"And when he rises, what then?" Gralkyn asked fearfully. Ithym nodded grimly, echoing the question.
"We strike with everything we have," Tarthe said, "both spell and blade."
"Let me cast a spell first," said Othbar. His face was very white and his voice shook. "If it works, Ondil will be bound into his tomb for a time, unable to work magic—and we can try to get out."
"To have him sending spells and beasts after us for the rest of our lives?" Ithym asked grimly.
Tarthe shrugged. "We'll have the chance to gather blades and spells enough to fight him if he does, where now he slaughters us at whim. Ready weapons, and I'll try these flagstones. Othbar, say out when you're ready."
The priest of Tyche fell to his knees in fervent prayer, bidding the Lady remember his long and faithful service. Then he pricked his palm with a belt knife, and caught the falling drops of blood in his other hand, intoning something they could not un¬derstand.
A moment later, he crumpled to the flagstones, arms flopping loosely. Gralkyn took an involuntary step forward—and then re¬coiled, as something ghost-white rose in wisps from the priest's body. It roiled in silence, growing taller and thinner—until a ghostly image of Othbar stood facing them. It pointed sternly at the four surviving Blades, and then at the windows. They watched in awe as Othbar's shade strode to the casket and laid its palms on the stone lid.
"What? Is he—?" Ithym was shaken.
Tarthe bent over the body. "Yes." When he straightened, the warrior's face looked older. "He knew the spell would cost him his life, I would guess, by what he said," Tarthe said, and his voice quavered. "Let's begone."
"By the windows?" Ithym asked, tears in his eyes as he looked back at the ghostly figure standing by the tomb.
"It's the way he pointed," Tarthe said heavily. "Ropes first."
The two thieves undid leather jerkins to reveal ropes wound many times around their bellies. Elmara took hold of one end of each rope, and the thieves spun around and around until the ropes lay in loose coils on the floor. Ithym caught up two ends and tied them together.
Then, gingerly, the two thieves approached a window, looking back over to be sure there was nothing visible that might spring at them. Ithym carried the coil of rope on his shoulder, and Gralkyn held one end of it in his hands as he approached the window.
He touched the end of the rope to the ornate wrought iron of the window screen, and then to the draperies beyond. Then he followed, gingerly, with one gloved hand. Nothing happened.
The oval window-screens depicted scenes of flying dragons, wizards standing atop rocky pinnacles, and rearing pegasi. With a shrug, Gralkyn chose the nearest one with a pegasus on it and swung the screen aside on its hinges. They made a slight squeal of protest, but nothing else befell. His blade parted the draperies beyond—to reveal bubble-pocked glass, and through it, a view of the sky and the wilderlands. Cautiously the thief probed the window opening with his blade, peering about for traps. Then he said, "These were not made to open. The glass is fixed in place."
"Break it, then," Ithym said.
Gralkyn shrugged, reversed his blade, and swung hard. The glass burst apart, shards flashing and tinkling everywhere.
Sudden motes of light shone in the air where the window had been, spiraling, slowly at first... and then faster....
"Back!" Elmara shouted in sudden alarm. "Get ye back!"
The light of the activating spell flared before her words were half out—and a force of awesome power snatched both thieves out through the small opening, rope and all, smashing their limbs against the walls as they went, as if they were rag dolls being stuffed through a hole too small for them. Ithym had time for one despairing scream—long, raw, and falling—before hitting the rocks.
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 be¬come 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 passage be¬yond and was gone—unseen in the sudden flash and whirl of a hundred circling, clanging blades, darting about in the space 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 de¬stroying 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 sorcer¬ess 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 shat¬ters 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 in¬stant 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 cas-ket, 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, sway¬ing. 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 crashing 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 shifted, 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 blaz¬ing 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 de¬stroying 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-work¬ing 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 continu¬ously 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, lass," 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 noth¬ing, 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 scraped 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 passed. The ferry man steadied his boat in silence, watching the young lady's de¬termined stride as she climbed the hill. The full glory of the set¬ting 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 spat¬ter in the bottom of the boat, and the scaly, grinning face whis¬pered, "Done, master." Garadic knew Ilhundyl was watching.
*****
Elmara stopped in front of the altar: a plain, dark block of stone standing alone atop the hill. The wind sighed past her. She offered a heartfelt prayer to Mystra, and the wind seemed to die away for a breath or two. When she was done, she unwrapped Ondil's Book of Spells, its binding still bright around it, and placed it reverently on the cold stone.
