Shadows of Doom - Ed Greenwood [125]
Once-beautiful long hair, now a mold-covered, wild mane of gray and white, clung to the shriveled, half-skeletal travesty of a face as the figure bent forward.
In answer, Zalarth began the ugly syllables of a spell to control undead.
The figure scowled and said sharply, "Now is that friendly? What do you here? Are you come merely to plunder?"
She waved a skeletal hand, and a thief more frightened than the rest hurled his knife.
The figure watched the blade whirl through the air at her, and raised a hand with sudden speed to protect her face. The knife tore through the wasted flesh to lodge between two bones in the forearm. The figure raised her arm to study it.
"So you would bring death to me, where the gods failed? Die, fools, and despoil my home no longer!"
The figure gestured. Purple and black bolts of magic spat from each bony finger, streaking unerringly across the chamber to smite the thieves.
His spell done, Zalarth watched aghast as his men shrieked, stiffened, and died. The lich-if it was a lich- was ignoring his magic, and he could feel no ties of Art to give him power over it.
"What are you, that you defy my Art?" he asked, one hand darting to the other.
The undead lights of her eyes regarded him coldly. "An archlich. Apologize, if you would live."
"I'm sorry indeed to have met with you," Zalarth said from the depths of his heart, and turned the ring he wore.
Abruptly he was elsewhere, back in the great hall he'd first entered when coming through the gate. He ran, then, ran as he had not done for years, feet pounding on the stones. Headlong down a dark passage, up a stair, through a weirdly lit, moss-choked gallery, and up another stair.
It opened onto a landing that led to another ascending stair on one hand and an archway on the other-an archway that opened onto a balcony overlooking another large hall. What ruin was this? It was huge, and- He glanced over the edge of the balcony, stopped, and stood very still.
In the room below stood Elminster of Shadowdale, the ranger Knight at his side. Her sword was drawn, and he held a wand. Both were facing that young fool Avaerl.
"Die, old fool," Avaerl taunted the bearded, battered old man, a wand glowing in the young mage's hand. "Die by the order of Manshoon, Lord Most High of the Zhentarim! Die at the hand of Avaerl of Sembresh!"
Sharantyr drew and hurled a dagger in one smooth, flashing movement and charged after it, leaping over small piles of rubble. "I think he's trying to talk us to death, Old Mage!" she cried, raising her blade.
Avaerl howled and clutched at his slashed fingers, the wand falling as the dagger spun away into the gloom. Sharantyr raced toward him, hair streaming behind her.
Lightning flashed and cracked from a balcony above, outlining her in blue-white dancing death. She staggered, groaned loudly, and fell to her knees.
Zalarth stared across at the balcony whence the bolt had come, then swiftly ducked low and moved far aside from where he had been standing.
Cold laughter came from the dimness that had spawned the lightning. "Not so threatening now, are you, Sharantyr?"
The speaker moved to the low, broad stone balcony rail and stared down triumphantly. "And so it is by the hand of Xanther that the famous Elminster shall perish!"
The old man had moved forward involuntarily as the lady ranger was struck. He stopped now, amid the rubble, and sighed. "If ye knew just how many times I've heard that line down the years-and mind, mageling, Manshoon himself has said it, twice, and I'm still standing for all his empty boasting!"
Xanther snarled and aimed his wand. Elminster calmly took out his pipe and sucked on it.
Lighting flashed, but Elminster was suddenly elsewhere. He appeared out of empty air on the balcony just behind Xanther, pipe glowing in his hand, and calmly tipped the councillor forward over the rail.
Xanther had time for the raw beginnings of a scream as he plunged-just before he struck the raised edge of a shattered stone table that rose out of the rubble like the edge of a giant's shield.
It was old and