The Temptation of Elminster - Ed Greenwood [68]
Behind him, the door of the spell chamber split from top to bottom, shrieking its protest as more than a dozen claws literally tore it apart, tossing down the splinters to reveal an open, empty door frame.
Something that glowed with a pale, wavering ghostliness stood at the head of the stair…something large, menacing, and yet uncertain. A thing of claws and ever-shifting jaws and tentacles and cruelly barbed mandibles. A thing of menace and death, now advancing leisurely into the spell chamber at an almost gloating, slow pace.
Yintras Bedelmrin watched death come for him, floating over wards that would have seared limbs at a touch, and swallowed, trembling.
Lightning leaped within him, as if in reminder, and suddenly Yintras threw back his head, drew in a deep breath and spoke as loudly and as imperiously as he could. "I am armored by Azuth himself, and need fear no entity. Begone, whatever you are. Go from here, forever!"
The old wizard took a step toward the thing of claws, lightning still leaping from arm to arm. Ghostly radiance rose up in a menacing wall of claws and reaching tentacles…but even as it did so, it was flickering, trembling, and darkening. Holes were opening in its overreaching sub-stance, holes that grew with it.
With horrifying speed it expanded to loom almost to the ceiling, towering over the old man in the many-patched robes. Yintras stood watching it, not knowing what to do and so doing nothing.
A fatal creed for an adventurer, and no better for wizards. He quailed, inwardly, knowing death could come in moments, horrified that he might embrace it when he could have escaped it…just by doing the right thing, or something.
Claws snatched at him in a horrible mass lunge that left him entirely unaware that a tentacle that had grown savage barbs and long-fanged jaws was snaking around through the darkness to stab at him from behind and below.
Lightning cracked, raged white-hot in the air of the spell chamber and was gone again, leaving…when his streaming eyes could see again…a feebly flickering gray mist cringing and writhing in the air by the door.
Yintras drew in a deep breath and did one of the bravest and most foolish things in his life thus far. He took a step toward the mist, chuckled, then took another step, raising his arms despite the lack of lightning or any feeling of surging or lurking power.
The mist gathered itself as if to do battle with him, rising and thickening into a small but solid mass, like a ready-raised shield trailing away into formlessness. The old wizard took another step, and the strange mist seemed to tremble.
He stretched forth a hand as if to grasp it. In a sudden wash of frigid air and a chiming of tiny, bell-like sounds, the mist broke into a swirling stream and was gone out the door in a flash, leaving only a mournful snarl in its wake.
Yintras watched it go and stared at the emptiness where it had been for a long anxious time. When at last he believed that it was truly gone, he went to his knees again to speak his thanks. All that came out were sobs, in a quickening rush that he found himself powerless to stop.
He crept forward in the darkness on knees and fingertips, trying to at least shape Azuth's name. Then he froze in surprise and awe. Where his tears had fallen, candle after candle was springing to life by itself, in a silently growing string of dancing warmth.
"Azuth," he managed to whisper at last. "My thanks!"
All of the candles went out in unison, then flared into life again. Yintras knelt in their midst, touched by glory and grateful for it. Sadness laced the edges of his bright delight too, and beneath all, he felt empty, utterly drained. He touched the smudged chalk that had once been the outline of a pointing hand and started to cry like a child.
Eight: The Sundered Throne
A throne is a prize that petty and cruel folk most often fight over. Yet, on bright mornings, 'tis but a chair.