“Thank you, Beshaba!” the tavernmaster snarled in sarcastic thanks to the goddess of misfortune as he dived headlong onto the rubble, framing a scene in his mind of opening a certain ivory door with the dragonscale key. The mental vision grew clear, the door swung wide—and Durnan remembered to close his eyes just in time.
The white light in his mind was nothing to the blinding flash that marked the breaking of the dragon rune he bore on his left wristlet. As that broad metal band crumbled, giving his forearm an eerie tingling as it fell away, Durnan rolled over a low stone wall, dropped onto a sunken floor, and found his feet. There came a hubbub of excitement from the crowd
as the tavernmaster started his sprint through the pillars and tumbled stones, and got his eyes open again.
The white ring of radiance that marked the rune’s release of power was still rolling outwards, moving with him in a flickering, expanding dome of protection. Spell rays and gaze attacks alike would be shattered by its touch—for an all-too-short time.
“Tymora”aid me!” he gasped as he ran, dodging between two blackened stubs of stone wall that stood like frozen fingers reaching vainly for the cavern ceiling overhead. If Lady Luck smiled on him, the dragon rune would guard his back from the beholder’s eye powers long enough for him to reach the mind flayer. Aye, if…
Dark robes flickered ahead as the illithid dodged this way and that, trying to see him as he darted through the ruins. Durnan snatched out his belt-knife as he ran, dust-sash flapping, and the mind flayer spat one loud word somewhere ahead of him.
There was a flash, a roar of tortured stone, and one of the walls ahead burst into fist-sized chunks of rubble. Durnan spun behind a pillar until the worst crashings of striking, rolling stones were under way around him, then sped on. If a certain old and overweight tavernmaster could just move well enough, there’d be no time for the thing to work another spell!
He snarled at his own slowness as he leaped over the rubble. He’d just had a momentary glimpse of the beholder, drifting along after him but keeping well back. It must not be hungry… or at least, not very hungry.
Durnan was close to the illithid now, stones rolling underfoot in his haste as he burst through a doorway into a room that was no longer there, and saw it beyond the crumbling wall ahead. Its glistening, slime-covered hands darted to its belt and plucked forth a broad-bladed hooked sword. A blade? Usually they were too eager to flail at your head with those brain-sucking tentacles to bother with steel…
The squidlike growths around the thing’s mauve mouth were writhing in excitement, Durnan saw, as he came around one last jagged end of wall and rushed down on his foe.
A boot coming down wrongly on loose rubble now could mean his swift death, he reminded himself grimly, and hunkered down as he ran to keep his balance, skidding deliberately when he reached a knob of stone he could hook one boot around.
Eagerly, the mind flayer pounced on the seemingly off-balance human, those four tentacles stabbing greedily out. Durnan raised one arm to fend them aside, hooking the edge of his knife around the nearest one, and slashed viciously at their roots.
The mind flayer’s sword came up rather clumsily to clang against his blade, and he used the speed he’d built up to smash it aside with one shoulder and dive past the thing, lashing out with one boot to kick it in the chest.
There were shouts from the watching crowd and the fast-paced chatter of changing bets as Durnan rolled to his feet, bounced off a spar of stone, and charged back at the thing. He dare not turn his back on it and try to run for the street—not only would it have time to hurl a spell at his back, but the crowd might well draw steel on him, or bar his way for its own amusement, to force him to turn and fight.
The mind flayer’s body seemed misshapen. It wavered as it rose from the rubble where it had fallen—just in time to quail and hiss under the bite of Durnan’s sword. Once, twice, the true steel slashed, hacking tentacles away—and the blood that splattered forth was not the milky ichor it should have been, but a dark, reddish-green gore!
Frowning, Durnan cut away the last tentacle and drew back his blade for a final thrust through one of those furiously-glaring white eyes—only to see it melt away before him, slumping down into something like a long, reddish worm or clump of worms that slithered and flapped wet, fast-sprouting fleshy wings in its haste to escape. He hacked at the glistening thing in disgust, backing away to keep an eye out for tentacles heading for his ankles.
There was angry shouting from the crowd: The shapeshift had told them the thing Durnan faced was no mind flayer, but something else … and who could bet on an unknown shapeshifting thing that was swiftly being hacked apart by this hard-breathing human?
Amid curses, a tankard flew through the air to rattle among the tumbled stones not far away. It was shortly followed by another. Enraged bettors were venting their feelings. Luckily, the state of things in Skullport was such that few would dare to throw daggers when a ready knife might be needed more pressingly to settle a dispute nearer to hand in the crowd…
“Well, thank the gods for such grand favors,” Durnan muttered aloud at that grim thought, as he ducked away from a part of the worm-thing that had suddenly grown bony spurs and was flailing at him. He took one numbing gash high on his arm, near his left shoulder—then he and his foe both staggered. Someone in the crowd had hurled a blasting spell strong enough to rock the ruins at them both—and the dragon rune’s dome had flung it straight back at its source.
The packed throng of spectators was suddenly a screaming, fleeing mob generously sprayed with blood. Pulped, boneless things struggled weakly on the slick stones around a ring of cleared space at the center of the lane.
Durnan lunged under his foe’s bony, flailing arm and caught hold of the worm-like coils, lifting them with a grunt. There was a horrible shifting and wriggling in his hands as slashing teeth and talons struggled to be born—then the tavernmaster set his teeth and heaved, the muscles in his shoulders rippled, and the shapeshifting thing was flung away through the air.
It landed with a heavy, wet smack, flopped spasmodically once or twice, but could not lift itself off the row of iron spikes that stuck up through its flowing flesh like a line of blades before it sagged, burbled forth a whistling sigh, and hung limp. Dark gore dripped slowly onto the stones beneath. Useful things, sword blade fences.
A deep blue glow flickered and faded around the corpse as it melted back into the ungainly limbs and bare-brained, fanged head of a doppleganger. The glow of dying magic.
Durnan’s eyes narrowed as a flare of white light marked the passing of his own dragon-rune defenses. Someone —in the crowd —had been feeding that beast spells, and probably controlling it, too…
“I am Xuzoun,” a deep voice rolled out from close behind him, heavy with confident menace, “and you, Durnan of Waterdeep, have just slain my most loyal servant.”
Durnan spun around to find—as he’d expected—the beholder looming over him, great and terrible. Its huge, lone central eye gloated coldly as the stones all around him erupted into conjured, questing black tentacles.
“The teleport that brought me here was yours, then?” Durnan asked. “And this… duel staged for my benefit?” His face and voice showed no fear as his sword and knife came up smoothly to face the eye tyrant—and the tentacles grew around him like swaying, upright eels.
“Of course,” the beholder told him silkily. “I’ve gone to much trouble to take you.”
Durnan cast a quick look around at the slowly and carefully closing ring of tentacles. “And why would that be?” he asked softly.