from him by the rushing purple flames. He looked for a moment as if he wanted to cry, then to chortle in glee. As Storm watched him, through the roaring and her pain, his face twisted and trembled. He barked, suddenly, like an angry, excited dog, then threw back his head and bayed before hurling himself on the woman struggling on the altar, twisting and panting and clawing at her. Sharp pains faded as his hungry hands clutched her broken bones, and they shrank away, healing at his touch.
The archwizard's furious assault dragged her off the stone into a helpless tumble, and instantly Storm could breathe-and scream out her pain-again. Purple fire stabbed forth in angry fingers to claw at the whimpering bard and the puzzled-looking wizard as they stared into each other's eyes, locked in a frozen embrace, and Halaster asked in a very quiet, precise voice, 'Excuse me, but are you one of my apprentices? I don't believe I've had the pleasure-'
'No, and I'm thinking you won't be having it any time soon, Blackcloak,' Storm hissed into his startled face, 'if you don't get us both back out of here-
It was a gambit that almost worked. The mad archwizard frowned thoughtfully, as if trying to remember some shy;thing, lifted one hand to trace something in the air, then shook his head and said in quite a different voice, 'Oh, no, Idon't think I could do that.'
'Halaster!' Storm roared at him, slapping his face as the purple fire rose into a shrieking howl, tugging at them enough to drag them a few inches across the stone floor. 'Listen to me!'
'Thy voice is tarble upon the ears, jibby, yet thou'rt strange to me. Yield thy name, I pray,' he quavered in reply, his voice different again. Storm growled, wrapped her arms and legs around him as if he were a pole she was trying to slide down, and rolled their locked bodies over and over, away from the altar.
The last of Elminster's shieldings slid away from around Storm as they went, passing into her in a healing that banished pain and brought back vigor from end to end of her body. She almost laughed aloud at the sheer pleasure it brought.
Halaster burst into angry tears, like a child who's had a toy snatched from him, and was clawing at her again. 'Give it!' he sobbed. 'Give it back!'
The threads of silver fire were gone, vanished with her healing. Snarling and barking, the wizard became a great black wolf, then a thing of talons and scales, panting, 'Shrivel! Shred! Shatter!'
'Sylune,' Storm told the room grimly, as fresh fires in her breast announced that the claws had torn open her flesh once more, 'you've a lot to answer for. Next time, call on someone else.'
Silver smoke billowed up from her in a bright glow, and Storm fought to slap away Halaster's head as it became snouted and many-fanged once more, and promptly snapped at her. She never saw the deeper darkness gather above the altar, and slowly open two cold, glitter shy;ing eyes of dark purple.
Halaster's head was now a thing of questing tentacles, darting at her eyes and up her nostrils, sliding in a surge of cold slime into her ears.
In the gloom of the temple under Waterdeep, there came a shining forth of the Weave. The air filled with the bright sweep of a glittering net of glowing stars, stars that threw back the darkness and the purple orbs as two blue-white eyes, each as large as a coach, opened briefly to regard the struggling humans.
When the blue-white radiance faded, the bard and the wizard twisted and strained in darkness, their only light the sparks and tongues of silver fire leaking from between them.
The purple glow returned briefly, flaring up like a flame on the altar, but the blue-white flash that came out of nowhere to slash at that flame was so bright and sudden that the stone of the altar groaned aloud, and smaller stones fell from the ceiling here and there, clattering down around the two humans.
Storm and Halaster panted and struggled against each other for a long time before silver radiance flared. The Mad Mage hissed at the pain it brought him as he tried to lap at it, his wolf head sporting an impossibly long tongue. His other limbs had become snakelike coils, each wrapped thickly around one of Storm's broken limbs. She lay helpless under him, spread-eagled on the stones with her front laid open down past her navel. Silver fire flared up around her heaving, glistening inter shy;nal organs in an endless, pumping sequence of dancing flames. More flames licked out between her parted, whimpering lips, and the hungry wizard bent his head to feed.
Unheeded, the stones between them and the altar were heaving upward, as if something long and snakelike were reaching out from under the freshly cracked block of stone, burrowing along at a speed no mole had ever reached. The line of heaving stones was heading straight for the spot where the helpless Chosen of Mystra lay.
'What's happening?' Thone asked, as Sylune swayed juid threw up her hands. 'Can I help?'
Blue-white fire spiraled around her, rising up with a muted scream, and Thone found himself trembling from the sheer force of magic rushing through the room-Art that howled and roared up, then was gone.
In the sudden stillness, Sylune let her arms fall back to her sides and sighed. Thone found he could move again, and that he felt very sad. As the Witch of Shadowdale walked to the window end of the kitchen, all the light in the room seemed to move with her, leaving him in deep shadow.
The Zhentarim slyblade stared down at his hands, and found that they were shaking, and that he was struggling on the edge of bursting into tears.
In a lamp-lit chamber in southern Thay a man stiff shy;ened, lifted his head sharply, then sketched two swift ges shy;tures in the air.
'As you wish, holy Shar,' he whispered to the empty air around him, an instant before the lights in his eyes went out forever. He toppled onto his side with no more sound than a whisper, as if he were made of paper.
An apprentice looked up sharply, in time to see the body of his master settle onto the rugs like a dry, hollow husk. Empty eye sockets stared up into the lamplight forever.
In two places not so far apart, sudden blue-white fire swirled, and two men found they hadn't even time to open their mouths and exclaim before the fire was gone again, and they were somewhere else.
They were somewhere underground-a chamber of dark stone where Dauntless and Mirt stood gaping at each other, then at the sole source of light in the room, a few paces away. Fitful silver fire rose from a silver-haired figure who lay sprawled on her back, gasping feeble plumes of flame as a monster crouched atop her, licking at the fire that rose from her.
'Ye gods!' Mirt snarled, as he bounded forward, past a racing upheaval of stones. He thrust his trusty dagger into the beast's nearest eye.
Dauntless said less and ran faster. His sword took the squalling creature in the throat, thrusting twice as it col shy;lapsed forward onto the woman. The stones of the floor rose up like a clutching hand around them both, creaking and rumbling.
With startled oaths the two Harpers kicked aside stones and stabbed down into what flared up from beneath. It seemed no more than glowing purple smoke, but it ate away their blades as if it were acid, spewing sparks at their every thrust. Wordlessly they dropped useless hilts into it and snatched out dagger after dagger, thrusting like madmen into the empty, glowing air they stood on, until at last the purple radiance flickered and faded.
It seemed to retreat back into crevices beneath the floor stones, and Dauntless eyed it narrowly as Mirt plucked aside the beast's shoulder, which seemed to dwindle under his fat and hairy hand.
At another time, the wheezing moneylender might have stopped to peer curiously at the vanishing monster. Now, however, as snakelike tentacles melted away, he had eyes for nothing but the white, drawn face coming into view from beneath it.
'Storm Silverhand!' Mirt swore, and scrabbled among secret places in his worn and flapping breeches for one of the potion vials he always carried. 'Help me, lad!' he panted, crashing down to his knees beside the sprawled, ravaged body of the Bard of Shadowdale. 'She's-'
Dauntless had already kicked aside the monster's body, staring curiously at what it had become-a gaunt old man whose face he did not know-and was now staring past Mirt at something else. He threw the dagger in his hand hard into the darkness.
The moneylender's shaggy head whirled around to see what the younger Harper had attacked. He was in time to see a man he knew catch the dagger and close his hand over it with a mocking smile. Purple light-the same hue as the radiance they'd just been hacking at-flared up between those closed fingers and the dagger faded away into nothingness.
Auvrarn Labraster struck a pose, raising one hand in a lazy salute. Those handsome, crookedly smiling
