Free Spellstorm by Ed Greenwood Page B

shaping intricate gestures that made the glowing lines brighten and thicken. “Resurmregard!”
    And he flicked his raised fingers in a shooing gesture that made the glowing lines roll away from him through the air, into the shifting smokes of the spellstorm.
    Murmurs arose as the fog obediently parted, drifting aside to lay bare a narrow passage through them.
    As wizards started to converge on it, peering and looking excited, its creator walked warily forward—and the fog obediently receded before him, extending the passage to reveal more of Lord Halaunt’s goat-cropped lawn.
    The triumphant wizard raised his hands on both sides, to be ready to hurl back the fogs if they closed in on him, and strode along the passage he’d made.
    Mirt made a wordless growl deep in his throat, and pointed to a mage far back across the lawns, whose hands had just darted through a swift spellweaving.
    “Seeking to dispel the work of Laragaunt and doom him,” Elminster announced, watching. “I doubt Mystra will let him succeed.”
    The effect of the surreptitious spell was immediate; the outer opening in the great hemisphere of fog, where the new passage began, started to fill in, the spellstorm tumbling forward like smoke let out of a window. Several of the boldest mages, on the brink of following Laragaunt along the passage he’d created, recoiled hastily. In a matter of moments, that end of the passage was gone, lost in thick fogs once more.
    Laragaunt looked back, then turned and started to hasten—and obligingly the spellstorm continued to yield before him. He came out of the fogs in haste, into the open area right around the stone walls of the old mansion, gasped in relief, and made for the doors.
    Only to find them closed and locked.
    Almost contemptuously he worked a minor spell, to work the lock rather than damaging the door … and they all watched his face change as nothing at all happened.
    He looked doubtfully over his shoulder at his passage, just as the last of it faded away, the fogs drifting in from both sides to swallow it. He stood on a narrow strip of lawn that stretched away along the walls of the mansion for as far as he could see in both directions, presumably encircling Oldspires like a green ribbon—that might now be his prison. For the roiling fog now stood like a great, unbroken hedge or fence around the strip of grass, walling him in.
    Laragaunt tried the doors with all his strength, then sighed, stepped back to peer up at Oldspires, then set off around the house in search of other ways in.
    “All doors and windows closed, locked, and barred or shuttered,” El remarked. “I made sure the servants obeyed thy orders.” He looked at Lord Halaunt.
    Alusair snorted. “ ‘My’ orders.”
    “Has a ring to it, hey?” Mirt offered, and received a withering look from her that would have been far sharper if made with her own features. Lord Halaunt’s expression was forbiddingly withering most of the time.
    Myrmeen went to a massive high-backed seat along one wall, and cautiously seated herself. No clouds of dust or storm of scurrying rats arose, and it didn’t collapse under her, so she relaxed, and after a moment moved to one end where she could recline into its padding.
    “We should enjoy this leisure, I’m thinking,” she said. “There’ll be precious little once all that lot are in here with us.”
    Mirt joined her. “Good idea.”
    Elminster’s Weave vision worked well no matter where they were, so they all took seats and watched the powerful spellhurlers out on the lawn one by one hurl mighty spells at the spellstorm, trying to pierce it and get in.
    And one by one, Mystra let them succeed.
    Laragaunt of Threskel trudged into view several times, making increasingly gloomy circuits of the outside of the rambling mansion. By the last one, he was peering up at high windows, trying to judge what could be climbed to—and forced open, once one was somehow perched precariously up there.
    “That’s