Ten steps later, the warrior came face to face with Myrkul’s undead. The lead zombie opened a long gash in the warrior’s shoulder. Kelemvor reacted instantly, backing away and countering with a backhanded slash that removed the corpse’s arm. In the same breath, the fighter kicked the thing, knocking it down the stairs and into the zombie behind it. Both corpses fell.
“Run!” Kelemvor screamed.
Elminster took Midnight’s arm and fled back up the stairs. As they retreated, a third zombie climbed over the pile in the stairway. Kelemvor waited for it, then hacked at its neck with two savage slashes. The thing’s head came free with a pop, then dropped to the stairs and rolled away. The body remained standing, flailing its arms.
The two zombies Kelemvor had knocked over regained their feet and pushed past their headless comrade, intent on tearing the warrior to pieces. He backed up the stairs slowly, slashing periodically to stall his attackers.
Outside the trap door leading into the stairwell, Midnight turned to Elminster. “We’ve got to help him,” she cried.
“Kelemvor can take care of himself,” Elminster said. “Let’s use the time he’s buying us. How can we retrieve the tablets?”
Midnight tried to summon some magic that would help, but all she could think of was her lover. Occasionally, the clang of steel on stone or a loud grunt rolled out of the stairway to announce that he still lived. Each time, the sound grew closer, so Midnight knew the sage was right. Kelemvor was buying time and not simply throwing his life away. Still, she could think of nothing but helping him.
Midnight returned to the stairwell.
“Where are you going?” Elminster demanded. “The tablets—think of the Realms!”
“In a minute!” Midnight retorted.
She found Kelemvor staggering up the stairs, covered from head to foot with scratches and small wounds, scarcely beyond the reach of two pursuing zombies. Midnight paused, trying to think of something to halt the corpses.
Kelemvor slipped on a small stone and nearly fell. The rock bounced toward the zombies, and then an incantation came to Midnight. She performed it as quickly as she thought of it, and the stone instantly became a boulder.
It smashed into the first zombie, crushing him. Then it slowed its descent and bounced into the second corpse, knocking it off its feet. The boulder tottered on a stair for a moment, then reversed direction and sluggishly started rolling uphill. It gained momentum steadily, and a moment later the rock was bouncing up the stairs as rapidly as it had started down them.
Midnight pointed at the boulder and screamed, “Look out!”
Kelemvor took two steps, glanced over his shoulder and saw the boulder. He dropped to his belly and it bounced over him. Midnight barely jumped out of the way as the huge rock shot out of the stairwell and arced away into Waterdeep.
The warrior scrambled out of the stairs behind it. He slammed the trap door shut, then hopped on top to prevent the zombies from opening it.
“Perhaps now we can attend to the tablets?” Elminster suggested, tapping his foot impatiently.
Midnight glanced at the stairwell. Kelemvor looked secure enough for the moment. “I have something in mind,” she said. “But I don’t know how much good it will do. I can only grab one of the tablets with the spell, and it won’t stop Myrkul from coming after us.”
“We’ll handle Myrkul when he gets here,” Elminster said. “Right now, our only concern is getting the tablets back.”
Midnight nodded, then closed her eyes, envisioned a tablet, and performed an instant summons incantation.
At the bottom of the tower, Myrkul was about to step into the courtyard when the saddlebags suddenly became unbalanced and slid off his shoulder. He picked them up and looked into the side that had grown lighter. It was empty.
He cursed an oath so profane that even one of his clerics would have winced, then turned and ran back up the stairs.
On top of the tower, Midnight stood staring at the tablet in her hands. Until now, her magic had not fatigued her. But the instant summons was complicated and demanding, and she felt slightly weakened.
“Marvelous,” Elminster said. “Call the other one, and we’ll be on our way.”
“How are we going to get off the roof?” Kelemvor demanded, still standing on the door. The zombies were pressing on the other side, but did not have the leverage to push the fighter off.
“We’ll think of something,” Elminster replied.
Midnight shook her head. “I’m tiring. Even if the incantation doesn’t misfire, I won’t have anything left to fight Myrkul.” She did not doubt the Lord of the Dead was coming at this very moment. “You summon the other Tablet of Fate, Elminster.”
“I can’t,” the sage replied. “I haven’t studied that spell in years. But I can get us off this roof if you get the other tablet.”
The comment reminded Midnight that, as powerful as he was, Elminster still had to study his spells and impress their runes on his mind.
“I’ll try,” Midnight sighed, setting the first tablet down.
She called the instant summons incantation to mind again, then pictured the other tablet and performed it. An instant later, a storm of fist-sized rocks appeared over the tower and pelted the trio mercilessly.
“It failed!” Midnight said, feeling a little dizzy. Her body ached where a dozen stones had hit her, and her muscles burned with fatigue.
The trap door bucked beneath Kelemvor, then it flew open, launching him into the air. He landed six feet away and rolled to his feet, still holding his sword.
A zombie climbed out of the stairwell. Kelemvor charged, cleaving the corpse in two with a slash so vicious he nearly threw himself off his feet.
“Myrkul!” he screamed, staring at a dark-robed man behind his zombies.
Kelemvor’s sword suddenly changed into a huge snake and slithered around his body. The serpent’s scales were covered with a filthy green ooze, and a forked, black tongue flickered from its mouth. Myrkul shrugged. He had intended to heat the sword and burn the warrior’s hands, but he would be just as happy if a snake strangled the man to death.
The serpent wrestled Kelemvor to the floor, then Myrkul sent his remaining zombies out onto the roof. Midnight grabbed her tablet and backed away. Elminster, however, calmly waited for Myrkul’s corpses to leave the stairway. Then he cast a spell he hoped would take them by surprise.
To the sage’s immense relief, a swarm of fiery globes leaped from his hand, each one striking a corpse in the chest. Most of the spheres carried the zombies off the tower roof. Some exploded into miniature fireballs that reduced the corpses to piles of ash and charred bone. In an instant, the meteor swarm had destroyed Myrkul’s protectors.
After hearing Elminster’s voice and seeing the fiery trails streak over the stairwell, Myrkul knew he would have to confront the woman and her friends alone. They had dared to hunt him, and when that failed, they had stolen a tablet off his person. The trio would continue to harass him until he destroyed them. Sighing in exasperation, the Lord of the Dead prepared a defensive spell and climbed out of the stairwell.
Elminster was the first to see Myrkul step onto the roof. Kelemvor was being strangled by the snake, and Midnight, tablet beneath her arm, was rushing to her lover’s aid. The Lord of the Dead wore a black hood pulled over his head. Beneath the hood, he had scaly, wrinkled skin covered with knobby lesions, black, cracked lips, and eyes so sunken that his face looked like a skull. Fiery blue embers burned where his pupils should have been. The saddlebags containing the other tablet were slung over his shoulder.
Elminster began to throw an ice storm at the avatar, but Myrkul lifted a hand and cast the silence spell he had prepared. Everything within five feet of the ancient sage suddenly fell quiet, as did the mage himself. Without the ability to speak aloud, Elminster could not complete the verbal component of his spell and it did not go off.