Elminster Must Die_ The Sage of Shadowdale - Ed Greenwood [144]
“I am Sir Eskrel Starbridge, highknight of Cormyr,” Starbridge replied. “I’ve come to bring you back to Suzail with me, where your presence is … desired.”
“L-leave Shadowdale?” the wizard quavered. “I’m—nay. Impossible.”
Around Starbridge, his dozen highknights—and the five war wizards, too—stood as still as stone. Legend insisted—shouted—that this old man blinking at them had spells enough to rend kingdoms, and had done so, more than once. To say nothing of toppling castles, snatching down dragons from the sky and rending them, and transforming charging armies into smears of blood on the earth and a red mist of gore blowing away on the breeze.
Starbridge had said he would try diplomacy first. Not a one of them thought it would succeed, but, well, if there was a time for prayer, this was it.
“Elminster,” Starbridge asked gently, “what keeps you here? We have woods as wild as these in Cormyr—the Forest Kingdom—and the farm on the far side of that ridge is fast disappearing beneath new saplings. What makes Shadowdale so special?”
The old man smiled. “All the Realms knows Elminster dwells here, so the fools all come to me. Fools like you.”
The walls erupted, the air full of hissing arrows, quarrels, and darts.
All of which struck air that did not quite glow, a foot or so away from every one of the Cormyreans, and shattered against it to fall harmlessly to the floor. The war wizards responded almost lazily, spells lashing the walls in red-orange fire that tore into the pale, struggling forms of howling doppelgangers hiding behind the tapestries, who convulsed in agony in the heart of those flames and died.
“Your … servants?” Starbridge asked, in the silence that followed. “Handmaidens?”
The old man behind the table flung himself out of his chair. A highknight darted after him.
“Narulph, stand where you are!” Starbridge roared. “Mereld?”
“Too late to hold it in its shape,” the war wizard snapped in reply, craning his neck. “Another doppelganger, shifting fast—I’ll have to blast it, or it’ll get away!”
Starbridge sighed in disgust. “Do it!”
He turned. “Baerengard?”
“Wizard of War Lemmeth was fast enough, sir,” came the prompt reply. “The youth—Thal—was a ’ganger too. He has it held.”
“Good. We question that one. Though I doubt any of them knew where Elminster is, beyond ‘not here.’ Stlarn it.”
Manshoon smiled into the moving glows and cast a swift spell.
In midgasp the young lords Windstag, Sornstern, and Dawntard all clutched at their heads, reeled, rebounded off the walls, and bit their lips hard enough to draw blood, eyes wide and wild.
Then they shivered, shuddered, and came out of whatever had just smitten them, to blink at each other.
Nodding in grim unison, they rushed with one accord to put their shoulders to the door of the rented rooms of old Lord Murandrake.
And broke it down.
As they came crashing into a lamplit and pleasant room, an elderly man in a nightrobe started up from his chair, dropping his book of derring-do tales and his drink, as he fought to somehow pass through his seat backward to get away from them and to keep his balance at the same time.
It was a battle he lost, and swiftly. Wherefore Lord Barandror Murandrake ended up on the floor, cowering back in the cave made by his toppled chair, with three bright, sharp swords menacing him.
“An axe—d’you have an axe?” one swordsman snapped.
“A hand axe?” the second spat accusingly.
“An enchanted hand axe?” the third snarled.
Murandrake’s quavering voice failed him, and he gabbled incoherently in his fear, but with wild wavings of his arms managed to indicate that there was something in the next room.
The trio of lordlings charged through the open doorway, found themselves in a luxuriously appointed bedchamber, saw a gleaming helm mounted high on one wall in pride of place with a sword and a hand axe crossed beneath it, snatched all three trophies, and