The Temptation of Elminster - Ed Greenwood [110]
The deadliest sport among the Zhentarim is vying for supremacy within its dark ranks… and in particular, the doom of the too young and nakedly ambitious: to be sent Elminster hunting. I'll wager that this has always been a perilous pastime. Some are wise enough, as I was, to use it as a chance to "die" our ways out of the Brotherhood. It was interesting…if a trifle depressing…to hear, while in disguise, what folk said of me, once they thought me safely dead. One day I'll return and haunt them all.
Destrar Gulhallow
from Posthumous Musings of a Zhentarim Mageling
published circa The Year of the Morningstar
The darkness never left Ilbryn Starym. It never would, not since the day when the last hunting lodge of the Starym had been torn apart in spells and flame, their proud halls in Myth Drannor already fallen, and the Starym had been shattered forever.
If any of his kin still lived, he'd never found trace of them. Once proud and mighty, the family that had led and defined Cormanthyr for an age was now reduced to one young and crippled cousin. If the Seldarine smiled, with his magic he might be able to sire children to carry on the family name… but only if the Seldarine smiled.
Again, it had been the Accursed One, that grinning human Elminster, his spells splashing around the temple as he fought the queen of Galadorna. A thousand times Ilbryn had relived those searing instants of tumbling down the temple, broken and aflame. To work magic that would restore his leg and smooth his skin to be what it had once been would ruin spells he'd never mastered, the spells that had cost him so much, to keep his ravaged innards working. Years of agony…if he lived that long…lay ahead. Agony of the body to match the agony in his heart.
"Have my thanks, human," he snarled to the empty air. The horse promptly jostled him, sending stabbing pains through his twisted side, as it clopped across a worn and uneven bridge. Ahead, through the pain, he saw a signboard. On his sixth day out of Westgate, riding alone on a hard road, it was a welcome sight, it told him he was getting somewhere… even if he didn't know quite where that somewhere was.
"Ripplestones," he read it aloud. "Another soaring human fortress of culture. How inspiring."
He drew his bitter sarcasm around himself like a dark cloak and urged his horse into a trot, sitting up in his saddle so as to look impressive when human eyes began their startled looks at him, an elf riding alone, all in black and wearing the swords and daggers of an adventurer, with…whenever he let the spell lapse…one side of his face a twisted, mottled mass of burn scar.
The weaponry was all for show, of course, to make his spells a surprise. Ilbryn dropped one hand to a smooth sword pommel and caressed it, keeping his face hard and grim, as the road rounded a thick stand of trees and Ripplestones spread out before him.
He was always wandering, always seeking Elminster. To hunt and slay Elminster Aumar was the burning goal that ruled his life…though there'd never be a House Starym to return to with triumphant news of avenging the family unless Ilbryn rebuilt it himself. He was close on Elminster's trail now, he could taste it.
He put out of his mind how many times he'd been this dose before and at the end of the day had closed his fingers on nothing.
Ah, a tavern, The Fair Maid of Ripplestones. Probably the only tavern in this dusty farm town. Ilbryn stopped his horse, threw its reins over its head to enact the spell that would hold it like a statue until he spoke the right word, and began the bitter struggle to dismount without falling on his face.
As it was, his artificial leg clanked like a bouncing cartload of swords when he landed, and he clung to a saddle strap for long seconds before he could clear his face of the pain and straighten up.
The two old men on the bench just sat and watched him calmly, as if strange travelers rode up to the Fair Maid every day. Ilbryn spoke gently to them, but grasped the hilts of a blade and a throwing dagger as a sort of silent promise of trouble