Elminster_ The Making of a Mage - Ed Greenwood [52]
The feeling lasted until he'd clambered out of the water onto a disused dock and started the cold, dripping walk home. If he'd been Farl, he'd have taken his knowledge of who'd died in that chamber to swoop down on a hand's-worth of houses this very night and seize riches their owners would never claim before relatives or lesser vultures knew man or treasure was missing, and be safely gone into the night.
"But I'm not Farl," Elminster told the night, "and not even all that good a thief-what I am is a good runner."
To prove it, he outran the armsman who came around a corner just then, halberd in hand, who with a startled shout recognized the youth he'd almost spitted in a stairway in Havilyn's house not twenty breaths ago. Their pounding pursuit took them along a winding street lined with the walled gardens of the wealthy. As they ran under overhanging trees, a dark shadow reached down from one of them and struck the armsmen hard and accurately in the face with a cobblestone.
The man pitched to the cobbles with a clatter, and Farl dropped lightly down into the road, calling, "Eladar!"
Elminster turned at the top of the road and looked back. His friend stood with hands on hips, shaking his head.
"Can't leave you alone for an evening, I see," Farl said as El puffed his way back down the street.
As he came up, his friend was kneeling on the guard's neck, expertly feeling for purses, spare daggers, medallions, and other items of interest. "Something important's happened," Farl said, not looking up. "Havilyn came running in, all out of breath, and said something to Fentarn-and we were all ordered out of the house, and the armsmen after us to be sure we were turned out into the street-while the lot of them ran somewhere-ran, El, I tell you… I didn't know any high-and-mighty merchants remembered how to run…"
"I was where the important thing happened," Elminster said quietly. "That's why this one was chasing me."
Farl looked up at him, eyes alight. "Tell," was all he said.
"Later," Elminster replied. "Let me describe the dead first, and once ye've named them, we can visit whichever unsuspecting incipient houses of grief bid fair to have the heaviest loot lying around for the taking."
Farl grinned fiercely. "Suppose we do just that, O prince of thieves." In his excitement and the effort of lifting the guard's body, he did not see Elminster stiffen at the word 'prince.'
*****
"We're fair out of room in there," Farl said in satisfaction when they were safely away from the boarded-up shop where their takings were cached. "Now let's go somewhere where we can talk and not be seen."
"The burial ground again?"
"Fair enough-once we make sure it's free of lovers."
They did so, and Elminster told Farl the tale. His friend shook his head at El's description of the Magister. "I thought he was just a legend," he protested.
"Nay," El said quietly, "he was frightening-ah, but it was magnificent, the way he ignored their best spells, and calmly judged each and struck them down. The power!"
Farl cast a sidelong glance at his friend. Elminster was staring up at the moon, eyes bright. "To have that much power, someday," he murmured, "and never have to run from an armsman again!"
"I thought you hated wizards."
"I-I do… magelords, at least. There's something about seeing spells hurled, though, that-"
"Fascinates, eh? I've felt that." Farl nodded in the moonlight. "You'll get over it once you've tried to fire a wand or speak a spell over and over again and nothing happens. You learn to admire it from a distance and keep well clear-or be swiftly slain. Gods-bedamned wizards." He yawned. "Well, a good night's work.… Let's get some slumber under Selune-or we'll be snoring somewhere when full day comes again."
"Here?"
"Nay-two of those dead, at least, have family vaults right here-and what if their servants, sent to clean up the tombs and the brush