Elminster Must Die_ The Sage of Shadowdale - Ed Greenwood [90]
The word seemed to roll away across vast distances, though it seemed no louder than it should have been—and at a stroke, the room was darker, the air singing with sudden tension. He looked around in case something was slithering or creeping out of the darkness to come up behind him, but saw nothing.
“Tar lammitruh arondur halamoata,” he added, loudly and slowly. He had no idea what language—if it was a language—he was speaking, but it sounded old and grand and menacing. Very menacing.
The room went colder still.
“Tan thom tanlartar,” he read out—and flinched as the chalice in his hand erupted in weird blue fire. Raging flames that raced down his arm to the elbow and then wreathed it and the chalice in an endless, soundless conflagration. That held no heat at all and caused him no pain, only a disturbing, bone-deep tingling.
“Larasse larasse thulea,” he added.
And shivered in the sudden icy chill—as the blue flames sprang from the chalice in a flood, like a gigantic snake or eel pouring forth from the goblet to the floor and then rebounding up again, growing larger and taller … man-high. With a darkness at their heart that slowly became a man. A man standing facing him and smiling, clad in a dark and nondescript leather war-harness. Boots, sword, and dagger. Dark eyes with those blue flames dancing in their depths—and a ceaselessly burning shroud of blue flames around the man’s body that ignited nothing, charred nothing, and seemed to cause the man no pain at all.
As he shifted his stance, one hand falling to his sword hilt and the other coming to rest on his belt, and smilingly faced Marlin Stormserpent.
Who asked carefully, “You obey me, y-yes?”
The man nodded curtly. “I do. And will.”
The lordling let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding and asked, “And you are?”
“Treth Halonter. The best warrior of the Nine, or was … before Myrkul.”
“Before Myrkul?” A dead god, something to do with the dead. Old Lord Bones, that was what the ballads called him. “Before you died?”
“Before Myrkul did this to us and bent us to his love of death.” The ghost’s smile never wavered.
Marlin peered hastily at his notes. “Is there—what must I avoid doing to prevent you turning on me?”
“Nothing. We know and obey the one who summons us forth.”
“And you’ll, uh, go back into the chalice when I say the right words?”
“Or just command me to. Myrkul was not interested in allowing me to deceive, betray, or turn on you. This is no fireside faerie tale, man. I am your slave.”
Marlin glanced at his sword, still lying where he had left it.
“How many of the Nine can I command at once?”
Halonter shrugged. “I know not. Are you given to fits of madness?”
In the depths of young Lord Stormserpent’s mind, Manshoon smiled.
This was going to be fun.
Marlin discovered he wasn’t just drenched in sweat; he was shaking with exhaustion. The two cold smiles facing him felt crushingly heavy, as if he was staggering under the weight of two suits of armor at once.
Those unwavering smiles belonged to the two who stood facing him wreathed in glowing blue flames that burned nothing—but drank energies from living beings they touched, if they willed it so. Or so they claimed.
Two blueflame ghosts who could stride through stone walls at will, but nothing living. If he commanded them to, they could literally walk right through the walls of the palace—leaving them whole and unmarred—and out into Suzail. Again, so they said.
Not that he had any way of proving wrong anything they said, except by watching as they tried to follow his orders. He would order them to walk through the wards and the walls beyond them, in a breath or two, and see.
He’d already commanded them both back into the sword and the cup he’d brought them forth from, and had brought them out again. They assured him they could sense where those items were, no matter how far he took them, and would return to them, but “go into them” only if he was present to command them. Unless or until his