time she needed.
The murderer must have thought so too. He snarled another curse, cast a spell, and soared up out of sight.
Storm bent all her will to healing herself, gasping and shuddering in agony as limb after limb jittered and ballooned back to its proper shape, shifting the massive blocks of stone. She'd not have much more time….
The first armsman made a short, despairing cry as he pitched down. Close above Storm, he struck the wall with a wet, pulpy sound, and said no more; his limbs convulsed once or twice after his body landed on the rocks and slithered down their far side.
Storm drew in her breath, thankful for the small mercy of the corpse's location, and found the strength at last to shift the stone atop her. She expanded her lungs and begin to heal them and the splintered mess that was her rib cage. The expected second Purple Dragon corpse fell limp and silent, his neck already broken, and crashed down hard on the upraised edge of her stone.
The impact made her gasp in fresh agony-but the stone rolled slowly away from her, crushing the armsman with sounds both brittle and wet. Storm shuddered, but dared spare no time for sorrow or revulsion … her foe would be back for her soon enough.
A third guardsman fell into the pit, roaring out his despair. Storm was still too weak and pain-racked to do anything to save him. He fell at her feet, smashed on the rocks, and stared at her beseechingly before his eyes grew dull and distant. In an ear that could no longer hear, Storm whispered, 'You shall be avenged.' She bent over the man to draw forth his sword. By the smiling mercy of the gods, it was unbroken.
Not so the dagger-but the man had a second one in his boot. Storm was fumbling it forth when another armsman crashed down beside her, limbs jerking in agonized spasms.
A familiar form jumped up from a crouched landing on the soldier's gut.
'On our feet so soon? My, but Mystra must love you!' the man who was not Maxer said merrily.
Storm pounced, her borrowed blade flashing. 'I'd love the world around me just a trifle more if it held just a few less meddling Malaugrym!' she snarled, thrusting. Her steel caught in cloth that tore as her foe twisted away. He was as fast as she, maybe faster.
A dodge, a duck, and they were both sure of that. He was fast enough not only to leap clear of her seeking steel-but to mutter out a spell.
Luckily for Storm, the pit was full of loose stones. There was a sliding and clicking of rubble behind her as the big stone that had crushed her once-a boulder as tall as a troll-lifted into the air under the bidding of her foe's magic. She spun around as it rose. The shattered body of a Purple Dragon peeled limply away from it.
'There are far greater powers in the worlds than that clan of proud, self-important feuding fools,' he said mockingly from behind her. The stone thundered down.
Without looking, Storm thrust viciously behind her at that voice. She spat out silver fire at the stony death above her. The blood-smeared boulder shattered into a thousand shards.
'Such as?' she snarled, and spun around. Her blade touched nothing but air.
From a safe dozen rocks distant, he was murmuring another spell. Storm flung her dagger at him.
It spun end over end, straight at his face. It clattered off stone. He was suddenly not there.
Storm went into a crouch of her own, bringing the sword up in front of her and trying to watch everywhere at once. The air glimmered. She spun around. He appeared out of it. She dived into a thrust, and was rewarded with a startled gasp and blood on her sword tip before he was gone again.
She rolled to a stop beside one of the crushed Purple Dragons. Storm sprang away from the blood-slick stones. If he was going to be blinking in and out all around her, she needed good footing. She stabbed at empty air, danced a few steps, turned, and stabbed again.
He chuckled from nearby. 'The Sharn battle the Phaerimm, and the Phaerimm fight everyone. Others mightier than these walk the worlds, you know … or should know, daughter of Mystra. You've not heard of such? Die ignorant, then.' He was gone again.
Storm whirled. The air around her shimmered and grew a cold fang. The bard twisted away, smashing the blade frantically aside with her sword. The dagger that had hurt her spun away from the bloodied hand of her foe- before the air shimmered and hid him again. Storm cursed heartily and whirled her blade around; it struck something. She heard a grunt of pain. An instant later, her sword struck stone with numbing force. She reeled, fighting for balance on the shifting scree underfoot.
A face loomed above hers as his body struck aside her sword arm. Lips that burned kissed her cheek with obscene delicacy.
With her free hand, Storm clawed at those eyes. Amid shimmering, the face was gone again. Her fingers felt the place where his kiss had burned away flesh, exposing her jawbone. Angrily she ran in a swift circle, hacking at air-until she saw him appear across the pit. He leaned against the wall with almost casual hauteur.
'Who are you?' Storm spat, raising her blade.
The man who was not Maxer laughed. 'I am the wolf in your dreams,' he said. His limbs grew fur. 'I am the child you pass in the street.' His smile melted into a woman's face more beautiful than her own had ever been, with moon-pale eyes and long, sweeping black hair. Then it dwindled into the leering visage of a dwarf.
'I can be everyone, everywhere. Soon, I'll be much, much more than that.' He left that quiet taunt hanging in the air as he became a Purple Dragon armsman, the mage Broglan, and one of the Summerstar maiden aunts.
With narrowed eyes Storm watched him. She murmured and made small gestures as his shapechanging display unfolded. Her spellcasting earned a mirthless grin from him. She finished one spell, and nothing happened. Without delay, she began another. His grin became a frown-and she was suddenly alone in the pit.
An instant later, a view of the keep battlements unfolded in her mind, only to fade almost immediately and be replaced by the lightless interior of an empty bedchamber, lamplight from the courtyard flickering through its windows. The scene changed again twice before Storm's second spell was done. She kept her mind firmly shaping it-and then let it take her to the latest scene.
The servants working the night through in the kitchens were in their usual bustle, with steam rising from the stew pots here, there, and everywhere. They darted about putting this tray of goose pies into the ovens and taking that tray of stuffed silverfin out. One servant looked down, startled, as a shaggy black dog suddenly appeared in his way, growled warningly-and then vanished again.
He'd have been more startled by far, Storm thought wryly, if he'd seen the true shape of the creature who'd appeared to him as a dog.
The cook looked up, saw her, and dropped his tray of pastries.
Shouting in horror, he fled as the crash echoed around the room. A gravy pan made a deafening whonga- onga-onga clatter. A curse came behind Storm. She turned, blade up, just in case someone was in the mood to hurl cleavers.
She was in time to see a steaming pan of gammon pies flung to the floor by a man who sprinted over them even before they landed. Another man backed away from her, white-faced. The gleaming platter that hung on a cupboard beside him shone back her reflection clearly: a tall, wild-eyed woman with silver hair, garbed only in blood. Teeth and bone glinted in the hole burned in the side of her face, and there was more blood all over the sword in her hand. She smiled ruefully, closed her eyes until her tracer magic showed her the next place clearly, and let the other spell take her there.
Mystra's Kiss, but those pies had smelled good.
She was in another dark chamber now-a lady's robing room, with a flicker of shimmering air at its far end where a black dog was just disappearing.
The gown hanging to her left was the one Dowager Lady Zarova had worn to the last feast. Storm heard soft weeping from beyond the door at the end of the room. She closed her eyes to find the next place her foe would appear.
Zarova was tossing in the throes of a nightmare, but the shapechanger appeared at the foot of her bed only long enough to murmur something-something magical, no doubt-and was gone again. Storm reached mentally. . where was he going? Wh-ah. A turret room. The chamber at the top of the Twilight Turret!
Her magic took her there. As her feet touched the bare stone floor, it became spongy and somehow warm. Black, eel-like tentacles rose around her in a small, hungry forest. Cold laughter came from a stout stone pillar across the room. She struggled for two long strides toward it before the entwining tentacles held her fast.
The pillar became Maxer. He stood and watched her, a broad smile on his face. 'Centuries of service to the
