The Temptation of Elminster - Ed Greenwood [133]
So how was it that this Harper knew it?
Eighteen: No Shortage Of Victims
The one certainty in a coup, orc raid, or well-side gossip session is that there'll be no shortage of victims.
Ralderick Hallowshaw, Jester
from To Rule A Realm, From Turret To Midden
published circa The Year of the Bloodbird
It was dark and silent, once the scrape of his boots had stilled. He was alone in the midst of cold, damp stone, the dust of ages sharp in his nostrils…and a feeling of tension as something watched him from the darkness, and waiting.
Elminster let himself grow as still as the stone handholds he still clung to, faced the aware and lurking darkness, and called up one of the powers Mystra had granted him. It was one he'd used far too little, because it required quiet concentration, and time… far more time than most of the beings he shared Faerun with were ever willing to give him. Too often, these days, life seemed a headlong hurry.
His awareness ranged out through the waiting, listening darkness. Things both living and unliving he could not see, but magic, when El concentrated just… so, he could feel so keenly that he could make out surfaces on which dweomer clung, the tendrils of spell-bindings, and even the faint, fading traces of preservative magics that had failed.
All of those things lay before him. Faint magics swirled everywhere, none of them strong or precisely located, but outlining a large cavern or open space. A good way off, on the floor of this chamber or cavern… or down in a pit, he could not tell which…several closely clustered nodes of great, not-so-slumberous magical might throbbed and murmured ceaselessly. El blinked.
Trap or no trap, he had to see what waited here that could hold such magical might. He'd been led here, the swirling sentience that had done it was watching him or at least knew of his coming…so what was the point of stealth? El cast a stone-probing spell, seeking pits or seams ahead of him. Shrouded in its eerily faint blue glow, he stepped warily forward.
Great expanses of the floor were the natural rock of the cavern, as El proceeded, this gave way smoothly to a floor of huge stone slabs, smooth-polished and level, no mosses had stained them, but here and there, the fine white fur of salts leaching out of age-old rock trailed finger-like across the stone.
A throne or seat of the same stone faced Elminster… empty of magic, surprisingly, though it was almost hidden from view behind the dazzle thrown off by the seven nodes of magic when he viewed it with his mage-sight. Thankfully, the seat was empty.
El sighed, threw back his head, and stepped forward. Seven nodes blinding in their magical might. Predictable or not, he could not ignore such power and remain Elminster. He smiled, shook his head ruefully… and took another step.
He might well die here, but he could not turn away.
The human was coming nearer. The Great Foe would soon be within reach…but also close to the runes that were too powerful to safely approach.
Too close.
He would probably get only one chance, so it would have to be a shattering blow that even a great god-touched mage could not hope to survive. After all these years, a few days or even months more would matter not at all. The slaying stroke did.
The strike that would reveal him and harm the Foe all at once had to be one that destroyed…or at least ruined his foe into something powerless but aware-aware of the pain he would then deal to it at leisure, and of who was harming it during that long, dark time… and why.
So wait a bit more, like a patient ghost in the shadows.
Two dark eyes that blazed like two inky flames of fury peered from the depths of one of the darkest clefts in the rear of the cavern and watched the wary wizard step forward to his doom.
Years consumed by the ache to avenge, the gnawing need that ruled him night and day… years that had all come down to this.
"Yes, Vaelam?" Dreadspell Elryn asked, his voice dangerously soft and