Ed Greenwood - Hand of Fire

Asper was also on her knees, facing Shan across smoking ash from about an armslength away. Shandril stared at her in horror.

"Get away!" she snarled. "Go from here before I burn you, too!"

"No," Asper told her, her face white with fear but her voice firm. "My Mirt lies wounded behind me. I'll not leave him. I'm his only shield against-oh, Shan-against spellfire!"

Shandril burst into fresh tears, shook her head, got up, and fled blindly into the night.

Men cowering amid the smoke watched her go, a stumbling, sobbing figure wreathed in flames, who left blazing footprints behind her.

She stopped atop a bare knob of rock on the edge of camp, and there turned, tears glimmering in her eyes and splashing in flames to the rocks below. On a curl of spellfire like dragons' breath her voice rolled softly back to Asper: "Farewell!"

Asper stood up and reached out to her. "Shan, no!"

"No?" Shandril cried wildly. "I've killed Narm! My man is gone, dead by my hand! Dead by this cursed spellfire that feels so good!" She shook her head, flames swirling in her hair, and sobbed bitterly. "Beldimarr too, and the Lady Laeral, and dozens more! I slaughtered them all! Everywhere I go, people die-and still wizards keep trying to get their hands on this fire inside me! One day they might succeed in taking it-and what then? Shandril Shessair causes the rest of Faerun be swept away?"

"Shandril, 'tis not your fault!" Asper cried, taking a few reluctant steps closer.

"Nay? I say it is," Shandril howled, her eyes two flames. "And I am done with slaying, done with fear and running and fighting, done with it all!"

She threw back her head and told the stars, "Gorstag, forgive me… Mystra, take me!"

Drawing in a deep breath, she gave Asper a little wave and a half-smile, and went to one knee. Propping both elbows on her raised knee, she put her fingers in her mouth-and fed herself spellfire.

There was a. moment of silence, then a trembling-a shuddering of earth and air and blood pounding in the ears that began as a sound so low it shook bones rather than being heard, but built swiftly to a din greater than any dragon might make.

No one could stand or wage war or be heard in that trembling tumult. All over that bloody field men fell, tumbling helplessly, and lightning snarled out from the lone lass on the rock, playing like restless blue snakes from blade to shield and back again, until men threw away their swords or tore off their armor, to lie wincing, cowering, and wondering when they would die. Asper fell, tried to get up again, and found herself once more on the ground, one shoulder to the scorched earth. She kept her eyes on Shandril all the while, and it was as she was rolling over onto her stomach again that she saw the maid from Highmoon rise up into the air, trembling in the thrall of the furious white stream of spellfire leaking from her mouth to roil around her as she went on feeding it to herself.

Perhaps forty feet off the ground her hands fell away from her mouth as she stared at the empty air beside her and gasped in wonder, "Narm? M-Mystra? Gorstag?"

And then Shandril exploded, in a burst of radiance so bright that Asper saw nothing for days afterward.

"Oh, lass," the High Lady murmured. "You saved him and healed him, and never knew. He but collapsed from the pain and lives yet. Unlike you."

The Weave flashed and shook itself, as if rid of a great burden. Alustriel Silverhand, weeping with grief and pain amid leaping tongues of silver fire, let go her shielding spells at last.

In Shadowdale, Elminster looked up sharply from an old map as Mourngrym frowned across the table at him and Illistyl and Jhessail winced in unison and grabbed for the backs of chairs, for support. "She's gone," the Old Mage said slowly, shaking his head. "She lasted longer than I'd ever thought she would."

Torm's eyes narrowed. "Who?"

"Shandril," Rathan said heavily, and reached for a decanter. "Gathered, as the gods gather us all."

"Mystra preserve her," Jhessail gasped, and threw back her head as if starving for air. A single tear fell like a wet star on the map before her. Torm reached out a finger and drew a prayer-rune with it, right across the face of Elminster's map.

Mourngrym waited for the Old Mage to erupt, but no storm came. Elminster merely shook his head again, looking off into a distant otherwhere that only he could see, and murmured, "Mystra will provide."

"Sharantyr?" Florin asked quietly, from his end of the table.

The Old Mage almost smiled. "Someone else has already provided for her. Someone who could teach Torm, here, a thing or two."

"What's wrong, Tess?" the Purple Dragon asked, coming awake in an instant and reaching for her with one hand and his ready sword with the other.

Tessaril Winter trembled under his touch like a little girl, and he swiftly wrapped a comforting arm around her smooth curves. "I know not, King Azoun," she said formally, her voice empty and despairing. "I only know someone has died-and in dying, reached out to me."

"Who?" the king of Cormyr asked softly, enfolding her in his arms.

Tessaril whispered, "She. Young, and of great power… it can only be Shandril Shessair. She never made it to Silvery-moon, after all." She swallowed. "Oh, Az-hold me."

"I will," Azoun said gently, not bothering to point out that he already was. Kindness is a rare quality in a king, understanding another, and caring a third. Tessaril lay still and thought on all three, and her eyes filled with tears.

"At least I have you," she whispered, and the Purple Dragon's answer was a simple whisper.

"Yes."

They lay together in silence for a long time before his Lady Lord of Eveningstar twisted free of the royal grasp and of her bed in one smooth movement, to stand bare and magnificent in the moonlight.

"Where-?" Azoun asked, hefting his sword.

Tessaril turned from a jewel-box on her dressing table with a pendant in her hand. As she held it out, the great jewel seemed to glow slightly. "I must tell Fee without delay," she explained almost apologetically. "She'll have felt my- my upset, and be lying awake now, wondering."

"Filfaeril? Are your two minds often linked, when you and I are together?"

Tessaril smiled a little sadly at him. "I would consider it treason on my part if they were not," she said quietly. "We also talk often with this."

She heard his sigh as she bent over the jewel, and turned her head again to add, with a thin half-smile, "And yes: often about you."

Azoun lay back with another sigh and told the moonlit ceiling, "I might have known."

Lord Manshoon stopped in midstride, the whirling magic that had brought him to this chamber in Zhentil Keep still dwindling behind him, and snapped, "Send for the priests! Something has happened-something that has made the Weave itself tremble!"

As wizards scrambled to do his bidding, he murmured, "So if the wench is dead, who has spellfire now?"

In the Stonelands a cool breeze was quickening, but despite the leaves it rustled and the branches it bent, a swirl of ashes rose and stood against it in the air, whirling up briefly into a shape that might have been an armored dwarf.

The shape turned, peering northwest over the puddled flow of stone that had once been a spire called Irondrake Rock as if straining to see something. No one was there to see the ashen phantom, and after a time it collapsed with a sigh and was gone again.

Peace returned to Delg's Dell, though the breeze blew no more that night.

Oprion Blackstone looked out of a high window in a certain tower of Zhentil Keep and murmured, "Another scheme fallen to ashes. Manshoon will send his spell-dogs to summon us to parley. What would happen, I wonder, if, I simply refused to come?"

"We'd slay you, of course," a deep, wet voice said from the air outside a moment before its owner drifted into view from around the tower's curve. "Many humans are that stupid, of course, but I was hoping we'd weeded out the worst dolts already."