The Temptation of Elminster - Ed Greenwood [62]
He stared out into the gathering night, but no one was there.
"Reveal," he said coldly, uttering aloud what he could have caused the wards to do silently, seeking to impress…or cause fear in…whoever was out there, playing pranks. It took magic of great power to force open the Tower door, with its intertwined glyphs, layers of active enchantments, and the runes set into its frame and graven on its hinges.
Too much power, he would have thought, to burn in any prank.
The wards showed him nothing lurking within their reach. Hmmph, perhaps that nose-in-the-air elf had left a timed magic behind and miscast on the timing. He couldn't think of anything fast enough to smite open a door and leave the reach of the wards so swiftly…and magic mighty enough to breach the door from afar would leave traces behind in the wards. So would a teleport or other translocation. The door's own magics should prevent a spell cast on it from surviving to take effect at any later time… so who…or what…had forced the door open?
Mardasper called on the power of the wards to close and seal the mighty door. After it had boomed shut, he stared at it thoughtfully without touching it for a long time, then murmured words he'd never used before, had never thought he'd have to use…the words that would force the awakened ward to expel any magic-wielding sentient in contact with it. The wards blazed white behind his eyes, finding nothing. If spellcasting beings were lurking nearby, they were either well out in the night-shrouded forest…or here, in the Tower, inside the wards already.
Mardasper looked at the door and swallowed, his throat suddenly dry. If there was an intruder in Moon-shorn, he'd just sealed himself in with it.
Gods above. Well, perhaps it was time to earn his title as Guardian of the Tower. There was a lot of useful…and misunderstood, fragmentary, or forgotten-magic herein, potential realm-shattering weapons in the right unscrupulous hands. "Mystra be with me," he whispered, opened the door that led into the main stair, and started to climb.
The mist chimed only occasionally, and very softly, as it drifted across the parchment-strewn table like an eel ghosting its way among the rocks of an ocean reef. Occasionally it would pounce on a gem or a twisted filigree item placed as a paperweight by Tabarast and Beldrune, and a cold turquoise light would flare briefly. When the power drunk was very strong, the mist would swirl up in triumphant, flamelike bursts of white, winking motes of light that would dance above the table in triumph for a moment before dimming and dwindling into a drifting, serpentine mist once more.
From knickknack to gewgaw it darted, flaring as it drank, and growing ever larger. It was in mid-swirl when the door of the room suddenly opened, and the Guardian of the Tower peered in. Something in here had flashed, spilling a tongue of white light through the keyhole…
Mardasper paused on the threshold and sent a seeking spell rolling out across the room. The mist faded and sank down behind the table, becoming nigh-invisible… and when the spell streamed through it, it allowed itself to be scattered rather than to resist and be found.
The spell washed into every corner of the room, then receded. In its wake, the wind sighed softly back together, not chiming even once.
Mardasper glared into the room, the flame from his blazing eye seeking what his spell could not see. There must be someone or something here, translocations wouldn't work inside Moonshorn.
His accursed eye saw it immediately: a breeze that was no breeze, but a living, drifting, incorporeal thing.