Elminster Must Die_ The Sage of Shadowdale - Ed Greenwood [109]
It was doing that right now.
So Alassra wasn’t dying or under attack. She was just … more mindless than ever before.
Storm set down the magics and her discarded clothing, laid the manacles on the garments and unwrapped them with infinite care to avoid telltale rattlings, then left those shackles lying, draped the magical cloak around her neck, and went to her sister, embracing her wordlessly.
The Simbul stiffened in alarm and wonder then gasped in pleasure as she felt the cloak against her skin where it was pressed between them.
The cloak began to glow—the same eerie blue as the blue fire from the skies had been—as her body started to absorb its enchantments. Alassra clawed and clutched at it like a desperate, starving thing.
Her gasps became moans of pleasure then groans of release as her arms tightened around Storm, and she kissed her sister with dreadful hunger.
“El!” she cried, in a raw, rough-from-disuse voice. “El?”
“Sister,” Storm said gently between kisses, “ ’tis me: Astorma. Ethena.”
“Esheena,” the Simbul hissed in mingled disappointment and gratefulness, relaxing as awareness returned. The wild fire faded from her eyes, and she stared into Storm’s gaze as they lay on the wet rock nose to nose.
Then she wrinkled her nose.
“Faugh!” she spat. “I stink!”
And she flung herself into the water, dragging Storm with her.
The pool was every whit as cold as Storm had expected, numbing her instantly. She’d be chilled for a day or more, thanks to her soaked breeches and boots, but that was a worry for later.
At the moment, Alassra was laughing with delight amid water aglow as the last of the cloak’s magic passed into her and it crumbled to nothingness. “Did you bring some soap? Or one of those new Sembian scents?”
Storm made a face. “Do I look as if I want to stink like a cartload of jungle flowers crushed into the blended lees of an extensive wine cellar?”
“You,” her sister said happily, “look like you can and do shrug off everything and serenely take from life what you seek, letting all else drift away without getting bothered over it.”
She spread her limbs and floated, submerged except for her face. “Thank you, Storm. Thank you for myself back … for a little while. So, what’s afoot in the wider world outside this hidehold? What are you up to? And El—where’s he right now, and what foolishness is driving his deeds?”
“Meddling in Cormyr, as usual,” Storm replied. “He sent me because he wants all the fun for himself.”
“Hah, as usual,” her sister told the cavern ceiling. “He always tries to keep me away from the best moments, too. I’d have slain thrice the Red Wizards, down the years, if he wasn’t always—”
“Alassra,” Storm told her with mock severity, hauling herself out of the water and hissing at the chill she felt as streams of it ran from her to rejoin the pool, “you haven’t left two-thirds of the Red Wizards alive, so far as any of us can tell, at any time since you started defending Aglarond. You couldn’t have claimed three times the Thayan lives you did. Trust me.”
“Oh?” Alassra grinned archly. “Why start now, after all these years? Tell me more news. Not about El—you’re helping him, of course—but of the wider Realms. Any kings toppled? Dragons tearing cities apart? Realms obliberated by angry dueling archwizards?”
“Oh, all of those,” Storm chuckled, running both hands through her hair to shed fresh streams of water as she cast a swift glance back at the manacles and the rest of the magic she’d brought. “Where to begin?”
“Thay, of course,” her sister said promptly. “I always want to hear what calamities have befallen the Thayans lately. Why, alathant so partresper I … what’s kaladash, ah—”
Their eyes met, and the wildness was back in the Simbul’s. And a moment