Cloak of Shadows - Ed Greenwood [83]
* * * * *
As the stars over Thay glittered and swam, the giant lurched and turned ponderously, raising its remaining arm in silence to point at the Old Mage, who shrugged and began the casting of a firestorm.
The weaving he was attempting was a slow and complex thing, denying it much use on battlefields or in sorcerous duels, but this strange drifting struggle was unlike most duels. This might well be the fire spell's best chosen time.
The giant struck first. A fiery comet streaked skyward, well above the Old Mage, and burst, raining down fiery death from above. El finished his casting with a flourish and looked up to enjoy the show. He'd not seen a Rain of Fire light up the darkness since three magefairs ago.
And then he saw the spreading rainbow that was his foe's other sally, and muttered a curse of old Myth Drannor.
* * * * *
Thay, Kythorn 19
In a tower whose spires stroked the stars, a tall robed figure turned sharply away from the battle he'd been watching-the wrestlings of a captured couatl and a winged devourer he'd conjured into existence not long be-fore-and said aloud, "Something's amiss!"
He turned to the west, in time to feel the surge again. Greater magic than he'd ever felt on the move before, even in the battles where massed Red Wizards had together hurled storms at the witches of Rashemen. Greater magic than any mortal should be able to control.
Perhaps it was out of all control, or perhaps a god had come to Thay. The robed archwizard shuddered and tapped a crystal sphere, awakening it to floating life. He must know what doom might be hurtling toward them all.
* * * * *
El willed his undergarments to take him to one side again and thrust himself backward, twisting his fall into an eddy in the air that gave him time enough to cast a spell he'd used before. Bringing the spell up one word short of its close, Elminster fell through the night-more quickly now, as he willed it-and watched the giant's disjunction suck in the spheres of his epuration spell, drinking them one by one.
He glanced up. The spheres had absorbed the entire rain of fire before being destroyed, and he should be out of range of the disjunction by now. He spoke that last word, and silver spheres bubbled out around him once more. Now he had no more epuration spells left.
He turned in the air, his clout and undervest tugging at him in response to his direction, and sent himself on a long glide toward the giant, trailing silver spheres. He had to get a better look at things.
It was the work of but a moment to send a flaring eye away from him, whistling away like a tiny tear of flame. He watched it dwindle speedily toward the giant as the titan's next attack came.
Roiling purple beams that would have wracked and forcibly transformed his body lanced past. Elminster rolled aside to be well clear of them and watched the flight of his probe.
It plunged into magical shadow and lit up the smoky form of the giant from within. In the spreading glow, Elminster saw the tendrils of conjured matter expanding, moving slowly to re-form the missing arm, and also saw the flashes of moving energy that sustained and animated the shadowy titan. Flashes emanating not from a man, but from… an item, a small bar or baton that hung in the giant's heart, winking and turning as it strove to move the giant to grasp at Elminster again.
Aha. So this giant was being directed from elsewhere, That-scepter, was it?-might be worth a look, if he could ever get to it.
Elminster summoned up his mage-sight as he plunged ever closer to his gigantic foe. "Far be it from me to cast aspersions on your origins, mighty Ao," he murmured, "or even to inquire too closely about such things, notions of blasphemy