'Turnold,' she said, ignoring the tremor in her voice, 'do you know where the master keeps scrolls or items to dispel magic?'
Turnold's eyes held sorrow. 'In his grimoires, only. He didn't want us unweaving his wards and getting into things he wanted undisturbed.'
'How can I get you free?'
Turnold managed the smallest of shrugs in his bonds of flame and said, 'I know not, but this gate must be destroyed-or all Toril stands in danger.'
Irendue nodded and with an impatient hand wiped tears from her cheeks. 'But how?' she asked, thinking of all the unusable staves and rods and floating scepters in the rooms around her. Either one of the shapeshifters might step into the room at any moment. She had no time.
'The web,' Lareth said haltingly, his voice sharp and high with fear at what he was suggesting, 'lives through our life. Slay us, and it will fade.'
Turnold's eyes blazed with sudden fire. Irendue looked helplessly from one imprisoned apprentice to the other until her eyes were snared by those of the older, wiser apprentice.
'Do it,' Turnold whispered hoarsely, transfixing her with eyes of steel. ' 'Tis the only way.'
'I can't!' Irendue hissed helplessly, standing nude before him, tears rolling down her cheeks once more. She could not look away from his blazing eyes.
Hanging in the web of fire, Turnold said carefully, 'You must. Know, Irendue, that I have always loved you-'tis why I baited you so often.'
'I can't harm anyone!' she wailed, clenching her fists.
'Take the sword the master keeps behind the door,' Turnold said faintly. 'Put it in my mouth-and then push. Please.'
Her tears almost blinded her as she found the sword in the study, fumbled its heavy length back through the passage, and came to face Turnold once more.
'I can't do this to you,' she whispered. 'I just can't.'
'You must,' he said fiercely, straining forward in the web of flames, 'and you will. Put the blade in my mouth.'
Irendue shook her head, weeping wildly. The sword point danced and glittered wildly in front of his face until he growled, 'I suppose one of my eyes would do as well, but I hardly think taking off my ears will suffice.'
His familiar sarcasm steadied her. Irendue slid the steel between his teeth. Resting it there, she asked quietly, 'Turnold, are you sure?'
'Of clorse hlyime shlure,' he managed to say around the tip. 'Do it!'
Irendue swallowed, blew him a kiss, closed her eyes-and thrust the blade forward.
'Gods greet ye, Turnold,' she said huskily, giving him the formal farewell. Her stomach heaved, and she almost flung the blade away in her haste to tear it free. When she opened her eyes again, she tried not to look at the limp thing that had been Turnold, but his blood was blazing up around him in flames of orange and red, and the web of white fires was dim, fading as she watched!
Irendue let out a tremulous breath and looked at Lareth. 'Can-Can you pull free?' she asked him, and watched his face tighten as he struggled. Cold fire flickered around his trembling limbs, but after a long, silent battle he gave up, sagging forward. His teeth were chattering in fear as he raised a gray face to her and said, 'D-Do it.'
She did. It was easier the second time… and as the apprentices' bodies slumped, the web of fire faded silently away, gone as if it had never been. Its passing was marked by the hollow clatter of Mortoth's bones bouncing on the floor.
With dull eyes, Irendue stared at his grinning skull. She went to her knees among the dead men, and the dust that had been the skin of her master eddied around her. The bloody sword was cold and heavy in her hands as the world dissolved in tears again…
The voice, when it came, was menacingly quiet. 'What have you done?'
Irendue lifted her head and the sword together, glaring up through tangled hair at the other shapeshifter. He wore the form of a handsome, sandy-haired man with a mustache… but his eyes glittered dark and deadly, like those of a hawk.
'Freed us,' Irendue gave him her fiercely whispered answer. 'Freed us all.'
'You shall die for this,' Lorgyn said softly.
'I know,' the woman replied calmly, embracing the sword as if it was a babe in her arms. 'Kill me, then, and have done… monster.'
Lorgyn showed his teeth in a smile. 'Ah, no,' he said in almost friendly tones. 'Death need not be so fast and easy as all that. I shall use your sorcery to help me raise another gate… and your body to power it. Of course, that body need not be whole…'
Still wearing that terrible grin, he advanced on her. Elven Court woods, Flamerule 30
'Die!' Belkram roared in fury, forgetting all thoughts of stealth and nearby wizards as he thrust his blade repeatedly into the shapeshifter's hairy, many-taloned bulk. If only it were still silver, he thought fiercely as he drove his steel home once more and struck something hard within, making the Malaugrym quiver.
It snarled and shrank away, and Belkram lunged after it, catching sight of Sharantyr's blade flashing on its far flank. The lady ranger's blade glistened as it rose and fell with a green-hued, translucent slime that must be the monster's blood.
'Right,' Belkram snarled, 'let's see all of your blood, beast! All of it!'
His blade thrust down to its hilt into the shifting bulk before him, and the Malaugrym recoiled, drawing flailing tentacles back into itself in struggling spasms of pain.
As it receded, it left Itharr behind, writhing weakly on the ground, his lifeblood drenching the moss and dead leaves around him. The Harper's mouth worked, and his eyes were blood-red; Belkram knew his friend was sorely wounded.
Delude yourself not, Belkram told himself sourly, he's dying.
Frantically he chopped and slashed at the shapeshifter, hearing Sharantyr's sobbing as she did the same thing. Her hair swirling around her, and she leapt high to throw all her weight behind her blade.
Something blazed with sudden fire behind her. A rolling wave of force, like a wave she'd once waded through on the beaches of Sembia, took her behind the knees and flung her forward onto the Shadowmaster.
Gray flesh opened up around her, seeking to suck her down in and smother her. Sharantyr screamed in fear and fury, clawed her way clear, and wriggled off the beasts's far side.
She came up wild-eyed, with blade in hand and breast heaving-and gaped in astonishment at a cold-eyed man in the robes of a Red Wizard, who stood over Itharr with staff in hand, glaring at a rainbow-hued radiance in the air around him.
'Must all spells go wild?' he snarled, leveling his staff in both hands as if it were a lance. Sparks raced down its length, and from its end burst brilliantly blue butterflies.
Belkram was still cutting at the heaving, roiling tentacled mass that was the Malaugrym, but trying at the same time to keep watch on this newcomer. The shapeshifter rose into a pillar of flesh, reached spade-shaped arms toward the Red Wizard, slimmed those arms into needlelike pincers…
The Red Wizard said something soft and brief-and fire seemed to be born within the Malaugrym, hurling its flesh and tentacles apart in an eruption of hissing steam.
The riven body fell back onto scorched moss, dwindling into something that was almost human. Something faceless and sprawled, which blazed with many small fires.
Shar faced the Red Wizard across their smoke and asked in a shaking voice, 'Why… why did you aid us?'
The wizard's cold eyes met hers, and Sharantyr was suddenly aware of how easily he could destroy them. Even with magic fraying wild, he bore several wands at his belt, something longer and more impressive sheathed like a sword at his hip, and the staff. Lights winked here and there along its carved length, and were answered by glows from among the many rings on his fingers. The Knight swallowed and stepped back, raising her sword. Belkram moved to her side, his blade also ready.
The Red Wizard smiled thinly. 'Another day we might be foes to the death,' he said in a voice strong with confidence and power. 'But against such a one as this…'
