Blackstaff (30 page)

Raegar looked back at them, winked, and blew a kiss toward Maliantor, then clambered in through the hole.

“Shoddy work, isn’t it?” he joked as he began pulling stone blocks from the blade. “Well, you’re coming, aren’t you?”

Khelben stood on the air, staring at Raegar with an irritated look. “Warn all others away from here and keep us from being interrupted by outsiders,” he told his apprentice. “We’re tackling the problem from within.” Khelben reached out with his blackstaff and pulled himself into the hole, even though Raegar could see the staff didn’t hook onto anything.

Raegar held out a hand to help Khelben the rest of the way in. The Blackstaff’s hand looked strong and rough, but it felt very delicate to Raegar’s touch. He felt a strange sensation as he helped the wizard inside the tower’s guardroom.

Khelben drew his hand away from Raegar and got up, holding his staff parallel to the floor rather than using it
for support. Nameless flew into the tower, landed on the pile of rubble, and promptly shook as much water off his wings and fur as he could.

Raegar said, “Something’s not right about you, Blackstaff. You’re acting far more daintily than your usual stomp and swagger. And since she’s also on my mind, when is your lovely apprentice joining us? You said she’d be with us, and her familiar is here, so where is she?”

“The ways of wizards always look strange. Tsarra is nearby, not that that’s any of your concern right now.” Khelben looked around and pressed his ear to the door. “Well, your method of getting us in was inventive but also noisy. So much for surprise. Let’s prepare you.”

Khelben’s fingers traced a quick symbol in the air before he rested his hand on Raegar’s shoulder. A shimmer of green energy flowed over Raegar’s wet cloak and body, and he felt a slight tingle as the magic spread across him.

“Thank you, sir. Feels a little different than the defenses Damlath used to grant me, but every bit helps,” Raegar said, swinging his sword arm and watching the telltale glimmers the motion left behind.

“You’re welcome. Now, let me go ahead of you,” Khelben said, as he dumped his sodden overcloak on the floor.

“Glad you don’t want the man who’s never been here before in the lead,” Raegar snorted.

“Don’t make me regret gifting you with that sword, Stoneblade. Stay sharp, now.” The Blackstaff glowered back at him then turned toward the tressym and stared at it. Nameless slipped through the door as soon as Khelben opened it.

The door opened onto the tight tower stairwell. Khelben pressed a hand to the stairs overhead and furrowed his brow. Nameless stuck his head back around the bend in the stairs and growled lightly before disappearing again. Raegar noticed the ring on Khelben’s hand glowed, the red gem pulsing and going dark as Khelben opened his eyes.

“I’ve dispelled the warning spells he put on the stairs,
but we’re still going to have to be fast about this, Stoneblade. Don’t be thrown by whatever you see, but wait to attack on my signal.” Khelben said, staring at Raegar.

The thief nodded but shook off an odd feeling as he looked into the man’s hazel eyes. The two men crept up the stairwell, catching up to the tressym. Khelben knelt for a second to touch the creature between its shoulder blades, and Raegar saw the green shimmer envelop Nameless with magical protection as well. The three of them moved quickly up the stairs into the tower’s top chamber.

“Wait. One more spell each.” Khelben held the tressym and Raegar back a moment. He touched the tressym first, and after his ring flared a moment, the tressym vanished from sight. Khelben reached for Raegar, who held up his hands.

“Just a minute, Blackstaff.” He pulled both his daggers from their boot sheathes. He tucked one in his belt, held the other in his left hand, and drew the short sword in his right. Both men cringed as the flames flickered to life.

“Hyarac,”
Khelben whispered. “That mutes the light of the blade.”

Raegar whispered,
“Hyarac,”
and the blade’s flames snuffed out. As he turned, Khelben’s hand clapped on his shoulder. Within a breath, Raegar too was invisible.

“Thanks for waiting until I had things in hand before doing that,” Raegar said, looking around at empty air.

Khelben’s whisper came from behind him: “You and the tressym are far more adept at walking silently than I, which makes me the stalking horse. Slip into the upper chamber and wait for your chance. You’ll know it when you see it, but don’t waste the surprise until we know his defenses are weakened.”

They moved forward, Raegar silently praying as he climbed the darkened stairwell toward the flickering blue-white lights up above. “Oghma, Lord of Knowledge, hear my prayer. Make my passing a whisper with your blessing. Make me a secret, so that I may share what I learn beyond this moment. Thus may I strike vengeance against one who abused your servants.”

Raegar felt calm and an image flashed through his mind of Oghma’s statue from the Font.

The three invisible intruders exited the stairs, all silent as tombs. Magic rasped across the air throughout the room as opaque black shards rang sharply against lime green razors of magic. The constant swirl and eddy of conflicting currents danced upon the air, and nearly distracted Raegar from the powerful sight above that—the pyramidal walls awash in blue lightning bolts, a blinding cluster of energy at the pyramid’s corners and peak. Despite the fury outside unleashed by that energy, only a clash of long-held hatreds made any noise within the chamber.

The two dead persons in the room, however, were neither silent nor inactive.

“By all that’s holy, I’ll see you destroyed, Priamon!”

The translucent woman who stood directly in their path didn’t block the view of the room. She hovered slightly off the floor, only the vaguest hints of an ochre gown and long floor-length russet hair outlining her existence. The only things solid about her existence were her spells. Raegar looked through her to scan the rest of the room.

The chamber was, by Raegar’s eye, ten paces across and its octagonal walls made it nearly circular. The walls sloped in as they rose, two walls each flattening together to seat the crystalline pyramid. The room culiminated in the lightning-soaked peak. Though the room was now lit by the lightning and the clashing magic, each of the eight walls of the room bore a torch. From its many tables and bookshelves Raegar assumed it was a workroom or study. All were shoved or toppled out of place, their contents scattered on the carpet-covered stone floor, apparently cleared by the spell battle in the room’s center.

There was Raegar’s enemy at the room’s core—the lich Priamon “Frostrune” Rakesk. His green robes swirled among the fury of spells, the hood fallen back from his near-fleshless skull. The inhuman creature’s spellcasting rose above the noise, and blue energy blasted at Syndra Wands, only to crystalize in the air against her shields
before crumbling in sheets of frozen vapor.

Raegar moved to his left, hugging the walls and keeping his eyes glued to the lich. He ached to throw the short sword at him, followed by his two throwing daggers, but he knew to wait. Raegar smiled as Syndra wove her green magic into a flock of woodpeckers. The magical constructs settled onto an invisible barrier around Frostrune and they began poking small holes in his magical protections. Raegar had never been so close to a major spell battle; Damlath had often used magic to get them as far away from them as possible. It was fascinating, horrifying, and sobering all at once. Raegar wondered if the air always felt so pressurized during a spell battle, as if the space itself recoiled from spells or pushed against them. He noticed a few fallen books shift on the far side of the room as the invisible Blackstaff made his way around the room’s perimeter.

Is he trying to get noticed? Raegar thought, then he saw Khelben slowly become visible.

Frostrune dissolved the flock of birds on his shields just as Khelben completed his casting and came fully into view. Flames coalesced into a ball of fire that bounced around the lich, setting fire to the areas all around him but leaving him untouched.

“Blackstaff, you should have struck to kill outright,” the lich said. “I’ll not leave you the chance to cast another ineffective spell. Say good-bye to your granddaughter a second time.”

“Hardly!” Syndra yelled, and to Raegar’s ears, the voices sounded as if they were underwater.

Despite the smoke from the fires at the room’s center, Raegar managed to keep from coughing and giving away his position. The ghostly sorceress and the lich cast furiously fast spells, and while power built up at their fingertips in green and blue energies, both fizzled out without effect. He’d seen Damlath do enough counterspells to understand each had cancelled out the other’s spell.

“Khelben,” Syndra yelled, “he’s got Isyllmyth’s Bracer!”

Khelben stood in an odd position, his left hand holding
his blackstaff perpendicular to the floor, rather than aiming it at Frostrune. His right hand was back by his shoulder, which seemed odd to Raegar until he heard the hum of a bowstring. The air shimmered around Khelben and the illusion melted away, revealing Tsarra holding her short bow and reaching back for another arrow.

A
s Tsarra let the arrow fly, she yelled, “Now!” and hoped both the tressym and the thief would know what to do.

Her arrow hit the lich’s shields, lit up the magic, and pulled it and a successive shield beneath it in its wake, forcing the magic of the shields to twist and stab into the impact point of the arrow. Frostrune screamed as the arrow caught him squarely in the chest, and he rocked back on his heels from the impact.

Raegar’s invisibility shimmered to an end as he yelled,
“Hyarac!”
and threw his flaming short sword at the lich.

The blade stuck Rakesk squarely in his right thigh, scorching his robes. As the lich tried to pull the sword from his leg, the flames leaped up and consumed the blade. The lich growled in frustration
as flames remained on his robes. Fires leaped from Raegar’s palm, and the sword returned to his grasp!

Tsarra sent to Khelben,
I hope you’ve healed up enough to stand, old man
.

Nameless carried the Anyllan’s bottle in his mouth, and he stayed invisible as he silently flew behind the lich. The ceramic bottle on the necklace shattered when Nameless reached his destination and bit down on it. A gray mist rose from it behind Rakesk.

He replied,
Fret not, Tsarra. You played my role beautifully, but we can’t allow our surprise to go unexploited. Ah good, my granddaughter’s quick to realize an advantage. You should learn this spell from her, should all of us survive
.

Syndra Wands screamed in pain. The spell she cast made her body grow paler and more insubstantial. Tsarra recognized the casting as very similar to a spell of hers, but this obviously had more power. Green energy lanced into the lich. He roared as his animating energies warred with that new magic. As he arced away from the sources of his pains, he realized a figure stood behind him. The red glints within the lich’s eyesockets flared as he stared deep into the eyes of the Blackstaff.

Khelben’s spell was nothing more than a stare, but twin streams of silver fire stabbed into the Frostrune’s skull, and the lich doubled his howling. Khelben’s attack stopped abruptly and he bore a surprised look.

“No,” Khelben gasped, gripping the lich’s robes. “You can’t possibly dare to wake—”

“Enough!”
Priamon Rakesk’s anger seemed to fuel the harness on his torso. Its magical pulse shoved everyone flat against the walls with a surge of crimson power. “I dare much,
Master.”

“Bastard!” Raegar yelled, throwing his sword at the lich again. “You killed Damlath!”

The sword whistled through the air, aimed at the lich’s head, but it bounced off of a renewed protective shield with a crackle of red flames.

“You will join him soon. Our dark friends have been held
at bay long enough. Enjoy their embrace, fools. It’s almost a shame you’ll miss the rise of the Frostlord, master of the Twisted Rune!”

Priamon raised his arms, and a silver bracer pulsed with power on his left arm. The lich floated up into the maelstrom of energy around and on the pyramid, and both he and the pyramid disappeared.

Exposed to the sky, the room filled with wind, rain, and thunder. The air above and around them swarmed with amethyst sparkles. The night skies became darker still, as sharn after sharn materialized around the top of Syndra’s tower. More and more appeared, not giving way for each other—they flowed around and into each other like water.

Almost immediately, three sharn had the stairwell exit blocked, and more than a dozen formed a ring in open air around the top of the truncated tower. Sharn dripped like thick liquid down into the chamber among the heroes.

Tsarra tried to move but found herself frozen. She also failed at speaking.
Khelben? Can you move? I’m paralyzed
. She looked in his direction to find him splayed across an overturned bookshelf.

I’m afraid Priamon’s obsession with the Shoon gave him rather effective dueling items. The Harness of Choramm the Cowardly generates magic that paralyzes those with arcane energy inside them for a time, if its wearer gets grievously injured. And I’m afraid we may run out of time before the effect wears off. I wonder where he found the blasted thing.…

Overhead, a huge fiery hand grabbed a sharn and boiled it in its grasp. The sharn fled before its screams faded, and Maliantor moved through the space it vacated.

She hovered above them and yelled down into the chamber, “Khelben! What happened?”

Syndra replied, “Grandfather is stunned, as is his apprentice, thanks to the Frostrune. My phantom state may have shielded me from the worst of it, but I cannot seem to cast any spells right now.”

Syndra floated about the room, checking on the two
paralyzed spellcasters. When she approached Tsarra, the apprentice recoiled, as she always did from undead, until she saw her eyes. Syndra’s translucent face was pleasant, a dimpled chin with a beauty mark drawing yet more attention that way. She and Tsarra shared similar half-elf features, though Syndra’s face was disarming by having one rounder human brown eye and an almond-shaped elf hazel eye. Tsarra had never seen kindness in the face of undeath until just then.