Elminster Must Die_ The Sage of Shadowdale - Ed Greenwood [4]
The old man snorted sourly and fumbled for a clay pipe with age-gnarled, shaking fingers. “If I could, d’ye think I’d be sitting here in this mud-hole, slowly starving? That’ll be my price for answers, mind ye: a finger of cheese or a bite of meat, if thy pouches run to such luxuries!”
Gaerond smiled, not kindly, and shook his head. “Our shame steadily deepens, doesn’t it, lads?”
The Bloodshields chuckled unpleasantly by way of reply. They had already spread themselves out and had drawn various favorite weapons—that they waved menacingly.
“You may have noticed,” Gaerond told the burly old man, “that Lylar here has brought a spear. We think it’d look better adorned with your head, as a sort of wave-about trophy, when we return to Sembia. Sembians pay well for their bodyguards—and it’s not every band of blades that can claim to have bested the legendary archwizard Elminster in battle!”
The burly oldbeard seemed to shrink a little in his seat. “Ye … ye’re joking, surely …,” he quavered.
Gaerond smiled his best, soft wolf smile. “No. I’m afraid not.”
The air promptly erupted in a briefly deafening storm of hissing and twanging, while the old man sat as still as a stone.
As abruptly as it had come, the storm was done, all the tapestries and paintings fluttering in the wake of too many snarling quarrels to count.
Most of the Bloodshields had been driven back against the walls, so studded with those quarrels as to resemble pincushions. Gaerond hadn’t been near a wall, so he was the last to fall, toppling in slow silence, disbelief plain on his dead face.
As if the thump and clatter of his landing were a cue, figures all clambered out from behind the tapestries in brisk haste, their pearl-white limbs reaching to reload crossbows or to snatch away weapons in case any of the Bloodshields might have had magical protection enough to somehow still live.
It appeared that none of them had.
The doppelganger sitting behind the table dwindled down into something long and lean that easily slid out of the wizard’s robes and the suit of padded armor beneath them that had lent “Elminster” such broad shoulders, and stretched across the table to join in the work of taking up the adventurers’ bodies and gear—the latter for salvage and sale, and the former to eat.
“Any trouble?” hissed a new arrival, coming into the cave still wearing Thal’s face, but with a body pearl white and featureless as the others.
“None,” replied one of the doppelgangers, who was busily breaking the necks of the Bloodshields, just to be sure, sounding almost bored.
“Where is the infamous Elminster, anyhail?” the youngest doppelganger asked. “He’s still alive, yes? They say he is, you know.”
Doppelgangers rarely shrug, but most of those crowded into the cave tried various versions of it, in wriggling unison.
The one who’d played Elminster answered, “He is, but he’s long gone from here. No shortage of talking meat coming looking for him, though. Still some Harpers, even.”
One old doppelganger grew a large mouth so he could leer, exclaiming, “I likes Harpers. Good eating.”
CHAPTER
ONE
DARK DECISIONS
The wardrobe was a cursedly tight fit.
Even for one of the handsomest, suavest, most lithely athletic, and most debonair nobles currently inhaling the sweet air of the Forest Kingdom of Cormyr.
Even a sneering rival would have had to grant that Lord Arclath Argustagus Delcastle was all of those things in the judgment of many a lass, not just his own.
Yet, despite all of those splendid qualities, the heir of House Delcastle could just squeeze himself inside the massive oak wardrobe. To keep company with old mildew and older dust. Whose familiar reek reassured him that this was the palace, all right.
Left knee above his left ear and fingers braced like claws to keep his cramped body from slipping and making the slightest sound, Arclath stared into the darkness wrought by the closed door right in front of his nose and prayed fervently that Ganrahast and Vainrence would be in a hurry and keep their secret meeting