Hand of Fire - Ed Greenwood [19]
Shandril Shessair was waiting for them, spellfire leaking from her eyes and nose as she glared. "Leave me alone!" she howled, slaying them with roaring gouts of flame that seared the passage outside and left small fires raging in its wake. "Just – "
There were angry shouts from the inn stairs, and the thunder of running feet. Figures moved in the next room whose wall Shandril had breached, dark-robed figures who'd obviously come in through its window, and were now waving spells as fast as their fingers could fly.
Shandril hurled spellfire at them – but her searing flames clawed along something that wrestled with it and withstood it, something that looked like black fire. Open-mouthed, Narm watched jet-black flames rage and snarl in the face of white-hot spellfire. Then a wizard moaned, reeled, and collapsed – as if exhausted or drained, not struck by anything Shandril had sent – and the black flames sank back.
"Shan!" Narm cried, "we have to get out of here!
The wall behind us – blast it!"
His raging wife turned with her hair swirling around her like so many eager, licking flames, and the wall obligingly darkened, melted away, and was gone – but her flames were faltering, now, and in the darkened room beyond were more hard-faced warriors in dark battle armor, with drawn swords and glaives in their hands.
A cascade of lightnings crashed down around them, and Shandril drank them in eagerly, turning with renewed vigor to face the wizards, trying to draw them into hurling more spells – ere she fed a slaying sheet of spellfire at head-level out into the passage and spun around to give the same to the warriors now surging forward to try to clamber through the hole she'd burned into their room.
The boar-like stench of cooked man-flesh was rising around them now, and Narm was crouching at Shandril's feet with their packs in his hands, trying not to hamper her as she turned and spat fire again and again – brief, careful gouts now, trying to preserve what she had left. The passage was afire; there was no going out that way – and the longer she was forced to fight, the less likely stepping into either of the other rooms, wizards and fresh hostile warriors or none, would give them any easy route to escape. That left – "The window!" Narm snapped. "Someone's climbing in the window!"
Shandril wheeled around, smoking hands raised to slay once more – only to stop, her eyes caught by a gleaming silver harp badge.
The man holding it was a smiling, dark-haired figure in leathers, wearing a sly expression on his handsome face that reminded her of Torm of the Knights of Myth Drannor. He gave them an airy wave, and called, "These accommodations seem a little – crowded. I generally provide free guidance to visitors to this fair city. Is there anywhere else you'd prefer to be, about now?"
"I can think of several," Shandril replied, hurling a tongue of spellfire at a wizard in the next room who'd fumbled out a dagger and was raising it to throw, "but none of them are in Scornubel. Do you – harp alone?"
"Most of the time," the black-haired man replied, giving the two priestesses of Chauntea a crooked smile. "I am Marlel, and I believe I already know both of your names – your real names. I can take you to – 'ware behind you, in the passage!" Shandril whirled, blasted, and watched the body of a warrior who'd been carrying a full-sized crossbow along the burning hallway toward them dance headless back into the flames, to fall and be lost, his bow firing harmlessly down the passage. There was a thud and a groan in the distance – hmm, not so harmlessly, after all.
"My thanks," Shandril told the Harper crisply.
"Now, can you take us to, say, The Stormy Tankard, on Hethbridle Street?"
"Of course," Marlel