smoldering.
Tsantress shrieked a warning as a lich suddenly leered at her elbow, ereen magical flames roarine uo to shroud irs bones as it tried to embrace her. The fire of four wands promprly met inside the lich and sent its upper body into oblivion. Tsantress was able to kick its flaming, stumbling legs away until they crashed to the passage floor.
Behind the wand wielders, Laspeera and a handful of scared-looking Purple Dragons came rushing down the passage, weapons out.
Even as Tsantress called a greering to them, she saw a sword appear, gleaming in the air behind them. It darted at them like an arrow loosed from a bow.
It ran through one startled Dragon from behind, up under the tail of his codpiece and into his vitals. He shrieked, clawing the air in agony, and collapsed.
'Ger against a wall! In pairs!' the Royal Magician bellowed, aiming the wands in his hands so the beams of snarling magic streaming from them met in midair right where a lich had just appeared. The lich burst in the blinding white explosion that followed, but more were appearing down the passage behind the Dragons, teleporting in from the group Vangey and Ree had been ravaging with wandfire.
Cackling wildly, a skull flew past everyone, eyesockets streaming flames, attacking no one but mad with glee at all the destruction. The flying sword struck again, darting as nimbly as any hummingbird in a palace garden, and Purple Dragons hacked at it frantically. Wandfire spat in all directions. Deltalon shouted for another wand as one he was using darkened and burst into dust in his hand. Ree flung one to him, sending it cartwheeling through the roiling air. Liches cast spells up and down the passage, and the palace's defensive magics flared up in scores of places.
In all of this, Vangerdahast glanced back at the liches he'd first scorched with wandfire and through their thinned ranks caught sight of the Knights of Myth Drannor-and in their midst, another Royal Magician of Cormyr. A perfecr likeness of himself, who smiled at him in cold triumph through the chaos of magic now storming around the passage.
Staring into the eyes of his impostor, Vangerdahast snarled in wordless rage. Rage that was all too likely to be futile.
'I wasn't much liking the look of this,' Semoor said, waving at the tall door at the end of the passage. It was graven with a glowing blue badge of Esparin, 'But for the love of Lathander, let's get to it and through it! Now!'
A long, slender sword streaked out of the spell battle, flying by itself with its point first. It glistened with fresh, wet blood, raced as fast as any arrow-and was headed right for Vangerdahast!
The Royal Magician's hands were already moving, shaping intricate gestures in feverish haste. A bare instant before rhe sword would have thrust into him, he vanished, reappearing well down the passage amid all the milling liches and swirling spells.
The sword plunged through the spot where the wizard had been standing, then soared up and around in a loop to come racing at Florin's face.
The ranger set his teeth and struck it aside with his own blade, striking as hard as he could and sending the flying sword singing and clanging along the floor until it bounded up at Doust.
The priest ducked away from it, cursing, and all the Knights pounced on the sword, hacking at it furiously until it sprang up out of their midst, struck the ceiling with a clang, andArrowed right back down again, plunging into-and through- Semoor's armored breast.
Vangerdahast saw the sword streak down the passage at the impostor, but he then lost all sight of that end of the passage. Knights, flying blade, his false double, and all disappeared in a huge explosion as a lich snatched the fell magic out of several other liches, destroying rhem in an instant, and twisted that freed, writhing magic into a withering wall of harrowfire.
Vantrerdahaxf had seen such a doom onlv once before in his life. but he knew what had to be done. He hurled the wand in his left hand into the heart of that advancing wall of flames, then unleashed the full fury of the wand in his right hand at the tumbling wood he'd thrown, murmuring an incantation that would dissolve the controlling magics of that wand.
The wand flared, turning the harrowfire into flames of a different sort. They blazed up into a blinding white wall of flame that sucked half a dozen screaming liches into it. Vangerdahast sealed off the rest of the passage for the few breaths the fire would last before it burnt itself out.
Grimly, hoping he wasn't dooming loyal war wizards he could no longer see, Vangerdahast thrust at those flames with his mind, forcing them back and through as many liches as he could get, before the fire faded away.
White fire blazed briefly around the wound in Semoor's chest as the minor spells on his armor failed. Screaming, the Light of Lathander arched over backward, writhing in agony.
From down the passage, the fierce-eyed Vangerdahast shouted a spell. Jhessail understood enough of the incantation to know the wizard sought to disintegrate the sword.
Caught in the sudden eerie glow of that magic, the sword standing up out of Semoor's breast rang like a bell, then shivered-and spat out something dark and smokelike. It billowed up into a huge, evil face with white flames for eyes, a face that jeered at the Knights as it grew a hand to clutch at the sword.
Vangerdahast's spell faded from around the sword, and the towering, leering thing plucked the blade out of Semoor.
The stricken priest crashed to the passage floor. White fire leaked from his chest, and blood spewed from his mouth. His fellow Knights, shouting in fear and rage, all hacked and hewed at the flying sword, the sheer fury of their blows striking sparks from it as the smokelike wrairh looming over them tugged at it, fighting to hold and wield the blade even as they tried to strike it down and shatter it.
They prevailed, dashing ir out of the great wraith's grasp. The smokelike thing drew back, freeing the flying sword to stab and dart at the Knights assailing it.
The adventurers sprang and ducked and hammered at the sword in a frantic, gasping dance that kept them all alive until Vangerdahast shouted another spell. From down the passage the spell came, gathering wardings from the passage walls all around.
The magic howled down the passage and closed in around the sword in a tightening, crackling fist that crushed the wraith-thing back down into smoke that streamed back into the blade.
The flying sword sprang high and went streaking back down the passage, with the wardings clawing at it angrily.
The Knights found themselves staring over Semoor's body and the scattered bones of liches at the distant Vangerdahast, who was standing down the passage with the wardings now streaming back to him and building up in a crackling cloak. Beyond him, the sword vanished through a bright wall of flame that hadn't been there before, that now hid the rest of the passage behind its bright raging.
'Get through that door!' the Royal Magician shouted to the Knights. 'Stop to defend yourself againsr liches when you must, but get through that door! '
'But-Semoor!' Jhessail wept.
'Leave him!' Vangerdahast roared.
'No!' Doust, Islif, and Florin shouted, all reaching for their lifeless friend.
'I'll take him,' Doust told the other two. 'You do the fighting!' He lifted Semoor in his arms, staggered, and promptly fell under the weight.
Islif reached out an arm and said, ' wVIItake him, we two!'
'Do it,' Florin snarled, springing past them to meet oncoming liches with furious swings of his sword.
Pennae led the rush in the other direction. The blue glows in the graven badge of Esparin were flaring and flickering wildly now, and rhe air seemed ro thicken and rhin in successive waves, shovinp them back when it was thick but letting them struggle forward between its moments of thickness.
'Hurry!' Florin called from behind his companions. 'Can't… hold them!'
Jhessail shrieked as a lich's bony fingertips tore across her ribs and breast, trailing magical flames. She
