Elminster's Daughter - Ed Greenwood [108]
The mighty innermost shields of the sanctum hummed and pulsed around them as she unconcernedly started unbuckling straps and shucking armor in all directions.
Vangerdahast blinked at the sight and swiftly looked away. He cleared his throat loudly, took another swig… and slyly looked back at her again.
Ignoring him, Myrmeen plucked out the towel that all wise Cormyrean warriors keep strapped inside their breastplates beside the spare dagger, towelled herself dry, and reached for the largest skillet.
"It astonishes me," she observed as she murmured the word he used to ignite whatever she'd left ready in the firebox, and went to the pantry cold-shelf for the crock of hog-fat and the string-sack hanging near it for some onions, "how you managed to keep such a round little belly on you, eating as you did."
"Well, lass," Vangerdahast grunted amiably over his drinking-horn, "I was alone and therefore relaxed. However tardily I thought of victuals and clumsily I prepared them, I could dine at leisure. No stress, see you?"
Myrmeen plucked down one of the kitchen knives she'd sharpened and commenced to do deft murder upon the onions. One thing for the old windbeard's magic: His cantrip made the stove hot in a hurry. She cast a glance at the wood ready at hand, judged it wasn't time to add any yet, and made busy greasing the pan. "How often did you end up groaning your guts out over the sink or yon bucket? Thrice I've scrubbed it and still can't get rid of the sick smell! No stress then, I suppose?"
Vangey sipped, cast a surprised eye at how little remained in his horn, and observed to the low-beamed ceiling, "The trouble with overclever lasses is their tongues. Sharp like swords, and always jabbing jabbing jabbing at a man."
Myrmeen snorted as the first onions hit the pan with a loud hiss and replied, "The trouble with overclever wizards is their hog-headed-stubborn insistence on always being right, which really means the world must do everything their way. Now, if they were really brilliant enough to choose the right way as their way, those tongues of their lasses could get a rest, and there'd be no jab jab jabbery at all!"
Vangerdahast chuckled and brought his booted feet up on the footstool. It had been months since it had been handy to do that with. Someone-Mreen here-must have cleared all those old scrolls off it, taken it out of the corner, and put it ready for him. Thoughtful lass.
He leaned back at ease and toyed with thoughts of what barbed comments he could make next to hear her laugh again and bring another thrust back his way. He hadn't chatted this way for years.
The retired Royal Magician of Cormyr sighed with contentment and drained the last of his amberfire, as the warm smell of frying onions rose around him.
* * * * *
The blind-shield behind him flickered as someone passed through it, and an anxious voice asked quickly, "Huldyl?"
For the briefest of instants, Huldyl Rauthur froze in fear-then clenched his fists, drew in breath, and turned, face serene and eyes widening in unruffled inquiry. "Yes?"
Pheldemar Daunthrae stood in the guardroom, slightly out of breath and sporting the beginnings of what would soon be splendid bruises. He held his rod ready in his hand as if expecting a fight.
Huldyl eyed it then looked up at its bearer. "Some sort of fight?"
"We've lost about eight of the sentinel horrors, as far as I can tell," the older War Wizard reported tersely. "Intruders-at least two, though I saw only one of them. Didn't look like warriors or mages or-or anything except Marsemban merchants, actually. They were carrying some sort of enchanted blast-bombs."
"Bombs?"
"Throw one, hit helmed horror, horror blows apart. Little circular silver disc-things, with runes on them in Thayan or some other Eastern script. No fuse, no trigger words, just throw, hit, and-boom!"
"They got away, these intruders, without leaving any