'Sorry,' Storm said shortly, rolling off him, 'but you were the only place left in here that didn't have a sword out! I had to materialize somewhere!'
Erlandar barked out a laugh. 'Things are back to normal,' he announced to the room full of staring men, 'she's lost all her clothes again!'
'Highly amusing, my Lord Summerstar,' Storm replied, snatching his blade from him. 'I'll be needing this-I'm on my way to getting dressed. Gods, but that-that thing must have subsumed a lot of spells! He's blasting the Haunted Tower apart!'
'What?' Erlandar bellowed, laughter sliding into fury. 'That's our Haunted Tower!'
Broglan, who'd been twisting on the floor struggling for breath all this time, found it at last-to laugh uncontrollably. 'Do you…' he gasped, when he could, 'know … how funny… that sounded?'
As a smiling Storm strode barefoot out of the room, and gestured rudely at the grinning guards who saluted her exit, the wizard on the floor finished a last guffaw and looked up. The room exploded with mirth.
It ended abruptly as the place rocked again, and a piece broke off the ceiling and fell. Dust descended in clouds, and the laughter turned to curses and coughing.
'Well,' Thalance Summerstar said, as he snatched up a wineskin to replace his lost goblet, 'this monster could dispose of us all by just bringing the keep down on top of us!'
'Did you have to say that?' Erlandar snarled as the room rolled underfoot again, and everyone fell.
Storm Silverhand went to her knees-bare knees, gods blast it-on the stones as the passage rocked around her. 'I hope,' she told the falling stones, 'that he's using up the spells he's stolen!' A last stone fell in front of her and broke apart. 'I won't be pleased if I hear otherwise.' She got up and ran on.
The fallen rubble made barefoot running painful. As she mounted the stairs, she hurled a handsome load of curses in the direction of the Haunted Tower. Ten minutes ago, these corridors had been full of such wild magic that she'd dared not tarry here nor try to regain solid form. Now, the foe had gone so mad that he was pulling down the Haunted Tower on his very head!
'Goaded by the silver fire,' she announced with grim satisfaction. At last reaching the right passage, she sprinted down it. 'And not the first to suffer that fate, either.'
Improbably, a door was open. Two fearful chambermaids were staring out at her as she sprinted past, hair streaming. They shrieked in chorus and flung their door closed with a boom.
'This whole vale is going crazy,' Storm said with a laugh. She caromed sideways off the wall as the keep shook crazily once more. Somewhere ahead of her, something heavy broke and crashed down; amid the near- deafening booming, she heard the sharper sounds of stone cracking and rolling.
The Bard of Shadowdale ran across the passage to the door she knew and snatched it open. Dust rolled out. 'Great!' she snarled. 'Just great!' Coughing, she felt her way through the dust and dragged out her clothes. Defiantly, she sat down in the middle of the corridor, as the keep shivered and thundered around her, and got dressed. Slowly and carefully, she adjusted this and smoothed that, putting on her pectoral last of all, until she pronounced herself ready to receive company.
Ah yes, company: such as the room full of men she'd left so precipitously not long ago. Well, now: to rally them, or to confront a madman and dance to his spells as he happily tore apart the keep, and the moon rose over them?
The fortress shook again. Something even larger crashed down into ruin. Ahead of her, a curving staircase broke into chunks and dropped slowly out of sight, one piece at a time. A rolling, shattering sound arose from below. Moonlight shone down into the dusty air where the stair had been. The foe must be shattering the battlements above! Well, it wasn't as if she didn't know where he was…
For the moment, the shapeshifter would keep. So much for grand schemes of spying out where he was and tracking him! Right now, she'd best get the few living men she'd need out of the place before he brought it down on their heads! What poison might fail to do, a nice heavy stone block might succeed at, all too well….
'Why me? Mystra, all I ask is, why me?' Storm said as she started back down the passage. As if in reply, the ceiling broke away and fell into the rooms beside her-and moonlight stabbed down from the open night sky above. Two floors that had been above her were gone!
Well, yes, Mystra, this wasn't the first time in her life that she'd made this very complaint. Sorry. Storm sighed and ran on.
'I am-I am-Yes!' And with that final, exultant shout, the man with three heads and eight arms flung his limbs up in triumph and hurled all the crowding chaos back where it belonged, clearing his mind at last. Balk of fire streaked up from two of those limbs, striking through the shattered stone and moonlight. Where they struck, a leaning turret broke away from the shattered stone around it and hurtled down into the open space that had not been there an hour earlier.
Down, down like a tumbling mountain, down to a crash that shook the entire vale and threw back echoes from the mountaintops …
Down to bury the place where the exultant many-limbed man had been standing, and on its way, scrape open an entire wall, and lay bare rooms and passages that had been walled away and hidden for many long years…
The ravaged wall creaked and buckled and bulged, threatening a great collapse. Leaning pillars held, and the slowly shifting stone ground ponderously to a halt, sending down only a little rubble. Out of one long-hidden cavity, something gleamed in the moonlight as it fell.
Something metallic and sticklike, with a single great eye as its head. The dragoneye scepter hit the rubble, bounced once, and slid to a stop, blinking up at the moon. Somehow, it looked angry.
Corathar Abaddarh clutched Dowager Lady Zarova's coronet and wished it would stop emitting little magical flashes. Was it going to explode, or burn him with lightning, or transport him somewhere unknown and perilous? Worse, would it attract the attention of the shapeshifter who was so busily blasting apart the keep on all sides?
The gods-cursed coronet was definitely flashing a little brighter and faster than it had when he'd found its hiding place and snatched it into the light. Pearls and emeralds and gods-knew what else had spilled out with it in a glittering flood. He'd swept them all back behind the hidden panel and slammed it shut again. At least, he hoped he'd found them all. With the room shaking all around him, some of them had taken long and interesting journeys. And, of course, the tumult had shattered his lantern!
He wouldn't have dared keep it lit on the journey back, anyway. Not with a howling-crazed shapeshifter laughing like a loon and blasting everything that moved!
Corathar sighed. He felt his way cautiously forward in the darkness. The dowager lady, the boldshield, and the safety of the heavily guarded kitchen rooms were a long way off… and he was growing weary.
He'd been a little suspicious of this errand at first. The whole thing could have been just an excuse to send him out across Firefall Keep right into the clutches of this murderous shapeshifter. The boldshield, however, had assured him that ranking nobles did have such enspelled items. Some of them were best handled only by their rightful wearers or by war wizards, because of enchantments laid on them by Lord Vangerdahast or his predecessors. Well, all right, but what about those enchantments? The cursed thing was flashing ever faster. He didn't see why he should die or be maimed just because some lazy noblewoman got all concerned over the fate of her coronet. After all, she'd left it behind. It was still in her castle, not out rolling around the countryside. Why couldn't it just have sat safe behind its stone panel until all this was over? Of course, there might not be a stone panel when this was all over, if-
Ahead, he heard a distant shout, and peered into the darkness. A many-armed figure was exulting in the moonlight, shouting and waving its arms in defiance at the night sky. Corathar swallowed and came to a hasty halt. This must be the foe!
Gods, if he looked over this way-! Corathar hastily cowered down, flipping up the tail of his robes to cover the winking coronet. There was a flash of fire from the distant figure-balls of fire, streaming up from those waving arms at some unseen enemy above. The bursts heralded a deep groaning that gave way to sharp cracking sounds. . and then a growing, rumbling, thunderous roar.
The figure and the moonlight and all were gone as the world leapt and rocked all around Corathar. It flung him about like a child's ball. He gulped, grunted, cursed, and tried in the bruising darkness to keep the coronet and
