Realms of the Underdark - J. Robert King [48]
Nothing happened.
"Mystra grant that this my spellshatter last just a trifle longer," Durnan prayed aloud, hands stabbing down to his boots for more daggers. That great mouth was very close now, and the roaring coming from it was shaking the tavernmaster's body. Teeth chattering helplessly, Durnan watched those fangs gape wide.…
Not far away, a black cobweb quivered and seemed to stiffen. Then a hoarse, dusty voice issued from it-a voice that squeaked and hissed from long disuse. "Someone is using a spellshatter," it told the empty darkness of the crypt around it.
Not surprisingly, there was no reply.
After a moment's pause, the cobweb shot forth an arm like the tentacle of a black octopus, and plunged it into the stone of the far wall-as if the tentacle were a mere shadow, able to freely drift through solid things. Then the entire cobweb shifted like a gigantic, ungainly spider and followed the tentacle, sliding into the stones of the crypt wall.
A breath later, the black tentacle emerged from a solid wall in Skullport, wriggled out across an alley, and turned to probe up and down the narrow, reeking way. A rat paused in its gnawings and scuttlings to watch this new, probably edible worm or snake-but sank back down behind a pile of refuse when the tentacle grew swiftly into a spiderlike growth that covered most of the wall. This spiderlike thing then became a flapping black cloak… from which grew the shuffling figure of a robed, cowled man, whose eyes gleamed in the darkness as brightly as the rat's own orbs.
The man's robe swished past the cowering rodent. He stepped out of the alley, looked out across a blackened, tumbled area of devastation where a building had burned or been blasted apart, and said clearly, "Hmmm."
A beholder was bobbing above a lone human, the magelight of carelessly crafted spells streaming around it, but was constrained from reaching its human by some invisible shield or other. The spellshatter, no doubt.
"Hmmm," the man said again, and stepped backward into the wall, sinking smoothly into the solid stone until only two dark, watchful patches remained to mark where his eyes must be.
Wisely, the rat scuttled silently away. With archwizards, one can never be sure. Halaster Blackcloak was known to be both one of the most powerful arch wizards of all, and more than a little… erratic in his behavior. He seemed to be settling into the wall to watch whatever was going on in the ruins, but-if one could ever be safe in Skullport-it was better to be safely away from him… far away from him.
Asper slid to a stop on a high catwalk and clutched its rail for a moment to catch her breath. It had been a long, hard run, and more than one foolish beast had tried to make her its supper along the way. The blade in her hand was still dark and wet from her last encounter. The leap from the end of a little-known tunnel-which wound down through the heart of Mount Waterdeep to end in a sheer drop, high in the ceiling of the cavern that held most of Skullport-down to the dark roofs below was always a throat-tightening thing.
Gasping for air, Mirt's lady tossed her head. Sweat streamed down her face despite her frequent wipes at it, plastering ash-blonde tresses to her forehead and dripping from the end of her nose. Asper sighed air deep into her lungs, shook her head to hurl away more sweat, clipped the ring on her sword-pommel to the matching one at her throat, spun the ribbon around so the still-gory blade would bounce along at her back as she traveled on, and peered out over Skullport, waiting for her breathing to slow.
The often-deadly place seemed somehow quiet tonight. The mysterious guardian skulls-or whatever they truly were-drifted here and there through the gloom high above the streets, where the stone fangs of the cavern ceiling made a silent forest close overhead. Asper loved this world of flitting bats, occasional screams, and muttered conspiracies. She enjoyed a leisurely prowl among the crumbling roof