Elminster_ The Making of a Mage - Ed Greenwood [89]
One room was carpeted in red velvet: a dancing-floor ringed with sparkling hanging curtains crafted of gems threaded onto fine wire. Another held smooth whitestone statues, perfectly lifelike in their size and detail and depicting beautiful human maidens with wings arching from their shoulders. Some were speaking statues, who greeted all intruders with soft, sighing voices, uttering poetry a thousand years dead.
"Such shouldst be my only joy, to behold thee, but yet mine eyes see the sun and the moon and cannot but compare them to thee… and thou art the brightest ennobled star of my seeing.…"
"Look to find me no more, where silent towers stare down upon the stars, trapped in still pools of dark water.…"
"What is this but the mist-dreams of bold faerie, wherein nothing is as it seems and all that one can touch, and kiss, are but dreams?"
Marveling, the Blades stalked among them, careful to touch nothing, as the endless, repetitious sighing of the unfeeling voices echoed all around them. "Gods," even the unshakable Tarthe was heard to mutter, "to see such beauty…"
"And not to be able to take it with us," one of the thieves murmured, voice deep with loss and longing. For once, the priests felt as he did, or so their nods and awestruck gawking said, if their mouths did not.
The room beyond the chamber of speaking statues was dark but lit by a rainbow of tiny, glittering lights-sparks of many hues that darted and soared about the chamber like schooling fish, a riot of swirling emerald and gold and ruby that never went out.
Lightning, they all thought, and hung back. Tarthe finally said, "Gralkyn… your foray, I fear."
One of the thieves sighed eloquently and set about the long process of divesting himself of every item of metal, from the dozen or so lockpicks behind his ears and elsewhere on his person to the small forest of blades tucked and slid into boots, under clothes, and into nearly every hollow in his slim, almost bony body. When he was done, he stood almost naked. He swallowed, once, said to Tarthe, "This is a very large thing you owe me," and strode forward on catlike feet into the midst of the lights.
They reacted immediately, darting away like frightened minnows and then circling about, faster and faster, until they rushed in on him from all sides with frightening speed, clung- the watching Blades saw Gralkyn wriggle, as if tickled by many unseen hands-and cloaked him in glittering lights.
He looked like an emperor robed all in gems, and stared down at himself in wonder for a time before he said, "Right. Well… who's next?"
The other thief, Ithym, came into the chamber hesitantly, but the lights did not move from around Gralkyn, and nothing else seemed to happen. Sighing out a tensely held breath of his own, Ithym glided over to his fellow thief and stretched out a hand toward the lights, but then drew it back. Gralkyn nodded at the wisdom of this.
Ithym went on into the far, dim regions of the room and moved about in soft silence for a time before returning far enough for them to see him trace a square in the air: there was a door beyond.
Tarthe took out his cloak, raked all Gralkyn's discarded metal in it, bundled it onto his shoulder, and strode into the room next, sword drawn. Instantly some of the lights drifted away from the thief in an inquisitive stream, heading for the tall warrior in full armor. The tensely watching Blades saw sudden sweat on Tarthe's forehead as he strode toward the second thief. The lights swirled around Tarthe as buzzing flies survey a walking man… and then returned slowly to Gralkyn.
The warrior shook his head in relief, and they heard him whisper hoarsely, "Now, Ithym-where's this door?"
A few scufflings later his voice floated back to them out of the gloom. "Hither, all! The way beyond looks clear!"
Cautiously, one by one, the other Blades hurried or edged past Gralkyn, until at last only the thief in his cloak of lights was left in the room. He walked calmly up to the door, peered through it, and saw the Blades standing anxiously in a little corridor that led into a