“No one else you trust, you mean.”
Elminster stared at her, and there was a tired look in his eyes. Silence stretched.
“Yes,” he whispered at last. “Ye’ve said it true. There’s no one else I can trust to save the Realms. That’s my doom, lass.”
As if in comment on his words, there came a faint metallic crash from behind them. It sounded as if an armored man had been hurled violently to the stone floor, two or three rooms back along the way they’d come.
Without a word Alusair whirled around and sped away, heading for the sound like a streaking arrow.
“There was a time,” Elminster muttered a little testily, “when the Weave let me send eyes wherever I desired …”
Aye, there had been a time.
Long gone, so he stood mute, one more pillar in dim silence, and waited.
Only to blink in genuine surprise at who appeared around the corner, walking beside the flickering shadow of Alusair like an old friend, to reach out long and shapely arms to him and offer her mouth for a kiss.
Elminster obliged, feeling as elated as he was surprised.
“I trust,” he said, when his lips were free to speak again, “ye’ll find time and will enough to tell me thy reasons for returning so swiftly, hey? I thought we’d agreed on a strategy.”
“We had,” Storm agreed, “but matters changed.” Her smile died swiftly, and she held out something small and round. “Behold one of the latest toys of the wizards of war.”
Elminster peered at it. “An orb. Tell.”
“Upon command, it captures speech and can later be made to emit what it has, ah, recorded as often as desired, for the hearing of others. The mages use it when questioning those they’re suspicious of.”
Elminster arched an eyebrow in the manner that meant it was a substitute for a mirthless smile. “Some war wizard is now missing this, I presume?”
“He will be when he wakes up,” Storm replied, “but that may be a day or so from now. I’m afraid I hit him rather hard.”
The look he went on giving her was both a silent question and the message that he wasn’t in the mood for waiting much longer for answers, so she added, “I dislike being surprised by someone I am unaware of, who has obviously been following me for some time. I dislike even more men who wait until I’m sitting relieving myself to attack me.”
Alusair’s glow grew a little brighter. “I fear our current Crown magelings share the poor manners of much of their generation,” she commented wryly.
“I doubt not thy justification for hitting a mage, nor decry thy wisdom in latching onto magic whenever possible,” Elminster said. “I’m merely curious as to why ye’re now back here, rather than a lot closer to Shadowdale.”
“I overheard something you should hear, too,” Storm replied, folding herself gracefully down onto the floor and murmuring something over the orb as she touched it. “The awakening word’s graven on its underside,” she announced. “You’ll hear two wizards of war who were unaware of my presence.”
The orb shook itself a little, and voices arose from it.
“Oho! Scared of the infamous Lady Dark Armor, are we?” A jovial, teasing man’s voice.
“No, not
“The Princess Alusair, then? Worth being scared of, that one, let me tell you!”
“No, it’s the one called Elminster.”
“Ah, the infamous Elminster! He’s been living in the haunted wing for some time, you know, hiding among its many ghosts-and posing with some old hag or other as the brother and sister Rhauligan.”
“Yes, yes. That’s not what worries me. It’s this trap they’re talking about, that they’ve set up for him when next he shows his face in the palace. If we blunder into any part of it, it’ll kill
“So don’t go atrysting in the haunted wing, dolt! Huh. Elminster. Some ‘Great Old Mage,’ that one! A doddering old fool, sharp-tongued and
“They … the word is he just killed a lot of us, and they’re right out of patience with him. If he steps into the trap, it’ll kill him-and it might hurl a good bit of the palace into the sky, just to make sure!”
The orb quivered again and fell silent.
Storm looked up at Elminster. “El, Alassra will be no more mad tomorrow than she is right now,” she whispered. “But if you fall, neither she nor I have any hope, nor any reason to carry on. You need this, right now, more than she does-and the Realms needs you more than it does her. It can muster many Red Wizard slayers, but only a handful of men who can and have saved it time and again. And of those men, you are the only one I trust.”
She took the orb and held it up to him. “Yours, El.”
He took it with a wry grin. “More magic to guard my mind while I take a turn at hurling a good bit of this palace into the sky?”
“Hey, now,” the ghostly princess put in sharply. “This is my
CHAPTER NINE
This is it,” Marlin announced triumphantly, gazing at the life-sized bronze staring dragon skull adorning the dark double doors before him. “The Dragonskull Chamber.”
Around him, his hireswords stirred restlessly, swords up and faces tense. Killing six Purple Dragon guards to reach this spot hadn’t bothered them in the slightest, but they were suddenly fearful.
Their employer surprised them then by turning away, pointing along the passage, and saying, “Now we go this way. To another room, not this one at all.”
Their gasps of relief were almost audible. Marlin hid a widening smile from them as he waved some of the men past him to take the lead as they turned the first corner.
Out of long habit, not just in accordance with the firm orders he’d given them, a few of the rearguard sellswords looked back behind them as they followed Stormserpent and their fellow hireswords.
They were men whose lives depended on seeing anyone who might be behind them, but dust swirled thickly where they’d slashed their way through great hanging draperies that had been drawn across the passage, to be sure no lurking guardians, undead or otherwise, awaited them. So none of them saw who was staring down at them from the deep gloom of a distant high balcony-the faintly glowing ghost of a princess, flanked by a dark, slender man and woman.
All three were watching Stormserpent’s band with eyes that burned like smoldering coals.
“And so the jaws begin to close. Slowly and patiently. Very patiently. There’ll be no escape for you this time, old foe.”
The darkly handsome man who drawled those words to no one but himself strolled across the chamber to watch another glowing, moving scene hanging silently in midair, where he’d cast it.
After observing it for some time he nodded unsmilingly, turned away, and went to a waiting decanter and tallglasses.
“This time, Elminster of Shadowdale,” he told the decanter politely, “I’ll wear you down. Spell by spell, ally by ally … one by one they’ll be stripped away. Worn out, exhausted.”
