Spellfire - Ed Greenwood [68]
He turned to face them all. "Sirs" he said curtly,
"this meeting is at an end. For your safety, leave at once." He crooked a finger, and horribly grinning gargoyles, hitherto motionless on stone buttresses overhead, flexed their slate-gray wings. The high lords of Zhentil Keep hastened to find their feet, and then their cloaks and swords and plumed hats, babbled and stammered their thanks and good-byes all together, and found the exit with comical haste. A patient golem closed the door they left standing open.
Manshoon then spoke to the gargoyles in a harsh hissing and croaking tongue, and they began to glide about the tower on their leathery wings, watching in terrible silence for intruders. Their lord stood in the dark hail and spoke. The candles sank and died. They had scarce guttered into acrid smoke before he spoke again, and at his words this time a stone golem as tall as six men strode ponderously toward him from one corner of the hall. It waited there in the darkness to greet any visitors foolish enough to enter unannounced in his absence. Manshoon looked about and then raced up the stairs in the darkness.
His ragged shout of rage and loss echoed back down the stairs behind him." Shadowsil!"
As he stepped out into the chill air atop the Tower High, he spoke a certain word. There came a stirring, and part of the tower beneath him moved. A great bulge of stone shifted and humped. Vast wings opened out over the courtyard of the tower and the minarets of the walls. A great neck arched out and glimmering eyes regarded Manshoon with eagerness and quickening interest, and fear.
The massI’ve bulk rose up the tower wall as huge claws caught and pulled. Somewhere a stone broke loose and clattered, unseen, far below. Then the wings beat in a lazy clap that echoed back from the rooftops of the city. Frightened faces appeared in the windows of temple spires and noblemen's towers, and vanished again in haste. Manshoon smiled without mirth at the sight and coldly locked eyes with the huge black dragon he had freed. Cold eyes looked back at him.
Few men, indeed, can retain sanity and will in the face of the full gaze of a dragon. The wyrm regarded him with vast age, and knowledge, and amusement.
Manshoon merely smiled and held its eyes with his own deep gaze. The fear in the dragon's eyes grew.
Then Manshoon hissed in the tongue of black dragons, "Up, Orlgaun. I have need of you." The great neck arched over the parapet for him to mount.
With a bound and flurry of beating wings the black dragon soared aloft from the city of cold stone and ready swords. Manshoon came with fire and fury to destroy the slayer of his beloved. Many have done so before, in more worlds than Faerun, and will again in days to come.
9: The Battle Ne'er Done
The worst trouble with most mages is that they think they can change the world. The worst mistake the gods make is to let a few of them get away with it.
Nelve Harssad of Tsurlagol
My Journeys Around the Sea of Fallen Stars
Year of the Sword and Stars
"I wonder," Torm said slowly, coins of silver and gold clattering through his fingers, "just how long this bone dragon had been gathering this stuff." He looked across a glittering sea of gleaming metal.
"Ask Elminster," Rathan said. "He probably recalls the day of Rauglothgor's arrival, what-or who-he ate at the time, and all." The cleric was methodically scrutinizing handfuls of coins, plucking out only the platinum pieces, and adding them to an already bulging purse. Nearby, Merith was shifting coins carefully with his feet, looking for more unusual treasure amid the coinage.
"Is this what we go through all the blood and battle for?" Jhessail said, coming up to him with her hands full of sparkling gems.
"Yes. Depressing, isn't it?" Lanseril replied from where he knelt with Narm beside Shandril. The onetime thief of the Company of the Bright Spear lay still and white, for all the world as if dead. Elminster