Elminster Must Die_ The Sage of Shadowdale - Ed Greenwood [2]
The tallest, widest man he’d ever seen met him at the door, smiling affably enough. Gaerond matched that smile, keeping his eyes on those of the innkeeper and pretending not to notice the two women at either end of a long serving counter who both had loaded hand crossbows lying ready on the well-worn wood in front of them.
“Rooms and a meal, for … six?”
“We’d like that and will pay ready coin.” Gaerond tried to sound amiable, out of long habit; many folk never saw past the fearsome sword scars. “If our work goes well, that is; we’ve a task that won’t wait. We’re the Bloodshields Band and come in peace. Chartered in Arabel, came afoot from Mistledale—and we’re seeking Elminster.”
The host’s smile held but was somehow a trifle less welcoming than before. “Six chartered adventurers, to seek a dead man? Or are you looking for treasure he might have left behind?”
Gaerond shook his head. “We’ve been paid well to consult with him, not offer him harm. On behalf of a patron too old in legs and back to be traveling anywhere to talk with anyone. Someone who’s met with him before told us to tell all in Shadowdale ‘Old Mage still, upon the hill’ if asked about our intentions.”
The innkeeper’s eyes flickered. Then he nodded gravely, turned, and called, deep but gently, “Thal!”
The rather dirty, barefoot young lad who burst out of the kitchens and raced to a halt just out of reach appeared so swiftly that he must have been listening. Bright eyes surveyed Gaerond for a moment ere looking a question at the hulking innkeeper.
“Guide these charter-helms to the wizard’s abode and back again,” came the grave instruction.
“Lanterns?” Thal chirped.
“Nay, lad,” Gaerond replied quickly, “but we’ll pay fair coin for guiding us. If the way’s not long, nor will our business with the mage be. Our patron has ordered that no one else hear what we say or is said to us, but we’ll be done soon enough and can come right back here at your heels.”
Thal looked at the innkeeper for instruction, as if Gaerond hadn’t said a word, but the innkeeper merely nodded approvingly.
At that, the lad smiled, nodded, and marched past Gaerond, trailing a cheerful, “This way, saers.”
Malkym looked as if he wanted a tankard before walking anywhere else, but followed Gaerond in silence, Flamdar and the others trudging right behind.
The lad led them to the crossroads, which were no larger nor less muddy than Gaerond remembered, and took the road north, past some new steads already sagging into the bog they’d been built on. Beyond them the land rose, crowned by a seemingly impenetrable tangle of thornstar hedge that all manner of vine-choked wild trees had thrust up through. Storm Silverhand’s farm, it had once been … a century back, when there still was a Storm Silverhand.
You’d have thought at least one or two Harpers might have survived to settle the place, to keep bellies full on its profusion of pole-fruit and all, but mayhap folk thereabouts had run them off or run them through, and—
To Gaerond’s grunted surprise, the lad turned off the road down into the ditch near the north end of the wild hedge, well past where the farm gate had been—only to scale the far bank of the ditch and plunge through a dark hole in the hedge that looked like a boar run.
Huh. Smelled like a boar run, too; Gaerond laid one hand on his favorite longsark as he put his head down and shouldered after the lad, through crackling branches, leathery leaves, and the inevitable jabbing thorns.
Right behind him, Malkym remembered one of his curses but kept it under his breath. Mostly.
Beyond the bristling fortress of hedge was a damp, mist-shrouded forest of tall trees—thinner than the great old forest giants ahead and to their left, but already choking brambles and wild shrubs off from the light. Birds whirred away in alarm, and small, unseen beasts scuttled for cover. A few rotten, leaning poles among the soaring tree trunks were all that was left of what must once have been rows and rows of crops.