Cloak of Shadows - Ed Greenwood [52]
"I will!" Roarald gasped, a pink froth rising to his lips. "But, Lord, I-"
"Be still! Symon, will ye do this?"
"Lord of Battles," the old warrior said, face to the ground and teeth chattering, "I will!"
"It is good. Roarald, draw thy hands away from thy belly."
Hastily the priest did so, and the sword plunged down.
A blaze of white fire shrouded the priest's agonized scream.
When he could see again, Symon struggled to his feet.
"Roarald? Roarald, do ye live, man?"
The priest was rising whole and strong, the stains of blood and dirt gone from his body. "I do," he said, wonder in his voice. "I live!"
"Praise be to Tempus!"
"Praise be!" the priest agreed, and clapped his comrade on the shoulder. "Speedily, now-find the boy and our horses. We ride on Luskan without delay!"
As Symon hurried off, the priest went to one knee and whispered, "Thank you, Tempus. I shall not forget."
"See that ye don't," a quiet voice came from the empty air, startling the man. He gulped, got up hastily, and ran after Symon.
And behind him a black sword melted out of the air, wavered, and became a thoughtful-looking old man, worn and much-patched robes draped about his thin frame. The morning sun gleamed on the man's long white beard and whiskers as a pipe floated into view from somewhere in the trees nearby and drifted gently up to the old man's mouth.
"That's done," Elminster muttered. "Too good a man to lose, Roarald, even if he is as stubborn as an old post. Hmmph! A certain Queen of Aglarond has used those same words to describe me a time or two, hasn't she?"
He strolled away, calling to mind the next place he'd viewed from the hilltop-and abruptly he was there, worn boots stepping onto the soft ground behind a tent.
"Another one dead? Have all the gods cursed this caravan?" The voice was proud and angry. "Who is it this time?"
"Mider, sir. He's-eaten away, sir, like the others. Only his feet left, and his scalp. In his tent, still in his blankets."
"Was he the only one of us alone in a tent?"
"Yes, sir. Albrar was his tent mate, until…"
"I know. Maybe it's something they were carrying, the two of them. Burn that tent and everything in it, just as it stands. Now!"
"Yes, sir." There was the sound of hastily receding booted feet, followed by a rustling of canvas and tent silks.
"Do they suspect?" a new voice asked in a whisper that did not carry beyond the ear it was said into.
"Mider did, but it's just a little too late for him, now," was the amused reply. The shared mirth that followed was silenced by the meeting of lips, a mouth-coupling that soon became a frantic, muffled screaming as the doppleganger couple found themselves locked in their embrace, immobilized by something that had twisted them into their true, monstrous shapes, and frozen them there. Something that drifted up from the tent like a ghostly mist and whirled back into the shape of Elminster.
"It shouldn't take long for someone to find them," he said, turning away in satisfaction. "Live by trickery, die by trickery. That'll be my ending too, no doubt, when at last it comes."
He stepped through the trees to where his pipe hung. "Now I'd best hurry," he murmured. "Galdus hasn't much time left." And then he was gone, an instant before a guard, drawn sword in hand, came warily down the path in search of the privy bench.
The Hawkgauntlet Arms was distant indeed from that privy bench at the back of the caravan camp, but it was the pride of Hawkgauntlet, a hamlet north and west of Ilipur too small to grace any map. And too poor to loot, unless one was a brigand too hungry to care.
Elminster shoved open the groaning front door and stepped into the gloomy taproom beyond. The old man behind the bar blinked at him in the sudden shaft of daylight.