Elminster in hell - Ed Greenwood [35]
Vangerdahast shook his head. "No holes in those shutters, and no gaps for air to slide through. Saw you the dust when I opened them? No. Something darker happened here, I can feel it."
His scribe was nodding. She could feel it, too, as strong as when she'd been here before. There was something about this room. A watched feeling…
Alaphondar shrugged irritably, and said, "I'm for the bed. I've seen your nothing and have far too much to do tomorrow to stand here yawning any longer. The gods give you good slumber-though for the life of me, you don't deserve it."
As the sage turned and left, the wizard and his scribe looked at each other. In unspoken accord, they frowned and turned to prowl the room again, searching for what must be there.
With a sudden growl of impatience at his own failing wits, Vangerdahast cast a magic-seeking, advanced on the map and the lamp, and sighed sourly. He leaned back against the wall. The map held its complex weave of old spells, and the lamp, flame and all, was bereft of enchantment. The rug also bore only the magics of long ago.
Bolifar Geldert, it seemed, had simply vanished from this room. Simply and impossibly. "Impossible," in Vangerclahast's experience, always meant magic.
The sage's desire for bed seems wiser than before," he said quietly. "Come, lass. Let's spell-lock this room and go. There'll be plenty of time to search fruitlessly on the morrow."
Sardyl nodded and said nothing, but then she usually did.
You don't seem to feature in this yet, mage. You will he teaching vangekdahast about magic before this is done, won't you? Or is a little of this necessary?
[mind slap, red pain flaring like flames in the vaulted darkness]
If ye refrain from that, Nergal, 'twill unfold faster!
[diabolic growl of warning]
[fresh images flaring]
Between great paintings and tapestries, sheets of polished copper striped the palace walls. Lamplight reflected from the metal, throwing a warm glow onto its face and flashing back onto carefully motionless, watching guards. Standing in pairs along the walls, the guards kept their faces expressionless as the Royal Magician escorted his scribe past them to the door of her chambers.
"Get some sleep," he told her grimly, his voice low enough to reach her ears alone. "There'll be plenty of time to worry about Bolifar's fate in the morning. Set your spell shield."
Sardyl nodded and bowed to him. She looked pale and on the verge of tears, her eyes large and dark.
After another wordless moment, Vangerdahast put a comforting hand on her shoulder.
Lady Crownsilver slid gently out from under it and went into her room.
The Royal Magician stood like a statue, listening as his scribe closed and bolted her door. It was barely a breath later before he heard the tiny singing sound that meant she'd set her spell shield within.
Vangerdahast nodded grimly at the closed door and cast a spell of his own. As he turned away for the long trudge to his own chambers, the guards were startled to see a fist-sized eye hovering behind the wizard's back, keeping a lookout for him.
The conjured eye saw nothing suspicious on the journey, nor was there anything amiss as the Royal Magician entered his familiar rooms, set his own wards, passed into an inner spell chamber, and turned to his workbench. Without even pausing to light a lamp, he worked a mighty magic to trace Bolifar Geldert.
The mighty magic collapsed into darkness, failing utterly.
Vangerdahast frowned down at the fading ashes and wisps of smoke that had been his spell. He sighed for perhaps the hundredth time that night and headed for a closet he rarely opened. A hooded thing waited there.
The spell on the closet door gave him enough dim red radiance to drag the hood off and toss it aside. The revealed speaking-stone atop its pedestal was a chipped, sloping mass of rock, not the polished crystal sphere favored by the fashionable mages of Sembia and Cal-imshan.