All Shadows Fled - Ed Greenwood [106]
He'd barely had that thought when the air across the room shimmered and sparkled. His beloved smiled at him as she crossed the room, a stone in her hands, the black spatters of long-dried mushroom clear upon it.
With a smile, Khelben bounded up out of his chair, feeling the familiar excitement of the chance to work truly new magic.
Then he saw the brightness of unshed tears in Laeral's eyes, and looked a wordless question at her as he came forward, arms out to hold and comfort her.
His lady sighed as she came into his embrace. "I wish Elminster were still with us. Even more than holy Mys-tra, his presence-gruff ways and all-made me feel all was right in Faerun, underneath the troubles of the day."
Elven Court woods, Flamerule 30
"I'm sure I saw someone walking through the trees just about… here," Shar whispered. The three rangers crouched together amid a close-grown stand of massive dark trunks-shadowtops that had stood on this slope for nigh a thousand years.
"What sort of someone?" Itharr asked her. "Human?"
"A youngish man, in robes, going from down there, along this slope, toward somewhere that way. I think he was on his way back after a call of nature."
"On his way back to a camp, or a halted group of wayfarers," Belkram mused. "Either way, we'd best be cautious when going where this knave you saw was headed, for fear of being seen by a sentry-or blundering into the heart of a group of foes."
Sharantyr laid a silencing hand on his arm and pointed back the way they'd come. All three strained to see and hear something. After a moment, Itharr caught sight of a furry animal moving away and said reassuringly, "Badger… a big one, but a badger."
"That's not reassuring," Shar said, her face inches from his, "because I saw it, too… and what I saw go behind that tree stood on two legs and had several eyes, on stalks."
"Malaugrym," Belkram said bleakly. "Hunting us?"
"Why else would it be here, in the depths of the Elven Court woods, where creatures to devour or hide among are relatively few?" Shar replied. "Doppelgangers like cities, where there's prey in every alley and folk to hide among on every corner. Of course it's after us."
"I'm vastly reassured to know we now know what's going on," Itharr said with a grin. "I'll be ecstatic if someone details what, by the skulls of the Seven Lost Gods, we do now?"
Behind them, from just about where they'd been peering at the probable Malaugrym, there came a sudden shout of alarm and the sharp 'whump' of a spell-burst, followed by a crackling of brush and somebody crying out an incantation in desperate haste.
"That's easy," Belkram said with a wolfish grin. He waved a hand in the direction of the commotion. "We sit and watch."
Thuruthein Tlar was determined to impress his master. Orth Lantar was the wisest Red Wizard Thuruthein had ever met-and wise Red Wizards guarded and rewarded those who were truly loyal to them, for there was no more rare commodity in all of Thay.
Prestym, lyrit, and the others were the sort of ambitious, scheming apprentices that surrounded every Red Wizard; a seething mass of fawning back-stabbers who were little better than fodder. Thuruthein suspected Orth Lantar knew their true worth-and probably intended to spend the lives of more than a few of them in his stated attempt to penetrate the ruined elven city of Myth Drannor and find some of its fabled magic. Thuruthein was determined not to be counted among the expendable.
So when three humans in leather armor came skulking around the camp-brigands, for certain-in his watch field and during his sentry duty, Thuruthein knew just what to do.
He'd stood up behind his tree and was aiming the wand very carefully at the face of the woman, humming in anticipation and noting her wild beauty with the briefest of appreciative regret-when he heard the smallest of sounds close behind him and whirled about, heart leaping into his throat.
To see himself grinning back at him! A Thuruthein Tlar with tentacles instead of hands. Those tentacles were stretched