Elminster Must Die_ The Sage of Shadowdale - Ed Greenwood [85]
“I don’t keep track,” came the gruff reply. “Always seemed a mite childish, all this keeping score. Those who do tend to be those I dislike. Now, don’t step forward, whatever ye do. The results would be … unpleasant.”
“You’re sending what they hurl right back at them, aren’t you?”
“Wise lass; I am indeed. And I’m destroying no palaces this day—at least, that’s my present intention. Yon collapse was no collapse at all.”
“But if you try to scare them away, those who’ll flee will come running right into our laps!”
“Oh? Has thy lap greeted anyone, yet?”
“No, but—”
“More years ago than I care to remember,” the Sage of Shadowdale announced, straightening out of his crouch with a brief wince, “ye may recall I had a hand in crafting some of the wards cast here. Without the Weave, I can’t twist them much now—there are so many later castings—but in some places I can temporarily cause a room or passage to, ah, adjoin another that’s really halfway across the palace. Wherefore—heh—a lot of guardians, whether fearful or enthusiastic, are now sprinting along the torchwalk outside the Hall of the Warrior King, heading for the royal court at a pace that shouldn’t break too many necks, if the door at the end of that passage is as flimsy as I remember it being. I do hope they’ve repaired the little bridge over the silverfin pond, or more than a few loyal defenders of Cormyr are shortly going to wind up rather wet.”
Storm smirked, despite herself. “How far do your magics reach? Into the Room of the Watchful Sentinel itself—or are all the honor guard undoubtedly waiting for us in there going to be standing untouched, crowded to the very walls, and itching to fell Elminster, infamous enemy of the Dragon Crown?”
The Sage of Shadowdale favored her with one of his more sour looks. “D’ye think I started spinning spells yestermorn?”
“No,” Storm replied dryly, “I believe you only started thinking of your own neck about then. Yes?”
“Stormy one, when did ye start wanting to take all the fun out of things? Eh?”
A man in ankle-length robes came staggering out of the roiling dust just then, a wand in one shaking hand starting to spit sparks, so Storm ducked into a low lunge that gave her reach enough to shove him into the wall.
The young and startled wizard of war rebounded off it hard, head lolling and wand cartwheeling away, so Storm didn’t bother braining him with her sword hilt. She just glided out of the way and let the handy, hard flagstones feed him that fate instead.
“Yon overbold unfortunate wasn’t one of those waiting for us in the passage,” Elminster remarked, “so I’d say the portal guardians are coming out after us. Time to send my shield of return spell in to greet them—and let them harm themselves with everything they hurl at it. I am, after all, a hand that brings about the fitting justice of the gods.”
“We all were, we Chosen,” Storm reminded him sadly. “When Mystra still spoke to us and the Weave still sang.”
“Not now, lass,” Elminster grunted. “I’m busy.” The walls and ceiling ahead of them seemed to shudder, as the very air around them seemed to snarl and then whirl and rush loudly.
“Keep thy sword up and handy,” he added a little grimly a shrieking moment or two later. What sounded like the wail of a gale-force wind was rising around them, as the Sage of Shadowdale wrestled his magic sideways and through a doorway that wasn’t made to accommodate it—at the same time as a dozen or more mages inside the room beyond that door hurled their own spells at the pinwheel of intruding magic, seeking to destroy it.
Elminster’s face was suddenly drenched with sweat, so much of it that his nose dripped a stream like a village tap and his beard became a small waterfall.
“El?” Storm asked sharply, eyeing him as he went pale. “Is there anything I could—should—do?”
“No,” the Old Mage snapped. “Not unless ye—”
A section of the passage wall ahead of them screamed like an agonized child and abruptly