disgustedly, 'Stupid illithids. Must they always meddle?'
The crushed, half-melted bodies of the mind flayers slid like slime down the walls of the chamber, neither of them survived long enough to see Halaster Black-cloak's eyes blast their tables and flasks to dancing sparks and flying dust.
When his gaze had roved about the entire chamber and he sensed no other mind-signatures on the whisperer in the beholder's distant brain, the wizard sighed and turned to pass through the teleport once more… only to pause and glare with renewed energy at the chiming glow-shift sculpture.
It had escaped-or resisted-his destructive gaze unharmed. Halaster's black eyes narrowed, and then hardened into rays of darkness that leapt and stabbed through the air-only to strike the sculpture and be drained away to somewhere else, leaving the chiming construct unharmed.
'Who-?' Halaster snarled, shifting into a more tangible, upright form.
The sculpture cleared its throat and said mildly, 'Why, me, of course. We agreed that action in thy house was undesirable if not of thy doing… but we said nothing of mere watching. 'Tis how I learn things, ye see.'
'Elminster,' Halaster said softly, fading back into a darkness studded with two eyes as sharp as spear points. 'One day you'll overstep the marks I set… and then…'
'Ye'll try to slay me, and fail, and I'll have to decide how merciful to be with ye,' the sculpture replied merrily. 'Those who set marks, know ye, are usually better employed doing something else.'
'Do not presume to threaten me,' Halaster's voice answered him, as if from a great distance, as the darkness that was the Master of Undermountain began to whirl about the unseen teleport.
'That was not a threat,' the sculpture said mildly. 'I never threaten. I only-promise.'
The reply that came back out of the teleport sounded very much like the rude lip-flapping sound known in some realms as a 'raspberry.'
Durnan was still swearing when the whirling blue mists faded and the world returned: a darkly cavernous world lit by many lamps and torches, sharp with the smell of a recent spell blast. Smokes curled lazily past him as he stumbled on uneven, shifting rubble for a moment, and then crouched, blade up, to look all around.
There was a murmur off to his right. Durnan looked that way first and found himself regarding an interested crowd of mongrelmen, hobgoblins, bugbears, orcs, and worse. They were standing on a torchlit street making bets and excited comments — as they stared right back at him.
Skullport. He was in Skullport. The surprise on some of the faces and the sudden energy of the betting suggested that his arrival hadn't been expected. Wherefore this crowd had gathered to witness something else. Durnan glanced left and right into the dark, smoking ruin around him. Ah hah. Indeed.
A beholder hung in the air off to his left, its eyes gleaming with malice as it glared at him and through him, at… a mauve, glistening creature with a tentacled face and white, pupilless eyes. It stood in dark, ornate robes, well off to his right — and was raising its three-fingered hands in clawing, spell-hurling gestures as it coldly hissed an incantation. A mind flayer… and an eye tyrant. Dueling with magic. And he was between them.
'Thank you, Beshaba!' the tavernmaster snarled in sarcastic thanks to the goddess of misfortune. He dived headlong onto the rubble, framing a scene in his mind of opening a certain ivory door with the dragonscale key. The mental vision grew clear, the door swung wide-and Durnan remembered to close his eyes just in time.
The white light in his mind was nothing to the blinding flash that marked the breaking of the dragon rune he bore on his left wristlet. As that broad metal band crumbled, giving his forearm an eerie tingling sensation, Durnan rolled over a low stone wall, dropped onto a sunken floor, and found his feet. There was a hubbub of new excitement from the crowd as the tavernmaster started his sprint through the pillars and tumbled stones, and got his eyes open again.
The white ring of radiance that marked the rune's release of power was still rolling outward, moving with him in a flickering, expanding dome of protection. Spell rays and gaze attacks alike would be shattered by its touch… for an all-too-short time.
'Tymora aid me!' he gasped as he ran, dodging between two blackened stubs of stone wall that stood like frozen fingers, reaching vainly for the cavern ceiling overhead. If Lady Luck smiled on him, the dragon rune would guard his back from the beholder's eye powers long enough for him to reach the mind flayer. Aye, if…
Dark robes flickered ahead as the illithid dodged this way and that, trying to glimpse its quarry darting through the ruins. Durnan snatched out his belt knife as he ran, dust sash flapping, and the mind flayer spat one loud word somewhere ahead of him.
There was a flash, a roar of tortured stone, and one of the walls ahead burst into fist-sized chunks of rubble. Durnan spun around behind a pillar until the worst of the crashings were done around him, and then sped on. If a certain old and overweight tavernmaster could just move well enough, there'd be no time for the thing to work another spell!
He snarled at his own slowness as he leapt on over the rubble. By the pillar he'd had a momentary glimpse of the beholder, drifting along after him, but keeping well back. It must not be hungry… or at least, not very hungry.
He was close to his foe now, stones rolling underfoot in his haste as he burst through a doorway into a room that had been blasted away, and saw the mind flayer beyond the crumbling wall ahead. Its glistening, slime-covered hands dived to its belt and plucked forth a broad-bladed hooked sword. A blade? Usually they were too eager to flail at one's head with those brain-sucking tentacles to bother with steel.
The squidlike growths around the thing's mauve mouth were writhing in excitement, Durnan saw, as he came around one last jagged end of wall and rushed down on his foe.
A boot coming down wrongly on loose rubble now could mean his swift death, he reminded himself grimly, and hunkered down as he ran to keep his balance, skidding deliberately when he reached a knob of stone he could hook one boot around.
Eagerly, the mind flayer pounced on the seemingly off-balance human, its four tentacles stabbing greedily out. Durnan raised one arm to fend them aside, hooked the edge of his knife around the nearest one, and slashed viciously at their roots.
The mind flayer's sword came up rather clumsily to clang against his blade, and he used the speed he'd built to smash it aside with one shoulder and dive past the thing, lashing out with one boot to kick it in the chest.
There were shouts from the watching crowd, and the fast-paced chatter of changing bets as Durnan rolled to his feet, bounced off a spar of stone, and charged back at the thing. He dare not turn his back on it and try to run for the street-not only would it have time to hurl a spell at his back, but the crowd might well draw steel on him, or bar his way for its own amusement, to force him to turn and fight.
The mind flayer's body seemed misshapen, it wavered as it rose from the rubble where it had fallen- just in time to quail and hiss under the bite of Durnan's sword. Once, twice, the true steel slashed, hacking tentacles away… and the blood that splattered forth was not the milky ichor it should have been, but a dark, reddish-green gore!
Frowning, Durnan cut away the last tentacle and drew back his blade for a final thrust through one of those furiously glaring white eyes. It melted away before him, slumping down into something like a long, reddish worm or clump of worms that slithered and flapped its wet, fast-sprouting wings in haste to escape. He hacked at the glistening thing in disgust, backing away to keep an eye out for tentacles heading for his ankles.
There was angry shouting from the crowd: the shapeshift had told them the thing Durnan faced was no mind flayer, but something else… and who could bet on an unknown shapeshifting thing that was swiftly being hacked apart by this hard-breathing human?
Amid curses, amp; tankard flew through the air to rattle among the tumbled stones not far away. It was shortly followed by another. Enraged bettors were venting their feelings. Luckily, the state of things in Skullport was such that few would dare throw daggers when a ready knife might be needed nearer to hand.
'Well, thank the gods for such grand favors,' Durnan muttered aloud at that grim thought as he ducked away from a part of the worm-thing that had suddenly grown bony spurs and was flailing at him.
He took one numbing gash high on his arm, near his left shoulder-and then he and his foe both staggered. Someone in the crowd had hurled at them both a blasting spell strong enough to rock the ruins around them-and the dragon rune's dome had flung it straight back at its source.
The packed throng of spectators was suddenly a screaming, fleeing mob generously sprayed with blood, pulped, boneless things struggled weakly on the slick stones around a ring of cleared space at the center of the lane.
