Elminster_ The Making of a Mage - Ed Greenwood [53]
A sudden thought came to Elminster, and he grinned. "Hannibur's?"
Farl grinned back. "His snores'd wake a corpse."
"Exactly." They laughed and hastened back through the dark streets and alleys of the city, avoiding aroused bands of arms-men who were tramping aimlessly about in the night, looking for a running youth in dark leathers and an old mage strolling along in the air-and no doubt inwardly hoping they'd find neither.
As the half-light that heralds dawn stole down the river and into Hastarl, El and Farl settled down on Hannibur's roof, wondering at the silence from below. "What's become of his snoring?" El murmured, and Farl shrugged his own puzzlement in reply.
Then they heard the small sound from below that meant Hannibur had slid open the eye-panel on his back door. They exchanged raised eyebrows and bent to look down into the alley- in time to see Shandathe Llaerin, called "the Shadow" for her smoothly silent ways, and perhaps the most beautiful woman in all Hastarl, come lightly up the alley to Hannibur's back door. They heard her say softly, "I'm here at last, love."
"At last," the baker rumbled as he drew the door warily open. "I thought ye'd never come. Come to the bed ye belong in, now."
Elminster and Farl exchanged delighted glances, and clasped hands with fierce joy in the night. Then, all thoughts of sleep gone, they settled down to listen to what befell in the room below.
And were fast asleep within seven breaths.
*****
The hot sun woke the two exhausted, filthy thieves sometime late in the morning… and once they were awake, the smell of fresh-baked rolls and loaves wafting up from Hannibur's shop made sure they stayed that way.
Stomachs growling, the two thieves peered carefully down at the bedroom below. They could just see Shandathe's elbow as she slept the day peacefully away.
"Don't seem right, that she should sleep, when we can't," Farl complained, rubbing his eyes.
"Let her sleep," Elminster replied. "She's doubtless earned it. Come." They climbed carefully down the crumbling back sills and cross-beams of the shop next door and went off to the silver-bit baths-only to find folk lined up.
"Whence this sudden urge for cleanliness, goodsir?" Farl asked a sausage vendor they knew by sight.
He frowned at them. "Haven't ye heard? The mage royal and a dozen other mages were killed last night! The dirge-walk begins at highsun."
"Killed? Just who could manage to slay the mage royal?"
"Ah." The sausage seller leaned close confidentially, pretending not to see the eight or so folk who crowded or leaned out of the line to listen. "There's some who says it was a mage they awakened from sleeping in a tomb all these years since the fall of Netheril!"
"Nay," a woman standing near put in, " 'Twas-"
"And there's some," the sausage seller went on, raising his voice to ride over her, "what says it was a poor wretch they caught an' were going to eat, alive, so they say, for some foul magic-but when they sat down at the table, he turned into a dragon, and burned 'em all! Others say 'twas a beholder, or a mind flayer, or summat worse!"
"Nay, nay," the woman said, pushing in, "that's not it at all-"
"But meself," the sausage-vendor said, elbowing her back and raising his voice again, so that it echoed back off the stone wall across the alley, "I think the first tale I heard is the true one: their wickedness was punished by a visit from Mystra herself!"
"Yes! That's it! 'Twas just that as happened, I tell thee!" The woman was hopping up and down in her excitement now; her capacious bosom heaved and rolled like tied bundles on the docks in high winds. "The mage royal thought he had a spell that would bring her to heel like a dog so he could use her power to destroy all wizards but ours and conquer all the lands from here to the
Great Sea beyond Elembar! But he was wrong, and she-"
"She turned them all to boars, thrust spits up their behinds, and seared 'em in the hearth fires!" The