The Temptation of Elminster - Ed Greenwood [155]
Saeraede wailed, flames streaming from her mouth, and fell away from Elminster, her mists receding into a standing cloud whose dark and despairing eyes pleaded with his for a few fleeting moments before it collapsed and dwindled away to whirling dust.
El was still staggering and coughing, his hands at his ravaged throat, when Azuth strode forward and unleashed a magic whose eerie green glow flooded the runes and the dust that had been Saeraede alike.
Like a gentle wave rolling up a beach, the god's spell spread out to the crevice Ilbryn had hidden in and every other last corner of the ravaged cavern. Then it flickered, turned a lustrous golden hue that made Beldrune gasp, and rose from the floor, leaving scoured emptiness behind.
Azuth strode through the rising magic without pause, caught hold of the reeling Elminster by the shoulders, and marched him one step farther. In mid-stride they vanished together…leaving three old mages gaping at a fallen throne in a shaft of sunlight in a pit in the forest that was suddenly silent and empty.
They took a few steps toward the place where so much death and sorcery had swirled…far enough to see that the runes were now an arc of seven pits of shivered stone…then stopped and looked at each other.
"They're gone an' all, eh?" Beldrune said suddenly. That's it…all that fury and struggle and in the space of a few breaths… that's it. All done, and us left behind an' forgotten."
Tabarast of the Three Sung Curses raised elegantly white tufted eyebrows and asked, "You expected things to be different, this once?"
"We were worthy of a god's personal protection," Caladaster almost whispered. "He walked with us and shielded us when we were endangered…danger he did not share, or he'd never have been able to deal with that fireball as he did."
"That was something, wasn't it?" Beldrune chuckled. "Ah, I can see myself telling the younglings that… a little more pepper, indeed."
"I believe that's why he did it," Tabarast told him. "Yes, we were honored…and we're still alive, unlike that ghost sorceress and the elf… that's an achievement, right there."
They looked at each other again, and Beldrune scratched at his chin, cleared his throat and said, "Yes… ahem. Well. I think we can just walk out, there at the end where the fire burst out of the cavern, that way."
"I don't want to leave here just yet," Caladaster replied, kicking at the cracked edge of one of the pits where a rune had been. "I've never stood with folk of real power before, at a spot where important things happen… and I guess I never will again. While I'm here, I feel… alive."
"Huh," Beldrune grunted, "she said that, an' look what happened to her."
Tabarast stumped forward and put his arms around Caladaster in a rough embrace, muttering, "I know just how you feel. We've got to go before dark, mind, and I'll want a tankard by then."
"A lot of tankards," Beldrune agreed.
"But somewhere quiet to sit and think, just us three," Tabarast added, almost fiercely. "I don't want to be sitting telling all the drunken farmers how we walked with a god this night, and have them laugh at us."
"Agreed," Caladaster said calmly, and turned away.
Beldrune stared at his back. "Where are you going?"
The old wizard reached the rubble-strewn bottom of the shaft and peered down at the stones. "I stood just here," he murmured, "and the god was… there." Though his voice was steady, even gruff, his cheeks were suddenly wet with tears.
"He protected us," he whispered. "He held back more magic than I've ever seen hurled before, in all my life, magic that turned the very rocks to empty air… for us, that we might live."
"Gods have to do that, y'see," Beldrune told him. "Someone has to see what they do and live to tell others. What's the good of all that power, otherwise?"
Caladaster looked at him with scorn, anger rising in his eyes, and stepped back