Spellfire - Ed Greenwood [102]
Even now, the cult must be searching for her-and with the testing, it will not take them long to learn that she is here."
Storm smiled, almost ruefully. "Elminster plays a deeper game than we do. He did that in front of everyone quite deliberately… I trust him completely, and yet I confess his doings often make me uncomfortable. We will all have to deal with the consequences."
"You think such a public display was unwise,"
Florin said with a smile. "I, too-and yet I thought then, and still feel, that Elminster was like an actor in the streets of Suzail. He plays to a larger audience than those standing around him, hoping to attract the eyes of those who pass, perhaps a noble or even a ruler. Our sage is no fool, and not feeble in wits from age, unless there is some feebleness that affects the judgment but leaves one able to perfectly work art and develop new magics."
"There is such a thing," Sharantyr teased. "But it strikes the young, too-it makes us adventurers when we could stay safe at home in fields or forests, doing dull, honest work and acquiring respect as we grow gray and bent."
"Well said," Storm noted. "But I think Elminster has some purpose, though not clear to us yet, in displaying Shandril's power so dramatically."
"Is this 'us1 we three here?" Sharantyr asked, "or the Harpers? Answer me not, if you'd rather not speak of them."
Storm shook her head. "I have not spoken formally with others of the fellowship, but I can tell you that most who saw the testing were of like mind. It is the act of a rash youngster?'
Florin nodded, turning his gaze thoughtfully to the top of Elminster's small, rough fieldstone tower, just visible over the foothills of the tor below them.
"Shandril is a danger to him, more than any other in the dale, for she brings spells to dust. If ever she moves against Elminster, or is duped into foiling him, the old mage can be destroyed-and our defense against Zhentil Keep will be gone. Those who would work such a deed are only too many"
"Aye," Storm said, her silver hair stirring with the rising breezes. She looked to the tower where they knew Shandril to be, and her eyes were very dark as she looked back at the two rangers. "So it must not happen."
"A lot of folk have died here, it seems," Shandril said, her voice showing fear. The young theurgist Illistyl was showing her the tower.
Illistyl sat down on a cushion and waved at Shandril to do the same. Shandril sank down as Illistyl answered calmly, "A lot of people have died, indeed.
Zhentil Keep has attacked the dale twice since the knights came here. Almost half the farmers I grew up with are dead now. So are more adventurers who came to the dale than you could cram breast-to-breast into this room. It is real life; people die, you know.
"It is not all tavern-tales and fond memories. Ten levels beneath us, in the crypts, I know at least three of the knights who sleep forever. It is a price some of them, no doubt, never intended to pay-but pay it they did, most without choice. Think on this before you become an adventurer.
"The life you choose may well take Narm from you, or cripple one of you beyond art that you can command or hire to put right. Once you have power, though, you have very little choice-you become a foe and a target for many, and must become either an adventurer or a corpse."
"How did you come to be a knight?" Shandril asked curiously. "You are younger than Florin and Jhessail, and your art is…"
"Lesser? Aye, so it is. There was a lycanthrope here in the dale a few years back-not long ago, though it seems long enough to me now. The knights took a census, so that their art could be used to try and detect the were-tiger. It was poor Lune Lyrohar, one of the girls at Mother Tara's.
"They found that I had powers of the mind, and Jhessail took me to study under her, I lost all my folk in the wars, so I came to live at the tower." She smiled. "Much of the time thus far has been spent raising Jhessail's and Merith's daughter; most of the rest, studying art. One has little