Dread Sister Klalaerla went to her knees immediately, holding forth her lash in both hands.
With leisurely tread the Darklady came around the inky waters and took it from her. The Overmistress immediately bowed forward to kiss the knife-blade toes of the Darklady's boots, holding her tongue against the cold, bloodstained metal until the lash came down across her own back.
It burned, despite the webwork of crossed lacings that were part of her own garb, but it was a mark of pride not to flinch or gasp, she held firm, waiting for the second blow that would mark her superior's displeasure, or the rain of cuts that meant Avroana's fury was aroused.
None came, and with a smooth motion that almost managed to conceal her relief, she straightened to a sitting position once more, for Avroana to put the lash to her lips. She kissed it, received it back, and relaxed. The ritual was satisfied.
'Your Darkness?' she asked, as was the custom.
'Klalaerla,' the Darklady said, almost urgently…her familiarity made the Overmistress stiffen with excitement…'I need you to do something for me. Despite Narlkond's assurances, those five Dreadspells are going to fail us. You must be the striking hand that rewards them for their misdeeds. If they betray the House of Holy Night, you must bring the justice of the House to them, whatever the danger to yourself. I demand it. The Flame of Darkness
'Gladly,' Klalaerla said, and meant it. To travel outside the House once more! To breathe the free winds of Faerun, out in the open, and see lands spread out before her once more! Oh, Avroana! 'Lady most kind,' she said, her voice trembling, 'what must I do?'
The noise smote their ears like a blow. Dust curled up, the ground shuddered and heaved beneath their boots, and here and there around the ruins slabs of stone whirled aloft, thrust into the air by geysers of rocketing vapor.
The five Dreadspells exchanged awed, delighted glances, the roaring of their unleashed magic swallowing their shouts of excited approval, and poured down death until Elryn slapped at their arms and waved the scepters in his hands…weapons he'd snatched from his belt after his staff sputtered out.
When he had their attention, the senior Dark Brother aimed the scepters at an angle toward the floor beside the shaft. If their fire burst through into the cavern below, it would burn an angled path reaching to where Elryn's spying spell had shown him the staggering Chosen, near a throne and a ring or half-ring of runes that could perhaps, just perhaps, be made to explode.
The destruction of a Chosen was, after all, their holy mission. As Femter, Vaelam, and Hrelgrath aimed their staves with undaunted enthusiasm, Elryn stepped back a pace or two and saw Daluth, on the far side of the group, doing the same. They exchanged mirthless smiles. If there was a backlash, someone had to survive to take word to the distant Darklady…or, if it raced along the linkage she used to spy on them all, to see what fate she suffered. Perhaps it would even be one that would let two false wizards go their separate ways in Faerun, so heavily laden with enchanted items that they could barely stand.
A more prudent time for such moondreams would come later…when they weren't standing in a haunted ruin near sunset, at the heart of a killing forest emptied of life, with a known Chosen and a madman who thought he was a god and the ghost of a sorceress locked in battle somewhere close by under their feet, hurling spells around and over old and powerful spell runes cut into the stone floor for some old and very important purpose.
The thunder of destructive magic roared on unabated as the junior Dreadspells laughed and exulted in the sheer rush of power under their command. Walls toppled, smashing wardrobes flat, as the floors that supported them melted away and tumbled into an ever-lengthening chasm. Trees all around groaned and creaked as the ground shifted.
Daluth kept his own wands trained straight down, at the self-styled Azuth and his companions. He'd seen the casual waves of a hand that had wrought what it took most archmages long and complicated rituals to achieve. God or avatar or boldly bluffing archmage, whatever it was must be destroyed.
Elryn aimed his scepters to Fire through the opened, dust-choked space in the wake of the three staves… which were now, one by one, shuddering to exhaustion, to be tossed aside in favor of Netherese scepters whose blasts were almost as potent. Chosen or not, no lone wizard could stand unscathed in the face of such destruction. Elryn snarled as a scepter crumbled to dust, and snatched forth another to replace it. No, there was no chance at all that a man could survive this. Why, then, was he so uneasy?
The end of the cavern vanished in tumbling stones and the flash and rock spray of spell-wrought explosions. Floor slabs bounced upward as a shock wave rolled through them, toppling the throne. More rocks broke away and fell from the ceiling, bouncing amid the roiling fury there, on his knees, a dazed Elminster watched through pain- blurred eyes as the collapse of the ceiling continued in a rough line heading toward him, chunks of stone larger than he was crashing down or being hurled aside in an endless roaring tide.
Someone or something aloft must be trying to slay him, or destroy the runes … not that he faced any dearth of foes nearer at hand.
Saeraede, who must have lied to him about everything except who put the runes here, was riding him like a mounted knight, her claws around his throat and searing his back with talons of icy iron. He knew before he tried that no amount of rolling or smashing himself into a wall could harm or dislodge her, how can one crush or scrape away a wisp of ghostly mist?
Move he must, though, or be buried or torn apart by the snarling, smoking bolts and beams of magic that were gnawing their way through earth and stone to reach him. El groaned and crawled a little way along heaving stones…until the runes of Karsus erupted into white-hot columns of flame, one by one. As they licked and seared the collapsing ceiling, magic played all around the cavern, purple lightning dancing and strange half-seen shapes and images forming and collapsing and forming again in an endless parade.
The last prince of Athalantar smashed his nose and shoulder into a floor-slab that was heaving upward to meet him, and rolled over with a gasp of pain and despair. As he clawed at the edges of the stone with bloody, feeble fingers, trying to drag himself upright again, the stone melted away into smoke and rending magic burst into him.
Ah, well, this is it … forgive me, Mystra.
But no agony followed, and nothing plucked at his flesh, to melt and sear and reave….
Instead, he was rolled over as if by the empty air, and glowing nothingness enclosed him in ropes of radiance. Dimly, through his tears and the roiling motes of light, Elminster saw magic rushing toward him from all sides, being drawn to him, veering in its dancing to race in.
Wild laughter rose around him, high and sharp and exultant. Saeraede! She was wrapped around him, clinging in a web of glowing mists that grew thicker and brighter as she gorged herself on magic, a ghost of bright sorcery.
Sunlight was stabbing down into the riven cavern, now, but the dancing dust cloaked everything in gloom… everything but the rising giant built around Elminster's feebly writhing form. The rune-flames were twisting in midair to flow into Saeraede, and she was rising ever higher, a thing of crackling flame. El strained to look up at her…and two dark flecks among the magical fire became eyes that looked back at him in cold triumph.. until a mouth swam out of the conflagration to join them and gave him a cruel smile.
'You're mine now, fool,' she whispered, in a hoarse hiss of fire, 'for the little while you'll last….'
'Lord Thessamel Arunder, the Lord of Spells,' the steward announced grandly, as the doors swung wide. A wizard strode slowly through them, a cold sneer upon his sharp features. He wore a high-collared robe of unadorned black that made his thin frame look like a tomb obelisk, and a shorter, more lushly built lady in a gown of forest green clung to his arm, her large brown eyes dancing with lively mischief.
'Goodsirs,' he began without courtesies, 'why come you here to me once more this day? How many times must you hear my refusal before the words sink through your skulls?'
'Well met, Lord Arunder,' said the merchant Phelbellow, in dry tones. 'The morning finds you well, I trust?'
Arunder gave him a withering glare. 'Spare me your toadying, rag seller. I'll
'Aye, I'll grant that,' one of the other merchants grunted. 'Can't see him looking like much in a good gown. No knees for it.'
'No hips, neither,' someone else added.
