Elminster_ The Making of a Mage - Ed Greenwood [49]
From somewhere nearby, Hawklyn snarled an incantation in a high, frightened voice. The old man ignored him.
The rising men came to a smooth halt at the same height as the balcony, and the chain wove its way among them, gleaming in the light of the fires below.
There was a flash and a roar. Elminster dived for his life as Hawklyn's spell smashed half the balcony into a splintered ruin of paneling and shattered stone. Desperately the young thief clawed his way along a stone floor that was crumbling and collapsing under and behind him.
With a shudder and then a gathering roar, most of the tiles of the broken balcony floor slid down to the stones of the feasting-hall amid a cloud of dust. The rubble piled up in a heap around a lone, leaning pillar that had supported that end of the balcony moments before. Sprawled on the surviving remnant of the balcony, Elminster turned in haste to see the Magister unconcernedly standing on empty air, surrounded by a ring of helpless, floating, frightened men.
"Is that the best you can do, Hawklyn?" The old man shook his head. "You had no business even thinking you could ever grow mighty enough to challenge me, with such feeble powers… and dull wits driving them." He sighed. Elminster saw the crystal chain had wrapped itself around the neck of one floating man.
The man's head was turned with slow, terrible, unseen force, until he hung helplessly staring into the old man's eyes. "So you are a magelord, Maulygh… of long service, I see, and you fancy yourself too cunning to appear openly ambitious. Yet you desire to rule over all and await any chance to smite down these others, and take the throne for yourself. And you have plans; your reign would not be gentle."
The Magister waved a hand in dismissal, and the crystal links around the wizard's neck burst apart in tinkling shards. Maulygh's headless body jerked once and then hung limp and dripping. The shortened chain glided on to the next man.
"Only a merchant, eh? Othyl Naerimmin, a panderer, smuggler, and dealer in scents and beer." The quavering voice seemed almost hopeful, but when it came again, it was a low, bitter tone of disappointment. "You arrange poisonings." The coil of the chain burst again, leaving another hanging body behind.
Someone wailed in terror, almost drowning out the frantic mutterings of several spellcastings. The Magister ignored it all as he watched the chain wind its deadly way on through the air. One man-a fat merchant, gasping and staring in horror, was spared. He floated gently down to the floor, fell when the magic released him, and then scrambled up, whimpering, and fled from the hall.
The next man was another mage, who spat defiance and went to his death raging. When he was headless, pulses of purple radiance flared around the body. The Magister studied them. "An interesting web of contingencies-don't you think, Hawklyn?"
The mage royal spat a word that echoed and rolled around the hall, and there was a sudden burst of flame. Elminster shrank back into the corner and hid his face, feeling a sudden wash of heat. Then it was gone, and amid the creaking of cooling stone and the rush of tortured air, they heard the old man sigh.
"Fireballs… always fireballs. Can't the young cast anything else?"
The Magister stood unharmed on empty air, watching the chain-much shortened now, its surface cracked and blackened from fire-move to the next man. He proved to be dead already, of fright or self-spell or a stray glass shard, and the chain drifted on.
Twice more it burst, and then another merchant was spared. He fled sobbing, leaving only the mage royal of Athalantar hanging alive before the Magister. Hawklyn looked right and left at the headless things in the air around him and snarled in fear.
"I must confess that killing you will bring me satisfaction," the old man said. "Yet I'd be more pleased still if you renounced all claims to this realm here and now and agreed to serve Mystra under my direction."
Hawklyn cursed,