jerking out brutal weapons and jostling each other to be first at the kill.
Spheres of vividly glowing air-of all colors, from a rather glorious ruby red to a putrid green-were drifting around them now, expanding from Elminster's person and various minor enchantments worn or carried by his three companions. The disjunction was working all too well.
The woman who'd hurled the dagger struck a pose just beyond the Harpers' blades and laughed in triumph. 'When Elminster lies slain,' she cried, eyes shining, 'remember that it was I, Arashta Tharbrow, who struck his magic from him-for the greater glory of Bane, whose foremost servant I am!'
'Oh?' Itharr asked curtly, as his blade cut a line of shrieking sparks from the invisible shield protecting the sorceress. 'He's reduced to hiring madwomen now, is he?'
She howled at him like a dog in fury. 'Blasphemy!' she spat when she found control enough to form words. Shaking in anger, she threw up her hands to smite the hard-faced ranger with magic-and then her face changed, one of her hands flew to her mouth, and she went pale.
Her face contorted in frantic fear, and her hands flashed in the gestures Belkram knew would unleash a lightning bolt. Snarling against the pain he expected to come, he kept hacking at the unseen barrier that protected her, and suddenly realized it was giving way. Instead of ringing off something rock hard and unyielding, his blade was going a little way into something that rushed past it like floodwater, resisting but allowing the steel's passage.
And then he realized no lightning had come to snatch breath and life away from him.
'Look!' Itharr said. 'Her eyes!'
All three of them peered past their hacking blades. The weird purple glow had faded away, and the green eyes behind it looked very young and very frightened as Sharantyr's blade broke through the fading shield at last and slid into the woman's breast with silken ease and speed.
The sorceress went down, blood bubbling from her mouth in a last, soundless scream, her mouth moving to shape words that would never be heard. The disjunction swept away the last of her shield as it had robbed her of spells, and with shield and spells went a cloaking wall of shadows, revealing to the rangers a snarling, hooting group of hobgoblins racing toward them across a few paces of open grass.
' 'Ware!' Belkram shouted unnecessarily, and then battle was joined, the skirling clangor of steel on steel drowning out all coherent speech. The hobgoblins were reckless, snarling hackers of the sort skilled warriors disparagingly called 'meat-choppers,' but they were big and coming in fast, and there were a lot of them. If one Harper caught his blade against a hostile weapon, the slashing steel of the next foe could well be into his ribs before he could recover. Wherefore the three ducked, dodged, and dove as they never had before, swords and daggers together weaving a deadly wall of darting death that took down their hulking attackers with a stab in the eye here and a thrust through the ear or throat there, never slowing to parry and hack at chests or flanks.
Shar got a single glimpse of a tall black figure running easily at the fore when the charge began. Then the being thinned suddenly, like a wisp of smoke, and the hobgoblins thundered past and crashed into the three rangers without their dark companion.
That seemed like an eternity ago now, as she twisted and strained and set her teeth against the numbing force of the hacking blows raining down on her deflecting blade. Shar's lungs were burning with the effort of meeting those strikes, and sweat was running down her wrists and dripping from the end of her nose as she danced, leapt frantically out of reach of a roundhouse slash-which sank deep into the side of another hobgoblin, she noted with glee-and found herself spinning through the heart of the gathered hobgoblins.
A startled face loomed up at her, and she slashed just beneath it, opening a throat with her whistling steel as she launched herself in the other direction, hoping to stay ahead of any direct pursuit. Rounding to the left, she found herself behind an unwitting foe and hamstrung him with a ruthless slash along the backs of his knees. With a grunt of surprise, the next hobgoblin turned his head from trying to gut Belkram, and Shar drove her dagger hilt deep into one staring eye.
It lodged against the bone as she overbalanced, and she brought her sword up to protect her back as she jerked her arm back and forth wildly to haul her fang free.
It came away at last, but by then hobgoblins were swinging at her from three sides. Shar flung herself down flat on her back, and as their blades crashed into each other overhead, kicked out hard against a massive hobgoblin foot and got the momentum she needed to roll away.
She rolled right into Belkram, who leapt high to allow her passage under him. Sharantyr came to her feet in time to see a snarling Itharr take a slash along his ribs as he leaned to drive his sword into the tusked mouth of his assailant. The sword continued upward, pushing the hobgoblin's helm off on the top of its head. Itharr let go of the blade at once and tore the hobgoblin's own black-bladed scimitar from its failing fingers, bringing it back immediately in a swing that took two fingers off the sword hand of the next hobgoblin.
As that one screamed, it reeled back into another, who slipped and got Belkram's blade in its throat. Shar fenced with another, gritting her teeth, until Belkram reached out and put his dagger into its armpit.
Then it was over, and they still stood, three panting, sweating, bleeding humans among a confusion of groaning, writhing, or silently sprawled goblinkin. They sought each other, wiping sweat from their eyes, and then stiffened at a cruel laugh from beyond the battle.
They whirled as one, in time to see Elminster's body topple in a fountain of dark blood as a black blade scythed through his neck. The blade was held by-no, it seemed to actually be one arm of a tall black figure. The Old Mage's eyes stared accusingly at them as his head dangled, long white hair firmly in the dark man's grip.
'Futile fools!' the figure sneered, and backed away from them into a whirling green light that was growing behind it.
Heartsick, Shar took three running steps and hurled her blade. But as the weapon flashed end over end, the laughing figure faded away through the gate and made the portal wink out, so her steel bounced on dark turf in the night.
She felt the tears beginning as she turned her head and saw Belkram and Itharr looking down at the headless body. Then they looked up at each other. Belkram licked dry and trembling lips twice before he managed to ask, 'What do we do now?'
8
The Castle of Shadows, Kythorn 16
The shadows swirled uneasily in the vast, gloomy Great Hall of the Throne as a shimmering occurred in their midst, a disturbance that — in light of recent events — was swiftly surrounded by a dozen grim-faced elder Shadowmasters, hands raised to deal magical death.
The roiling shadows they eyed so narrowly parted into a green flame. The flame deepened swiftly into a man-high spindle and then widened into a tunnel. A breath later, Issaran of the blood of Malaug stepped proudly out of the spiraling emerald depths with a severed human head gripped in one fist, a staring man's head with long white hair and a longer white beard.
He waved his other hand, calling bloodfire down from the Shadow Throne to illuminate himself — an act of insolence for any lesser kin when a Shadowmaster High ruled in the castle. Murmurs in the shadows reminded him of that, but he cared not a whit. This was his moment of glory, and everyone must see it lest the Shadow-master forget the reward he'd promised. The amber glow drove back the darker shadows, making the center of the hall a grand and glorious place.
At the heart of the radiance, young Issaran stood tall, holding up his trophy for all to see. 'Elminster of Shadowdale,' he proclaimed loudly, 'slain by my hand!'
'Oh?' Dhalgrave asked coldly, melting suddenly out of invisibility to hang in the air just above the proud young scion of Malaug. 'So how do you explain that?' One of his powerful hands lifted to indicate the pale glow of the scrying portal, behind the dwindling disturbance that a moment ago had been Issaran's gate.
Something in that acid tone made Issaran pale as he spun, to stare openmouthed at the scene in the portal.
