He struck another pose. “Now enjoy this with me! Regard the sleek line of flank, hip, thigh, and calf! I’ve never had
Elminster made a rude sound, waved one long-fingered hand in a less than polite gesture, and glided into another pose with fluid grace.
Ah, but it was good to have a body that obeyed his will again-without stiffenings and stabs of pain and ever- present aches!
El squatted deep and then sprang high, again and again, in a series of frog hops across the room, just because he could, ere joyously doing a cartwheel through the door into an antechamber that seemed to be half wardrobe and half armory.
He swept up out of it to the tinkling accompaniment of delighted laughter in his mind. Symrustar evidently approved.
Now to cover his oh-so-velvet and shapely newfound hide …
He cared not if this body strode the Realms unclad in any of the various diaphanous drapery robes-hideously hued in dunglike, glistening mauves and yellows, wherever they weren’t black or sluggish-blood russet-he’d seen on most unarmored fallen she-drow around the riven citadel, but he did fancy some of the black drow armor. The lesser leather sort, rather than the fluted, pointed glass stuff. And knives, aye, he’d have himself some of those. There were wicked-sharp little obsidian daggers everywhere, their black blades upswept and beautifully balanced for throwing-and he’d always loved a good throwing knife.
Why, he’d taken down a magelord with a knife in the eye once, about twelve centuries back, and then there’d been that little duel in Cormanthor. Not to mention slicing a finger off that Zulkiir to ruin the spell the Thayan had been so proud of, and-
“Sorry,” El grunted, and he started to search. Hurriedly.
Despite that haste, it took him quite a while to find armor that fit properly-local dark elf fashion was skintight, which made finding the right garments rather important-but clouts and undercorsets and daggers in clip-on sheaths were plentiful. Good clouts had many uses, so El took an armful. Then he strapped daggers all over his body, not forgetting to fasten two sideways beneath his small, sleek breasts and a trio down inside the front of the corset to serve as extra armor.
“Not what a dark elf of good breeding might do,” El murmured, “but I fear I’ll never be that. Corrupt and fallen human, me.” He twirled, just to feel such a spin done without pain, and laughed aloud as a thought struck him. “I’ll be able to wear some of those splendid thigh-high boots! I’ve got the legs for it at last!”
Trying on the wrong boots can be painful, he discovered, but he was soon shod in comfortably fitting, soft lizardskin boots of a shining ebony hue. The mirror, at least, very much liked the look of them.
Deep in his mind, Symrustar snorted. Loudly.
Now a proper sword-the drow blades on hand all had wicked curves rather than a long, straight reach, but with this supple body he could dance in and out against a foe, rather than leaning and reaching as had slowly become his habit down the years, as his own aging body had gone gaunt and stiff. And he would need a staff.
Then he’d need two grapnel-ended climbing cords of the sort drow patrols hereabouts always carried; they could be tied around the trim waist he now had, riding on the largest hips he’d
“Oh, I doubt that, lass,” El muttered, rushing along passages in search of kitchens or pantries to ransack. “I very much doubt that.”
He found both almost immediately by literally stumbling into a small dining chamber dominated by an oval table heaped with slumped, mindless drow. The food under them was almost all crushed or spilled, but archways at the back of the room led into similar feasting rooms clustered around a central kitchen-a kitchen connected to larder after larder.
Dodging collapsed or wandering drow who had no minds left to notice a boldly wayward priestess in warriors’ armor clambering among them, El ransacked the citadel’s food stores at will. The good wine was all in fluted, fragile, utterly impractical bottles and decanters, but the soldiers’ swill was in double-thickness skin belt pouches, and there was cheese, thin hard-smoked pack lizard steaks, and plentiful vallart, the dark, chewy crescentiform wayfarers’ bread favored by many near-surface drow.
He took all he could stow, along with a battered metal mug a cook had been using as a measuring cup and a wickedly sharp little carving knife as long as one of his newly gained little fingers, thrust everything into two shoulder sacks that rode one atop the other like ungainly bulging bladders, one of them half-full of someone’s huge, rock-dust-soiled, dark old cloak, and departed the ruined citadel, heading the way the glaragh had: with his face into that faint breeze that blew along the passage.
That Underdark wind just might be coming from the Realms Above, the lands he knew, and provided the only firm direction point in this endless subterranean labyrinth. Symrustar was right-
Aye, and thank ye. Symrustar was right: he did not want to tarry overlong, and be caught there when more drow arrived and saw what had happened to their mighty fortress.
No, he wanted to be back in the surface lands, as swiftly as he could get there without blundering into death for his new body, or great delays. Not that he could call to mind any ways up that should be nearby.
He recalled the places he wanted to avoid, all right. Haunted Ooltul, with its phaerimm and beholders, and the patrols of giants that ranged out from Maerimydra. Yet if he stayed too distant from those perils, he risked walking right into the drow hunting bands that would become ever more numerous and frequent, the closer he got to Cormyr-and the drow city of Sschindylryn.
There were ways that rose-if they’d survived the initial tumult of the Spellplague, and the century or so since-up into caverns in the Stonelands, and some in the Storm Horns, too …
The Thunder Peaks routes might be best, if the dragons and dracoliches that laired in their uppermost caverns were gone, asleep, or preoccupied. Hah; if. Those ways would bring him to the surface on the easternmost border of Cormyr, where the Purple Dragon outposts were few and scattered. He had spells enough that he should be able to evade the notice of Cormyr’s soldiery and easily reach the heart of the realm, where he could begin to follow Mystra’s commands. Which he recalled precisely: “By any means you deem best-becoming their head or turning their leaders to my service-recruit Cormyr’s wizards of war. They must become the ready allies, helping hands, and spies for all my Chosen.”
If he conducted himself properly, El could do that without instantly coming to Manshoon’s attention. Oh, that malevolently twisted one would notice him soon enough, and would need dealing with sooner or later … but for now, if El could manage matters thus, let it be later. He’d seen too many men and women-and Fair Folk, too-fall into the folly of fighting a favorite rival, spending their lives seeking to thwart and eradicate a foe; ere long, that striving became all their lives held and accomplished.
El sighed. “I see it all too clearly, lady. I’ve spent century after century being slapped across the face by such an obvious conclusion, after all.”
“And so, Elminster of Shadowdale has more important work to do than to hold hard to any one foe or task. Since I began to avenge my family by bringing down the magelords, and in doing so learned my gift for the Art, I learned I could be more than a skulking slayer, and that Divine Mystra desired my service. Since then, I have
