All Shadows Fled - Ed Greenwood [34]
Slowly, as if with great effort, the red fluid was gathering, joining into two ever-widening pools. The creature watched for a long time; the pools became two rising, glistening red humps. Purposefully the fanged thing flew across the chamber to hang above one pool, and extended a forest of mouths with questing tongues, intending to suck up the pool.
With surprising speed, the pool leapt upward to meet it, roaring in a red column that plunged into all the waiting mouths. The fanged creature darkened, shuddered-and flew apart in a wet explosion of staring eyeballs and slime.
Gelatinous fragments of its riven body were flung to the far corners of the rubble-strewn room… but before they could stain the walls or floor, these wet remnants faded silently away into the air, as if they had never been.
The sword captains standing around Nentor Thul-doum nearly swallowed their tongues in startled fear when the wizard let out a sudden raw scream, clawed blindly and convulsively at them all, and then flung himself back in his seat, clutching at his head. The wordless wet gargle in his throat rose again into a screaming, a high keening that went on and on… and men pulled back from the reeling Zhentarim and drew their blades. They shivered.
"What should we do, Lord?" a sword captain asked, hurrying to where Swordlord Amglar sat watching, his back against the ancient bulk of the Standing Stone.
The commander looked up expressionlessly at the anxious officer and shrugged. "Either this passes, or it doesn't. If the latter, well put arrows through him from well away until he falls silent, and then burn the body." Amglar reached for the wineskin and goblet that sat on the grass beside him, and his lips curved into a mirthless grin. "Wizards are all like that, inside," he told the swordcaptain softly. "If their control is ever broken, all the screaming and wide-eyed raving bursts out, for us all to see."
The man shivered. "What does that to wizards, Lord?"
Amglar shrugged. "It's but magic sweeping away restraint. Mages are just men and maids like all the rest of us. The problem with our kindly Zhentarim is that they all seem to forget that."
In a ruined chamber deep in the night-cloaked woods, two columns of dark, glistening liquid grew slowly darker and more solid, shifting into manlike shapes. One sharpened into the likeness of the shorter pilgrim while the other was still a glistening humanoid, eyes and mouth just swimming into view on a face of red slime.
"That body?" the unfinished one asked disgustedly.
"Again?"
"You'd prefer this?" The shorter pilgrim flickered and slid, its clothes and bristles melting away into ivory-skinned voluptuousness. A breathtakingly beautiful female human caressed itself provocatively, posing with its hands in a magnificent fall of flame-red hair.
"Where'd you see that?* the unfinished one asked.
The second Malaugrym smiled. "Well, it's a long story…"
Tower of Ashaba, Shadowdale, early
Flamerule 17
"Is there more moongleam?" Elminster asked hopefully, holding out his goblet.
Chin on hand, Shaerl shook her head. "Not this side of the cellars, and I'm in no state to climb stairs now. Not after-gods, Old Mage, it's been six bottles! Doesn't wine touch you?"
"No," Elminster told her. "I just like the taste."
Shaerl rolled her eyes. "Of course. Silly of me even to think you'd get tipsy, or take headaches from wine, like mere mortals."
"Look ye, lass, it took me the better part of a year to get the spell right-and after all that, Mystra laughed and changed me with a wave of her hand! I could have saved myself hours-nay, days-of painstaking research!"
"Aye," Shaerl agreed dryly. "I can see how long and hard it would have been, drinking every night away to see how long it took you to start reeling,