Elminster in Myth Drannor - Ed Greenwood [25]
When the dust settled again, he saw what he'd been waiting for: a few claws, flailing away tirelessly around the edge of the boulder that had pinned the magekiller against the rocks.
So it was solid enough to slash with its claws, and to be pinned down by rocks-but all that harmed it was metal. Or more probably, just cold iron.
Elminster looked down at the crumbling cliff below him, sighed, and started trotting along it, looking for a way down.
About twenty paces along, the way found him. The ground under his boots muttered, like a man talking in his sleep, and slid sideways. El leapt frantically away from the gorge, and then slid helplessly down into it, bumping along atop a river of moving earth and rolling, bouncing rocks.
When he could see and hear again, he'd been coughing on dust for what seemed like hours, and he hurt all over.
He was back in his own form again. Had he lost the gem?
A quick touch reassured him that it was still there, and its powers were still waiting for him. He must have changed back without thinking, to get more reach and try to ride the moving rocks. Or something.
Elminster got up gingerly, winced at the pain of putting his weight squarely on a foot that seemed to have been hit by several hundred rolling stones during his unintentional journey, and started to pick his way along the rocky bottom of the gorge to where the magekiller had been.
It might, of course, have clawed its way through the rock to freedom by now. It might be waiting for him somewhere among all these rocks, very near. In that case, he'd just have to use that spell, and start off through this dangerous part of the woods all over again…
Then he saw it: a forest of spectral claws waving awkwardly around the edge of that massive boulder, in a tumbled forest of rocks ahead. He still-somehow-had his dagger in his hand, and he went to work cautiously, stabbing over the edge of the rocks at one claw and then another, watching them melt away like smoke under his blade.
When they were all gone, he ventured past them, to lie atop the boulder that pinned the strange monster, reaching down again and again to stab at the helpless body beneath. His blade never felt anything, but the frantic whispering from beneath him grew slowly fainter and fainter, until at last it stopped, and the boulder settled against the rocks beneath with a clacking sound.
Elminster straightened slowly, bruised but satisfied, and looked back up at the lip of the gorge.
A man was standing there. A man in robes whom he'd never seen before-but who seemed to know him. He was smiling as he looked down at Elminster of Athalantar, as he raised his hands and made the first careful gestures of what Elminster recognized as a meteor swarm. But the smile wasn't friendly at all.
El sighed, waved to the man in sardonic greeting- and with that gesture released his waiting spell.
When the four balls of raging fire raced down into the gorge and burst, the last prince of Athalantar was gone.
The wizard who'd followed Elminster so far clenched his fists as he watched the fire he'd wrought roar away down the gorge, and cursed bitterly. Now he'd have to spend days over his books, casting tracing spells, and trying to find the young fool again. You'd think the gods themselves watched over him, the way luck seemed to cloak him like a mage-mantle. He'd avoided that slaying spell at the inn… old Surgath Ilder had hardly been a fitting alternative. Then he'd somehow trapped the magekiller-and that spell had taken days to find components for.
"Gods, look down and curse with me," he muttered, his eyes still murderous, as he turned away from the gorge.
Behind him, unseen, pale shapes rose from half a dozen peaces in the gorge-stone cairns that the fire had scorched in its passing.
They drifted in eerie silence to where a certain massive boulder lay among the stones, and moved their hands in gestures of spellcasting, though they uttered not a word. The boulder rose unsteadily. The wraithlike, floating forms thrust impossibly long tendrils of themselves