Elminster Must Die_ The Sage of Shadowdale - Ed Greenwood [41]
“Hey, now,” the ghostly princess put in sharply. “This is my home you’re speaking of. A little less talk of hurling skyward, if you don’t mind.”
CHAPTER
NINE
IN THE NAME OF THE DRAGON
This is it,” Marlin announced triumphantly, gazing at the life-sized bronze staring dragon skull adorning the dark double doors before him. “The Dragonskull Chamber.”
Around him, his hireswords stirred restlessly, swords up and faces tense. Killing six Purple Dragon guards to reach this spot hadn’t bothered them in the slightest, but they were suddenly fearful.
Their employer surprised them then by turning away, pointing along the passage, and saying, “Now we go this way. To another room, not this one at all.”
Their gasps of relief were almost audible. Marlin hid a widening smile from them as he waved some of the men past him to take the lead as they turned the first corner.
Out of long habit, not just in accordance with the firm orders he’d given them, a few of the rearguard sellswords looked back behind them as they followed Stormserpent and their fellow hireswords.
They were men whose lives depended on seeing anyone who might be behind them, but dust swirled thickly where they’d slashed their way through great hanging draperies that had been drawn across the passage, to be sure no lurking guardians, undead or otherwise, awaited them. So none of them saw who was staring down at them from the deep gloom of a distant high balcony—the faintly glowing ghost of a princess, flanked by a dark, slender man and woman.
All three were watching Stormserpent’s band with eyes that burned like smoldering coals.
“And so the jaws begin to close. Slowly and patiently. Very patiently. There’ll be no escape for you this time, old foe.”
The darkly handsome man who drawled those words to no one but himself strolled across the chamber to watch another glowing, moving scene hanging silently in midair, where he’d cast it.
After observing it for some time he nodded unsmilingly, turned away, and went to a waiting decanter and tallglasses.
“This time, Elminster of Shadowdale,” he told the decanter politely, “I’ll wear you down. Spell by spell, ally by ally … one by one they’ll be stripped away. Worn out, exhausted.”
Manshoon poured himself a glass, held it up to catch the glow of one of his scryings, studied the hue of its contents appreciatively, and told it, “Yes, the days of your seeing all and always being two strides ahead of me are gone. Gone with the integrity of the Weave and the love of your oh-so-tolerant goddess. Gone with the lost mantle of being a Chosen. Now, Elminster, you’re no better than the rest of us.”
He glanced idly at another nearby glowing scene, one full of writhing tentacles and a silently shrieking victim in their coils, then walked past it. “Not that you’re a toothless lion. Ah, no. I’ve underestimated you in the past and have been humbled for that, but not again. Never again.”
The next scene showed him several wizards of war, heads together over a highly polished table in an ornate palace chamber. Manshoon did not bother to make his magic let him hear what they were so excitedly saying, but he added to the glass, “So there’ll be no grand spell battle between us. No chance for you to taunt me with your cleverness one more time then somehow slip away. We’ll not be seeing each other until you have no spells left worth mentioning.”
He moved on, waving a hand to dissolve a scene he no longer needed. “You’ll defeat this looming trap, I’ve no doubt. Almost certainly the one after that, too. Perhaps the third and fourth that await you. Yet I’ve prepared more, and I’m not going away, Sage of Shadowdale. I’ll cut at you and claw at you and stab at your back, withdrawing whenever you turn to see who wishes you ill, so time and again you face nothing and no one to hurl your spells at or put a name to. And when at last you’ve no sleeves left to hide your tricks, then I’ll strike. And I will strike.”
He stopped in front