Elminster in hell - Ed Greenwood [68]
Mirt nodded. "This fails to surprise me," he said, turning his head to see how Asper and Aleena fared. Beside him, Laeral toppled silently over onto her face.
Flames flared up from her body as it struck the floor, writhing, and Mirt roared out a heartfelt curse and a cry for aid. As he rolled the Lady Mage over, Asper ran for the door-and the alarm-gong on the wall just outside it.
Only his smallest belt flask held water, and Mirt dashed it into Laeral's face and pawed at her nose and cheeks to try to keep the flames at bay-greenish-yellow tongues of hot fire that seemingly rose from nothing. Magical fire, of course, damned wagonloads of praise be to Mystra, and all that. It ignored all of his ineffectual attempts to douse it; though it somehow didn't spread to him, the Old Wolf was heartily glad when the room suddenly filled with stern-faced Tower apprentices.
He was thrust aside in an instant, and the room erupted in tense castings and snapped orders and suspicious
II peering. Their health assured, Asper, Mirt, and Aleena \vere thrust into chairs in the most distant corner of the room and sternly bidden to wait and not stir.
Just now, none of them felt like doing anything but sitting dazedly and letting the numb tingling die away. Young apprentices were still scurrying in with more chairs. Hard questioning lay in the future of Laeral's three unexpected late-night guests.
Amid the nervous tumult, a tall figure limped into the room. Aleena rose in a flurry of clanking armor to run to him.
"Gently, 'Leen," Piergeiron cautioned as she rushed to throw her arms around him. Scowling apprentices reached out to claw her back. Piergeiron made straight for the nearest chair, wobbling a little as he came. His face was tight and white with pain.
"Well, young lion?" Mirt said, looking into his eyes.
Those eyes were oddly green, a strangeness that seemed to grow as the Open Lord of Waterdeep collapsed into the chair and gasped, "Perhaps I'll live." As his daughter reached him at last and rained kisses on his face, he caught hold of both chair arms and shook himself, wincing.
"Weak as a gutter kitten," he hissed, waving Aleena back to her chair. "Now, will all the watching gods- or any of the rest of you-kindly tell me just what is going on?"
Mirt held up a hand to forestall anyone else saying anything and turned to the apprentice standing watchfully beside his chair. All four of them had acquired such sentinels, he noted, and they did not look entirely friendly,
"How fares the Lady Laeral?''
"That's not for me to say, merch-" the young wizard began, his voice as cold as the edge of a drawn blade. He fell silent in astonishment as a long, slender hand took hold of his arm from behind, and its owner followed, giving him a quelling look.
"I, too, perhaps will live a bit longer," Laeral told them, a wry smile on her lips. "A clever trap beneath the Harper enchantments-or at least, what I thought were Harper spells." She gave Piergeiron a friendly nod and turned her head to regard Mirt. "You were about to say something important, I believe?"
Mirt nodded and looked in turn to Piergeiron. "Tell us what you last remember-of what befell before you' ended up here."
The paladin drew in a deep, quavering breath, lifted his head to stare thoughtfully at the spell-scorched ceiling, and said, "I was… charmed by a spell, cast by one who came on me unawares, in private. A man, by the mind-touch, young and full of rage and excitement. He forced from my mind the names, faces, and abodes of all the lords of Waterdeep."
Around the circle of chairs and apprentices, there was a silent bristling, a sudden tension that was almost n gasp.
"He thanked me… mockingly," Piergeiron said slowly, remembering, "and then came around from behind me to bow-all sweeping arms and snooty flourishes, a parody of a courtier-and swept a sword from behind his back and ran me through. He wore a mask, and I don't think, if he'd removed