Elminster Must Die_ The Sage of Shadowdale - Ed Greenwood [3]
Gaerond caught sight of what might have been the roofless corner of a farmhouse, far off to the right—but no one was living or farming there anymore; they were striding through deep drifts of wet dead leaves and undisturbed, moss-girt deadfalls, with nary a trail to be seen.
And there in the trees, dusk was coming down fast.
“How far, lad?” he grunted, misliking the thought of being caught in the tangle when night fell.
Thal turned and gave a cheerful, guileless smile. “Just ahead, saer, down this path!”
Gaerond suppressed a snort. “Path” was a wild bard’s fantasy if he’d ever heard one, but the lad was atop a little ridge barely three long strides ahead, and pointing down the far side of it, as if the Old Mage’s abode really wasn’t far.
“There, saers!” Thal told them happily, stopping on the ridge and waving them past, one by one, one slender arm pointing.
Blast all the gods, there was a path that seemed to spring out of the sloping rock falling away from the ridge, and descend, winding through a few trees, down into a dell or mayhap a cave somewhere behind too many trunks to stare through.
Gaerond peered hard at the narrow dirt track where the bare rock ended and it began, in a vain attempt to see what manner of beast had made it, then turned to snap, “Rorn!”
Rornagar Breakblade liked to walk rearguard and was good at it; he spun around without the slightest delay, knowing what Gaerond wanted.
Yet no matter how keen and suspicious Rornagar’s eye, he had turned too late and beheld nothing but leaves and rocks and trees.
Gaerond’s sharp gesture brought them all to a silent, hard-listening halt, but there were no rustlings to tell where Thal had gone. The forest was suddenly empty of cheerful little lads.
“Well?” Malkym asked at last, as the Bloodshields stared at each other … and dusk came down.
“Light the lamps,” Gaerond ordered shortly. “We go on.”
They did that and were well down the path among the trees, Rornagar having turned to stare suspiciously—but vainly—into the forest twice.
Gaerond’s fingers were busy at his peace-strings without his eyes ever leaving the path ahead and the forest around. He could see where the way went, right into a low cavemouth ahead. A twinkle of light was escaping from the chamber, through holes in a door made of a patched and tattered hanging deer hide that had seen better days.
He stopped well outside it and waved to his fellows to join him as quietly as possible. As they gathered nigh-silently around him, each gave him the ramming-hilts-home gesture that told him they were ready for battle.
Gaerond nodded approvingly and looked to Rorn, who shook his head to silently say there’d been no sign of their young guide. Hmm, gone without coin, too; what but wager he’d been the wizard himself, in shift-shape?
With a shrug and smile, Gaerond called pleasantly, “Elminster? Elminster the wizard? Peaceful hired fellows here to confer with you!”
“Come ahead,” an old man’s voice quavered in reply. “Peaceful fellows are always welcome.” Then it turned stern or rather pettish. “See that ye stay that way.”
The Bloodshields traded smirks and came ahead.
The cave was a long, narrow hovel of damp dirt, stones, and sagging old rough-tree furniture, more a hermit’s cellar than a druid den. Two small, flickering lamps hung from a crossbranch over a rude table, and somewhere behind their glows sat a stout, broad-shouldered old man, blinking at them past a fearsome beak of a nose. He had a long, shaggy white beard.
The floor was an uneven, greasy, hard-trodden litter of old bones and empty nutshells, and around the dirt walls roots thrust out here, there, and everywhere; on many of them had been hung a pathetic collection of rotting old scraps of tapestry and paintings.
“So ye’ve found Elminster, ye adventurers, and to earn thy hire would speak with me? Well, speak, then; I’ve naught to share, I fear, and if ye were expecting great magics or heaped gems, I’m afraid ye’ve come a century or so too late.”
“Huh,” Gaerond replied. “That’s a shame. We quite like great magics and heaps of gems,