Elminster's Daughter - Ed Greenwood [61]
The Simbul sighed. "Mystra's will be done," she murmured then turned suddenly, caught hold of his beard, and brought his lips to where she could kiss them fiercely.
As she always seemed to, she moved hungrily against him, melting into him…
"Take care of yourself," she whispered when they were both breathless and lack of air finally forced her to draw back. "I waited so long for you-don't leave me lonely now."
Elminster blinked at her. "Lass?Ye waited for me…?"
"To notice and then to love me," she replied, eyes very dark. "For myself and not as one of Mystra's daughters."
She shaped a spell that called darkness, outlined by a sprinkling of tiny stars, out of the air in front of her. "I loved your mind for centuries before you knew who I was, Old Mage. Now I love your character, too." She made a face, and added, "Your body, however: that you could have taken better care of, to be sure. Old wreck."
Elminster lifted his eyebrows, held up his hands with an airy flourish, murmured a swift incantation-and melted into the shape of a tall, broad-shouldered young man of rugged good looks and raven-black hair. He gave her a sparkling grin.
She snorted, struck a breathlessly excited hands-to-mouth pose like a young lass about to swoon-and slid back out of it to wink at him. Stepping back into her darkness, the Queen of Aglarond murmured, "My old wreck," and was gone, taking her rift with her, stars and all.
The transformed Elminster smiled fondly at where she'd been for a moment, shaking his head, then made a face of his own. "In those centuries of loving my mind, did she watch where my wandering body went and with whom, I wonder?"
He chuckled, shrugged, and strode down the cold, dark, and cobwebbed passage.
The damp made the spiderwebs thick, jeweled-with-droplets curtains. Elminster pushed through them unconcernedly, acquiring a marbled pattern of silken filth on his robes, and when he reached the remembered crossway, he turned left.
Cold blue fire flared in the emptiness in front of his nose immediately, but he strolled right through that ward-spell-and the next one, too.
By then a sleepy-eyed War Wizard, barefoot in her robes, was confronting him furiously. A rod that winked and glowed from half a dozen attached side-wands was cradled in her arms and aimed right at his face.
"Halt or be destroyed!" she snapped, as her fingers triggered a magic that sent bells chiming in a dozen chambers, near and far. Whatever befell now, this obviously not-so-secret passage would be swarming with War Wizards in a few minutes. Until then, 'twas her duty to prevent this stranger from-
He stepped forward, and she snarled and triggered three of the wands at once.
Their flash and roar almost blinded War Wizard Belantra, and sent her staggering back as the passage flagstones rippled under her feet in a great Shockwave. In the distance, behind the broad-shouldered intruder, stones fell from the passage ceiling, amid much dust, and tumbled away.
He kept coming, as if the ravening magic hadn't touched him at all.
"Back,demon!" Belantra snapped, sudden fear rising inside her. No one should be able to withstand such a blast! Even if the handsome man before her was mere illusion, the magic that presented it should have been shredded, and-
One long-fingered hand grasped the tip of one of her wands, even as she furiously triggered it again. Calmly ignoring Belantra, the intruder lifted the wand so its emerald beam of flesh-melting fury was trained not at his chest, but directly into his eyes.
Bright blue those eyes shone as they met hers for a moment, winked, and dropped to examine the wand again.
"Ah, yes. I helped Vangey enspell this. Now, after all these years, he wastes it in some sort of toy 'mightywand' gonne, such as the Lantanna fashion?" The handsome intruder shook his head. "I thought I'd taught him better than that."
He looked up again, gently pushing the wand aside with one fingertip, and asked, "What might thy name be, lass?"
"I'm a War Wizard of Cormyr," Belantra snapped, "and I'll ask the questions