Cloak of Shadows - Ed Greenwood [76]
Hmmm. "Blurturt," Ushard said rudely, uttering the ancient Sword Coast obscenity with crisp gusto, and drummed his fingers on the desk top. It was here on these few pages somewhere, he just knew it, but going from a certain inner feeling to finding and opening that fabled door was a journey that mages had failed to make long before Ushard had seen the route.
Blurturt indeed. Ushard bent forward to read the all-too-familiar passages again, hoping that somehow what he was seeking would leap up and grab him by the throat.
Of course, even lowly apprentices should be careful what they hope for.
Had Ushard watched the image in the scrying stone an instant longer-as he was supposed to, for it dimmed only when the closet door that had activated it closed again-he'd have seen the spectral doomguard emerge from the door frame and follow the two master mages. And he'd have known that they weren't what they seemed to be.
Had Ushard been attending to the scroll-copying he'd been assigned to do, he would have noticed the glowing globe over his desk bob and dim for the briefest of moments, and known that the dumbwaiter had been called down from beside the desk (where it was holding his evening snack of mulled cider, smoked oysters, and a melted-cheese-sliced-pickles-and-mustard bun-now cold because he'd forgotten them) to the nether regions.
Had he cared about welcoming uninvited guests and summoning Laeral to receive them, as he was supposed to do, Ushard would have wondered why they hadn't come up the stairs, passing through any of the various detection fields and screening spells, and wondered about the eccentricities of six-foot-tall mages preferring to somehow fold themselves into a square box about two feet long on a side to ascend into the tower instead.
And had he possessed half the brain he thought he did, Ushard would have slapped every alarm he could lay hands on when the dumbwaiter's door opened by itself to reveal a very squashed bun and a complete lack of both oysters and cider tankard. As it was, he glanced up, frowned, and said "Damned ghosts. Why can't they go bother the girls? At least they'll scream."
He'd actually turned back to his book, whistling the melody of "She Was Only A Mermaid In Waterdeep Harbor" between his teeth-badly off-key-when it struck him that something odd might be going on.
A moment later, he concluded that something most definitely was, as his book erupted into a pair of steely talons that shot up and grasped him by the throat, propelling him firmly backward away from the alarms.
His back arched painfully, Ushard of Athkatla fought for breath, choking and flailing his arms futilely about, flapping hands that might one day hurl spells to humble all known Faerun… or might not. The gods weren't telling.
An instant later, the chair and Ushard overbalanced and crashed to the floor together, but the talons merely closed, tearing out the apprentice's throat. His body bounced and flopped once as everything faded, and then his eyes brightened. All that rhapsodizing about frog salad! The name of the frog was really… But he had no throat to speak, and there was no one to hear, and he was sinking into darkness that rushed in from all sides, and-
"I believe that melody, properly sung, goes like this," an icy voice told the unhearing apprentice. But a second voice interrupted the speaker with an urgent, " 'Ware, Taernil! Behind you!"
Rylard of Neverwinter was rapidly ceasing to look like himself and more like Taernil of the Malaugrym, even before the intruder spun around to face the spectral guardian rising from the underside of the dumbwaiter. The box was rising up its shaft despite its open door.
"Stop that thing!" Taernil snarled, meaning the box, but Balatar's arm grew into a spike that rushed across the study with impressive speed to pin the guardian to the wall.
"Hah! Die, bone-bag!" Balatar laughed, enjoying himself immensely-and then his laughter twisted into something else.
If the guardian had been solid and