aside the little window shutter, asking in Thaerla of Chauntea's sniffiest voice, 'Yes? You disturb us at prayer for a good reason?'
'You ordered evenfeast for two,' a flat, unimpressed voice replied, 'and I've brought it. Still interested?'
'Ah, now. That's different,' Thaerla replied, unbolting the door again.
A hard-eyed guard entered, a loaded hand crossbow aimed at the ceiling and his other hand hovering above the hilt of his blade. Behind him came two chambermen in the maroon-and-gold uniform of the inn, bearing steaming dome-covered platters on their shoulders, followed by another guard. The foremost guard pulled on a carved knob on the wall beside the door that Narm had thought was mere decorative molding atop a pillar-and the whole affair came out of the wall as a table on edge. Expertly he kicked it up and open, and stood back to let the servants set down their platters.
As they did so, the other guard came into the room, drew the door closed, and leveled another hand crossbow at Shandril-as the first guard brought his crossbow down to menace Narm, and the two chambermen lifted the domes away from their platters to reveal small plates of roast boar on skewers-and cocked hand crossbows of their own. With swift deftness they removed wooden safety catches, laid darts into tracks, ready to fire, and pointed their weapons at the two priestesses.
'W-what is the meaning of this?' Thaerla of Chauntea quavered in outrage.
'It means,' the first guard said pleasantly, 'you're both going to get down on your faces on the floor in front of us, with no hurlings of spellfire or anything else-or well see if someone can wield spellfire with two crossbow darts in her throat. Or eyes, perhaps,'
'Down!' one of the chambermen snarled, gesturing with his crossbow. 'On the floor now!'
'Which one of them is the spellfire wench, do you think?' the other guard muttered. 'We could kill the other one and-'
Slowly the hooded, penitent priestess wavered uncertainly to her knees, and then down. After a swift glance at her, Thaerla followed, murmuring, 'ChaunteadeliverusChaunteasaveusChaunteakeepandpreserveusyourfaithfulservants-'
'Silence! She's a god, so she's heard you. Now, enough!' the second guard snarled, stepping forward to aim his crossbow at Shandril's hooded head from only a few feet away. One of the chambermen did the same. The other two thrust their bows almost into Thaerla's face, and the priestess ended her supplication with a sort of peeping sound and sank floorward.
The spellfire came without warning, roaring forth with enough fury to snatch all four men off their feet and drive them, shattered to pulp, into the wall behind them-in the scant instants before that wall disappeared, and startled faces gaped at Shandril from the room beyond.
The owners of those faces promptly screamed, clawed aside their prop and bolts, and fled. Shandril rose with her face white and set but her eyes dark and terrible with rage.
From the window came a burst of fire and flame that flung iron bars like kindling into the room, to crash and bounce and roll. Shandril caught a glimpse of two faces outside, glaring in at her with expressions that were less than friendly-and as they aimed wands in through the roiling smoke and crumbling hole that had been the window, she gave them spellfire, blasting much of that wall away. uS-shan, easy' Narm hissed, still on his knees. 'This building might come down on us if y…'
'So get us out of here,' she said in a voice that trembled with rage. 'Right now I just want to lash out at anyone in this Nine Hells of a city!'
Narm snatched up their packs and snatched the door open-to stare into the hard-eyed faces of a dozen or more warriors. He barely slammed it again before a crossbow cracked. The quarrel slammed through the closing gap and shivered its way across the room, and Narm was hurled back, the door banging open, under the fury of hard-charging warriors.
Shandril Shessair was waiting for them, spellfire leaking from her eyes and nose as she glared. 'Leave me alone!' she howled, slaying them with roaring gouts of flame that seared the passage outside and left small fires raging in its wake. 'Just-'
There were angry shouts from the inn stairs, and the thunder of running feet. Figures moved in the next room whose wall Shandril had breached, dark-robed figures who'd obviously come in through its window, and were now waving spells as fast as their fingers could fly.
Shandril hurled spellfire at them-but her searing flames clawed along something that wrestled with it and withstood it, something that looked like black fire. Open-mouthed, Narm watched jet-black flames rage and snarl in the face of white-hot spellfire. Then a wizard moaned, reeled, and collapsed-as if exhausted or drained, not struck by anything Shandril had sent-and the black flames sank back^
'Shan!' Narm cried, 'we have to get out of here! The wall behind us-blast it!'
His raging wife turned with her hair swirling around her like so many eager, licking flames, and the wall obligingly darkened, melted away, and was gone-but her flames were faltering, now,' and in the darkened room beyond were more hard-faced warriors in dark battle armor, with drawn swords and glaives in their hands.
A cascade of lightnings crashed down around them, and Shandril drank them in eagerly, turning with renewed vigor to face the wizards, trying to draw them into hurling more spells-ere she fed a slaying sheet of spellfire at head-level out into the passage and spun around to give the same to the warriors now surging forward to try to clamber through the hole she'd burned into their room.
The boar-like stench of cooked man-flesh was rising around them now, and Narm was crouching at Shandril's feet with their packs in his hands, trying not to hamper her as she turned and spat fire again and again-brief, careful gouts now, trying to preserve what she had left. The passage was afire; there was no going out that way-and the longer she was forced to fight, the less likely stepping into either of the other rooms, wizards and fresh hostile warriors or none, would give them any easy route to escape. That left 'The window!' Narm snapped. 'Someone's climbing in the window!'
Shandril wheeled around, smoking hands raised to slay once more-only to stop, her eyes caught by a gleaming silver harp badge.
The man holding it was a smiling, dark-haired figure in leathers, wearing a sly expression on his handsome face that reminded her of Torm of the Knights of Myth Drannor. He gave them an airy wave, and called, 'These accommodations seem a little-crowded. I generally provide free guidance to visitors to this fair city. Is there anywhere else you'd prefer to be, about now?'
'I can think of several,' Shandril replied, hurling a tongue of spellfire at a wizard in the next room who'd fumbled out a dagger and was raising it to throw, 'but none of them are in Scornubel. Do you-harp alone?'
'Most of the time,' the black-haired man replied, giving the two priestesses of Chauntea a crooked smile. 'I am Marlel, and I believe I already know both of your names-your real names. I can take you to-'ware behind you, in the passage!' Shandril whirled, blasted, and watched the body of a warrior who'd been carrying a full-sized crossbow along the burning hallway toward them dance headless back into the flames, to fall and be lost, his bow firing harmlessly down the passage. There was a thud and a groan in the distance-hmm, not so harmlessly, after all.
'My thanks,' Shandril told the Harper crisply. 'Now, can you take us to, say, The Stormy Tankard, on Hethbridle Street?'
'Of course,' Marlel told them with a smile. 'If you can hold onto a rope, the window awaits.'
Shandril gave Narm a shove in the Harper's direction, and after two quick glances into the room of the warriors-where no one moved-and the passage-burning too merrily, now, to fear any arrivals that way-turned to face the wizards once more. One of them was just finishing a spell of hurled fists. Shandril gave him a cold smile and awaited it, spellfire racing up and down her widespread arms-and the wizard promptly fled.
Marlel leaned out the window almost lazily, flung a knife, and there was a short, strangled gurgling sound, followed by the heavy thud of a body ending its fall.
Shandril's body jerked under the first few blows of the mage's spell, and then her spellfire rose bright around her and she sighed almost in rapture as she drank in the magic.
The small fires on her body died away, and she smiled and strode to Marlel, who gave her his crooked smile, indicating the window with a flourish.
'Just a moment,' Narm said, and cast his poison-detecting spell on the platters that still steamed on the table mode the shattered door.
The roast boar brought for them promptly glowed bright purple.
