All Shadows Fled - Ed Greenwood [9]
"Hey!" Torm said in aggrieved tones. "What's wrong with the taste of my mouth?"
"Nothing," she said tartly, spinning away from him, "except that it's the only taste you've got." She sat down on a chair. "Now, about that neck rub."
"If my taste is so bad," Torm said, delving hurriedly into a wardrobe, "how is it that you're in my bedchamber, out of a dozen more in this place? Hey?"
"That can be remedied," she said, rising.
Torm caught her wrist and sat her back down. "You're not going out into the hall like that!"
"Why not?" She gave him a deadly look. "After what I've heard about what you've been doing to this body before I got here, it could hardly damage my reputation – or yours – any further! Has Ulistyl heard about this?"
Torm looked pained. "How did you -? Oh. Elminster."
She nodded in silent satisfaction. The thief looked at her, found his eyes drawn to meet her own, sighed, reminded himself again that this magnificent creature was a woman old enough to be his great granddam many times over, smiled ruefully, and turned her around to face away from him again. "You wanted a rub," he said, "and you shall have it. Then you can go down those stairs and fight off the entire Zhent army doe-naked if you want… but you might catch cold before they get here."
"Not if all the men of Mistledale give me the sort of hot glances you've been throwing my way," she returned. Torm chuckled and tipped some scented oil out of the bottle he'd taken from the wardrobe, rubbed his palms together, and then laid gentle fingers on her shoulders.
Sylune stiffened. "What're y-oh. Ohhh." A few pleasant minutes later, she asked almost sleepily, "How did you know I love the scent of cloves? Did Elminster tell you?"
"No," Torm replied, sounding irritated. "How, then?"
"Lady Sylune," Torm said carefully, "I am a thief." He had to hold her up to keep her from falling off the chair as she bent over and shook with sudden, helpless laughter.
Daggerdale, Flamerule 15
Valaster's Stand had thrust lancelike into the eastern Daggerdale sky for an age and more, and bid fair to do so for a long time to come. Long before Valaster had chosen to die there, the stand had been an arrowhead-shaped ridge that rose sharply upward as it ran northwest, to end in a jagged, overhanging point of rock under which many a traveler had camped. Wiser folk kept to the thick stand of shadowtop trees that marched up its back, and so stayed hidden from the eyes of predators.
The trees on the edge of the rocky point were dead or dying. Their bare branches thrust up into the sky like the gnarled fingers of a dead man, a popular roost for birds of prey. Two large and dusty buzzards sat side by side there now. Many another raptor circled, squalling at the buzzards' refusal to leave, and then flew off in search of other perches.
The two dusty birds paid them no heed, for they were deep in conversation.
"We can't get back without a mage," one said in tones that threatened to become a wail.
"If we find one powerful enough," the larger buzzard added, "there remains the problem of compelling him to create a way between the planes-and yet keep ourselves safe against his treachery."
"To say nothing of the wrath of the elders of the blood if they hold us responsible for opening a way into Shadowhome any mortal can use… can you imagine armies of men in the halls of the castle?"
"I could tell them it's all your fault, Atari," said the larger buzzard, sounding amused.
"I don't find this a matter for jesting," the other raptor said coldly, "even from you."
"We'd best begin lurking about cities and towers and the like, looking for wizards and trying to find out just who is mighty, and what interests drive them," the larger buzzard said. This may take a long time."
"Aren't they most likely to be found in cities?" Atari responded almost despairingly. "Yinthrim, I don't know how to look and act in a human city! We won't be able to learn anything if we're always running afoul of local laws and customs, and