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  SPELLFIRE

  ©1988 TSR, Inc.

  ©2005 Wizards of the Coast LLC

  All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. Any reproduction or unauthorized use of the material or artwork contained herein is prohibited without the express written permission of Wizards of the Coast LLC.

  Published by Wizards of the Coast LLC. Hasbro SA, represented by Hasbro Europe, Stockley Park, UB11 1AZ. UK.

  FORGOTTEN REALMS, D&D, and Wizards of the Coast, and their respective logos are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast LLC in the U.S.A. and other countries.

  All Wizards of the Coast characters and their distinctive likenesses are property of Wizards of the Coast LLC.

  Cover art by Jon Sullivan

  Cartography by Rob Lazzaretti

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 00-190894

  eISBN: 978-0-7869-6173-3

  For customer service, contact:

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  Visit our websites at www.wizards.com

  www.DungeonsandDragons.com

  v3.1

  INCUDI REDDERE

  This one’s for all who’ve brought the Realms to life over the years:

  To Jenny, Andrew, Victor, John, Ian, Jim, Anita, Cathy, Dave, Ken, Tim, Kim, Jeff, Kate, Eric, Steven, George, Grant, Bryan, Julia, Michelle, Elaine, Bob, Mel, Carrie, Mary, Karen, and Bruce.

  A special salute on this one to Rob, who’s riding the other saddle of this horse.

  It’s also for newfound friends who’ve joined the ride as the years have passed; well met and welcome!

  It hasn’t always been easy being Elminster … but it’s always been worth it.

  So let us return to the Rising Moon …

  VETERIS VESTIGIA FLAMMAE

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Foreword

  Chapter 1 - At the Sign of the Rising Moon

  Chapter 2 - Wandering in the Mist

  Chapter 3 - The Gates of Doom

  Chapter 4 - Many Meetings

  Chapter 5 - The Grotto of the Dracolich

  Chapter 6 - Death in the Dark

  Chapter 7 - To Face the Bright Danger

  Chapter 8 - Much Mayhem

  Chapter 9 - The Battle Ne’er Done

  Chapter 10 - Full Flagons

  Chapter 11 - To Make a Cat Laugh

  Chapter 12 - Spells to Dust

  Chapter 13 - Gods Help us All

  Chapter 14 - Shadows Creep

  Chapter 15 - Hawks Weep, Fools Plan

  Chapter 16 - To Walk Unseen

  Chapter 17 - Harps and Bright Hope

  Chapter 18 - Talk Turneth Not Danger Aside

  Chapter 19 - The Crushing of the Soul

  Chapter 20 - Revelations at the Rising Moon

  Chapter 21 - A Sunset for Several

  FOREWORD

  by Ed Greenwood

  When TSR, Inc., went looking for a new fantasy world setting for the Second Edition of the DUNGEONS & DRAGONS® game, I’d piled up many articles in Dragon® Magazine featuring the FORGOTTEN REALMS.

  The Realms was born in 1967. When ongoing D&D play began in the Realms a decade later, I didn’t feel it was fair to clobber players with new spells, monsters, or magic items until they’d been published, and so the Realms was introduced to a wider public.

  When TSR launched the Realms as a game setting, they asked me to “show us all the Realms” in a novel, and Spellfire was born.

  The plan was for me to pen a novel every year. I wanted the first one to show a lot of spectacular scenery, introduce every interesting character I could find an excuse for including, and demonstrate the depth of detail the Realms offered. Humor and Three Musketeers-style swashbuckling, not just fate-of-the-world-hanging-on-the-heroes high fantasy quests. Gold Rushes and city intrigues and crooked merchants as well as dragons and roaring monsters and endless dungeons.

  Just for fun, I also wanted to blow holes in fantasy clichés. Let’s see a heroine save the hero. Show a swaggering band of heroes do something recklessly stupid and (for once) get killed off as a result. Ever notice villains get attacked while asleep or in their homes–but not heroes? Well, I wanted to fix that. Ever notice how heroes stride or gallop across a continent on scant sleep, never having to relieve themselves? I wrote scenes of blundering exhaustion and embarrassed searches for concealing bushes. I also included wizards hurling mighty spells and missing their targets, and grand charges that ended in spectacular pratfalls.

  I made my heroes weep, gasp, curse, slip and cut themselves. Often. Every time an evil guard fell over dying, I let the reader know about his fading dreams and his family back home. I tried to show “good sides” of every bad guy, and vice versa. I shoehorned in scores of monsters and characters I wanted other authors to use, later … and ended up with a novel that was, ahem, more than a third longer than was now wanted with scant time to fix things.

  Out came editorial axes, some hasty stitching covered the worst resulting holes, and Spellfire was hurled forth. Many, many readers loved it, but I winced at the published version because many surviving characters now “looked and sounded wrong,” and because the Malaugrym had disappeared completely from the novel, making it seem as if Elminster and the Knights heartlessly abandoned Narm and Shandril to certain death, rather than fighting covertly to protect them. Now the chance has come not to restore the full original novel (that would take the by-now-standard fantasy trilogy!), but to bind some wounds and sharpen some points and clean up Spellfire. I hope you’ll all still love it as I do. Hearken, then, to a romp that tries to be more than its surface blast and bluster.

  Thanks for reading.

  1

  AT THE SIGN OF THE RISING MOON

  Neglect not small things, for all ruling and war and magecraft are naught but small things, one built upon another. Begin then with the small, and look close, and you will see it all.

  Seroun of Calimport

  Tales of Far Travels

  Year of the Rock

  It was a good inn, but sometimes Shandril hated it—and this was one of those times. She cried at the pain of her scalded hands, tears running down her chin and arms into the suds as she washed a small mountain of dishes.

  It was a hot Flamerule noon. Sweat stood out all over her like oil, making her slim arms slippery and glistening. She wore only her old gray tunic, once Gorstag’s. It stuck to her here and there, but only the cook, Korvan, would see her, and he would slap and pinch even if she were bundled in furs.

  She blew out sharply. Lank blonde hair parted reluctantly in front of her eyes. Tossing her head to fling the drenched tresses aside, Shandril surveyed the stack beside her and concluded with a sigh that three hours’ worth of dishes remained.

  More than she had time for. Korvan was starting the roasts already. He’d want herbs cut and water brought soon. He was a good cook, Shandril allowed grudgingly, even if he was fat and stank and had hot and sticky hands. Some folk stopped at the Rising Moon just because of Korvan’s cooking.

  Korvan had once been a cook in the Royal Palace of Cormyr in fair Suzail. There’d been some trouble (probably over a girl, S
handril thought darkly, perhaps even one of the princesses of Cormyr), and he’d had to leave in haste, banished upon pain of death.

  Shandril wondered, as she eyed a soapy platter critically, what would happen if she ever managed to get Korvan drunk senseless or knocked cold with a skillet and somehow dragged him through the Thunder Gap into Cormyr. Perhaps King Azoun himself would appear out of thin air and roar to the Cormyrean border guards, “Here he is!” and they’d draw their swords and hack off Korvan’s head. She smiled. Perhaps he’d have time to plead for mercy or cry in fear as the blades flashed up. Perhaps.

  Shandril snorted. Great chance of that ever happening! Korvan was too lazy to go anywhere, and too fat for most horses to carry him. No, he was trapped here, and she was trapped with him. She scrubbed a fork fiercely until its twin tines gleamed in the sunlight. Yes, trapped.

  It had been a long time before she’d realized it. She had no parents, no kin—and no one would even admit to knowing where she’d come from. She had always been here, it seemed, doing the dirty work in the old roadside inn among the trees.

  It was a good inn, everyone said. Other places must be worse, but Shandril had never seen them. She couldn’t remember having been inside any other building—ever. After sixteen summers, all she knew of her town of Highmoon was what she could see from the inn yard. She had thought of running away but was always too busy, too behind with her work, or too tired.

  There was always work to be done. Each spring she even washed the bedchamber ceilings, tied to a ladder so she wouldn’t fall off. Sharp-eyed old Tezza did the windows, all those tiny panes of mica and a few panels of blown glass from Selgaunt and Hillsfar. They were far too valuable for Shandril to be trusted with.

  Shandril didn’t mind most of the work, really. She just hated getting bone-tired or hurt while the others did little or, like Korvan, bothered her. Besides, if she didn’t work or fought with the others—all of them more necessary to the running of the Rising Moon than Shandril Shessair—she’d upset Gorstag. More than anything (except, maybe, to have a real adventure), Shandril wanted to please Gorstag.

  The owner of the Rising Moon was a broad-shouldered, strong man with gray-white hair, gray eyes, and a craggy, weathered face. He’d broken his nose long ago, in his days as an adventurer. Gorstag had been all over the world, swinging his axe in important wars. He’d made quite a lot of gold before settling down in Deepingdale, in the heart of the forest, and rebuilding his father’s old inn. Gorstag was kind and quiet and sometimes gruff, but it was he who insisted that Shandril have a good gown for feast days and when important folk stopped at the inn, though Korvan said she’d serve them better by staying hard at work in the kitchen.

  Gorstag also had insisted she have a last name. Years ago, the chamber girls had called her “a nameless nobody,” and “a cow too runty to keep, so someone threw it away!” The innkeeper came into the room and said in a voice that had made Shandril think of cold steel and executioners and priestly dooms: “Such words—and all others like them—will never be spoken in this house again.”

  Gorstag never hit women or spanked girls, but he took off his belt, as he’d done when he thrashed the stable boy for cruel pranks. The girls were white-faced, and one started to cry, but Gorstag never touched them. He closed the door, set a chair against it, and walked over to the whimpering girls. Saying nothing, he swung the belt high and brought it crashing down on the floorboards. Dust curled up, and the door rattled. Then he put his belt back on, took the shocked Shandril gently by the shoulder, and led her from the room, closing the door behind him.

  He led her to the taproom and said thickly, “I call you Shandril Shessair, for ’tis your true name. Do not forget. Your name is precious!”

  Shandril asked, voice quavering, “Was I so named by my parents?”

  Gorstag shook his head slightly and gave her a sad smile. “In the Realms, little one, you can take any name you can carry. Mind you carry it well.”

  Yes, Gorstag had been good to her, and the Rising Moon was like him: kind and good, well-worn and bluntly honest, and lots of hard work. Day after day of hard work. It was her cage, Shandril thought fiercely, reaching for another dish while the sweat ran down her back.

  She saw with surprise that there were no more dishes. In her anger she’d washed and scrubbed like a madcap and now was done.… It was early yet, time enough to change to her plain gown and peek into the taproom before cutting the herbs.

  Before Korvan could come give her extra work, Shandril vanished. Her bare feet danced lightly up the narrow loft stairs to her trunk.

  She washed her face and hands in the basin of cool water she’d left for Lureene, who waited tables and shared the sleeping-loft with her, save for nights when she had a man and Shandril was banished to the cellar for her own safety. She changed swiftly in the familiar gloom and crept downstairs to the deserted taproom. The flagstones felt cool under her feet.

  Gorstag had started the evening fire, ready for a party of adventurers from Cormyr. The taproom was warm and smoky. Light blazed on the crackling hearth and on torches mounted on the walls, hooded with grim black iron. Shadows leaped along the great beams that ran low overhead, bearing the floors above on their mighty backs. In the ever-shifting play of light, the scenes on faded, flaking paintings seemed to live and move—high deeds of heroes and glories of battles long past. Massive oak tables crowded the room, surrounded by plank benches and stout chairs covered in worn leather.

  Over the bar hung a two-handed broadaxe, well-oiled and sharp. Gorstag had borne it in far-off lands in days long gone and adventures he would not speak of. When there was trouble, he could still toss it from hand to hand like a dagger and whirl it about as if it weighed nothing. Shandril imagined it in Gorstag’s hands on sundrenched battlefields or amid icy rock crags or in dark caverns where unseen horrors dwelt. It had been places, that axe.

  The bar boasted a small, gleaming forest of bottles of all sizes and hues, kept carefully dusted by Gorstag. Some came from lands very far away, and others from Highmoon, not half a mile off. Below these were casks, gray with age, that yielded drink to thirsty Moon patrons by means of brass taps. Gorstag was very proud of those taps. They’d come all the way from fabled Waterdeep.

  Above the bottles and the axe hung a silver crescent moon: the Rising Moon itself. Long ago, a traveling wizard had enspelled it to never tarnish.

  The house was a good inn, plain but cozy, its host respected, even generous, and Highmoon was a beautiful place.

  Yet to Shandril, it seemed more and more a prison. Every day she walked the same boards and did the same things. Only the people changed. The travelers, with their unusual clothing and differing skins and voices, brought with them the idle chatter, faint smells, and excitement of far places and exciting deeds. Even when they came in dusty and weary from the road, snappish or sleepy, they had at least been somewhere and seen things. Shandril envied them so much that sometimes she thought her heart would burst right out of her breast.

  Every night folk came to the taproom to smoke long pipes, drink Gorstag’s good ale, and listen to gossip of the Realms. Shandril liked best when the grizzled old men of the dale told of their youthful feats and the legendary deeds of older heroes. If only she were a man, strong enough to wear coat-of-plate and swing a blade, to send foes staggering back with the force of her blows! She was quick enough and fairly strong, but not like these great oxen of men who lumbered, ruddy-faced, into the inn to growl their wants at Gorstag. Even the long-retired veterans of Highmoon, shrunken with age, seemed like old wolves—stiff, slow, and hard of hearing, but wolves nonetheless. Shandril suspected in their huts, old blades hung in places of honor, too.

  If ever I get to see any other house in Highmoon, ’twould be a wondrous thing, she reflected sourly.

  She sighed, her scalded hands still smarting. She dared not smear goose-grease on them before getting the herbs, or Korvan would fly into a rage. His aim with kitchen steel was too good. Smiling ruef
ully, Shandril took the basket and knife from behind the kitchen door and went out into the green stillness of the inn garden.

  She knew what to cut, how much to bring, and what was fit to use, though Korvan made a great show of disgust at her selections. He always sent her back for one more sprig of this and chided her for bringing far too much of that. Still, he used all she brought and never bothered to get more himself if she was busy elsewhere.

  Korvan was still absent when she returned. Shandril fanned the herbs out neatly on the board. Turning, she lifted the wooden yoke and its battered old buckets.

  I’m used to this, she realized grimly. I could be forty winters old and still know nothing but lugging water.

  Korvan was coming down the passage, grumbling loudly about the calm thievery of the butcher.

  Shandril slipped out the back door and darted away, holding the yoke-ropes with practiced ease to keep the pails from banging together.

  She felt eyes on her and glanced up. Gorstag had come around the corner of the inn. Trotting head down, she’d nearly run into his broad chest. He grinned at her startled apologies and danced around her, making flourishes with his hands as he did when dancing with grand ladies of the dale. She grinned back and danced to match him. Gorstag roared with laughter, and Shandril couldn’t help giggling.

  The kitchen door banged open, and Korvan peered out angrily. Opening his mouth to scold Shandril, he closed it again with an audible snap as the innkeeper leaned over to smile at him.

  Gorstag turned back to Shandril and asked, for Korvan’s benefit, “Dishes done?”

  “Yes, sir,” Shandril replied, giving a slight bow.

  “Herbs cut and ready?”

  “Yes, sir.” Shandril bowed hastily to hide her growing smile.

  “Going straight out for water. I like that … I like that indeed. You’ll make a good innkeeper someday. Then you will have a cook to do all those things for you!”