The great bulk sat down, pressed both hands to its face, and drew them away slowly, arms trembling as if with great effort.
And the lower half of that face twisted, dwindled, and became a human mouth and jaw… a mouth that Tace found horribly familiar.
“Saraebo,” that mouth said softly as one long arm reached out to touch the wall beside Tace.
And she was sure.
She’d heard Master Throon murmur that word betimes, when locking or unlocking doors in Ironwind. It was the word that commanded all—when he used it, at least. He took care his apprentices never heard it unadorned with a lot of gibberish and fancy gestures.
The solid stone wall opened like a curtain drawn back, and her transformed Master waved at her to enter the dark passage waiting behind it.
Tace hesitated. This could be a prison, a place to wall her away until whatever troubles were raging were done, and he could—
“Quickly!” Throon hissed, as there was a sudden stirring in the air and the closed and barred stone door she’d come in by started to glow and bulge. “Those who hunt me are here! Go, Little One—and in years to come, when you stand tall and proud in the Red Brethren, remember this day and the ‘prentices of Rundarvas Thaael—and think of some way to avenge me!”
A great force struck the stone door with strength enough to make the very floor buck and heave under them, the stones all around ring and rumble, and dusty rubble cascade down in torrents.
“Haste!” Throon snapped at her, fingers dwindling into something closer to his own, and shaping the air in the intricate gestures and poses of spellcasting. He started to chant the phrases of a magic Tace had never heard before, one that turned some of the dust around him crimson and brought it streaming toward him in smokelike, racing fingers.
Another spell-blow smote the door, branding momentary cracks of blinding glow across her gaze and sending tiny bolts of lightning aimlessly through the air to fade away before they struck anything.
Maelarkh Throon finished his incantation with a last triumphant word and spread his hands. From them a white radiance raced outward, forming a milky wall across the tharm from wall to wall, with Tace and the passage on one side of it, and Throon and the cracked, bulging door on the other.
“Go, Little One,” he cried, “and be safe this day, when—”
Then the world lashed out, deafening and blindingly bright, and that milky wall went hard and black.
Black oblivion, utter silence, gentle sensation of falling…
Her very ears seemed to be screaming, Tace thought dully. She realized she’d been flung shoulders-first into the wall behind her then along it to crash into the corner, which she was now sliding down.
And the ceiling, she saw in utter terror after movement overhead made her look up, was falling after her…
Terrified, Tace leaped for the passage, scarcely realizing the Vaedren had somehow found its way onto her wrist and tightened there as if it had been made for her.
The great crash at her heels snatched her up and flung her down the dark way gaping before her like a boneless ball, and she never knew that the flaring glow from her wristlet was the Vaedren reassembling her shattered skull and lesser bones,
again and again, as she crashed into stone walls and around corners and down unseen stairs, glancing off pillars and carvings and the bloody, bone-studded remains of beings not fortunate enough to be wearing a Vaedren, until…
All Ironwind, Delhumide, great Thay itself, and the overarching sky of Faerun obligingly went away…
* * * * *
She was lying in darkness, surrounded by the faint glow of the Vaedren on her wrist. All around her doors were sliding open and hidden ways revealing themselves and the glows behind them going out. Which meant one thing: the Master of Ironwind Tower was dead.
And even if Rauksoun and the others had been slain too, their slayers were stalking these halls now. Or if they’d all perished fighting Maelarkh Throon and his traps and ‘prentices, someone would come to plunder and slay. And that someone would be a Red Wizard, or several of them, who would slaughter a lone slave lass without a moment’s thought, if she were lucky.
She had to get out;
She had to get far from Thay, had to—the spellchamber, where the portals were! Yes! Even if they went straight to another wizard’s tower, they were her only way out of this one, and all the vultures and worse whose eyes must be turning to it already. She had to get to the Master’s spelltharm.
Before someone—or something—got to her.
* * * * *
“Well?” Rauksoun’s voice was as cold and sneeringly confident as ever.
“I know we’ve shattered all of Thaael’s spying spells and spun a ward that’ll hold against his scrying for a day at least. I think we’ve found and slain all those he sent.” That voice belonged to Varlbit, and he sounded more exhausted than exultant.
“Well done. Thank you, faithful Varl,” Rauksoun said,
softly and sardonically. There was a wash of light that made the Vaedren flare on Tace’s wrist, followed by a sob that might have been her own, and she knew Varlbit Dauroethan was no more.
That “we’ve” meant he’d probably been leading the Master’s novices againstThaael’s apprentices, and they were dead now, too.
She’d be next, if she didn’t move just as quietly as she knew how. With infinite care Tace rose, turned, and stepped back from the archway she’d been creeping toward.
“Halt, whoever you are!” Rauksoun’s voice was sharp. “The magic you carry will begin to consume you, very soon now, unless I cast the right spell on it, to render it safe! Stop where you stand, and wait for me.”
Tace ducked along the next passage. It ran along the back of the spellchamber and was now littered with rubble, waist-deep in several places where the spellchamber wall had been blasted out into it.
Rauksoun must have some way of detecting the Vaedren without knowing what it was or who bore it. Which meant she could only hide from him by abandoning it or getting onto the far side or into the heart of a powerful, active spell.
And with the Master dead, the only such magics nearby would be the portals in the spellchamber, her destination anyway. If they were gone, she was… doomed.
Something large and loud slithered and roared triumphantly in the spellchamber and she heard Rauksoun’s startled curse.
Then he snapped out a swift spell and lightnings were slashing everywhere. Tace flung herself down between two toppled stone blocks as bolts sizzled and arced wildly and whatever had roared in triumph bellowed in pain.
Tace risked a swift glance through the rent wall.
Something lizardlike but as large as one of the flickering portal-mouths was dying messily on the floor in a tangle of 3 spasming scaly legs, lashing tale, and curled tatters that had! probably been wings. It had obviously come out of one of the three portals still flickering and pulsing in the spellchamber, and Rauksoun stood warily in front of those portals with an intricately-shaped metal rod in his hands, spell-glows playing gently about its many barbs, spires, and flanges.
She ducked down swiftly, but not before he saw her, and it was only because she kicked out against one block and flung herself up, out, and sideways that she didn’t melt into nothingness along with the stones that had sheltered her, in the roaring magic that howled through the gap in the wall and gnawed deep into the far wall of the passage, obliterating everything in its path.
The bolt was fierce but short-lived, and in its wake Rauksoun chuckled coldly.
“You’re swift, little witch, I’ll give you that. What is it you’re carrying? The Vaedren? Did Throon trust you once too often, and end up murdered by you for his troubles? Hey? Or did—”