Elminster in Myth Drannor - Ed Greenwood [114]
Even Elminster was taken by surprise; how had he missed seeing the cruel-faced elven mage who was now rising, a vengeful column of mist turning solid, above the tangled garden? Clouds of radiance were swirling in from all directions to join the thickening form of the sorcerer. As he grew taller and more solid, he calmly continued to lash the coughing, sobbing sorceresses with crackling streams of lightning, allowing them no moment to recover or escape.
Sparks fell in showers from the elf's hands as he stepped forward, treading on the empty air with a mincing swagger of satisfaction. El felt a stinging pain as they drifted through him and winked out. He swirled around the mage, swooping and shouting in silent futility.
The innermost ward had been no ward at all, but the cloudlike, alert form of the mage, awaiting aid, intentional or otherwise!
"Haemir Waelvor, at your service," the elven sorcerer told the two ladies, when their burned and trembling bodies were so enwrapped with lightnings that they couldn't move. "The Starym seem to be delayed- perhaps wanting me to do the dirty work before they deign to appear. It matters little, now that I have your life-energies to feed my shield-sundering. You're here to protect feeble-witted, doddering old Mythanthar, I take it? A pity; you're going to be the death of him instead."
Bhuraelea managed a groan of protest; little black flames leaped from her mouth. Mladris hung limp and silent, her eyes open, staring, and dark. Only a pulse racing in her throat showed that she yet lived.
El felt rage rising in him like a hungry red tide, demanding release. He turned ponderously, letting the anger build into shaking energy that burst out at last in a long, soundless charge that took him through the lightnings that bound the two sorceresses, and straight at the Waelvor mage.
Halfway there he arched and cried out in silent pain and surprise. He could feel the lightnings! Their caster could see and feel his contact, too; Haemir's eyes narrowed at the sight of his suddenly crackling, spitting, somehow dimmed bolts of lightning. What was dragging at them so?
Waelvor's lips thinned. Old Mythanthar, or some other meddler? It mattered little. He snarled something, and moved one hand in a quick spell that spun a dozen slicing blades to clash in the air at the point of the disturbance.
El watched the blades appear and tumble down behind him, and rose up out of the lightnings feeling both pain and exhilaration. Some of their energy was racing around inside him, making him tingle unpleasantly, and scattering sparks from his mouth and eyes.
The Waelvor wizard's eyes widened in surprise as he dimly perceived the lightning-lashed outline of an elven-or was it human?-shape, an instant before it smashed into him.
El struck with all his force, lashing and slashing, trying to overwhelm Haemir Waelvor through sheer ferocity. When he "touched" the mage, he felt no solidity, only a tingling as the lightnings rolled out of him, then searing pain as the interlaced spells of the wizard's mantle tried to tear him apart, phantom that he was.
While Elminster rolled in midair screaming soundlessly in agony, Haemir Waelvor shook his head, roaring, his own lightnings spitting and coiling from his mouth in their rude return. The pupils of his eyes suddenly turned as milky and sparkling as a white opal-a look El had last seen years back, in the eyes of a mage who'd just fallen victim to his own confusion spell.
El shook his head and screamed again, trying to gain control of his own pain-wracked form. So, he could hurt-or at least cause pain and confusion to-folk he rushed through, could he?
Shuddering, he drifted away to a distant vantage point to watch, knowing he could do nothing to aid the two sorceresses, who lay slumped where the failing lightnings had released them.
He needed to know how long it would take a wizard to recover-and if swooping through one as a spell was being cast