Ed Greenwood - The Best of the Realms, Book II

The lightnings turned to streams of radishes, bouncing and rolling, wherever they reached into The Place—but where they struck Elminster’s flaming blood, the spew of radishes turned to lightning again, scorching at least one bladesman until his sizzling eyes sprouted plumes of smoke and he fell, gasping out more smoke.

Dove tripped over someone, saw someone else looming up over a desperately-rolling Storm, and went for him, lashing him with her gown and her girdle. The man sidestepped, slashing at both garments, and Dove flung herself down, scissoring her legs around his.

He started to fall, waving his arms wildly to try to stay upright, and she stabbed at him with her dagger. He twisted away with a triumphant howl, only to overbalance and fall backward onto the stolen dagger a grimly-smiling Storm was holding ready. It burst up through the man’s throat with a dark bubbling, and he barely had time to stare disbelievingly up at the moon before his wide eyes froze and his frantically-cursing mouth fell slack.

Storm groaned under him, pinned and breathless, and Dove reached to try to free her.

“Begone, useless fools,” came a sharp command, and this time Dove heard enough of the sharp voice to know that it was female. It came from a tall woman with nightdark hair and darker eyes who was walking barefoot out of the trees, a loose cloak eddying around her ivory limbs and a dark mask failing to conceal her smile.

Two gliding steps brought the woman to the edge of the stones as bladesmen fled into the woods like hurrying shadows. The cloak was flung off and the mask followed, and from the ivory-hued body thus revealed inky darkness flooded, devouring moonlight as it came.

Trees, the moon, and even the corpse-strewn stones of The Place vanished before that swift-spreading gloom, but in the resulting void Dove found she could still see some things.

Or rather, some people. Uncle El lay curled over in pain, his skin glowing a pale white and that bright blue-white fire leaking from him in ribbons and pooling around him.

Storm’s skin was white, too, and so was Dove’s own—and blue-white flames pulsed in slices and gashes on both of them.

A similar moon-white glow shone brightly from the shapely woman confronting them, but her skin was moving, thrusting outward here and there as if trapped fists were reaching out from beneath it, and darkening where it did so. Darkening and erupting into long, cruel black claws, and narrow-snouted, many-toothed jaws.

“Behold,” the woman purred, “the Dark Talons of the Devourer.”

She glided forward, shapely no longer, a small forest of eel-like necks ending in clamshell-like jaws, wriggling taloned tentacles, and that soft cruel smile.

“In the sacred name of Shar I feed,” she announced calmly, kneeling over the dead bladesman and the struggling, still-pinned Storm beneath him. “I, Vrasabra the Anointed, Priestess of the Night.”

There was a brief flash of magic from somewhere behind the priestess, but it howled into strange music, followed by Laeral’s disgusted curse.

Vrasabra smiled. “Handy, this place of wild magic. And fitting that creatures of Mystra should perish because of her carelessness.” Talons reached forward almost gently to pluck aside the dead bladesman and reach for— Elminster gasped out a desperate spell and the night boiled.

Blood burst from him in all directions in a blue-white mist. The very stones of The Place shook, then the tall, slender wizard was suddenly hanging in midair, with great white wings sprouting from him.

Three, four—Dove watched in horror as a spine sprouted from Uncle El’s disbelieving face and grew feathers, white pinions racing along its length with uncanny speed as he

moaned, sobbed, and flung himself forward in a chaos of mismatched wingbeats, rolling like a tumbleweed.

Vrasabra the Anointed hissed and shrank back, talons and jaws gathering in front of her in a wall of menace.

Elminster did nothing to her, instead snatching up Storm in his arms as he hissed in pain, leaking blue-white fiery blood all over her, and flung himself forward into the night.

“Get the stones!” he gasped at Dove, as he hit the ground hard and rolled—or tried to. A crumpling chaos of wings spilled Storm onto the ground in a comical collapse that made the priestess of Shar crow with mirth—and pounce.

Then the night lit up with a white flood that seared eyeballs and left everyone blinking dazedly at Laeral, who stood wearing nothing but torn and much-patched forester’s breeches—and a coldly sneering smile.

“A step too far, Sharran,” she said triumphantly, her eyes igniting like two silver flames. “Now kiss the Weave.”

The very air tore audibly as magefire slashed talons and claws alike, hurling a shrieking Vrasabra of Shar headlong across The Place. Stone glowed and heaved where the roiling fires touched them, but released the priestess, who crashed into saplings on the far side of the ruins, trailing smoke.

Dove turned, caught up a fallen knife, and ran toward the woman—but behind her Laeral’s cry of glee rose into an ear-stabbing scream that went on, and on, and…

Brightness crashed through and flooded all, carrying Dove far, far away.

* * * * *

Swimming through glimmering waves of tears, the moon hung silent and serene, telling Dove wordlessly that not much time had passed.

She sat up—or tried to, but somehow found herself on her face.

She tried again, but the night whirled around Dove then ebbed away, leaving her on her back again.

Rolling over with slow caution, she saw that the glade was awash in a soft blue-white glow. The very air was glowing.

That glow seemed to be rooted in the sprawled body of Laeral, who lay senseless on her back, staring at nothing.

Between Laeral and the wincing, staggering priestess of Shar—whose bare body trailed dozens of limp, lifeless jaws and talons, though a handful still writhed and snapped hungrily—lay a scorched area that no longer held any ancient stones.

The Place was gone.

Its slabs and the base of its pillar had vanished, swept away into some otherness that seemed to have claimed half of Uncle El’s wings—which were sheared off in a straight line as if sliced by a sword. That left only their roots sprouting from … the sprawled, motionless body of the patient man who’d reared Dove and her sisters.

A scorched and dazed Storm was wandering aimlessly among the trees and trampled ferns beyond Elminster, where the huddled thing that had once been Andur Marlestur also lay. A few daggers and severed arms and hands were also scattered about, but most of the dead bladesmen had vanished with the stones they’d been sprawled on.

“Ohhh,” the Sharran gasped, clawing her way up a tree until she was more or less upright, “that was a spell. No more wild magic here. Gone, quite gone.” She tried a smile, and found that—between winces—it managed to linger.

“Leaving none of you strong enough to resist the Devourer.”

Vrasabra the Anointed left the tree behind and came unsteadily through the glow toward Storm, almost falling once.

She’d nearly reached her mumbling, staggering prey when the body of Andur Marlestur stirred under her feet, tripping her into a headlong fall.

The Sharran came up snarling, turning to meet her new foe—and by then the dead lordling was on his feet, his head lolling lifelessly and his eyes fixed on nothing.

“No undeath comes so quickly!” the priestess snarled in disbelief, stepping back to hiss the words of a spell that would impose her will on the walking corpse.

The remains of the Lord of Tharnwood folded its arms politely and waited for her to finish—but the moment she’d done so, the bloodless body staggered forward to embrace her.