Elminster Must Die_ The Sage of Shadowdale - Ed Greenwood [111]
There were eight well-armed, fierce-looking adventurers in the hollow. Three were huddled asleep in their cloaks; two stood watch with their backs to trees, facing out into the night; and a trio were muttering together as they banked their fire with clods of earth. Their talk told Storm they were trouble, all right.
“Harper’s Hill,” one was saying. “Three different men down in the dale said he’ll be thereabouts, if he’s to be found at all.”
“I heard he lurks around Storm Silverhand’s farm—with her and a lot o’ ghosts and the like,” another put in.
“Nay,” said the last of the three. “Ulth and I searched there a day back. No crops sown this year, and a garden run wild. The house stands open and empty. They say in the dale the Lady Storm walks out of the woods when she pleases—mayhap twice a year, now, no more—and no one knows when she’ll appear or why. Never stays more than a night, seems to avoid her farm, then is gone into the trees again.”
“Crazed, all of them,” the first man offered, spitting thoughtfully into the fire. “Been thus a long time, now.”
“So what do we do if we can’t find Elminster?” the second man asked, sounding younger and less assured than the other two. “Search the backside of every tree between here and Sembia? That’s a lot of forest!”
“Yes,” the first man told him firmly. “Search we will—not trees, idiot, but every last cave in all the forest. Yet I doubt it’ll come to that. Once we find a hint of magic, we’ll have found Elminster.”
Storm sighed soundlessly and backed away. Right past the sentinel she’d passed on her way in—just as unnoticed as during her arrival.
She would have to deal with them before she headed back to Suzail … or Alassra would be dead with half-a-dozen arrows in her before this lot were done looking for El.
Who would just have to deal with the council on his own, Cormyr fall or Cormyr stand.
Oh, Mother Mystra, come back to us.
That fierce prayer was answered by the utter silence she’d been expecting.
The empty silence she’d heard for a hundred years.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-FIVE
WELL EARNED
Marlin poured himself another glass from his favorite decanter and nodded approvingly.
This Jharakphred was the best artist for hire in Suzail, it seemed.
A nervous, simpering little runt of a man, to be sure, as he stood there holding the protective cloth covers he’d just stripped from the two portraits he’d painted—but the best.
There was no arguing with the two boards lying flat on Marlin’s table. They weren’t just good likenesses of Lord Draskos Crownsilver and Lord Gariskar Dauntinghorn—they were old Draskos and Daunter.
“You like them?” the artist asked nervously, misinterpreting Marlin’s silence. “I followed both lords for days, until they told their bodyguards to run me off. With cudgels.” He rubbed at some bruises, reflectively, then left off to add proudly, “I think I got them right, though. Very true to life.”
“Very,” Marlin agreed with a smile, stepping forward to hand the man the promised fee. “Well earned.”
Jharakphred beamed, bowed deeply to his noble patron with the heavy pouch of gold clutched in both hands, turned away—and never saw Marlin’s smile widen into a beam to match his own as two men blazing with silent blue flames from head to toe stepped out from behind tapestries both before and behind the artist and ran him through.
“Take him to the furnace,” Marlin ordered, plucking the gold back out of convulsing claws that would never hold a brush again, as the impaled man gurgled and shuddered on two swords at once. “You know the way. Mop up every last spot of blood ‘twixt here and there, then return to me.”
His will more than his words compelled the two silent slayers, but Marlin enjoyed giving orders. Besides, he needed the practice. It wouldn’t do to sound less than regal when the time came.
Soon.
What seemed a very short while later, silent blue flames erupted out of the nearest wall. Marlin smiled and, as both Langral and Halonter emerged, beckoned them over to the pair of portraits.
“These men … would you know them, across a room