The Temptation of Elminster - Ed Greenwood [64]
Dasumia rolled back onto one hip and propped herself up with one arm, the other toying with the rod. "So tell me," she told the sky, in silken-soft tones that made Elminster stiffen warily, "just why you disobeyed me. Does killing mages come hard to you?"
Fear stirred cold fingers within him. "It seems… unnecessary," El replied, choosing his words very carefully. "Does not Mystra say the use of magic should be encouraged, not jealously guarded or hampered?"
Ah, Mystra. Her word had led him here, to serve this beguiling evil. He'd almost forgotten what it felt like to be a Chosen of Mystra, but in his dreams, El often knelt and prayed, or repeated her decrees and advice, fearing it would entirely slip away from him if he did not. Sometimes he feared that the Lady Dasumia was stealing his memories with creeping magic or walling them away behind mists of forgetfulness, to make him entirely her creature. Whatever the cause, it was getting harder, as the months passed, to remember anything of his life before the Riven Stone…
Dasumia laughed lightly. "Ah, I see. The priests of the Lady of Magic say such things, yes, to keep us from slaying thieves who steal scrolls… or disobedient apprentices. Yet I pay them little attention. Every mage who can rival me lessens my power. Why should I help such potential foes rise to challenge me? What gain I from that?"
She leaned forward to tap Elminster's knee with the rod. He tried not to look at the little green lights winking into life around it and wandering up and down its length almost lazily. "I've seen you on your knees to Mystra, of nights," she told him. "You pray and plead with her, yes, but tell me: how much does she talk to you?"
"Never, these days," El admitted, his voice as low and as small as the despair he felt. All he had to cling to were his small treacheries, and if she ever discovered those…
Dasumia smiled triumphantly. "There you are-alone, left to fend for yourself. If there is a Mystra who takes any interest in mortal mages, she watches while the strong help themselves, over the bodies of the weak. Never forget that, Elminster."
Her voice became more brisk. "I trust your labors haven't faltered in my absence," she commented, sitting up…and raising the rod to point at his face like a ready sword. "How many whole skeletons are ready?"
"Thirty-six," Elminster replied. She lifted that eyebrow again, obviously impressed, and leaned forward to peer into his eyes, dragging his gaze to meet hers by the sheer power of her presence. El tried not to wince or lean away. In some ways, the Lady Dasumia was as, as…well, awesome at close quarters and as irresistibly forceful in her presence…as Holy Lady Mystra Herself. How, a small voice in the back of his mind asked, could that possibly be?
"You have been hard at work," she said softly. Td thought you'd spend some time trying to get into my books and a little more poking around my tower before you got out the shovels. You please me."
El inclined his head, trying to keep satisfaction-and relief…from his face and voice. She must not have discovered his rescue work, then.
With his spells, her most obedient apprentice had healed a servant and whisked him to a land distant, laden with supplies and white with fear. She'd taken the man to her bed but tired of him as the Year of Mistmaidens began, and one morning she had turned him into a giant worm and left him impaled on one of the rusting spits behind the stables to die in slow, twisting agony. El had left the transformed body of a man who'd died of a fever in the servant's place. Restless and reckless meddling, perhaps. Doom-seeking lunacy, that, too. Yet he had to do such things, some how, working small kindnesses to make up for her large, bold evils.
It hadn't been his first small treachery against her cruelty… but there was always the chance that it would be his last. "My honesty has always outstripped my ambition," he said gravely.
Her mockery returned. "A pretty speech, indeed,"