Elminster Must Die_ The Sage of Shadowdale - Ed Greenwood [151]
Who stumbled toward her with a muffled curse, fumbling with its skirting plates.
Thankfully, that pleasantry was uttered in a voice she recognized.
“Well met, El,” she greeted her armored visitor cheerfully, sidestepping deftly in case she startled him. Archwizards—hah, all wizards—were … dangerous. Like unsheathed carving knives forgotten in a dark drawer, they could imperil all who blundered too near.
“Urrah? Storm?” The Sage of Shadowdale sounded astonished. “When did ye return?”
“Now,” she replied simply, stepping around him to close the door. “Whence this sudden thirst for wearing armor?”
“Stops idiot wizards of war hurling spells before they stop to ask who I am,” came the muffled reply. He produced something from under the skirts and thrust it at her. A tray, wobbling more than a little. “Here, hold this—and, ah, help thyself. Must get this blasted helm off.”
“Savory tarts?” Storm asked, her stomach suddenly rumbling. When had she last eaten, anyh—
The world erupted with a white-hot roar.
The scrying exploded in his face, but Manshoon never flinched. He let the tears stream as he smiled.
Lothrae and Mreldrake might be drooling idiots for days, but he’d managed it.
Yes.
Strike hard and fast enough, and you can fell even the mighty. Storm Silverhand should be a broken thing spattered across the back wall of the crypt, and Elminster sorely wounded.
That armor would have saved his life, but he’d be in great pain. And alone once more, as Manshoon wanted him to be.
Aye, this was much better. He busied himself casting another scrying spell to look into that crypt again as soon as possible. Spending days tainting its wards to let him through had been worth every irritating moment, after all.
“Storm?” he gasped when he knew he was Elminster again. He was lying sprawled on stone, afire with pain.
Silence was the only reply offered by the darkness.
“Oh, lass,” he whispered. “Oh, no. Not like this …”
Mystra be with me.
Or … will I join her?
Elminster swam back to consciousness again. The pain was even worse, this time.
The armor was torn and crumpled where it wasn’t missing. He was burned in all those bare places, yet shivering. He lay on the cold hard smoothness, feeling life run out of him … slow, sticky, and inexorable.
The faint glows of the tombs were gone … or was his sight merely dimming as he started to die?
No, there was new light.
Fey witchlight.
Alusair had arrived, and her ghostly glow with her.
“Hail, fair princess,” he murmured, trying to smile.
Metal clinked and tinkled; Alusair was fighting to pluck away shards of Duar’s shattered armor that kept falling through her fingers.
“Damned magic!” she hissed. “Once I could command this entire palace—and now I can’t farruking pick up a stlarning plate of armor!”
“How … mighty … fallen,” Elminster offered, choking on welling blood.
“Hey, now, Old Mage,” the ghostly Steel Princess replied tenderly, her face floating perhaps a hand’s length away from his, “rest easy. If you’re fated to die here, at least you’ll die clowning around in stolen armor—and if we kiss and cuddle as much as I can manage, you’ll go in the arms of a lass trying to make love to you. Isn’t that what most men want?”
“Not … dead … yet,” Elminster managed. “But so damned … weak …”
Which was when a feeble whisper rose from the open door in front of them both, and something dark slithered into view. A wraith, a dark cloud barely able to lift itself far enough off the flagstones to drift, creeping like smoke toward them.
“And how d’you think I feel?” it asked testily.
It was a voice they both knew.
Vangerdahast.
The whisper was coming from all that was left of him. He was obviously a Dragon no longer. And just as obviously barely alive—or barely undead—too.
“Elminster,” Alusair said insistently, “use the codpiece! Heal yourself, before it’s too late!”
Elminster blinked at her, nodded almost absently, obeyed—a glow that brought some measure of relief promptly