Elminster Must Die_ The Sage of Shadowdale - Ed Greenwood [63]
He straightened up and pointed at the stone that had first caught his eye. “See yon slanting chisel mark? That tells ye to look low, if ye’re in a rough-walled passage like this one.”
Storm nodded. “Harpers told me to look for an inverted T of chisel-scars.”
“Ah, those were the caches that held poison-quelling as well as healing. They were for fighting nobles,” El informed her gruffly. “Not so many of them survive, and they were fewer to begin with. I remember—”
He stiffened then and fell silent, raising a hand sharply to command silence. Storm gave it.
A moment later, from beyond the wall on the other side of the passage—a wall that must be very thin—they heard a door open and a sneering voice speak in a loud and sudden pounce of triumph.
“And how brightly doth the spark of Tarandar shine across all the watching Realms this fair evening?”
El knew that voice. He put a finger on the pendant and felt the dark, hot flood of malice in the thoughts from the other side of the wall. So the sneering and sarcastic Master of Revels really was every bit as pompous and nasty as the wagging tongues of palace servants made him out to be.
Khaladan Mallowfaer, it was said, never did a lick of work and never stopped spying on his lessers, needling them, and decrying their work, either.
Just then, all gild braid and crisply uniformed magnificence, he had stepped out of nowhere into the path of …
El frowned and fought hard to steer the pendant away from Mallowfaer’s malice toward the other nearby mind …
… a weary Halance Tarandar, just as the senior chamberjack had started the long walk from his little cubbyhole of an office toward home and bed.
All these preparations for the council—plans, revisions, and new plans to sweep away the thrice-approved, thrice-modified revisions …
Halance was anxious to get some sleep before he had to present himself at the court—too soon, by the racing moon, too soon!—all over again for the next day’s work. However, the man who stood sneeringly under his nose, wearing his usual unpleasantly mocking smile, was eleven rungs above any senior chamberjack in the exacting ladder of palace rank, so Tarandar managed a smile.
“Tired, saer.”
“What?” Mallowfaer was playfully jovial. “How so? With all the—ahem—powers at your disposal?”
“Had to use those powers in my dealings with a certain noble lord, just now, to keep the arrangements right for the big day, and Cormyr safe, saer.”
“Oh? Which certain noble lord?”
“Not at liberty to say, saer. Sorry. Standing orders of Lord Ganrahast, saer; I’m sure you understand.”
The Master of Revels flushed a deep crimson that Elminster could feel through the pendant.
The whole palace knew Mallowfaer feared the Mage Royal and all war wizards, and deeply resented them and anyone else who had the authority to keep secrets from him, or to order others to do so. Every courtier who’d worked more than a few days at court knew the Master of Revels would never dare speak to Ganrahast. So Halance could be certain his words would never be checked for falsehood.
And Mallowfaer knew the darkly handsome young courtier standing so deferentially before him, eyes carefully downcast, understood full well the depths of his cowardice.
So he stepped aside with a wordless snarl and stalked away, whirling around three paces later to see if he could catch young Tarandar smirking.
The unseen Elminster rolled his eyes.
Rather than smirking, Mallowfaer had almost caught Halance yawning.
Gods, the senior chamberjack was thinking, but Mallowfaer is predictable …
It was a measure of Halance’s weariness that his feet had taken him down a side stair before he was quite finished with that thought. He passed the door guard at the foot of the stair with a trading of silent nods and went out