Hand of Fire - Ed Greenwood [99]
"North and – Waterdeep?" Thoadrin nodded.
"Seeking spellfire is a fools' game, but those well above us in the Followers may not believe that, from where they sit safe and distant. So to Waterdeep to hide until the time's right to seek our masters and admit our failure."
Laranthan nodded, looked back at the drifting smoke where a long ridge of ancient and weather-scoured rocks had been, shivered, and started walking northwest.
The flying lass and her storm of all-consuming flames dwindled down behind the smoking, melted rocks along one side of the hollow. Orthil Voldovan shook his head in awe and then bellowed, "Arauntar!
Beldimarr! All swords – to me!"
Was anyone left to answer his rallying?
Ah, Arauntar, lumbering forward, and someone else, past yonder wagons… Voldovan stared around in mounting horror at the smoldering ruins of his caravan, muttering all the curses he could remember.
A dozen wagons, at least, and probably more than twice that many clients…
All the work of some brigands and one girl.
Distant trees crackled as spellfire roared on.
Voldovan looked in that direction and growled,
"Gods above, how am I going to slay her? And if I don't, how soon before that devours all the Realms?"
*******
In the gathering dusk, Sharantyr of Shadowdale saw the flash and glow of mighty flame in the distance ahead a moment or two before the ground shook beneath her boots.
"Shan, Shan," she muttered, climbing onto Flamewind's saddle and urging the weary horse into a trot, "couldn't you have waited until I got there?"
Somewhere nearby in the Blackrocks, a wolf howled.
Her mount faltered under her, saddle leather creaking with the break in stride. Sharantyr kicked her feet out of the stirrups and murmured, "Slow, then, Flamewind. Go as slow as you want to."
The horse faltered again under her and fell.
Sharantyr sprang free, cursing softly, and watched the ground rush up to meet her like a hard-driven fist.
*******
Her bright spellflames first began to falter just as Narm was starting to stagger from weariness, every breath burning his lungs. He'd run a long way up and down loose rocks and over tangled thorn-vines and half-fallen, leaning trees. He had lost count of the number of small, snarling things that had scurried away from beneath his pounding boots.
He felt as if he'd run halfway to Waterdeep, but when he'd slipped, caught hold of a tree to keep from falling down a dark cleft between rocks, and ended up wrenching himself back the way he'd come from ere he could halt, he could still see the fitful glows and rising sparks of the burning wagons in Haelhollow, not all that far off.
Shandril was flying lower now, struggling in the air as if wrestling with some invisible wraith, and the jets and bursts of flame were becoming fitful as her spellfire ran out or she won her battle for mastery over it. It had been some time since she'd burned a clear trail through the Blackrocks brush. Only the occasional gout of flame set anything below her to smoldering now.
Narm caught hold of another tree, clung to it while he threw back his head and drank in deep, shuddering breaths of cool twilit air, then ran on again. She wasn't far ahead now. One last sprint just might…
Shan suddenly put her hands down at her sides – balled and shaking fists, at once achingly beautiful and pitiful – and soared straight up into the sky.
Windmilling his arms wildly to slow down, Narm ran right underneath her, managed to get himself stopped with the aid of a particularly thorny wintanberry bush, and wrenched himself around to face her.
"Shan!" he shouted. "Shan, I'm down here!"
The bright thing of fire wriggled in the swiftly darkening sky above him, writhing strangely against the brightening stars like a sandsnake he'd once seen burrowing into river mud, and made a horrible sound. A soft and yet harsh sound that went on and on.
Narm gaped up at his lady for a long, fearful time, wondering if the spellfire