Elminster in hell - Ed Greenwood [56]
And so, defiant mage, 'tis time to burrow through your twisted tangle of a mind in earnest. Nergal said in a mind-voice that was a sharp biting sword. I spurn the visions you lay before me to waste my time. I cars nothing for long-ago adventures or romances. I desire mystra's power-I know you must have wielded it, and from your memories of such usages, i can learn so give me, man- yield and crawl.'
Shouldn't that be yield or crawl? All ye need do is- aaarggh!
[dark lances stabbing, bright pain flashing, tumbling, memories surging, falling, wild pain, screaming screaming amid devil's laughter, rising to outbellow all]
Little worm, i could have done this to you from the first!
[mind lash, raw screaming]
Hah! I should have done this to you from the first!
[bright whirling chaos of torn memories, shards and scraps a-tumble]
… Across the fields she saw him go, a bent and tattered gray form. He dwindled, striding steadily on, became a tiny figure, and was gone.
And she shivered, sighed, and turned away.
[images dwindling, falling, fading, lost and forgotten forever, now, in the wake of an archdevil's wrath]
The warrior looked down at the gathering vultures and the heaped bodies of the fallen and leaned on his spear.
Far they stretched from the height where he stood, far across rolling hills and the plain beyond; a hundred hundred souls and more this day. Davalaer thought on the wailing and grim sorrow that news of this battle would bring to the dales, even though victory had been theirs. Too many men would never return home. Too many were gone forever.
Aye, there would be lamenting in the houses of the dalefolk. Davalaer sighed, looking out at the still forms below. "But they will forget," he said heavily. "And then- somewhere, sometime-this will happen again."
Bah! Your mind isa cesspool of these misty-eyed moments! What care i for the tears of weak and fooush humans? [shards of remembrances hurled, broken, away…]
How can you hide what i seek, when magic is your power anf your life's work? How? How?
[red eyes glaring through the darkness of shattered chambers, memories strewn broken on the floor like shards of glass and torn cobwebs] mystra. That's it. Your goddess aids you.
[diabolic eyes raging up into pyres]
Snow yourself, goddess!
[darkness, silence, eddying dust] come forth, cowardly wench!
[darkness, memory shards sighing down to rest] elminster aumar, snow me mystra! Reveal to me memories of mystra! Show me!
[cringing, faltering, pain-ridden]
Aye…
"The Starym are apt to be overproud fools," the Lady Laurlaethee Shaurlanglar said calmly, "but they are right in one thing: to allowing these stinking bears of humans into our midst is to sully and doom us. That's why I invited you here, plaything of the Srinshee. That moonwine you drained oh so elegantly was laced with enough srindym to kill a dozen overambitious human magelings."
The man they called Elminster cast three swift, hawklike glances behind and before him, gliding a pace to one side to peer behind a hanging as gracefully as any young warrior of the People.
The elf lady laughed lightly. "We are quite alone, doomed one. I've no need or desire for witnesses-no guards to keep at bay the paws of a dying brute. I am the last of a proud warrior line, and I can protect myself."
Elminster gazed silently down at the slender wisp of gowned elven beauty in the chair. The Lady Laurlaethee was frail even as elves measure such things. Standing tall, she'd be little more than half his height. Sapphire-bright eyes looked coolly back up into his with no trace of fear. He gave her the slightest of smiles and asked, "And ye did this thing-why?"
"Hatred," the matron said, rising with supple grace. "For you and the likes of you. Beasts who seek to steal what they haven't the wits to learn. If the Srinshee wasn't so besotted with lust, you'd still be scrabbling and straining to call forth a little glow from your fingertips-in the brief moments before you found your corpse decorating the end of a Cormanthan spear."
"Well, that's certainly