The Temptation of Elminster - Ed Greenwood [125]
"Done, Uldus," said a voice from above him, crisply.
Uldus Blackram managed to strike his head on the altar, somersault over backward to get a good four paces away, and get to his feet all in one blurred flurry of movement.
When he froze, half turned to flee and panting hard, he was looking back at six bald-headed men in black and purple robes, standing in a semicircle around the altar facing him, with faint amusement on their faces.
"Lords of the Lady?" Uldus gasped. "Have my prayers been answered at last?"
"Uldus," the oldest of them said pleasantly, stepping forward, "they have. At last. Moreover, a fitting reward has been chosen for you. You're going to guide us into the Dead Place!"
"P-praise Shar!" Uldus replied, rolling his eyes wildly upward as he toppled to the turf in a dead faint.
"Revive him," Elryn commanded, not bothering to keep the contempt from his face or voice. "To think that such as this worship the Most Holy Lady of Loss."
"Well," one of the other wizards commented, bending over the fallen Uldus, "we all have to start somewhere."
The glowing spellsphere orbited the throne at an almost lazy pace. Saeraede gave it only casual attention, absorbed as she was in sending images of her peering self out into the trees to lure this bold Elminster back to her castle.
Aye, let us gently tease this fittingly powerful and somewhat attractive mage hence.
Yet the news was clear enough, from all the mages she covertly farscried. Word of the death of Mystra was spreading like wildfire, spells were going wild all over Faerun, mages were shutting themselves up in towers before grudge-holding commoners could get to them… or tarrying too long, and getting caught on the ends of pitchforks in a dozen realms, and on and on.
It was time to move at last and make Saeraede Lyonora once more a name to be feared!
Abruptly something tore through one of her images. Saeraede sat up with a frown, and peered, trying to find out what it had been. The spellsphere abruptly lost its scene of city spires and flapping griffon wings beneath armored riders and acquired the dappled gloom of the forest above her. A forest that held a crouching Elminster, several of her floating faces, and…
Arrows snarled through her conjured visage and the dead leaves beyond, to thud into the forest loam and send Elminster scrambling around the other side of a tree.
Arrows?
"Damned adventurers!" she roared, her cry ringing back to her off the cavern roof, and sprang up from the throne. The spellsphere winked out as it fell, the radiance around the stone seat faded…but she was already whirling up the shaft, her eyes spitting flames of mage-fire. Were a bunch of blundering sword swingers going to shatter her long-nursed plans now?
The fittingly powerful and somewhat attractive Elminster boldly dodged another arrow, hurling himself on his face in wet moss and dead leaves as another dark shaft whined past his ear like an angry hornet and fetched up in the trunk of a nearby hiexel with a very solid thunk.
El scrambled up, drawing breath for a curse, and flung himself right back down on his face again. A second shaft hummed past low overhead, joining the first.
The hiexel didn't look to be enjoying these visitations too much, but Elminster hadn't time to survey its sadness…or do anything else but charge to his feet, leap over a fallen tree, and whirl around behind its rotting trunk. He bobbed up into view right away, betting that the two archers wouldn't have had time to put fresh arrows to their strings just yet. He had to see them.
Ah! There! He loosed a stream of magic missiles at one, then ducked down again, hearing the approaching thud of booted feet running hard in his direction.
It was time to get gone and be blessed quick about it!
He sprinted away, downhill and dodging from side to side, hearing crashing