Elminster in Hell

keep this ability a secret from all until she'd mastered something more to go with it. She had done so.

Barely ten days ago, under the master wizard's kin tutelage, Alustriel had managed to make a great blue spark snap from one of her fingers to a metal coin set on a table several paces distant. She'd felt only a tingling, no pain… but she could make a spark appear only when she was excited or frightened or upset. Its creation] always left her shaking and drenched with sweat. Great magic, aye.

Yet it was all she had. Alustriel turned in the darkness and strode into the little room where she kept her spell components-harmless ingredients for this or that. A sudden instinct made her hand close on a certain vial of iron filings and slip it into the hidden pockets in her skirts. Perhaps she could blind Irlar with it. She could not make herself pick up the tiny, bejeweled dagger that she knew lay on the table near the vials. He would only slash her face with it-or toss it laughingly aside.

There was a sudden scraping sound at the door of the other chamber. Irlar had come for her.

Irlar was a servant of Bane. He had a tiny brand under a ring that he turned around and around on his finger. Irlar meant to take her to a temple tonight, to forswear Mystra for Bane and quench any magic she might have forever. No doubt, he would also force his love on her at the dark altar, to claim any child she might bear for the dark god….

A sudden shiver shook her so much that' her teeth chattered. Alustriel bit her lip, stilled her quaking limbs, and forced herself to move calmly and silently into the main chamber… to meet her doom. Her uncle might never be proud of her, but she would not see him dismiss her as a light-headed wench, a nothing. She heard a gentle sighing sound, and knew it for an unseen blade cutting the bell rope so she couldn't summon aid or rouse the house.

She made her face as dignified as she could and looked to the door. She deliberately unhooded the tiny oil lamp before her on the stone window-table. The sudden light caught him sliding home the flimsy door bolt of brass filigree. His look of alert surprise rose into a smile as he saw that she was alone.

'Well met,' he said with gentle sarcasm, 'my Alustriel.' He stared at her eagerly, hungry for a reaction. Waiting to feel her fear.

Panic and nausea rose together within her. Alustriel looked back at him, keeping her face calm. She dared not speak; she trusted neither tongue nor voice to be steady and loyal. Irlar grinned at her indecision and advanced, I

'Come, now,' he asked, 'is my offer of marriage such a hated thing? Or a matter so trifling that it wakes no' spirit in you at all?' At that, Alustriel smiled, though inside she felt more like weeping. It was meant to be an unsettling, catlike smile, but it wavered. He grinned, not wary at all. Why should he be?

She was helpless, and they both knew it. Slowly she hooded the lamp, plunging the room into darkness as she gathered control of herself. Again.

'Welcome, my lord,' Alustriel managed, finding her voice at last in the polite phrases of her childhood training.

'I hoped I would be,' he answered triumphantly. With a sudden stride he reached her, putting his arms around her. He kissed her fiercely. His lips were those of a proud conqueror.

Alustriel fell back a step. He advanced, keeping their bodies tightly pressed together. Her rising anger made Alustriel's heart and breath quicken. Irlar took this for excitement, and his hands began to move. Boldly, to her hip and breast, pushing her back.

She retreated toward her high-canopied bed. Furious resolve made her breath shudder and misled him into renewed boldness. Onto the sleeping furs he bore her. Eyes closed, lips glued to his, Alustriel concentrated with infinite care on her harp spell. It had to sound just right.

There. He stiffened atop her as he heard it. Far away it sounded, and muffled, as if in another room. Slowly it grew louder. Alustriel held Irlar to her with feigned caresses and bent her will with achingly careful precision. The unseen harpist was coming nearer.

Irlar pulled his lips from hers and gripped her arms with bruising force.

'What-who's that?' he hissed, shaking her.

'My uncle,' she whispered with false urgency. 'In the secret passage! On his way here; he only plays so when he comes to speak with me!'

With an oath Irlar rolled off her, drawing his dagger. Alustriel seized her chance, heart pounding. In her skirts, her fingers found the vial and uncorked it.

Irlar turned his head and hissed, 'Where?' at her commandingly, to learn where the nonexistent passage was.

She flung the contents of the vial into his face. She stabbed a finger at his eyes, gathering her will with that peculiar surge she always felt-and there was a snap. A blue spark leaped into Mar's eyes, crackling for an instant among the filings there.

Irlar roared, clutching at his eyes.

She felt his dagger swing around, missing her in the darkness as she Hung herself back and away, rolling along the edge of her bed. As always, casting the cantrip left her weak and trembling. She found her feet and fled unsteadily across her dark bedchamber, hampered by her skirts, trying to keep ahead of his reaching blade.

Cursing, Irlar came after her. He slashed wildly with the dagger, still blind but heading straight for the passage door. She'd have no time to throw the bolt and escape from her rooms. She whirled around her unseen guest table, bending her will again to the harping, bringing it louder and nearer.

Irlar followed. His cursing sounded scared now, more than angry.

Alustriel breathed a prayer to Tyche as she bumped her shins into her little side table, stumbled, and caught herself on it with both hands. She swept it up desperately, spilling a mint-water decanter and two drinking horns to the floor. She held it like a shield.

Irlar charged toward the noise, slashing wildly. He slipped on one of the horns and flung his arms up to hold his balance.

Alustriel stepped forward to bring all her weight to bear, as she'd seen her uncle's axe men do, and brought the little table down as hard as she could on the hand that held the dagger.

Irlar screamed on the heels of the sickening crack. The dagger rang off the glass decanter somewhere underfoot.

He lunged upon her, grabbing at the table with his good hand. She held to it, but he jerked impatiently, tore it from her grasp, and flung it away. It crashed against the far wall.

Alustriel dodged away again, desperate now.

'Bitch!' Irlar hissed at her savagely. 'I'll kill you for that!'

She knew his words for simple truth. His thoughts of abduction on horseback to a temple of Bane were gone. Nothing less than her blood would satisfy him now. He crashed into another table, toppling statuettes and jars, but did not upset it and stopped, holding to it to steady himself. Alustriel heard a jar roll across it with almost lazy slowness-before it toppled over the edge to the floor.

Then she was pulling at die bolt of her chamber door with all her strength. It squealed, and he roared at the sound. Some instinct made Alustriel duck away. An instant later a perfume bottle crashed into shards against the wall just above her head, showering her with glass and a stinging mist. Then came another and another. In her hampering skirts, she scuttled sideways seeking a weapon… or a refuge against his murderous fury… and knowing she would find neither.

A rushing, whistling sound in the darkness told with cold certainty that Irlar had found her riding whip.

She had to get out of these long skirts! With shaking fingers, she unlaced and tore at the garment, crouching low and biting her lip.

Irlar panted and thrashed the darkness furiously with the whip, seeking her.

Nearer he came, and nearer. Alustriel rolled out of her skirts at last. He heard her and charged with an exultant roar. She twisted on the floor and brought the cloth up before her in both hands, as a shield. The whip cut into them with a sharp crack, and one of her arms burned with sudden, stinging fire.

The whip came down again-and again and again, in a rain of blows too wild and rage-driven to be precise. Alustriel rolled and crawled and writhed on her luxuriant rugs, but could not elude him. When she got the edge of a table between her and the whip, Irlar kicked her savagely in the face and breast until she was out from under the table's shelter-and pressed on with his whipping, grunting with the effort of his stroke.

Alustriel sobbed as she made for the table. This time the whip missed her. She crouched motionless in the dark, gathered her tattered will, and bent it to her task.