Realms of the Underdark - J. Robert King [43]
"Ye'll try to slay me, and fail, and I'll have to decide how merciful to be with ye," the sculpture replied merrily. "Those who set marks, know ye, are usually better employed doing something else."
"Do not presume to threaten me," Halaster's voice answered him, as if from a great distance, as the darkness that was the Master of Undermountain began to whirl about the unseen teleport.
"That was not a threat," the sculpture said mildly. "] never threaten. I only-promise."
The reply that came back out of the teleport sounded very much like the rude lip-flapping sound known in some realms as a "raspberry."
Durnan was still swearing when the whirling blue mists faded and the world returned: a darkly cavernous world lit by many lamps and torches, sharp with the smell of a recent spell blast. Smokes curled lazily past him as he stumbled on uneven, shifting rubble for a moment, and then crouched, blade up, to look all around.
There was a murmur off to his right. Durnan looked that way first and found himself regarding an interested crowd of mongrelmen, hobgoblins, bugbears, orcs, and worse. They were standing on a torchlit street making bets and excited comments – as they stared right back at him.
Skullport. He was in Skullport. The surprise on some of the faces and the sudden energy of the betting suggested that his arrival hadn't been expected. Wherefore this crowd had gathered to witness something else. Durnan glanced left and right into the dark, smoking ruin around him. Ah hah. Indeed.
A beholder hung in the air off to his left, its eyes gleaming with malice as it glared at him and through him, at… a mauve, glistening creature with a tentacled face and white, pupilless eyes. It stood in dark, ornate robes, well off to his right – and was raising its three-fingered hands in clawing, spell-hurling gestures as it coldly hissed an incantation. A mind flayer… and an eye tyrant. Dueling with magic. And he was between them.
"Thank you, Beshaba!" the tavernmaster snarled in sarcastic thanks to the goddess of misfortune. He dived headlong onto the rubble, framing a scene in his mind of opening a certain ivory door with the dragonscale key. The mental vision grew clear, the door swung wide-and Durnan remembered to close his eyes just in time.
The white light in his mind was nothing to the blinding flash that marked the breaking of the dragon rune he bore on his left wristlet. As that broad metal band crumbled, giving his forearm an eerie tingling sensation, Durnan rolled over a low stone wall, dropped onto a sunken floor, and found his feet. There was a hubbub of new excitement from the crowd as the tavernmaster started his sprint through the pillars and tumbled stones, and got his eyes open again.
The white ring of radiance that marked the rune's release of power was still rolling outward, moving with him in a flickering, expanding dome of protection. Spell rays and gaze attacks alike would be shattered by its touch… for an all-too-short time.
"Tymora aid me!" he gasped as he ran, dodging between two blackened stubs of stone wall that stood like frozen fingers, reaching vainly for the cavern ceiling overhead. If Lady Luck smiled on him, the dragon rune would guard his back from the beholder's eye powers long enough for him to reach the mind flayer. Aye, if…
Dark robes flickered ahead as the illithid dodged this way and that, trying to glimpse its quarry darting through the ruins. Durnan snatched out his belt knife as he ran, dust sash flapping, and the mind flayer spat one loud word somewhere ahead of him.
There was a flash, a roar of tortured stone, and one of the walls ahead burst into fist-sized chunks of rubble. Durnan spun around behind a pillar until the worst of the crashings were done around him, and then sped on. If a certain old and overweight tavernmaster could just move well enough, there'd be no time for the thing to work another spell!
He snarled at his own slowness as he leapt on over the rubble. By the pillar he'd had a momentary glimpse of the beholder,