The Temptation of Elminster - Ed Greenwood [38]
I wonder: do monsters look different from inside?
Citta Hothemer
from Musings Of A Shameless Noble
published in The Year of the Prince
The farmer's eyes were dark with suspicion and sunken with weariness. The fork in his hands, however, pointed very steadily toward Wanlorn's eyes and moved whenever the lone traveler did, to keep that menace on target.
When the farmer finally broke the long, sharp silence that had followed the traveler's question, it was to say, "Yuh can find the Lady of Shadows somewhere over the next hill," a sentence the speaker ended by spitting pointedly into the dirt between them. "Her lands begin there, leastways. I don't want to know why yuh'd want to meet her…an' I don't want yuh standing here on my land much longer, either. Get yuh boots yonder, and yuh in 'em!"
A feint with the fork underscored the man's words. Wanlorn raised an eyebrow, replied, "Have my thanks," in dry tones, and with neither haste nor delay got his boots yonder.
He did not have to look back to know the farmer was watching him all the way over the crest of the hill, he could feel the man's eyes drilling into his back like two drawn daggers. He made a point of not looking back as he went over the ridge…and in lawless country, no sensible traveler stands long atop any height, visible from afar. Eyes alert enough to be watching for strangers are seldom friendly ones.
As he trotted down the bracken-cloaked hillside that was his first taste of the Lands of the Lady, he briefly considered becoming a falcon or perhaps a prowling beast… but no, if this Lady of Shadows was alert and watchful, betraying his magical abilities at the outset would be the height of foolishness.
Not that the man who was Wanlorn, but who'd walked longer under the name of Elminster, cared over much about being thought a fool. It was a little late for that he thought wryly, considering the road he'd chosen in life…with his stealthy departure from Castle Felmorel not all that many steps behind him. Mystra was forging him into a weapon, or at least a tool… and in all the forging he'd seen, those rains of hammer blows looked to be a little hard on the weapon.
And who was it long ago who'd said, "The task forges the worker"?
It would be so much easier to just do as he pleased. using magic for personal gain and having no care for the consequences or the fates of others. He could have happily ruled the land of his birth, mouthing-as more than one mage he'd met with did…the occasion al empty prayer to a goddess of magic who meant nothing to him.
There was that one thing his choice had given him: long life. Long enough to outlive every last friend and neighbor of his youth, every colleague of his early adventure and magical workings and revelry in Myth Drannor.
And every friend and lover, one after another, of that wondrous city, too.
Elminster's lips twisted in bitterness as remembered faces and laughter and caresses rushed past his mind's regard, one after gods-be-cursed another… and the plans with them, the dreams excitedly discussed and well intended, that blow and dwindle away like morning mist in bright sunlight and come to nothing in the end.
So much had come to nothing in the end…
Like the village in front of him, it seemed. Roofs fallen in and overgrown gardens and paths greeted him, with here and there a blackened chimney stabbing up at the sky like a dark and battered dagger to mark where a cottage had stood before fire came, or a vine-choked hump that was once a fieldstone wall or hedgerow between fields. Something that might have been a wolf or may have been another sort of large-jawed hunting beast slunk out of one ruined house as Elminster approached. Otherwise the village of Hammershaws seemed utterly deserted. Was this what Lord Esbre had meant by the Lady of Shadows seeking to 'enforce her will" on these lands? Was every such place ahead of him going to be deserted?
What had happened to all the folk who dwelt here?
A few strides later brought him a grim answer. Something dull and yellow-gray cracked under his boots. Not a stone after