Except for one, that had winked into life and risen off its cushion, glowing and pulsing as it spun slowly. As he beheld it, it chimed again.
Sarhthor glared at it. Then his eyes narrowed and he rose suddenly up out of his chair like a storm wind to snatch up his untidy belt of wands. Buckling it briskly around his waist, he strode across the room to firmly shove the errant crystal back down into place-it chimed again, and then went dark-turn, and wink out, leaving the room entirely empty of wizards.
Thus abandoned, the books all went to sleep again.
The floor of the cavern glowed with runes Eirhaun would never have been able to conceive of. He stared at them hungrily as the beholders-tiny monsters, none of them larger than his own head-rose from crafting them to hang in the air and gabble and hiss among themselves, glaring at him from time to time.
He knew how contemptuously the eye tyrants regarded humans in the Brotherhood-all humans, probably even Lord Manshoon himself. These “little manyeyes” were doubtless little different than dogs. The small, yapping sort were always the most aggressive. And the most insecure.
Yet Eirhaun hurried not at all. He’d been invited to work this magic with them so that he could learn, and he had no intention of their rushing things to a conclusion so they could later dismiss him as “deficient of wits” when he couldn’t work this spell himself under their coldly sneering scrutiny.
Ah, so that was how such power was leashed, and then twisted to achieve this rather than that. He nodded, trying to sear the runes into his memory, seeking that mental stillness inside himself wherein he could be certain of remembering all, and A chiming sounded within his head, startling him out of all concentration. No! Not now! Not when he was so close to The chiming rang again, loud and cheerful and insistent. Eirhaun clenched his teeth and growled out wordless anger, trying once more to frame the spell.
Abruptly he became aware that a beholder was hanging in the air right in front of him, glaring at him with its central body-eye. “Go,” it hissed coldly at him. “You are summoned. Shirk not your tasks: Go.”
Eirhaun opened his mouth to protest that another Zhentarim had been left on duty to respond to such a summons-and another chiming sound rolled out of it, loud and bright.
All twelve of the human-head-sized beholders were staring at him now. “ Go, ” they hissed in unison. “If you are loyal to the Brotherhood, go.”
Eirhaun sighed, nodded, and murmured the word that would whisk him away.
Lord Eldroon set down his goblet. “Something’s awry,” he said firmly. “They were to report right back. We’ve been waiting now far too long.”
Lord Yellander glared across the table. “You think I’ve not noticed? What’s taking those dolts?”
Eldroon shrugged, rose, looked at Yellander, and went to the silently flickering portal. Yellander hastened to join him. They looked at each other, then drew their swords.
Together they stepped through the cold blue flames-and together gaped in astonishment at what they saw through the common room door.
Unseen men shouted, and a surging magic of tumbling velvet night shot through with roaring sparks flooded across the common room. They saw it wash over some support pillars and melt those stout timbers away.
Chairs and tables sighed into nothingness as the dark magic passed through them, rolling right on through back pantries, off to the left.
In its wake, daylight flooded the riven room, leaving them gazing at distant roofs in Halfhap.
With those pillars gone, the ceiling began to loudly groan and sag.
Yellander and Eldroon exchanged astonished, fearful looks-and hastily retreated back through the portal again.
Eirhaun found himself standing in the sunlight on the top step of the entry stair into the Oldcoats Inn, in Halfhap, staring through a blasted-open hole that had presumably recently been its front doorway. And blinking in astonishment.
Had all of the Brotherhood mages he’d sent gone mad? They were leaping around the room they’d obviously destroyed, hurling spells at each other! Well, he Bane-be-damned knew what would happen the moment they noticed him; they’d all turn on him. No one likes a ruthless, devoted-to-humiliation teacher.
But then, he’d never liked any of them, either. His shielding was singing around him now, fully up and working.
So Eirhaun allowed himself a smile of anticipation, raised his hands, and quietly and precisely cast the most powerful battle-spell he knew.
Had there been no spell-chaos roiling and grappling in the room in front of him, they’d probably all-or all but the two or three most accomplished, perhaps-perished as that spell smote them.
As it was, one burst apart like a rotten fruit, another burned like a torch, howling in helpless dying agony-and the others all staggered, turned with hatred in their eyes, recognized him, and started casting their strongest remaining battle-spells.
Eirhaun called up a magic in his mind that should slay one of them. He was still debating which one he should fell when half a dozen Zhentarim spells howled into his shielding.
And the world around Eirhaun briefly vanished.
His shielding flared into blinding radiance, searing whiteness that faded into rainbow hues. He was still struggling to peer through them when his legs started changing, bulging and flexing into amorphous bonelessness, all at once. The pain made him sob involuntarily, it was… so great, so horribly…
His shielding was going wild around him, as spells fought for supremacy within it. It was clawing at him, and he was still changing, barbed wings sprouting from his breast in a sickening struggling of knees and elbows that shouldn’t be there, but were bursting out of him, sliding through his ribs… it was agony, it was terrible…
As he sank to his knees, or rather collapsed into wriggling tentacles, his ribs and all twisting into snakelike things that he stared at with revulsion, Eirhaun became aware that one of his eyes was growing very large and thrusting forward out of his face, while the other stayed its usual self and stared in horror. He also became aware that someone was shrieking in agony, long and raw howls and wails of agony and terror.
Then, at last, he became aware that the shrieking someone was him.
Which crystal had chimed had told Sarhthor where the trouble was. He had teleported to his favorite tower in Halfhap, intending to use magic to locate the precise location of the summons, but one glance across Halfhap had told him the Oldcoats Inn was the place to be.
Or rather, not to be. Frowning, he’d teleported again, to a spot he knew, right behind the hotel desk. He’d taken care to arrive crouching, and that thoughtfulness had served him well.
It seemed his arrival hadn’t been detected, and his personal wardings had thus far passed unnoticed as he crouched in hiding behind the hotel desk-and warring Zhentarim blasted most of the Oldcoats Inn down into sagging, perilously hanging ruin in front of him.
He’d watched them, thrusting two tendrils of his shielding around the edges of the desk to serve him as eyes, and seen Eirhaun’s arrival-and their unison attack on him. He harbored no love for Eirhaun-no one in the Brotherhood did, not that any Zhentarim dared allow friendship or kindness to weaken their schemes for an instant-but this… this was madness.
Something was afflicting these magelings, who hitherto had smoldered in waiting maliciousness, not daring to hurl their every spell as they were doing now. Something was forcing them to dare this much.
Wherefore that something had to be hurled out of the Realms, to protect all mages everywhere. If it cost the Brotherhood every last one of these ambitious magelings, what of it? Faerun bred no shortage of ambitious magelings.
Frowning, Sarhthor spun a particular ring around on the middle finger of his left hand, until its customary display was beneath, and its band uppermost. He kissed that band, carefully murmured a word, and kissed it again.
Whereupon the ring spat itself off his finger, into his other (waiting) palm, and became a shield-shaped, rigid scroll. He touched two of its many runes in the right sequence to awaken it to life and make its words appear; when he could see them, he slowly and carefully cast the spell laid out before him.
Ere long his words boomed and rolled, forcing a hush over that battling room by the sheer weight of their power. Sarhthor spoke on, his body starting to shake from the power racing into and through it, streaming out into a roiling something that became a darkness in the air, a waiting, reaching darkness that plucked at the startled warring Zhentarim.
