Varlbit licked dry lips. “What things?”
“Do you know what the Vaedren truly is?”
“Some sort of beast, spell trapped inside that wristlet. It gives the thing sentience, limited, I think, but enough to control the power-gems Throon has been enspelling. He’s trying to augment it right now.”
Rauksoun nodded. “You’ve read the right books. Good. I don’t know what manner of creature a ‘Vaedren’ is, or was, but I doubt it matters anymore. Throon devised the wristlet himself and it’s been his portal passkey for years. This last season, though, he seems to have fallen in love with the thing.”
“Meaning?”
Rauksoun shrugged. “He’s getting restless, perhaps?” “No,” Varlbit snapped, “I mean, fallen in love with it how?”
“Ah. All it used to do was allow its bearer to sense nearby portals and to make them operate safely, without knowing
their specifics, but these last few months he’s given up just storing spells in its gems and started infusing it with additional powers.”
“How do you know this?”
“I keep my eyes open, Varl, and my brain working—little things you should have mastered years ago.”
The younger apprentice hissed in anger, but said only, “Suppose you tell me what you’ve so keenly seen and reasoned about these ‘additional powers,’ then.”
“Throon’s worried about what might happen to him if an unfamiliar portal takes him to a place of great danger or hostility—a frigid ice waste, say, or somewhere unknown in the Underdark, or the depths of the sea. To protect himself against such places, he’s been trying to augment the Vaedren to enable him to take the shape of certain formidable beasts.”
“The monsters he’s been summoning and slaying?” “Those very beasts, yes.”
Varlbit studied the older apprentice, eyes narrowing. “We’ve always been something of rivals, Rauk. So why are you telling me this?”
“Because I’m worried about the skins of everyone in Ironwind Tower. The Master isn’t training either of us swiftly enough, and never instructs those new so-called ‘prentices at all! Old Tharlund just shuffles down to them with our old workbooks and leaves them to try those spells on their own! Throon spends all of his time cooing over the Vaedren, when he should be crafting deathwhirls by the dozen, so we’ll both have something to hurl when the attacks come!”
“Attacks?”
“Varl, are you stone-blind and brainless? Who do you think Throon’s greatest rival is?”
“Oh. Rundarvas Thaael, of course.”
“Brilliant. Astoundingly perceptive. Wonderful! So, have you spent a single spell farscrying Thaaeltor this last, say, year or so?”
“You know I haven’t,” Varl said grimly. “What’re they up to?”
“I don’t know, because Thaael has trebled his wards and
thrown up spellscreens and linked guardian beasts to them, so my every probe gets me a mooncalf—or worse—coming for me, right back down the line of my spell! Now, doesn’t that worry you?”
Varl swallowed. “Y-yes. Thaael swore to slay the Master ‘soon,’ and that was a year ago.”
“Indeed,” Rauksoun agreed bitterly. “And right now, as we float here whispering at each other, Maelarkh Throon is down in that spellchamber gaining darkvision—darkvision!—for his precious Vaedren, when he should be arming Ironwind Tower!”
* * * * *
The portal flashed, purple radiance flickering over Maelarkh Throon’s face. He smiled, hands still raised in the last gesture of his spell, and watched it flash again. There…
Down a long spiral of crawling purple lightnings it was coming, racing at him out of the depths of his portal, ensnared by his reaching spell from the cold lightlessness of the Underdark and snatched here, right into— his ready spellweb, flaring now into fiery life as the lurker plunged into it, beating its great stonelike flaps furiously, writhing like a netted manta ray. Doomed already.
He would have its darkvision, its flight, and the stonelike appearance of its hide, in that order. He murmured the word that linked him with the spellweb so he could set it to work—and start feeding…
* * * * *
“He’s drunk on sucking that beast dry,” a coldly gloating voice observed, “and sees nothing else.” “Is our time come at last, Master?” “It is. You know what to do.”
The apprentice nodded, swallowed, and carefully began a much-practiced spell.
Rundarvas Thaael smiled and waved his second apprentice forward. And his third, fourth, and fifth. There were many portals to subvert and alter, and such things took time. Hasty work is always sloppy work.
* * * * *
The wristlet glowed warmly against his skin. Throon smiled and reached with his mind into its familiar surging glows, seeking flight…
And finding it. Ahhh.
As the Master of Ironwind Tower settled gently down onto the stones at the far end of his spellchamber, some of the magics of the spellweb started to sing eerily.
He frowned. No power surge should—.
But no matter. ‘Twould be the work of but moments to sweep those spells into smooth dissolution, using the Vaedren to drink their roilings and prevent a hundred-odd small magics through Ironwind from being shattered or twisted into unstable untrustworthiness, then—
[brightflash]
Faerun exploded raw around him.
“Yes!” Thaael exulted and without pausing a moment, snapped, “Now, don’t stop to watch your work. Twill be many, many breaths ere you’ll be able to see anything useful anyway, after a portal-blast!”
He strode excitedly across a room alive with the surging sparks of aroused Art, his paunch wobbling. “We overwhelmed it very handily, so Throon’s stunned or worse, but his wards are probably triggering already.”
Stopping beside the rays of thrumming white light that were stabbing from every fingertip of his most competent apprentice, he gestured grandly at that unfolding magic.
“Behold. Join to Ahraul’s spell, now, all of you. Yon portal is Throon’s weakest. It must be forced wide, and the beast thrust through! Then we’ll see blood wash the walls of Ironwind Tower!”
Maelarkh Throon screamed, or thought he did, in the white blinding dazzle that was all he could see.
There was still smooth stone under his boots, but otherwise he might just as well have been staggering through the heart of a fire that neither seared nor cooked, but brought him utter silence and nothing to see but an endless white void.
A strange discordant sound rose out of nowhere, swimming and warbling eerily to draw seemingly louder and nearer, and reveal itself as several excited men’s voices chanting incantations. The words, like the voices, were unfamiliar, but that cadence was unmistakable, and Throon could judge from syllables that the unseen chanters were working a spell together that had something to do with portals…
Haularake! He had to see!
He tried to work one of the most powerful spells he knew—one of the most prized secrets of the senior Red Wizards—to return his body to what it had been before the blast. Tamtornar’s Rendever snuffed out great handcounts of spells from memory in an instant and succeeded only slightly more often than it failed, but now, as always when a desperate mage tried it, it could mean the difference between oblivion and survival.
His unheard tongue seemed made of thick mud, and his unseen fingers were both numb and heavy … the spell… could he… by all the…
The Vaedren! If he called on the Rendever stored within it—
* * * * *
The impenetrable pearly void flickered, faded, and began to darken. Maelarkh Throon tried very hard not to sob in relief. The spell-chant seemed to be coming from that direction, and seemed also to be rising to a conclusion—a triumphant conclusion, blast it!