Elminster_ The Making of a Mage - Ed Greenwood [48]
"Do you know where you are?" the mage royal asked coldly.
"This room, I know not-some grand house, surely. In Hastarl, in the Realm of the Stag."
"And what is it that binds you?" Magelord Hawklyn leaned forward as he spoke those eager words. Lamplight caught gem-adorned ward-runes on his dark robes, and they flashed as he moved, drawing eyes to him. He looked lean and dangerous as he spread long-fingered hands before him on the table and half rose to challenge the wizard in the grip of the chain.
The Magister looked at the chain with mild curiosity, rather like a man surveying sale-goods after idly entering a shop with an unspectacular facade. He reached out to touch it, ignoring the sudden lightnings that spat and crackled, blinding-white, around his wrinkled hand, tapped it thoughtfully, and said, "It appears to be the Crystal Chain of Binding, forged long ago in Netheril, and thought to be lost. Is it that, or some new chain of thy devising?"
"I shall ask the questions," Neldryn Hawklyn commanded grandly, "and you will give answer-or I'll use this crossbow, and Faerun will have a new Magister." As he spoke, a cocked and loaded crossbow floated into view from behind a curtained door. Startled looks sped between the merchants sitting around the table.
"Oh," the old man said mildly, "is this a challenge, then?"
"Not unless you defy me. Consider it a threat hanging over you. Obey or perish-the same alternatives any king gives his subjects."
"You must live in rather more barbaric lands than I am used to," the Magister said in a dry voice. "Can it be, Neldryn Hawklyn, you have reshaped Athalantar into a tyranny of mages? I have heard things of you and your fellow magelords… and they were not good things."
"I don't doubt it," Hawklyn sneered. "Now hold your tongue 'til I bid you speak-or a new Magister will speak, in your stead."
"Do you then seek to control when and how the Magister speaks?" The old man's tone seemed almost sad.
"I do." The crossbow drifted nearer, rising menacingly to hang above the table, aimed at the old man's face.
"Mystra forbids that," the Magister said quietly, "and so I have no choice left. I must answer your challenge."
His body suddenly boiled into billowing vapors, faded, and was gone. The chains hung around emptiness for a moment, and then crashed to the floor.
The crossbow jerked as it fired-but the quarrel sped through emptiness, leaping across the room to strike a hanging shield and rebound. It cracked against the stone wall in a corner, fell, and flew no more.
"Let all that is hidden be revealed!" Mage Royal Hawklyn thundered, standing with his arms raised. Then he recoiled; the old man melted out of the air right in front of his face, sitting calmly on nothing in the air just above the table.
Half a dozen spells lashed out as alarmed wizards saw a clear chance to slay. Amid the leaping magic, terrified merchants upset chairs in their haste to bolt from the table. Food sprayed into the air as ravening flame, bolts of lightning, and mist-shedding beams of coldness cut the air, meeting in hissing chaos where the old man-had been. He was gone, instants before deadly magic struck… if he'd ever been there at all.
"Those who live by the slaying spell," the Magister said mildly from the balcony-Elminster whirled and gaped in terror as the man in robes suddenly appeared beside him-"must expect, in the end, to die by it."
He raised his wrinkled hands. From each finger a ruby ray of light stabbed out across the room. Solid things they touched boiled silently away. El gulped as he saw legs standing with no body left above them-and beyond, a sobbing wizard crash to the floor as his frantically running feet were suddenly gone from under him. Amid the screams and crashes the rays slowly faded, leaving only spreading flames behind, where they'd scorched wood or singed tapestries.
The rays were still dying away as men all over the room started to rise into the air-whole or in remains, floating slowly straight up, regardless of their struggles or frantic spellcastings. Glass