All Shadows Fled - Ed Greenwood [120]
Sylune gaped at a face only she could see-and beside her, the Red Wizard went to his knees, babbling a prayer.
He had not prayed to the Lady of All Mysteries since he'd been a young apprentice, and that had been very long ago.
The world danced, and the three rangers suddenly found themselves standing at the crossroads by the Old Skull Inn in Shadowdale, with startled armsmen and villagers staring at them from all sides.
They peered around, wondering why Sylun6 had been so suddenly adamant that they be here, now.
"Is that the Blackstaff?" Itharr asked, eyes wide. He pointed toward Elminster's Tower.
Belkram peered. "Aye-I spoke to him once, and to Laeral several times; that's her, too, beside him."
Khelben Arunsun was casting a spell-or rather, miscasting it. A shower of blue furry jungle plants abruptly rained down around him. He cursed loudly, like any merchant who's made a mistake, and strode toward the road. Two laborers, who were walking along it with heavy hods on their shoulders, looked back.
They let the hods fall, and boiled up into things out of nightmare.
A small forest of tentacles reached for folk all around, and the street became a chaos of screaming, fleeing people, with armsmen trying to wade through them. Tentacles grew many-fanged mouths and bit down mercilessly.
"Malaugrym," the three rangers shouted, breaking into a run.
Laeral hurled a spell-and the two monsters were girt with an amber radiance, out of which darted dozens of butterflies.
Laeral stared in disgust at the clouds of insects, unbelted her robe, and let it fall to the turf behind her. Beneath it she wore a short kirtle bristling with daggers. Drawing one in either hand, she raced across the meadow toward the road, Khelben lumbering along beside her.
Horns were ringing out from the Tower of Ashaba, and armored men were streaming from its gates-men who wore the Purple Dragon of Cormyr.
The Malaugrym were undulating along the road toward the three rangers. As the three hefted their blades and eyed reaching tentacles, they heard the deep, bubbling voice of one tentacled monster ask, "Argast, what's that?"
They all stared at what was rising up from the road in front of the tower-a gigantic black dragon, clutching a wagon in its claws!
"By all the blinded, crawling gods…" Shar cursed in disbelief, watching the dragon spread its great wings. One beat sent it over the meadow, where it set the wagon down as tenderly as a newly laid egg. It banked and roared down at the crossroads, jaws gaping…
Jhessail looked up sharply as a roar split the air outside. "What was that?" she snapped.
Illistyl beat her to the window. "Gods!" she gasped. "A dragon!"
Jhessail thrust her head past her apprentice's shoulder and glared out. "Out of nowhere? Impossible!"
She snatched something out of her bodice and tugged. A fine gold chain parted, and Jhessail held up a pendant that was shaped like a sphere, with windows enclosing a smaller windowed sphere-and another, and yet another.
Illistyl stared at it. Elminster had given her that, and she'd never said what it was for…,
Jhessail thrust it out the window and whispered a single word-and the pendant was gone in a flash of spreading light that all but blinded them both.
The swooping dragon flashed with that same light, and was suddenly no huge black scaled wynn at all, but a small, manlike thing trailing tentacles as it fell from the sky.
Laeral leapt desperately out of the way as the twisting, changing thing crashed to earth.
Both Malaugrym hissed, "Lorgyn!"
Around the cursing lord mage of Waterdeep, spells were going awry in a continuous swirl of radiances and odd manifestations. Laeral scrambled through a shower of green lizards, the snapping fangs of Malaugrym tentacles close behind her.
"Gods," Sharantyr said, her face paling as the three rangers charged together, pounding along the road toward the two gigantic snake-things that were writhing and snapping in earnest