peace. Your visit here is unlikely to be hospitable.'
Azmyrandyr merely smiled, letting his smirk slide into a sneer as his spell took effect and the room exploded in flames.
A sphere of clear air surrounded Alustriel and the Red Wizard. He strode forward with something sparkling in his hand. Outside it, hitherto unseen globes of fire burst with force enough to shake the High Palace, transform ten tapestries into as many raging torches, and scour the rest of the room with roaring flames.
Azmyrandyr of Thay smiled a tight, cruel smile as the true target of his magic collapsed with a roar, and announced, 'A slight refinement of the traditional meteor swarm spell.'
The riven ceiling of the chamber plunged down on Alustriel in a rain of tumbling panels and flaming frag shy;ments. Struggling under the cascade of embers, Alus shy;triel managed to stagger the first four steps of a charge at the Red Wizard before a tangle of blazing timbers smashed her flat.
Tendrils of silver hair roiled angrily among the wreck shy;age, and Azmyrandyr eyed them warily as he took two quick steps forward and tossed a small, sparkling stone onto the floor, springing hastily back as the last burning pieces of the ceiling crashed down, bounced, and rolled away in all directions. As the stone landed, the sphere of nothingness that had kept the flames at bay melted away. The last, dying tongues of flame swept over hith shy;erto untouched stretches of carpet around the smolder shy;ing heap wherein Alustriel lay.
'Wild magic stone brings down antimagic shell,' the Red Wizard said calmly, for all the world as if he were describing a move in a chess game.
Nimbly stepping around the small fires still rising here and there about the blackened carpet, he backed out of range of the stone and raised both hands to weave another spell.
Rubble shifted and sagged away. Something sprang up from the blazing heart of the debris, somersaulting to one side in a tangle of long, flowing silver hair and smoke. Azmyrandyr's jaw dropped as the dainty High Lady of Silverymoon landed, vaulted without pause over another heap of rubble, and sprinted toward him, her gown smoldering around her and her lips snarling out an incantation as she came.
Hastily he abandoned his casting and stepped to one side. Something crunched under his feet, and he found flames rising around him. Hastily the Red Wizard moved again, but by then the furious face of one of the fabled Seven Sisters was almost touching his, and her bare hands were reaching for him. He slapped one hand away, and the other drove into his ribs, glancing off bone and away in a wet, slicing glide that left sear shy;ing pain in its wake.
Azmyrandyr of Thay screamed and hurled himself back, heedless of what flames he might stagger through. He fetched up against a scorched wall and stared at Alustriel's open hand. Her fingers were drip shy;ping with his blood as she advanced on him, entirely ignoring the waist-high flames she strode through.
A bleak smile touched her lips. 'Laeral's Cutting Hand,' she announced, her tones a mockery of his own.
The Red Wizard shrank away, then, as Alustriel's hand swept down, was lost in a blur of spell-shot air. Her descending fingers struck the naked blade of an upthrust sword that was held awkwardly in both hands by a younger Red Wizard, robed like Azmyrandyr, but sporting oiled, glistening black hair and a beard to match. There was apprehension on his face, but also, rising to overwhelm it, a fierce delight.
Waves of tingling nausea swept over Alustriel, and she fell back with silver fire licking around her hand. That gave her new assailant all the time he needed to rise and thrust his blade right through her belly.
She could not even find breath enough to scream.
'Taste a Sword of Feebleminding, Chosen of Mystra!' he shouted in triumph. His laughter rose above the crackling and snapping of the dying fires all around them. 'Haha! You'll probably find it hard to serve your goddess well, drooling and mumbling your way around this palace for the rest of your days.'
Alustriel staggered back, moaning, her agonies snatching the sword from the wizard's hands. He let it go to stand and gloat.
'Oh,' he cried mockingly, putting a hand to his forehead as the High Lady of Silverymoon stared down at the blade beneath her breasts and sobbed forth spurts of silver fire, 'I've quite forgotten my manners. I am Roeblen. . of Thay, but I'm sure you guessed that-back when you still could guess any shy;thing.'
The wizard watched Alustriel sink to her knees, tug shy;ging feebly at the hilt of the sword to draw it forth, and laughed again. Striding over to her, he reached down for the hilt of his blade.
'Is there something more you'd like me to do for you, perhaps?' he mocked. 'I've a sharp dagger ready for your fingers and tongue. Once spellcasting is beyond you, perhaps we could play. We could trade spells, you and I. Show me a spellbook, and I'll cast a painquench on you, eh? It should last just long enough for you to take me to your next spellbook, hmm? Or can't you understand such things anymore?'
The Red Wizard shook his head in mock sorrow. 'Such a pity,' he told her. 'I was looking forward t-'
The woman on her knees before him growled, set her teeth, and wrenched forth the sword. It promptly exploded into starry shards.
As silver flames snarled forth from her in its wake, Alustriel raised eyes that blazed with pain to glare at Roeblen as she held up one hand over her head and a slender black staff appeared in it.
Roeblen's eyes narrowed. 'A staff of Silverymoon, no doubt,' he murmured, raising his hands to deliver a smiting spell.
One end of the staff lifted a little, and he changed his mind, backing hastily away.
'Wise of you, Red Wizard,' Alustriel gasped, her breath a plume of silver flame as she climbed the staff to stand unsteadily upright, clapping a hand that glowed to the wound in her belly and gathering her will to begin what was necessary. ' 'Twould have been wiser still not to have come here at all.'
Roeblen spread his hands. 'Such was not my inten shy;tion, High Lady. I'm linked into the cycle. Azmyrandyr's calling isn't something I can resist. I saw you only an instant before I was brought here, and had just time enough to snatch down my best creation.. which you promptly destroyed.'
Alustriel spread her own hands precisely as he had done, as her healing spell spread its soothing tendrils through her body. 'A pity I'm immune to feebleminded shy;ness, isn't it?'
Roeblen's face twisted into a sneer. 'For a mage cen shy;turies old, you're not very swift witted, are you? Only a fool yields information to an enemy.'
Alustriel shrugged, feeling almost whole again. 'Mystra bids us educate the magically weak.'
The Red Wizard's eyes snapped with anger, and he spat forth a fireball incantation, hurling it at the rav shy;aged ceiling above her. Better to crush and bury this wounded Chosen rather than cast something her per shy;sonal defenses might negate or even turn back on him.
With a singing sound and a whirling of sparks, one of Alustriel's wards failed across the room, and a door burst open. As both High Lady and Red Wizard turned to look, Roeblen's fireball burst overhead, shaking the room and spitting fire in all directions. Through its roar there came a tortured groan from overhead, slow and loud, but unending. Slowly, as it went on, it grew both louder and swifter.
As a reeling Taern Hornblade and a tall and hand shy;some elf behind him clutched at the doorframe and stared in horror, the floor of the room above the black shy;ened Ten Tapestries Chamber broke asunder and col shy;lapsed, spilling like a titanic waterfall through the shattered ceiling.
Stones roared down in a dark flood of death as Taern screamed something and the laughing Red Wizard retreated. Alustriel glanced upward, then raised the staff, aiming it straight up. It winked once in her grasp, and she looked at Roeblen and announced calmly, 'Pass-'
The rest of the word was lost in the thunder of tum shy;bling, crushing stone. It went on and on, hiding the ruler of Silverymoon from view amid rising dust as stones cracked and rolled.
When at last the roaring died away to echoes and the dust began to settle, Roeblen turned away from his latest frustratingly futile attempt to bring down a door ward and spat out a curse. It should have been so easy. A word, two gestures, another word, and he should have been out and roaming around a palace legendary for its stored magic. It was too much to hope that the falling stones had crushed those two idiots in the door shy;way, but at least he'd felled the much vaunted High Lady of Silverymoon.
A figure came striding out of the dust then, a tall figure with a staff in its hand, whose silver hair stirred about its shoulders as if with a life of its own.
The Red Wizard's hissed curse turned into a groan of disbelief as two more heads came bobbing through the dust. Gods, had he missed them all?
Roeblen looked from one grim and dusty face to another, then murmured something swift and anxious, his intricately gesturing fingers momentarily shaping a closed ring. As the three folk of Silverymoon advanced upon the
