Mystra! The goddess had heard her!
Hope surged in her like fresh cooling fire. The Simbul obeyed, or tried to, struggling to gather her will in the raw red heart of deepening agony. Demon talons had shifted from her limbs to the softer, easier target of her belly and torn into it. They were pulling at the edges of that wound, seeking to tear her wide open and rip her apart. Her legs and hips were drenched in her own warm blood, and her torso was one great gaping wound …
Mind that not. Call the blueflame.
The Simbul called, and felt the floating objects that held blueflame start to respond, curving in closer to her.
Demon bodies were in the way, clawing and crowding and surging. This was hopeless …
Hope, my darling daughter, is a lantern we all need, and we must never yield it up. Not even for me. Take firm hold of your hope, and keep calling the flame to you. Beautiful blueflame …
The blueflame converged on her, the items that bore it searing holes through the demons as they came. Demons shrieked and roared as they died or were maimed, many of them falling away.
Yet more snarlingly crowded in. Haures and rutterkin, glabrezu and nameless wormlike clutching things … no matter how much they clawed at incoming blueflame or swung weapons or worked magic at it, they could do nothing to stop or slow or strike aside the called blueflame-for touching it brought disintegration, and magic only made it blaze more brightly.
Into your wound. Draw the blueflame into you.
The Simbul did as Mystra commanded, and the silver fire roiling within her and leaking from her wounds snarled in hungry coils around the blueflame, merged with it … and consumed it.
Quite suddenly, she was full of white-hot, raging power. Might that boiled up her limbs, that moaned in crackling restlessness through her hair … that was hurled out of her as she cried out in pain.
Power shot from her eyes in beams and gouted from her nose and mouth, stabbing in all directions in a blinding-bright flood that devoured demons and the walls beyond them alike.
Dark fragments of walls toppled ponderously away from The Simbul, down into crashing ruin, crushing more demons. Others fled in all directions, shrieking.
Screaming loudly enough to drown them all out, in pain and exultation and sheer fury, The Simbul soared up out of the keep, shedding the ashes of broken demons in her wake, a leaping comet that soared high into the night sky.
“Tluin,” Hawkspike gasped, trying to roll over. Plaguespew, but he was stiff!
“Hawk?” Harbrand yawned. “You awake?”
“No,” Hawkspike snarled firmly, though he very much was. Not that he wanted to be. He ached all over, cold and sharp stones jabbed him with every movement, he was hungry-his stomach growled, on cue-and, yes, he needed to relieve himself. Achingly.
Overhead was dark, rough stone. They were in some cave or other they’d found. Yes, he remembered now … a big one. They’d spilled some flash oil on a branch and made a torch that’d burned long enough to search it thoroughly. One vast room, a natural cavern that came furnished in old bones and refuse … but nothing recent, and no beast smell, so it wasn’t a lair for anything at the moment. They were somewhere high in the mountain foothills near Irlingmount. And, of course, come morning, they were stiff and sore, and decidedly not well rested after an uncomfortable night spent huddled on unforgivingly hard, sharp rocks.
“Tluin tluin tluin,” Hawkspike told the world, wincing as he rolled into a kneeling position and more unyielding stone promptly bruised his knees. He heaved himself upright to stumble unsteadily over to where he could lean against the cavern wall. His mouth tasted like he’d been licking a beast cage.
Harbrand, of course, was already up. Hrast him.
And stretching on the far side of the cavern, like a tavern dancer readying herself for something acrobatic. Grinning, too.
Gods above, the bastard was going to be cheerful.
“I,” Hawkspike’s partner announced, breaking off stretching with a series of kicks and flexings of his arms like some sort of drunken wrestler, “need to ease the old bladder. And get a drink. We heard a stream, last night, didn’t we?”
“Unnh,” Hawkspike agreed, pointing to where he vaguely thought the flowing water might be. They had heard water tinkling-a small but flash-flowing run-somewhere off that way.
Of course, to pee or drink, they’d have to go out into that bright slice of the world waiting yonder, beyond the entrance …
He picked his way carefully along the wall, not trusting his balance yet. Oh, but his bones were cold … The only good thing was, Har wasn’t moving much faster. Which meant he’d be saved from hearing quite a few mocking comments, at least until-
Something blotted out the morning light. Hawkspike looked up-and froze. Clear across the cave, Harbrand had done the same thing, becoming a gaping, pale-faced trembling statue.
The cavemouth was a descending gash as long as a grandly sprawling cottage. Completely filling it was a black snout that thrust a long way into the cave. A snout that was attached to the scaled, curving-horned head of … a black dragon.
“Naed,” Hawkspike gasped, and he eased his own bladder right there and then, favorite codpiece and all.
Wise and cruel draconic eyes slid across from Harbrand’s similar distress to watch him.
“Well met,” the dragon said, parting his jaws-those fangs! — in a slow, soft smile. “I am Alorglauvenemaus, and I find myself in need of some replacement Beasts.”
“Oh?” Harbrand managed to quaver, from across the cave. “W-what sort of beasts?”
About then, Hawkspike decided that losing control of his bladder was an ineffective tactic. So he chose another: falling over in a dead faint.
“That’s a good idea!” Harbrand said brightly-and he fainted, too.
A moment later, the cavern rocked to a deafening roar. Alorglauvenemaus was guffawing.
“Such … glory,” The Simbul mumbled, watching dawn creep across the mountains. Enough of the power was gone from her that she was herself again, in control once more. Hanging high in the air, she healed herself, flexing and stretching in gasping ease. All pain gone, she was stronger, more vigorous, and more alive than she had ever been. “Thank you, Lady Mother. What now?”
Now you must go and hunt more blueflame, of course. Many more rifts await.
The Simbul groaned, then managed a grin. “Well, that one was … intense fun. And I’m getting good at this; must be all the practice.”
Must be, Mystra agreed, and they found themselves laughing together again.
The lord constable of Irlingstar struggled to his feet, dimly aware that Elminster-the sleekly menacing drow he’d had in his arms, his knife at her throat-had run headlong from him, down a passage and away.
The dark elf hadn’t been Lucksar at all. Lucksar was dead, and no more help was coming …
Someone was shouting, several someones; prisoners, noble voices he knew, angry and afraid.
“Are we all going to be killed while you do nothing?”
“The war wizards are murdering us, one by one, while you just stand there and laugh!”
“Killers! So much for your vaunted justice!”
“What?” Farland muttered wearily, still reluctant to leave all those memories behind, to forget the warmth of that mighty mind wrapped around his … what had brought this shouting on? Had there been another killing?
There had. The guards had just found Lord Arlond Hiloar lying dead in his own cell doorway. Ah, yes, perfumed Arlond, fair-haired and delicate, icily arrogant to everyone but more often withdrawn, always fondling and stroking a little spiral-seashell-shaped ivory snuffbox he carried with him. Not long before he’d been found dead, he’d been seen standing in that doorway, watching and listening as louder prisoners, in their own doorways up and down the same passage, had demanded to be let out. All of them had been kept to their rooms by the invisible walls of the new wards; Elminster’s “secure boxes.”