Elminster_ The Making of a Mage - Ed Greenwood [99]
Tarthe drew a shuddering breath, shook his head, and turned to the young mage. "Just the two of us, now." He nodded at the book strapped to Elmara's chest. "Anything there that might help?"
"Ondil's magic sealed it. I would not like to try to break his spells here in his own keep-not while Othbar's sacrifice holds." Elmara looked at the silent and motionless image holding the coffin shut-and noted its flickering, fading extremities. She pointed. "Even now, the lich tries to break out of its coffin."
Tarthe's eyes went to the flickering hands of the image. "How long do we have?"
Elmara shrugged. "If I knew that, I'd be Ondil."
Tarthe waved his sword. "Don't jest about such things! How can I tell you haven't fallen under some spell or other and become Ondil's slave?"
Elmara stared at him, then slowly nodded. "Ye raise a wise concern."
Tarthe's eyes narrowed, and he drew a dagger, eyes fixed on the young sorceress. Then he turned and threw it back through the opening where Tharp had died. It spun into the passage beyond and was gone-unseen in the sudden flash and whirl of a hundred circling, clanging blades, darting about in the space that had been empty moments before.
"The magic continues," Tarthe said heavily. "Do we try to dig a way out in earnest?"
Elmara thought for a moment, and then shook her head. "Ondil is too strong-these magics can be broken only by destroying him."
"So we must fight him," Tarthe said grimly.
"Aye," Elmara replied, "and I must prepare ye before the fray."
"Oh?" Tarthe raised an eyebrow and his blade as the sorceress approached.
Elmara sighed and came to a halt well beyond his reach. "I can fly yet," she said gently. "If this tower stays aloft through Ondil's own magic, ye too must be able to take wing if we slay him-or ye will fall with the tower, and be crushed when it shatters below."
Tarthe swallowed, then nodded and put his blade on his shoulder. "Cast your spell, then," he said.
Elmara was barely done when sudden radiance flared behind her.
She spun around-in time to see Othbar's image vanish, along with the lid it had been holding down. She sighed again. "Ondil found a way," she murmured. Suddenly she nodded as if answering a question only she could hear, and her hands flashed in frantic haste, working a spell.
Tarthe looked uncertainly at her and risked a step forward, sword raised. Inside the stone casket lay a plain, dark wooden coffin, seemingly new-and on it, three small, thick books.
"Touch them not," Elmara said sharply, "unless ye are ready to kiss a lich!"
The warrior took a step back, blade up and ready. "I doubt I'll ever be ready for that," he said dryly. "Will you?"
"What must be, must be," the sorceress said curtly. "Stand back against yon wall now, as far off as ye can get."
Without looking to see if this direction had been obeyed, she stepped up to the casket and laid one hand firmly on a spellbook.
The dark wooden lid vanished. With inhuman speed, something tall, thin, and robed sprang up from where it had lain, the spellbooks tumbling down around it.
Icy hands clutched at Elmara, caught, and seared the living flesh in their grasp.
Instead of pulling back, Elmara leaned forward, smiled tightly into Ondil's shriveled face and said the last word of her spell. The lich found himself holding nothing-in the brief instant before the ceiling of the chamber smashed down atop him, burying the coffin.
The sorceress reappeared beside Tarthe, shoulders to the wall, eyes on the coffin. Dust and echoes rolled around them both as Elmara rubbed at her seared wrists and watched the stones of the central ceiling begin to rise up in a silent stream, back whence they'd come. Tarthe looked at her, then at the casket, and then back at the mage. His face wore a look of awe-but also, for the first time in quite a while, hope.
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