Daughter of the Drow - Elaine Cunningham [109]
With insolent ease, Kharza cast a spell that shattered the wall into pebbles and dust. He stood there, his arms crossed and a faintly bored expression on his wrinkled face.
Mocking applause echoed through the cavern, and Nisstyre stepped into view. The copper-haired wizard stood on the far side of the lava pool, on a ridge of rock roughly on eye level with his foe.
"I believe the first round is a draw," he conceded with a slight bow.
"And the second will be mine," Kharza assured him. The wizard took a sticky pellet from a hidden pocket of his robes and hurled it high into the air. The pellet exploded, and what had been merely a wad of spiderweb expanded into gray lines of magical force. Sticky tendrils shot off in all directions, seeking solid stone and quickly finding purchase. In less than a second the entire cavern was enmeshed in a giant, shadowy web. The web trembled far over the heads of the wizards, like a giant canopy. A large sticky drop slowly broke free to fall with a hise into the lava pool below.
Nisstyre's face, which glowed red in the darkness of the cavern, paled nearly to gray as the web of shadows magically stole his body's warmth. His features registered the pain of the bone-deep chill, and his hands moved with agonizing slowness as he formed the gestures of an answering spell.
The Xorlarrin wizard did not wait for the attack; he chanted the words of a summoning. Giant spiders appeared at his command and scurried across the sticky gray web toward their assigned prey. They slipped through the strands and began to descend on silvery threads toward Nisstyre.
"A fit death for a heretic!" exulted Kharza-kzad as the venomous spiders, so beloved of the Lady of Chaos, closed in.
"Do you really fight for the honor of Lloth?" sneered Nisstyre.
The younger wizard's hand swept slowly forward in a menacing arc, not at the spiders, but at the web itself. Kharza had expected this to come sooner or later, for only a magical attack could dispel the web. To his astonishment, the copper-haired wizard unleashed not a pulse of fey energy, but a bolt of simple fire.
Simple, but effective. Flames raced along every strand, setting the entire web ablaze. The web of fire was a glorious, dazzling sight, and Kharza marveled as he beheld it. It was also, he conceded, a brilliant strategy. The heat and the punishing light of the fire forced him to deal with the burning web. This would give his enemy time to marshal his own magical strength, to recover somewhat from the magical chill. Fortunately, Kharza was well prepared for the task.
Shielding his eyes with one hand against the brilliant light, the wizard drew a fist-sized obsidian sculpture from a pocket of his robes. As was befitting of a master of the Sorcere, he possessed an Amulet of Plelthong, an ancient and powerful drow device that commanded many attacks and defenses, Kharza spoke the words that would unleash the needed force. He raised the amulet-the graven face of a smiling drow wizard-and pointed it toward the flaming web.
The obsidian lips pursed, and the drow-shaped amulet spat a stream of cold blue light upward. The magic expanded, becoming a cone of power that engulfed the fire and extinguished it. The web remained, but it was blackened and brittle. The charred bodies of the spiders dangled and swayed for a moment, then fell toward the waiting lava.
Kharza allowed himself a smile of triumph and just a moment's celebration. Too long: a black dart sped toward him and pierced his uplifted hand. His priceless amulet was knocked from his grasp to roll amid the common stones.
The wizard let out a shout of pain and outrage, but he had learned the danger of hesitation. Without bothering to pull the needlelike dart from his hand, he snatched a wand from his belt and pointed it upward.
As he had