weapon. Even her feet were bare on the grass of the courtyard.
'Aglarond bids you welcome,' she said with a smile that held sly amusement. Her hair was a fall of white splendor, but her eyes were dark mysteries. 'All who would be our true friends are welcome here.'
Behind the gold-bedecked, many-ringed Mouth, in his gold-woven garments and spade beard, the other envoys and factors regarded her in silence. Some trembled openly. Others clenched white hands on weapons or talismans. Not a few were drenched with sweat.
She gave them all a warm, almost motherly smile and turned to lead them up the last bends of the path. Gracious and regal she seemed, more a ruler than an apprentice. Only a few stray motes of light, drifting like restless stars in her wake, revealed the might of her risen Art-a spell shield that would turn any treachery striking at her back. Not a man present thought that those little stars were visible by accident. Twas said that leaves did not dare drop in Aglarond without the Simbul's expressly granted will.
The path wound amid pools of lily pads. Tiny bright fish called sunsilver leaped to snatch gnats from the air. The trail led up across shaded garden slopes to a side entrance of the palace. Warmed by the Simbul's smile as she ushered them across the threshold, the embassy filed within. The seneschal stepped into their wake-and casually blasted certain of the men ahead of her to ash with a bright arc of ravening spells.
The untouched survivors screamed.
Behind a nearby tree, Elminster snarled a soft incantation. It spun an image of himself and set it in midair outside the door.
'Murderess!' he snapped. 'Turn and behold thy doom! Thy slaughter has gone on long enough! I challenge thee!'
The bright silver lance of the spell that would have blasted him, had he been a living man, lashed out even before she spun around, eyes flashing. 'Begone, minion of Thay.'
'I am no friend to Thay,' the bearded, floating man in black told her.
'If you do their work, you are a Thayan to me. All enemies of Aglarond are Thayans at heart, whatever allegiance they profess,' she snapped back.
Elminster raised an eyebrow. 'Come forth and fight,' he said softly, 'Slayer-from-behind,'
'I invited possible spies and vipers into this, the palace of the great queen,' the Simbul replied, darting a look behind her at coughing, staggering men. Lost in the smoke of her spells, they were blindly swinging swords. 'They are thus my responsibility. I choose when and where to fight, man-and have no interest in petty duels. Get you gone.'
Elminster gave her a crooked smile in reply. He turned, eyes never leaving hers, and aimed his arm like crossbow. Bright bolts lashed out from his fingers. A palace turret flew apart and collapsed into the gardens with a roar.
That made her mouth gape open. His smile tightening, Elminster lifted his other hand and toppled a slender trio of spires.
Eyes blazing, the Simbul raised both hands over her head. From linked fingers, she smote him with a hungry flood of lightning.
The titanic bolt roared forth, shredding his spell-spun image in an instant. It bounced and screamed its way through the gardens and out of sight, quite drowning out Elminster's brief gasp of pain as he shuddered behind his tree.
'Ha!' the Simbul cried in triumph.
In reply, the turret beside the doorway where she stood blazed from top to bottom with sudden ruby flames- slumped into a hot river of rock.
'Fight me, or lose your palace,' a door gong beside her explained calmly. With a shriek of rage the Simbul turned and blasted it.
Another turret crashed down, and a sentry's helm rolled out of its ruin past the Simbul's feet. 'Oh, is this a race to bury Ilione's throne?' it asked.
The Simbul's eyes burst into flames. Her hair writhed around her in a tempest as she rose into the air, arms as swift as speeding arrows. 'Reveal my foe!' she howled. The air around her crackled with gathered power.
Abruptly the sky filled with curving trails of force, a great web of crisscrossing paths… and
The Simbul hurled tears of death at him, a magic whose slowly descending curtains of force would block any translocation. She snapped the word that would bring her girdle of scepters from her chambers to her.
Even as she buckled it around her waist, bright blades of force sheared away her deadly curtains, sending their energies spinning through the air. One whirling fragment became a snarling ball of flame and crashed among cottages downhill. It shook the ground, and fires rose there with greedy speed.
The Simbul turned from that destruction and tearfully screamed out her rage. Two of her scepters tore open the ground under her foe's feet, spilling him end over end clown the garden.
Few wizards would have dared to use both of those wands together. The magic snarling out of them seared the Simbul's hands. Rampant energy clawed its way up and down her body, almost choking her. She bounded barefoot forward through the air and screamed, 'Take this fray elsewhere, man, or so help me, I'll bind us together with spells and hurl myself into the heart of Waterdeep- or an inner chamber of Candlekeep!'
Needles of force that were curling around her like gigantic pincers slowed to a stop. Her challenger's voice came back to her: 'Where, then?'
'Crommor's Fang,' she spat. 'Know it?'
'See ye there, murderess,' came the level reply-an instant before bolts of force raced down to strike her mantle. The Simbul's world became a deafening inferno of numbing, dancing white fire.
A few familiar words snatched her out of raging doom and hurled her across half the Sea of Fallen Stars to the Fang. She was wont to hurl her wildest magics on it, or lie alone on its rocky height to look up at the stars. This time the Simbul was not kissed by the cool breezes of sunset, but rather muffled, warmed, and slowed in the heart of a bright, shimmering dome of magic.
Mystra, but this man was fast! A dueling ward of old Myth Drannor! She'd seen only one other, and that-
The ground beneath her grew stabbing spears of stone. They thrust up in energetic, many-pointed fury. The Simbul snarled an incantation that would turn them back on their source. One of two of the dissolving razors laid open her legs. She fell hard on unforgiving stone amid ribbons of her own blood.
The stones rocked under her with the fury of a distant explosion. Her challenger had no greater like for his spears than she did. The Simbul smiled grimly and used her trickling blood in a spell that snatched her across the Fang to where another human was bleeding. As the world whirled, she thumbed a locket at her belt and broke a tiny crystal therein.
Magic thrummed like a releasing bow. It rushed out around her, spinning a cage. Nose to nose in its crackling heart-a place where no spells could kindle-the Sirnbul and her challenger stared at each other. Her magic had happened to capture one of the few trees on the Fang, and its thorny branches groaned as Hie cage tightened around them. The air would be full of hard-driven splinters in a moment-
A scepter became a knife in her hand and thrust up at his ribs. It bit home. Her hawk-nosed, bearded foe kicked her hard in the crotch, hurling her upward. The knife trailed his blood through the air. Her hand struck a tree branch with numbing force and the knife tumbled away.
The man palmed it out of the air like a juggler. She bounced on the ground, losing her breath in a helpless groan. He pounced, crashing down atop her.
They rolled together. Her tightening magic sang around them. The Simbul saw the knife sweep back for the slash that would lay open her throat.
Desperately she flung up her hand to guard herself. Bright steel burst through it, the wet point jutting out of the back of her hand.
Mystra, such
Sobbing uncontrollably, the Simbul thrashed on the ground, seeking to hurl her foe off and away, so she could snatch the fang of her torment
