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*****
"Whither now?" Elminster asked, as Myrjala reined in where the trail crossed the shoulder of a little knoll
west of the city. He looked around curiously; from Hastarl, one couldn't see this was a grave-knoll. A stone
plinth stood within a low wall, overgrown with shrubs and low-branched trees that cloaked the stone from all
but the closest eyes.
"In all your struggle, you've gained none of the spells wielded by the magelords," Myrjala replied. "As it
befalls, I know where the mage royal kept a cache of magic
spellbooks, healing po-tions, and items held ready
in case he was hounded from Has-tarl, or ever found the city held against him. Here in this old shrine of Mystra, where
no thieves come for fear of the guardian ghosts of dead mages, is his cache."
"Is it guarded?" Elminster asked warily, as they dismounted amid the trees.
"Of course it is, fool mageling!" someone snarled from behind him.
Elminster whirled around of his horse flow and twist... into the familiar shape
in time to see the rearing body
of Undarl, mage royal of Athalantar. Myrjala's mount screamed in terror, and they heard the frantic drumming
of hooves as it fled.
Elminster gulped and plucked at his belt for the things he'd need to cast what paltry battle-spells he had
left. Undarl's gloating grin told him he was not going to be in time. The mas-ter of the magelords raised his
hand and began to murmur something, but Myrjala sprang between them, skirts swirling. The lightning that
cracked forth from Undarl split before her upraised hands and splashed harmlessly off to either side.
The mage royal screamed in anger. When he could find words through his fury, he snarled at her, "You!
Always, it is you! Die, then!" His next words were a hissed incantation, and streams of fire burst from his
fingertips in a crimson web that crackled and clawed the air, but was turned back by Myrjala's conjured
shield. Elminster had no spells left to match such magics; he could only stand anxiously in the lee of
Myrjala's barrier.
The web of fire Undarl had spun began to glow a dull, angry red. The mage royal lashed at the shield with
his fading flames, and called out a name that echoed among the stones of the shrine.
His call was answered by a vast bestial roar. Something huge and dark rose up from behind the trees
behind the mage royal... a red dragon! It unfurled batlike wings and hissed, eyes glinting with cruelty. Then its
shoulders surged and it leapt through the air toward the prince and the dark-eyed sor-ceress. It breathed fire
as it came, a roaring torrent of flame that poured over Myrjala's shield ... but could not consume it.
The sorceress said something long and awkward, and the dragon's flame doubled back on itself, coiling
and turning from red to an eerie bright blue before it became white-hot. To El-minster's mage-sight it seemed
even brighter; Myrjala had transformed it into something awesome. It rushed back at the dragon like a hungry
wind. El glimpsed dark wings beating frantically amid the roiling flames for a moment, and then, in an
explosion that rocked the knoll and hurled him from his feet, the dragon burst part.
Scales and blackened scraps of flesh flew past the last prince of Athalantar as he struggled to his feet
and saw Undarl snarling and lashing at the sorceress with his whip of flames, seeking to pierce the shield.
Fire roared and rumbled.
Myrjala stood unmoving against the fury of the flames, and spoke a single calm word. The edges of her
shield began to grow, lengthening into long, lancelike tips that reached toward Un-darl, pulsing with power.
The wizard laughed contemptuously. His arms were growing longer, too, stretching into tentacles. The tips
of his snakelike limbs hardened into sharp, red, long-taloned claws. The lance-tips of the shield reached him
and passed harmlessly through. Undarl's laughter grew more shrill, and his face had begun to stretch forward
horribly into a snout. The talons of his hands ended in small bulbous things, now, each with its own snapping
mouth.
"My spell can't touch him!" Myrjala exclaimed, amazed.
The mage threw back his head, and his ever-wilder laughter echoed back from the stone plinth behind him.
"Of course not! I am no puny mortal of Faerun, to be mastered by your magic
I walk the shadows where I will
on many worlds. Many think themselves mightier than me, only to learn the depths of their folly in the moments before
they perish!"
Undarl's ever-larger tentacle-heads suddenly swooped around the shield and were upon her, darting and
biting like writhing snakes. Myrjala shrieked as one bit off her raised hand
but her scream was abruptly cut off
an instant later when the wizard's head, dragonlike now, breathed out fire that burst through the shield without pause.
The sorceress vanished from the waist up, collapsing in a smoking welter of ashes and blackened bones.
"No!" Elminster cried, leaping on the dragon-thing the magelord had become. He clawed at its eyes,
kicking and weep-ing.
Undarl shook him off. El fell heavily, saw the fanged snout turn just above him to breathe down devouring
fire, and rolled in under it with desperate speed, rising beneath those snarling jaws.
Undarl's flame roared skyward, useless, as the prince snatched out the stub of the Lion Sword and
stabbed at its throat repeatedly, forcing the dragon-thing to recoil. Even as its head arched back away from
his blade, hissing, Undarl's biting claws clutched and tore El's back and face. Elminster crooked an arm
around the dragon-thing's throat and swung around be-hind it, scrabbling for balance. Those clattering claws
swarmed in on him, but he drove his blade deep into one of the dragon's golden eyes.
Undarl convulsed and shuddered, tearing free. Its newly grown tail smashed El away. He rolled in the dirt
as the dragon-thing squalled and thrashed in agony. Elminster scrambled to his feet and carefully cast a lash
of lightning, a feeble spell that might not do more to a dragon than singe its scales
but he cast it not at
Undarl, but at the hilt of the Lion Sword, where it stood quivering in the dragon's eye.
Lightning leapt and flashed. The dragon-thing stiffened, jerked its tail, and sank limply back across the low
stone wall, its brain cooked. Smoke rose in lazy curls from its eyes and nose.
Weeping in fury, Elminster hurled every battle-spell he had left. Before his streaming eyes the scaly body
of his foe was chopped apart and then frozen. He stood over the riven carcass until he could force his
trembling lips to shape the words of his very last battle-spell. Small, stinging bolts of magic lanced out at the
pieces of Undarl, hurling them aloft. El did not stop until only tangled lumps of flesh remained amid blood . . .
blood everywhere.
Still weeping, Elminster turned to where Myrjala had fallen. Fallen defending him
again. He tried to embrace
her ashen bones, but they crumbled and he was holding only drifting dust ... and then, nothing.
"No!" he sobbed brokenly, on his knees before Mystra's shrine in the brightening morning. "No!"
He stood up, mouth working, and shouted at the uncaring sun, "Magic brings only death! I'll wield magic
no more!"
The ground rumbled and rocked at his words, and something slithered around his feet. Elminster looked
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