Fistandantilus Reborn - Douglas Niles [120]
“I’m staying, too!” declared Mirabeth, taking the lad’s arm, watching in awe.
The mountain rocked with growing violence. A shard of stone scored a deep gash in Foryth Teel’s head, drawing an immediate shower of blood and sending the man staggering backward.
Abruptly the green shroud fell from the two images of Fistandantilus, and the archmages staggered apart. The human gasped for breath, while the lich slowly drew itself into a tall, utterly rigid posture.
“Go-before it’s too late!” the historian insisted, angrily gesturing to Danyal and Mirabeth.
But the two young humans merely shook their heads, locking their arms around each other as they shared their intention to stay behind with the historian and see the matter to its conclusion. With one hand, Mirabeth reached out to grab onto Nightmare’s halter, and under her soothing touch, the horse grow strangely calm amid the chaos and destruction.
Ignoring his stubborn companions, Foryth turned back to the two archmages. Inflamed by their consumption of Kelryn Darewind’s essence, they stared at him with the light of hunger banked only slightly in their eyes. The web of green light still glowed between them, and Dan could plainly see the tension, the strain that the connection placed on the two figures. The balance of power between them was tenuous, and the lad sensed that neither could relax, or the other’s victory would be absolute.
“You can become what you want, you know,” Foryth ventured. “A true fusion of your selves, through the bloodstone, will result in a being of truly godlike power.”
“I will not yield to a corpse!” sneered the fleshly version of the archmage.
“Nor I surrender to mortality!” cried the other.
“But you already have-both of you,” Foryth Teel replied, his scholarly tone utterly reasonable. “In truth, you are the same being, but you have been brought here from different segments of the River of Time. If you think about it, the chance to merge with yourself is a unique opportunity, a combination that has never been attempted in all the history of Krynn.”
As the wizards glared at each other, Danyal noticed that Foryth Teel had picked up the golden chain and its green stone pendant.
“The key, of course, is that only one of you can wield the bloodstone.
Here!”
Foryth suddenly flipped the gem into the air, tossing it between the two mages, and for an instant it seemed to Danyal that time stood still. The artifact tumbled and careened in space, the gold chain flashing through a dizzying whirl, and then the two images of the wizard reached forward.
Each of them seized a portion of the chain, pulling on the treasured artifact.
The links pulled taut as the power of twin sorcerers raged through the ancient metal. The sound of a thunderstorm rocked through the chamber.
Bright flashes of light, like green spears of lightning, crackled outward from the two figures and sent the watching humans staggering backward.
The air in the cavern was instantly fouled, thick with the stench of death.
The whirling storm exploded around them, louder than anything Dan had ever heard. He pulled Mirabeth close, and the two of them hunched down, wincing against the unnatural gale, grimacing as the wind lashed like a physical force against their hair, clothes, and skin.
And then the black-shrouded wizards were gone, both of them vanishing in a crackle of green smoke. The storm vanished with them, though the tremors of the dying mountain still rocked the floor and dropped showers of rubble and boulders from the ceiling.
“What-what happened?” Dan asked, stunned. Even though the cavern was still jolted and rocked by subterranean convulsions, it seemed strangely silent in the wake of the sorcerous departures.
“The two versions of Fistandantilus are scattered again, shards of them tossed along the length of the River of Time. It should be many centuries before that power is mustered into the world again.” Foryth’s tone was wistful, almost as if he regretted that the archmages had departed before they could be fully interviewed.
“But how