Трой Деннинг - Waterdeep

“No!” Midnight cried.

She released the sword, then straightened three fingers and jammed them into the thief’s throat as hard as she could. The strike nearly smashed his larynx. Choking and gasping, he stumbled away, pulling the sword out of the mage’s body.

Midnight collapsed into a sitting position. She held her hands over her wound, which had begun to bleed.

Cyric swallowed and cleared his throat several times, attempting to restore the normal passage of air. Finally, he lifted his sword and started toward Midnight again. “For that, you die in pain,” he gasped.

Barely capable of focusing on the thief, Midnight raised a hand and pointed it at him. She tried to summon an incantation that would kill him, but the pain in her stomach clouded her head and she could not think clearly. Her mind simply filled with a jumble of nonsensical words and meaningless gestures.

Just then, a fierce round of battle cries came up from Swords Street. Watching Midnight over his shoulder, Cyric went to the edge of the tower to see what had happened. Just a hundred yards from the base of Blackstaff’s home, the Company of the Manticore and the 5th Watch Regiment were engaged in a confused, whirling melee with Myrkul’s horde. Human and denizen bodies alike lay stacked two and three deep, and blood ran down the gutters in streams. The buildings lining the street were scorched and half-destroyed from the desperate magic that wizards had flung into battle without regard to misfires or precision.

As Cyric watched, a group of denizens broke through the line. Five mages directed spells at them, resulting in a spray of colors, an unexpected rain shower, and two miniature tornadoes. But one of the spells went off correctly, and a fireball engulfed Myrkul’s warriors. To Cyric’s surprise, the magic reduced the denizens to charred lumps. A dozen of Waterdeep’s soldiers gave a rousing cheer, then rushed over to seal the gap the attackers had been trying to exploit.

And from what Cyric could see from the tower, the battle was going badly for the denizens all across the city.

The battle was turning, though Cyric could not see the reason. In fact, Elminster had finally reached the other side of the Pool of Loss and closed the portal. The loss of contact with Hades was demoralizing the denizens. It was also weakening much of their invulnerability to spells, fire, and weapons, which was due to magic emanating from Myrkul’s realm.

Cyric decided that it was time to take the tablets and find the Celestial Stairway. He turned back to the middle of the roof, where Midnight barely sat upright. The mage continued to point her hand in his general direction. Her face was too masked in pain for the thief to tell whether or not she was concentrating on magic.

Cyric considered stabbing Midnight again. But then he looked at her wound and the pool of blood in which she sat. Recalling some of the incredible things he had seen her magic do, the thief decided it would be wiser to let her bleed to death on her own. Besides, with the tide of battle turning, he did not think there was much time to waste.

The thief went over to Adon and pulled the saddlebags out of the cleric’s grasp. Adon feebly tried to rise and stop him, making it as far as his knees.

“Thanks,” Cyric said cheerfully. Taking aim at the bloody spot on the cleric’s shirt, the thief kicked him as hard as he could—twice. “I’d kill you, but I don’t have any time to waste.”

Then Cyric threw the saddlebags containing the Tablets of Fate over his shoulder and left the tower.

After Cyric left Blackstaff’s tower, Midnight collapsed and fell unconscious. Adon dragged himself to her side. He tore a ragged piece of cloth off the mage’s sleeve and used it to stanch the bleeding from her wound. The bandage did not work completely, but at least the flow slowed to a trickle.

As they lay on the roof, Adon watched Waterdeep’s soldiers defend the city. At first, the guard companies and watch regiments simply kept the denizens from breaking through their lines again. Then, as the attackers’ charge lost momentum, the defenders started beating the horde back. Within minutes, Waterdeep’s troops were advancing, and a short time later they were pursuing the denizens back toward the Dock Ward.

But the defeat of Myrkul’s host did little to encourage Adon. Each time he took a breath, his lungs filled with fire, and each time he exhaled, bolts of pain shot through his torso. Periodically, he fell into fits of uncontrollable coughing and wheezing. Cyric’s contemptuous kicks had broken two ribs, in addition to mangling Adon’s already injured lungs. Several times, the cleric tried to find the strength to stand and go after Cyric and the tablets. A wave of unbearable agony always forced him back to his knees.

Forty minutes later, a griffon carrying two riders approached Blackstaff’s tower and landed. A tall, black-haired man leaped off the beast, examined Kelemvor’s bloodless body, then inspected the rest of the scene. Finally, he walked over to where Adon and Midnight lay.

“What happened?” Blackstaff demanded, not bothering with introductions. The wizard had never met Adon, but he had no doubt about the cleric’s identity.

“Cyric took the—” Adon fell into a violent attack of coughing and could not finish the sentence.

After waiting a few moments for the fit to pass, Blackstaff said, “Wait right here—I’ll get something to help.”

He disappeared into his tower, then returned an instant later with two vials of murky green fluid. “This is a restorative. It will ease your pain.” He gave one to Adon, then kneeled and poured the other into Midnight’s mouth.

Adon accepted the vial and drank it down. Although he had never met Blackstaff Arunsun, the black-bearded man’s bearing left little doubt of his identity. As the mage had promised, the potion dulled the cleric’s pain and put an end to his coughing. Though Adon felt far from hardy, he found the strength to stand.

“Cyric has the Tablets of Fate!” Adon said. “You’ve got to—”

Midnight opened her eyes. “Khelben?” she said. “Do you have the tablets?” She still felt dizzy and weak, but her strength, like the cleric’s, was slowly returning.

Instead of answering Midnight’s question, the bearded mage began asking his own. “What happened to Kelemvor? Where’s Elminster?”

Midnight and Adon each tried to answer a different question simultaneously. The result was a garbled mumble.

Blackstaff held up his hand. “Let’s start from the beginning. Midnight?”

Midnight told Blackstaff about tracking Myrkul back to the wizard’s tower. She quickly explained how the Lord of the Dead had stolen the tablet from the vault, then described how they had lured the god back to the roof and destroyed him. “By the time we recovered both tablets, his denizens were closing in on your tower,” she finished. “Elminster went to the Pool of Loss to cut them off from Myrkul’s city.”

“Then Cyric attacked,” Adon said. He briefly recounted how Cyric had injured him again, killed Kelemvor, stabbed Midnight, and finally taken the tablets and left.

When the cleric was softly relating the specifics of the green-eyed fighter’s death, Midnight turned away and tried in vain to hold back her tears.

Blackstaff considered the story for a minute, then said, “I’ll go and retrieve Elminster from the Pool of Loss—”

“What about Cyric and the tablets?” Adon interrupted. “You’ve got to catch him before he reaches the Celestial Stairway!”

“Patience, Adon,” Blackstaff said calmly. “Unless he knows where the Stairway is, Cyric will not find it easily. Only people of extraordinary power can see it. We have plenty of time to locate him and recover the tablets.”