Elminster Must Die_ The Sage of Shadowdale - Ed Greenwood [35]
He could almost taste the power.
Lothrae had promised. Until together they controlled four or more of the Nine, those they did have would be Marlin’s to command as he saw fit—and, by the Dragon Throne, there was a lot he planned to do with them before that fourth ghost was found!
Below, in the deep gloom, Marlin Stormserpent and his band of hirelings advanced cautiously along the great passage that ran down the heart of the haunted wing.
Princess Alusair turned from the rail of the balcony where she’d been watching them, as swiftly as if she’d been thrusting a sword.
“I could kill all these fools in less time than it would take you to get down yon stairs to hail them,” she hissed. “Why shouldn’t I? Why, Old Mage?
Why?”
The chill emanating from her made Elminster’s teeth chatter, but he stood his ground. “I know how ye feel, lass.”
“Seething,” she snapped. “That’s how I feel, right now. So put an arm around my shoulder and soothe me, wizard. Or by my father’s sword, I’ll be down from this balcony and killing them all, before you can—”
“Easy, Alusair. Easy,” he murmured, doing just as she’d bade him. His arm encountered nothing solid, only a terrible cold. A flesh-freezing chill that made him stagger, yet he tried to hold her comfortingly. And failed.
Alusair watched him stumble back against the nearest pillar, gray and gasping. Her face was not friendly.
“Not yet, lass,” he muttered at her when he could speak again. “There’ll come a time to smite these worms, to be sure. Probably not long from now.”
She glared at him. “Not yet, not now, await the right time … how can you be so farruking patient, Old Mage?”
Elminster shrugged, looking back at her with eyes that blazed with the same rage that was almost choking her.
“It helps,” he whispered fiercely, “to be insane.”
“They seem rather disappointed to find only dark emptiness, shrouded furniture, and a distinct lack of chained maidens, imprisoned nobles, and heaps of gold,” Alusair said tartly, a little later. “Poor little pillagers.”
She peered down from a high balcony in the last room of the haunted wing. Young Lord Stormserpent seemed to be tugging something out of an inner pocket in the breast of his darkly fashionable jerkin. “What’s he up to now?”
Elminster shrugged. “That’s a map, so I’d say he’s now going to tour the palace in search of a magic he thinks is hidden here.”
“One of his precious Nine? Can’t I kill him now? Really, El! You may not care what is stolen or despoiled in these halls, but this is my home—I care very much!”
Then she saw that the old wizard’s hands clutched the balcony rail so hard they were white and shaking.
It seemed Elminster had discovered that he cared very much, too.
“Heartened, saer?”
“Of course,” Marlin replied, smiling a real smile. “Not a man lost, and all the undead who dared stand against us destroyed with admirable ease and swiftness. We’ve time left to try to accomplish something that should prove much easier than facing down hauntings.”
“Oh, aye?” The hiresword’s voice held a subtle note of disbelief. He’d survived being hired by many overconfident patrons before—and hoped to live long enough to be hired by many more again. “So we’re bound deeper into the palace?”
“Of course. I must check the accuracy of these maps and find the way to the legendary Dragonskull Chamber.”
“Where the Royal Magician died?”
“That’s the place,” Marlin said cheerfully, consulting his map again and then waving at the armed men around him to turn down that side passage.
Most of Suzail knew no one dared enter the Dragonskull Chamber.
Most of Cormyr knew that name belonged to a heavily warded spellcasting chamber hidden somewhere deep in the royal palace, that was shunned because the Royal Magician Caladnei, ravaged by the Spellplague, had died inside it one night eighty years before.
Among courtiers and nobles, it was said that not even the most powerful war wizards could penetrate its mighty wards. Dragonskull still stood dark, empty, and shunned, its never-locked doors closed, because