Rowen extinguished his lightning ball at once.
“Goblins?” Vangerdahast whispered.
“Not here,” came Rowen’s soft reply. “Not following us.”
Scraps of tin and glass began to tinkle as the unseen stalker broke into a rush. Vangerdahast snatched a stone off the floor and started a light spell. He had not even reached the second syllable when Rowen shot a ball of silver lightning into the cavern roof.
In the brilliant flash that followed, Vangerdahast glimpsed a sinewy woman with flaming red hair dodging through the scarecrows toward them. Though her skin was fair, she was as naked as Rowen and far more powerfully built, with scaly red wings unfurling behind her back and a pair of fiery, diamond-shaped eyes glaring in their direction.
“She’s free!” As the cavern sank back into darkness, Rowen pushed Vangerdahast away from the pit. “Go!”
But Vangerdahast had a better idea. He turned and flung himself into the pit. He gave himself a single heartbeat to vanish over the edge, then spoke a single word that slowed his fall to that of a feather. Seeing no reason to avoid magic now that Nalavara was free, he pulled a crow’s feather from his pocket and spoke a long series of mystic syllables, then swooped down to snatch one of the sticks off the pit bottom.
Vangerdahast pulled into a steep ascent, flying blindly into the pitch darkness above. He pictured the scepter Rowen had described earlier, a long golden staff carved into the semblance of a sapling oak, then plucked a few hairs from his woolly beard. Leaving the direction of his flight to chance, he rubbed the hairs over the length of the stick and quietly uttered the twisted syllables of a little deception spell.
The first clue of his enchantment’s success came in the form of the heavy pulse of Nalavara’s wings, approaching from straight ahead and rapidly growing louder. Vangerdahast veered left and narrowly escaped a roaring cone of flame, which splashed against the far wall and brightened the entire cavern. The wizard glimpsed the scaled figure of a two-hundred-foot elf woman changing into a giant dragon, then again fell sightless when she closed her mouth and the flames vanished.
Vangerdahast cast a spell of light upon the stick in his hands, revealing what appeared to be an oak sapling of pure gold, with an amethyst pommel carved into the shape of a huge acorn. The wizard swung the staff to his side and saw Nalavara’s huge mouth, all fangs and tongue and now completely reptilian, swooping into the light. He dived beneath her, then nearly lost control of his flight as her jaws boomed shut behind him.
Flying beneath the dragon seemed to take forever. He passed between her first set of legs without incident, for Nalavara was still smacking her jaws and did not yet realize she had missed him. Her scales were the size of tournament shields and as thick as doors, and when Vangerdahast came to her abdomen, the heat of the fire burning in her belly was enough to sear his flesh. Had he spread his arms and held the staff out to its full length, he would not have spanned half the breadth of her body. As he passed beneath her wings, the turbulence nearly knocked him from the air, then a pair of taloned feet appeared in the light, reaching forward out of the darkness to slash at him blindly. He steered dead center between the huge claws and still had an arm’s length to each side.
Knowing better than to risk her thrashing tail, Vangerdahast plunged groundward and turned toward the narrow passage by which he and Rowen had entered the chamber. If he could lure her out of the cavern, he would send his counterfeit scepter streaking off on its own and teleport back to recover the real one.
Nalavara wheeled around, glancing off the wall and filling the cavern with an enormous crash. Knowing his light spell would draw her eye like a beacon, Vangerdahast dropped to within a foot of the iron scarecrows, making wide erratic turns in both directions. The ploy failed miserably. As he neared his goal, a stream of fire shot past overhead and filled his escape tunnel, forcing him to dodge to one side and duck into a nearby hole.
For a moment, Vangerdahast dared hope it would not matter. The passage was as narrow as the first and packed even more densely with the same iron scarecrows. He streaked twenty paces forward-then was forced to pull up short when he came to a gray dead end.
The ground rumbled, and the wizard knew Nalavara had landed behind him. He dropped down among the iron scarecrows and jerked one out of its base, then thrust it toward the entrance and began a spell.
Vangerdahast had barely started the incantation before Nalavara’s snout blocked the mouth of the passage, her nostrils already boiling with fire. He rattled off the final syllables, sighed in relief as a thick wall of iron sprang up before him-then shrank away as the dragon’s fiery breath crashed into his magic barrier.
The roar continued for what seemed like several minutes. An orange circle appeared in the middle of the wall and slowly spread outward, pouring so much heat into the tunnel Vangerdahast thought he would burst into flames. The iron began to melt and drip out, and long tongues of flame poured through the hole, licking at the tunnel’s end and turning the bauble racks white with heat. Vangerdahast pressed himself to the side of the passage and crept closer to the iron wall, where he would be more sheltered from the flames.
Finally, Nalavara’s breath gave out, leaving a huge circle of white-hot iron between the wizard and his foe. He remained pressed against the wall, confident as ever that he would survive but trying desperately to find some way to turn this to his advantage.
“Sir Magician?” rumbled Nalavara’s voice.
Vangerdahast thought about remaining silent, then decided he would be better served by confidence. He took a deep breath and stepped in front of the hole.
“Still here, Nalavarauthatoryl.” He tipped the counterfeit Scepter of Lords briefly into view. “I understand you have been looking for this? Feel free to come and get it.”
A ghastly chuckle rumbled through the cavern outside, then Nalavara tipped her head, blocking the mouth of the passage with one of her huge eyes.
“I think not, wizard. You have proven more… challenging than I thought.”
“Shall I take that as a compliment?” Vangerdahast asked. Seeing no sense in allowing his foe more of a chance than necessary, he tipped the scepter out of sight. “Or have you decided to surrender?”
Again, Nalavara chuckled. “You are not that stupid. But you are dissatisfied. I could satisfy you.”
“I trust your proposition is not a carnal one?”
“Hardly. You know what I have planned for Cormyr, so your dream of ruling that particular realm is impossible.”
“I see you have been eavesdropping.”
“More than you know, wizard.” Nalavara’s eye was replaced by a half open mouth filled with teeth as tall as men. “But there will be a realm left when I am through-a realm free of men but in need of a ruler nonetheless.”
“How very generous of you,” Vangerdahast said. “So you intend to give Cormyr to a bunch of goblins? No wonder Iliphar’s ghost rose against you.”
“The Grodd will defend the Wolf Woods!” Nalavara hissed. “They will not yield it to a band of murdering humans.” Her voice grew calmer. “And you… you will be their ruler.”
“I will?”
“If you give me the scepter.”
“And if I don’t think that’s a very good idea?” Vangerdahast asked.
“Then destroy it yourself.” The dragon lowered her eye, again blocking the passage. “It is all the same to me.”
“All I need do is pick up the iron crown?”
“It is waiting for you in the palace,” Nalavara said. “Wear it, and you are master of your own kingdom.”
“A kingdom of goblins?” Vangerdahast stepped back behind the iron wall. “I think not.”
Nalavara remained ominously silent. Vangerdahast closed his eyes and pictured himself standing beside the pit where he had left Rowen, then hissed his teleport spell. There was that instant of colorless, timeless falling, then he found himself lying on his side gasping for breath, staring up into a dark fissure between two teeth the size of wagon wheels. In his teleport afterdaze, he could not imagine how he had managed to shrink himself to the size of a rat and end up in a terrier’s mouth.
“Magic? With me here?” rumbled a deep voice. “You are not as smart as I thought.”
Finally recalling the situation, and recognizing by the scaly lip above what had happened, Vangerdahast smashed the golden scepter against the dragon’s teeth.
The staff broke in two, and Nalavara flinched, jerking her head around and flinging the wizard across the dark
