Crown of Fire - Ed Greenwood [32]
Dark, hot blood splashed him as he leapt free, to the sound of startled shouts from the swordmaster and warriors, who saw the warcaptain topple dead with no apparent foe. Delg lay prone in the darkness and waited.
A moment later they were fleeing, crashing in headlong flight through the trees. Delg retrieved his axe and scrambled atop the warcaptain's corpse so he could see farther.
His hunch was right. The priest had fled back into the darkness only a little way, and then stopped to watch what befell-so as to return triumphant, should his side win. He stood alone, uncertain, between two trees. Delg smiled grimly, shook his head at the man's arrogant stupidity, and raised his axe.
Lanternlight caught the blade. It flashed once, and the startled priest half-turned to flee, peering through the darkness and trying to see what was happening.
That was time enough. Delg hurled his weapon, grunting as he threw his entire body into the attack.
The blade whirled free, and Delg rolled on the ground. The spinning axe took the priest in the head, ending all his thoughts in one brief, bright moment of pain. The blackrobed body crashed down into rotting leaves.
Only a pace behind it, a stout figure hid in the deep night-shadows. It held a drawn blade up and ready; if the priest had gone a pace or two more, he'd have impaled himself on the steel. The figure shrugged, grinned, slid his sword back into its sheath, and melted into the night, unseen.
Delg, panting, thought it prudent to retrieve the warcaptain's dagger before venturing out into the night in search of his axe. He had to tug the blade several times to tear it free of the helm. Turning, he set out, and had almost reached his axe when he heard Shandril calling his name, her voice soft with fear.
Fimril, mageling of the Zhentarim, smiled as he rose from his crouch over the dancing flames. The sweat ran down his pale, drawn face in sheets and dripped from his chin; the spell he'd just used was too exhausting to hold for long. Few mages-in or out of the Brotherhoodcould call images from the flames of a campfire as clearly as he could. He shook with weariness-but it was crucial that he saw it all.
His voice, when he could find it, was warm with satisfaction. "Karkul and the priest are both dead, as are almost all of their men-and the maid's spellfire has run out. The time to strike is now."
He showed an eager, vicious smile to his frightened sell-sword bodyguards. None of them, however, saw the skull floating in the night gloom beyond the circle of firelight. Its smile matched Fimril's own.
The twin doors flashed and flared as various magical locks and bindings were released-and then ground slowly and ponderously open.
A handsome, cold-faced man in swirling black robes strode through the doors, onto a midnight sea of slick black marble. He walked to the center of this room, which was always dark, turned to face the doors, and halted. Tiny motes of light flickered and pulsed on his robes, rising slowly into the air. They winked and drifted in small circles, gathered over the man's head, and coalesced into a sphere of flickering light.
Under the gathering radiance of his conjured driftlight, Fzoul Chembryl waited patiently, like an impassive statue, in the center of the innermost sanctum. He listened to the familiar chants in the temple passages outside with the air of an old and jaded critic. In the growing light, his long red hair gleamed like new polished copper.
The silence that then fell outside told Fzoul his guest had arrived. In moments, its massive shadow loomed up in the doorway. It drifted in with slow caution, eyestalks darting this way and that.
Fzoul lifted his head a little and said calmly, "Greetings, Xarlraun."
The beholder turned its pale eyes toward him. Xarlraun was dark, the chitinous plates of its outer skin covered with many old and ill-healed scars. The monster was as large as a woodsman's hut, its spherical body as high as three tall men standing on each other's shoulders. For many years it had dwelt in its own high