Crown of Fire - Ed Greenwood [91]
Behind her there came a peculiar hissing sound, a groan, and the thud of someone falling.
Turning. she calmly drew a wand. In the end, until she died or Azoun gave her other orders, Eveningstar was hers to defend. Trying to see the cause of the commotion, Tessaril peered back into the nightgloom in front of the tower, a bare thirty paces behind her. With one bound, Firespark was gone from her shoulders.
Something small and white floated in the air beside the tower porch. One of her guards lay sprawled in the dirt beneath it. As Tessaril stepped forward, raising the wand, the eyes of the floating thing-a human skull, by the gods!-flashed, and part of the front wall of tier tower simply vanished with a little sighing sound. Lamplight spilled out through the breach, accompanied by frightened curses. The Purple Dragons within hauled out blades and peered out into the night.
A sudden bright bolt of lightning spat from the skull. Trailing sparks, the bolt danced from man to man, making each in turn convulse, stagger, and fall. Smoke rose from their armor.
Tessaril mouthed a curse and triggered her wand. Fire shot through the night, shrouding the skull in bright flames. It turned slowly to face her, quivering in the air as flames raced over it. Then its eyes flickered, and it spat another bolt of lightning from its bony jaws.
Tessaril dived to one side, but no one in the Realms could have dodged that leaping lightning. With an angry snapping sound, the bolt struck her, and she reeled, gasping, and fell. Her veins crawled. She could not breathe. White needles pierced her eyes, and the smell of burnt cloth and hair was strong in her nostrils. Only the hard dirt against her check told her she was still alive.
The bolt that had almost slain Tessaril awoke the slumbering Mirt. He sleepily shuffled out of the audience chamber, blade in hand, then skidded to a halt when he saw that the entire front wall of the entry hall was gone and that a skull floated in the night outside. Purple Dragons lay sprawled about the room amid fallen blades and splintered furniture.
Mirt snatched up a discarded sword and hefted it to throw. As he moved, the skull turned to confront him, fire flashing where its eyes should have been. With a chill, Mirt recognized the same leaping flames in its empty sockets that he saw in Shandril's eyes when she was angry. Spellfire lived in this undead thing.
The skull laughed hollowly as it drifted slowly into the room. the twin, coiling flames of its gaze bent on hint. "I'm getting much too old for all this," Mirt grunted sourly, squinting up at the glowing skull.
On the road below, a weak and dazed Tessaril fought her way slowly to hands and knees. Pain raged inside her, and from somewhere nearby, she heard a frightened, querying mew. With weary detachment, she looked down at herself and saw the cause of her tressyni's alarm: smoke was rising in lazy curls front her body. Biting her lip, the Lord of Eveningstar caught her breath, struggled to a sitting position, and frowned in concentration to gather her wits for another spell. As she fought to make the intricate gestures, she heard and saw the battle above.
"All right!" Mirt growled, waving both blades. "Come on, then! Let's be at it!" A voice from his memory female, and mocking, but he was damned if he could recall just who, at this tense momentechoed in his head:
Heroes can't choose which fights they will win. That is why all of them die in the end.
The light within the skull flickered. The air was suddenly full of the bright, deadly pulses of flame the Old Wolf had seen many triages hurl down the years-the bolts that cannot miss.
So this damned dead thing could work spells. Thanks be to the gods! Mirt held that sour thought as he steeled himself against the pain he knew would come, and threw his borrowed sword at the skull as hard as he could.
The bolts struck him, lancing into his body with shuddering pain. As always, their