Elminster in Myth Drannor - Ed Greenwood [24]
Enough analysis; such thinking was a luxury for mages… and just now, he'd best forget about being a mage. He had only a few breaths left to experiment before he'd have to leap down, or die. Carefully El drew one of his belt daggers, and dropped it, point-first, into the many staring eyes of that hissing, burbling head.
It fell freely to the earth far below with a solid thump, leaving a shaft of dark emptiness in its wake right through the heart of the many-clawed thing. The magekiller shuddered and squalled, its tone high and fearful and furious, but somehow fainter than before.
Now it was done keening and was moving again, climbing after Elminster with murder in its eyes. The hole through it had gone, but the entire beast was visibly smaller. The last prince of Athalantar nodded calmly, planted one boot against the trunk below him, and kicked off.
The air whistled past him for a moment before his hands crashed through branchlets, snapping them in a swirling of leaves, and caught hold of the bough he'd aimed for. He clung there for a moment, hearing that urgent squalling sound ringing out again, close above, and then swung out and down, twisting to snatch at a lower branch.
It seemed he wasn't much of a minstrels' hero, either. Instead of the branch they were seeking, his hands found only leaves this time, and tore through them.
An instant later, the Chosen of Mystra hit the ground hard on his behind, rolled over into an unintentional backflip, and found his feet with an involuntary groan. His rear was going to be sore for days.
And his running was going to be an ungainly limp now. Elminster sighed as he watched the slithering thing racing back down the tree in a giddy spiral, to come and kill him.
If he used the lone spell he'd left ready, he'd be whisked back to the scepter… but that would leave him with all the walking through the woods to do over again, with this hissing monster and perhaps his mysterious follower lurking between him and Cormanthor.
He plucked up his dagger. He had another at his belt, a third sheathed up one sleeve, and one in each boot-but was that enough to do more than annoy this thing?
Spitting out a very human curse, the elf who was not Iymbryl Alastrarra stumbled southward, dagger in hand, wondering how far he could get before the magekiller caught up with him.
If he could only win himself time enough, perhaps there was something the gem could do…
Preoccupied with his haste and wild plans, Elminster almost ran right out over the edge of the cliff.
It was cloaked in bushes: the crumbling edge of an ancient rockface, where the land dropped away into a tree-filled gorge. A tiny rivulet chuckled over rocks far below. El looked along it and then back at the magekiller-which was coming for him as fast as ever, slithering around trees and their sprawling roots with its tireless claws raking the air.
The prince glanced along the lip of the cliff, and chose a tree that leaned a little way out into space, but seemed large and solid. He ran for it, one hand outspread to test it-and only the whispering warned him.
The magekiller could burst into a charge of astonishing speed when it desired to, it seemed. El looked back in time to see the foremost, lunging claws reaching for his head. He ducked, slipped on the loose stones, and made a desperate grab for a root as he went over the edge.
In a bruising clatter of rolling stones he swung against the cliff, slammed hard into it, and got his other hand onto the root, just as the long, serpentine body hissed past him into the gorge below.
There was a jutting rock some forty feet down, and the magekiller made a twisting grab for it. Claws squealed briefly on rock, trailing sparks, and then the jutting rock pulled free of its ancient berth and fell, its unwilling passenger flailing the air beneath it.
Together boulder and spectral beast crashed into the rocks below. They did not bounce or roll; only the dust they hurled up did that.