Stormlight - Ed Greenwood [31]
Those talons were like smoke. The startled wizard’s face shone through them as he stammered out a spell.
At the same moment, Storm felt a terrible cold slice through her from behind. A man’s voice by her shoulder hissed, “Stop, it, witch! End your spell, or my next thrust will be through your heart!”
The bard looked down at the blue flickering that was shaping a point below her right breast. “A spellblade. Murndal Claeron-it is Murndal, is it nor?-do you know the price of wilding the weapon you have so boldly used?”
The war wizards had all turned to face her by then, their hands up to hurl spells. The boldshield had his blade half out. Following his lead, the armsmen reached around to put daggers to the throats of the mages. Everyone watched in frozen, wary silence as Storm turned to face the mage who'd struck her from behind.
Murndal made a frightened sound and tried to slash the spellblade sideways, to reach her heart. Storm stepped easily away from it, so that it sliced its way right out through her ribs instead. Spinning gracefully around, she touched it once, and the wizard was suddenly holding nothing but a few blue sparks that tuckered and drifted from his hand.
"Let us have peace," she told her attacker then, towering over him.
Murndal of the war wizards cowered away from her, his mouth dry and his fingers cold with fear.
Silver fire was swirling around the wound in her side, and curling out from between her lips as she spoke. Her eyes were suddenly two pools of soaring silver flames, and Murndal could not help screaming as she took him by the arms. He felt the crackle and surge of powers he could only guess at.
Storm said gently, "I've worked no spell, ambitious one… and I can see that the crafting of that weapons was beyond you, too."
She let go of the trembling mage and turned again. "Broglan! Mind your manners!" she snapped "Spellblades? The backlash could have killed this young mageling of yours-and a dozen more folk, if he'd dragged it out at the wrong moment! What were you thinking of?"
Broglan stared at her, naked fear on his face. He licked his lips. The haunting that had startled him and scared Murndal into attack was gone, scattered by hit hasty spell. Now Storm Silverhand, every inch a Chosen of Mystra, with the divine silver fire of legend curling out of her very eyeballs, was staring angrily at him.
"Y-Your power, and how we might stop it," he whispered, unable to think of anything to say but the truth.
She sighed, and tossed her head. Already the wound in her side was smaller, and the terrible silver radiance was blazing and flowing along it, fading away from her face. "Well, at least I'm hearing some honest words from you," she said calmly. "Do you think you could open the crypt now, and forget such nonsense as this for a while?"
Broglan stared openmouthed at her, and then turned to the crypt doors. The shaken war wizard took a deep breath and bowed his head for a moment. He raised his hand, murmured something, and touched the line of wax marked by the three runes that the Harvestmaster of Chauntea had impressed on it. A small fire blazed up around his fingers. At first green-white, it became a deep and restless red and raced along the wax..
When it had traced around both of the doors, it died away. Broglan drew in another deep breath, stepped back, and indicated the unsealed doors.
“Open them, and lead the way in,” the boldshield ordered him.
The war wizard shook his head. “The haunting-there could be-“
Ergluth gave him a look of cold disgust. “Wizard,” he growled, “go in, and take that lantern from yon armsman with you-or I’ll soon be telling Vangerdahast that the leader of his Sevensahs investigative team had the great misfortune to fall onto my sword while we were exploring the haunted Summerstar family crypt.”
Broglan gulped. "Y-Yes, Sir Boldshield," he said, and did as he'd been ordered.
The lantern bobbed away reluctantly into a large and eerie chamber, its walls broken by many niches containing atone coffins. Several larger