Cloak of Shadows - Ed Greenwood [33]
Then she heard screams from above, and something wet fell on her cheek. She wiped it away without slowing. Stickiness… blood! Reaching the trees, she saw another purple thing dodging among them, seeking Belkram. She flung herself flat on her back just in time.
This time, the spell blast showered her with jagged scraps of wood and hurled blazing cinders aloft. Watching them, she saw the glowing figures jerking and convulsing in a sky full of whirling blades that flashed and spun in the moonlight.
Some sort of blade barrier spell. It must be the work of Elminster!
Shar finally got her ring onto her finger and found her feet again. She was flung to her knees almost immediately as two explosions rocked some distant trees and a corner of the ruins quite close by. Itharr appeared, diving headlong through a window with his leathers ablaze, to roll and curse on the ground nearby. Staggering to her feet, Shar ran toward him as the ground rocked again, someone snarled, "Die!" high overhead, and a sudden amber light announced the fruition of another spell. Still at a dead run, Shar glanced up.
From out of that brilliant light swooped two gargoyles. Glistening, orange, and translucent, they seemed made of glass rather than stone-and were coming for her and Itharr fast, sharp talons extended.
Shar cursed, ran into Itharr-sending him sprawling-and then ran after him and rolled him hurriedly into the trees to give him some cover. Then she ducked aside with a shriek as one ice-cold talon laid open her leathers and shoulder together. As she sprinted away along the edge of the forest, Sharantyr heard the wind-whistle of the gargoyle wheeling in the air and then beating its wings, closing in on her.
At what she judged to be the last possible moment, she swerved into the trees and dropped.
A splintering crash told her the gargoyle had tried to follow her, and found a tree instead. She got up hurriedly and ran back the way she'd come, as a lightning bolt cracked across the ruins and lit up the night.
The brilliant light showed her the fallen, twisted form of one glowing… man? It seemed to have too many legs and something that might have been a wing. A Malaugrym? Strolling past it, out into the open heart of the ruins, was an unconcerned-looking Elminster, unlit pipe in his mouth and his hands empty.
A cone of shining white radiance leapt down out of the night at him, and an angry snarl came from the trees clear across the ruins, followed by a trio of glowing lances rushing right at the Old Mage with crackling lightnings dancing back and forth from one lance tip to the other.
A many-tentacled thing scuttled on spiderlike legs out of the trees behind Elminster, and a ring of scarlet balls of fire spun down out of the sky. Shar stared at them all, mouth suddenly dry.
No man-not even a thousand-year-old archmage- could stand against all this. And after Old Elminster was gone, she and the Harpers would surely die too. She drew a sword she knew was useless and thanked the gods she'd be dying with friends, and in battle, and that they'd shared a laugh or two this evening before death came for them all. "Lord of Battles," she breathed, watching death come for Elminster from all sides, "and Lady of the Forest, let us all die well-and not before we must!"
And then the Old Mage's pipe flashed again. An instant later everything crashed together, blinding her. The last thing she saw as the dazzlement overwhelmed her and the force of the blast flung her head over heels into the trees, was one of the ruined towers falling slowly, almost majestically, into the conflagration below.
* * * * *
"There's been no attempt to hide their trail, Lord," Brammur said, his old gray eyes grave.
"Yet only four, you say?" Like his men, the Lord of Daggerdale wore the leather armor of a forester and bore a sword covered with gum and soot to keep it from reflecting the light. And like his men, he spent his days sleeping in one of the caves they knew, and his nights out hunting Zhents, brigands, and other predators in his ravaged realm. Randal