Shadows of Doom - Ed Greenwood [108]
Something shattered loudly on the stone floor. When Gedaern whirled around, darkness was already spreading smoky tendrils toward him.
* * * * *
Elminster moved slowly and kept his injured hand hidden in the sleeve of his robe. Sharantyr caught up to him and put a hand on his shoulder.
"Elminster," she said, earnestly, "I'm well enough to get about, and fight if need be, but you! Are you in any shape to be strolling around in the midst of a battle?"
The Old Mage gave her a tired look. "The answer to that one, lass, is the same one it's always been: I have to be."
He looked down a side passage and added, "So rest ye assured, I am. We go this way."
Sharantyr rolled her eyes and followed him. "Just answer me this, then. Where are we going, and why?"
"Ah, lass," the answer floated back to her down the dim passage. "Sages and drunkards alike have been arguing over answers to that double-bladed question for longer than I've been alive."
"Elminster!" Sharantyr wailed despairingly.
Behind them a councillor slipped out of the great hall in the concealing smoke born of the magical globe he'd shattered. He trotted to where he could watch the lady ranger and the old man in robes turn into the side pas-
Shouts echoed not far off, followed by the sound of running feet drawing nearer. The councillor frowned and looked hurriedly around. Selecting a certain door, he slipped into the room behind it, closed the door in silent haste, and in the darkness felt his way past the table he knew would be there to the floor beyond.
On his knees, he drew a slim, smooth wand out of a concealed sheath on his forearm and muttered a word. The wand pulsed with a faint purplish-white radiance, and from its tip a ghostly white glow spun away to form… an eyeball.
The orb stared back at him, looking very much like his own eye for a silent, floating instant, then faded slowly from view.
The councillor slid the wand back into its place, took a hidden dagger out of its sheath inside his boot, and lay down on his face, hiding the hand that grasped the dagger under him, his other hand sprawled as if lifeless.
He blew dust away to ward off sneezing and lay still in the chill darkness. The invisible eye, driven by his will, slipped under the door and sped down the passage in pursuit of Elminster of Shadowdale.
* * * * *
Elminster rubbed his chin. "It's been many a winter," he said slowly, "and they've made some changes… but what I'm looking for should be about-here."
His slowing stride brought him to a halt between two closed doors. He retraced his steps to the first door and paced carefully along the passage from it. At a certain spot he took off one boot, leaving it as a marker, and padded unevenly on to the second door.
Pacing back carefully from that door, the Old Mage found himself at his boot again, nodded, and put it back on. He looked up at Sharantyr almost challengingly.
She merely shook her head. Elminster knelt down, touched with a questing finger the stone he'd marked, and nodded again emphatically.
Sharantyr cast a quick look behind her, sword in hand. The passage was dark and empty. Then she bent forward to watch as Elminster dug the fingers of his undamaged hand into a dark crack that looked no different from a hundred others in the flagstone floor, and heaved.
The stone shifted a little. Dust puffed up and swirled as it sank comfortably back into its place again.
Elminster grunted, dug his fingers in again, shifting for a better grip, and heaved. His shoulders shook.
Sharantyr leaned closer. "Want any help?"
The slab rose very slowly as Elminster looked at her sourly. Sharantyr shrugged.
Unseen above them, the floating eye drifted nearer.
The slab grated sideways. Sharantyr stared into the darkness of the hole that the Old Mage had uncovered. Air was moving upward. Foul air.
Sharantyr sniffed and wrinkled her nose. "A cesspool. You've found the castle's cesspool."
Elminster sat unconcernedly on the edge of the hole. A lip ran all around its edge to hold the slab he'd dragged aside. He sat on