Spellfire - Ed Greenwood [132]
"Aye, well said," Casildar agreed. "We must move.
But how? Our armies?"
"I do not care to launch the armies of Zhentil Keep in Manshoon's absence," Fzoul said. "Shadowdale need merely spread the rumor that we have mastered spellfire, and Cormyr, Sembia, Hillsfar, and all will strike together to forestall the destruction they will expect at our hands. No, we must move more quietly than that, my lords. Yet as Casildar says, we must move. What say you?"
"What of our assassins?" Yarkul suggested.
"The replacements are young and poorly trained, yet," Zhessae said. "Even strengthened by our lesser brothers and the magelings, I fear they would anger Shadowdale more than harm it."
"Aye," Sarhthor agreed in his deep voice. "We have gone that way before. Always we must run, or die."
"Yes," Sememmon put in. "We have all seen what happens when we send the magelings. Everyone wants to be the hero, to make his name among us.
Reckless and foolish, they overreach themselves and fall. Elminster is no foe to be mastered by a mageling."
"Are you suggesting that we go in force, ourselves?"
Ashemmi asked. "Leaving aside our personal peril, does that not leave Zhentil Keep undefended? Surely the High Imperceptor of Bane has heard of Manshoon's absence by now. Will he not strike against you, Fzoul, and all of us?" His words fell into a deepening silence around the table.
"No doubt," Fzoul agreed coldly, "he will try. But The Black Altar, and Zhentil Keep about it, are not undefended, my friends." He waved a hand, and out from behind a curtain far down the large chamber floated Manxam.
The beholder was old and vast and terrible. Lichen grew upon its nether plates, and its eyestalks were scarred by old wounds and wrinkled with age. Its single great central eye turned slowly to survey them all as it drifted closer. In the depths of that dark-pupilled, bloodshot orb each man at the table saw his own death and worse. A deep, burbling hiss came from its closed, many-toothed maw; its ten smaller eyestalks moved restlessly as Manxam the Merciless came to the table.
The eye tyrant passed over them all to hang above the center of the table, and rolled slowly in awful majesty until its ten small eyes hung just above them, at least one looking at each man there. It said nothing, but merely hung in midair, watching.
"I feel we can all be persuaded," Fzoul said without a trace of a smile, "to come to some consensus now."
The beholder did not blink.
Nervously Sememmon cleared his throat. "Aye, indeed… but what do you propose?"
"I believe," Fzoul said steadily, "that the most powerful mages among us here now should go to Shadowdale immediately and do whatever is necessary to capture or destroy this Shandril, Elminster or no Elminster. As we are not sending incompetent or weak magelings, as you have so correctly advised us against, brother Sememmon, I have every confidence that you shall return with spellfire, if you return at all."
The mages Sememmon, Ashemmi, and Yarkul went white and silent. Only the wizard Sarhthor looked unsurprised. He merely nodded. Sememmon looked up to find that Manxam had silently rolled over so that its central eye, the one that foiled magic, gazed at them all.
Now the reason for seating the mages together around one end of the table was all too apparent.
Manxam and Fzoul were just too far away for them both to be caught in a timestop spell, and no other magic would allow Sememmon to ready an item of art to strike at Fzoul or Manxam. Certainly he could not strike at both-nor was there a great chance of besting Fzoul here, in his temple. Against Manx-am, the mage knew he stood almost no chance at all.
Sememmon doubted he could even escape alive from The Black Altar if he merely tried to flee.
Perhaps if he, Ashemi, Yarkul, and Sarhthor all worked together, with spells planned beforehand, they might have a chance to escape. If Casildar