The Temptation of Elminster - Ed Greenwood [67]
"Of course not," Tabrast snapped. "Would I be sitting here the night through in all this cold damp if they were?" He thumbed the lid of his tankard open, took a long pull, and looked back at the castle towers in time to see one of the glimmering lights go out.
They sat and waited until their tankards were empty, but nothing else happened. The castle, it seemed, was asleep. Tabarast finally turned his gaze from it with a sigh. "We're all pawns of the Lady who minds the Weave, though…aren't we? It just comes down to whether you delude yourself into thinking you're free or not."
"Well, I am free," Beldrune snapped, his lips tightening. "By all means let these funny ideas prance through your head, Tabarast, and govern your days if you want them to, but kindly leave me out of the 'foolish puppet' drawer in your mind. You'll live longer if you grant that other mages might have scrambled out of it, too."
Tabarast turned to fix the younger mage with a wise and keen old glare." Which other mages?"
"Oh, just the ones you meet," Beldrune grunted. "All of them."
Far from the turrets Tabarast and Beldrune were watching, and farther still from the shattered, smoking stump that had been the tower of Holivanter, another wizard's tower stood against the night sky.
This one was a modest roughstone affair studded with many small, loosely shuttered windows, sun boxes of herbs hanging from their sills. It stood alone in the wilderlands, bereft of village or muddy lane, and deer grazed contentedly around its very door…until a mist rising silently out of the grass settled upon them, and they sank down into oblivion, leaving only bones behind.
When there were no eyes left to see it, a chill, chiming whirlwind stole to the base of the tower and began to rise.
Floating up past climbing roses and ivy in eerie silence, it gathered itself in the air like a coiling snake…and lunged through a chink in a shutter halfway up the tower, pouring itself into the sleeping darkness beyond.
Dark chamber within opened into dark chamber, and the misty wind whirled, moaned as it gathered its might in that second room, a place of books and scroll-littered tables and dust…and became an upright, gliding thing of claws and jaws that slid out into the spiral stair at the heart of the tower, and up.
At the top of the tower, candlelight through an ill-fitting door danced reflections down the staircase, and an old and rough voice was speaking, alone, oblivious to the danger creeping closer, as clawed mists came gliding.
At the heart of a chalked symbol set with many candles, an old man in much-patched robes was on his knees, facing the chalk image of a pointing human hand. A blue radiance outlined the hand, and both it and the chalkwork were his doing, for he had dwelt long alone.
"For years I've served you, and the Great Lady, too," the wizard prayed. "I know how to smash things with spells and to raise them, too. Yet I know little of the world outside my walls and need your guidance now, O Azuth. Hear me, High One, and tell me, I pray: to whom should I pass on my magic?"
His last word seemed to echo, as if across a great gulf or chasm, and the blue conjured radiance suddenly shone almost blindingly bright.
Then it went out entirely as a wind rose out of the very floor, flowing from the chalked hand. The candles flared wildly, spat flames, and went out under its rushing onslaught, and out of the darkness that followed their deaths came a voice, deep and dry: "Guard yourself, faithful Yintras, for danger is very close to you now. I shall gather your Art unto me in the time of your passing… worry not."
With a crackle of leaking energy and a strange singing of the air, something blown on that wind flowed around the old wizard, winding around his trembling limbs to cloak him in warmth and vigor. With an ease and agility he hadn't felt in years, the old man sprang to his feet, raised his hands, and watched tiny lightnings crackle from one arm to the other