Spellfire - Ed Greenwood [36]
The ruined city seemed endless, though she saw more trees among the stones than she had earlier.
Perhaps I am nearer the edge of the ruin, Shandril thought hopefully. She sighed and looked all around cautiously for perhaps the thousandth time. It was then she saw them.
In a place of tilted piles of stone, where all the buildings had toppled and fallen, there stood two figures confronting each other across a wasteland of rubble. A sharp-eyed man in wine-red robes stood on the cracked base of a long-fallen pillar, facing a tall, slim, cruel-looking woman in purple standing on what was left of a wall.
"Die, then, Shadowsil," the man said coldly, and his hands moved like coiling snakes. Shandril crouched low and kept very still.
The woman's hands were also moving. Shandril wondered briefly if everyone in all Faerun would arrI’ve in Myth Drannor before she could get out of it.
From the man's hand burst sparkling frost, a white cone that spread, roaring as it closed on the beautiful woman. She stiffened, arms shining with frost, but already from her hands four whirling balls of fire had burst forth, flashing through the fading cone of frost, trailing winking sparks.
Shandril scrambled on hands and knees around the pile of rubble and behind the corner of a building that wasn't there anymore. It was well she did so, for an instant later there was a flash of flame and a roar, and a wave of intense heat passed over her face.
When she peered cautiously around the rubble again later, the man was gone. There was a large, blackened area on the rocks, and the woman in purple was walking triumphantly across mountains of jagged stone to where her foe had stood. The cracked stone creaked as it cooled; the woman turned on her heel to stare levelly all around. She saw Shandril's head immediately and stared. Shandril scrambled hastily back to the corner again and fled down a ruined street. At its end she ducked around a corner, blood hammering her brain in fear. Biting her lips to silence her panting, she dared not believe she had escaped so easily.
Suddenly, the air before her shimmered and the lady in purple stood before her. "Who are you, then, little one?" she asked softly; Shandril shI’vered. The lady was very beautiful. "I am Symgharyl Maruel, called The Shadowsil"
Shandril held her blade up in silent answer. The lady mage laughed, and her hands moved deftly. Shandril rushed at her, but knew before she started that the woman was just too far away. She was staring in fear and anger at the mage, still yards distant, when her limbs locked in mid-stride and she froze helplessly.
The purple robes swished nearer. The lady undid a rope from around her waist as she approached.
Tymora, aid me, Shandril thought desperately as the mage placed the rppe gently around the wrist of the hand in which the immobile, straining thief held the sword. She looped it also about Shandril's neck, drawing it tight across her throat, and said, "
Ulthae-entangle." The would-be thief s scalp prickled in horror as she felt the rope slithering of its own accord across her skin, tightening about her arms and neck and knees, pinning her securely.
When it was done, Shandril was bound tightly about, truly helpless, and a short length of rope led from a great knot at her waist to the languid hand of the lady in purple.
At least, Shandril thought, that means she'll take me out of here… although with the luck Great Lady Tymora has shown me thus far, devils will show up to slay her, leaving me as a ready meal for anything that happens by. She had a brief memory of the thing in the well, and shuddered… and then, in sinking horror and despair, found that she could not shudder.
Her own body was her prison.
Symgharyl Maruel jerked on the rope that bound her, and Shandril fell over helplessly to crash upon the broken stones that had long ago been a pleasant winding lane of the City of Beauty. The