Master? Master, I have him. Where are you?
[CHAOS]
Master?
AH THERE YOU ARE MY PRETTY ONE HEIGH-HO THERE'S A BLADE BRIGHT AND READY BUT THE STORMS ARE SO FIERCE, MILORD, THAT WE DARE NOT TRY TO KISS ME NOW YOU WENCH, YOU BRAZEN DOG! WOE BETHRUST IT ALL! THERE'S AN ANKLE THAT MUST BE HIS, IN ALL THIS BLOOD, AND…
It seemed to Shayna Summerstar then that a bright sword of silver flames cut open a door in the back of her mind, and images tumbled in, rushing and overwhelming her, all shrieking and moving and overlaid and shifting at once….
With a snarl, she tore away from the wizard, leaving bits of her gown behind, and barked like a dog. Insprin went pale and backed away from her warily, but the face she turned toward him was streaming with tears. Emerald eyes implored him to stay with her even as she snarled and babbled wordlessly and clawed at the empty air.
"Insprinwizard!" she gasped, as if rising from deep water, "don't leave meeeeee!" She was gone again into a nightmare world of howling and shrieking and staggering. Abruptly she raced off into the darkness of the Haunted Tower, crying out despairingly, "Don't leave meeeeee!"
Insprin took two running steps after her but stopped. He looked around at the dark walls and the scraps of cloth in his hands, cursed softly, and turned back. He ran for all he was worth, his aging heart pounding in his ears. The jaws of the trap could close on him any instant.
The child was trapped, in torment. Alone, and frightened-and the heir of a noble house he was sworn to protect so long as she lifted no hand in treachery to the Dragon Throne. For Shayna to survive Broglan's spells and the silver fire and the bard's sword, he had to find Storm, swiftly, and tell her… tell her everything.
"Storm!" he called, when he could find the breath. "Storm Silverhand! I need you!"
He lost his footing on a stair, stumbled painfully, and with a rueful laugh rebounded off the wall at the bottom. Of course he needed Storm. Don't we all?
FOURTEEN
As the sun went down over Firefall Keep, something shook the rooms where the two Summerstar lords stood with a few Purple Dragons, a cook, and the grim war wizard Broglan. "What in the name of the Old Dragon of Cormyr was that?" Erlandar snarled as dust drifted down on their heads.
A dull, rolling boom resounded through Firefall Keep.
"Storm blasting the shapeshifter to little shifting bits?" Thalance suggested hopefully-and then winced as a second explosion flung him hard against the nearest wall. The goblet he'd been holding clanged off stone and rolled away into a corner, trailing its contents.
Abruptly, one panel of the barred double doors at the end of the room shivered and fell, hanging crazily from its hinge for a moment as a widening crack raced across the wall above it. The door collapsed with a rushing groan. Its bar bounced and clanged. The guards posted there cursed and scrambled to get clear-only to fling themselves on their faces when a pale creature streaked over them and flew down the room.
Broglan cursed and fumbled for his wand as blades flashed out of scabbards all around him. Suddenly, he was on the floor again, the wind knocked out of him. A nude woman, silver hair swirling around her, was curled up on his chest.
"Sorry," Storm said shortly, rolling off him, "but you were the only place left in here that didn't have a sword out! I had to materialize somewhere!"
Erlandar barked out a laugh. "Things are back to normal," he announced to the room full of staring men, "she's lost all her clothes again!"
"Highly amusing, my Lord Summerstar," Storm replied, snatching his blade from him. "I'll be needing this-I'm on my way to getting dressed. Gods, but that-that thing must have subsumed a lot of spells! He's blasting the Haunted Tower apart!"
"What?" Erlandar bellowed, laughter sliding into fury. "That's our Haunted Tower!"
Broglan, who'd been twisting on the floor struggling for breath all this time, found it at last-to laugh uncontrollably. "Do you…" he gasped, when he could, "know … how funny… that sounded?"
As a smiling Storm strode barefoot out of the room, and gestured rudely at the grinning guards who saluted her exit, the wizard on the floor finished a last guffaw and looked up. The room exploded with mirth.
It ended abruptly as the place rocked again, and a piece broke off the ceiling and fell. Dust descended in clouds, and the laughter turned to curses and coughing.
"Well," Thalance Summerstar said, as he snatched up a wineskin to replace his lost goblet, "this monster could dispose of us all by just bringing the keep down on top of us!"
"Did you have to say that?" Erlandar snarled as the room rolled underfoot again, and everyone fell.
Storm Silverhand went to her knees-bare knees, gods blast it-on the stones as the passage rocked around her. "I hope," she told the falling stones, "that he's using up the spells he's stolen!" A last stone fell in front of her and broke apart. "I won't be pleased if I hear otherwise." She got up and ran on.
The fallen rubble made barefoot running painful. As she mounted the stairs, she hurled a handsome load of curses in the direction of the Haunted Tower. Ten minutes ago, these corridors had been full of such wild magic that she'd dared not tarry here nor try to regain solid form. Now, the foe had gone so mad that he was pulling down the Haunted Tower on his very head!
"Goaded by the silver fire," she announced with grim satisfaction. At last reaching the right passage, she sprinted down it. "And not the first to suffer that fate, either."
Improbably, a door was open. Two fearful chambermaids were staring out at her as she sprinted past, hair streaming. They shrieked in chorus and flung their door closed with a boom.
"This whole vale is going crazy," Storm said with a laugh. She caromed sideways off the wall as the keep shook crazily once more. Somewhere ahead of her, something heavy broke and crashed down; amid the near-deafening booming, she heard the sharper sounds of stone cracking and rolling.
The Bard of Shadowdale ran across the passage to the door she knew and snatched it open. Dust rolled out. "Great!" she snarled. "Just great!" Coughing, she felt her way through the dust and dragged out her clothes. Defiantly, she sat down in the middle of the corridor, as the keep shivered and thundered around her, and got dressed. Slowly and carefully, she adjusted this and smoothed that, putting on her pectoral last of all, until she pronounced herself ready to receive company.
Ah yes, company: such as the room full of men she'd left so precipitously not long ago. Well, now: to rally them, or to confront a madman and dance to his spells as he happily tore apart the keep, and the moon rose over them?
The fortress shook again. Something even larger crashed down into ruin. Ahead of her, a curving staircase broke into chunks and dropped slowly out of sight, one piece at a time. A rolling, shattering sound arose from below. Moonlight shone down into the dusty air where the stair had been. The foe must be shattering the battlements above! Well, it wasn't as if she didn't know where he was…
For the moment, the shapeshifter would keep. So much for grand schemes of spying out where he was and tracking him! Right now, she'd best get the few living men she'd need out of the place before he brought it down on their heads! What poison might fail to do, a nice heavy stone block might succeed at, all too well….
"Why me? Mystra, all I ask is, why me?" Storm said as she started back down the passage. As if in reply, the ceiling broke away and fell into the rooms beside her-and moonlight stabbed down from the open night sky above. Two floors that had been above her were gone!