Elminster Must Die_ The Sage of Shadowdale - Ed Greenwood [64]
Elminster stayed with the chamberjack’s mind, hoping to learn something of the council preparations.
Halance Tarandar was stumbling-tired, but smiling.
Arclath Argustagus Delcastle was an exhausting friend.
His thoughts rushed through some of the airy nonsense Arclath had declaimed to the Realms around … then, for some odd reason, Tarandar found himself in another memory. He was staring into the dark eyes of that mask dancer at the club, posed as still as a statue in front of their table. Her arms had been flung wide to display all he was supposed to stare at … yet it was her eyes he remembered.
Because they’d been watching him intently.
Then Halance Tarandar realized what the subtle changes in her gaze had meant, and stopped in midstride, a little chill finding its way down his back.
She’d been listening to their every word.
Why?
“She’s my kin, all right,” Elminster muttered to Storm, letting go of the pendant. “Taking as much interest in doings at court as we do. Too much interest for her continued health, as it happens; yon courtier, a kindly and overworked young chamberjack, has just realized how much attention she was paying to them when young Lord Delcastle took him and a friend out to the club she dances at. Right now he’s wondering whom she’s working for, or what scheme she’s hatching herself. He’ll report as much to Delcastle, too, but thankfully for her—and us—he’s too falling-down tired to do it yet. We should be able to get to her first.”
“And bring Ganrahast and Vainrence and all their keen wizards down on her head?” Storm asked warningly.
El gave her a scowl. “She’s young and of my blood,” he growled. “She should welcome a little adventure.”
“A little, yes,” Storm replied. “I’m not so sure she’ll stay smilingly welcoming when half the realm comes after her. We’re used to it, remember?”
“Hmmph. Better for Cormyr if all its younglings happily take on anything the world hurls at them.”
“You’re sounding like a gruff old noble,” the silver-haired bard teased him.
“I’m feeling like a gruff old noble,” Elminster snapped back. “Distinctly underappreciated and beset by suspicious wizards of war at every stride I take. Not to mention experiencing a glut of foes that’s flourishing, not diminishing.”
Storm shrugged. “As I said, we’re used to that. Ride easy, El. Yes, you had to destroy more wizards and highknights than Cormyr should lose, but it hasn’t gotten really dark yet, for us or for young Amarune.”
“That,” the Sage of Shadowdale muttered, “is precisely what’s souring me. I’ve a feeling this is going to go very bad.”
“And I have a feeling you’re not going to be disappointed,” Storm sighed, putting a comforting arm around his shoulders.
He gave her another scowl, but it faded into something close to a wry grin.
Ere he shook his head and told her, “Just two of us, lass, until we secure Amarune’s loyalty and get her competent enough to do what we do and keep herself alive. Then we’ll be three. Not enough, not near enough.”
The air around them dimmed, then, as an enchantment on the cache abruptly took hold of them both.
Ganrahast had cast trap spells on the remaining caches that slowed every movement of someone who violated a cache without murmuring the correct password or wearing the right sort of enchanted ring.
Elminster and Storm had time to recognize what was happening and start to say so to each other, eyes meeting in dismay … but they lacked even a moment more to do anything about it.
“Such a simple trap! It seems the Chosen of Mystra are mighty no longer. So you are brought low at last, old foe. At last.”
The glow of the conjured spell-scene was by far the brightest light in the vast and gloomy cavern. In its heart, Elminster and Storm stood despondently facing each other in a secret passage deep in the royal palace, their faces grim as they started to speak words so slowly it would take them hours to finish.
“At last,” the beholder said again, smiling crookedly.
It was a very big smile, because the eye tyrant was as large across as the front door of any grand