Spellfire - Ed Greenwood [134]
The mages would have no choice. No doubt they would slaughter Casildar, but he was too ambitious anyway, and a small price to pay for the destruction of Manshoon's pet spellhurlers. The Zhentarim would serve Fzoul at last.
Even if Manshoon did return now, he would find himself isolated, with only upstart magelings-all too eager to betray him for their own advancement-to stand with him against the loyal of Bane, who served Fzoul. The beholders cared not which humans they dealt with, so long as their wants were met. The city would be his at last.
Until someone took it from him.
Fzoul never noticed the wizard eye floating above and behind him among the dark spires, keeping carefully out of sight. He could not see its invisible owner, regarding him from the dark window of a tower nearby.
He did hear the commotion in the courtyard below, as the warrior-priests of the High Imperceptor crept over the wall, and were met by alert and waiting underpriests of the Altar. Fzoul leaned forward and indiscriminately cast a blade barrier down into the growing fray below, caring nothing for the fate of his own acolytes. Let them see Bane the sooner, all of them.
Sememmon heard the clash and clatter of many whirling blades and screams below, and suddenly saw the bloody slaughter as one of the attackers boiling over the temple wall cast magical light upon the scene. He leaned out swiftly before Fzoul could leave the balcony and attacked with his Ring of the Ram. He struck with all the force that the magical ring could muster, draining it of multiple charges to do the task quickly and surely. He did not aim directly at the Master of The Black Altar, for he knew Fzoul would be well protected, but struck instead at the balcony.
It shivered and cracked, as if struck by a battering ram, and then fell away, crumbling in midair, down into the shrieking and death below. It seemed to fall with awful slowness, but Sememmon watched Fzoul's fall closely; The cleric had no time to use an item or utter a word of recall- unless he managed to do so after the first blade had sliced crimson across his red mane of hair. A falling chunk of stone blocked Sememmon's view seconds before the balcony crashed to the ground.
Sememmon turned away in satisfaction, resolving that the attack on Shadowdale would begin and end with the destruction of Casildar, at least until the spellfire-maid was out from under the eye and thumb of Elminster.
He never noticed another wizard eye that floated just above the dark window.
The eye was gone, however, some six breaths later, when a great round shadow drifted out of The Black Altar's depths, its many eyestalks coiling and writhing like a nest of serpents. Then the slaughter really began.
The night was cold. Overhead, Selune was scudding amid a few tattered gray clouds. Lower down there was little breeze, but Shandril had shut the windows against the chill.
She sat on the bed, facing Narm. "Well, my lord?"
Shandril asked. Narm shrugged and spread his hands.
"What do you want, my lady?" he asked. Shandril looked at him, eyes dark and beautiful, and spread her own hands.
"To be happy. With you. Free of fear. Free to walk as we will, and neither cold nor hungry. More, I care little for, as long as we have friends."
"Simple enough," Narm agreed, and they both laughed. "All right, then," Narm continued, "we must travel west, as they all say. But, advice be damned, let us go by way of The Rising Moon and Thunder Gap, so you may see Gorstag once more.
What say?"
"Yes! It if pleases you, it pleases me. But what of the Harpers?"
"Well…"
Outside in the night, Torm strained to hear, but slipped. He breathed a curse upon fickle Tymora as he slid slowly backward on the wet slates despite his splayed, iron-strong fingers. He soon ran out of roof and fell over the edge.
Desperately he swung himself inward as his fingers left the slates. Then he was falling, mind racing coolly. His fingers closed on a window ledge