Elminster in hell - Ed Greenwood [32]
Hun. Feeble intrigues compared to those here in hell, hut i can feel magic near-and getting nearer. No leading astray, now!
None. The memories merely unfold…
Vangerdahast found himself yawning again. Quite deliberately he reached out to the nearest candle and snuffed the flame between his finger and thumb.
The pain brought him fully awake. Letting the smoke curl up undisturbed, he stepped back and shot a glance across the chamber. The tall, slender form was slumped and still: Sardyl, sitting patiently in her usual chair, had slipped into slumber.
It was late. Time had passed-too much time. The chambermaids would long since have begun clucking at the thought of the Royal Magician's personal messenger and scribe shut in with him this late, this long. As if the Lady Sardyl Crownsilver didn't trust Vangerdahast absolutely… almost as deeply as he trusted her.
"Wake, lass," he said, stroking her cheek with one finger, far more gently than the chambermaids would have believed Old Hammerspells was capable of.
Sardyl blinked awake and looked a silent question up at him.
Vangerdahast nodded impatiently, angry at the tardy Geldert. "Aye, fetch him," he growled and wheeled away to pace across the room once more, seeing not the desks littered with tomes and parchments, but his increasingly welcoming bed and much-needed sleep. "Give him no more time. I'll have whatever he's got ready now," he added, quelling yawn after yawn.
Without a word, his scribe rose, stretched like a cat, and set off to bring back Master Mage Geldert from the airret she'd conducted him to earlier. Vangy turned by his desk and watched her go. The Lady Sardyl Crownsilver might not have spells enough to best a good guardsman yet, but she was far more blessedly silent and tactful than a dozen of his most senior War Wizards-and more trustworthy, too.
Mmm. Trust, Always a rare commodity in Cormyr.
Ho, ho! A little lust in the offing, perchance?
[mental eyebrow raised] Devil, ye make me look like a prude-and that, I fear, is an accomplishment.
The door at the top of the stairs was still spell-locked. Sardyl lifted a shapely eyebrow and raised her hand again, feeling the faint prickling that told her she hadn't been mistaken. "Bolifar," she called softly, knowing how small the turret room beyond was.
There was no reply. Sardyl frowned, cast a quick look back down the stairs to be sure no guard was watching, and turned her hand in a swift circle as she murmured the words of a spell known to very few, even among the War Wizards.
The lock spell died with a tiny flash, and she turned the door ring and went in.
The lamp was lit, its soft light falling warm and steady across the turret room's rug, chair, table, and wall map.
All of these things, and the lamp itself, occupied their usual places-but the chamber was entirely empty of' Bolifar Geldert, his pens and ink, his parchment and blotter, and his writing satchel.
There were no corners to hide in. Sardyl looked up, found the ceiling every bit as bare as it should have been, and took two smooth steps into the room. She turned slowly, looking all around, reaching out to touch nothing. The windows were closed, their solid-slab shutters locked from within, and there was no sign of anything unusual in the turret room. Neither was there any sign of Bolifar Geldert.
The Lady Crownsilver's mouth tightened. She backed hastily to the doorway. From there she cast a magic-seeking spell into the turret room-and found only what had always been there: the old, many-layered magics on the map. Preservative enchantments laid down well before she'd been born, perhaps before her grandmother's birth.
Yet, standing here, she did not feel alone, somehow.
Eyes large and dark, Sardyl took several steps back