"Gods!" one of the warriors gasped.
The priest beside him murmured, "Holy Tyche, be with us."
Four spheres of hitherto dark, slowly brightening radiance floated in the center of the huge chamber. Three of these globes were as tall as two men, and one other, smaller globe hung be¬tween them.
The nearest globe held a motionless dragon, its vast bulk coiled up to fit within the radiance, its red scales clear to their gaze. It seemed asleep, yet its eyes were open. It looked strong, healthy, proud—and waiting. The most distant globe held a being they'd heard of in tales: a robed, manlike figure whose skin was a glistening purple, whose eyes were featureless white orbs, and whose mouth was a forest of squid tentacles. It, too, hung motion¬less in its radiance, standing upright in emptiness, its empty hands having one finger less than their own. A mind flayer! The third globe was partially hidden behind the dragon's bulk... but the Blades could see enough to bring the cold, sword-biting taste of fear strongly into all their mouths at last. The globe's dark oc¬cupant was a creature whose spherical body was inset with one huge eye and a fanged mouth, and fringed with many snakelike eyestalks: a beholder. Its dread kin were said to rule over many small realms east of Calimshan, each eye tyrant treating all be¬ings who dwelt or came into its territory as its slaves.
Elmara's gaze, however, was drawn to the fourth, smaller globe. In its depths hung a large book held open by two disem¬bodied, skeletal human hands. When Elmara narrowed her eyes against the bright blue glare—everything in this place was mag¬ical, making her mage-sight almost useless—she could see bright webs linking the four globes and wavering between both skeletal hands and the tome. They must be animated guardians, those bones ... as well as the three monsters.
"So do we turn away from our greatest challenge and live, or go after that book and die gloriously?" Ithym's voice was wry.
"What use is a book?" one of the warriors replied with loud fear.
"Aye," the other agreed. "Just what Faerun needs—more deadly spells for mages to play with."
"How so?" Gralkyn put in. "Yon book might be prayers to a god, or filled with writings that lead to treasure, or..."
The warrior Dlartarnan gave him a sour look. "I know a spell-book when I see one," he grunted.
"I did not ride all this way," Tarthe said crisply, "to turn back now—if there is a way back that won't kill us all. I also have no desire to ride back into that last inn empty-handed and have all the tankard-drainers there think us a pack of cowards who did nothing but ride out, eat a few rabbits in the wilderness, and ride home again, our untested blades rusting in their sheaths."
"That's the spirit—" Ithym agreed, then added in a stage whisper "—that'll get us all killed."
"Enough!" Elmara said. "We're here now and face two choices: either we try to find another way onward, or we fight these things, for be in no doubt: all of those globes are spell-linked to the book, and those bone-hands, too."
"One death is imminent," the warrior Tharp said in his deep, seldom-heard voice. "The other we can look for later."
One of the priests held up his holy symbol. "Tyche bids the brave and true to chance glory," the Hand of Tyche said sharply.
"Tempus expects adventurers to embrace battle, not slip away when strong foes threaten," agreed the Sword of Tempus. The priests exchanged glances and grim grins as they readied weapons.
The thief Gralkyn sighed. "I knew riding with two battle-mad priests would bring us trouble, in depth and at speed."
"And disappointment came not to you," Tarthe said, "for which you gave much thanks. So you are now at peace, ready to speak of strategies against these globed beasts and not weasel words to try to get out of facing them!"
There was a little silence as the Blades smiled mirthlessly at each other or displayed looks of unconcern, all trying—in vain— to hide the fear in their eyes.
Elmara spoke into that quiet tension. "We are in the house of a mage, and as a worshiper of Mystra, I am closest among us to the mantle of wizardry. It is right that I make the first attack"— she swallowed, and they saw she was trembling with excitement and fear—"as I am the most likely of us to prevail against. . . what we face."
"What are ye, Elmara—the Magister in fool form, perhaps, or the Sorcerer Supreme of all Calimshan, out for a lark? Or are ye really just the soft-witted idiot ye sound to be?" Dlartarnan asked sourly.
"Hold hard, now," Tarthe said warningly. "This is no time for dispute!"
"When I'm dead," the warrior returned darkly, "it'll be just a blade-thrust or six too late for me to enjoy one last dispute. . . . I'd just as soon enjoy it now."
"Soft-witted idiot I may be," Elmara told him pleasantly, "but sit on thy fear long enough to think . . . and ye can't help but agree that however ill my efforts befall, they are still the best road we can set foot upon."
Several Blades protested at once—and then as one, their voices fell silent. Grim faces looked out at the globes, back at the trembling young mage, and then back at the globes again.
" 'Tis madness," Tarthe said at last, "but 'tis just as surely our best hope."
Troubled silence answered him; he raised his voice a little, and asked, "Does anyone here deny this? Or speak against it?"
In the hanging silence after these words, Ithym gave a little shake of his head. As if this had been a signal, the two priests shook their heads together—and one by one, the others followed, Dlartarnan last.
Elmara looked around. "We are agreed, then?" The Blades stared at her in silence until she added, "Well enough; I need every man here to have ready all the weapons he can hurl afar— but to loose nothing until I give word, whate'er befalls."
She waved them to one end of the balcony while she went to the other. "I must cast some spells," she said. "Someone keep an eye on those lights behind us and tell me if my work draws them hence."
She stamped and shuffled and murmured for a long time, casting powders into the air, drawing many small objects from various places in her clothing, and from sheaths beneath gar¬ments and in and about her well-worn boots.
In wary silence, the Blades watched the young mage trace small signs in the air; each glowed briefly and then faded as she traced the next. Radiances washed over the young mage and then were gone, and though her intent, earnest expression never changed, both she and her companions-at-arms noticed that with each new spell she worked, the four silent globes hanging so menacingly near pulsed and grew brighter. The lights in the doorway winked and drifted around each other, ever faster, but made no move to spill out into the passage.
At last El bent to her boots and drew forth six straight, smooth lengths of wood. She held two end-to-end so their slightly bulbous tips touched, deftly twisted and pushed, and they became one. In like manner she added length to length, until she held a knobbed staff as tall as she was.
She shook it as if half expecting pieces to fall off, but all held firm. Then she brandished it against an imaginary foe. Dlartar¬nan snorted; it looked like a toy.
Elmara leaned the toy staff against the balcony rail and came toward them, rubbing her hands thoughtfully. "I'm about ready," she said, casting a keen look at the waiting globes. Her hands trembled slightly.
"We gathered that," Ithym said.
Tarthe nodded, smiling thinly. "Mind telling us just what spells you've worked ... before all the bloodletting begins?"
"I've not much time to chatter; the magics don't last over-long," Elmara replied, "but know ye all: I can fly, flames will harm me not—even dragonfire, though I doubt the mage who wrote the spell had ever faced it when he made his claim—and spells hurled my way will come back upon the sender."
"You can do all that?" Tharp's voice was thoughtful.
"Not every day," Elmara replied. "The spells are woven into a dwaeodem."
"How nice," Gralkyn said with light, lilting sarcasm. "That explains everything ... now I can go to my deathbed content."
"The spells are linked in a shield about me," Elmara replied softly. "Its creation took the sacrifice of an enchanted item of power—and it drains the life from me, slowly but inescapably, more the longer I hold it."
"Then enough idle talk," Tarthe said sharply. "Lead us into battle, mage."
Elmara nodded, swallowed, ducked her head just as a helmed warrior does to pull down his visor before a charge—the warriors exchanged looks and smiled—caught up her staff, and scrambled up onto the balcony rail.
Then she leapt off into space—and plunged from view.
The Blades exchanged grim looks and leaned forward over the rail. Far below, Elmara was gliding, arms outstretched, across the chamber, tilting her body as if testing the air. Her flight pulled sharply upward a scant hand's-breadth in front of a balcony, and she began to soar toward them. Her face was white and set; they saw her swallow and begin to look green even as she released her staff and moved her hands in intricate passes and finger-link-ings. The staff flew along beside her, mirroring her slight shifts of direction as Elmara rose up the far side of the chamber, working a spell. She seemed to cast it twice ... and drifted to a halt facing them, arms spread above her head, two ghostly circles of radi¬ance flickering about her hands. Then they saw but did not hear her mouth a word that made the chamber itself quiver—and the radiances rushed outward from her hands and vanished.
The four spheres in the center of the space began to move. The Blades watched, warily raising weapons as the globes of light glided around the chamber—and the beings within them stirred. As if awakened from a long sleep, they turned to look about. One of the Blades whispered a heartfelt curse. The thieves ducked low behind the balcony rail, peering at their crazed comrade hanging in the air, hands moving again as she cast yet another spell.
There was a soundless flash. The mind flayer had worked some spell of its own, seeking to break free of its globe, but the glowing magic had prevailed. The tentacled thing crouched down in seeming pain. Elmara frowned and gestured at it, and the mind flayer's prison of light scudded across the chamber, gathering speed as it spun toward the globe that held the dragon. The great wyrm was thrashing its tail, wriggling its shoulders, and roaring silently, trying to shatter the cramped confines of light about it. Its jaws flashed fire as it caught sight of the watching men on the balcony. Hatred glared in its gaze as it snarled at them.
Then the two globes rushed together, and the world shat¬tered.
The Blades roared as a light brighter than they'd ever seen blasted into their eyes. They were staggering back even before the balcony shook beneath them, and they fell, blinded by the flash of the bursting globes. Only Asglyn, the Sword of Tempus, who'd expected spellfury of some sort and had closed his eyes in time, was able to see the mind flayer struggling in the dragon's jaws, hissing and burbling in futile spells before those teeth chomped down, once.
What remained of the purple body fell away in a dark rain of gore as the dragon opened its mouth and roared its rage. The third globe was already rushing in at the dragon, the beholder's eyestalks writhing as it prepared for the battle it knew would come.
Asglyn had a brief glimpse of Elmara, face a mask of sweat, jaw clenched in effort, driving the globe along the path she'd cho¬sen. Then the priest shut his eyes tight, just before the flash of rending globes came again. It was followed by a second flash that lit his face with its heat. When Asglyn dared look, he saw the beholder wreathed in flames as the dragon beat its huge wings and raked at the eye tyrant with reaching claws. Stabbing rays of radiance leapt from the beholder's many eyes. The dragon's answering roars held a rising note of fear amid its fury.
Asglyn looked about him. Gralkyn was slumped almost against him, hands jammed to eyes as he knelt behind the rail. Tarthe was shaking his head, fighting to clear his vision.
"Up, Blades!" the priest hissed urgently, and then stiffened as the voice of Elmara sounded inside his head.
"Hurl everything that can pierce or slash at the tyrant's eyes, as soon as the gods make ye able!"
Asglyn hefted his heavy hammer, his favorite weapon borne through a hundred battles or more, and hurled it with all his might, end over end, in a careful, climbing arc, so that it might fall into the great central eye of the beholder. It spun through the air but he never saw if it struck home; he had turned to scramble about the balcony, shaking and slapping his dazed and groaning companions and hoping somehow they'd escape with their lives.
Elmara's next spell brought whirling blades into being from nothingness. They flashed and spun about the waving eyestalks of the beholder like so many fireflies. El saw more than one eye spurt gore or milky liquid and go dark before the madly spinning eye tyrant blasted the shards into drifting smoke with a ray that leapt on to stab at a certain young mage.
Leapt—and rebounded, slicing silently back into the roiling tangle of dragon wings and scaled shoulders and claws, and the darting, spinning, snarling eye tyrant. The dragon roared in pain, but El could see none harm the beholder.
The dragon spat fire again. As before, the gout of flames seemed to splash away over an invisible shield held in front the eye tyrant. Yet that shield was no barrier to the dragon's claws and tail. As El¬mara watched, the tail slapped the beholder end-over-end across the chamber, its eyestalks curling and struggling vainly. It passed near the balcony where the Blades stood, and more than a few of them hurled daggers, darts, and blades just above and before it so it rushed helplessly into the stream of whirling steel. The monster squalled in pain and fury as it tumbled to a halt. What eyes it had left turned toward the nearby balcony.
Bright beams and flickering rays of feebler radiance flashed, and the Blades cried out and ran vainly about the balcony in ter¬ror. It shook and shuddered under them, and most of the rail was suddenly gone, melted away in the fury of the eye tyrant's attack.
