The racing fire became a spellburst, a shortlived sun of silver-blue light in the sky over the Promenade, around a writhing beholder.
An eye tyrant that flickered and was a man for a moment, a man falling through the air. Then it was a beholder once more, shuddering and writhing, groaning aloud and then roaring, “I am Xarlandralath, spawn of Xorlughra-and slave of the accursed Manshoon! Deliver me! Deliver me from this!”
Then the sun winked out, hurling the beholder high into the air, spinning and writhing.
Arclath heard a gasp, and the strong, longer-fingered hands holding him stiffened-and then fell away.
He turned in time to see Storm fall on her face on the cobbles, crumpling to the street as limp as a wet cloak.
Pain exploded in his head. Elminster’s pain.
As he staggered back to the wall to keep from falling, and clawed his way feebly along it, Arclath heard the wizard say weakly, sounding both faint and far off in the echoing depths of his mind, Storm’s done Storm’s done get us inside get us away…
He bent to pick her up, or try to, lost his balance, and stumbled a few wild and swift steps back on his heels to keep from falling. They took him around to look out into the street again.
Where the Lord of House Delcastle saw the beholder descending again, wearing a murderous glare and seemingly in control of itself-or under Manshoon’s control, that is-once more.
Beyond it, Targrael had turned from trying to get to a particular building, and with a sword waving wildly in both hands, was racing back across the street, wearing a murderous glare of her own. A bared-teeth glare that was bent on the beholder.
Far more glares were being aimed at the menacingly swooping eye tyrant. Every wizard of war on the street had taken a stance and was casting a spell-every last one of them, with the Dragons drawn hastily back to give each one room.
“Now!” a long-bearded war wizard shouted.
And the air itself screamed as half a hundred spells tore through it, to converge in the onrushing beholder.
The flash was blinding and deafening and made Arclath want to fall.
So he did.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The royal palace, the Promenade, and the row of buildings facing the palace across the broadest street in Suzail all rocked and swayed. A parapet corbel broke off and plummeted to the cobbles where it shattered, the shards rolling ponderously to various halts.
Hardly anyone noticed. Everyone, even as they fell and bounced amid the shaking cobbles and swirling dust, was staring up at the beholder above-the eye tyrant at the snarling heart of more than twoscore ravening magics. They tore and thrust, seared and lashed, and sent a shrieking, fang-shedding, broken-jawed sphere spinning helplessly away, shredded eyestalks whirling away from it in a wide-hurled rain of wet ruin.
Dying, torn open, and spilling guts in a rain of purple gore, the beholder Talane now knew was Manshoon’s slowed as it reached the zenith of where the magics had hurled it, and started to fall.
Ravaged and drifting, too wounded to attack anything, but trying to slow its descent, the beholder tumbled, its central eye staring at nothing and going dim. The Cormyreans watched, not daring to cheer yet.
Targrael kept moving, following the path of the beholder, peering hard at it, watching for any sign of Manshoon working a last magic.
It was drifting sideways as it fell, away from the palace… toward the rest of the city. To the rooftop where Talane crouched.
Targrael never let her stare leave the ruined tyrant, not for an instant. Would it crash and splatter on that club rooftop, right beside Manshoon’s slinking little mind-slave?
It certainly looked as if… no… no. It was going to drift just far enough to fall past, to be dashed to wet ruin in the street behind, or across the fronts of the shops and balconies of the next building beyond.
Then Targrael’s vigilance was rewarded.
She saw the briefest of flashes in the air between the beholder and the dark figure on the edge of the rooftop. Manshoon, plunging into the mind of his Talane.
Talane, who by day was the Lady Deleira Truesilver, resident of a noble mansion that not even the founder of the Zhentarim could hide or move.
Targrael forgot all about the falling beholder. Talane was her new target.
She started to run. Dragons were running, too, and some of them were eyeing her as their swords came up, but she ignored them, sprinting all the faster, heading for the street that ran beside that club, trying to circle around behind the rooftop.
She was in time to see Talane, high above her, make the dangerous leap to the roof of the next building.
“You!” a man commanded from close behind her. “Down steel, or die!”
Targrael rolled her eyes. Did clod-headed Dragons never give up?
Still running, she looked back. Stlarn! The man had friends, about a dozen of them, and a war wizard was running with them. Looking neither winded nor afraid in the slightest, to boot. He had a tluining wand out!
She’d passed the club and was running along the side of the second building, knowing that Talane was likely several buildings along by now, making much shorter rooftop leaps and acquiring a wide choice of ways down to the street-or deeper.
More Dragons were coming at her down the sidestreets, closing in.
“Stlarn it,” she said aloud. “Enough of this! I will go to Truesilver House to hunt myself a Talane, but I need that gem from Queen Alendue’s cache first, anyhail. If I capture his mind, he can’t use his magic on me!”
Rounding a corner she knew, a good six strides ahead of the Dragon who was still commanding her to surrender or taste death, she came upon the wooden hatch she remembered. Plucking it up, she flung it back in his face without even looking and plunged feet-first down the revealed shaft.
She was half a dozen sloshing steps along a noisome sewer quite large enough for tall warriors, heading into the palace by one of the wetter ways, before the Dragon whose face she had crushed with her hurled hatch drew in his last, gurgling breath and died.
Mirt’s headlong flight through the palace had slowed to a fast, stumbling lurch, restoring wind enough to him to roar, “Help! Ho! A rescue! Beholder attack! War wizards and Dragons beset! The palace breached! Aid!”
Where were all the doorjacks and guards? Usually the stlarned pests were everywhere, like flies on fresh dung, forever stepping forward to politely bar your way, and He came to a lamplit meeting of passages that had to be a guardpost, and it was deserted, too. Oh, well, mayhap they were all out there in the street already, and busy dying…
An old shield hung on the wall beside the lantern, adorned with peeling paint that had once proclaimed a no-doubt-famous blazon. It was probably a precious relic of some famous old Obarskyr king, a hero of the realm storied in song.
Well, old relic, time to save Cormyr again. Reversing his daggers into a pair of improvised clubs, Mirt started hammering on the shield, belaboring it like a gong until it rebounded repeatedly off the wall, raising a terrible racket.
He could hear the echoes rolling back from six or seven rooms away, setting various distant and unseen metal trophies to ringing in sympathy. Grinning, Mirt dented the shield even harder, paint flying into dust all around him.
A door flew open, and a man staggered through it, face contorted in anger.
A war wizard.
Of course.
Seeing Mirt, he waved his hands imperiously and snarled, “Stop that, sirrah! Madwits! Old fool! Folk are trying to sleep!”
Mirt went right on ringing the shield but used one hand to point back the way he’d come, and then waved the dagger he was holding.