The Temptation of Elminster - Ed Greenwood [151]
Slim fingers grew fingernails like long talons, and when they were as long as Saeraede's hand, she reached almost lovingly for his mouth.
"We'll just have the tongue out, I think," she said aloud, "to forestall any nasty…ah, but wait a bit, Saeraede, you want him to tell you a few things before he's mute… Hmmmm…"
Razor-sharp talons drifted just inches past Elminster's tightly constricted throat, to slice into the first flesh she found bared. Plowing deep gashes across the strangling mage's neck, she flicked his blood away in droplets that were caught in her whirling mists and held her bloody talons exultantly up to the sunlight.
"Ah, but I'm alive again," Saeraede hissed, "alive and whole! I breathe, I feel" She brought that hand to her mouth, bit her own knuckles, and held the hand out toward the grimly watching avatar of Azuth to let him see the welling blood. "I bleed! I liver
Then she screamed, swayed, and stared down, dark eyes widening in disbelief, at the gore-slick, smoking sword tip that had just burst through her breast from behind.
"Some people live far longer than they should," said Ilbryn Starym silkily from behind the hilt, as he stared gloating into the eyes of the mage still frozen in Saeraede's grasp. "Don't you agree, Elminster?"
A door was flung wide, to boom its broken song against a heavily paneled wall. It had been years since the tall, broad-shouldered woman who now stood in the doorway, her eyes snapping in alarm and anger, had worn the armor she hated so much…but as she stood glaring into the room, the half-drawn long sword at her hip gleaming, she looked every inch a warrior.
Sometimes Rauntlavon wished he was more handsome, strong, and about ten years older. He'd have given a lot for so magnificent a woman to smile at him.
Right now, she was doing anything but smiling. She was looking down at him as if she'd found a viper in her chamber pot…and his only consolation was that he wasn't the only mage rolling around on the floor under her dark displeasure, his master, the gruffly sardonic elf Iyriklaunavan, was gasping on the fine swanweave rug not a handspan away.
"Iyrik, by all the gods," the Ladylord Nuressa growled, "what befell here?"
"My farscrying spell went awry," the elf snarled back at her. "If it hadn't been for the lad, here, all those books'd be aflame now, and we'd be hurling water and running with buckets for our lives' worth!"
Rauntlavon's face flamed as the ladylord took a step forward and looked down at him with a rather kinder expression. "I-it was nothing, Great Lady," he stammered.
"Master Rauntlavon," she said gently, "an apprentice should never contradict his master-of-magecraft… nor belittle the judgment of any one of The Four Lords of the Castle."
Rauntlavon blushed as maroon as his robes and emitted the immortal words, "Yujus-yujus-er-ah-uhmmm, I, ah…"
"Yes, yes, boy, brilliantly explained as usual," Iyriklaunavan said dismissively, rolling to his elbows. "Now belt up and look around the room for me: is anything amiss? Anything broken? Smoldering? Aflame? Hop, now!"
Rauntlavon hopped, quite thankfully, but kept his attention more on what two of The Four Lords of the Castle were saying. They'd all been debonair and successful adventurers, less than a decade ago, and one never knew what wild and exciting things they might say.
Well, nothing about mating dragons this time.
"So tell me, Iyrik," the Ladylord was saying in her I-really-shouldn't-have-to-be-this-patient voice, "just why your farscrying spell blew up. Is it one of those magics you'd just be better off not trying? Or were you distracted by some nubile elf maid seen in your spying, perhaps?"
"Nessa," the elf growled…Rauntlavon had always admired the way he could look so agile and elegant and youthful, and yet be more gruff than any dwarf…as he rose and fixed her with one glaring that's- quite-enough eye, "this