The wand flared, turning the harrowfire into flames of a different sort. They blazed up into a blinding white wall of flame that sucked half a dozen screaming liches into it. Vangerdahast sealed off the rest of the passage for the few breaths the fire would last before it burnt itself out.
Grimly, hoping he wasn't dooming loyal war wizards he could no longer see, Vangerdahast thrust at those flames with his mind, forcing them back and through as many liches as he could get, before the fire faded away.
White fire blazed briefly around the wound in Semoor's chest as the minor spells on his armor failed. Screaming, the Light of Lathander arched over backward, writhing in agony.
From down the passage, the fierce-eyed Vangerdahast shouted a spell. Jhessail understood enough of the incantation to know the wizard sought to disintegrate the sword.
Caught in the sudden eerie glow of that magic, the sword standing up out of Semoor's breast rang like a bell, then shivered-and spat out something dark and smokelike. It billowed up into a huge, evil face with white flames for eyes, a face that jeered at the Knights as it grew a hand to clutch at the sword.
Vangerdahast's spell faded from around the sword, and the towering, leering thing plucked the blade out of Semoor.
The stricken priest crashed to the passage floor. White fire leaked from his chest, and blood spewed from his mouth. His fellow Knights, shouting in fear and rage, all hacked and hewed at the flying sword, the sheer fury of their blows striking sparks from it as the smokelike wrairh looming over them tugged at it, fighting to hold and wield the blade even as they tried to strike it down and shatter it.
They prevailed, dashing ir out of the great wraith's grasp. The smokelike thing drew back, freeing the flying sword to stab and dart at the Knights assailing it.
The adventurers sprang and ducked and hammered at the sword in a frantic, gasping dance that kept them all alive until Vangerdahast shouted another spell. From down the passage the spell came, gathering wardings from the passage walls all around.
The magic howled down the passage and closed in around the sword in a tightening, crackling fist that crushed the wraith-thing back down into smoke that streamed back into the blade.
The flying sword sprang high and went streaking back down the passage, with the wardings clawing at it angrily.
The Knights found themselves staring over Semoor's body and the scattered bones of liches at the distant Vangerdahast, who was standing down the passage with the wardings now streaming back to him and building up in a crackling cloak. Beyond him, the sword vanished through a bright wall of flame that hadn't been there before, that now hid the rest of the passage behind its bright raging.
"Get through that door!" the Royal Magician shouted to the Knights. "Stop to defend yourself againsr liches when you must, but get through that door! "
"But-Semoor!" Jhessail wept.
"Leave him!" Vangerdahast roared.
"No!" Doust, Islif, and Florin shouted, all reaching for their lifeless friend.
"I'll take him," Doust told the other two. "You do the fighting!" He lifted Semoor in his arms, staggered, and promptly fell under the weight.
Islif reached out an arm and said, " wVIItake him, we two!"
"Do it," Florin snarled, springing past them to meet oncoming liches with furious swings of his sword.
Pennae led the rush in the other direction. The blue glows in the graven badge of Esparin were flaring and flickering wildly now, and rhe air seemed ro thicken and rhin in successive waves, shovinp them back when it was thick but letting them struggle forward between its moments of thickness.
"Hurry!" Florin called from behind his companions. "Can't… hold them!"
Jhessail shrieked as a lich's bony fingertips tore across her ribs and breast, trailing magical flames. She kicked it frantically, sending it staggering back-and hurled herself forward inro it in a wild dive, punching with her fists. Fell flames roared up all around her, bathing her, clawing at her face, and setting her hair to sizzling… then she hit the floor hard, amid breaking, scattering bones, and the flames were gone. A lich cackled from somewhere above her, and suddenly a strong hand took her by the ankle and pulled.
"Sorry," she heatd Florin gasp. " 'Ware your eyes, Jhess!"
She was being dragged swiftly over bony shards, back toward the door.
"Won't open!" she heard Pennae shout. "No lock, but I can't get this tluining thing open!"
Then Pennae sobbed as if in sudden pain, and Doust cried, "What?"
"Burned my fingers," the thief gasped, sounding much closet now, as Florin's dragging went on. "This door is… is…"
"Magical, yes," Islif panted. "Doust, leave Semoor. We need you to fight these liches! "
Florin let go; Jhessail opened her eyes, tried to struggle to her knees-and screamed at what she saw. A dozen liches or more had gathered in a sort of wall across the passage. They advanced on the Knights. The glowing, pulsing door was only a pace or two away behind their backs, and the liches were thrusting forward, seeking to overwhelm the swinging swords of Florin and Islif, bear them down under weight and numbers, and tear them apart. Spells seemed to have become useless in the waves rushing out from the door, spell after spell fading vainly from the fingertips of the liches casting them. But liches were working magics on themselves, too, making their fingerbones into long, raking claws, and those spells seemed to be holding.
"Endless!" Doust panted, joining Islif and Florin with his mace.
Pennae mewed in pain and flung herself at the door again, braving its magical fires to feel for any carch or lock or opening her eyes might have missed. "These stlarning liches are endless!"
"Pretend you're hewing firewood back in Espar!" Islif gasped. "Take it all down, and we can go in and lounge by the fite!"
"Oh,gods, I wish you hadn't said that!" Pennae snarled from right behind them.
The door exploded.
Orders, Strict, and Otherwise Much of the troubles, in my or any ordered life come about as the sometimes-deadly results of orders, strict and otherwise, that are flagrantly disobeyed or that never should have been given in the first place.
The world was all bright flame and silence-the brief and troubled silence of the tempotarily deafened. The passage spun around Jhessail as she was hurled far down it, tumbling helplessly through the air with her fellow Knights around her. Vangerdahast and many liches were swept along as helplessly as storm-whipped autumn leaves in front of her.
Bones bounced and broke apart, skeletons scattering as they struck the unyielding passage floor, and Jhessail just had time to realize that she was racing to experience the very same bone-shattering fate before she slammed hard inro something very solid that wore armor. Something that groaned at her arrival, even as it wrapped arms around her and skidded along the passage floor under the force of her landing, leaving a silenrly sprawled bullyblade in its wake.
It was Dauntless. She'd landed in the arms of the ornrion who'd murderously stalked the Knights for so long-and what was he doing here, anyhail? — and he was now staring at her in open-mouthed starrlement, as sounds slowly came back to her. Jhessail dazedly started to think she was still alive, after all.
Someone else, huddled on the floor right by her outflung left foot, moved, heaving himself upright. It was Vangerdahasr. Magic swirled around him as he staggered, and he seemed for a moment to be someone taller, leaner, and darker of garb.
Then he was the familiar oaunchv. elowerine Roval Maeician of Cormyr again, muttering out a spell entitely unfamiliar to her as he shot suspicious glances all around-in particular at the bright wall of flames that cloaked one side of the passage, well beyond him.