Elminster Must Die_ The Sage of Shadowdale - Ed Greenwood [141]
He was alone amid the dust-covered Stormserpent discards again.
Lothrae had been … irritated. From the outset. Not by news of the axe, so … what? The timing of the contact? Had he been busy or in danger of being discovered or overheard?
Marlin frowned as he restored things to the way he liked to leave them and left the room.
The orbs had come from Lothrae and were old magic. When either of the men entered the rooms where their orbs were kept, a spell cast by an outlander wizard Lothrae had hired and then murdered when his work was done made the other feel that a contact was about to come.
Early on, Marlin had usually felt Lothrae’s approach to his orb, wherever it was, and had hastened to the disused tower of the family mansion. These days, he usually went to his orb and initiated their converses.
Was Lothrae losing interest in their alliance? Or wanting him to keep silent for a time? Or was there some danger or difficulty at Lothrae’s end?
Well, the silent dust around him was hardly likely to offer him any answers. And somewhere out there, probably nearby, was a hand axe that held a secret …
Manshoon sighed.
Marlin Stormserpent. Young. Rash. And at that moment, nigh blind with excitement.
Idiot lordling. So utterly, utterly predictable.
The serving maid whose mind the soon-Emperor of Cormyr was riding shrugged off the stained old sheet to give her sneer the space she felt it needed.
Young Stormserpent had just rushed past her and was dwindling down the curving stair, all oblivious to his surroundings. She probably needn’t have bothered embracing the old broken statue and casting its dust sheet over them both. Just sitting still right under his nose would probably have been sufficient.
Blind idiot lordling.
“Things’re still changing,” she murmured, as Manshoon spoke through her. “But you grow no whit wiser, Marlin oh-so-ambitious Stormserpent. Nothing more useful to add to any shared wisdom just now, I’d say. Yet you’re one of the brighter-witted lordlings of the realm. All the gods help us.”
Lord Broryn Windstag was right out of breath, Sornstern was in a hardly better state, and even Kathkote Dawntard was panting and going purple. They were all wearing revel masks they’d very recently snatched down off the wall of a shrieking noblewoman’s boudoir—but hadn’t begun their foray with those masks, and in any case, whatever “protection” the slips of black, betrimmed silk afforded them would last only as long as they could keep out of the hands of the authorities.
Their search for the hand axe had grown increasingly frantic, and they’d had to bruise more than a few folk along the way. War wizards and Purple Dragons were after them, with the city roused; aye, it was death or exile if they didn’t manage to get clear away—and stay there for long enough for doubt and planted false rumors and a few convenient “accidents” to befall key witnesses …
Gasping for breath as they stumbled up the back stair of an expensive address just off the promenade, with the senseless body of its guard tumbling to a stop behind them, the three started to wonder aloud at how they came to be doing it so wildly, rashly, and precipitously. Or for that matter, at all.
“Was some spell at work on our minds?” Windstag snarled.
“Well, even if one wasn’t, that’s got to be our claim if we get caught!” Sornstern panted, reeling against the stairpost as they reached the upper floor.
“When we get caught,” Dawntard corrected grimly.
Still panting, they paused together to catch their breath in the passage outside the door of old Lord Murandrake’s expensive rented rooms—and hesitated, exchanging wild-eyed glances.
The wizard and the noble came to a spot where the dark, narrow passage ended in a meeting with a passage running left and right.
“This way, lad!” Elminster boomed cheerfully from inside his borrowed helm, turning left.
“Very well,” Arclath agreed, following, “but where are we going, if I may ask?”
“Ye may,” El replied brightly, “and if ye’re very good, I might even tell thee. Before we get there, that