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use.
Stone statues turned, creaking. Clouds of dust fell from their joints as lightings leapt from their palms. The
blue bolts leapt at the hawk-nosed man, who ignored them. The lightnings struck something unseen around
the walking man and encir-cled it, crackling harmlessly.
One of Ilhundyl's long-fingered hands tapped the table be-fore him. Then he raised the other hand, made a
certain ges-ture, and muttered something. Golems stepped out of the solid stone walls of the Castle of
Sorcery and lumbered toward the walking wizard. As they came, the lone intruder spoke an in-cantation. The
air in front of the hawk-nosed stranger was sud-denly full of whirling blades. In a flashing cloud, they spun over
to strike sparks from the armored colossi
who strode stiffly and ponderously through the storm of steel.
Ilhundyl watched the scene expressionlessly, then leaned forward to ring a bell on his table. When a
young woman in liv-ery hurried in, face anxious, he said in calm, cold tones, "Order all the archers to the wall
by the Great Gate. They are to bring down the intruder by any means necessary."
She hurried out as the golems closed in on the intruder, lift-ing massive arms to smash him like a rotten
grape against the stones. The wizard raised his hands. Invisible forces cut a slice of stone away, severing
one moving leg from its foot, and slowly, but with awesome, quickening force, the first golem fell.
The Castle of Sorcery rocked, and Ilhundyl started up from his seat in rage, in time to see the second
golem fall over the broken remnants of the first, and topple in its turn.
Gods take this intruder! He was perilously close to the walls already. Where were those archers? And
then arrows lashed on the terrace like hard-driven black hail, and the Mad Mage smiled as the wizard's body
jerked, spun around, and fell, trans-fixed.
Ilhundyl's smile collapsed into a frown as the screaming body was suddenly upright again. Another arrow
took it through the head, which flopped loosely, and the corpse reeled and fell headlong, only to appear
upright again with no shaft standing out of its mouth. Two arrows sped into it and the body spun, legs kicking
to jerk erect again in different garb....
"Stop!" Ilhundyl snarled. "Stop firing!" His hands stabbed for the bell, knowing it was too late. By the time
his orders were heard and relayed, all the archers were dead. His foe was using some spell that switched one
person for another, in a double teleport!
That was a spell he had to learn... this young mage must be taken alive. Or at least destroyed in a way
that left his spell-book intact.
Ilhundyl strode out of the room and down the Wind Cavern, where smooth shapes of glass stood on all
sides, pierced by many holes that sang mournful songs when the wind blew. Tak-ing down this mage might
cost him all of his Winged Hands
but it would be done, whatever the price. He could always make more....
He was still a few hurrying paces short of the archway that led into the north tower when the horned suit of
armor beside it clanked down from its pedestal and strode toward him, raising its weapons. Ilhundyl spoke a
soft word and turned one of the rings on his hand, then cast a spell with a few swift, snarled phrases. Acid
burst out from between his fingers in a sphere of acrid purple flames that expanded as it flew. The hissing
sphere crashed over the armor and spattered to the floor beyond. Smoke rose from flagstones as it ate away
at them; the molten blobs that had been the armor crashed down into the widening pits in the stone, breaking
into vapors and droplets.
Another suit of armor was already coming through the door from the next chamber. Ilhundyl sighed at this
childishness and hurled his second
and last acid sphere spell. There was a flash this time as the purple flames
struck something in the air and rebounded on the master of the Calishar. Ilhundyl had time for a single pace back
before the acid drenched him.
Smoke hissed, and Ilhundyl fell without a sound, dwindling into vapor rather than blood and bone. Out of
the air on the far side of the gallery, the Mad Mage faded back into view, and said scornfully, "Fool! Think
yourself the only wizard in all Faerun to use images and spells of deceit?"
He waved an imperious hand, and stone spikes suddenly erupted from the air to his right. He pointed, and
obediently they flew toward the armored figure. Long before they reached it some force dragged them aside
to smash through the many-curved glass figures. Ilhundyl's wind sculptures toppled into ruin, and the Mad Mage's
eyes blazed in fury.
"Seven months to fashion those!" he snarled. "Seven months!"
Rays of amber radiance leapt from the archwizard's out-thrust hands toward the armored figure. His target
abruptly vanished, and the rays stabbed past where it had been, to touch the far wall of the chamber. The
stones of the wall seemed to boil briefly as the rays sheared through them, opening a large hole, and
continued on across empty air to bore through the dis-tant wall of the north tower in the same manner.
Outside, an unseen guard shouted a startled warning to his fellows.
The furious ruler of the Calishar was still staring at the de-struction he'd caused when the armored figure
winked into view a little behind him and well to the right, at the spot the stone spikes had appeared from
and
its armored fists swung down, striking apparently empty air with solid smacks. The visible Ilhundyl fell to the floor
without a sound and winked out of existence. An instant later, the Mad Mage reappeared at the far end of the gallery
in a blind, snarling fury. "You dare ?"
He growled out a stream of words that echoed and rolled with power, and the Castle of Sorcery shook
around him. Impal-ing spikes shot up from the floor, transfixing the armored figure from below, and then with a
thunderous roar, a score of stone blocks crashed down from the high ceiling and smashed the in-truder flat.
As the dust of their landings rolled lazily across the floor, wall-panels opened all along the gallery. From
behind the panels drifted three dead-looking, rotting beholders, eyestalks questing stiffly back and forth for a
foe. A glowing cage on a chain plunged down from a ceiling trapdoor, burst open as its spell-glow faded, and
six winged green serpents boiled out of it, jaws snapping angrily as they swooped around the gallery, seeking
prey. Here and there on the gallery floor, stone blocks turned over with slow uneasiness to reveal glowing
magical glyphs.
The hard-eyed Mad Mage waited with hands raised to un-leash more destruction as the chamber settled
into slow silence. The undead eye tyrants floated menacingly about, finding noth-ing to turn their beams on,
and the flying snakes darted excit-edly here and there. One snake dived at Ilhundyl, and he crisped it in the
air with a single muttered word. Silence fell again. Perhaps he really had managed to destroy the intruder.
The Mad Mage spoke another spell to raise the stone blocks from the shattered armor. They drifted
upward obediently
and then rose to one side. Ilhundyl's jaw dropped. He watched in horror as the blocks, undead
beholders, snakes, glass shards, and all began to move in a slow spiral before him.
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