Part 19 (1/2)
Tarthe drew a shuddering breath, shook his head, and turned to the young mage. ”Just the two of us, now.” He nodded at the book strapped to Elmara's chest. ”Anything there that might help?”
”Ondil's magic sealed it. I would not like to try to break his spells here in his own keep-not while Othbar's sacrifice holds.” Elmara looked at the silent and motionless image holding the coffin shut-and noted its flickering, fading extremities. She pointed. ”Even now, the lich tries to break out of its coffin.”
Tarthe's eyes went to the flickering hands of the image. ”How long do we have?”
Elmara shrugged. ”If I knew that, I'd be Ondil.”
Tarthe waved his sword. ”Don't jest about such things! How can I tell you haven't fallen under some spell or other and become Ondil's slave?”
Elmara stared at him, then slowly nodded. ”Ye raise a wise concern.”
Tarthe's eyes narrowed, and he drew a dagger, eyes fixed on the young sorceress. Then he turned and threw it back through the opening where Tharp had died. It spun into the pa.s.sage beyond and was gone-unseen in the sudden flash and whirl of a hundred circling, clanging blades, darting about in the s.p.a.ce that had been empty moments before.
”The magic continues,” Tarthe said heavily. ”Do we try to dig a way out in earnest?”
Elmara thought for a moment, and then shook her head. ”Ondil is too strong-these magics can be broken only by destroying him.”
”So we must fight him,” Tarthe said grimly.
”Aye,” Elmara replied, ”and I must prepare ye before the fray.”
”Oh?” Tarthe raised an eyebrow and his blade as the sorceress approached.
Elmara sighed and came to a halt well beyond his reach. ”I can fly yet,” she said gently. ”If this tower stays aloft through Ondil's own magic, ye too must be able to take wing if we slay him-or ye will fall with the tower, and be crushed when it shatters below.”
Tarthe swallowed, then nodded and put his blade on his shoulder. ”Cast your spell, then,” he said.
Elmara was barely done when sudden radiance flared behind her.
She spun around-in time to see Othbar's image vanish, along with the lid it had been holding down. She sighed again. ”Ondil found a way,” she murmured. Suddenly she nodded as if answering a question only she could hear, and her hands flashed in frantic haste, working a spell.
Tarthe looked uncertainly at her and risked a step forward, sword raised. Inside the stone casket lay a plain, dark wooden coffin, seemingly new-and on it, three small, thick books.
”Touch them not,” Elmara said sharply, ”unless ye are ready to kiss a lich!”
The warrior took a step back, blade up and ready. ”I doubt I'll ever be ready for that,” he said dryly. ”Will you?”
”What must be, must be,” the sorceress said curtly. ”Stand back against yon wall now, as far off as ye can get.”
Without looking to see if this direction had been obeyed, she stepped up to the casket and laid one hand firmly on a spellbook.
The dark wooden lid vanished. With inhuman speed, something tall, thin, and robed sprang up from where it had lain, the spellbooks tumbling down around it.
Icy hands clutched at Elmara, caught, and seared the living flesh in their grasp.
Instead of pulling back, Elmara leaned forward, smiled tightly into Ondil's shriveled face and said the last word of her spell. The lich found himself holding nothing-in the brief instant before the ceiling of the chamber smashed down atop him, burying the coffin.
The sorceress reappeared beside Tarthe, shoulders to the wall, eyes on the coffin. Dust and echoes rolled around them both as Elmara rubbed at her seared wrists and watched the stones of the central ceiling begin to rise up in a silent stream, back whence they'd come. Tarthe looked at her, then at the casket, and then back at the mage. His face wore a look of awe-but also, for the first time in quite a while, hope.
Something dusty and shattered rose up out of the casket when the stones were all gone, and it stood facing them, swaying. Slowly it lifted the slivered bones of one arm. Its skull was largely gone, but the jaw remained, chattering something as it fought to move its bent arm to point at them. A cold light burned in the one eyesocket that was whole. The jagged edges of the topless skull turned as the lich looked at Tarthe-and then Elmara whispered a word, and the ceiling came cras.h.i.+ng down on it again.
Nothing rose out of the casket this time, and Elmara stepped cautiously forward to peer down into the open coffin.
In the bottom lay dust, smashed and splintered bones among the tatters of once-fine robes and the three spellbooks. Some of the bones s.h.i.+fted, trying to move. A ruined arm rose unsteadily up to point at Elmara-who coolly reached in, grabbed it, and pulled.
When she had the clutching, clawing arm free of the casket, she flung it down on the floor and stamped on it repeatedly until all the bones were shattered. Then she looked into the casket again, seeking other restive remains. Twice more she hauled out bones and stamped on them-and at the sight of her dancing on them, Tarthe broke into sudden shouts of laughter.
Elmara shook her head and reached into the coffin, touching the spellbooks and murmuring the words of one last spell. The books quietly disappeared.
Behind her, Tarthe's laughter ended abruptly. Elmara whirled around in time to see a smiling robed man thicken from a shadowy outline into full solidity above a winking curved thing of metal on the floor... Tharp's helm.
It was a cruel smile, and its owner turned to Elmara, who stiffened, recalling a face burned forever into her memories. The magelord who'd ridden the dragon and burned Heldon!
”Ah, yes, Elmara-or should I say Elminster Aumar, Prince of Athalantar? Tharp was my spy among the Brave Blades from the very beginning. Very useful you've been, too, finding all sorts of malcontents and hidden magic and gold. Yes, the magelords thank you in particular for the gold . . . one can never have enough, you know.” He smiled as Tarthe's hurled dagger spun through him to clash and clatter against the far wall of the chamber.
An instant later, flames roared through the room. The blazing body of Tarthe Maermir, leader of the Brave Blades, was flung into the far wall, and Elmara heard the warrior's neck snap. The magelord looked down at the burning corpse and sneered. ”You didn't think I'd be foolish enough to reveal where my true self stood? You did? Ah, well...”
Elmara's eyes narrowed, and she spoke a single word. The sound of a body heavily striking a wall came to her ears-and the magelord's image vanished.
A moment later, the man appeared nearby, slumped against the wall. He gazed coldly up at Elmara, who was stammering out a more powerful incantation, and said, ”My thanks for destroying Ondil. I shall enjoy augmenting my magic with his. I am in your debt, mageling ... and so it is my duty and pleasure to rid us of your annoying attacks, once and for all!” A ring on his finger winked once, and the world exploded in flames.
Hands still moving in the feeble, useless gestures of a broken spell, Elmara found herself hurled out the shattered window where the two thieves had gone, a coil of flames crackling and searing around her. She roared in pain, the flames clawing at her, and twisted about as she fell so as to appear helpless for as long as possible before she called on the powers of her still-working flight spell. The book strapped to her stomach seemed to ward off the flames, but her ears were full of the sizzle of her burning hair.
Below lay the shattered bodies of the two thieves, and a large blackened area where lumps still gave off smoke-all Briost had left of the youngest Blade and the horses he'd guarded. Scant feet above them, Elmara bent her will and darted away, soaring just above the ground, smoke trailing from her blackened clothes. She wept as she flew, but not from the growing pain of her burns.
The small open boat held a man and a woman. The old, grizzled man in the stern poled it steadily on through thick sunset mists.
He eyed the young, hawk-nosed woman who stood near the bow, and asked quietly, ”Be going to the temple, young lady?”
Elmara nodded. Motes of light sparkled and swam continuously about the large bundle she held with both hands against her chest, veiling its true nature. The old man eyed it anyway, and then looked away and spat thoughtfully into the water.
”Have a care, la.s.s,” he said, resting his pole so the boat drifted. ”Not many goes, but fewer comes back to the dock next morn. Some we never find at all, some we find only as heaps o' ashes or twisted bones, and others blind or just babbling at nothing, dawn 'til dusk.”
The young, hawk-nosed maid turned and looked at him, face expressionless, for a long time. Then she lifted her shoulders, let them fall in a shrug, and said, ”This is a thing I must do. I am bidden.” She looked ahead into the mists and added quietly, ”As are we all, too often, it seems.”
The old man shrugged in his turn as the island of Mystra's Dance loomed up out of the scudding mists before them, a dark and silent bulk above the water.
They regarded it, growing larger as they approached. The old man turned the boat slightly. A few breaths later, his craft sc.r.a.ped gently along an old stone dock, and he said, ”Mystra's Dance, young lady. Her altar stands atop the hill that's hidden, beyond the one above us. I'll return as we agreed. May Mystra smile upon ye.”
Elmara bowed to him and stepped up onto the dock, leaving four gold regals in the old man's hand as she pa.s.sed. The ferry man steadied his boat in silence, watching the young lady's determined stride as she climbed the hill. The full glory of the setting sun was past now, and purple dusk was coming down swiftly over the clear sky of Faerun.
Only when Elmara had disappeared over the crest of the bare summit did the boatman move. He turned away and leaned on his pole strongly. The boat pulled away from the dock, and the old, weathered face of its owner split in a sudden grin.
The grin widened horribly as the face above it slid down like rotten porridge. Fangs grew down to pierce the sliding flesh. The flesh dripped off a too-sharp chin and fell away to slop and spatter in the bottom of the boat, and the scaly, grinning face whispered, ”Done, master.” Garadic knew Ilhundyl was watching.