Cloak of Shadows - Ed Greenwood [100]
Stepping out from behind the stone, the Old Mage strolled down to the path, hitching at his robes so that it might look to an observer as if he'd had urgent business in the bushes off the trail.
Reaching the cart ruts, he stepped up onto the worn grassy strip between them and trudged along. As he'd expected, one of the bushes beside the path ahead trembled slightly.
"Oh, a wizard may well find time for much fun (for much fun), but an old rogue's work is seldom ever done (ever done)!" Elminster warbled, taking up a tune he'd heard a world away from this one.
"Aghh! Do ye mind!" A deep voice growled from the bushes. "I was plannin' just to rob thee, but if ye don't'en belt up, I'll be happy to gut ye instead."
"Gut me?" Elminster looked properly terrified. As expected, he drew back and turned to run, only to find himself staring into the grinning, unshaven visage of a half-orc whose parentage was attested to by one broken-off tusk, flat, piglike features, and a cruel smile.
"Don't mind Glorym. He's not hungry today, so he probably won't nibble on ye, being as ye aren't a pretty maiden." The brigand leader stepped into view, guffawing loudly at his own jest and scratching himself with his free hand in an ongoing quest for fleas. The other hand held an axe that might have once served to chop down trees-young saplings, that is, and several hundred years ago.
Elminster looked from one outlaw to the other and suppressed a wild urge to hoot with laughter by quavering, "Wha-what will ye be doin' to me?"
"Well, minstrel boy," the brigand leader drawled, displaying teeth that might have made a boar envious-an old and very sick boar, mind-"the proud army of which I'm swordlord hasn't been paid in a goodly while, and-" "Pike," the half-orc rumbled from behind Elminster, "what army? There's just ye 'n me, near's I can tell-"
"Hush!" the brigand leader said severely, and favored Elminster with another crookedly reassuring smile. "Pay no attention to my friend behind ye. I-hem hem blaugh ahum-chose him for this duty because of his, ah, kindly ways toward donors we meet on the road. Donors, I say, because 'tis our habit to, at this time, ask ye for some small tokens for passage on our road… a toll it pains us to request, mind ye, but-"
Elminster forestalled more of this by scaling a gold piece into the man's grubby outstretched palm.
Pike's eyes widened as he looked down at it, and then narrowed. He scratched his nose and stepped forward.
"Well," he said jovially, " 'tis a beginning, right enough, an' I'm right grateful to see ye've got the idea of
the th-"
Elminster added a second gold coin to the first and turned to face Glorym. "Would ye like the same? I'm in a hurry…"
"Aye," Glorym rumbled, but Pike's eyes had narrowed again. "In a hurry? That's an awful shame…"
Elminster smiled pleasantly at him and said, "So it is, friend Pike, because I perceive ye and Glorym here share the same fondest wish. Ye both want to die rich."
He gestured, and both brigands wriggled in midair, their faces telling the world of their sudden terror at discovering they could no longer move. As the white-bearded, gaunt old man between them crooked a finger, one of the gold coins in Pike's palm drifted smoothly through the air to settle into Glorym's grasp.
Elminster smiled at them both and steered their frozen, floating bodies together, gently arranging their hands on each other's throats, tossing away their weapons, and closing the fingers of their free hands firmly around the coins. Then he snapped his fingers. Magic made none-too-clean fingers tighten, and the trapped, frightened eyes began to bulge almost immediately.
"And so ye shall," he added brightly,