"Mystra, be with me now," she breathed. She whirled around a landing and pounded up the next flight. "If you like fun and folk making idiots of themselves with magic, you won't want to miss this!"
"Something moved, I tell you!" the Purple Dragon, snarled. He pointed with his sword. "Right-there!"
"Easy," Insprin Turnstone said from behind him, raising his wand. "There's naught but death to be gained from rushing off into the darkness hacking at things!"
"What do wizards know of real war?" the armsman spat over his shoulder. "Keep to what you know, mage, and-"
His words broke off in a sudden gurgle.
To the warrior at his other shoulder, Insprin said sharply, "Your torch! Quickly!"
They'd been cut off from the boldshield's rally by falling stones and spells that sent small, seeking balls of flame. We've not been cut off, but herded, Insprin thought bitterly. Now they were somewhere along the backstairs passage the servants called the Lower Run, well away from the Haunted Tower. The darkness around seemed a waiting, watching, menacing thing.
Now, as Insprin had feared, the darkness was beginning to grow tentacles. Playing with its prey.
The fluttering torchlight showed the black, glistening tentacle he'd expected. Purple Dragons shouted in disgust and rage all around the wizard and rushed at it, hacking and slashing.
And so, of course, they ran headlong into a waiting net of coiling arms, which fell on them from above. Insprin cursed, caught up a fallen torch, and threw it high and hard. It struck stone and spun away in a cloud of sparks, but it had shown him enough. The source of the tentacles was somewhere back there.
He aimed and fired his wand carefully-and was rewarded with a roar of pain. The armsmen suddenly bounced aloft in unison, kicking their boot heels, as the tentacles around their throats convulsed. One man slashed the tip of a tentacle. He fell, but scrambled up to stagger away. All the others came down atop him in a deadly rain of flesh, thudding against stone. The tentacles had made their victims into large, living flails to batter down the escaping man.
The Purple Dragons made wet, wordless sounds as their bodies were broken. Insprin cried out in his own revulsion and rage. He fired his wand-the tentacles quivered-and again. This time the tentacles withdrew, leaving a heap of blood-drenched, unmoving warriors behind. The war wizard backed away slowly, knowing he'd be next.
"Mystra watch over me now," he prayed aloud, "and grant that I die well."
Mystra was hard of hearing, it seemed. The next thing he knew was the smashing strike of a tentacle leaping out of the darkness to send him flying into the nearest pillar. He struck it hard, and staggered away, trying to clear his wits of red pain. The next blow stung his fingers like fire, and snatched his wand away.
He watched a burst of radiance that must have marked the breaking of his weapon, and drew himself up. This must be his time to 'die well.' So be it; he'd not go to the gods weeping or pleading. He strode away from the pillar to take a stance where the floor was free of rubble, corpses, and blood, and asked sternly, as his hands began the gestures of a silent spell, "Have you no mercy?"
"Hah! Mercy! Kindness! The pursuits of fools!" came a laughing reply out of the darkness. Its source advanced slowly to gloat: a man whose skin was the same dusty blue-gray as the night around him, but whose eyes gleamed like those of a great cat. He smiled as he grew a tentacle that slid forward.
Insprin's eyes narrowed. He was suddenly surrounded by a glowing ring of spheres, the fruit of his spell-spheres of winking, dancing sparks. One sped toward the tentacle and burst, clinging to it with bright motes that burned and melted away the dark flesh.
The tentacle quivered, but slid on through the air, its tip questing for the mage. Insprin backed away and began to hurl the other spheres in a frantic stream-only to see the tentacle wriggle deftly through his dweomer.
"Power is a better goal!" the foe told him in tones of cold triumph.
"Mercy and kindness are power," Insprin replied firmly, weaving another spell as he backed away from the slowly advancing tentacle. "The slowest sorts to reward, but among the most mighty."
"What nonsense d'you speak?" the shapeshifter asked scornfully as Insprin spread his hands. Something that glowed drifted up from between them. "Tell me-how are they mighty?"
"They separate the truly just and noble from all others," Insprin replied softly, dodging away from the tentacle and drawing the dagger from his belt.
"And why," the foe asked, as his tentacle lashed out with the sudden speed of a striking snake and snapped around Insprin's throat, "would I want to do that?"
"What manner of monster are you?" Insprin gasped, feeling the coils tighten and knowing his dagger would be too little a fang to cut it in time.
The shapeshifter shrugged. "Once men worshiped me," he gloated, "and called me Bane."
Insprin Turnstone's face turned pale, and he closed his eyes.
The shapeshifter shook him by the throat as if he was a rag doll. "Hah! Not so noble now, are you, dead hero! I'll have your spells first, and then …"
Insprin opened his eyes again and gasped, "You. . shall… not."
And from above Insprin, the glowing blade he'd wrought with his spell arrowed down to strike his own head.
Bright radiance burst in all directions, and the foe roared in pain as lightning spiraled down his tentacle. Hastily he severed it, reeling back as it dropped off to writhe and lash the floor like an agonized serpent.
"If that is what mortals mean by mercy," he croaked aloud," 'tis a power yet beyond me!"
His voice twisted into the icy fury of Pheirauze Summerstar. "Stole his spells from me in the end, did he?" Tentacles grew hands and pointed in unison-and the reeling, headless body that had been Insprin flew apart in all directions, bloody bones clattering against the walls.
The man-thing who once might have been a small, twisted part of the god Bane did not wait to see the remains of his victim. He whirled about with a roar of rage that echoed back from the keep all around. Wings grew and took him racing down dark passages, seeking the last wizard. Like a loosed thunderbolt, he swooped.
Men cowered away in fear and shielded their guttering torches.
There'd be time to slay them later, when he was done hunting wizards. A wizard, Broglan Sarmyn-leader of these ineffectual dolts. A man who must have some spells worth hurling. A bit of a coward, who'd probably be somewhere near the boldshield and the largest band of Purple Dragons, a man who was … there!
Broglan saw death coming for him, and knew it for what it was. He fired his wand carefully, but did not wait to watch its blue-white bolts strike home. If any of the men around him were to survive, he had to get clear of them, and die-if Mystra willed it-alone.
He broke into a run, bellowing, "Ergluth, stay back! Keep your men back!"
Stones loomed up ahead of him, half-seen in the darkness; he leapt over them, stumbled on loose rubble, and ran on, staggering. Behind him he heard wild, triumphant laughter. He spun, fired his wand at a flicker of movement, and ran on….
On into the Haunted Tower. In the distance, a pale phantom glided from doorway to doorway. Broglan shrugged and turned toward it, heading for a faint glow of moonlight. That must be the place the foe had blasted open to the sky.
Tentacles slapped at him and smote stones from the crumbling edge of a broken wall.
Broglan dodged desperately, his own breaths deafening in his ears, and kept going. An archway, a glimpse of Shayna Summerstar's face-wearing a crown? — from the gaping darkness of a chamber overhead, and he was clambering up a huge heap of stone.
A ball of fire burst ahead of him, hurling him back and blistering his face. He fell hard and tumbled on stones, losing his scepter somewhere in the fall.