The Temptation of Elminster - Ed Greenwood [4]
"Hurry!" she bellowed, drawing in enough dust to make her next words a croak. "Hurry… or die!"
A glow suddenly encircled one eye, then another… and burst into beams of golden light that stabbed out through the dust, parting it like smoke, to scorch the heels of hurrying Folossan and the wall beside Iyriklaunavan. Amandarn darted past Nuressa, stinking of fear, and the warrior woman pressed herself against the wall so as not to block the passage of her other two desperately hurrying companions. The elf then the dwarf clattered past, cursing in continuous babblings, but Nuressa kept her eyes on the pillars. Four columns of awake and alert eyes were peering her way now, radiances growing around many of them.
"Gods," she gasped, in utter terror. Oh let them be fixed here, unable to follow…
A ruby beam of light from one eye stabbed at Nuressa and she ducked away, sparks erupting along the edge of her war sword. Sudden heat seared her palm. As a dozen golden beams lanced through the dust at her, she threw the blade over her head, back behind her out of the chamber. She wheeled in the same motion to flee headlong after it, diving for safety as something burst near her left ear with a sound like rolling thunder. Stones began to fall in a hard and heavy rain.
It feels odd, to stand on air, neither solid like stone, nor the slight yielding of turf under one's boots. In dry and dusty darkness… where by Mystra's sweet kisses was he?
Memory flowed around him like a river, cloaking him against madness for so long that it would not answer his bidding now. There was a tingling in his limbs. Great power had struck him, forcefully, only moments ago. A spell must have been hurled his way… so a foe must be near.
His eyes, so long dry and frozen in place, would not turn in their sockets, so he had to turn his head. His neck proved to be stiff and set in its pose, so he turned his shoulders, wheeling his whole body, as the walls drifted slowly past, and dust fell away from him in wisps and ropes and huge clods.
The walls drifting… he was sinking, settling down through the air, released from… what?
Something had trapped him here, despite his clever walking on air to avoid traps and guardian spells. Something had seized on the magic holding him aloft and gripped it as if in manacles, holding him immobile in the darkness.
A very long time must have passed.
Yet something had shattered the spell trap, awakening him. He wasn't alone, and he was descending whether he wanted to or not, heading toward… what?
He strained to see and found eyes looking back at him from all sides. Malevolent eyes, set in columns of pale eyestalks that danced and swayed with slow grace as they followed his fall, radiances growing around them.
Some strange sort of beholder? No, some of the stalks were darker, or stouter, or larger all around than others… these were beholder eyestalks, all right, but they'd come from many different beholders. Those radiances, of course, could only mean him harm.
He still felt oddly… detached. Not real, not here, but still afloat in the rush of memories that named him… Elminster, the Chosen One…or at least a Chosen… of Mystra, the dark-eyed lady of all magic. Ah, the warmth and sheer power of the silver fire that flowed through her and out of her, pouring from her mouth, locked onto his, to snarl and sear and burn its agonizing, exhilarating way through every inch of him, leaking out nose and ears and his very fingertips.
Light flared and flashed, and Elminster felt new agony. His dry throat struggled to roar, his hands clawed uncontrollably at the air, and his guts seemed afire and yet light and free.
He looked down and found silver fire raging and sputtering around him, spilling restlessly out of his stomach along with something pale, bloody, and ropy that must be his own innards. Fresh fire flashed, and a searing pain and sizzle marked the loss of his hair and the tip of an ear along the right side of his head.
Anger seized him, and without thinking Elminster lashed out, raking the air with silver fire