Stormlight

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!

Well, yes, Mystra, this wasn't the first time in her life that she'd made this very complaint. Sorry. Storm sighed and ran on.

"I am-I am-Yes!" And with that final, exultant shout, the man with three heads and eight arms flung his limbs up in triumph and hurled all the crowding chaos back where it belonged, clearing his mind at last. Balk of fire streaked up from two of those limbs, striking through the shattered stone and moonlight. Where they struck, a leaning turret broke away from the shattered stone around it and hurtled down into the open space that had not been there an hour earlier.

Down, down like a tumbling mountain, down to a crash that shook the entire vale and threw back echoes from the mountaintops …

Down to bury the place where the exultant many-limbed man had been standing, and on its way, scrape open an entire wall, and lay bare rooms and passages that had been walled away and hidden for many long years…

The ravaged wall creaked and buckled and bulged, threatening a great collapse. Leaning pillars held, and the slowly shifting stone ground ponderously to a halt, sending down only a little rubble. Out of one long-hidden cavity, something gleamed in the moonlight as it fell.

Something metallic and sticklike, with a single great eye as its head. The dragoneye scepter hit the rubble, bounced once, and slid to a stop, blinking up at the moon. Somehow, it looked angry.

Corathar Abaddarh clutched Dowager Lady Zarova's coronet and wished it would stop emitting little magical flashes. Was it going to explode, or burn him with lightning, or transport him somewhere unknown and perilous? Worse, would it attract the attention of the shapeshifter who was so busily blasting apart the keep on all sides?

The gods-cursed coronet was definitely flashing a little brighter and faster than it had when he'd found its hiding place and snatched it into the light. Pearls and emeralds and gods-knew what else had spilled out with it in a glittering flood. He'd swept them all back behind the hidden panel and slammed it shut again. At least, he hoped he'd found them all. With the room shaking all around him, some of them had taken long and interesting journeys. And, of course, the tumult had shattered his lantern!

He wouldn't have dared keep it lit on the journey back, anyway. Not with a howling-crazed shapeshifter laughing like a loon and blasting everything that moved!

Corathar sighed. He felt his way cautiously forward in the darkness. The dowager lady, the boldshield, and the safety of the heavily guarded kitchen rooms were a long way off… and he was growing weary.

He'd been a little suspicious of this errand at first. The whole thing could have been just an excuse to send him out across Firefall Keep right into the clutches of this murderous shapeshifter. The boldshield, however, had assured him that ranking nobles did have such enspelled items. Some of them were best handled only by their rightful wearers or by war wizards, because of enchantments laid on them by Lord Vangerdahast or his predecessors. Well, all right, but what about those enchantments? The cursed thing was flashing ever faster. He didn't see why he should die or be maimed just because some lazy noblewoman got all concerned over the fate of her coronet. After all, she'd left it behind. It was still in her castle, not out rolling around the countryside. Why couldn't it just have sat safe behind its stone panel until all this was over? Of course, there might not be a stone panel when this was all over, if-

Ahead, he heard a distant shout, and peered into the darkness. A many-armed figure was exulting in the moonlight, shouting and waving its arms in defiance at the night sky. Corathar swallowed and came to a hasty halt. This must be the foe!

Gods, if he looked over this way-! Corathar hastily cowered down, flipping up the tail of his robes to cover the winking coronet. There was a flash of fire from the distant figure-balls of fire, streaming up from those waving arms at some unseen enemy above. The bursts heralded a deep groaning that gave way to sharp cracking sounds. . and then a growing, rumbling, thunderous roar.

The figure and the moonlight and all were gone as the world leapt and rocked all around Corathar. It flung him about like a child's ball. He gulped, grunted, cursed, and tried in the bruising darkness to keep the coronet and himself both unbroken.

At last his tumbling in the gloom came to an end, and he staggered to his feet and peered up and down the passage. The damned coronet was still blinking and winking. Where the moonlight had been he could see nothing-that way must be blocked.

"Mystra spit on it all!" he snarled, fear stoking fury.

He was trapped, and would have to go back into the cracked and lightless keep to dare one of the unsteady stairs and somehow find a way around all this. And was the mad foe dead? Or was the shapeshifter still lurking close by, in the dark-?

Something stumbled at him, and he shrieked and flung up the coronet in his hand. It flashed, obligingly. He briefly glimpsed a dust-smudged, wild-haired face, above a gown torn half off to reveal one gleaming white shoulder-and emerald eyes that were large and afraid and beseeching.

"Gods!" he swore hoarsely. It was the Lady Shayna Summerstar.

Or was it?

"Stay back," he shouted, in sudden, frantic fear, holding up the coronet in front of him as if it was some sort of weapon.

"Who … who's that?" her quavering voice came out of the darkness-a weak and frightened voice that ended in a cough. It was followed by another, and another. Judging by the racking sounds, her coughing fit had taken her to her knees. Corathar stepped back and pulled a sleeve over the flashing coronet, unsure of what to do.

"Thalance?" she asked weakly, out of the darkness. It certainly sounded like the noble lady he'd watched down the feast table….

Impulsively he stepped forward, wanting to see again the beauty he'd looked at so longingly that first feast night. He held out the coronet.

It blinked, and so did a pair of eyes very close to it-bewildered green eyes, that had trailed tears across the dust on her cheeks. That settled it. If this was the shapeshifter, it was an actor worthy of an easy meal.

"Lady?" he asked, reaching out into the darkness. "Will you tell me your name?"

The coronet flashed again, and he had another glimpse of her frightened, dirt-smudged face, eyes brighter now with hope.

"Shayna," she said. "Shayna Summerstar." The coronet winked. By its radiance he saw her lower lip tremble. She wiped dust and tears away from her eyes with one hand. "Who are you?" she asked as darkness descended again.

"Corathar, lady. Corathar Abaddarh; one of the war wizards."

"Wizards," she said slowly, as if it was a word she'd never heard before. "Not… Insprin?"

"Insprin is one of my companions, yes," he said eagerly.

He froze as a gentle hand tentatively touched him. It probed, ran up his arm-and the coronet flashed again, showing him fresh tears of hope. She looked up at his face, seeing him clearly for the first time, and opened her mouth to cry. He smiled at her reassuringly, and reached out.

"Thank the gods," she sobbed, clutching him, and dissolved into helpless weeping that shook them both. Corathar cradled her awkwardly, suddenly very aware of the gently spicy smell of her hair and of the softness of the body she was pressing against him.

She was a long time crying. She sobbed her way into silence and started trembling against him. He wasn't expecting the lips that found his, or the raw hunger with which she embraced him. He made a brief, wordless protest as he lost his balance and fell backward, but she clambered atop him, and the next flash of the coronet showed him her face as she bit her lip and tugged at his robes, panting.

"Corathar," she almost snarled. "Yes. Yes. Give me…"

Corathar reached out and gently set the coronet on her head. She responded by kissing him wildly and running her hands all over him, searching for buckles and lacings and openings, and …

Suddenly she stiffened, came to an abrupt halt with one delicate hand tugging her gown down and the other busily exploring its way down his bared chest. She sat up and pulled away from him.

"L–Lady?" Corathar whispered in sudden foreboding. "Have I… offended?"

The next flash of the coronet showed him a face that was somehow both sad and triumphant.

"No," she told him, in a voice that trembled a little. "No, you haven't. It's just-"

She was silent for so long that he dared to prompt her. "Just?"

Shayna Summerstar gave him a smile, and leaned close to him again. "I.. you'll be my first," she whispered, eyes very close to his, "and there's a family tradition I must uphold. We must use my bed-and, as we won't be able to wed, you must claim a gift of me. There's a spellbook none of us can use in the strong chest under my bed; one of the treasures my father gave me. It shall be yours … if you can use your magic to get us to my bed."

Corathar sat up slowly. A spellbook! Was this truly happening?

"Where is your bed?" he asked, looking up and down at her slender, gowned beauty. Shayna pointed down the passage where he'd seen the roof come down. . hours ago, it seemed, though it couldn't have been more than half an hour….

"There," she said, and smiled weakly. "Or somewhere under there."

"Lady," the young mage said, his lust ebbing, "are you sure-"

"Corathar," she said, making his name a caress. The coronet flashed again. Her eyes were very large and dark. "Please? For me?"

She got off his legs, and he struggled to his feet. "Of course," he told her. "Yes. Just show me … I've a spell that can lift the fallen stones aside."

Soft hands stroked his cheek, and then took his arm. She leaned against him, and they walked together along the rubble-strewn passageway, moving slowly, her hip pressed against his with every step. "Do this for me," the noblewoman said softly into his ear, "and you'll always be welcome at Firefall Keep. Sometimes wizards need patrons.. ."

"Lady Shayna," Corathar protested weakly, "I'm not a great wi-my magic's not that good." He cursed himself inwardly for a dolt….

"And how do I know that?" she purred. "You are kind, and modest, and a mage who'll grow to be powerful and wise-what more can a woman ask for?"

What else, indeed? The coronet's flash became a steady glow, now, and as Corathar cast a startled glance at it, she gave him an encouraging smile and pointed. "The bed must be just about there … about a dozen feet in, I'd guess."

"What if it's crushed?"

Shayna shrugged. "I don't think tradition demands that the bed be a certain size or condition-we'll make do." She flashed a dazzling smile, and then leaned close and whispered, "Hurry, my lord to be. Hurry."

Corathar smiled, nodded, and drew back his sleeves. "I'll need a little room," he said apologetically. She peeled herself away from his side and stepped back with another slow smile.

The youngest wizard of the Sevensash swallowed, collected his wits carefully, and then worked the most precise and exacting telekinesis spell he'd ever cast.

First that rock… no, think of Shayna's smiles later: rocks first… now that one … and that one …

Block after shattered block rose from where they'd fallen and swayed through the air off to one side, to clatter down into a shattered chamber beyond. About a score or so of rocks into this work, Corathar lifted a stone block that was almost intact, and thought he saw a hand lying under it. He blinking, feeling a sudden chill-but when he peered again at what he'd uncovered, it looked like the edge of the headboard. The bed!

He moved another stone, and another, with renewed eagerness, tumbling them out of the way, tossing and smashing them aside as sweat broke out on his brow-until a battered bed lay bare. With a flourish, he swept the last of the dust and rubble from its coverlet, and turned to the Lady Summerstar.

Shayna laughed delightedly and scrambled over the stones to reach it, coronet flashing. Corathar dismissed his spell and watched her, mouth suddenly dry. She reached the bed, lay down with slow grace, ran a hand up one hip of her gown, and beckoned to him.

"Come, my wizard," she called softly, opening her arms. Corathar obeyed.

His last memory was of how sweet her lips tasted as her eyes flashed in sudden triumph. The bed grew hands that sank iron-hard fingers into his throat, and strangled him.

He struggled for breath, but Shayna kept her lips pressed to his. It was from lower down that he felt sudden fire. He twisted, or tried to, and arched. . and then a chaos of memories that were not his own flooded into and over him. With a despairing cry that he never voiced, Corathar Abaddarh rolled over into darkness, forever…

"Spells, more spells," the man who was not Maxer muttered, and grew a tentacle to embrace the young woman beside him. WELL DONE.

He was so kind, Master. She sighed as she watched the husk fall back into ash and scatter on the rocks beneath them. The handsome head beside hers snorted and grew a long, long arm that reached up into a shattered room far above, and drew them up toward the moonlight.

"Kindness," the shapeshifter said aloud, scornfully. "Is that what you want me to give you?"

It would be a change, Master.

He stared at the young noblewoman in his arms, and suddenly shook with laughter. Gods, what spirit! He was beginning to feel the glimmerings of some respect for the nobility of Cormyr after all. 'Twas a pity, really, he'd have to destroy them all… including this one.

IF I HADN'T TOUCHED YOU WHEN I DID, he asked, suddenly and acutely aware that this young woman had chosen to rescue him from helpless death, and fought down strong urges and emotions to do so, WOULD YOU HAVE JOINED WITH THIS WIZARD?

She turned her head away from him, and he did not bother to grow an eyestalk to force a meeting of gazes. It was a long time before she said simply, Yes.

YOU HAVE MY THANKS, he told her gravely, wondering how soon it would be before he dared to destroy her. No one he might depend on could be permitted to survive. He must never lower his guard-and so, no one must be in a position to betray him … as she had betrayed another for him.

It was an even longer time before she said, in the depths of his mind, You're welcome.

She sounded so humble that he did not become alarmed at how deeply into his defenses she'd penetrated.

They sat together on the broken edge of a riven chamber and looked out over the moonlit rubble. The dust had largely settled, and they could see far into the Haunted Tower-and through it, trudging forward in answer to the master's call, the Hungry Man.

The Dark Master was in a hurry to transfer the puny spells he'd just subsumed to his mindless servant; the shambling husk hastened its tireless walk. It never saw what lay just beside one of its footfalls: a scepter whose metal shaft caught the moonlight and winked back from the watchful eye that surmounted it.

The dragoneye swiveled to watch the Hungry Man pass, and blinked once or twice as the shapeshifter stretched down his head so that two pairs of eyes faced each other from a pace apart-and blue-white beams of magic began to flow.

"Hold hard!" barked one of the guards at the doors, swinging a halberd up from the floor to menace her.

Storm raised an eyebrow. "To what?" she asked tartly. From somewhere beyond the ruined door at the guard's back, she heard Erlandar Summerstar laugh.

"It's her," the boldshield and the senior war wizard told the guard in unison, and he scowled and lowered his weapon.

"The way she came running up here …"

"You'd do more than run, man," Thalance Summerstar told him crisply, "if you were trying to make it through all those blasts and falls of stone!"

Broglan stepped forward a pace ahead of Ergluth Rowanmantle. "Are you-well? Did you meet with the foe?"

"I'm fine," Storm said, stretching. "Just a little weary-I'd grown unused to doing things without Mystra's power. No, I didn't see him, but I watched him bring down an entire turret, and it wouldn't surprise me if he didn't stop with just one, eith-"

She broke off and spun around. Someone was running toward them in the darkness, someone panting and not young and fit to begin with. Storm took two quick steps and put her hand on the guard's ready halberd, forcing its point down to the floor.

"What're you-" he snarled at her, straining with all his brawn to wrestle his weapon up again, and finding it as immobile as stone.

"Stand easy," Ergluth ordered gently, putting a hand on the Purple Dragon's shoulder.

Storm raised a hand. Everyone there fell suddenly silent as they saw a lone silver flame rise slowly from it. She held her palm up by her shoulder as if she held something she could hurl, and asked the darkness, "Who comes in such haste?"

The running steps halted, staggered, and then came on more slowly. "Insprin Turnstone, lady," a breathless voice called back.

"The dragon watches!" Broglan snapped.

"And never smiles," a reply came wearily out of the darkness. The speaker came forward into their torchlight. The senior war wizard relaxed; Insprin had obviously given the correct password to his challenge.

The older mage came up to them, still gasping for breath. He was covered with dust, and his sparse hair was in a wild twist of disarray.

"Are you all right?" Broglan demanded. "Did you see Corathar? Or Lady Shayna Summerstar?"

Insprin shrugged. "Corathar's out there somewhere-we'd best look for him if we want to find him before the foe does."

He looked down at his hand, and held up what was still clenched in his fingers. Erlandar made a wordless sound as he recognized the tatters of Shayna's gown.

"I got this close to her," the old wizard said directly to the two Summerstar men. The guards around them drew back silently, watching the blood drain out of the nobles' faces. Insprin added quietly, "She tried to lure me into the Haunted Tower-but when we got there, she started to howl and bark like a dog, and then ran off-to him. I tried to hold her back, but …" He shrugged. "I dared not follow; if I fell with none of you knowing her fate, or that she belongs to the foe…."

"No," Erlandar whispered hoarsely. "No." Then he spread his hands slowly, and turned around, gazing at all the grim men gathered there.

"If any hand must slay Shayna Summerstar," he said slowly, "let it be mine. None other must take her-not even you, Thalance. If you get out of this, it must not be with blood-guilt riding your shoulders for the rest of your days. Let it be bad old Uncle Erlandar."

To Storm he said, "Lady, I never thought to beg any woman for anything. . but if you can bring our Shayna out of this-the Shayna we know-anything you ask shall be yours. The vale, the keep, all of it, if you want!"

Storm shook her head slightly. "I'll restore Shayna to you all, if I can. If, I said; Harpers don't make promises they cannot keep." She turned to the guard whose halberd she still held. "Bring all the torches."

Then she set off into the darkness.

"Storm-what're y-" Broglan began, and she turned around.

"How else do you expect to rescue our strayed ones?" she asked simply. "Come with me, all who will. Those who remain behind, be free in your choice and without shame."

Then she turned her head to lock eyes with Erlandar, and said, "One more thing, lord-if my hand does save Shayna, there will be no price. Saving things for their own sake is what Harpers do." She smiled faintly and headed back into the darkness.

There was a general roar as the men at her back scrambled to follow her.