The Temptation of Elminster - Ed Greenwood [130]
"We can do no less," the youngest, poorest-looking of the three horsemen said then, saying his first quiet words since handing a stable boy some coins. "Eat hearty, both of you, and we'll trade information again."
"Oh, a-heh. Well enough… that's very kind of you, to be sure," Caladaster said heartily as he watched platters of steaming turtles and buttered snails brought to the table. Alnyskawer even winked at him as the tankards were set down beside them. Caladaster blinked. Gods, he was becoming a local lion!
"So where and what is Scorchstone Hall?" Beldrune asked almost jovially, plucking up a tankard and taking a long pull at it. Baerdagh didn't fail to notice the face the newcomer made at the taste of the brew or how quickly he set down the tankard again.
"A ruined mansion just back along the road a ways," he said quickly, determined to earn his share of the meal. "You passed it on your way in…the road bends around it, just this side of the bridge."
"It's warded," Caladaster said quietly. "You gentlesirs are mages, are you not?"
Three pairs of eyes lifted to him in brief silence until Tabarast sighed, took up a buttered snail that must have burned his fingers, and grunted, "It shows that badly, does it?"
Caladaster smiled. "I was a mage, years ago. Still am, I suppose. You have the look about you… eyes that see farther than the next hedge. Paunches and wrinkles, but yet fingers as nimble as a minstrel's. Not to mention the wardings on your saddlebags."
Beldrune chuckled, "All right, we're mages…two of us, at any rate."
"Not three?" Caladaster's brows rose.
The man with the pale brown eyes and the tousled hair smiled faintly and said, "Here and now, I harp."
"Ah," Caladaster said, carefully not glancing at the regulars in the Maid, who were bent almost out of their chairs straining not to miss a word of what passed between these travelers and the two old tankard-tossers. Wizards, now! And haunted Scorchstone! Mustn't miss this…
A Harper and two wizards, hunting Elminster. Caladaster felt a little better, now, about telling them things. Hadn't Elminster had summat to do with starting the Harpers?
"Scorchstone Hall," Caladaster continued, in a voice so low that Baerdagh's sudden humming completely doaked it from the ears of folk at other tables, "is the home of a local sorceress…a lady by the name of Sharindala. A good mage, and dead these many years. Of course, there are the usual tales of her being seen walking around past her windows, as a skeleton and all… but you'd have to be a damned good tree-climber to get to where you could just see a window of the Hall…let alone look through its closed shutters!"
He got smiles at that, and continued, "Whatever-Elminster asked us all about her, and we warned him about the wards, but it's my belief he went in there and did summat. We asked him to stop by our places…we live, Baerdagh an' I, in the two cottages hard by Scorch-stone, 'twixt there and here…when he was done, so's we'd know he'd fared well…"
"And we wouldn't have to go in there looking for his body," Baerdagh growled and went back to his humming. Tabarast and the Harper exchanged amused glances.
Caladaster gave his old friend what some folks would call a dirty look and took up his tale again. "He did drop by to see us…looked right happy, too, though he had a little sadness about him, like folk get when they remember friends now gone, or see old ruins they remember as bright and bustling. He said he'd a 'task' to get on with, and had to head east. We warned him about the Slayer, o' course, but…"
"The Slayer?" the Harper asked quietly. Something about his words made the whole Maid fall silent, from door to rafters.
Alnyskawer, the tavern master, moved quickly forward.