Elminster_ The Making of a Mage - Ed Greenwood [146]
There were real laughs this time and eagerness in their eyes.
"There's a supply train bound for the eastern fortresses just leaving the fort at Heldon," Helm said excitedly. "We were debating whether to risk striking at it… it'll gain us clothes an' mounts an' pack beasts an' wagons!"
"Good!" Elminster said, knowing he couldn't hold them back now if he wanted to. A hunger for battle was alight in their eyes; a flame he'd lit that would burn now until they-or the mage-lords-were all dead. There were shouts of eager approval. Helm collected the gazes of all the knights with his own eyes, turning as he drew his old sword and thrust it aloft.
"For Athalantar, and freedom!" he cried, voice ringing through the trees. Twenty blades flashed in reply as they echoed his words in a ragged chorus. And then they were gone, running hard south through the trees with their drawn swords flashing in their hands, Helm at their head.
"My thanks, Ruvaen," Elminster said to the leaves overhead. "Watch over them on their way south, won't ye?"
"Of course," the musical voice replied. "This is a battle no elf or man loyal to Athalantar should miss… and we must keep sharp watch in case there are other traitors among the knights."
"Aye," Elminster said soberly. "I hadn't thought of that. Well said. I go." He wove a brief gesture with one hand and vanished.
The two elves descended from the tree to make sure one of the knights' cooking-fires was truly out. Ruvaen looked south, shook his head, and rose from the last drifting tendrils of smoke.
"Hasty folk," the other elf said, shaking his own head. "No good ever comes of hot haste."
"No good," Ruvaen agreed. "Yet they'll rule this world before our day is done, with recklessness and neverending numbers."
"What will the Realms look like then, I wonder?" the other elf replied darkly, looking south through the trees where the men had gone.
* * * * *
Eight days later, the golden sun of evening saw two crows alight in a stunted tree just inside the walls of Hastarl. The branches danced under the weight of the birds for a moment- and then were suddenly bare. Two spiders scuttled down the scarred and fissured tree trunk, and into cracks in the wall of a certain inn.
The winecellar beneath the streets was always deserted at highsun-which was a good thing, for the two spiders crawled out into a musty corner, moved a careful distance apart… and suddenly two short, stout, pox-scarred women of elder years stood facing each other. They surveyed each other's tousled white hair, rotting clothing, and sagging, rotund bodies-and in unison reached to scratch themselves.
"My, but ye look beautiful, my dear," Elminster quavered sardonically.
Myrjala pinched his cheek and cackled, "Oh, you say the sweetest things, lass!"
Together they waddled through the cellars, seeking the stairs up into the stables.
* * * * *
Seldinor Stormcloak sat in his study, thick tomes on shelves all around him, and frowned. For two days now he'd been trying to magically graft the cracked, severed lips of a human female- all that was left of the last wench he'd seized for his pleasure-onto the unfinished golem standing before him. He could make them knit with the purple-gray, sagging flesh around the hole wherein he'd set the teeth, yes… To make them move again, as they should and not of themselves, though, was proving a problem. Why now, after so many successful golems? What had cursed this one?
He sighed, swung his legs down from the desk, and sprang to his feet. If he left the fleshcreep spell hanging and brought it down as he sent lightnings through the thing… well, now. He raised his hands and began to speak the complicated syllables with the swift sureness of long practice.
Glowing light flashed, and he leaned forward eagerly to watch the lips bind themselves to the raw, knotted flesh of the faceless head. They trembled. Seldinor smiled