One of the warriors grew impatient in his frustra shy;tion. Why wouldn't this woman he was hacking fall? He put his head down and charged right through her, passing through her nothingness to crash and clang hard against the chamber wall. The Simbul saw the mageling's eyes narrow.
'Y-yyes!' he cried, pointing at her. 'Yon's not the sorcer shy;ess at all, but a-'
The black tendrils closed over his head and twisted it off.
The Witch-Queen of Aglarond whistled and swal shy;lowed, despite herself, as the headless, blood-pumping body staggered forward into the blades and began to slump into bloody nothingness under their butchery. So that was a Spider of Shar.
Tendrils were lashing through her phantom self in angry futility now, and she thought it prudent to stagger, look injured, and to flee-down the passageway, toward the priests-as swiftly as possible.
As she began her falsely unsteady journey, the war shy;riors were making small whimpering sounds, wetter noises, and one or two short, desperate screams as the whirling blades penetrated their flickering, failing defensive magics. Even if one of the clergy tried to bring down the blade barrier now with quelling magic, her spellsnaring sphere would maintain it. She tugged on the sphere in her mind, sawing it from one side of the room-daggers snarled and rang sparks off the stone walls-to the other, where the song of tortured metal was repeated. Along the way, the moving blades brought final doom to the four armsmen dying in the heart of that whirlwind of steel.
Horrible things, blade barriers. Bloodletting waste, she thought, far more grisly than a good, clean fireball.
With that old and sarcastic wizards' dark joke twist shy;ing her lips, the Simbul brought the blade barrier through her phantom self. She gasped and flung up her arms in a fairly impressive feigning of fresh-wounded pain, and thrust it down the passage toward the two priests. Another pair of men had emerged into the far end of the passageway, far behind the priests, and at the sight of them, the Simbul acquired a smile that was even less pretty than the one she'd just been wearing.
Red Wizards, these two, or she'd eat all their fingers, with or without salt. One of them even wore the purple robes and red sash that puppeteers the world over used to let their audiences know 'Red Wizard' in a glance.
Ah, now, perhaps this trip was going to be worth leav shy;ing a comfortable throne for, after all.
The whirling blades shrieked and snarled their way along the narrow passage, spitting shards and sparks in all directions. Had her real body not now been tucked prudently into a corner of the chamber where appren shy;tices had recently been acting the roles of the rulers of Nimpeth, the Queen of Aglarond might have suffered some real damage. As it was, she limped and lurched for shy;ward, her face a mask of pain as she clutched at nonex shy;istent wounds in her phantom side, and tried to keep a grin from creeping onto her face as she watched the priests struggle with their obviously meager courage.
It didn't take long for one of them-the one who'd cast the spider spell-to whirl around and flee. The other one acquired a rather sick and wavering smile of confidence as he raised his hands into some rather frantic spell-casting and stood his ground, backing only a single step to strike a more dramatic pose.
The two Red Wizards had stopped to cast ironguard magics on themselves. They glanced down the passage calmly when they were done, then began to stroll unhur shy;riedly toward the fray. Ah, Thayan arrogance…
'The priest wasn't exaggerating after all,' Largrond of the Lash remarked. 'I must admit I
'Not exaggerating?' Ylondan the Tall replied, lifting a hand to make sure his rings were gleaming in their accustomed places. 'You think that staggering wreck is the Simbul?' He nodded his head in the direction of the wounded, staggering woman in the distance.
The priest Staenyn came panting past them, his eyes wild. He looked away hastily from the hard glares they gave him-and Ylondan thrust out a boot and tripped him. Staenyn fell hard, but they did not bother to look and see what he did after that.
'Well, whoever she may be,' Largrond said with a cold smile, 'our duty is clear.'
'Yes,' Ylondan agreed, glee making his voice rise into oily triumph. 'Blast the bitch!'
As if in reply to this, Temple Master Maeldur emitted a brief, brutally cut off bubbling scream as the blades reached him and did their bloody work.
'In case she should be an accomplished mage, and have some spells left,' Largrond said, as the two Red Wizards strolled untouched through the shrieking, clanging blades, 'I propose we take no chances. I shall cloak her in an anti-magic shell-and you can blast the ceiling above her. The old saying applies, you know.'
''Falling stones humble even the mightiest zulkir'- that one?' Ylondan replied, stepping around the diced carrion that had recently been a temple master of Shar without bothering to really look down, 'Or do you mean the one about not hurling meteor swarms when a bolt of lightning will do?'
'The former,' Largrond replied, not bothering to turn and look as the blade barrier met a Staenyn who was still groggily struggling to rise, and cut him to shrieking ribbons. 'The other one presumes you know precisely what you're facing.'
Ylondan swallowed. 'I think I do,' he said in a far qui shy;eter voice than before, as the blade barrier echoed its furious way on down the passage. His eyes were fixed on the woman they were now rapidly approaching, and his face had lost some of its usual color. 'I saw the Simbul once, in battle against… oh, never mind.'
He lifted his hands in sudden haste, and began to work a spell with hissing precision, moving his hands just as fast as the casting would allow. Largrond glanced at him, lifted one eyebrow, and matched his colleague's pace.
They were halfway through when the woman they were facing straightened up, crossed her arms over her breast in lazy condescension, and smilingly awaited their spells. Largrond almost faltered when the waiting woman began to laugh at them.
The Red Wizards finished their castings with identical sighs of relief, and Largrond's anti-magic shell promptly flickered into life. As it did so, the laughing sorceress winked out of existence, her mirth cut off abruptly-an instant before the stony rubble crashed down.
'A projected image,' Largrond groaned. His words heralded another instant, one in which the falling rubble was translocated onto the heads of the two Red Wizards. Sixty-odd stones that were each half the size of men slammed down to the passage floor amid a lot of lesser rubble, shaking the fortress, causing a partial collapse into the rooms on the floor below, and driving the dust of centuries into the air.
The real Simbul coughed delicately, stepped around the corner, and stood amid the carnage, dusting off her hands. 'Stand together in a passageway discussing your tactics against a foe close enough to hear? Idiots,' she muttered. 'The likes of these want to rule Faerun? Better we give it to the orcs.'
It had been a long and howling nightmare of pain, with much lying shivering on cold stone in utter dark shy;ness while half-cooked flesh that glistened and quivered like feast-day jelly shed the dark, dry ashes that had once been skin, and Auvrarn Labraster found new ways to scream.
Now the one who'd brought him here was back. Cool, soothing fingers had touched his eyeballs and banished the swimming haze that had cloaked them since the fire. A flood of sheer, shivering-cold pleasure had washed over Labraster from head to toe, banishing the worst of the pain and restoring to him skin that didn't crumble into ash or stick to anything it touched, and muscles that could move his limbs.
Those chilling but gentle fingers touched his throat. Auvrarn Labraster had a brief glimpse of a ring that looked like the iridescent husk of a long, green beetle, that covered the uppermost joint of a slender male human right hand, and glowed with a green light tinged around the edges with white. The glow extended only a little way, but it was enough to show him a rough, curv shy;ing wall of stone around and above his head. He was, it seemed, lying in a cavern.
Labraster then discovered that he could swallow again, could taste something besides fire for the first time in what seemed like an eternity, and could, in fact, speak. He swallowed several times, trying to shape words through a mouth and throat that seemed horribly dry.
'I owe you my life, good sir,' he husked, hearing a voice that at some moments seemed little more than a whistle, and little more than a raw, ragged rattle at others, 'and wish to extend to you my thanks.'
The response that came from almost directly above him-where the ring-wearer stood, his head beyond Labraster's field of view-was startling. The man with the cool fingers abruptly burst into a loud, canine bark shy;ing.
That barking gave way to liquid laughter, too high and shrill to be comfortably sane, then an almost childlike
