languid curls across the stone span. After these questing limbs bobbed and swayed-almost as if they sniffed the air-they slid slowly into the water again.
The bard pointed to a trail of ripples, which seemed to mark the path of something large moving toward them just under the water's surface. Elminster nodded, smiled, and waved a hand casually-and they were somewhere else again. This time, the horses were on an old, sunken road in the heart of a dark forest.
Storm sighed. 'The Harpers wanted me to protect you?' she began to ask. But when she spied the dull glint of many eyes watching them from dim, shadowed places under the trees, Storm reached for her sword.
Elminster grunted and pitched himself heavily from his saddle. Then he reached up and laid gentle fingers on the wrist of her sword-arm. 'Nay,' he said softly, 'Tis more likely, far, they wanted ye to protect others from me.'
Storm rolled her eyes. Smoothly she swung herself down from her saddle. 'I shouldn't be here,' she said. 'Key or no key. This hopping from place to place, world to world, is neither safe nor wise.'
Elminster grinned. 'And coming to the magefair with me was? I've taken us this way home, jumping so often, to give the slip to any mages who might have followed us. Few have the breadth of mind to shift from one world to another as often as we have.' The Old Mage patted her arm. 'Thanks for thy patience, lass. 'Tis not long now before we'll be at ease, and ye can chat with a good friend.'
As Elminster led the way on foot down an uneven path through the trees, bright morning dawned upon the old, unfamiliar forest. The rosy light seemed to make the Old Mage recall something. He turned and gestured behind them. Storm looked back in time to see their horses vanish. She looked at Elminster. He answered her wordless question only with a merry grin and headed back down the path again.
Holding her tongue, Storm followed. And she drew her sword, despite the Old Mage's words; knowing Elminster, this 'friend' could be a blue dragon-or worse.
The path led between two old, moss-covered stones. As they drew near, Elminster reached back and took Storm's hand. They stepped between the stones together, and the bard felt an odd, tingling chill.
They were somewhere else again. Somewhere familiar. Storm knew almost at once that she was in Shadowdale.
Elminster let go of her hand and strode away, reaching into his robes for his pipe. Storm stood staring after him for a moment. Then, in two quick strides, she caught up to him. Setting a firm hand on his shoulder, the bard spun Elminster around.
'Not a step farther,' she warned. 'Not until you tell me just what's going on. Where are our horses? Why'd we have to ride across half of Faerun for the key, anyway? Can't this Duara teleport? And wh-'
Elminster laid a finger over her mouth and said, 'The need for haste is past. I doubt anyone could have followed us through all the places I took us-not yet. Our mounts have preceded us to the Twisted Tower's stables. Come to my home. There ye'll meet a friend to us both: Lhaeo.'
The Old Mage lit his pipe and said not a word more until they were strolling up the flagstone path to the door of his ramshackle stone tower. It opened at his approach, and he turned and said, 'Put away thy blade, Storm, and be welcome.'
As they went in, his scribe Lhaeo called from the kitchen, 'Tea shortly, Old One!'
'For Storm, too,' Elminster said softly. By some trick of magic, Lhaeo heard his master and called out, 'Welcome, Lady Bard!'
'Hello, Lhaeo,' Storm replied, looking at the Old Mage with amusement. Elminster was calmly shoving piles of papers onto the floor, emptying a chair for her to sit in. Dust curled up in thick tendrils. Muttering, he gestured, and it was gone.
'A mite dark in here for me to see beautiful lady guests,' the Old Mage murmured, then reached out to touch a brass brazier. He made a popping sound, and flames flared up, casting a warm, dancing glow on the chair.
Elminster gestured with courtly grace, indicating that Storm should sit down. The bard stared at the brazier in puzzlement. 'How does it burn, without any fuel?'
'Magic. Of course.' Elminster turned away, raising yet another dust cloud on his foray through more piles of parchment 'Of course.' Storm reached out and tapped his shoulder.
'Elminster,' she said coldly, 'talk.' Her tone held the sudden ring of steel.
The Old Mage seated himself calmly on thin air, puffed on his pipe, and grinned at her through the rising smoke. 'Ye deserve to know, lass. Right, then: Duara was briefly an apprentice of mine. She dwells in Telflamm, these days, and joined the Harpers a summer back.' He puffed his pipe, and a blue-green smoke ring rose slowly up into the low-ceilinged gloom overhead. 'She can't use a teleport spell because she hasn't the power yet. Like all young, overeager mages, she took to adventuring to gain magic quickly-and unlike most magelings, came across a dragon hoard.'
Another smoke ring rose up from the pipe. The Old Mage watched its drifting journey, nodded approvingly, and went on. 'Er, the hoard had a dragon attached to it, of course, but that's another tale. Among the baubles, she found my key, so she sent word to me by caravan-letter that she had it and would bring it to the magefair if I was interested.'
'Who are your mysterious foes, then? How did you lose the key?' Storm asked. 'And why was Duara so dim as to send open word to you?'
Elminster shrugged. 'She'd no idea anyone save me would be interested in the key-or even know what her letter was about. When I got her note, I used magic to fars-peak with her, telling her I'd be coming to the fair. She told me that since sending the letter, she'd been attacked several times, twice found her tower ransacked, and even been threatened one night in her bedchamber by a mysterious whispering voice demanding the key.'
Storm rolled her eyes. 'So what is this key?'
'The key to this closet, of course,' Elminster said calmly, reaching out a long arm into the dusty gloom behind him. The key gleamed in his hand as it slipped through a slyly smiling dragon head carved into the wall. Lines appeared in the stone around the small carving, outlining a door. It began to swing open by itself.
Elminster pulled the key out and waved it at her. 'This was stolen from me by an unscrupulous man, long ago, who was-very briefly, mind ye-my apprentice. He was an ambitious Calishite, I recall, named Raerlin. I suppose he ended up in the jaws of Duara's dragon.'
'Well, what do you keep in there, that mages chase after the key?' Storm asked, looking at the closet's dusty door.
'Old spellbooks, picked up over the years while wandering the world,' Elminster replied as the door swung wide. Storm saw an untidy pile of thick, moldering tomes.
Eerie green and white light flashed suddenly from behind her. As it lit up the Old Mage's face, Storm saw his look of surprise and whirled around, upsetting her chair.
The eerie light came from a flickering oval of flame. It hung upright in the air, in the middle of the tiny, cramped room. Its presence defied the mighty magics that guarded Elminster's tower, magics, Storm knew, that kept the place safe from the archmages of the evil Zhentarim, the Red Wizards of Thay, and worse. No one should have been able to open a gate into the tower.
But the oval of flame was, Storm decided, most certainly a gate. When the bard looked through the flickering magical doorway, she saw a long, stone-lined hall, stretching away into darkness. And something was moving in the gloomy passageway…
Elminster strode forward, frowning, hands weaving spells out of the air. 'Impossible,' he murmured.
A shadowy figure was walking slowly toward them, out of the darkness of that phantom hallway. The creature was tall and very thin. Its eyes were two cold, glittering points of light set in dark pits. As it came nearer, Storm could see that the robes it wore hung in tatters, eaten away by rot.
The bard's heart sank. This must be a lich, a wizard whose magic was so powerful that he lived on, beyond death. Few could fight a lich and hope to survive, few even among the ranks of the great archmages of Faerun.
The lich came still nearer, and Storm met its fell gaze, staring into the cold, flickering lights of its eyes. They danced in the empty sockets of its skeletal face, measuring her, and then turned from her contemptuously to Elminster.
'Death has come for you at last, Old Mage,' the lich whispered, its hissing voice surprisingly loud. It was still far down the hallway.
'D'ye know how often I've heard those words? Every murderous fool in Faerun tries them on me at least
