Elminster in Myth Drannor - Ed Greenwood [49]
El did so. Beneath the lid was steaming stag meat, in a nut-and-leek gravy. "How came this here?" he asked in astonishment.
"Magic," she replied impishly, plucking a half-buried gilded decanter from the heart of a heap of coins at her elbow. "Drink?" Shaking his head in wonder, El extended his hand for it. She tossed the decanter carelessly in his direction. It spun toward the floor, and then swooped smoothly up into his hand.
"My thanks," El said, taking firm hold of it with both hands. The Srinshee shrugged, and the young man suddenly felt something cold atop his head. Reaching up, he found a crystal glass there.
"Your hands were both full," the sorceress explained mildly.
As El snorted in amusement, a bowl of grapes appeared in his lap. He laughed helplessly, and found himself sliding down the coins he'd been leaning against, as they slumped onto the floor. One rolled away, and he smashed it to the floor with his boot heel, to stop it.
"You're going to get awfully sick of those," the elven sorceress told him.
"I don't want coins," El told her. "Where would I spend them, anyway?"
"Yes, but you'll have to shift them all to get at what's buried," the Srinshee said. "I keep the best stuff packed about with coins, you see."
El stared at her, and then shook his head, smiled wordlessly, and applied himself to eating.
"So what brings an elven sorceress who can advise Coronals and blow away deep-worms and lead crowned kings on wild wood chases to some vaults underground no one ever sees?" he asked, when he'd eaten all he could.
The old sorceress had eaten even more, gorging herself on platter after platter of fried mushrooms and lemon clams without seeming discomfort. She leaned back on empty air again, crossed her legs on some invisible floating footstool, and replied, "A sense of belonging, at last."
"Belonging? With cold coins and the jewels of the dead?"
She regarded him with some respect. "Shrewdly said, man." She set her glass on empty air at her elbow and leaned forward. "Yet you say that because you don't see what is here as I do."
She plucked up a tarnished silver bracelet, chased about with the body of a serpent. "Pay heed, Elminster. This is what you need me for: to make the choice the Coronal charged you to, and win your life. This arm ring is all Cormanthor has left of Princess Elvandaruil, lost in the waves of the Fallen Stars three thousand summers ago, when her flight spell failed. It washed up on Ambral Isle when Waterdeep was yet unborn."
Elminster fished a gleaming piece of shell out of the heap beside him. It was pierced at all four corners, and from there fine chains led to silver medallions set with sea-horses picked out in emeralds, with amethyst eyes. "And this?"
"The pectoral of Chathanglas Siltral, who styled himself Lord of the Rivers And Bays before the founding of your realm of Cormyr. He unwittingly took to wife a shapechanger, and the monstrous descendants of their offspring lurk yet, tentacled and deadly, in the waterways of Marsember and what humans call the Vast Swamp."
El leaned forward. "Ye know the provenance of every last bauble in these vaults?"
The Srinshee shrugged. "Of course. What good is a long life and an adequate memory if you don't use them?"
El shook his head in wonder. After a moment, he said, 'Yet forgive me… the folk who wore or fashioned these can't all be kin to ye-if this Siltral fathered no elves, for instance. Yet you feel you belong… to what?"
"To the realm of my kin, and others of the People," the sorceress said calmly. "I am Oluevaera Estelda, the last of my line. Yet I rise above the family rivalries of House against House, and consider all Cormanthans my kin. It gives me a reason for having lived so long, and another to go on living, after those I first loved are gone."
"How lonely is it, at the worst?" El asked quietly, rolling forward to look deep into her eyes.
The withered old elf met his gaze. Her eyes were