sphere, as she forced the lock of the next door and came out into a large, many-pillared chamber that by rights shouldn't have fit within the tower walls. The chamber was rapidly filling with barefoot, sleepy-eyed apprentices.
"A drow!" one of them gasped, and others quickly took up the cry. Young faces frowned in fear and determination, and young hands moved in a weaver's nightmare of complicated gestures.
In a chamber whose domed ceiling winked with glim shy;mering stars, Laeral stirred, lifting her head from Khelben's bare, hairy shoulder. The chiming came again, and the Lord Mage of Waterdeep answered it with a louder, barking snore. Laeral's lips twisted in wry amusement. Of course.
She sat up, her silvery hair stirring around her bare shoulders, and sighed. The books they'd been studying lay spread open around them on the bed, abandoned for slumber, and Laeral carefully lifted her long legs over them as she rolled off the bed, plucked up a robe, and went to see what was wrong.
She was still padding down the tower stairs with a crystal sphere of stored spells winking ready in her hand when she heard shouts from below, the whoosh of released magic, then a blast that shook the entire tower. She lurched against the wall, cradling the sphere to keep it from a shattering fall-and was promptly flung across the stair by another, even more powerful blast.
"True trouble," she murmured to the world at large, then launched herself down the stairs in a long glide that called on the stairway enchantments to let her fly. The tower shuddered and shook under another blast before she hit the bottom, and a long, racing crack opened in the wall beside her. Laeral lifted her eye shy;brows at it as she plunged through an archway where dust was drifting down-and headlong into the battle raging below.
"Gods above!" Dauntless murmured. The door he'd seen the drow slip through banged open in front of his nose, and dust swirled out. There was a dull, rolling boom, and doors and windows creaked and slammed all over the tower. "I must be crazed to leap into this," he murmured, touched the silver harp badge pinned to the inside throat of his jacket for luck, and trotted into the booming darkness.
Not far away, in the shadow of another building, a cloaked and hooded figure the Harper hadn't noticed nodded to itself and turned away.
The passages inside were an inferno of whirling spell energies, swirling dust, and shouts, but he could follow their fury up and on, stumbling in the gloom. He came out into a room whose floor was cracked and tilted crazily, where dust-cloaked figures knelt and scrambled and waved their arms in spellcasting.
In their midst, standing alone in a ring of fires in the center of the room, was his beautiful Lady of Mystery. Shards of black glass lay all around her, something that looked like silver smoke boiled away from her sweat-bedewed body, and fury blazed out of her dark face. He almost cowered back at the sight of it. In his moment of hesitation, a white-faced young man in flap shy;ping robes bounded out from behind a pillar with a long, bared sword in his hand. Green glowing runes shimmered up and down its heavy blade as he charged at the drow.
Spells slammed into the dark elf from three sides as he ran, almost tripping over the embroidered edge of his robe. She was staggering helplessly in their grip when he skidded to a halt, grimly aimed his blade, and with both hands thrust it through her flat belly. The Lady of Mystery coughed silver fire almost into the duty apprentice's face. He reeled back as the sword shattered with a wild shrieking, spat bright shards away in all directions, and slumped into dust around the convulsed dark elf.
The young wizard hurled himself away in real horror as silver fire scorched his cheek and he realized who-or rather, what-this intruder must be. A cold, bright golden glow cracked across the chamber, and Dauntless found himself slammed back against its wall in the company of all of the dusty-robed figures.
A furious Lady Mage of Waterdeep strode barefooted into the center of the room, snarling, "Is this the hospi shy;tality of Blackstaff Tower?"
In the utter silence that followed her shout, Laeral set down a crystal sphere she'd been carrying and strode toward the drow who was standing upright again, silver fire blazing up around her in an unearthly nimbus of glowing smoke.
Laeral's unbound hair swirled around her as she stretched forth her hands, like a mother desiring a daughter's embrace, and asked in a voice not far from tears, "Sister-too long unseen-what troubles you?"
"My own ineptitude," Qilue replied, and burst into tears. She swayed amid silver flames, weeping, for a long moment, then, with a sob, she rushed into Laeral's waiting arms.
Laeral
Of all the ladies fair whom I would fain smile upon me, she whose smile is worth the most is the Lady Mage of Waterdeep. Laeral hath given me a nod of approval, and the memory of it shall be a light in the back of my mind all the rest of my days.
"Oh, most clever tongue, save me now!" Dauntless breathed aloud, as silently as he could, then stepped boldly around a pillar and joined the hasty throng of apprentices darting back out of the shattered, dust-choked chamber where their brave defense of Blackstaff Tower had just ended.
He kept his head down and matched the pace of those padding barefoot up the stairs, and had climbed an entire flight, turned on a landing, and mounted another before the expected snarl came from just behind him: "Ho! You-in the boots-hold hard. You're not one of us. Stand still, or be blasted to ashes."
Dauntless stiffened, sighed, and came to a reluctant halt. A hand took rough hold of his elbow and a shrill, excited voice near his ear said, "Try nothing. There's a spell dagger floating just beside your throat, ready to slay you if you try anything, anything at all!"
Dauntless was just opening his mouth to assure the speaker that he'd offer no violence when a hitherto-smooth section of wall opened like a door. A face like a scowling lion-a lion sporting a neatly trimmed pepper-and-salt beard-looked out of it.
The Lord Mage of Waterdeep glared past Dauntless and asked testily, "Is that all you've learned, of what we've been teaching you? Blast and threaten, blast and threaten? You sound like Zhentarim, not apprentices on the road to real mastery of magic. Take down that dagger spell this instant!"