Elminster in Myth Drannor - Ed Greenwood [62]
"I'm not going on a Hunt, Uncle," Delmuth replied, without slowing or looking up. "I'm out to cleanse the realm of a human."
"The one named armathor by our Coronal? Lad, where are thy senses? No trumpet has cried your challenge! No charge has been delivered before the court, or to this man! Duels must be formally declared. 'Tis the law!"
Delmuth stopped at the tall front doors to give a scrambling servant time to swing them open, and looked up and back. "I go to slay one who is vermin, not a person with any right to be treated as one of us, whatever the Coronal may say."
He cast the sword spinning up into the air and followed it outside; just before the doors boomed shut behind him, Neldor saw him catch the blade and set off through the mushroom garden, taking the shortest route to the hawthorn gate.
"You're making a mistake, lad," he said sadly, "and taking our House with you." But there was no one left in the forehall of Castle Echorn to hear him except the frightened servant, whose white face was raised to heed Neldor.
Instead of ignoring him or snapping out a curt order, the eldest living elf of the blood of Echorn sadly spread his empty hands in a gesture of helplessness.
By the doors, the servant began to cry.
* * * * *
The elf in black leathers turned an exultant somersault in the air, crashed through the curtain of ever-creeper leaves, and flung the sword in his hand exuberantly into the trunk of a blueleaf tree as he fell past. It struck deep and thrummed, neatly cutting an errant leaf in two on its brief journey.
The pieces were still fluttering down when the elf sprang up through them and snatched his sword back, crying joyously, "Ho ho, a cat has certainly been set loose among all the sleepy doves at court this time!"
"Easy, Athtar; they can probably hear you right down south by the sea." Galan Goadulphyn was carefully arranging small heaps of glass beads on his cloak, spread out atop the stump of a shadowtop that had fallen when Cormanthor was young. Only he knew that they represented the loans paid out to a certain phantom mushroom-growing concern by several too many proud Houses of the realm. Galan was trying to work out how to pay off some of the stiffer-lipped House keymasters by borrowing more from others.
If he couldn't come up with a deft pattern by nightfall, it might be necessary to leave Toril for a lifetime or two. Or however long it took for elves to find spells enough to build completely different, mind- and spell-fooling identities for themselves. A gloomhunter spider wandered onto the cloak, and Galan scowled at it.
"So? Everyone in the realm knows as much!"
"I don't," Galan said, staring intently into the eyes of the spider. They looked at each other for a moment, one eye to a thousand. Then the spider decided that prudence wasn't always only for others, and scrambled off the cloak as fast as its spindly legs could carry it. "Enlighten me."
Athtar drew in a deep and delighted breath. "Well, the Coronal has found a human somewhere, and brought him to court, and named him his heir and an armathor of the realm! Our next Coronal's going to be a man?”
"What?" Galan shook his head as if to clear it, spun away from his cloak, and snatched at his friend's throat lacings. "Athtar Nlossae," he snarled, shaking the leather-clad elf as if Athtar was a large and floppy doll, "kindly speak sense! Where in the name of all the bastard gods of the dwarves would the Coronal find a human? Under a rock? In his vaults? In a discarded slipper?" He let go of Athtar, who staggered back until he found a tree trunk to lean against, and took refuge there.
Galan advanced on him, growling, "I'm engaged in something very important, Athtar, and you come to me with wild tales! The Coronal'd never dare name a human armathor even if someone brought him a hundred humans! Why, he'd have all the stiff-necked young lads and old warriors