Elminster Must Die

drinkers, Tress was helping a rather tipsy-looking man to his feet. Not one of the nobles who’d brawled so messily in the club earlier, but a rather haughty-looking wizard of war in full palace robes who had evidently just risen from a table and sprawled on his face and was showing signs of doing so again the moment he lost the deft support of the womanly shoulder under one of his armpits.

“Thank you, wench,” he was growling rather blearily at Tress. “Know that you have aided a ver’ important wizard of the court, who enjoys the ear and confidence of the king himself! Wizard of War Rorskryn Mreldrake am I, and urkgh … I’m going to be sick, s’what I’m-”

He promptly demonstrated the truth of his words, with force and enthusiasm.

Arclath and Amarune both raised their eyes to the ceiling in disgust and parted to glide well aside as Tress steered her burden firmly through his own filth and straight to the door.

Two steps away from which the weaving, green-faced Mreldrake caught sight of Amarune, gave her a nasty grin, pointed one shaking finger, and spat maliciously, “You! You’re the Silent Shadow, you are!”

“I’ve skulked in the dark long enough,” Elminster growled under his breath. “Time to play the befuddled old man and walk right in there and get to hear just what terms our jaunty young lordling is on with the most important lass in the worl-”

Playing a stooped graybeard to the hilt, he was still three age-shuffling strides away from the doors of the Dragonriders’ Club and starting to reach for the nearest smooth-worn door handle, when Amarune Whitewave burst out of those doors, sprinting like the wind, with the bellowed “Stop! Stop and stand!” shout of a Purple Dragon pursuing her.

Elminster blinked, straightened up far too hastily for the decrepit elder he was trying to portray-and slipped. Which left him unable to get out of the way.

Amarune did not try to get out of the way either.

Even as he flung his arms wide to fight for balance, she slammed into him, running hard. The impact snatched the Sage of Shadowdale off his feet and dashed him down on the cobbles in a crash that drove all the wind out of him and brought sharp and instant pain. As she trampled him and ran on, not slowing in the slightest.

Leaving the man who had been the mightiest Chosen of Mystra flat on his back on the cold cobblestones of the street, half-dazed and struggling to breathe through what felt like broken ribs. He couldn’t even think of a spell to hurl, not that he had wind enough left to cast anything …

He couldn’t even roll over, let alone crawl aside, as a fresh tempest burst out of the Dragonriders’ and roared over him, a storm of hard-running Purple Dragons with lungs far healthier than his own, swords glittering in their fists, and very heavy boots.

He did, in their wake, manage a groan or two.

One of which caught the attention of a telsword who obviously hadn’t been given orders to pursue the fleeing woman. Coming out of the club to stand and watch the chase dwindling into the night, he glanced down at the sound of pain then bent to lend the huddled old man a hand.

“Come on, old drunkard! You can’t lie here; you’ll get trampled, you will!”

“I’m not drunk,” Elminster snarled through his pain. Ribs gone, to be sure. “I’m hurt. Some woman ran right through me.”

“Which way did she go?” the telsword snapped back, excited in an instant.

“Down the street,” Elminster replied dryly. “If she turned off it, I didn’t see. I was too busy lying stunned to notice.”

“All right, all right, old jester.” The telsword sighed, helping Elminster to sit up against the club wall. He peered down at the weathered old face out of sheer veterans’ habit-and frowned. “Have I seen you before? Who are you?”

“No one important, anymore,” Elminster said gruffly. “Just another old man.”

“Oh? Living on the streets?”

“When I can’t make it home before dark.”

“Oh, so you have a home, then.”

“Aye.”

“So, graybeard, how do you usually spend your days?”

“Growing older,” Elminster told him wryly. “And ye?”

It was almost dawn, and a weary and heartsick Amarune Whitewave didn’t know what to do.

She was standing in a dark street surrounded by grim-faced Purple Dragons, listening to Lord Arclath Delcastle glibly explain to them all once more that the dancer couldn’t possibly be the Silent Shadow, because she’d been with him more than once when that notorious thief had performed a daring theft, and that she must have fled out of sheer fear of being enspelled by a drunken wizard of war. Not only was he of noble birth, he himself had suffered thefts at the hands of the Shadow, and so, believe me …

Oh, gods. And he was again, oh-so-gallantly, offering to escort Amarune home.

She wanted to hit him. Or lose herself to sobbing in the warm comfort of his arms, and … she didn’t know what she wanted to do.

And she couldn’t stop yawning.

The Dragons believed him, nodding and looking at her with faces a little less unfriendly, and lowering the swords that had been pointed her way.

Which meant they’d soon leave her alone with him. A young and spirited noble lord who suddenly knew, whatever his clever tongue was saying to them that moment, that she was the Silent Shadow.

She remembered full well she’d stolen from him more than once. So, obviously, did he. Should she just deny all and claim the wizard must have mistaken her for someone else? Finding proof wouldn’t be easy-so long as he didn’t come upon Ruthgul or any of her other clients, and tie what they said to where she lived-but driving away his suspicions would be harder still. Suspicion always died a slow death.

“Go with the Lord Delcastle, lass,” a Purple Dragon was saying in her ear then, kind but firm. “He’ll see you safe home.”

That’s just what he could not do-but she dared not admit it.

Wearily she nodded, half-numb, and accepted Arclath’s attentive arm.

All she could think of doing was wandering the streets of Suzail until full day ran him out of time and into the jaws of some important business or appointment or other that he dared not miss. If her legs held out that long and she could keep her eyes open, that is …

“Trust me,” Arclath murmured, giving her that bright grin that she couldn’t tell if she loved or hated. “Dawn will be breaking soon enough. If you don’t happen to live next door or in the rafters above us, we’ll have time to see it-and sober, too!”

The stench at the end of the alley was indescribable. “Man-strangling” wasn’t a strong enough description. Nor was “forty sick snails lying dead in their own fresh vomit,” or “the heaped wet offerings of a hairy garrison all in the throes of the runs, brought on by eating lots of candy and mustard.”

El tried all of those and some far more colorful ones on for size as he winced and hobbled his way down the greasy, narrowing, and increasingly refuse-choked way. Even the rats avoided that end of the alley, and the smell had long before forced the boarding-up and mud-sealing of all the windows opening onto it.

Alone in the graying tail end of night, the Sage of Shadowdale set his teeth and lurched on. His many bruises were stiffening, and his ribs felt on fire. He’d fallen twice, many alleys before, but it had been worth it to persuade the young and fastidious Dragon tailing him that he really was an old crazed-wits living on the streets, and make the man turn back. The soldier had fallen at least once, too, and Elminster hoped the young dolt’s bright uniform was so besmirched that he was gagging.

Nevertheless, the filth had its uses. Not the least of which was safeguarding what he was retrieving. At the end of the alley was a fly-swarming heap of dung, old topped by fresh, beneath a cracked tile protruding from the wall.