Elminster Must Die_ The Sage of Shadowdale - Ed Greenwood [39]
These dark thoughts had already made them suspicious of certain efforts, promoted by the War Wizard Baerold, to collect items of magic said to house the trapped essences of the Nine.
After all, Baerold just might be a Shadovar trying to use—and use up—the war wizards as his agents to get his hands on what three now-dead wizards had written of as the “blueflame ghosts” the Nine had become, which could be commanded by one who held the items that contained them, and who knew how to compel them.
Might be, but might not be, either. Ganrahast and Vainrence were the most powerful of the current wizards of war, and their spells—that fell far short of the mind-reaming of old—could find no hint of Baerold being anything more than a young, ambitious, rather romantic mage of middling skills and training. So they watched him very closely and were careful not to advance his training with any sort of alacrity.
Like most Cormyreans with ears, Ganrahast and Vainrence had heard legends of the Nine, the legendary band of adventurers destroyed more than twoscore-and-a-hundred summers earlier, when Laeral Silverhand—later famous as the Lady Mage of Waterdeep, and consort of the Blackstaff, Khelben Arunsun—was possessed by the fell Crown of Horns.
Being war wizards, they knew a little more about the Nine. Most nobles of Cormyr had heard rumors that some of the Nine still existed, trapped in magic items, and could be summoned forth from those items by those who held them—and knew how—to fight as the item-bearer’s slaves.
Unless those three wizards, whose writings had been proven true in all other respects, had told the exact same lie, Ganrahast and Vainrence also knew the rumors of “blueflame ghosts that could be commanded as deadly slaves” were true.
With two men trying to pace back and forth in it, the room near the top of the north turret suddenly seemed small and crowded.
Elminster was suddenly back in darkness, the only radiance a faint glow from the ghostly face bending over him. The dagger had melted away entirely, its magic spent; his mouth held only the taste of old iron, a tang like long-shed blood.
He was cold, damnably cold …
The ghost of Alusair drew back from him. “Still alive, El?”
“Still alive,” he mumbled through chattering teeth. “At least they’re not plotting against the king, those two.” Shaking his numbed arms to try to get some feeling back into them, he rolled over. “What of our greedy young robber noble and his merry band?”
“I’m going after them,” Alusair announced, her eyes two dark holes in what was little more than a woman-shaped wisp of gray, a glow so faint it was barely there at all. “I won’t slay them—yet. I, too, want to know what they’re up to, here in my home. Yet there is something I must know, Old Mage.”
She drifted closer to Elminster, her eyes darker still.
“Are you on Cormyr’s side in this? Or still playing your larger games across the Realms, using us all like pawns on a chessboard?”
Elminster regarded her gravely. “I have always been on Cormyr’s side, Princess. Yet, aye, I’ve always played those larger games, as ye put it, too. I must. There is no one else who can save the Realms.”
“No one else you trust, you mean.”
Elminster stared at her, and there was a tired look in his eyes. Silence stretched.
“Yes,” he whispered at last. “Ye’ve said it true. There’s no one else I can trust to save the Realms. That’s my doom, lass.”
As if in comment on his words, there came a faint metallic crash from behind them. It sounded as if an armored man had been hurled violently to the stone floor, two or three rooms back along the way they’d come.
Without a word Alusair whirled around and sped away, heading for the sound like a streaking arrow.
“There was a time,” Elminster muttered a little testily, “when the Weave let me send eyes wherever I desired …”
Aye, there had been a time.
Long gone, so he stood mute, one more pillar in dim silence, and waited.
Only to blink in genuine surprise