Elminster Must Die_ The Sage of Shadowdale - Ed Greenwood [121]
Where amid a quiet cluster of Purple Dragons and servants still cleaning up and a few tables of newly arrived drinkers, Tress was helping a rather tipsy-looking man to his feet. Not one of the nobles who’d brawled so messily in the club earlier, but a rather haughty-looking wizard of war in full palace robes who had evidently just risen from a table and sprawled on his face and was showing signs of doing so again the moment he lost the deft support of the womanly shoulder under one of his armpits.
“Thank you, wench,” he was growling rather blearily at Tress. “Know that you have aided a ver’ important wizard of the court, who enjoys the ear and confidence of the king himself! Wizard of War Rorskryn Mreldrake am I, and urkgh … I’m going to be sick, s’what I’m—”
He promptly demonstrated the truth of his words, with force and enthusiasm.
Arclath and Amarune both raised their eyes to the ceiling in disgust and parted to glide well aside as Tress steered her burden firmly through his own filth and straight to the door.
Two steps away from which the weaving, green-faced Mreldrake caught sight of Amarune, gave her a nasty grin, pointed one shaking finger, and spat maliciously, “You! You’re the Silent Shadow, you are!”
“I’ve skulked in the dark long enough,” Elminster growled under his breath. “Time to play the befuddled old man and walk right in there and get to hear just what terms our jaunty young lordling is on with the most important lass in the worl—”
Playing a stooped graybeard to the hilt, he was still three age-shuffling strides away from the doors of the Dragonriders’ Club and starting to reach for the nearest smooth-worn door handle, when Amarune Whitewave burst out of those doors, sprinting like the wind, with the bellowed “Stop! Stop and stand!” shout of a Purple Dragon pursuing her.
Elminster blinked, straightened up far too hastily for the decrepit elder he was trying to portray—and slipped. Which left him unable to get out of the way.
Amarune did not try to get out of the way either.
Even as he flung his arms wide to fight for balance, she slammed into him, running hard. The impact snatched the Sage of Shadowdale off his feet and dashed him down on the cobbles in a crash that drove all the wind out of him and brought sharp and instant pain. As she trampled him and ran on, not slowing in the slightest.
Leaving the man who had been the mightiest Chosen of Mystra flat on his back on the cold cobblestones of the street, half-dazed and struggling to breathe through what felt like broken ribs. He couldn’t even think of a spell to hurl, not that he had wind enough left to cast anything …
He couldn’t even roll over, let alone crawl aside, as a fresh tempest burst out of the Dragonriders’ and roared over him, a storm of hard-running Purple Dragons with lungs far healthier than his own, swords glittering in their fists, and very heavy boots.
He did, in their wake, manage a groan or two.
One of which caught the attention of a telsword who obviously hadn’t been given orders to pursue the fleeing woman. Coming out of the club to stand and watch the chase dwindling into the night, he glanced down at the sound of pain then bent to lend the huddled old man a hand.
“Come on, old drunkard! You can’t lie here; you’ll get trampled, you will!”
“I’m not drunk,” Elminster snarled through his pain. Ribs gone, to be sure. “I’m hurt. Some woman ran right through me.”
“Which way did she go?” the telsword snapped back, excited in an instant.
“Down the street,” Elminster replied dryly. “If she turned off it, I didn’t see. I was too busy lying stunned to notice.”
“All right, all right, old jester.” The telsword sighed, helping Elminster to sit up against the club wall. He peered down at the weathered old face out of sheer veterans’ habit—and frowned. “Have I seen you before? Who are you?”
“No one important, anymore,” Elminster said gruffly. “Just another old man.”
“Oh? Living on the streets?”
“When I can’t make it home before dark.”
“Oh, so you have a