EPILOGUE
Elminster whirled and cast a hasty spell.
Storm started to say something urgent, but Elminster shook his head, waved his hands in a dramatic flourish-and watched Storm, Arclath, and Amarune vanish as his magic took them elsewhere.
Then he ran back to the cave.
He was only a few steps inside when Manshoon’s first attack spell stabbed at his back.
It raged against El’s ward, shattered it, and the two magics died together.
Elminster kept running, knowing the spot he wanted to reach before Manshoon’s second attack, a flood of piercing lightning, drove him to his knees, groaning in pain.
El fought to hiss out a small, simple spell, hoping its nature would let him finish it before Manshoon smashed him with deadly magic once more.
“Work with you? Bah! All my life you’ve frustrated my schemes, intrigued against me, opposed me!” the vampire shouted. “Work with you? I think not. Be entombed, instead!”
Magic clawed at Elminster, and the rock beneath him changed.
“I’ll drive you down into solid rock by making it less than solid-in shifting spots, so the weight of the rest of the stone, still hard, will crush your bones to jelly!”
Elminster was sinking, his body tingling, starting to shift at Manshoon’s bidding. He had to fight to form a smile.
“I want you to feel pain, Sage of Shadowdale!” Manshoon shouted from above. “Long, slow pain! Let your tongue be stilled, your jaw, arms, and fingers all be broken, to rob you of all means to work magic!”
The rock closed over Elminster’s head, dark and hissing, Manshoon’s magic lancing into his lungs to keep him from suffocating just yet. And to bring him more of its caster’s gloating.
“Think you can foil me again? Work another of your sly triumphs? No, a thousand times no! I am Manshoon, and I will defeat you!”
“By deafening me? Like any lackspell mageling, ye’ve certainly mastered being noisy!” Elminster murmured to himself as his body fell entirely back to ashes-and plunged through the fissures he’d been seeking.
The agony was-intense.
Yet, he’d known worse.
It would take him days, perhaps months, to drag himself together again… but he’d managed much, much longer patience in the past.
Silently, by many thousands of little ways, he descended.
New magic stabbed after him, thrusting here and there, swift and energetic.
Only to withdraw, finding no trace of Elminster.
“Yes!” Manshoon roared, his voice high and wild. “Bury him deep-and I did! Go godless to the gods at last, Elminster, to fail that judgment and fade, gone forever! Fare you not well!”
From some flakes of tumbling ash in a cavern far beneath Manshoon’s boots, in an upper cavern of the Underdark, came a faint echo that just might have been an answer to Manshoon’s shout.
An echo that sounded rather like the Sage of Shadowdale’s chuckle.
