All Shadows Fled - Ed Greenwood [110]
Irendue stepped back. Tears fell unheeded to the floor at her feet, and she regarded her master soberly. "Fare better than this, Mortoth," she said formally, once she'd fought down sobs to find a voice. Then, with a last great sigh, she turned away. The great wizard was beyond her help.
His hands were spread, the fingers awash with white fire. There was no way for her to get them free to open the spellbooks that would respond only to his touch. The only spell she knew to banish magic was in one of those books… and without its touch, this web of fire remained a doorway for legions of shapeshifters, and Faerun stood unguarded.
The words seemed to echo in her head, as if declaimed as a doom by a great herald. "Faerun stands unguarded," she whispered aloud, and looked wildly around the room, half-expecting shapeshifters to curl out of the air in all corners.
Nothing happened. The cold fires raged on, humming endlessly, and the crystal ball hung in the air beside her, flashing and flickering. She looked once into its depths, then at her two fellow apprentices, spread-eagled and sightless in the grip of the spell.
Lareth's hair was long enough, and one of Turnold's knees projected out of the streaming fire. She stepped forward, calling their names in a soft but insistent whisper, shaking them until the very flames around them snarled in protest. She was rewarded at last with eyes swimming open, questing dully about for a moment before fixing on her.
"Lareth! Turnold!" she hissed. "I need you!"
Lareth's mouth worked silently, but Turnold licked his lips and said, slowly and carefully, "I have always suspected this."
The words were followed by the faintest of smiles. Irendue would normally have answered such a gibe with stinging words, but now it made her eyes fill with tears. Turnold's wits were still his own… something, at least, was as it should be in the Tower of Mortoth.
"Turnold," she said, ignoring the tremor in her voice, "do you know where the master keeps scrolls or items to dispel magic?"
Turnold's eyes held sorrow. "In his grimoires, only. He didn't want us unweaving his wards and getting into things he wanted undisturbed."
"How can I get you free?"
Turnold managed the smallest of shrugs in his bonds of flame and said, "I know not, but this gate must be destroyed-or all Toril stands in danger."
Irendue nodded and with an impatient hand wiped tears from her cheeks. "But how?" she'asked, thinking of all the unusable staves and rods and floating scepters in the rooms around her. Either one of the shapeshifters might step into the room at any moment. She had no time.
"The web," Lareth said haltingly, his voice sharp and high with fear at what he was suggesting, "lives through our life. Slay us, and it will fade."
Turnold's eyes blazed with sudden fire. Irendue looked helplessly from one imprisoned apprentice to the other until her eyes were snared by those of the older, wiser apprentice.
"Do it," Turnold whispered hoarsely, transfixing her with eyes of steel. "Tis the only way."
"I can't!" Irendue hissed helplessly, standing nude before him, tears rolling down her cheeks once more. She could not look away from his blazing eyes.
Hanging in the web of fire, Turnold said carefully, "You must. Know, Irendue, that I have always loved you-'tis why I baited you so often."
"I can't harm anyone!" she wailed, clenching her fists.
"Take the sword the master keeps behind the door," Turnold said faintly. "Put it in my mouth-and then push. Please."
Her tears almost blinded her as she found the sword in the study, fumbled its heavy length back through the passage, and came to face Turnold once more.
"I can't do this to you," she whispered. "I just can't."
"You must," he said fiercely, straining