Crown of Fire - Ed Greenwood [21]
The beholders drifted toward the dark hole, and the false window began to slide out over it again. "We are agreed," the larger eye tyrant said simply. "This meeting ends."
"We are agreed," the two wizards echoed, "and this meeting ends." They stood together in silence and watched the dragon window settle back into place.
Manshoon looked at Sarhthor. "Useful news."
"If kept secret, Lord. As it shall be." Their eyes met for a long moment-dark, steady eyes set in expressionless faces.
Then Manshoon nodded and turned away. They strode together across the marble to where the unseen gate waited to take them back to the High Hall of Zhentil Keep.
"One thing occurs to me," Sarhthor said thoughtfully, a pace or two before Manshoon would have vanished. The high lord looked back at him silently.
"Others use this place besides us," the wizard said. "If I were to leave a tracing spell behind to record changes in Art, we'd know precisely what castings had been done here between our meetings. No spying magic could escape our notice."
Manshoon was already nodding. "Do it." He turned away and disappeared.
Left alone in the chamber, Sarhthor took a few steps back the way he had come, and then cast a spell with quick, precise movements. A faint, sparkling radiance seemed to gather out of nowhere to coil around his wrists and then leap outward in all directions, streaming away until it faded back into nothingness. Wearing the faintest of smiles, the wizard looked slowly around the chamber, turned on his heel, took a few strides, and vanished in his turn. Silence fell.
Then the marble floor seemed to ripple and flow, like the farthest tongues of water that waves throw up onto the sands of a beach. Gathering in one corner behind a tapestry, the ripples rose up smoothly into a man-sized pillar, spun for a moment, and sharpened into the form of a tall, thin, bearded man in plain, rather shabby, homespun robes.
Elminster of Shadowdale dusted himself off, looked around with a critical eye at the glowing tapestries, and then stared thoughtfully up at the dragon window. Scratching his beard, he grunted, "Tis high time, indeed… for certain folk to set down their harps and get their hands dirty. Again. Just as its time old Elminster got walked all over, again. Tis not the first time, this tenday, the world's needed saving."
Chapter 3
SWORDS GATHERED IN THE SHADOWS
Stormy weather is always with us, somewhere in Faerun. Beneath it, all too often, swords are out, the hand that wields one seeking to bury it in the body that wields another Part of the way of things as the gods order, perhaps-or just the way of all of us flawed beings who walk this world I fear I'll never see a day when no swords will be drawn-or needed. But then, perhaps my sight fails too soon.
Alustriel, High Lady of Silverymoon
To Harp and to Help
Year of the Deep Moon
It was, as the minstrels say, a bright and beautiful morning in the forest. Birds sang and swooped in the branches as three Zhentilar warriors, whose faces and backs ran with sweat, bent to their work.
Grunting under its weight, they lowered the stout frame of wooden poles into the pit where they stood.
"How're we to know she'll come this way? Aye?"
"Not our worry, Guld." The swordmaster's voice came from above them at the lip of the pit. "We're just swordarms. When the cover's done, we just hide by it and wait with blades out and that's exactly how Lord Manshoon said it."
The swordmaster had meant to awe them into silence with his last words, but the three sweating mennow climbing out of the pit and struggling to drag the dirt-andbrush-covered wooden lid properly onto the greased axlepole-were young. They still owned tongues that wagged faster than the muzzle applied by prudence would allow.
"What makes high-an'-mighty Manshoon think we can do what he couldn't? Him with a dragon and all his spells and wands, too!"
"He obviously knows your true worth better than I do, Alorth." The swordmaster's tone was biting.
Guld bent to slide the thin twigs into the sockets provided for them, taking care.