All Shadows Fled - Ed Greenwood [1]
"By the gods, the bardic phrases keep flowing, like…" The ghost sorceress paused meaningfully.
"Nightsoil from a hurled bucket?" Belkram offered helpfully.
Sylune rolled her eyes and continued, "And your reason for this… ah, fiery behavior?"
El grinned. "I was feeding a wild magic area to make it grow into a shield against Red Wizards… so I could turn my attention closer to home."
Belkram caught the first whiff of burning flesh and spun around, raising the gory daggers he held ready in both hands. Seeing the source of the smell, he relaxed. A certain grim satisfaction grew on his face as he watched the bodies of their foes burn. Sharantyr gave the midair cremation a single quick glance and turned her gaze back to the Old Mage.
"I know you well enough, Elminster," she said levelly, "to know that such words always lead us to another of your 'little tasks'… and I'd appreciate knowing what this one is without a lot of clever tongue-fencing. Several Malaugrym-one in particular-have about used up my patience for today." As she stared challengingly at the Old Mage, Shar flexed her aching jaw. Her mouth, scorched by a Malaugrym tentacle whose foul taste she could still remember, was throbbing painfully, and her tongue was a thick, numb thing.
As her companions looked at the usually merry Shar in surprise, Elminster inclined his head and said, "Plain speaking is wise in any case, Lady Knight. Know, then: thy swords and spells-and all of ye, with them-are urgently needed in the coming defense of Shadowdale. I'm here to send ye where ye're most needed in that fight."
"The Zhentarim?" Sylune asked shortly. It was more statement than question.
As if her words had been some sort of cue, the world around them was suddenly a cold place of endlessly streaming white flames, and her companions stood frozen amid the conflagration. The last thing the Witch of Shadowdale heard was Elminster's disgusted cry: "Ah, no! Not again!" And then his tattered words were whirled away from her, and all that was left was the ceaseless roaring…
After what must have been a very long time, Sylune knew herself again. She was all that was left of the woman widely known as the Witch of Shadowdale…
She was Sylune. Still a ghost… and still in Faerun. Hanging in the heart of the roaring.
All around her, flames that did not burn streamed endlessly past her motionless friends and the crumbling stones of the manor. But she could move and think… though the cold white flames made her tremble uncontrollably as they roared through her.
Sylune found she could move, if she bent her will hard to the doing. Let us be doing, then.
With slow determination, she drifted nearer the Old Mage, sitting motionless on his bit of wall. His hands were uplifted and his lips open, wearing the disgusted frown of his realization that whatever it was had caught him again.
So they were in some sort of trap. A magical trap, though its flames-which didn't seem to harm anything-had withstood the wildness of magic stalking Faerun for some time; it seemed. Some of the wildflowers growing amid the stones had bloomed and withered since the magic had begun. The companions had been here for days, then. Sylune wished she could sigh. I've not been a ghost long enough to learn patience for waits that may well take years.
She looked at the Old Mage's pipe, still floating beside his head where he'd left it, and saw that the flames bent around it.
They seemed to be avoiding it! Sylune stared at the spell-flames narrowly for a time; they boiled up out of nowhere on one side of the ruins, arced over her frozen companions, and then returned in an endless rush to nowhere on the far side of the broken walls. It was some sort of stasis field that avoided Elminster's small, curved, ever-smoking pipe.
So, the pipe yet radiated its own magic-and floated