Song of the Saurials - Kate Novak [41]
Elminster motioned with his hands, and a bright light flared from the surface of the water. Morala gasped.
"What is it?" Breck demanded anxiously.
"Elminster just cast a meteor swarm," the priestess said. "He battles monsters such as I have never seen before!"
The lead creature fell from the sky, knocking down several trees as it crashed to the earth. Its companions pulled up just as Elminster released a second meteor swarm.
From her magical vantage point, Morala could see a great cat stalking the mage, sneaking up behind him. The beast was twice the size of a tiger, with a mottled orange and brown hide. It halted ten yards from Elminster. The muscles in its haunches tautened and twitched as the cat prepared to leap.
"Elminster, behind you!" Morala cried out instinctively, though she knew the sage could not hear her.
Something alerted the sage to the danger, though, for he spun about with his hands spread out before him, thumbs touching, and sent a fan of fire shooting from his fingertips.
The cat twisted in midleap, trying, without success, to avoid the sage's fiery barrage. One side of the beast burst into flame, and it fell to the ground and rolled in the dirt to smother the fire burning its pelt. Before the cat had a chance to rise to its feet, Elminster pointed at it, and the beast crumbled to dust.
Elminster turned his attention back to the remaining feather dragons, who had circled and returned. As the dragons dropped down and soared over the sage, great plumes of sparkling dust shot from the maws of all four monsters, but when the dust had blown away, Elminster remained standing, apparently unaffected. The sage cast a wall of fire across the feather dragons' flight path. Two of the beasts were unable to pull up in time to avoid passing through the curtain of flame. They plunged through it and immediately crashed to the earth like meteors.
Watching the sage do battle while unable to hear any of the accompanying sounds felt unnatural and eerie to Morala, vet she kept her eyes fixed on the water.
She wished the blessings of Milil on the sage, though she suspected her god might have little power over events in the strange world where Elminster was now.
As the last pair of feather dragons came swooping down on the sage, talons extended, prepared to tear him to pieces, Elminster cast a forked bolt of lightning. Before the scorched bodies slammed into him, the sage winked through a dimension door, emerging some fifty feet away, where he could not be crushed in the monsters' death throes. Witnessing Elminster's unscathed emergence from the battle, the priestess breathed a sigh of relief. Elminster turned in Morala's direction and seemed to look right at the priestess. His eyes twinkled with mischief, and he gave a little theatrical bow. Then he turned away again and walked off into the strange forest.
The colors in the water began to swirl in a chaotic pattern and then fade. The water began to bubble; then, in a great burst of steam, it evaporated away.
Morala stepped away from the table and swayed, exhausted from the effort of scrying.
Lord Mourngrym stepped forward and helped the frail, elderly woman to a chair.
Morala leaned back, her eyes closed. "Elminster is alive and well," she said weakly. "The moment before my spell wore off, he had just defeated several monsters the likes of which I have never seen in the Realms. He appeared in no immediate danger. His instincts were sharp enough to note that he was being scried upon. He does not seem to be anyone's prisoner."
"Then why doesn't he return?" Breck asked.
"I do not know," the priestess answered. "He travels on foot in a strange world, and I couldn't perceive his goal. Perhaps some other wizard has summoned the sage to perform some service and he cannot return until it is completed. Perhaps he does not realize we have need of him here."
Alias stood in the doorway to the Harpers courtroom. She had returned from speaking with Elminster's