Elminster in Myth Drannor - Ed Greenwood [86]
A ghostly form swooped past him, trailing a faint echoing sound that might have been wild laughter, and the last prince of Athalantar grinned suddenly. Of course! Take ghost form!
He took two quick steps to see where the ghost disappeared to this time, and was rewarded: high up on one wall was a crevice. Far too small for him, but not too small for a spellbook.
If he cast the spell as Myrjala had shown him, he could shift back and forth between solid and wraith-like form for brief periods-becoming his solid, normal self for no more than nine breaths at a time, or less. Longer would break the spell, and his fourth time becoming solid would also end the magic.
El became a flitting shadow and soared aloft. As he rose to the crevice, there came a scuffing sound from somewhere nearby, as if a boot had slipped on rock. Evidently he hadn't any time to waste.
Something dark but pale-faced rushed out of the gloom at him, seemingly enraged. El almost tumbled and fell in fright, but then ducked aside. The ghost looped once, impressively, then scudded on out of sight around a corner, heading for other rooms. Evidently the Dlardrageth ghosts liked wraithlike intruders even less than solid mortals.
Reaching the crevice, El drifted inside. It opened into a small, cramped room-the remnants of a much larger chamber whose roof had long ago collapsed. There were bones under the rubble here, elven bones, and El doubted the ghosts would leave him alone if he took up residence in here for long. Still, he hadn't much choice. As he peered around, the air seemed to fill with a faint purplish haze. What was it? Magic, aye, but what?
Whatever it was, he felt no different, and was still a weightless flying shadow. He drifted to the other end of the little room.
Beyond its far wall, through the socket holes that had once held beams, a ghost could reach another huge chamber-this one open to the sky, and holding the first cautious elf, scrambling in over some rubble with sword raised. Ivran Selorn, if El's memory served him rightly; a blood-hungry youngling.
There was a jagged hole at one end of the collapsed room through which he could plunge, if he felt like dying on broken stones below. Through it, El could see the route that linked the open chamber where Ivran was, and the room where he'd been studying. The hole opened onto a cascade of rubble that spilled down into a round room once at the base of a now-fallen tower. A passage ran out of Ivran's room into an antechamber, and thence through the tower room. From there a narrow, rubble-choked passage linked up with the room El's spellbook still lay in. The route was not a long one, and Ivran-bold and eager-was moving swiftly.
That left a certain Athalantan boy very little time. El went to his knees in the room with the bones, turned solid, and yanked down his breeches.
His one legacy of his thieving days was what he always wore under his clothes: a long, thin waxed black cord, wound round and round his midriff. He uncoiled it now and hurled most of it out the crevice, tying its other end to the splintered end of a ceiling beam in the little room with the bones. Holding his breeches up with one hand. El became a wraith again, and returned to his spellbook.
As he became solid and hastily tied the free end of the cord around and around the book, the stealthy sounds coming along the passages told him that Ivran and the other searchers were already entering the tower room: a few paces in the right direction and they'd be able to see him here, feverishly tying a length of cord around a book with his pants around his ankles.
He became a wraith again and almost leapt into the air, soaring up and into the crevice just as fast as he could fly.
Back in the room with the bones, El turned solid once more and hauled on his cord, gasping in his haste. He didn't have long to work before he'd break the magic, so