Elminster Must Die_ The Sage of Shadowdale - Ed Greenwood [24]
The old man in the ragged robe waited patiently. Three of his calm breaths later, the undead guardian of this nigh forgotten, deep passage of the palace undercellars stepped back to let him pass.
With a smile and a nod, he did so, looking back only once. The skeleton was staring after him, as still as a statue, its sword still point down.
Elminster walked on into the darkness. It was a curious thing; down the many years of his long life, he’d spent not all that much time in the Forest Kingdom. Yet being back in the haunted wing of the royal palace of Cormyr, he felt at home.
He belonged.
Not back under the trees of Shadowdale he knew and loved so.
These cobwebbed shadows and empty, echoing rooms had somehow stolen into his heart and head and had become home.
Just when had that happened? And how?
Elminster came to a halt. Here, at the lowest spot in the passage, where the walls glistened with seepage, there was always a puddle of water. Sounds from the palace end of the tunnel always echoed here, clearly audible far from their source, and unless a foe was hard on one’s heels with a blade drawn or a spell on his lips, ’twas always worth halting for a breath or two to listen for what might be waiting in one’s near future.
Aye—there! The scrape of a boot, again. Someone was waiting up ahead where the passage opened out into the wider undercellar. Someone who’d already grown bored.
“My foot’s asleep again, stlarn it,” came a thin, waspish male voice, startlingly loud and sudden. “Taking his godsfire-damned own time about it, isn’t he?”
“Huh,” another, deeper male voice muttered in reply. “Probably wounded and wary—and so, slow. Thal didn’t see him, remember; just Storm Silverhand heading away from the city wall right quick. Meaning the Old Mage’s wits are his own again, or she’d not leave him—so back here he’ll come. Back to where the magic is.”
“Where he’ll find us ready for him.”
“I hope.”
“You doubt the Royal Magician’s wisdom in this?” That was a snapped, swift challenge.
The reply was wearily calm. “How many went up against him out at Tethgard—and how many came back alive?”
There was a short silence before the other man snarled, “I don’t want to talk about it. I … Things did not go well.”
“So much half the palace knows—as all of Suzail will, tomorrow. How’s Tethlor?”
There was a loud sigh. “Still in a bad way, to tell true. Almost as bad as Elminster.”
The Sage of Shadowdale smiled wryly in the darkness and started walking forward again. Reception foreguard or not, he wasn’t getting any younger.
As he went, he felt in the breast of his jerkin beneath the scorched smith’s apron and among the pouches at his belt for the things he’d probably need when he reached the far end of the passage. Handy things, Storm’s Harper caches, if one didn’t mind wearing gowns at the flashier end of the wardrobe …
Yet all gods blast this creeping madness and the magic he dared not hurl. He was going to have to waste so much time arguing with fools, instead …
Like yon two, standing with thumbs hooked through their belts, barring his way with confidence that was probably more outward seeming than truth. One was in faintly glowing black leathers: a highknight of Cormyr. The other wore the robes of a wizard—and any wizard walking around the royal palace of Suzail, even its dingiest, deepest undercellar, must be a wizard of war.
They stared back at him. The old, bearded man striding unconcernedly up the passage in the darkness, alone and swordless, didn’t look like a great wizard. His clothes looked as old as he was, worn and none too clean and befitting a laborer who saw few coins and even fewer baths. Old, down-at-heel boots, stained and patched breeches, and a burn-scarred apron over a jerkin. The belt at his waist sagged onto his slim hips, loaded down with bulging pouches. He was hefting something in each hand; both somethings were small, dark, and round. And he was smiling.
Elminster gave them both a polite nod as he came to a halt and let silence fall.
It didn’t last long.
“We’ve been waiting for you, old man,”