Spellfire - Ed Greenwood [127]
Narm stared at him in anger, then resignation, and then sheepish amusement. "Elminster won't permit it, indeed," he said. "I can see that I'll have to rise early in the day indeed to get ahead of you."
Elminster smiled. "Ah, but I have live hundred years' start on ye. Come. Dinner is ready. Thy lady is a cook of rare skill. Ye have chosen correctly. See that ye serve her as well, boy, as she serves ye." With this last sage advice he knocked his pipe out on the doorstep and went in. Narm looked once at the stars, beginning to sparkle as the sky darkened, and followed him inside.
13: To Walk Unseen
The bards soon forget a warrior falling without a great feat of arms. Would you be forgotten?
Face each battle, each foe, as though it is your last. One day it will be.
Dathlance of Selgaunt
An Old Warrior's Way
Year of the Blade
The morning sun laid bright fingers upon the table where they sat in the audience chamber of the Twisted Tower. Shandril watched stray dust motes sparkle above the table as she and Narm waited for Elminster to come in from dawnfry in the great hall.
Narm's hand found hers, and they sat together in contented silence, alone with the fading tapestries of Shadowdale's past and the empty throne. "I was brought here by Illistyl before we met in Rauglothgor's lair," Narm said quietly, "and spoke with Mourngrym. It seems an age ago, now."
Shandril nodded. "It seems long ago that I left Deepingdale, yet it is a matter of tendays, not months." She looked at the great painted map of the Dragonreach upon the wall. "I wonder where we shall be in a year?" she asked.
Narm never replied, for upon her words the doors opened and Elminster came in. Shandril had thought Mourngrym would be with him, but the sage was alone. He came toward them, slowly, and for the first time, Shandril thought, he really looked old. He sat down in a chair beside them, not on the throne, and fixed them with bright eyes.
"So quiet?" he asked. "Have ye both stopped thinking, then?"
"No," Narm replied boldly. "Why say you so?"
The old mage shrugged. "The young are supposed to be always talking or laughing or fighting, they say.
Ye two… surprised me." He took out his pipe, looked at it for a long breath in silence, and then put it away again, unlit. "I asked ye here to tell thee that I have watched, these past few days, and ye two are as well trained with art and spellfire as we here can presently make thee. It is up to thee, now, if ye would grow more powerful. More than that, it is time for the both of ye to decide what to do with thine lives."
"Do?" Narm asked, but not as one surprised.
Elminster nodded approvingly.
"It is not good for ye to drift along under the influence of the knights and myself. Ye would be swept up into our councils and our struggles. Ye'd slowly grow embittered and empty, as ye lost the will and way to walk thine own roads and think for thyselves."
"But we have found friends here, and happy times,"
Shandril protested, "and-"
"And danger," Elminster interrupted smoothly. "I want to keep ye with me. One cannot have too many friends, and I grow weary of losing them all, one after another, with the years. But if I let ye stay, I would draw doom to ye, just as settling down together in the dale, or in a nice cottage somewhere by thyselves will."
"What? Laving together will bring danger upon us?"
Narm asked, bewildered.
"Nay-staying in one place will. With thy talent,"
Elminster said, pointing a long finger at Shandril,
"one mage after another will seek to slay thee.
Mulmaster, Thay, and the Zhentarim all must needs destroy anything that threatens