Elminster's Daughter - Ed Greenwood [124]
"Vangerdahast"the Lady Lord of Arabel snapped, "get over
here! There's a dragon digging out your sanctum like a dog hunting for bones!"
"Eh? A wyrm? Excellent! I can try my-"
"I doubt either of the two War Wizards it's just flung away over the trees would agree with that 'excellent' of yours," Myrmeen interrupted crisply. "And I doubt this sword of mine will do much more than amuse our unexpected guest! I've never seen this sort of dragon-silver blue, but with the shape of a copper wyrm…"
Vangerdahast made a small sound of exasperated annoyance, abandoned his spell with a dismissive wave of his hands, and strode to the window.
"A song dragon! Well, now!" He rubbed his hands together. "I wonder how her human form strikes the eye?"
Myrmeen gave him a strange look at about the same time as the massive tail outside swung toward the window in a suddenly looming slap. The windows crashed in, riven spells bursting into crawling fingers of lightning that wrestled with the glass, splinters of frame, and dislodged stone blocks-then stabbed out in all directions. The Lady Lord shrieked as one bolt found her armor and writhed briefly up and down her, and Vangerdahast grunted as another made one of his rings burst apart without triggering its magics, almost casually flinging him across the room as it did so. The north end of the kitchen groaned as unseen pantries beyond it collapsed, the chambers beyond them dug open and flung apart.
"Wizard!" a great, roaring voice hammered at them. "Where are you, wizard?"
Vangerdahast's answer was three carefully enunciated words that called up the defenses of the sanctum.
The shields all around him flared 'white and flowed forward, in a gathering charge that flung the song dragon back across the glade. Helmed horrors came racing through the shattered trees like arrows, converging on the thrashing wyrm. A pale green radiance began to gather around Vangerdahast, leaking out of the empty air like so many humming sparks to settle around him, cloaking him in rising power.
"Lass," he growled, in obvious discomfort, "see yon stone? The one with the rune on it?"
Myrmeen looked up at him from where she lay sprawled and gasping on the floor, face white and hair scorched… then turned her head to look where he was pointing.
"Pluck it up, and drink all you need of the healing potions beneath," the former Royal Magician of Cormyr grunted, striding past her with green radiance surging and building around him. "For once have a little sense and crawl away somewhere to lie quiet and keep out of the way. In all that battle-steel, you're nothing but dragonbait: Yon wyrm breathes lightning-gas!"
The Lady Lord of Arabel stared after him… and with trembling hands, as she lay on the floor, tried to unbuckle and shake off her armor. Vangerdahast cast a glance back at her, shook his head in disgust, and flexed his hands.
Green radiances flashed, and all over the sanctum wands, rods, rings, and odd diadems and orbs flashed, quivered, and grew green haloes of their own.
Outside, the helmed horrors were hacking and stabbing at the rolling, tail-lashing dragon, unaffected by the cloud of gas that gouted from its jaws. Scaled claws snatched and flung them often, and from time to time tore one apart in a flare of white radiances, the pieces of armor tumbling separately to earth.
Vangerdahast calmly watched the song dragon writhe and roll its way through the forest, toppling trees in all directions. If it started working magic, he'd smite it with the whelmed power of the sanctum, but until then, as long as his horrors held out…
These guardians didn't last very long, anyway. The flight enchantments he gave them gnawed endlessly at the magics that animated and bound them together, so they were a loss he could bear. The imprisoned criminals who'd elected to be put into dreamsleep so their sentiences could be used for these horrors would have sudden awakenings and probably an unpleasant burst of nightmares, scaring their jailers and adding to the meal preparation burden in the few remote keeps of the