Elminster Must Die_ The Sage of Shadowdale - Ed Greenwood [10]
Someone like that young fool Marlin Stormserpent back in Cormyr, who was seeking the nine ghosts he thought would swiftly slay all the war wizards and loyal Purple Dragons and rival traitor nobles alike and deliver the Dragon Throne into his idle lap.
Lovely Laeral was gone, so there weren’t nine deadly ghosts to be had. Yet there were still six, possibly seven—and if a certain Elminster commanded them, he could hurl back the shadows in Sembia and make the Forest Kingdom bright and strong again, a bastion for Harpers and those who had a talent for the Art but lacked training. A land where he could make mages trusted and respected again, and from which he could send them forth to deliver the rest of Faerûn from so much of its lawless, bloody chaos. New guardians to take up the burden of defending the Realms from all who’d cheerfully destroy it while conquering it.
Or he could let Alassra consume the ghosts, and be restored.
That much power and that many memories would be enough to make her whole again, the twisting taint burned right out of her, to stand strong at his side, his lady love once more bright in all her power and fury. Together they could tame the Realms and set it to rights.
So, the Crown … or the Mad Queen?
Ah, dark decisions …
Easily made, this time.
His Alassra.
Soft lips found his throat in the dark, just above his collarbone. She was still asleep, loving him in her dreams.
El smiled thinly. He loved the Obarskyrs and the Land of the Purple Dragon dearly, but it could all be swept away in scouring fire in an instant if that was what it would take to make his Simbul herself again.
To have his Alassra back, he would do anything.
Anything.
CHAPTER
TWO
ANOTHER BOLD NIGHT IN BRAVE CORMYR
Hold! What was that?”
The hoarse whisper came out of the night, not much more than twice her arm’s reach in front of her, where a cluster of duskwoods stood dark and tall. Storm Silverhand froze.
“Some scuttling furry thing. What else’d be creeping around the heart of the Hullack at this time of night?” The second voice was thinner and sharper. It was also higher up, coming from somewhere in one of the trees in front of her.
“Elminster and the Simbul?”
“Very funny.”
Storm heard a faint scuffling as the second speaker clambered down to the ground before adding, “Well, I can’t trace a thing. We’re too close to the ruin. What’s left of the tower’s wardings won’t keep a mouse at bay, but their decay is like a great seething hearth-cauldron in front of us, roiling and echoing. It may be silent and unseen, but it’s all too stlarning effective at foiling my scrying magic. Trying to find those two with spells, if they’re anywhere in front of us, is impossible.” There followed a gusty sigh, then, “Heard anything more?”
Storm stood right where she was, thankful it was dark enough in the hollow that it was easier for the men to move by feel than by sight.
“No,” said the first whisperer, a little doubtfully.
“Well, I’m not telling Kelgantor we heard a little rustling we can’t identify, just once, and only for a moment.”
Kelgantor. These were war wizards. Storm kept very still.
“What ruin?” the first whisperer hissed. “What sort of fool would build in the heart of the Hullack?”
“A long-ago fool, that’s who. Your older colleagues tell me it was called Tethgard. Some fallen fortress from the bygone days of the realm, back when this Elminster—if he really is as old as all the legends say he is—was young. You know: when gods walked the earth and Anauroch was all empty desert and a dragon laired on every hilltop.”
Ah. War wizards paired with highknights. Far more of them than just this pair and probably led by Kelgantor, because that was what the battle-mage Kelgantor did. All of them out in the