Spellfire - Ed Greenwood [33]
Where was she? The smell of earth and old, dank stone hung around her in the darkness. Shandril lay still on something hard and uneven and collected her wits. Her mouth was dry, her head ached, and her back and shoulder throbbed. Oh, yes… she had fallen into this… while crawling away from a well. She was in a large ruin in a forest, inhabited by devils and other fearsome monsters. It was probably Myth Drannor, and she would probably neither get out nor survI’ve. Shandril rolled over; metal slithered and shifted under her. Oh, yes. Coins! She clutched one in her hand and rolled onto her knees. It was too dark to make out what sort of coin it was. Overhead, faint light could be seen through the gap where the stones above had collapsed. She could not reach the opening.
Tymora spit upon all! If this was adventure, perhaps it was worth Korvan and unending drudgery at The Rising Moon, after all! Shandril looked about her helplessly. It was too dark to see anything. She would have to blunder around in the dark, feeling for a way out… if there was a way out. Shandril sighed.
The Lady of Luck smiled indeed…
Then, above her, she heard a shout. Running feet, screams. More shouting, and the clang of weapons.
A horrible groan, more running feet, and then, suddenly, someone hurtled down from above Shandril in a shower of dirt and paving stones.
Shandril slid down the heap of coins desperately. A stone fell on her foot, already half-sunk in coins, and another glanced numbingly off one elbow. There was a great crashing and slithering among the coins, and a rough male voice said triumphantly in the darkness, "Ha! Got you! Thought you c-"
"Ilzazu!" hissed a second voice, and there was a blue-white flash and a crackling, sizzling sound, followed by a horrible, dying moan.
This was just about enough, Shandril decided, and fainted again.
When she knew the world around her again, the light overhead was much brighter. Shandril found herself lying at the edge of the pile of coins, feet up on the slithering riches, head down and aching. She felt weak and dizzy; it seemed like days since she fled from that gargoyle.
She got up and looked around. The coins-thousands of them, rusty-brown with age and damp-looked to be all copper. Sigh. Above her, atop the heap, lay two bodies on their backs, feet entangled, both human. One wore armor, much blackened; about him there still clung a faint reek of burned flesh. The other wore robes, and clutched the crumbled fragments of a stick of wood. A sword protruded from his rib cage, and a small shoulder bag lay half-crumpled beneath him. Shandril clambered up the mound of coins again. Food? Perhaps one carried water, or wine?
The armored corpse was cooked black; Shandril avoided it. The other had a dagger, which she took quickly, boots- too large, but her feet had bled enough for her to take any boots over no boots-a skin of water, which she drained thirstily, and the shoulder bag. She tugged it free of the body and examined the scraps of wood curiously. The thickest piece, from the butt end of the stick, bore the word 'Hzazu,' but nothing happened when Shandril cautiously said it aloud. She scrambled down the heap again.
The bag proved to contain hard, dark bread, a wheel of cheese sealed in wax, another half-eaten wheel speckled with mold (Shandril ate it anyway, saving the other for later), and a small book. Shandril opened it cautiously, saw crawling runes and glyphs, and slammed it again. There was also a hopelessly smashed hand lamp, a flint, and a metal vial of lamp oil. She put everything but the flint and oil back into the bag and slung it on her shoulder. She crawled back to the dead magic-user again and tore off what she could of the man's robe, doused it in oil, and wearily struck the flint against coin after coin, and finally upon the scorched armor of the other corpse to strike sparks onto the soaked