Midnight knew that she could not risk harming Adon, so she took aim at the rider with the bolos, the one at the back of the charging formation, and released a fireball spell. A crackling, blue-white pattern of energy formed before the mage's trembling hands, then collapsed. Nothing else seemed to happen.
In the air, sailing toward the bridge, Sejanus had felt a moment of panic when he saw the mage on the bridge and realized she was attempting to cast a spell in his direction. When she completed the complex gestures and the spell seemed to fail, the assassin laughed and raised his bolos above his head. He prepared to throw the weapon and bind the woman's arms before she could try such foolishness again.
On the bridge, Midnight stared in shock at the flaming scimitar that hung poised over the head of her intended victim. No one else sees it, she realized as she watched the magical sword — the result of a spell called Shaeroon's Scimitar, if she guessed correctly — follow Sejanus. Midnight's spell had gone awry and had brought this force into existence by mistake. But the mage knew that she could profit from the error, and her eyes narrowed as she spoke. 'Take him!' she whispered, and the scimitar descended.
A hundred feet above the Ashaba, with only a dozen yards between himself and the mage, Sejanus felt a searing pain begin at the base of his skull and race downward, through his spine, like a fire out of control. The agony flowed out from his spine, piercing every nerve in his body. He began to convulse, and his mount, confused by his motions, veered off at a right angle and raced upward toward the clouds.
As Midnight's errant spell struck Sejanus, Kelemvor stepped aside from the raven-haired magic-user and readied himself to face Varro, the scythe-bearing assassin. With his sword drawn, the green-eyed fighter prepared himself for the fury of the nightmare rider's descent. As the night-black horse came within twenty feet of Kelemvor, it opened its fanged mouth and belched out a foul-smelling cloud.
Now only a dozen feet away from the fighter, Varro gripped his scythe and prepared to match its steel against that of his prey's sword. The assassin leaned over the left flank of his nightmare as the creature arced upward, toward the right. The fighter's sword gleamed as it reflected the harsh sunlight at the assassin's back. Only a few feet from slicing his prey neatly in half, Varro was shocked as the fighter leaped forward, brought his sword down in a crashing blow against the assassin's weapon, then rolled to the bridge and out of Varro's view. As his mount rose to the east, over the bridge, the assassin looked at his weapon in shock.
'You'll pay for this, dog!' Varro screamed in disbelief, dropping the shattered scythe into the river. The assassin reined in the nightmare and drew a sword. The monstrous horse beneath him turned as sharply as it could, but as he turned back to the west, into the sun, Varro was shocked to see Durrock hovering over the bridge, not attacking, just hanging in the air. The image was both beautiful and terrible, a majestic silhouette in black against the blazing orb of the sun. The body of the cleric dangled from Durrock's hand, and the assassin's sword was raised high over his head.
'This game is over!' Durrock cried. 'Varro, stay where you are!'
Varro dug his heels into the sides of his mount, and the nightmare reared once but held its position. On the ground, Kelemvor stood, his heart racing, as Midnight moved toward the center of Blackfeather Bridge.
Durrock's nightmare exhaled a cloud of smoke and snorted. The assassin brandished his sword and yelled, 'Surrender now or your friend dies! Decide!'
Kelemvor heard a scream behind him and turned. In the sky to the east, the third rider, Sejanus, was slowly making his way back to the bridge. 'What do you want with us?' the green-eyed fighter yelled.
Durrock's nightmare reared, and Adon twisted precariously in the air. 'I'm not here to answer your questions,' the assassin cried. 'Lord Bane, the God of Strife, has sent us to deliver a summons. We are here to escort you to an audience with the Black Lord in Scardale.'
'Oh, is that all?' Kelemvor snapped. His grip on the sword tightened. 'Thank you, but we'll pass. You'll have to carry my regrets to Bane.'
Durrock loosened his grasp on Adon, and the cleric slipped slightly toward the ground. The assassin grabbed the scarred cleric again before he could fall. 'Do not tempt fate, fools. You have no choice!'
'We'll come with you,' Midnight cried. The mage held her hands, their fingers laced together, above her head so the assassins would know she was not casting a spell. 'You've won.'
Kelemvor stared at the mage, then looked away and slowly lowered his sword. 'This is insane!' the fighter hissed. 'They will simply kill us in Scardale, once Bane is done with us.'
Midnight sighed and turned to the fighter. 'Perhaps. But we can't let them kill Adon now,' she said. 'We may have a chance to escape later.'
'Ah, of course!' Kelemvor snapped. 'It will be better if we try to escape. Then they can have the pleasure of hunting us down again before they kill all three of us!' The fighter reached down and picked up the heavy canvas bag containing Midnight's spellbook.
Midnight didn't answer the fighter. Instead, she looked up at Durrock, still hanging against the sun, and nodded. 'We're ready,' the mage said. The riders began to descend.
VI
Cyric crawled through a tangle of heavy branches on the north shore of the Ashaba. The underbrush served to camouflage his quaking, half-drowned body as the thief heard the sound of the nightmares racing across the sky above the bridge, then watched as Kelemvor, Midnight, and Adon were taken away by the assassins.
I'm lucky I'm not with them, the thief thought. In fact, I'm lucky to be alive at all!
After the dalesman's arrow had caused him to lose his grip on the tree in the river, Cyric had been dragged beneath the surface by a powerful undertow. Only by grabbing for handholds and footholds along the sleek, slimy wall of the riverbank had the thief been able to save himself. When he finally broke the surface of the water, he was past the bridge.
Cyric had remained hidden beneath an overhang in tin-hank and watched the events on the bridge unfold. He saw Midnight's protective sphere burst and Kelemvor become a panther and savage the dalesmen. Two men had escaped the creature's fury — the young, blond guard they had met in Shadowdale, and a shirtless, red-skinned, bald man. Cyric was uncertain of either man's whereabouts.
The hawk-nosed thief had seen Midnight and Adon resurface, then drag themselves up the bank opposite him to the woods at the southern end of Blackfeather Bridge. There had been a brief moment of relief as Cyric watched Midnight move toward the shore, but that feeling faded as he realized that Adon had survived, too. The very thought of the weak-willed Sunite infuriated the thief. Worse, he simply couldn't understand why Midnight protected him. It was that kind of foolish behavior from both Midnight and Adon that made me realize I'd be better off without them, the thief decided as he crawled up the bank. And from Kelemvor's lame performance in the non-battle with the assassins. He gave himself up! Cyric cursed silently — the thief had added the fighter to his list of people too sentimental to be trusted.
Still, Cyric did feel some remorse over the fact that he couldn't help Midnight escape from Bane's assassins. She would be disappointed in me, the thief suddenly realized, then grew angry at himself for being concerned about the mage's feelings at all. Anyway, he concluded, wherever she's been taken, she probably believes that I'm dead.
Perhaps it was best that way. There had been a strong bond of friendship between the thief and the mage — at least there was before the trip down the Ashaba — and Cyric knew that that type of bond could easily get in the way of his plans. Although he didn't care if Adon's blood might have to he spilled in his pursuit of the Tablets of Fate, Cyric did not relish the idea of harming Midnight. She knew things about him that no one else alive would ever know. Still, he realized that he could trust her, that she would not betray him. Were situations reversed, Cyric was sure that his friendship would not prove as unshakable as the mage's.
As the thief moved some branches out of his way, careful not to allow them to snap and reveal his position, he pulled himself up the embankment. The small expanse of woods Cyric faced had to be an unnatural growth, a product of the physical and mystical chaos that was infecting the Realms. That was the only explanation the thief could think of to reconcile the presence of a grove of trees in an area that had appeared barren on all his maps. Although there had been no sounds that would accompany unusual activity in the woods — or signal the presence
