Ричард Байерс - Dissolution

Relonor was a gifted mage but no marvel as a tactician. In the excitement of the moment, he'd reflexively cast his favorite spell, and characteristically for a Mizzrym retainer, it was an illusion. He'd forgotten that his foe, born in the same House, might well recognize the sequence of mystic passes. Of course, even if Pharaun hadn't, his silver ring would have shown him what sort of magic the other male was creating. He ignored the phantasm and reached into a pocket to snatch a tiny crystal and commence a spell. He ignored the apparition even when it lunged so close he felt the imaginary but searing heat of its halo of flame. An intense coldness, visible in the fan of drifting ice crystals it instantly created, exploded from his hand. It passed right through the reptile, dissipating the illusion in the process, and washed over Relonor. It painted him with rime, and he fell backward. Pharaun grinned. Greyanna was a fool to accost him with so few retainers in her train. Didn't she realize that two masters of Tier Breche were more than equal to the worst that she and her four dolts could do? The foulwing flapped its batlike wings and hopped closer to the melee. As its legless body pounded down on the ground, Greyanna opened a leather bag and flung a handful of its contents into the air. The falling motes flared with greenish light when they struck the ground. Each seethed and sparkled upward like a spore instantaneously growing into a fungus.

In an instant, a number of animate skeletons stood upon the street. They carried a miscellany of weapons and shields but shared a common purpose. As one, they oriented on the masters and advanced. Shifting back and forth, Ryld cut the undead creatures down. Pharaun took momentary shelter behind his friend, then the swordsman cried out, staggered, and dropped his guard. The skeletons surged forward, and the twins, who'd been hovering at the periphery of the fight, darted in as well. Caught by surprise, Pharaun only just had time to conjure a dazzling, crackling fork of lightning. The power held the enemy back for a moment, and Ryld recovered his balance. «All right?» asked the Master of Sorcere. «Yes.» Ryld chopped a spear-wielding skeleton's legs out from under it. «Something was trying to tamper with my mind, but it's gone now.» «It won't stay gone unless I confront the spellcasters.» Pharaun floated up into the air, beyond the skeletons' reach, making sure he would have a clear shot at Greyanna and the others. In his absence, the creatures would likely be able to surround Ryld, but that couldn't be helped.

Surveying the scene, he saw that Relonor was still lying motionless on his back.

Positioned beyond the melee, Greyanna and her sister priestess were reading from scrolls. For a moment, Pharaun's thoughts exploded into a terrifying madness, but reason quickly reasserted itself. He sucked in a deep breath, trying to quell the residual fear, and a second assault wracked his body. He cried out, and the agony passed. Somehow he'd weathered both spells.

He threw a seething ball of lighting at Greyanna, but it winked out of existence halfway to the target, unmade by the priestess's defenses. She and the other cleric employed their scrolls again. A dazzling, searing beam of light erupted from Greyanna's hand. It slashed across Pharaun's face, and he closed his eyes just in time to keep it from blinding him. It was painful nonetheless, but his own defenses kept it from burning his face off. The other priestess flailed at him with a sizzling bolt of lightning. As it was one of his own favorite forces to command, it hardly seemed fair. He stiffened with the shock for a moment or two, and the magic lost its grip on him. He feared the spasm had cost him precious time. By the time it passed, he thought the priestesses were surely in the process of casting new spells, but when he looked at the lesser of the two she wasn't creating any magic. She'd dropped her suddenly blank scroll on the ground and was rooting in her leather pouch, presumably for another means of magical attack. Clasping a bit of coal and a tiny dried eyeball held in a little vial, Pharaun created an effect. Power sighed and rippled through the air, and a mass of darkness appeared around the female's head, blinding her. The wizard's thoughts flew apart once more, then reassembled themselves. He rounded on Greyanna. She was still clutching her scroll, evidently still casting from it. He began to conjure, and she, evidently uncertain of the parchment's power to protect her, tore open the bag. It had occurred to Pharaun that the sack might have more spores in it, but he'd assumed they would produce more skeletons. This time, though, the glittering motes burst in midair, swelling into ugly little beasts resembling a cross between a bat and a mosquito. The stirges swirled around him, jabbing at him with their proboscises, striving to drink his blood. They interfered with the motion of his hands and so spoiled his conjuration. He restored his weight and fell back to the ground, where Ryld, beset by clinking skeletons on all sides, beheaded one with a sudden cut. One of the twins edged toward him but balked when the big male pivoted in his direction. Pharaun slammed down on the street. Trailing chattering stirges, he sprinted toward the fallen Relonor. A couple skeletons turned to hack at him, but most of them were too intent on killing Ryld to notice him. Up close, the things stank. Pharaun thought they must still have some scraps of rotting flesh about them somewhere. Just as he reached the unconscious wizard, Greyanna's foulwing landed on the other side of the body with a ground-shaking thump. Pharaun roared out a painfully loud magical shout, and the beast recoiled, carrying its rider with it.

Pharaun stooped, ripped the brooch off Relonor's sash, turned, and ran. Greyanna screamed in rage. The foulwing roared its strange double roar, and two sets of jaws clashed shut behind the fleeing male. A stirge's proboscis jabbed him in the back, staggering him, but was unable to penetrate his piwafwi. Another spell rattled his mind but with no permanent ill effects. A skeleton appeared on his flank, swinging a notched, rusty axe at his head. Splitter flashed in an arc and smashed the undead thing into tiny pieces.

Pharaun caught hold of the hem of Ryld's piwafwi and glanced around at Greyanna.

Her face a mask of fury, she tossed away her scroll, which was likely blank, and held her hands high to receive the long staff materializing from some extradimensional storage. He could see why she wanted the instrument. It blazed with mystic power, but it was also slow in attaining tangibility. Some chance interaction of the magical energies playing about the battleground was retarding its transition to the physical plane. Why, then, didn't she leave off summoning it and attack in some other manner? Why— In a flash of inspiration, the answer came to him, and it was astonishing. But he was scarcely in a place conducive to contemplation of his discovery, and it was time to remedy that. He peered at the brooch he'd taken from Relonor, found the trigger word implicit in the kaleidoscopic pattern shining around it, and spoke.

Greyanna regarded the open space in the middle of the ring of aimlessly milling skeletons, and the stirges swooping and wheeling above. A moment before, Pharaun and his hulking accomplice had been standing there, but they were gone. If her eyes had not deceived her, her brother had flashed her that old familiar mocking grin as he vanished. How dare he smirk at her like that when it was she who had driven him from House Mizzrym! She regarded her iron staff, taller than she was, square in cross-section, graven with hundreds of tiny runes, and warm as blood to the touch. The weapon had failed her. She trembled with the impulse to swing it over her head and smash it against the stone beneath her feet until it was defaced, deformed, and useless. She didn't, because she knew Pharaun's escape was really her fault, not the staff's. She should have summoned the weapon sooner. She should have been more aggressive with the sack. Damn this degrading and inexplicable season! Because of its vicissitudes, her mother had instructed her to play the miser with every personal resource, even though she was fighting for the welfare of House Mizzrym and all Menzoberranzan.