Elminster Must Die_ The Sage of Shadowdale - Ed Greenwood [52]
“Is she—?”
“Dead? As in, released from undeath? Destroyed and gone? I … think not.”
He shook his head grimly as she helped him to his feet, and muttered, “The surge of magic was very strong.”
Storm tapped her head. “In here, it’s been getting much worse,” she told him bitterly. “I rarely feel surges at all, anymore. For me, the Art is almost gone.”
Elminster gave her a look. It was a long time before he whispered, “For me, ’tis a warm, seething treasure within me, a waiting, beckoning pit I hunger to plunge into, as easily and as often as I used to. Power I ache to wield, no matter how witless it leaves me.”
He drew in a deep breath then blurted, “I need ye. To hold my mind together whenever I slake myself in the Art. We’re a team, the two of us together an archwizard formidable enough to face down most foes.” He put his arm around her. “Together, lass. Together we’ll guard the Realms yet.”
Storm’s eyes shone as she smiled. “And if it refuses to be guarded, El? What then?”
“Then we tame it and teach it, until ’tis willing!”
“Well, now!” snapped a harsh young voice out of the darkness. “Impressive words indeed! A pity they’ll be your last!”
Elminster and Storm had no time to roll their eyes and groan at how many times they’d heard such gloatings before.
They were too busy screaming in pain as the passage around them exploded in roaring emerald flames that flung them away like helpless scraps of rag.
“There’s no way in the world they could have survived that,” a somewhat shaken male voice offered into the smoke-reeking darkness.
Up and down the passage there was a restless din of groanings and crackings; stones cooling and complaining about it. Here and there louder crashes could be heard, as blocks of stone fell from their places to shatter on the floor below.
“Lord Ganrahast is seldom mistaken in his judgments,” the harsh young voice observed, a little smugly.
“I’d be happier if I could clearly see the Sage of Shadowdale lying dead at my feet and know there was no way he could rise again to face me. Ever,” a third voice observed.
“Oh, don’t be such a coward, Mreldrake.”
“I don’t think I much care for those words of yours, Rendarth,” Mreldrake replied stiffly. “You didn’t face him and his mad Witch-Queen out in the wilds. I did.”
“And ran like a scuttling rabbit, no doubt, and so lived to tell us all the tale,” Rendarth snapped right back. “So if you’re so bold and battle-hardened as all that, mighty Rorskryn, suppose you advance down the passage and find us Elminster of Shadowdale—or what’s left of him. We’ll need his head to bring back to Ganrahast and Vainrence, mind. Or, failing that, some bit of him large enough to identify him with certainty.”
“I did in fact listen to the orders we were given, too,” Rorskryn Mreldrake replied coldly. “You go, boldest of mages.”
“As I recall,” Wizard of War Andram Rendarth said in his harsh voice, “I was placed in command of this little trio, and I am giving you, Mreldrake, a direct order. Get down that passage and start hunting. And mind you bring back lumps of Elminster, and not the other one.”
“It was a woman,” the third wizard added helpfully as Mreldrake conjured light with an angry snarl. “So if you see large breasts, you’re not looking at—”
Elminster had heard more than enough.
Storm—still breathing, thank all gods—was lying atop him, silent and heavy and bleeding copiously all over him, but he could readily reach and aim the wand he’d taken from Wizard of War Lorton Ironstone, after Alusair had obligingly won that earlier battle for him.
It was a wand that dealt short-term paralysis, the weapon Ironstone should have used back then, right away and without warning, instead of issuing his grand challenge. Yet lost chances were part of the fast-fading past, and it should ably serve a certain Sage of Shadowdale now.
He leveled the wand carefully and murmured the word that brought it to life. Ganrahast and Vainrence weren’t training these dolts well; only utter fools stand side-by-side on a battlefield, when both are mages and face a foe they