Why, when I was your age…'
'I know, I know,' Sharantyr interrupted her smoothly. 'You went to bed at dawn after spending all night on your knees, cleaning the stables with your tongue, and enjoyed a deep and restful sleep for the time it took the stable master, roused by cock's crow, to walk the length of the stalls and empty his chamber pot over you. Then you had to run two miles to the river to bathe and draw enough water for all the horses to drink, run back with it, and get the axe to go out and chop firewood for the kitchen fires, before y-'
'When I was your age,' Elminster said severely, 'axes hadn't been invented yet. Nor horses. We walked everywhere to gather our firewood.'
'Was it carrying armloads of all those whole, uprooted trees that got you all hunched over, greybeard?' Belkram asked merrily, steering his mount so that Storm was riding between him and the Old Mage.
Elminster swiveled a cold eye in his direction and replied gruffly, 'Nay, I got my hunch from fathering dynasties and fortifying kingdoms, a baby and a boulder at a time. Trees were no trouble to carry in those days, lad. The gods hadn't thought of them much before, y'see, and none of 'em'd grown much more than halfway to yer knee.'
His reply was a chorus of sighs and groans. There was even one from Storm, as they rode onward in the last dark, misty moments before dawn. Then the lady bard tossed silvery hair out of her eyes with a lazy shake of her head, a motion so beautiful that watching it still made Itharr's mouth go dry, even the fortieth time around. She turned again to regard them all and said, 'I can't ride with you much longer. Other duties call. Guard the Old Mage well, now.'
Snorts and sardonic chuckles answered her. Storm stilled them with a lifted hand and reined her mount in as spear points loomed suddenly out of the mists before her. A gruff voice behind one of them said, 'Hold, in Lord Mourngrym's name! Who are you, riding out before dawn?'
'Storm Silverhand,' the lady bard told him calmly, 'with two Harpers, the Lady Sharantyr, and-'
'Nay, lass, don't tell 'em my name,' Elminster said gruffly, spurring forward. 'Let 'em guess.'
A helmeted face peered at him out of the mists, and visibly swallowed. 'Lord Elminster,' he said, 'you may pass, of course…'
The row of spear points was suddenly gone, even before Elminster could snarl out any sarcastic reply, and they heard the clink and rattle of men in chain mail moving hastily aside to salute.
'My thanks, men of the guard,' Storm said kindly into the mists. 'Brion, isn't it?'
'Aye, lady…'
'I'll be back very shortly, alone,' she said, and rode on waving for them all to follow. Elminster inclined his head to her in sarcastic acquiescence and spurred past her into the mists.
'Ye bloody gods!' Storm muttered, rolling her eyes and galloping after him, hand going to her sword out of long habit. Seeing that, the three who rode hurriedly after her reached for their blades, too. They rode on, hands on hilts but not drawing their steel, and soon heard ahead the thud of slowing hooves and Storm's soft 'Hooo!' to her horse.
They came to an untidy halt in the mists, old wizard and all, milling around thigh to thigh in an open place where trails met. Storm pressed ahead a little way down one grassy ride until they followed her, and then reined in again. 'Here I leave you. Follow this trail onward, and may you find fair fortune, all of you.' She turned her mount, squeezed Sharantyr's arm for a moment as she rode past, and then was gone back into the mists.
As the thud of hooves faded away down the way they'd come, the first real gray light of dawn came stealing slowly in around them. 'Whither now?' Sharantyr asked, peering at trees she could just begin to see on all sides.
'Forward, of course,' Elminster said gruffly, and dug a toe into his mount's flank. It snorted its annoyance and moved off briskly down the new trail. The other three riders met each other's gazes, rolled expressive eyes, and followed.
'We appear to be heading into Daggerdale,' Itharr observed carefully, as the first brightness of the coming day broke forth around them, and birds began to call and flutter.
'Perceptive, aren't ye?' the Old Mage replied without turning. His three companions, riding in his wake, sighed in unison.
'By all the lazily ruling lords,' Belkram said under his breath, 'it is Elminster.'
The Castle of Shadows, Kythorn 15
Shadows shifted uneasily around them, seeming to sense the tension in the Great Hall of the Throne. A Malaugrym who bristled thorny spines from every inch of his lizardlike skin stood erect on the black marble beside the flickering scrying portal.
The portal was dim at the moment, showing only swirling gray mists somewhere in Faerun. As always, the portal hung silent, floating immobile some way above the floor, but the Malaugrym drew away from it after a few moments. While near the endless flickering, he could not escape a prickly feeling of being watched.
He glared at the portal and then turned his back on it, feeling ridiculous.
A moment later, a tentacle brushed his shoulder and he jumped, spinning around with a wild snarl only to freeze amid the titters of his kin, standing around the hall, half-seen in the shadows.
'Don't drop your guard for a moment, not even here,' said the tentacled giant mushroom who'd tapped him. Facing it, he recognized the voice. 'Or rather, especially not here.' Now he was sure.
'Bheloris,' he said flatly, and the mushroom cap nodded. 'Neleyd,' it named him in reply and began to collapse, flowing swiftly into something else.
The words had been helpful, even friendly. Nevertheless, Neleyd drew away warily and grew a stabbing bone-spike at the end of his tail, holding it up over his head, ready to stab if need be.
Bheloris ignored the threatening spike as he settled into the shape of a lion-headed man and stepped forward with his head cocked and a gleam in his eye. 'Standing around waiting for a glimpse of the Great Elminster, are you?'
Neleyd shrugged, a small forest of spines shifting. 'It seemed prudent,' he said in a casual tone. Bheloris chuckled, and his tail briefly came into view, scratching the back of his neck.
'I'm glad to hear at least one of the younger blood of Malaug mention prudence,' he said. 'It would not be a grand day for our kin if all of you rushed into battle, falling over each other in proud haste, only to be slain by a foe anticipating just that artful tactic.'
A strikingly beautiful woman glided forward through the shadows, a goblet in her hand. As she came, barbed bone hooks grew along her forearms, and her head lengthened into a sharklike fin. 'I've yet to hear anything but arrogance from the elders of the family,' she observed coldly, 'all of you sitting in judgment on the coming failure of us 'younglings' and doing nothing yourselves.'
'And I have yet to discern anything but aggressive presumption in those younger kin like you, Huerbara, who speak against their elders and find fault with things done long ago, conveniently before such young, bright-browed heroes were on the scene to do things properly.'
'Have a care, old one,' Huerbara hissed, and Neleyd noticed the beginnings of a stinging tail to match his own, behind her back. He looked quickly at the leonine head beside him but saw only contempt in its eyes. Bheloris made no shifts in shape, made no move save for the very end of his tail, which switched lazily back and forth, seeming to await something interesting ahead.
'The warning is more appropriately received than given,' he said flatly, and turned away from her to face Neleyd fully once more. 'In this matter of the wizard, have you any plans that you feel moved to share, or simply discuss?' the older Malaugrym asked mildly, ignoring the furious Huerbara.
Neleyd kept a wary eye on her as he said, 'Thoughts, yes, but anything approaching a plan or decision, no. I would look kindly on a chance to discuss such affairs freely with someone'-he bowed-'of more experience than myself.'
Huerbara, eyes blazing with mounting fury, was shifting out of human form. Her beautiful head did not change, but the shoulders beneath it were sinking down into an insectoid body with many jointed legs. She was taking the form of a giant scorpion, stinger waving menacingly as she sidled forward.
Bheloris inclined his head and said, 'I am pleased to see such wisdom and would derive still greater pleasure in being able to aid-even if only in a small way, through frank converse-the aims of so refreshingly intelligent a relative. When would you like to assay such a debate?'
