The Temptation of Elminster - Ed Greenwood [65]
She stretched like a large cat and used the rod over one shoulder to scratch her back, putting it within easy reach of Elminster. "You must have far more patience than I do," she admitted, her eyes very dark and steady upon him. "I could never serve such an arbitrary goddess."
"Is it permitted to ask whom ye do serve, Lady Master?" El asked, extending his hands in a mute offering to accept the enchanted rod.
She poked at her back once more, smiled, and put the rod into his hands. Two of the rings she wore blinked as she did so.
Dasumia smiled. "A little higher… ah, yessss." Her smile broadened as El carefully used the rod to scratch the indicated spot, but she kept her eyes fixed on his hands, and the rings that had winked a moment ago now flickered with a constant flame of readiness.
"It's no secret," she said casually. "I serve the Lord Bane. His gift to me was the dark fire that slays intruders and keeps more cautious mages at bay. Did you know there's some fool of an elf who tests my wards with a new spell every tenday? He's been at it for three seasons now, as regular as the calendar, almost as long as you've been with me." She smiled again. "Perhaps he wants your position. Should I order you to duel him?"
El spreads his hands and said, "If it's your wish, Lady. I'd as soon not slay anyone unnecessarily."
Dasumia stared at him in thoughtful silence for quite a long time as the carpet rushed on away from the smoking stump of the tower and the dying day, and finally murmuring, "And deprive me of the entertainment elven futility brings me? No fear."
She rose up on her knees in a single smooth motion, plucked the rod out of El's hand, resheathed it, and in the same continuous movement reached out with both hands to take hold of his shoulders. Her slender fingertips rested lightly upon him, yet Elminster suddenly felt that if he tried to move out of their grasp, he'd find them to be claws of unyielding iron. In three years, this was the closest contact between them.
He held still as his Lady Master brought her fare close to his, their noses almost touching, and said, "Don't move or speak." Her breath was like hot mist on Elminster's cheeks and chin, and her eyes, very dark and very large, seemed to be staring right into the back of his head and seeing every last secret he kept there.
She leaned a little way forward, just for a moment, and their lips met. An imperious tongue parted his own lips-and something that burned and yet was icy raced into his mouth, roaring down his throat and coiling up his nose.
Agony…burning, shuddering, get-away-from-it agony! El sneezed, again and again, clawing at fabric in a desperate attempt to keep from falling, knowing his whole body was shuddering. He was convulsing and sprawling on the carpet, sobbing when he could find breath enough… and he was as helpless as a child,
Yellow mists cavorted and flowed before his eyes, the darkening sky overhead kept leaping and turning, and he was thrashing against claws that held him with painful, immovable force.
For what seemed an eternity he coughed and struggled against the yellow haze, drenched with sweat, until utter exhaustion left him able to spasm no more, and he could only lie moaning as the lessening surges of pain ebbed and clawed their ways through him.
He was Elminster. He was as weak as a dried, rolled-up leaf blown in the wind. He was…lying on his back on the flying carpet, and the only thing that had kept him from falling off it in his throes was the iron grip of the sorceress he served, the Lady Dasumia.
Her hands loosened on him, now. One left his bruised bicep…in which it had been sunk inches deep, like an anchor of iron throughout his thrashings…to trail across his brow, thrusting oceans of sweat away.
She bent over him in the gathering gloom of falling night, as the breezes of the lofty sky slid over them both, and said softly, "You have tasted the dark fire. Be warned, if ever you betray me, it shall surely slay you. As long as you worship