The great wings beat once, twice, and then there was a sudden, sickening shudder beneath Manshoon. The vast body faltered and twisted. Manshoon grabbed at a razor-sharp bony fin on the wyrm's neck to keep his seat and yelled, juggling the wand for a few anxious moments. Orlgaun convulsed again, and sheered off sideways in the air with breath-robbing speed, revealing their foe.
In the air behind them flew a human in full coat-of-plate, shield up before him, long naked sword reaching again toward Orlgaun. Manshoon snarled and blasted the fool with his wand. Magic missiles pelted the twisting man like a sudden rain, and he fell away as they swept on.
Manshoon hissed a curse into the wind as he felt Orlgaun's wingbeats come more slowly, and heard the joyous battle-roars of the great dragon no more. His wyrm was hurt already, and these people looked to be tougher than he had thought. He was readying a lightning bolt as Orlgaun swept around once more and he saw the old bearded man standing, alone now, on the rocks below. Beyond him there was a maiden in robes. Manshoon dismissed her as nothing as he bent his gaze on the bearded one and cast his bolt.
Lightning seared the air in its crackling descent, white and writhing. It turned aside mere feet in front of the old man and crawled harmlessly away, as if it had struck something unseen. The old man looked up calmly as he cast a spell of his own, and Manshoon recognized him with a shock: Elminster of Shadowdale. The old mage was not off on some other plane meddling, or fussing scatter-brained among scrolls and librams dusty and brittle with age, but here and alert and looking completely unafraid. Of Symgharyl Maruel there was no sign. Manshoon snarled, a little unsettled, and reached for another wand. Orlgaun would not stoop as low as last time; the great wings were lifting them already.
Then a great hand loomed in the air before Manshoon, and before he could even groan, Orlgaun's flight had swept him into it with stunning speed. The clap of their meeting was thunderous.
A broken wand and a dagger spun down out of the air as the dragon screamed shrilly and thundered past above them. Merith turned in the wind of its passing and said, "Now!" almost laughing, as he disspelled the protective barriers about the mage. Jhessail nodded, lifted a wand of her own, and breathed its word of command gently over it, her eyes on the mage. Magic missiles hissed forth, twisting and turning in the air to follow the slumped mage clinging to the back of the great black dragon. The huge disembodied fist hung in the air by his shoulder and moved with him. Elminster followed it with his eyes and frowned in concentration, but a smile was playing about a corner of his mouth.
Orlgaun swept around again, and Manshoon rose in his saddle, roaring his rage and pain as he spat the necessary word and the wand spewed lightnings. The fist struck at him again, and Manshoon was hurled back against Orlgaun's rough scales by the blow. He had a brief glimpse of the foe in armor flying up and at him, again, that long sword swinging…
Orlgaun saved him, striking out in fear with one wing at the darting creature that had so hurt it before. The point of Florin's blade skittered harmlessly across the dragon's scales. It struck at him and then, with a flapping of wings, rolled swiftly away.
Far below, Jhessail said the last words of a spell of flight as she touched her husband's forehead. Merith kissed her before he sprang aloft, blade flashing, to join the fray.
As he knelt by the moaning forms of Torm and Rathan, Lanseril was calmly using his own art to summon insects to attack the enemy mage. Ten paces away, Narm stared at him helplessly as the battle raged overhead. The great dragon slashed at Florin with its claws, cartwheeling across the sky with mighty beats of its wings. Merith Strongbow was flying after it as fast as he could, while the uncanny fist struck again in midair and their beleaguered foe cast down lightnings once more.
Lanseril finished his spell, pointed at Manshoon carefully, and then turned his attention again to healing his companions. Jhessail raised her wand again and then staggered as the lightning struck. The ground shook as something the mage had hurled exploded in front of Elminster, and Narm shielded Shandril desperately with his own body as stones flew. A stone struck his shoulder, and then his back, with numbing force, and he had not even time to sag before something else hit him on the temple. His eyes saw red, deepening steadily into… darkness…
Half a world away, Khelben Arunsun and Malchor Harpell, great mages both, looked at each other across the aged parchment between them as they felt roiling art echoing in their blood. With one accord they turned to the crystal ball that stood at hand. The room about them, high in Blackstaff Tower in the great city of Waterdeep, fell silent as the two mages stared intently into the crystal, and the great lords gathered there waited to learn what had occurred.
In Candlekeep, near the sea, the Keeper of the Tomes looked up from pages of stamped and burnished electrum as the soft glow of the runes of power they bore flickered.
The First Reader had seen it too, and fallen silent in his translation. The two men looked at each other in the dark, dusty round room that was the innermost and most sacred of the Inner Rooms, and then stared out, unseeing, into the darkness. The glowing globe that gave them light to read by dimmed where it hung at the keeper's shoulder, brightened, and then dimmed again.
"Great art, somewhere, contending with great art," the First Reader said quietly, and the Keeper nodded.
"Aye," he said grimly, "and what changes will it bring this time?"
The question hung unanswered in the room with them for a long time before they could begin reading again.
Orlgaun wheeled again, and Manshoon shook where he sat on the broad, scaled back from the aftereffects of the mighty disjunction he had worked. The hand that had nearly slain him was gone, as were the other, lesser magics that had assailed him-but below on the rocks, the old mage and the younger maid still stood calmly. Their hands moved again in the gesture of spell-weaving, and the elf and the ranger still flew after him, low and beneath Orlgaun's body where he could not reach them, one on either side.
Manshoon snarled in frustration and tore another globe from the necklace he wore as the black dragon dove again toward his enemies. Orlgaun moved more slowly and heavily with each pass. Both spells and steel had struck the dragon, and struck deeply. The black dragon had felt nothing worse than the sting of arrows for a long time. Nor have I met such resistance in a fair while, Manshoon thought darkly, as he hurled the globe he held. He then watched magic missiles rise up toward him in a bright dancing group of lights. He was powerless to stop them.
Behind him he heard Merith's triumphant song as the elf thrust his blade between two of Orlgaun's armored scales. Manshoon turned, raising his wand, but Florin was there, sword sweeping out. The blade burned across the lord's fingers like liquid fire, and Manshoon saw the wand whirl harmlessly away in the air amid droplets of his own blood just before the magic missiles struck.
The dragon rider's globe exploded with stunning force, showering everyone on the ground with a spray of dust and small stones. Larger fragments cracked sharply off the rocks they crouched behind. Only Elminster and a sorely wounded Jhessail still stood in view. The other knights lay still under the dust or crouched behind cover tensely. The earth's shuddering nearly threw the weary Jhessail to her knees.
Under Narm's heavy weight, Shandril was jolted into confused awareness of the tumult around her. Where was she now? Wearily she wriggled into the light, scarcely aware that she was pushing away a body, and completely unaware that it was Narm. She saw dust swirl everywhere. In the open pit of tumbled rocks and coins before her Elminster stood calmly, facing to her right and looking upwards.