Cloak of Shadows - Ed Greenwood [84]
He screamed those last words as he saw silver spheres crumbling close around him under the assault of an attack meant to transform his body to stone, and a second attack, breaths behind the first, intended to shatter his petrified form.
This was enough, and more than enough. Folk were dying in the Realms while wild magic raged and avatars walked, as he wasted time playing with this ungainly wizard's nightmare. Well, at least there'd be no more spells of open rending sent his way-not now.
At that thought he plunged into the giant's smoky body, spheres close around him. Sudden lightnings raged, but the spheres bought his life with their own, one after another, and held breathable air between them, and he went on.
Down, down, spiraling in the lightning-lashed gloom toward the quickening, rushing lights that marked the consternation of whoever was making the giant move. Silver spheres were falling away like mist before an open flame now, but he was close, very close… and falling like a flung stone, hands outstretched.
Then a sphere flashed into being around his goal, a shimmering, rainbow-hued sphere of light right in front of him, banishing the shadowy heart of the giant like tattered smoke with its power, pulsing as it promised his death.
A prismatic sphere. Thanks again, Ao.
Elminster put his hands back and then swept them together sharply before him, and silver spheres flashed willingly past him to their doom, flaring into vivid flashes of red, orange, and yellow as they bored through the deadly multilayered barrier in his path.
The fourth sphere spun past him, expiring in a vivid green flare, and Elminster called on his underthings one last time, bidding them slow his fall. Fabric sawed at all his joints, protesting with raw pullings and tearings that were more felt than heard, and the fifth sphere died in front of him, the blue flash of its passing making his eyes flood with tears.
The deeper flashes that followed shook him soundlessly. Then, through swimming eyes, Elminster saw the crackling scepter turning in front of him.
He put forth a hand and grasped it firmly, saying calmly, "Thaele."
And the world seemed to stop. There was a frozen white instant of pain as he hung motionless in the air, feeling lightings surge through him; then he felt the giant begin to collapse. Abruptly the night sky was gone, and he was standing in a familiar, cozy room more than a world away.
* * * * *
Thay, Kythorn 19
The Masked One shook as the last lightnings roiled through him, and the shadows that had been his titan tumbled and rolled away. Gods curse the Mage of Shadowdale! The scepter was gone, and without it…
The door behind him split from top to bottom with a thunderous crack. The necromancer whirled, snatching at the serpent-headed rod that was his last and most secret defense.
"What're you playing at, traitor?" came the cold question from the light beyond. The glowing head that drifted into the room was as tall as a man, but its features were those of the Zulkir Lauzoril.
The Masked One opened his mouth to reply, but whatever he might have said was lost forever in the crash of raining acids and bursting forcebolts that came through his scrying stone and his secret gate respectively, and crashed together with him at their heart. The chamber rocked, and the necromancer's struggling figure vanished.
As smoke rose from what had been a room of splendor only moments before, the floating head said irritably, "Stay out of this, both of you. I'll deal with affairs that occur on my own lands!"
"We await your starting to do so," came a reply. "All of Thay awaits."
The head raised an eyebrow. "Does it? And how comes your perfect knowledge of this?"
"Lauzoril," another voice said carefully, "has it occurred to you that being Zulkir might occasionally involve other talents than the ability to make clever remarks?"
"We're waiting," the first voice agreed, almost smugly.
The conflagration that followed hurled stony fragments for miles, but Zulkir Lauzoril suspected that The Masked