Surely it could hold one lass who hurled spellfire, if her mind was bound slumbrous by no less than the Chosen…
Shadows shifted and Eirhaun stood among them, wrapping himself in their tendrils like a great cloak, assuming command of the great cold web of enchantments.
Another shimmering was already there, a whirling in the darkest corner. Right where he’d put it. He reached out cautiously, probing…
Its mind was still bound shut—shut against him, yes, but not for much longer. All he need do now is slide strands of his web into the maid’s body and bind it to his will. Then call up his strongest shielding against any flare of spellfire, and stab at that sleeping mind!
“And so,” he breathed aloud, his voice one whisper lost among many, “my snatching of spellfire shall be accomplished. Such a small and easy thing…”
Eirhaun let his awareness sweep throughout his spellweb, seeking intruders, making sure the wards that should hide his captive were doing so.
All was quiet. Of course.
With a smile like smoothed-out velvet, Eirhaun Sooundaeril extended his spell-strands, dark Art coiling like a huge but unseen serpent to his bidding.
Ah, such power! The strands touched his prisoner, and clung.
Confusion roiling beneath his probings. He bore in and down, sinking deeper.
There was a sudden flash of cold, blue light, a— Spellfire!
The Maimed Wizard bore down with his strands and his shield together, thrusting—.
Silver flame blossomed in the darkness, searing through both!
Silver?
In the wake of that flash, darkness was thrust back from its source in the corner where two crumbling statues soared like needles thrust up close together. The gently-smiling lady who stood between them was much taller than Shandril of Highmoon.
Silver hair tumbled and stirred around her as if in a pranksome breeze, and her eyes were two stars of blue-white fire. She wore a dark sash over light-hued leather, high boots, breeches, and a tunic that clung smooth and tight to her own hide. She also wore a smile.
“Well met, Eirhaun Sooundaeril,” she said with icy impish-ness. “I am Laeral of Waterdeep, and this—” she held out one of her hands, light dancing over its raised palm, “—is the spellfire you seek!”
“I—” Startlement smote the Maimed Wizard, and rage flared with it, but he had time for no more than that one baffled word ere the radiance around Laeral flared and another light sprang up in his many-shadowed darkness, down the far
He whirled to stare at it and found himself meeting the cold eyes of another silver-haired woman, this one tall and mighty-thewed in her worn and much-used armor. “Dove am I, wizard,” she told him in coldly smiling challenge, “and this, too, is spellfire!” Light was curling above the hand she held out to him.
Eirhaun took a step back, his eyes flitting to gaze at both women at once, his hissing serpent-fingers curling and coiling involuntarily. He was less than surprised when the radiance in Dove’s hand flared, and a third light sprang into being behind him.
Within its flickering caress stood another silver-haired woman, one whom he’d spied upon with spells many a time, a woman whose black leathers bore the fragrance of green growing things in Shadowdale. Her smile told him she’d been quite aware of his farscrying scrutiny.
“Your unsleeping eyes know me well already, Eirhaun,” she said with a lilt of mirth, “but you may as well have my name, too: Storm Silverhand, Bard of Shadowdale. With a handful of spellfire, of course.”
The cupped flame she held flared at those words and a fourth light was born elsewhere in the shadowed hall. The Maimed Wizard turned with a snarl, drawing his shieldings in close around himself, and beheld—
Another silver-haired Sister he knew. “Alustriel of Silverymoon,” he spat, fear now wrestling with his rage. What trap were they spinning here? What had they planned?
“Fitting justice for what you have become,” Alustriel told him, as if she could hear his thoughts. “With the aid of—” she held up her cupped hand in turn, “—a little spellfire, of course.” The dancing flames in her palm flared on cue.
With trembling hands Eirhaun wove a second shielding around himself, even as he turned and saw a tall and scornful she-drow whose obsidian skin was barely covered by the open gown she wore. Silver hair swirled around her as she fixed him with large, dark eyes whose contempt bit like dagger points, and purred, “Qilue am I, and I, too, bring you spellfire. The doom you were seeking?”
The flare of flame in those lone black fincers heralded
yet another burst of radiance. Eirhaun turned reluctantly this time, to face a wild-eyed human woman who wore only the tangles of her restlessly swirling silver hair and the tatters of a once magnificent black gown that looked as if it had been burned, torn by nettles, and slashed by blades. Unlike her Sisters, she was barefoot, and her eyes were like two flames that almost outshone the flickering in her uplifted hand. Almost.
“Most men call me The Simbul,” she said with a cold smile. “And I, too, Eirhaun, bring you spellfire.”
The Maimed Wizard moaned as the flames held by the Witch-Queen of Aglarond flared up. He was doomed, he was going to die here, he—
“Men all too often forget me,” came a cold whisper from just behind him. Eirhaun whirled wildly, letting out a little shriek despite himself.
“Yet I persist, and am called Sylune, the Witch of Shadowdale.” The ghostly, glowing outline of a barefoot, silver-haired woman in a gown stood on empty air close enough to reach out and touch Eirhaun. He could see the spellfire raging in her palm through her wraithlike fingers. She smiled at him and asked, “Do I have to tell you what I hold, or are your wits working for you now?”
She lunged forward as if his shieldings were not there, thrusting through the air at him with spellfire flaming in a hungry circle around her shoulders, her face falling away to an empty-socketed, grinning skull.
The Maimed Wizard smote at her with all the Art he could command, shrieking in terror, and in the flash and sizzle of deadly, slaying Art that followed, his floating eyes had time for but one brief glimpse ere plunging darkness swallowed him. Seven outflung and empty hands were raised against him, with no trace of spellfire in them, and his own magics were rebounding from them back at him!
No!
Brightness, blindness, raw agony, bones torn forth from his flesh, no tongue left to shape his screams…
Out of red pain he squirmed, helpless, writhing, and weeping when he remembered how. Was this godly torment, or had his contingency magics dragged him back to… here?
Where was here?
Cold hard stone beneath him and an excited exclamation. Voices … blood roared like surf in his ears then, drowning out what they said, and he tumbled in fresh pain that made him whimper and shout then whimper again.
“We found him here,” a frightened voice said, “and…”
“Were scared enough to overcome your fear of me,” a coldly familiar voice purred. “Well, well. You’ve learned something this day, at least. All is not lost. I was beginning to wonder. You’ve earned the right to consume food here—and so live—a few days longer. Go and rejoin the rest of the novices.”
A boot scraped the stone very close by, and that familiar voice said from just above him, “You are Eirhaun Sooundaeril, and are now truly Maimed, indeed. Would you care to share with your fellow Zhentarim the reason for your present shame?”
A vial was unstoppered, and water that stung like winter ice rained down on the fires raging in Eirhaun. He smelled the tang of healing enchantments upon it.
Light glimmered in the heart of its spattering—one of his floating eyes had been restored—and his jaw worked, now, at his command. He moved it experimentally, discovering he had a tongue once more, and used it to ask, “Hesperdan?”