The Temptation of Elminster - Ed Greenwood [123]
A third figure was on the balcony, peering around the guard's shoulder. It wore the cloak and helm of a guard, but no gauntlets, and the helm…which was far too big for it…kept slipping forward over its face.
An impatient hand shoved the helm back up out of the way, and the white, worried face of Kadeln, Tome-priest of the Temple, stared down at his friend. "Tenthar," he hissed, "you shouldn't have come here. These people are wild with fear."
"You know," the man in the black cloak remarked almost casually, "standing down here with them, I'd begun to notice that." Then his control broke and he almost clawed his way up the wall to the balcony, ignoring a warning pike thrust. The dirty blade stopped inches from his nose and hung there warningly. Tenthar paid it not a blind bit of attention.
"Kadeln," Tenthar was snarling, " what's going on? Every last damned magic I work goes wild, and when I study…nothing. I can't get any new spells!"
"It's the same here," the white-faced priest whispered. "They're saying Mystra must have died, and…"
One of the guards hauled Kadeln away from the edge of the balcony, and the other jabbed viciously with his pike, Tenthar flung himself desperately back out of its reach and tumbled down the bronze doors to the ground.
The crowd melted away a few paces as if by magic, and he found himself lying in a little cleared space with the pike once more hanging a handspan above his throat. "Who are you?" the guard behind it demanded. "Answer, or die. I have new orders."
Tenthar sat up and thrust the pike head away with one contemptuous hand. When he scrambled to his feet, however, he took care to be a good two paces beyond its reach.
"Tenthar Taerhamoos is my name," he said sternly, opening his cloak to reveal rich robes, and a gem-studded medallion blazing on his chest. "Archmage of the Phoenix Tower. I'll be back."
And with that grim promise the archmage whirled around and pushed his way almost proudly through the crowd. All around him were murmurs of "It's true! Mystra's dead? Magic all undone?" and the like.
A stone spun out of somewhere and struck Tenthar on the shoulder. He did not stop or try to turn but struggled onward through bodies disinclined to let him pass. "An archmage?" someone cried. "With no spells?" another asked, close at hand. Another stone struck Tenthar, on the head this time, and he staggered.
There was a roar of mingled awe and exultant hunger all around him, and someone shrieked, "Get him!'
"Get him!" a thunderous chorus echoed. Tenthar went to his knees, looked up to see boots and sticks and hands coming at him from all sides, clutched his precious medallion to guard against the spell going wild, and said the words he'd hoped not to have to say.
Lightning crackled out in all directions, and Tenthar tried not to look at the dying folk dancing to its hungry surges around him. Chain lightning is a terrible thing even when unaugmented, with the medallion involved, well…
He sighed and stood up as the last of the screams died away, watching the bobbing heads of those who'd lived to flee grow smaller as they ran across the fields. He'd best be running, too, before some bloodthirsty idiot rallied them or the folk here who were only stunned and twitching recovered enough to seek revenge.
The smell of cooked flesh was strong, bodies were heaped on all sides. Tenthar gagged, then broke into a trot. He never even saw the pike hurled at him from the balcony, it fell well short and struck, quivering, in the dirt.
A blackened body rose from among the dead and tugged it free. "The thing I hate most about these little games," it remarked to the empty air, "is the cost. How many lives will be snuffed out before it's over, this time?"
Another blackened thing rose, shrugged, touched the pike, and said sadly, "There's always a price… all our power, and we can't change that."
There were two shimmerings in the air…and the two blackened bodies were gone. The pike winked out of sight an instant later.
"Are there archmages under every stone