The Temptation of Elminster - Ed Greenwood [9]
The last two she-fiends soared up into the air to gain height enough to dive back down on this unexpectedly tough pair of humans, and Ardelnar snatched a quick glance back at the overgrown, ruined towers of Myth Drannor. More fiends were coming. Barbazu and barb-covered hamatula, far too many to outfight or outrun, loped along with tails lashing and blood-hunger in their faces. This fern-covered ground would be his grave.
"Tempus, let this last battle be to your glory!" he cried aloud, holding up his bloodied hammer. "Make me worthy of your service, swift in my striking, alert in my fighting, agile and deft!"
One of the erinyes tapped his hammer aside with her dagger, and leaned in to snicker as she swooped past his ear, "My, my…anything else?"
Her voice was low, and lush, full of lusty promise. Its mockery enraged Ardelnar more than anything else ever had in all his life. He bounded after her, almost leaving himself open to easy slaughter at the hands of the other erinyes, but instead she became the first victim of Klargathan's spell.
Black, slimy coils of what looked like a giant serpent or eel erupted from the ferns not far away, spiraling upward with incredible speed. Now they seemed more like taproots, or the boughs of a tree sprouting from nothing to full vigor in mere seconds.
One bough encircled the throat of the erinyes as she turned leisurely to slice at Ardelnar, and another looped about her ankle. The force of her frantic wing beats swung her around to where the black tree was already entwined around both of the previously grounded erinyes. Their bodies were visibly shriveling, sucked dry of blood and innards with the same unnerving speed as everything else this spell-tree did.
Still trying to fly, the snared she-fiend crashed into a tangle of thickening trunks. Her head was driven off, dangling to one side, and thereafter she moved no more.
"By the Lord of Battles, what a spell!" Ardelnar gasped, watching tendrils swarm over the body of the erinyes with that same lightning speed. More were waving in the air above them, encircling the fourth she-fiend. Despite her frightened, wildly slashing struggles, the tendrils caught at her wings, pulled, and slowly dragged her down. The priest of Tempus laughed and waved his hammer at the mage in salute.
Klargathan gave him a lopsided grin. "It won't be enough," he said sadly, "and I haven't another like that. We're going to die for the sake of a few gems and elven gewgaws."
The running fiends were almost upon them now. Ardelnar turned to flee, but the southerner shook his head. "I'm not running," he said. "At least my tree keeps them from taking us from the rear."
A sudden hope lit his features and he added, "Have you any sapphires?"
Ardelnar tore open his pouch and emptied it into the mage's hand. "There must be a dozen there," he said eagerly, no longer caring a whit when Klargathan raked through them and dumped everything that wasn't a sapphire onto the ground.
The southerner swept one arm around the priest and hugged him fiercely. "We're still going to die here," he said, bestowing a firm kiss on the startled priest's lips, "but at least we'll turn a few fiends to smoking bones around us." He grinned at Ardelnar's expression, and added, "The kiss is for my wife, tell Tempus to deliver it to her for me, if you've time left for another prayer. Hold them off again, please."
He crouched down without another word, and Ardelnar hefted his warhammer in one hand and unhooked