A cone of shining white radiance leapt down out of the night at him, and an angry snarl came from the trees clear across the ruins, followed by a trio of glowing lances rushing right at the Old Mage with crackling lightnings dancing back and forth from one lance tip to the other.
A many-tentacled thing scuttled on spiderlike legs out of the trees behind Elminster, and a ring of scarlet balls of fire spun down out of the sky. Shar stared at them all, mouth suddenly dry.
No man-not even a thousand-year-old archmage- could stand against all this. And after Old Elminster was gone, she and the Harpers would surely die too. She drew a sword she knew was useless and thanked the gods she'd be dying with friends, and in battle, and that they'd shared a laugh or two this evening before death came for them all. 'Lord of Battles,' she breathed, watching death come for Elminster from all sides, 'and Lady of the Forest, let us all die well-and not before we must!'
And then the Old Mage's pipe flashed again. An instant later everything crashed together, blinding her. The last thing she saw as the dazzlement overwhelmed her and the force of the blast flung her head over heels into the trees, was one of the ruined towers falling slowly, almost majestically, into the conflagration below.
'There's been no attempt to hide their trail, Lord,' Brammur said, his old gray eyes grave.
'Yet only four, you say?' Like his men, the Lord of Daggerdale wore the leather armor of a forester and bore a sword covered with gum and soot to keep it from reflecting the light. And like his men, he spent his days sleeping in one of the caves they knew, and his nights out hunting Zhents, brigands, and other predators in his ravaged realm. Randal Morn sighed. 'That means they're either confident as all the gods or trying to lure someone into attacking them…'
'Or just such fools that they don't know better.' Thaern finished the sentence for him. His head archer looked as grim as Randal Morn felt.
'I don't like mysteries,' the Lord of Daggerdale said shortly. 'Fighting Zhents and orcs and such is bad enough. But we must know who they are and what they're about.'
'Unless they're still riding through the night, Lord, it looks like they've holed up in Irythkeep,' Brammur said through his gray-white moustache. 'Shall we make haste, or walk wide to surround it?'
'The lure could be for us,' Randal Morn mused. 'We must go wide, quietly and with care. Bram — '
His next words were lost forever in a sudden flash that split the night. Then there were several flashes together, and the ground rocked under them. The last of Randal Morn's men exchanged glances, lifted eyebrows, and took tighter grips on their weapons.
'On the other hand,' Randal Morn said lightly, 'no one's likely to hear us if we go in bellowing drinking songs, through that.' Another distant crash answered him, and a dead limb broke off a tree somewhere near and made its crashing way to the ground.
Irythkeep was outlined by amber radiance for a moment, and they heard shouting and saw glowing lights moving in the sky above its ruined towers. They watched the explosions, curling tongues of flame, and flashes of light for several awestruck breaths. Then the Lord of Daggerdale licked lips that had gone dry and said, his heart leaping with excitement within him, 'That magic could slay us as swiftly and easily as the ones it's intended for. We must still use caution.'
'I always do, lord,' Thaern said, stone faced. Randal Morn punched him playfully on the shoulder and chuckled. 'Right, blades!' he said to the others around him. 'Onward! Follow the ever-cautious Thaern.'
Daggerdale, Kythorn 16
Belkram came dazedly, painfully back to Faerun, sprawled on his back over several broken branches of a scorched tree. Smoke curled up the cracked and smoldering trees around him, and something winged and taloned and made of glass was slashing clumsily at him from where it hung wedged in a tangle of leaning, half-fallen trees.
Belkram gave it a sour look and rolled away until he fell off his bed of branches and found his feet amid trampled ferns. His leathern gloves were inside his breeches as always, the cuffs protruding above his belt right behind him; they were out and on in three tugs. The ranger took up a scorched sapling and hefted it once. He swung it up for greater force, and then down as hard as he could.
Glass shattered and tinkled off branches. He snarled and struck again, until not only the talons but most of the arm had been struck off. Then he strode away, seeking his friends.
They weren't hard to find. Elminster was scampering around the clearing, hurling slaying spells up into the night and dodging the same sent back his way. Shar lay draped limply over a branch ahead, arms dangling, blood on her face.
He lifted her off the tree limb as gently as he could, flinching as a swarm of fireballs drifted through the now-blackened stones of the keep and exploded together, sending fresh tongues of flame roaring into the trees. He turned her over.
She was breathing. In his arms she coughed weakly, spat blood-she'd bitten through her lip, Belkram saw- and murmured, not opening her eyes, 'Tempus… have you come to take me?'
Touched, Belkram knelt amid the tangled and smashed trees and laid her on the ground. Finding her sword, he put it into her hand, kissed her forehead, and said, 'It's me, Shar-Belkram the Bold! I'll be back for you, Lady Knight. Lie still here… I'll be back!'
'Belk… ram?' she breathed, head lolling back. The Harper glanced back at her once, sudden moisture in his eyes, as he ran out into the clearing. Something that looked like a griffon or a giant eagle-but had three long tentacles curling out from each shoulder instead of wings-was writhing around on the ground, obviously hurt. Beyond it, something like an owlbear with a snake's body was hugging Itharr and trying its best to bite his face off at the same time. Farther off still, amid the stones of the keep, several men were blinking in and out of existence, hurling spells from time to time at foes who didn't seem to be there. One of these men looked like Elminster.
Darting magic missiles and flickering, slow-drifting motes of light from some other spell were streaming around the clearing, around them all, like a swirling school of fish. Belkram shook his head as he sprinted toward Itharr.
A bolt flashed down to the ground in front of him, splitting a stone block twice his size with a crack that left his ears ringing. Belkram fell sideways, rolled, and found himself coming up face-to-face with a robed man who had long fangs, rich-looking robes, and flickering globes of radiance around both hands. The man's startled face twisted into a sneer, and he raised one hand threateningly-so Belkram thrust his blade through that mouth. A moment later he was hanging on through a squalling, bruising battering of blood and frantically shifting flesh. It melted away from his blade, ichor gushing out in all directions, and flowed around his legs, looking like the putty Belkram had once mixed to set glass in an Athkatlan window. Cold fear rose inside the Harper, and he stabbed down frantically with his blade, carving at the thick, unyielding, slowly tightening stuff.
The mutating flesh shuddered and spasmed suddenly, then undulated away from him in snakelike coils. Belkram snarled, snatched out his belt dagger, and went after it, slashing wildly with both his weapons.
He was still slashing and hewing ribbons of the stuff away in all directions when a bright swarm of magical bolts swam down into the clearing and raced at him.
Once, Belkram had taken a dagger through the palm of his hand. The attacking bolts felt like seven such daggers in swift succession. The pain smashed the breath out of him as the force of the striking magic missiles drove him back into an untidy heap on the ground. It was like being struck in the short ribs over and over again, Belkram thought, struggling to get his breath. Through swimming eyes he saw some of those glowing mages still standing on the air above the keep. Itharr… he'd been going to help Itharr…
Rage burned in Itharr Jathram all the time. Slow and buried deep, but there all the time, like coals glowing under turf for the night. Once in a while-not often, but eventually-that building rage rose and warmed and boiled up… and the burly, quiet Harper slew things.
He'd said as much to Storm, that first day at her farm, sitting on two stumps in the forest behind her house. 'Lady,' Itharr had told her softly, 'you must know this. I'd not be the best citizen in a land at peace. From time to time, I find… I must kill.'
Storm had merely nodded, sober eyed, and said as gently, 'I can see it in you. Yet know this, Itharr. You are welcome in my house, now and to the end of your days.'
And for that, Itharr would love her forever. Her face then, and her words, came back to him now as he stood
