Elminster in Myth Drannor - Ed Greenwood [14]
So he'd shrugged and pressed on, heading for the fabled Towers of Song. The elves suffered no human to see their great city and live, but a goddess had commanded El to go thence, in his first service to her. If elves clinging fiercely to their privacy didn't approve, that was just too bad.
Too bad for him, if his alertness or spells failed him. Once already there had been a burst of blue light in the dusk off to his left one evening, as a trap spell claimed the life of an owlbear. Elminster hoped such magics were specific in their triggerings… and weren't waiting for humans who used spells to keep clear of the ground.
One thing was increasingly clear to him, now: even elves eager to be friendly, if Cormanthor boasted any such, weren't likely to welcome an intruding human with smiles if that lone visitor was carrying a scepter of power looted from an elven tomb.
The attention he'd attracted back at the Horn had been a mistake, whatever danger that prospector's ignorance of magic had posed. He'd lost a night's sleep, and had to use hasty spells to snatch himself clear, when at least four folk with spells and daggers had separately attacked his sleeping chamber. The last one had come creeping across the roof, blade in hand, right to where El was listening to the sounds of two of the others knifing each other to death in the darkness below.
Now he was carrying a beautiful-and no doubt very recognizable-thing of gems and chased silver that an elf who saw it might be able to awaken from a distance to turn its powers on Elminster… a scepter that might bear a curse or spit magics that harmed anyone arousing them. A scepter that had belonged to an elf whose surviving kin might slay any human who dared to touch it. A scepter someone might be tracing even now.
How could he have been so stupid? El sighed again. Somewhere on this journey he had to hide the scepter, in a place where he-and, barring tracing spells, only he, not some mysterious follower or elven patrol-could find it again. And that meant a distinctive landmark; in this endless wood, something of the land beneath the trees, not a tree itself. He kept a watch for something suitable.
Soon after sunrise, on the day after Elminster walked above the dark waters of his twelfth swamp, he found it. The land rose sharply in a line of pointed crags, the last one a bare stone needle like the prow of some gigantic ship eager to sail up to the sun.
Elminster chose the crag next to the prow. It was a lower-tree-girt height, with a duskwood tree he liked the look of clinging to one of its edges. 'Twould do. In among its roots he knelt, scooping up a handful of earth and crumbling it in his fingers until it fell away to leave him holding a few stones.
Out of his bag he took the silver scepter, glancing at it briefly as he laid it on his palm amid the stones. It was a beautiful thing, one end tapering into the shape of a tongue of flame. Elminster shook his head in admiration, and whispered a certain spell over his hand. Then he thrust the scepter into the hole he'd created, smoothed dirt over it, and plucked up a nearby clump of moss to lay atop the disturbed earth. A handful of leaves and twigs completed the concealment, and he hurried to the next crag along the line. There he dropped one of the stones, and went on to another three of the tree-clad heights, to leave a stone at each. Pausing at the last, he murmured another spell that left him feeling weak and sick inside, as his limbs tingled with blue-white fire for the space of a long, leisurely breath.
He took that breath, and another, before he felt strong enough to make the second casting. It was a simple thing of gestures, a single phrase, and the melting away of a hair from behind his ear. Done.
The Athalantan kept still for a moment, listening, and peered back the way he'd