The City of Splendors_ A Waterdeep Novel - Ed Greenwood [89]
Was reeling, suddenly, clutching at his head with both hands and screaming.
As the apprentices stared at him in rising terror, Khelben swayed as the lines of force plunged into him, converging with terrifying speed.
There was a soundless crash that rocked the room, rippling waves of magic raced out past their ankles to slam into the wall and strike clattering shards of stone free… and the great spellweb was gone, leaving only a faint, fitful glow around the rigidly upright body of the Lord Mage of Waterdeep, whose eyes were wide, staring wildly and unseeingly in different directions and whose mouth was slack and drooling, even before he started to topple.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
"Tammert!" the wild-eyed apprentice sobbed, long hair still crackling about her shoulders in the swirling chaos of magic that was eddying around them like so many tugging waves of sparks. "Is he dead?"
Tammert Landral had once, several rooms below this one, tried to put a sword through Qilue of the Chosen and been scorched by silver fire for his pains-and he was the closest of them all to the fallen Lord Mage of Waterdeep. He swallowed, stretched out a hand that he snatched back hurriedly when magic rose up from the Blackstaff's apparently intact body to shock into him with a burning, menacing snarl, and replied, "I-I don't think so. Get Maresta! And Araeralee! Hurry!"
The apprentices of Blackstaff Tower being what they were, his order would have ordinarily evoked not obedience but a flurry of dispute and loftily offered opinions, but just now almost everyone in the room wanted desperately to be somewhere else. Aside from Tammert and Callashantra, who stood uncertainly right where she'd been when she'd shouted to him, the room emptied in a few frantic moments.
While Tammert hoped desperately that Maresta Rhanbuck, motherly whirlwind that she was, and Araeralee Summerstar, of whom the Lady Laeral was so fond, would know what to do.
"Mother Mystra, guide us," he prayed fervently, going to his knees and sacrificing a spell from his mind to make his prayer flame up and hopefully be heard. "Oh, that Laeral was here!"
However, it was the impish and beautiful little seductress Jalarra who next appeared in a doorway, to say brightly, "Everyone just came tearing past me like all the devils in the Nine Hells have come visiting! What'm I missing? I-oh."
Eyes going very wide, she stopped, feeling the magic still roiling around the room wash over her, and peered across its fading, flickering glows at the sprawled body of Khelben Arunsun.
"What happened? Is he-?"
"I don't know," Tammert told her grimly, not turning to take his eyes off the fallen archmage for a moment. "Go get Maresta, will you?"
Surprisingly, Jalarra whirled around to do just that-and let out a little shriek of alarm as Maresta and Araeralee almost flattened her in their own hasty arrivals.
"We've sent a calling-spell to the Lady Laeral," Maresta panted, looking more flustered than any of them had ever seen her before, "and we can only hope-"
There was a soundless flash, and the room suddenly held one more person. Jalarra shrieked again.
"Have we trained you that badly?" the Lady Mage of Waterdeep demanded, from where she stood towering over Tammert. "That 'hope' is the only thing you can think of to do?"
She whirled around, saw Khelben, and hurled herself at him. Tammert almost gratefully flung himself out of the way.
The apprentices watched Laeral crawl atop the Blackstaff, eyes closing as if she was trying to feel something. Then she turned her head, gave them a grim nod, and announced, "Backlash-and a bad one."
The apprentices kept silent, not knowing what to say.
"Maresta," Laeral added briskly, "you're in charge. Waterdeep must believe the Lord Arunsun is still here and at work. All of you: if anyone asks, we're both here but we're busy, right? If anyone gets insistent, tell them we're busy with Mystra."
There was another soundless flash, and all of the glowing, swirling magic in the room was gone. The stones where the Lord and Lady Mages of Waterdeep had