Spellfire - Ed Greenwood [69]
Lanseril gave Narm a shove. "Enough brooding, mage. Get up and find some gems and platinum coins and the like while it's still lying about for the taking." At Narm's dark look, he said more gently,
"Go on. We'll watch her, never fear. You'll need the gold, you know, if you plan to learn enough art to see you both past all the enemies you've made these past days."
Narm looked at him again, doubtfully. Thoughtful eyes met for a time. The young man nodded slowly.
"You may be right. But… Shandril…" He looked at her helplessly again. The druid laid a hand on his arm.
"I know it's hard. You do the best for her, and for yourself, though, if you get up and go on with your duties. The plans of gods and men unfold even while you sleep, as the saying goes. You can do nothing for Shandril sitting here. Go, lad, and play among the coins. You'll see few enough of them before you die, as it is." Lanseril pushed him again. "I'll keep your spot warm, here by her shoulder. I even promise to call you if she should awaken and want to kiss someone, or the like." He grinned at Narm's expression. "Go on."
Narm rose on painfully stiff legs and looked down at Shandril again for a moment. He traded quick glances with Lanseril and Elminster, nodded wordlessly, and hurried away. Lanseril sighed.
"These younglings… their love burns so." He looked up suddenly as he realized Elminster was grinning at him.
"Aye, indeed, old one," the mage said gravely, leaning on his staff. The two friends looked at each other for a moment in silence and then spoke as one, the druid who had not yet seen thirty winters and the mage who had seen some live hundred.
"Well, when you get to be my age," they quoted the old saying together and broke into chuckles. Around them the knights were striding back and forth with small, clinking bundles, gathering Rauglothgor's hoard at a great rate. They could see Narm in the distance, peering curiously at a ruby in his palm. A fistful of gold coins was beginning to creep between the fingers of his other hand.
"Not much magic-damnation upon that balhiir,"
Torm said to Jhessail, a dozen brass rings spilling from his hand as he brought them within range of her detect magic spell. They did not glow with the radiance that betokens magic.
Jhessail spread her hands. "It is the way of balhiirs," she said simply. Then she smiled, eyes twinkling.
"Poor Torm," she said in mock sorrow and commiseration. "You'll have to settle for mere gold, gems, and platinum… and so little, too!" She waved at the scattered riches that lay all around the knights.
Torm grinned. "Scant compensation, good lady," he said in courtly tones, "for the discomfort and danger attendant upon almost my every breath, these days.
What good are coins to a dead man?"
"Precisely the thought that prevents most sane beings from taking up thievery," Jhessail replied mildly. Torm chuckled and bowed to her in acknowledgement of a point well made.
Lanseril looked beyond them to the broken ridge of rock that marked the edge of the devastation Shandril's spellfire had wrought. Florin stood there, watchful, bearing a special shield Elminster had brought back with the healing potions. The ranger's blade was in his hands. He was silent and alert, eyes flicking here and there over the cold gray peaks above and the tree-clad land below.
Elminster, too, was silent and intent, but his eyes were upon Shandril. Even as Lanseril looked down at her, she moved slightly and frowned, murmuring something so faint they could not hear it. Lanseril leaned forward to reach for her, and the long, knobbly end of Elminster's staff came down before him, warningly. The druid looked up its length at he who bore it and asked, "Do we tell Narm?"
Elminster smiled. "No need." A crashing noise, growing swiftly louder, heralded Narm's progress through the coins toward them. "Shandril!" he cried, and then met their gently silent gazes. "Is she-"
"She stirs, no more," said the sage. "If ye must shake her, do it gently,