Elminster in hell - Ed Greenwood [34]
Feeling the stares of his two companions, Vangerdahast gave them both a glare and added, "Yes, I was here in 1306. The weather was fine that year, and the five before it, too, as I recall. I'll thank you to direct your disbelief elsewhere, and spare me any comments about wizards' dotage."
Sardyl sighed. "Secret passages?"
Her master gave her a weary look. "You've been reading too many fantasy books, my dear." Alaphondar, who'd been about to ask the same thing, shut his mouth with an audible snap.
The Royal Magician gave the sage a withering glance and waved his hand at the chamber around. "Look you: The stones are solid, with nothing to raise or lower them, floor or ceiling-and there's no room in the walls for secret doors or passages. The curve you see is because the walls here are the same walls that form the outside of the tower." One of his hands went to a belt-pouch, hesitated with visible reluctance, and then dipped within.
There was a small glass sphere in the wizard's fingers when he raised his hand again. He murmured a word over it. Sudden light winked and moved within its depths.
"Stored magic?" Alaphondar asked, leaning forward for a better look.
Vangerdahast nodded. "These hold but one spell-and it's a spell that works only once in a particular place. Once I've called this forth, another spell of the same sort will never manifest successfully in this room."
"And it's a…?"
The Royal Magician left the sage's question hanging unanswered in the air as he went to the windows, closed and latched the shutters, and put his back to them. "In a moment," he announced, "we should see an image, a person. Identify it if you can-and fix its features in your mind if you can't." He felt Sardyl's question without bothering to meet her gaze, and added, "My magic will be seeking the likeness of the last person to use transloca-tional magic into or out of this room."
As he spoke, the glass sphere flashed with a vivid golden flame and shattered, tiny shards tumbling musically through his fingers.
A moment later, the air in the middle of the room shimmered, seemed lojlow for a moment, and suddenly grew misty. Gray wisps coiled, lengthened, and became- very suddenly-sharp and distinct. They were looking at a woman, or rather at the faint, flickering image of a woman's upper torso, die rest of her lost in the mists. She looked determined, even eager, as she raised slender bare arms and moved her fingers in the most graceful casting Sardyl had ever seen. Suddenly, she was gone, leaving two fading motes of starry light.
It was a long moment before she realized the woman hadn't been wearing anything but rings and a necklace. It was another before she heard Vangerdahast swallow in a way he rarely did.
Sardyl knew what that sound meant and turned in time to see grief in Vangerdahast's softened face. The Royal Magician looked like just what he was: an old man struggling not to cry. That was all she saw before his face hardened.
He looked up at her with what could only be called a defiant glare.
Wordlessly she put a comforting hand on his arm-something Alaphondar would never have dared to do-and asked her question with her eyes.
"Amedahast," he replied gruffly. "High Magess of Cormyr, into the reign of Draxius. This was her “by-herself” chamber, long ago. No one's used translocational magic here since her time-not really a surprise, that, given the wards."
The wizard strode a few paces to the wall, peered at the map, and touched a tiny monogram in one corner of it. “Aye, here's her mark. She drew this… more than seven hundred summers ago."
Alaphondar looked around the room once more, and shook his head. No, it really was too small to hide anything from them. "If your missing Bolifar