The City of Splendors_ A Waterdeep Novel - Ed Greenwood [157]
His gold-eyed foe also boasted things no elf had ever possessed: massive shoulders and faint silvery scales. The two bullyblades flanking him a respectful-cautious?-step behind looked human enough, but hardly more welcoming.
Oh, naed. Beldar gave them a bright smile and an airy wave-and spun around to sprint back to the hidden door.
He was through it in moments and racing back the way he'd come. There were crashings of shifting rubble under hurrying boots behind him.
Beldar half-ran and half-fell down the slippery stairs, shoulders and knees bouncing bruisingly off stone, and lurched to the waiting skull.
"Dathran," he gasped, scooping a handful of bloodstones onto the nose-ledge from his smaller purse, "I must consult with you- urgently!"
"So soon? Years steal memories and leave grayer men forgetting things and having to return. To see this in one so young and bold…"
Fortunately, the teeth-stones were moving during these mocking words. Beldar flung himself into the widening way and tumbled onto the rune-bedecked rugs of the witch's hearth-chamber. "Close the portal!"
The Dathran, imp alert on her shoulder, was staring past Beldar at his three onrushing pursuers.
"You bring these?" the crone snapped.
"Not by invitation," Beldar gasped. "I-"
As the three slayers dived into the room, rolling up into fighters' crouches, the Dathran calmly turned to touch a tapestry with a single murmured word. It promptly melted away into nothingness, revealing a shelf of human skulls.
Beldar snatched off his eyepatch and backed away as the three slayers advanced menacingly. The half-dragon thrust one of its swords through a belt loop and fumbled something small out of a belt-pouch, reaching back as if to slap it against the skull-wall.
The Dathran turned a cold smile upon the half-wyrm and folded her arms across her breast. Three skulls soared off the shelf behind her and raced across the room at the intruders. Flinching back, the dragonblood threw whatever it held at them.
Beldar dropped to the ground just before three bright, ear-splitting blasts rocked the room and flung him upright again, stumbling unsteadily amid swirling dust.
There were hoarse shouts of pain, a shriek, and the imp's shrill laughter. Then warmer light was blossoming somewhere in front of him, as the Dathran called, "Follow the light, Lord Roaringhorn. That way lies your safety. Go!"
Beldar staggered forward into fresh dustfalls, small stones stinging him as they plunged and bounced all around. He could see nothing but glowing dust, tapestries, and… a door.
Opening it, he stepped into quieter, damper darkness, and the faint privy-reek and stronger mold-stench that proclaimed "sewer" to any Waterdhavian.
An eerie chiming rose behind him, and with it came a blue-green radiance that swirled, clung to Beldar numbingly, and thrust him forward in a fell tide, shoving him along dark stone walls.
It released him suddenly, retreating to hang in a singing, seething cloud. Beldar whirled around to behold a blue-greenmist that seemed studded with half-seen, gently drifting spikes and chains. A narrow face began to form in its roilings.
The half-dragon. Beldar drew his sword and thrust hard between those golden eyes, hoping to slay the dragonblood before it could fully regain solidity.
Frigid pain slammed up his arm into his chest, so sharp and searing that he fell. Beldar rolled away, fighting for breath-gods, the cold!-but his collapse had thankfully torn him free of the killing frost.
The strange mist drifted nearer. Floating in the glowing blue-green haze were three skulls, empty eyesockets glimmering in warning as their bony jaws moved in unison, and the Dathran's voice hissed, "Go fight your battles elsewhere, Lord Roaringhorn. When next you come, come alone!"
Beldar groaned at his own stupidity. No attack by the half-dragon, this, but one of the Dathran's wardspells.
He staggered to his feet and stumbled away into deeper darkness. Fumbling