Elminster_ The Making of a Mage - Ed Greenwood [107]
The guards lounging on benches behind the gate heaved themselves to their feet and picked up their halberds. Armsmen of Athalantar, or she was a magelord. They looked bored and brutal.
Elmara shifted her pack to better conceal the small spell-things she'd taken into her palm, and trudged up to the gate.
"Halt, woman," the swordcaptain of the guard said offhandedly. "Your name and trade?"
Elmara faced the officer across the gate and said politely, "The first is none of thy affair; as to the second, I work magic."
The armsmen drew back, their boredom gone in an instant. Halberds flashed as they came down over the gate to menace the lone woman. The swordcaptain's brows drew together in a frown that had made lesser men turn and run, but the stranger stood her ground.
"Mages who do not serve our king are not welcome here," said the swordcaptain. As he spoke, his men were moving steadily sideways around the ends of the gate, weapons at the ready, moving to encircle Elmara with steel.
El ignored them. "And what king might that be?"
"King Belaur, of course," the swordcaptain snapped, and Elmara felt the cold point of a halberd prodding her lower back.
"On your knees, now," the swordcaptain snapped, "and await our local lord mage, who will demand to know further of your business. Best you use a more respectful tongue with him than you did with us."
Elmara smiled tightly and raised one empty hand. She made a small gesture and replied, "Oh, I shall."
Behind him, the first gasps began, and the point probing at her spine was suddenly gone. All around, the guardsmen staggered, cried out or vomited, white-faced, and sank to their knees. One kept going, bonelessly, to the turf, his halberd dropping from loose, empty hands.
"What-what're you doing?" the swordcaptain gulped, face tightening in pain. "Magic-?"
"A small spell that makes ye feel what it is to have a sword sliding through your guts," the young, hawk-nosed maid said calmly. "But if it confuses thee…"
The swordcaptain felt a sudden twinge in his stomach, and in the same instant there was a flash in the air before him. He stared down-to see a shining steel blade standing forth from his belly, his own dark red blood running down the blade. He choked, clutched a vain hand to quell the wrenching, searing pain in his stomach-and then the sword and the pain both vanished.
The warrior stared down in astonishment at the unmarked leather over his belly. Then his eyes rose slowly, reluctantly, to meet those of the young woman, who smiled at him pleasantly and raised her other hand.
The guardcaptain paled, opened his mouth to say something, jaw quivering, and then fled, followed a moment later by the rest of the guard. Elmara watched them go, smiling a little, and then walked on along the road, toward the inn.
*****
The sign above the door said Myrkiel's Rest, and merchants had told her it was the best (near the only) inn in Narthil. Elmara found it pleasant enough, and took a chair against a wall at the back of the room, where she could see who came in. She ordered a meal from the stout proprietress and asked if she could use a room for a few breaths, offering a regal if she could do it undisturbed.
The innkeeper's eyebrows rose, but without a word she took Elmara's coin and showed her a room with a door that could be barred. When Elmara returned to her seat, humming the verse "O for an iron guard!" her meal was waiting, hot butter-bread and rabbit stew.
It was good. She was most of the way through it when the front door of the Rest burst open, and armsmen with drawn swords pushed in. An angry-looking man in robes of red and silver strode in their midst.
"Ho, Asmartha!" the splendidly garbed man snapped. "Who is this outlaw you shelter?" With an imperious jerk of his head, he indicated the young woman sitting in the corner. The innkeeper turned angry eyes on Elmara, but the hawk-nosed maid was calmly licking the last sauce from a rabbit-bone, and paid no heed.
Motioning his armsmen to stay around him, the man in robes strode grandly toward Elmara's table.