Stormlight - Ed Greenwood [93]
Something touched him. He dived away frantically, burying his face in sharp stones. Another touch, and another-tentacles! He rolled away, kicking at their rubbery, ropelike strength, fighting to get free. Bleeding fingers clawed for something to hurl at that cold, close laughter.
"Pitiful fool," the scornful voice of Pheirauze Summerstar said from above him. "I'll have your spells before you can waste any more of them. Farewell, Broglan Sarmyn, oh-so-capable leader of the Sevensash"
Tentacles came down like clubs upon his wrists, and ankles-and throat. Broglan bucked and wriggled, clawed frantically at the stones beneath him, and cried out for help.
All that came out was a hoarse rattle-but his fingers found something long, and cold, and hard. A poker? A mace-haft? He swept it up and thrust it desperately at a dark face above him-a dim face that was two red eyes and a gleaming, grinning mouth.
His improvised weapon seemed to have an eye of its own: a huge orb that winked at him knowingly as he thrust it out. Then its red eyes became two flames, and the flames lashed out.
As the real pain began, Broglan used the last breath in him to call on Mystra to claim his soul. He hoped she would hear him in time.
Sixteen
TO AWAKEN A DRAGON
Flames seared Broglan Sarmyn like two needles driven into his eyes. All he could do was stare, unable even to blink. A whirling chaos of lights and sounds and flashing images rushed toward him.
The cold, cruel laughter of the foe laced every contorted image in the confused cacophony of shouts and cries and gasped words of agony and passion. The wizard could do nothing, nothing at all, as his thoughts, dreams, and memories were dragged away. In a another roiling moment, he would be gone, swept back into the stream of chaos and out of his own skull…
“Storm,” he struggled to say, with his last breath, “I have love to love and respect you-Mystra, please tell her thisss…”
The stream sucked him down, past the place where he could speak and think and cling to anything he knew and loved.
Suddenly, though, its quickening rush stopped, eddying in confusion-broken by the calm, lazily blinking scrutiny of a dark eye as large as all the world. An eye that slid across to block the stream.
The stream struck that eye and rebounded, something that could not happen, a raging voice within Broglan shouted. From somewhere nearby, the foe screamed.
The scream was long and raw and wild. It trailed off into howls of forlorn loss and agony, that in turn became wild giggling and sudden yips and barks and cries. This insane gibbering burst into screams once, more when amber light flared into a sudden halo of flames around the dark eye, and a voice that echoed and re-echoed through the wizard's mind spoke.
AT LAST I AM AWAKE AGAIN. YOU HAVE MY THANKS, MAGE, FOR FREEING ME-EVEN IF YOU DO SERVE THE ACCURSED ONE.
The Accursed One?" Broglan asked before fear told him silence might have been safer. Might.
SHE WHO IMPRISONED ME!
Mystra? Broglan gulped, and asked the question he had to: "Who are you?"
The eye seemed to twinkle as a laughter so deep that it hurt the ears boomed and rolled. DO YOU NOT KNOW ME?
Broglan had no defense but the truth. "N-No," he whispered.
THEN KNOW ME YOU SHALL!
The amber flames around the great eye suddenly flared to a blinding white radiance, and stabbed into Broglan far more keenly than the stream of chaos had done. This time, there would be no escape.
*****
Storm turned toward the flash of white light. "What's that?" she murmured aloud. Elder magic, to be sure. Something of great power had just been awakened, back in the shattered heart of the Haunted Tower.
She broke into a run. She had to be there.
The stone hurled from above struck her so hard that she saw only dazzling golden sparks. Storm knew she fell sideways, but thought that she kept running-or at least her legs kept moving…
When the sparks faded, she found she was lying on her side, and Shayna Summerstar was leaping down from a ledge