Rise of the Blade - Charles Moffat [44]
"Whats wrong with the blade the way it is?"
"Its evil. Evil in a way I can't even begin to explain. I could feel it probing my brain at one point." The warrior turned away and the mage got the hint that the Doctor didn't want to talk about the sword.
Their comraderie and small talk coming to an end, the night felt very cold right then and they both felt it. "By Mystra its cold out here," Khelben said with an involuntary shiver.
"No," Pierce said as he looked up into the sky and held out a hand to catch a snowflake. "Its just something in the air." He furrowed his brow and looked at the ground. "Khelben, can you make the snow come down a bit harder?"
"You're asking me to play with the weather? Sorry, I don't have the right spell memorized to do something as hard as that. Why?"
"If we could, we'd be able to see the foot prints in this alley, assuming its rarely used."
The archmage frowned in deep thought. "Stand closer to me. I've got something that will work." He paused and quickly cast a protective sphere of energy around the two of them.
"You're going to summon an air elemental?" Pierce guessed more than probed. "You better summon it to the east so its wind doesn't ruin the tracks." The Doctor didn't like the idea of elemental spirits at all, especially those of fire and rock. On his first adventures with Witter and Draque he had learned the value of respecting those awe inspiring creatures. His mentor Witter, more than anyone else had taught him that elementals were things to be taken quite seriously. Even dragons fear them with good reason.
The mage nodded and turned about to face the blank wall of the building behind the Yawning Portal. Taking out the required components, Khelben spoke the arcane words and then became silent.
It didn't happen soon, but that was normal. Even so, it took longer than normal as the breeze gatherered together in front of the pair, swirling together until it formed a visual, seething mass of blowing snow that resembled a miniature tornado. Two black dots stared back at the Harpers from within the tornado. Pierce knew immediately that this elemental was larger and more powerful than normal and that Khelben had not been expecting this change of events.
The archmage remained unimpressed by the appearance of the elemental noble and he displayed that as he spoke sternly and evenly. "Make it snow more so we may follow the tracks in the dirt left behind by our prey. Do not ruin the tracks however with your wind."
The task was not an easy one for even an air noble but the being complied. A moment later the snow angled down in lines about them. It took a minute to discern the difference in tracks between Pierce, Khelben, Mirt and the dead Harper, but the Doctor eyes riveted to the sets of toes and heals made by riding boots.
"Follow the trail," Khelben commanded. He watched the elemental go ahead of them. "I hope this isn't a wild goose chase Pierce."
The Doctor merely smiled. "Call it a hunch and a night out on the town if you will. I'd rather be out here getting lost than being in there, getting drunk."
The mage nodded consent and the pair followed the trail gamely.
Over five thousand silver buckets of maple sap waited patiently to be boiled and purified into a hundred buckets of lifesyrup. One of the key problems Draque had first run into with his quest to make money off maple syrup was the fact that it took so many damn buckets just to make a small portion. He and Hiram had worked for the last year on this project of theirs and both of them agreed that they had to be patient.
Over a year ago, during the summer of '69 Draque had cast the Lifetree spell on over fifty trees. When fall had come, those trees had grown in size and produced over five hundred buckets of sap. At that time the Academy's foundation had finished and the place had been a huge mess. They had built the boiling shack where the east wing is now and it had taken over a week to boil all the sap into ten buckets of syrup.
Those ten buckets