Elminster_ The Making of a Mage - Ed Greenwood [131]
Ilhundyl watched the scene expressionlessly, then leaned forward to ring a bell on his table. When a young woman in livery hurried in, face anxious, he said in calm, cold tones, "Order all the archers to the wall by the Great Gate. They are to bring down the intruder by any means necessary."
She hurried out as the golems closed in on the intruder, lifting massive arms to smash him like a rotten grape against the stones. The wizard raised his hands. Invisible forces cut a slice of stone away, severing one moving leg from its foot, and slowly, but with awesome, quickening force, the first golem fell.
The Castle of Sorcery rocked, and Ilhundyl started up from his seat in rage, in time to see the second golem fall over the broken remnants of the first, and topple in its turn.
Gods take this intruder! He was perilously close to the walls already. Where were those archers? And then arrows lashed on the terrace like hard-driven black hail, and the Mad Mage smiled as the wizard's body jerked, spun around, and fell, transfixed.
Ilhundyl's smile collapsed into a frown as the screaming body was suddenly upright again. Another arrow took it through the head, which flopped loosely, and the corpse reeled and fell headlong, only to appear upright again with no shaft standing out of its mouth. Two arrows sped into it and the body spun, legs kicking-to jerk erect again in different garb…
"Stop!" Ilhundyl snarled. "Stop firing!" His hands stabbed for the bell, knowing it was too late. By the time his orders were heard and relayed, all the archers were dead. His foe was using some spell that switched one person for another, in a double teleport!
That was a spell he had to learn… this young mage must be taken alive. Or at least destroyed in a way that left his spell-book intact.
Ilhundyl strode out of the room and down the Wind Cavern, where smooth shapes of glass stood on all sides, pierced by many holes that sang mournful songs when the wind blew. Taking down this mage might cost him all of his Winged Hands- but it would be done, whatever the price. He could always make more…
He was still a few hurrying paces short of the archway that led into the north tower when the horned suit of armor beside it clanked down from its pedestal and strode toward him, raising its weapons. Ilhundyl spoke a soft word and turned one of the rings on his hand, then cast a spell with a few swift, snarled phrases. Acid burst out from between his fingers in a sphere of acrid purple flames that expanded as it flew. The hissing sphere crashed over the armor and spattered to the floor beyond. Smoke rose from flagstones as it ate away at them; the molten blobs that had been the armor crashed down into the widening pits in the stone, breaking into vapors and droplets.
Another suit of armor was already coming through the door from the next chamber. Ilhundyl sighed at this childishness and hurled his second-and last-acid sphere spell. There was a flash this time as the purple flames struck something in the air and rebounded on the master of the Calishar. Ilhundyl had time for a single pace back before the acid drenched him.
Smoke hissed, and Ilhundyl fell without a sound, dwindling into vapor rather than blood and bone. Out of the air on the far side of the gallery, the Mad Mage faded back into view, and said scornfully, "Fool! Think yourself the only wizard in all Faerun to use images and spells of deceit?"
He waved an imperious hand, and stone spikes suddenly erupted from the air to his right. He pointed, and obediently they flew toward the armored figure. Long before they reached it some force dragged them aside-to