Ed Greenwood - Bury Elminster Deep

“Keep watching the ghost!” Glathra snarled at the senior war wizards standing with her. “Whatever happens, don’t let it slip away!”

“Uh, Lady Glathra?” one asked, daring to pluck at her sleeve.

“What?” she almost spat in his face, fury rising fast. He pointed over the rooftops.

Where a beholder had just risen into view and was floating serenely nearer.

“Lady!” an older, deeper-voiced Crown mage called, before she even had time to gape. “Over here!”

“We must get down there!” the ranking Highknight snapped, waving to his men. “Down the stairs! Move!”

“I give the orders here!” Glathra almost shrieked, but his reply, delivered at the full run without even bothering to look in her direction, was a silent but emphatic gesture of the sort never seen in polite company.

With a wordless snarl of rage, Glathra rushed across the roof to the deep-voiced mage, to see why he’d hailed her.

In the alley below, marching in a line abreast with their swords out and ruthlessly slaying the few bullyblades who hadn’t sense enough to flee from them, were five blueflame ghosts.

“The Blazon’s burning,” Mirt rumbled as they hastened together along a sidestreet.

“And not a moment too soon, from all Arclath’s told us of the place,” Storm replied as they came to a corner where their way joined a larger street. “Now, if I’ve guessed right, our lone blueflame ghost should be fleeing now and coming right along… here.”

“Fleeing? I didn’t think they ever fled!”

“They do when their commander wants them to, or when they face five of their own kind. See?”

In the distance, down the street, a wall of bright blue flame was moving closer as five ghosts walked abreast, striding swiftly along the street.

“Oh, naed,” Storm muttered. “Things can never just be stlarning simple, can they?”

She was eyeing the unmistakable shape of a beholder, descending silently in a smooth and unhurried arc, to float just above and behind the line of ghosts.

And in front of Storm and Mirt, about a dozen paces away, a noble was standing facing the ghost who’d been in the Blazon. The lord was holding something that was glowing blue, something flat and about the size of his hand. The ghost, still walking hurriedly toward him, was fading away.

Its flames pulsed in time with flares of light from whatever the lord was holding.

“Lord Calantar?” Storm whispered.

“Ye know him?”

“By sight. I’d never have guessed he’d be the…”

“ ’Tis always the quiet ones,” Mirt growled, stalking forward and hefting his dagger.

The ghost vanished. A moment later, the cobbles all around Lord Calantar suddenly sprouted war wizards.

“Traitor!” Lady Glathra shouted into the lord’s face, trying to grab his hand and the glowing item in it.

“Hey!” Mirt shouted. “Mind out!”

He pointed, and some of the Crown mages turned to look.

They saw the beholder swooping down on them, its many-fanged maw gaping and its eyestalks writhing like angry snakes.

The war wizards let fly with their swiftest, strongest battle spells, chanting and gesturing frantically-as Mirt swept out one arm, caught Storm around her sword arm, and dragged her hastily back.

She was trying to fight free of his dogged, wheezing grasp when the spells started to strike the beholder-and it exploded with terrific force, shattering windows, balconies, and cobbles, dashing their ears into ringing numbness, and hurling scores of folk in all directions, like so many dolls.

Another trap.

Glathra was smashed flat by two of her own war wizards as they were flung into her from behind-and Lord Calantar was sent tumbling down the street to fetch up against a cart, dazed and mumbling.

Storm stumbled after him, the blast having snatched her out of Mirt’s grasp, and pounced on the noble. Who stabbed up at her with a dagger as he tried to call out his ghost again. The item in his hand-a belt buckle-started to pulse a bright blue once more.

Storm fended off one thrust, took another in her forearm with a hiss of pain, then lost patience and brought her sword down, chopping Calantar’s buckle-holding hand down onto the cobbles. He spat a curse at her and stabbed again, so she swung her sword up and chopped down harder, cutting his hand off.

It was still clutching the belt buckle.

Storm snatched the spurting, severed thing up, buckle and all, and tried to ignore the pulsing blue glow.

She could see the five blueflame ghosts all staring at her and running now, coming for her as fast as they could.

Glathra was on her feet again and running at Storm, too-and was much closer. She was trying to gasp out a spell as she came, but as she trampled on an apparently unconscious Mirt, the Waterdhavian tripped her deftly with one hairy hand. He rose with a grin as Glathra bounced on her face, to shout at Storm, “Go, lass! Get ye gone! I’ll try to-”

The five ghosts were almost upon him.

Storm winced, not wanting to see what was going to happen to Mirt-and then, in a sudden flash and a moment of silent, gentle drifting, it was all gone.

The street, ghosts, Glathra, and all.

Elminster’s magic had snatched her away.

Abruptly, Storm was standing on a hard, smooth, and familiar floor.

She was in the warehouse, holding Lord Calantar’s severed hand, and the buckle clutched in those gore-dripping fingers was losing its blue glow.

Elminster was running to her, Arclath and Amarune right behind him. Rune wore her mask but nothing else; the blue flames El’s magic had shrouded her in had vanished.

“I-” Storm started to say, but a frowning Arclath snatched up a rickety chair at a dead run and flung it, hard.

Storm ducked aside and the chair smashed right into-Wizard of War Glathra, who had just appeared behind her.

Glathra fell to her knees, spat out a curse, snatched a wand from her belt, and triggered it, blasting Elminster, who’d leaped in front of Storm. Flames crashed into him with a roar.

In a trice his familiar face and beard were gone, mere wisps of illusion dashed to nothingness in the flames that tore apart the body that had been Applecrown’s.

The staring face of a much younger man was sent flying through the air as Glathra’s wand blast flung all that was left of Reldyk Applecrown in a dozen directions.

Severed limbs flew, ashes swirled, and Arclath was flung into a stack of crates, to land groaning.

Storm slid past him across the warehouse floor, silver hair clawing at crates and barrels to try to slow herself.

Nude and weaponless, Amarune Whitewave flung herself on Glathra, backhanding the wizard viciously across the face and snatching the wand away. Glathra made a grab for it and got a hard elbow under her chin instead as Rune twisted away to fling the wand as far and as hard as she could, off into the dim distances of the crate-heaped warehouse.

The two women clawed and rolled for a frantic breath or two before Glathra broke free, sprinted out of Rune’s reach, and turned to catch her breath and get out her other wand, the one that paralyzed.

Which was when Storm hit her, launching herself over crates in a wild dive with arms spread wide to make sure the wizard of war couldn’t dodge away.

Glathra tried.

They ended up on the floor together, bouncing and struggling. Storm’s tresses promptly shackled Glathra’s wrists and assaulted her mouth, preventing her from uttering any magic-until the Bard of Shadowdale could get a hand on the war wizard’s head.

Ruthlessly Storm slammed the war wizard’s head against the floor, then clawed it up by Glathra’s hair and slammed it down again. And again.

And again, until her foe went limp under her.