Part 5 (1/2)
CHAPTER FIVE.
OVERHEARD AND S SPIED U UPON.
Wild terror had seized Elminster the moment he summoned his wits to begin casting the guise of Elgorn Rhauligan on himself-the madness. Come hard and early.
So he'd given up trying the spell and stood shaking and sweating in the dank deep darkness, disgusted and alone.
Storm was gone on her slow, careful, skulking way back to Shadowdale, overland by back lanes, winding creekbeds, and game trails to the familiar trees where, of late, Yelada and the elves kept busy preventing her farm from vanis.h.i.+ng entirely back into the forest. Back to the farmhouse hearth where Ala.s.sra, too, always ended up sooner or later, seeking warmth and solace no matter how sunk in madness she was.
A kitchen Elminster wouldn't mind relaxing in, himself, to sip warm soup with his boots off and battered old feet up on the table, with Storm winking at him as she menaced his toes in mock fierceness with her carving knife. With onions sizzling in a pan and the promise of a really good meal rising to tantalize his nose, setting his mouth to watering...
El smiled tightly as he firmly shook his head to banish the daydream and bring himself back to the tunnel he stood in, a short stroll away from being under the grand, sprawling royal palace of Suzail. It was a narrow, low-ceilinged way, ancient and crumbling...but not unguarded.
Quite possibly not just by the guardians he knew, but by new perils. The soaring seat of rulers.h.i.+p it led to was, after all, under the protection of a society of young and ambitious wizards. Mages who must all be under orders to watch for the infamous Sage of Shadowdale and to destroy or entrap him if at all possible.
And if there was one thing a long, long life in Faerun taught even a slow-witted man, it was that all all things are possible. things are possible.
He took a step closer to the royal palace-and abruptly stopped, peering into the darkness ahead.
Something had moved, something brown and...bony.
Ah. An old friend, of sorts, if he wasn't mistaken.
El felt in a belt pouch, brought forth a pinch of powder, used his other hand to do the same to another pouch as far away from the first as his girth would permit, then brought his hands together and rubbed.
A faint glow kindled where the two powders met and mingled. He lifted his glowing palm like a pale, feeble lamp and stayed where he was.
As the first, familiar guardian shuffled into view.
He'd guessed right. It was a human skeleton, trudging with slow, unsteady menace. As it came, it raised a sword dark with rust.
Elminster gave it a calm stare. ”Do ye really want to strike at me? Will thy shrewd strike bring crowning triumph to thy day?”
Empty eyesockets stared at him, expressionless but somehow uncertain. Then brownish bones s.h.i.+fted-only spell-bleached skeletons were truly white, all bards' ballads notwithstanding-and the sword wavered down again.
The old man in the ragged robe waited patiently. Three of his calm breaths later, the undead guardian of this nigh forgotten, deep pa.s.sage of the palace undercellars stepped back to let him pa.s.s.
With a smile and a nod, he did so, looking back only once. The skeleton was staring after him, as still as a statue, its sword still point down.
Elminster walked on into the darkness. It was a curious thing; down the many years of his long life, he'd spent not all that much time in the Forest Kingdom. Yet being back in the haunted wing of the royal palace of Cormyr, he felt at home.
He belonged.
Not back under the trees of Shadowdale he knew and loved so.
These cobwebbed shadows and empty, echoing rooms had somehow stolen into his heart and head and had become home.
Just when had that happened? And how?
Elminster came to a halt. Here, at the lowest spot in the pa.s.sage, where the walls glistened with seepage, there was always a puddle of water. Sounds from the palace end of the tunnel always echoed here, clearly audible far from their source, and unless a foe was hard on one's heels with a blade drawn or a spell on his lips, 'twas always worth halting for a breath or two to listen for what might be waiting in one's near future.
Aye-there! The sc.r.a.pe of a boot, again. Someone was waiting up ahead where the pa.s.sage opened out into the wider undercellar. Someone who'd already grown bored.
”My foot's asleep again, stlarn it,” came a thin, waspish male voice, startlingly loud and sudden. ”Taking his G.o.dsfire-d.a.m.ned own time about it, isn't he?”
”Huh,” another, deeper male voice muttered in reply. ”Probably wounded and wary-and so, slow. Thal didn't see him, remember; just Storm Silverhand heading away from the city wall right quick. Meaning the Old Mage's wits are his own again, or she'd not leave him-so back here he'll come. Back to where the magic is.”
”Where he'll find us ready for him.”
”I hope.”
”You doubt the Royal Magician's wisdom in this?” That was a snapped, swift challenge.
The reply was wearily calm. ”How many went up against him out at Tethgard-and how many came back alive?”
There was a short silence before the other man snarled, ”I don't want to talk about it. I...Things did not go well.”
”So much half the palace knows-as all of Suzail will, tomorrow. How's Tethlor?”
There was a loud sigh. ”Still in a bad way, to tell true. Almost as bad as Elminster.”
The Sage of Shadowdale smiled wryly in the darkness and started walking forward again. Reception foreguard or not, he wasn't getting any younger.
As he went, he felt in the breast of his jerkin beneath the scorched smith's ap.r.o.n and among the pouches at his belt for the things he'd probably need when he reached the far end of the pa.s.sage. Handy things, Storm's Harper caches, if one didn't mind wearing gowns at the flas.h.i.+er end of the wardrobe...
Yet all G.o.ds blast this creeping madness and the magic he dared not hurl. He was going to have to waste so so much time arguing with fools, instead... much time arguing with fools, instead...
Like yon two, standing with thumbs hooked through their belts, barring his way with confidence that was probably more outward seeming than truth. One was in faintly glowing black leathers: a highknight of Cormyr. The other wore the robes of a wizard-and any wizard walking around the royal palace of Suzail, even its dingiest, deepest undercellar, must be a wizard of war.
They stared back at him. The old, bearded man striding unconcernedly up the pa.s.sage in the darkness, alone and swordless, didn't look like a great wizard. His clothes looked as old as he was, worn and none too clean and befitting a laborer who saw few coins and even fewer baths. Old, down-at-heel boots, stained and patched breeches, and a burn-scarred ap.r.o.n over a jerkin. The belt at his waist sagged onto his slim hips, loaded down with bulging pouches. He was hefting something in each hand; both somethings were small, dark, and round. And he was smiling.
Elminster gave them both a polite nod as he came to a halt and let silence fall.
It didn't last long.
”We've been waiting for you, old man,” the one in robes said, his waspish voice now all smug menace.
”I had in fact figured that out, youngling,” Elminster replied pleasantly. ”Once, I'd've been flattered, but down my long years so many have lain in wait for me that the thrill is quite gone.” He peered at them both, one after the other, tendering the same gentle smile. ”I do hope ye're not disappointed.”
Two faces glowered at him. One belonged to a highknight he knew, one Belsarth Hawkblade, a grim, oft-unshaven man of brutal ruthlessness but iron-hard loyalty to the Crown. The other was the man in robes and had a face unfamiliar to him-but kin to one he'd seen briefly in the fray at Tethgard; that of a war wizard busy mastering the art of the headlong, panic-ridden retreat. Scared down to his boots, he was.
”Hawkblade,” he asked, nodding toward the pale, tight-faced mage, ”who's thy friend? Wizard of War-?”
”Lorton Ironstone,” the wizard answered curtly, not waiting for Hawkblade to speak. ”And I am charged to ask you, Elminster of Shadowdale, if you will now surrender yourself peacefully into our custody to face the king's justice.”
”Charged by whom?”
”Ganrahast, Royal Magician of the Realm,” Ironstone snapped. ”At the request of the king himself, Lord Vainrence gave us to believe.”