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they saw her swallow and begin to look green even as she released her staff and moved her hands in intricate
passes and finger-link-ings. The staff flew along beside her, mirroring her slight shifts of direction as Elmara
rose up the far side of the chamber, working a spell. She seemed to cast it twice ... and drifted to a halt
facing them, arms spread above her head, two ghostly circles of radi-ance flickering about her hands. Then
they saw but did not hear her mouth a word that made the chamber itself quiver
and the radiances rushed
outward from her hands and vanished.
The four spheres in the center of the space began to move. The Blades watched, warily raising weapons
as the globes of light glided around the chamber
and the beings within them stirred. As if awakened from a long
sleep, they turned to look about. One of the Blades whispered a heartfelt curse. The thieves ducked low behind the
balcony rail, peering at their crazed comrade hanging in the air, hands moving again as she cast yet another spell.
There was a soundless flash. The mind flayer had worked some spell of its own, seeking to break free of
its globe, but the glowing magic had prevailed. The tentacled thing crouched down in seeming pain. Elmara
frowned and gestured at it, and the mind flayer's prison of light scudded across the chamber, gathering speed
as it spun toward the globe that held the dragon. The great wyrm was thrashing its tail, wriggling its
shoulders, and roaring silently, trying to shatter the cramped confines of light about it. Its jaws flashed fire as
it caught sight of the watching men on the balcony. Hatred glared in its gaze as it snarled at them.
Then the two globes rushed together, and the world shat-tered.
The Blades roared as a light brighter than they'd ever seen blasted into their eyes. They were staggering
back even before the balcony shook beneath them, and they fell, blinded by the flash of the bursting globes.
Only Asglyn, the Sword of Tempus, who'd expected spellfury of some sort and had closed his eyes in time,
was able to see the mind flayer struggling in the dragon's jaws, hissing and burbling in futile spells before
those teeth chomped down, once.
What remained of the purple body fell away in a dark rain of gore as the dragon opened its mouth and
roared its rage. The third globe was already rushing in at the dragon, the beholder's eyestalks writhing as it
prepared for the battle it knew would come.
Asglyn had a brief glimpse of Elmara, face a mask of sweat, jaw clenched in effort, driving the globe along
the path she'd cho-sen. Then the priest shut his eyes tight, just before the flash of rending globes came
again. It was followed by a second flash that lit his face with its heat. When Asglyn dared look, he saw the
beholder wreathed in flames as the dragon beat its huge wings and raked at the eye tyrant with reaching
claws. Stabbing rays of radiance leapt from the beholder's many eyes. The dragon's answering roars held a
rising note of fear amid its fury.
Asglyn looked about him. Gralkyn was slumped almost against him, hands jammed to eyes as he knelt
behind the rail. Tarthe was shaking his head, fighting to clear his vision.
"Up, Blades!" the priest hissed urgently, and then stiffened as the voice of Elmara sounded inside his
head.
"Hurl everything that can pierce or slash at the tyrant's eyes, as soon as the gods make ye able!"
Asglyn hefted his heavy hammer, his favorite weapon borne through a hundred battles or more, and hurled
it with all his might, end over end, in a careful, climbing arc, so that it might fall into the great central eye of
the beholder. It spun through the air but he never saw if it struck home; he had turned to scramble about the
balcony, shaking and slapping his dazed and groaning companions and hoping somehow they'd escape with
their lives.
Elmara's next spell brought whirling blades into being from nothingness. They flashed and spun about the
waving eyestalks of the beholder like so many fireflies. El saw more than one eye spurt gore or milky liquid
and go dark before the madly spinning eye tyrant blasted the shards into drifting smoke with a ray that leapt
on to stab at a certain young mage.
Leapt
and rebounded, slicing silently back into the roiling tangle of dragon wings and scaled shoulders and
claws, and the darting, spinning, snarling eye tyrant. The dragon roared in pain, but El could see none harm the
beholder.
The dragon spat fire again. As before, the gout of flames seemed to splash away over an invisible shield
held in front the eye tyrant. Yet that shield was no barrier to the dragon's claws and tail. As El-mara watched,
the tail slapped the beholder end-over-end across the chamber, its eyestalks curling and struggling vainly. It
passed near the balcony where the Blades stood, and more than a few of them hurled daggers, darts, and
blades just above and before it so it rushed helplessly into the stream of whirling steel. The monster squalled
in pain and fury as it tumbled to a halt. What eyes it had left turned toward the nearby balcony.
Bright beams and flickering rays of feebler radiance flashed, and the Blades cried out and ran vainly about
the balcony in ter-ror. It shook and shuddered under them, and most of the rail was suddenly gone, melted
away in the fury of the eye tyrant's attack.
Yet no searing spells tore into the men, though the crash and flicker of variegated lights was almost
blinding. Magic spat and crawled all along the balcony before rebounding back at the strug-gling spherical
monster; Elmara's last spell was doing its work.
Those Blades who could see well enough hurled more dag-gers, but in the fury of roiling magic around the
balcony, most of these vanished in sparks and fragments or simply sighed into nothingness. Through the hail
of blades, the furious dragon clapped its wings and rushed down at the beholder, seeking to slay the thing
that had caused it such pain. As it came, it breathed fire again. The blackened eye tyrant rolled over in the
streaming storm of flame so all its remaining eyestalks pointed straight at the great wyrm. Rays of magic
leapt and thrust, and the oncoming dragon began to scream. The beholder rose a little to get out of the way
as the dragon hurtled helplessly past. The wyrm crashed into the wall so hard that the Blades were hurled
from their feet. The eye tyrant's eye-rays stabbed mercilessly at the thrashing dragon.
The beast seemed much smaller by the time it managed to flap free of the wall again, smoke rising from
its body. Crushed balconies fell away in rubble as the dragon moved, its scream a raw and terrible sound of
agony. Then its cries began to fade. The awestruck Blades saw bits of the dragon's straining body vanish as
if it were just so much ice melting in the heart of a fire. It dwindled swiftly, lifeblood boiling away into nothing
in the face of the cruel powers bent upon it. Beyond the fury of flashing magic, the Blades could see the
floating figure of Elmara, arms waving in careful haste as she cast another spell.
When the dragon vanished in a last puff of dark scales and boiling blood, the beholder turned with
menacing slowness to-ward the mage and rolled over so that the broad ray of its central eye could strike at
her
the eye that drained all magic.
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