Crown of Fire - Ed Greenwood [85]
The eye tyrants whirled and spun helplessly, eyestalks flailing the air with frantic futility as they were dragged into the planar rifts. Amid flashes and angry, groundshaking rolls of thunder, they spun faster and faster, until Storm could no longer distinguish them from the whirling chaos of the rifts; they were gone.
The vortices promptly collapsed and vanished. Manshoon snatched time enough to glance back over his shoulder, and his jaw dropped. Only one eye tyrant remained, rising above him to gain a clear pant to strike down at Elminster.
The Old Mage smiled tightly and let his hands fall again, his next spell done.
Zulthondre was an old and powerful eye tyrant: its chitinous body plates reflected the firelight in dancing green tongues of radiance. It knew the scent of the old, bearded man facing it across the small campfire. That smell had emanated from the very floor of the chamber in the Citadel of the Raven, where it had met with Manshoon and Sarhthor. Zulthondre seethed with rage. No human had ever outwitted it before.
The beholder ceased its futile eyestalk attacks; each beam it had lashed out had been absorbed by a silvery sphere and utterly wasted. Instead, Zulthondre bent its large, rage-reddened central eye balefully on those silvery spheres. The power of the eye destroyed the old man's spheres one by one, and each winked out of existence.
And then Zulthondre's world exploded in flames.
The Old Mage watched in satisfaction as eight blazing fireballs spun into being around the beholderand then burst in unison, with a roar that made Storm's ears ring. The eye tyrant darkened, writhing in obvious agony. Plates of chitin were flung away from its convulsing body as its skin wrinkled, melted, and burst open. Jets of bodily fluids boiled forth from within. Mouth gaping in a soundless scream, the beholder crashed to earth, flames rising from its body.
Manshoon had been frantically snarling spells, two wands crossed over his head. They flickered and vanished an instant after the beholder's death crash, leaving the sorcerer's hands empty, but outlined in dancing sparks. Ignoring the tumult behind him, Manshoon straightened in triumph, eyes flashing, and snarled, "Now you'll pay, Old Mage! Die!" Many lightning bolts raced from his crossed hands then, tearing the air with vicious snarls of their own to strike at the Old Mage.
Elminster stood unmoving as they came. An arm's length in front of him, the bolts struck an invisible, protective shield of force, and crawled futilely over its surface.
"One day," Elminster replied calmly, "ye'll anger me overmuch, Lord High and Mighty-and I'll make time enough to hunt down and blast to nothingness every last crawling clone of thine, thy every last hiding-hole-and wipe ye from the Realms entire; aye, and all the other worlds, too. So take care, Manshoon, to ne'er grow too powerful or too persistent in angering me-or I'll lose my temper, and it'll be too late for thee."
He turned deliberately to the bard and said, "Now, Storm."
Storm let fall her sword, and spun to face the High Lord of Zhentil Keep.
Manshoon's hands were already darting through the gestures of a spell, obviously aimed at the Old Mage. But the Zhentarim gaped in surprise as a spell leapt first from Storm's hands.
Storm felt an exultant thrill as the tingling magic rolled out of her, more power than she'd ever felt before. She