The Temptation of Elminster - Ed Greenwood [6]
El nodded and waved his thanks, on his stumbling way to lean against a nearby pillar and shake his head.
He'd been exploring this tomb…a century ago?… seeking to learn how the mightiest archwizards of Netheril had faced death. Some insidious magical trap had ensnared him so cleverly that he'd never even noticed his fall into stasis. For years, it seemed, he'd hung frozen near the ceiling. Elminster the Mighty, Chosen of Mystra, Armathor of Myth Drannor, and Prince of Athalantar stood in midair, a handy anchor for spiderwebs, acquiring a thick cloak of dust and cobwebs.
Careless idiot. Would that ever change, the hawk-nosed mage wondered briefly, if he lived to be a thousand years old or more?
Perhaps not. Ah, well, at least he knew he was an idiot. Most wizards never even make it that far. El drew in a deep breath, dodged behind the pillar as he saw the elf glaring at him and raising his hands again, and sorted through his memories. These were the spells…and that one would serve. He had a world to see anew, and decades of lost history to catch up on.
"Mystra, forgive me," he said aloud, calling up the spell.
There came no answer, but the spell worked as it was supposed to, plucking him up into a brief maelstrom of blue mists and silver bubbles that would whisk him elsewhere.
Abruptly, the figure behind the pillar was gone.
"I could have had him!" Iyriklaunavan cursed. "Just a few moments longer, and…"
"You could've had us killed in a spell duel, right here," Amandarn hissed. "Shouldn't we be getting away from here? That man was freed from how we found him, those eyes sprouted from the pillars… what else is waking up, in there?"
Folossan rolled his eyes and said, "Am I hearing rightly? A thief, walking away from treasure?"
The wealth redistributor eyed him coldly. "Try saying it thus," he replied. " 'Hurrying away from likely death, in the interests of staying alive.' "
The dwarf looked up at the silent warrior woman beside him.
"Nessa?"
She let out a deep, regretful sigh, then said briskly, "We run, away, as swift as we can on these loose stones. Come…now." She turned, a hulking figure in blackened armor, and began to shoulder her way around pillars and stub-ends of fallen walls.
"We're barely twenty paces from the strongest magic I've seen in decades," the elf mage protested, waving a hand at the darkness.
Nuressa turned, hands on hips, and said tartly, "Hear my prediction: it's not only the strongest magic you've seen…it's the strongest you'll ever see, Iyrik, if you tarry here much longer. Let's get gone before dark… and while we still can."
She turned away once more. Folossan and Amandarn cast regretful glances at the hall they'd fled from, but they followed.
The elf in maroon robes cursed, took one longing step around the end of the wall as if to return to the tomb, then turned to follow his companions. A few paces later he stopped and looked back.
He sighed and went on his way, never seeing what came out of the tomb to follow him.
The second torch died down. In the near total darkness that followed, the runes on the steps of the tomb blazed like so many altar candles. From somewhere there came a rhythmic thudding, as if from an unseen, distant drum. The lights winking and playing in the curtain above the dark stone casket began to race about, washing down over the stone tomb as showers of sparks that sank into the runes they touched and caused little flames to flare up briefly from the stone. A mist or wispy smoke came with them, and a faint echo that might have been an exultant chant mingled briefly with the thudding.
The runes flared into blazing brilliance, faded, flashed almost blinding-bright…then abruptly went out, leaving all in darkness and silence.
The embers of the torch gave just enough light, had anyone been in the tomb, to see the massive lid of the casket hovering just above its sides. Through the gap between them, something emerged from the tomb and swirled around the room.
It was more a wind than a