himself out into the night. 'Fast, now,' he whispered softly. 'And stay low.'
'My lord,' Asper whispered back urgently, 'shouldn't we go home for armor and friends, better weapons, magic? You are not the least of the lords! You stand in great danger!'
Mirt grinned wolfishly. 'The gods must know I grow bored, these days. I would share that danger, lass! If this one who slays lords knows I am a lord, then let him find me! I want to be found… for if he finds me, then it follows that I will have found
The blade he held lifted a little, a snake eager to strike. 'I feel in some need of finding this lord-slayer, right now,' he added softly, and Asper shivered a little in spite of herself. Then he was gone, out into the night. She set her trembling lips together in silence, raised her blade, and followed. As always.
Chapter Eight
Elminster stumbled forth over sharp stones into full wakefulness once more-and into the claws of a red haze of pain.
It seemed he'd been lurching and scrabbling and crawling along forever, his guts sick with agony, his thoughts a chaos of grim scheming and involuntary remembrances, goaded by the archdevil riding his mind like some exhausted, tatter-winged bat steed-
Elminster drew himself up so he could lean against a stone thickly smeared with old, black blood. The cracked skulls of devils crunched and rolled under his feet.
[dark lances stabbing, bright pain flashing, tumbling, memories surging, falling, wild pain, screaming screaming amid devil's laughter, rising to outbellow all]
[mind lash, raw screaming]
[bright whirling chaos of torn memories, shards and scraps a-tumble]
… Across the fields she saw him go, a bent and tattered gray form. He dwindled, striding steadily on, became a tiny figure, and was gone.
And she shivered, sighed, and turned away.
[images dwindling, falling, fading, lost and forgotten forever, now, in the wake of an archdevil's wrath]
The warrior looked down at the gathering vultures and the heaped bodies of the fallen and leaned on his spear.
Far they stretched from the height where he stood, far across rolling hills and the plain beyond; a hundred hundred souls and more this day. Davalaer thought on the wailing and grim sorrow that news of this battle would bring to the dales, even though victory had been theirs. Too many men would never return home. Too many were gone forever.
Aye, there would be lamenting in the houses of the dalefolk. Davalaer sighed, looking out at the still forms below. 'But they will forget,' he said heavily. 'And then- somewhere, sometime-this will happen again.'
[red eyes glaring through the darkness of shattered chambers, memories strewn broken on the floor like shards of glass and torn cobwebs]
[diabolic eyes raging up into pyres]
[darkness, silence, eddying dust]
[darkness, memory shards sighing down to rest]
[cringing, faltering, pain-ridden]
'The Starym are apt to be overproud fools,' the Lady Laurlaethee Shaurlanglar said calmly, 'but they are right in one thing: to allowing these stinking bears of humans into our midst is to sully and doom us. That's why I invited you here, plaything of the Srinshee. That moonwine you drained oh so elegantly was laced with enough srindym to kill a dozen overambitious human magelings.'
The man they called Elminster cast three swift, hawklike glances behind and before him, gliding a pace to one side to peer behind a hanging as gracefully as any young warrior of the People.
The elf lady laughed lightly. 'We are quite alone, doomed one. I've no need or desire for witnesses-no guards to keep at bay the paws of a dying brute. I am the last of a proud warrior line, and I can protect myself.'
Elminster gazed silently down at the slender wisp of gowned elven beauty in the chair. The Lady Laurlaethee was frail even as elves measure such things. Standing tall, she'd be little more than half his height. Sapphire-bright eyes looked coolly back up into his with no trace of fear. He gave her the slightest of smiles and asked, 'And ye did this thing-why?'
'Hatred,' the matron said, rising with supple grace. 'For you and the likes of you. Beasts who seek to steal what they haven't the wits to learn. If the Srinshee wasn't so besotted with lust, you'd still be scrabbling and straining to call forth a little glow from your fingertips-in the brief moments before you found your corpse decorating the end of a Cormanthan spear.'
'Well, that's certainly blunt enough,' Elminster observed. 'Being a thirsty beast-and one of course quite devoid of proper manners, I wonder if I might have some more of this excellent wine. I believe the srindym improves it somewhat.'
Sapphire eyes flashed. 'She protected you!'
Elminster bowed his head. 'Lady, she did.'
'That traitoress!' the Lady Laurlaethee spat, striding to a corner where large and small spheres of crystal turned slowly, chiming faintly as they spun. 'Once word of thi-'
'Lady, I must guard ye against thy own foolishness,' Elminster said swiftly, raising his voice a trifle. 'Ye seem to think I speak of the Srinshee. I do not. She neither knows of our meeting nor provides me with any defenses. My spell cloak is my own.'
The exquisite beauty of an elven face is shattered when perfect lips twist into a sneer. 'You presume me foolish indeed, ape-thing. You wield no magics of any accomplishment that you did not seize, steal, or cozen from this elf or that. Who is this 'she' who protects you, if not one of the People?'
“Divine Mystra, the goddess I serve,' Elminster said quietly. He watched for her response as calmly as if he
