Stormlight - Ed Greenwood [91]
"Mystra, be with me now," she breathed. She whirled around a landing and pounded up the next flight "If you like fun and folk making idiots of themselves with magic, you won't want to miss this!"
*****
“Something moved, I tell you!” the Purple Dragon snarled. He pointed with his sword. “Right-there!”
“Easy,” Insprin Turnstone said from behind him, raising his wand. “There’s naught but death to be gained from rushing off into the darkness hacking at things!”
“What do wizards know of real war?” the armsman spat over his shoulder. “Keep to what you know, mage, and-“
His words broke off in a sudden gurgle.
To the warrior at his other shoulder, Insprin said sharply, "Your torch! Quickly!"
They'd been cut off from the boldshield's rally by falling stones and spells that sent small, seeking balls of flame. We've not been cut off, but herded, Insprin thought bitterly. Now they were somewhere along the backstairs passage the servants called the Lower Run, well away from the Haunted Tower. The darkness around seemed a waiting, watching, menacing thing.
Now, as Insprin had feared, the darkness was beginning to grow tentacles. Playing with its prey.
The fluttering torchlight showed the black, glistening tentacle he'd expected. Purple Dragons shouted in disgust and rage all around the wizard and rushed at it, hacking and slashing.
And so, of course, they ran headlong into a waiting net of coiling arms, which fell on them from above. Insprin cursed, caught up a fallen torch, and threw it high and hard. It struck stone and spun away in a cloud of sparks, but it had shown him enough. The source of the tentacles was somewhere back there.
He aimed and fired his wand can fully-and was rewarded with a roar of pain. The armsmen suddenly bounced aloft in unison, kicking their boot heels, as the tentacles around their throats convulsed. One man slashed the tip of a tentacle. He fell, but scrambled up to stagger away. All the others came down atop him in a deadly rain of flesh, thudding against stone. The tentacles had made their victims into large, living flails to batter down the escaping man.
The Purple Dragons made wet, wordless sounds as their bodies were broken. Insprin cried out in his own revulsion and rage. He fired his wand-the tentacles quivered-and again. This time the tentacles withdrew, leaving a heap of blood-drenched, unmoving warriors behind. The war wizard backed away slowly, knowing he'd be next.
"Mystra watch over me now," he prayed aloud, "and grant that I die well."
Mystra was hard of hearing, it seemed. The next thing he knew was the smashing strike of a tentacle leaping out of the darkness to send him flying into the nearest pillar. He struck it hard, and staggered away, trying to dear his wits of red pain. The next blow stung his fingers like fire, and snatched his wand away.
He watched a burst of radiance that must have marked the breaking of his weapon, and drew himself up. This must be his time to 'die well.' So be it; he'd not go to the gods weeping or pleading. He strode away from the pillar to take a stance where the floor was free of rubble, corpses, and blood, and asked sternly, as his hands began the gestures of a silent spell, "Have you no mercy?"
"Hah! Mercy! Kindness! The pursuits of fools!" came a laughing reply out of the darkness. Its source advanced slowly to gloat: a man whose skin was the same dusty blue-gray as the night around him, but whose eyes gleamed like those of a great cat. He smiled as he grew a tentacle that slid forward.
Insprin's eyes narrowed. He was suddenly surrounded by a glowing ring of spheres, the fruit of his spell-spheres of winking, dancing sparks. One sped toward the tentacle and burst, clinging to it with bright motes that burned and melted away the dark flesh.
The tentacle quivered, but slid on through the air, its tip questing for the mage. Insprin backed away and began to hurl the other spheres in a frantic stream-only to see the tentacle wriggle deftly through his dweomer.
“Power is a better goal!” the foe told him in