"I would like to take this opportunity to apologize most sincerely for any inconvenience I have caused you, sir," he stammered. "The lady and I were just leaving. Please, don't let us interfere with your busy schedule."
He started to edge back, hoping that no lightning-armed wizards in hooded robes were watching the stage. Illyth, on the other hand, stood her ground and set her chin defiantly in the air. "Why, Master Dulkrauth? What do you possibly hope to gain from all this?"
"Gain? New faces in the city's councils, dear lady, terror and fear and consternation, chaos and uncertainty, the opportunity to profit by the deaths of rivals. You, I fear, are merely in the wrong place at the wrong time." The merchant captain nodded at his blades. "Kill the girl and the bard. Leave the fox-faced one for me."
Jack dragged Illyth back out onto the stage, rushing through the curtain. The Master Crafter darted in the other direction, toward the stage wings. The floor of the theatre was a charred wasteland, with a score of Game-goers dead in their seats and small fires smoldering everywhere from the touch of the lightning. People ran and screamed, two or three knots of men struggled with tall robed Faceless Lords, and behind him he could hear Dulkrauth and his mercenaries lunging after them in pursuit.
"Jack!" Illyth cried in alarm.
The rogue looked to her side; there the Blue Lord burned down a Game attendant and looked up, spying the two fugitives on the stage.
Without a second thought Jack leaped up and down, waving his hands in the air. "Hey, you! I'll wager you can't miss at this range!"
The murderer slowly raised his wand to point directly at the pair of them; Jack seized Illyth and threw her to the ground just as Dulkrauth and his armsmen burst out of the curtains right where they had stood. Then the Blue Lord loosed his bolt. White light crashed all around them like the fall of a brilliant hammer. Then the thunderbolt seemed to pick up Jack and fling him back down to the stage again.
Ears ringing, he looked over his shoulder. Dulkrauth and his two swordsmen had been fairly felled by the Blue Lord's attack. Before the sorcerer could correct his aim, Jack scrambled to his feet and helped up Illyth.
"Backstage again!" he cried.
"Where are we going?" the girl cried in the confusion. "Jack, you almost got us killed!"
"I am improvising, Illyth," he responded.
He bolted for the stage exit, only to run headlong into yet another complication. A tall, stern-faced mage carrying a staff the size of a small tree stepped silently into the backstage area from the dressing rooms, an aura of power crackling audibly around him. He halted and gazed on Jack and Illyth with cold dispassion, speaking not a word.
"Master Alcides!" gasped Illyth. "You don't know how glad we are to see you! There is an ambush in the theatre-sorcerers are striking down all the Game players!"
"Master who?" asked Jack. Then the name rang true. Alcides von Tighe, the archmage of the Wizard's Guild, probably the most powerful wizard for a hundred miles around. Just the fellow to deal with a hornet's nest like this, he thought. "Oh, of course. I recommend warding against lightning if you have any spells of that sort," Jack volunteered. "You'll find seven villainous fellows in the chamber just outside. Deal with them as you see fit; in the meantime, I am afraid I must escort the lady to safety."
Alcides conjured a small, winged monstrosity with needle-sharp fangs and evil yellow eyes. The devil hovered in the air before him, flapping its leathery wings while its tail, armed with a venom-dripping barb, lashed back and forth angrily.
"Slay them both," the mage commanded with an imperious wave in the direction of Jack and Illyth.
"Master Alcides, wait!" Illyth cried out. "I am Illyth Fleetwood-"
The venomous devil beat its wings once, twice, and then it darted straight for her, stabbing with its barb just as a knife fighter might slash and thrust with a poisoned blade. Illyth jumped back, tangled her feet in the curtain ropes, and fell heavily on her backside. Jack grabbed a small three-legged stool from the set and threw it at the little monster, driving it back from Illyth. The creature recovered instantly and came after him. Jack drew the dagger at his belt and slashed wildly at the thing, trying to avoid its sting.
"I fail to see how Master Alcides's arrival has improved the situation," he said to Illyth, as the tall stern mage strode past the stage.
A sudden bright flare of lightning from just beyond the curtain threw a brilliant white glare all across the backstage. The mage looked back at them to see how its minion fared and then stepped out onto the stage. In the light, Alcides's face was gray, almost insubstantial. Shadowlike.
"It's another one, Illyth!'' Jack said. "A shadow simulacrum!"
He defended against a sudden furious attack on the part of the imp, who missed with its venomous barb but managed to lock its small, sharp jaws on Jack's left arm and started to worry at him like an infernal terrier. Jack gave out a strangled cry of disgust and pain and fell back into the curtain, but he managed to seize the monster's stinger with his right hand and wrestled it away from his face.
The archmage-or to be exact, his copy-stepped boldly onto the stage and was instantly targeted by several crashing bolts of lightning. They struck some kind of invisible shield or barrier surrounding him and died out as if they were nothing more than pretty lights. The shadow-Alcides grinned feverishly and filled the theatre floor with a great blast of fire that shriveled the Red and Black Lords to ashes and started the whole place burning merrily. Game-players still fought desperately to escape the killing place, hemmed in by Tiger's armsmen at the exits. What can this possibly signify? Jack wondered for one fleeting instant. Then the imp started scratching at his face and throat with its claws while it still ripped and tore at his arm with its teeth and stabbed at him with its stinger. Jack howled in pain.
Something big hit the devil from behind, then again, and again. The creature crashed into the stage floor next to Jack, bludgeoned there by a short board wielded by Illyth.
"Hah! Take that!" the noblewoman cried. She jammed the end of the plank hard at the imp's head, but the creature released its grip on Jack's arm and twisted out of the way.
The timber slammed into the stage only a few inches from Jack's face, but he ignored it and reached out to seize the devil by the throat. Reversing its sting, he jammed the barb into the little monster's belly and squeezed, pumping its own poison into it. The thing wailed in agony, a high scream like a tea kettle hissing on a hot stove. Then it disappeared in a puff of stinking sulfurous smoke. Jack coughed and gagged, but Illyth reached down and hauled him up.
"Come on," she said. "If your shadow was close to a match for you, we don't want to be anywhere near Alcides's shadow. He's an archmage. Oghma knows what he might do next."
Jack risked one more look at the battle in the theatre. Hovering in midair, protected by a spell shield, Alcides directed radiant blasts of magic at whatever target struck his fancy-Game players, Faceless Lords, arms-men, or now at the city watchmen who appeared on the scene, trying to fight their way into the auditorium.
"I agree," he said. He clamped his right hand around the bloody bite wound on his left forearm, and led Illyth toward the stage exit again.
This time, no one blocked their escape. They clattered down the short flight of rickety wooden steps leading into the alleyway behind the theatre and headed out toward the street. Smoke poured out of every window; people screamed inside, and a handful of Game-players and attendants scrambled out of windows facing the alley and jumped or fell to the dubious safety of the narrow lane outside.