Spellfire - Ed Greenwood [168]
"Why not stay?" Narm replied. "You have the power to slay a hundred half-mad mages."
Shandril sighed. "Aye, maybe. But I'd lose the dale and my friends and even you, I don't doubt, in the process. Powerful mages always seem to destroy things about them. They work worse devastation than forest fires and brigands. Sometimes I think life would be much simpler without art."
"I said that to Elminster," Narm replied, "and he said not so. If I could see the strange worlds he's walked, he said, I'd understand."
"No, thank you," Shandril replied. "I've troubles enough, it seems, in this world." The road rose again through a leafy tunnel of old oaks, then gave way to an open area.
Narm and Shandril rode close and quiet, side by side, looking all about them for danger. Tiny, whiplike branches that had fallen from the trees above lay amid the dead leaves and tangled grass and ferns like thin, dark faerie fingers, waiting to clutch or snap underfoot. They rode on, and still no attack came, nor did they meet travelers upon the road.
"This is eerie," Shandril said. "Where is everyone?"
"Elsewhere, for once," Narm said. "Be thankful, and ride while we have the chance! I would be free of the dales, where everyone knows us. Your spellfire cannot last-triumph-forever."
"I have thought about that," Shandril said in a small voice. "Thus far, we have been very lucky. More than that, we've fought many who did not know what they faced, even as I do not. Before long, mages will come against us with spells and devices of art prepared specifically to disable me or foil spellfire.
And then how shall we fare?"
"Ah, Shan, you moan a lot," Narm replied, exasperated. "I'm worried about you. You at least can strike back. Did you expect a life like in the ballads, all cheering and triumph and happy endings?
No. Adventure, you wanted, adventure you have.
Did you hear Lanseril's definition of adventure, at that first feast in Shadowdale?"
Shandril wrinkled her brow. "I did overhear it, yes.
Something about being cursedly uncomfortable and hurt or afraid, and then telling everyone later that it was nothing."
"Aye, that was it." They rode over another rise with still no sign of other travelers on the road. "It is a long way to Silverymoon," Narm added thoughtfully.
"Do you remember all the Harpers Storm named for us, along the way?"
"Yes. Do you?" his lady replied impishly, and Narm shook his head.
"I've forgotten half of them, I'm sure. I was not suited to be a world traveler?' Narm replied ruefully.
"Nor was the tutelage of Marimmar very useful in that respect."
Shandril laughed. "I'll bet." She looked at the woods about them. "If the Realms hold places as beautiful as this, mind you, I won't mind the trip ahead."
"Even with a hundred or so evil priests and mages after our blood?"
Shandril wrinkled her nose. "Just don’t call me 'Magekiller,' or anything of the sort.
Remember-they come after me. I have no quarrel with them."
"I'll remind the next dozen or so corpses of that,"
Narm replied dryly. "If you leave enough for me to speak to, that is."
Shandril looked away from him, then, and said very softly, "Please do not speak so of all the killing. I hate it. Never, never do I want to become so used to it that I grow careless of my power. Who knows when this spellfire might leave me? Then, Narm? I will have only your art to protect me. Think on that."
They rode down into a dell where moss grew in knobs and clumps of lush green amid the dead leaves.
Small pools of water glistened under dark and rugged old trees. Narm looked around warily, as always, and said soberly, "Aye. I think of it often."
"It seems the fate of this Shandril to grow old unhindered-by us, at any rate" Naergoth said dryly to Salvarad, when they were alone at the long table.
"Is there any other business?"
"Aye, indeed. The matter of your mage. Malark was destroyed in Shadowdale-how, I know not-but