Shaking his head, Baerdagh spat pointedly into the dust by the stranger's boots and started to shift himself along the bench, to get out and away before this young glutton tucked into such a feast as this under their very noses and drove him and his empty vitals wild.
Caladaster was in the way, though, and slower to move, so the two old men were still shifting their behinds along the bench when the tavern master came back again with a keg of beer and tankards.
Three tankards.
The stranger sat down and grinned at Baerdagh as the old man looked up with the first glimmers of amazement dawning on his face.
"Well met, goodsirs," he said politely. "Please forgive my boldness, but I'm hungry, I hate to eat alone, and I need to talk to someone who knows a fair bit about the old days of Ripplestones. Ye look to have the wits and years enough .. . what say we make a deal? We three share this...and eat freely, no stinting, ye keeping whatever we don't eat now...and ye give me, as best ye know, answers to a few questions about a lady who used to live hereabouts."
"Who are you?" Baerdagh asked bluntly, at about the same time as Caladaster said under his breath, "I don't like this. Meals don't just fall out of the sky. He must have paid Alnyskawer to get even a quarter of this out here on a table, but what's to say we won't have to pay summat, too?"
"Our thin purses," Baerdagh told his friend. "Alnyskawer knows just how poor we are. So does everyone else." He nodded his head toward the tavern windows. Caladaster looked, already knowing what he'd see. Near everyone in the place was crowded up against the dirty glass, watching as the hawk-nosed stranger poured two full tankards and slid them across the table, emptying eating forks and trencher knives out of the last tankard and sliding them across too.
Caladaster scratched his nose nervously, raked a hand down one of his untidy white-and-gray mutton-chop whiskers...a sure sign of hurried, worried thought...and turned back to the stranger. "My friend asked who you are, an' I want to know too. I also want to know whatever little trick you've readied for us. I can leave your food an' just walk away, you know."
At that moment, his stomach chose to protest very loudly.
The stranger ran a hand through unruly black hair and leaned forward. "My name is Elminster, and I'm doing some work for my Lady Master, work that involves my finding and visiting old ruins and the tombs of wizards. I've been given money to spend as I need to, in plenty...see? I'll leave these coins on the table ... now, if I happen to vanish in a puff of smoke before ye pick up that tankard, there's enough here for ye to pay Alnyskawer yourselves."
Baerdagh looked down at the coins as if they were a handful of little sprites dancing under his nose, then back up at the stranger. "All right, that tale I'll grant," he said slowly, "but why us?"
Elminster poured his own tankard full, set it down, and asked, "Have ye any idea what weary work it is, spending days wandering around a town of increasingly suspicious folk, peeking over fences and looking for headstones and ruins? By the first nightfall, farmers always want to thrust hayforks through me. By the second, they're trying to do it in droves!"
Both old men barked short and snorting laughs at that.
"So I thought I'd save a lot of time and suspicion," the stranger added, "if I just shared a meal with some men I liked the look of, with years enough under their belts to know the old tales, and where so-and-so lies buried, and..."
"You're after Sharindala, aren't you?" Caladaster asked slowly, his eyes narrowing.
El nodded cheerfully. "I am," he said, "and before ye try to find the right words to ask me, know this: I will take nothing from her tomb, I'm not interested in opening her casket, performing any magic on her while I'm there, or digging up or burning down anything, and I'd be happy to have ye or someone else from Ripplestones along to watch what I do. I need to be able to look around thoroughly...in good bright daylight...and that's all."
"How do we know you're telling the truth?"
"Come with me," Elminster said, doling out platters and cutting into one of the pies. "See for thyselves."
Baerdagh almost moaned at the smell that came out of the opened pie with the rush of steam...but he'd no need to, his stomach took care of the utterance for him. His hands went out before he could stop himself. The stranger grinned and thrust the platter bearing the slice of pie into his hands.
"I'd rather not go about disturbing dead sorceresses," Caladaster replied, "and I'm a bit old for clambering around on broken stones wondering when the roof's going to fall down on my head, but you can't miss Scorchstone Hall, you came..."
He broke off as Baerdagh kicked him under the table, but Elminster just grinned again and said, "Say on, please, I'm not going to whisk away the meal the moment I hear this!"
Caladaster ladled himself a bowl of soup with hands that he hoped weren't shaking with eagerness, and said thickly, "Friend Elminster, I want to warn you about her wards. That's why no one plundered the place long since, an' why you didn't see it. Trees and thorn bushes an' all have grown around it in a wall just outside the shimmering … but I recall, before they grew, seeing squirrels and foxes and even birds a-wing fall down dead when they so much as brushed Sharindala's wards. You came right past it on your way in, just after the bridge, where the road takes that big bend, it's bending around Scorchstone." He took a big bite of cheese, closed his eyes in momentary bliss, and added, "It burned after she died, mind, she didn't call it Scorchstone."
Baerdagh leaned close across the table to breathe beer conspiratorially all over Elminster and whisper roughly, "They say she walks there still, you know...a skeleton in the tatters of a fine gown, still able to slay with her spells."
El nodded. "Well, I'll try not to disturb her. What was she like in life, d'ye know?"
Baerdagh jerked his head in Caladaster's direction. The older man was blowing on his soup to cool it, he looked up, stroked his chin, and said, "Well, I was nob-but a lad then, do you see, and …"
One by one, overcome with curiosity, the folk of Ripplestones were drifting out of the Maid or down the street to listen...and, no doubt, to enthusiastically add their own warnings. Elminster grinned, sipped at his tankard, and waved at the two old men to continue. They were plowing through the food at an impressive rate, Baerdagh had already let out his belt once, and it lacked several hours to highsun, yet.
In the end, the two old men were content to let their good friend Elminster go alone up to Scorchstone Hall, though Caladaster gravely asked the hawk-nosed mage to stop by their neighboring cottages on his way out, if'n he needed a bed for the night, or just to let them know he'd fared safely. El as gravely promised he would, guessing he'd find deafening snores behind barred doors if he returned before the next morning. He helped the old men carry home the food their groaning-full bellies wouldn't let them eat and bought them each another keg of beer to wash it down with. They looked at him from time to time as if he was a god come calling in disguise but clasped his hand heartily enough in almost tearful thanks and wheezed their way indoors.
El smiled and went on his way, waving cheerfully to the scattering of Ripplestones children who came trailing after him...and the mothers who rushed to drag them back. He turned and walked straight into the thick-standing trees that hid Scorchstone Hall from view. The last watchers from afar, who'd wandered down from the Maid with their tankards in their hands, spat into the road thoughtfully, agreed that Ripple-stones had seen the last of another madman, and turned away to drift back to the tavern or about their business.
The shimmering was as Caladaster had described it...but sighed into nothingness at the first passage spell El attempted. He became a shadow once more, in case more formidable traps awaited, and drifted quietly into the overgrown gardens of what had once been a fine mansion.
It had burned, but only a little. What must have been a tower at the eastern front corner was now only a blackened ring of stones among brambles, attached to the house beyond by a rock pile of its fallen walls...but the gabled house beyond seemed intact.
El found a place where a shutter sagged, and drifted into the gloom through a window that had never, it seemed, known glass. The dark mansion beyond had its share of leaks, mold, and rodent leavings, but it looked for all the world as if someone cleaned it regularly. The shadowy Chosen found no traps and soon reverted to solid form to poke and peer and open. He found sculptures, paintings smudged where someone had recently scrubbed mold away, and bookshelves full of travel journals, scholarly histories of kingdoms and prominent families, and even romantic novels. Nowhere in the house that he could see, however, was there any trace of magic. If this Sharindala had been a mage, all of her books and inks and spell-substances must have been destroyed in the fire that brought down her tower ... and presumably the lady had perished therein, too.
El shrugged. Well, a searcher in days to come wouldn't know that if he did his work properly. A forgotten scroll on a shelf here, a wand in a wooden box hidden behind this tallchest, and a sheaf of incomplete spell notes thrust into that book there. Now to put a few more scrolls in the closets he'd seen up in the bedrooms, and his work here was done. Magic enough to set a mageling on the road to mastery, if shrewdly used, and...
He opened a closet door and something moved.
Cowered, actually, as handfire blazed between Elminster's fingers. Brown and gray bones shifted and shuffled into the deepest corner of the closet, holding a wobbling wand pointed at him. El saw glittering eyes, a wisp of cloth that might once have been part of a gown, and a snarl of long brown hair that was falling out of the shriveled remnant of a scalp as the skeleton brushed against the walls. He stepped back, holding up a hand in a "stop" gesture, hoping she'd not trigger that trembling wand.
"Lady Sharindala?" he asked calmly. "I am Elminster Aumar, once of Myth Drannor, and I mean no harm nor disrespect. Please come out and be at ease. I did not know ye still dwelt here. I'll pay ye proper respects, then withdraw from thy house and leave ye in peace."
He retreated to the door, put on his cloak and summoned up defenses in case the undead sorceress did use the wand, and waited, watching the open closet door.
After a long time, that dark-eyed skull peered out... and hastily withdrew. El leaned against the door frame and waited.
After a few moments more, the skeleton hesitantly shuffled out of the closet, looking in all directions for adventurers who might be waiting to pounce. She held the wand upward, not leveled upon him, and came to a stop halfway down the room, gazing at him in silence.
El offered her the chair beside him with a gesture. She didn't move, so he picked up the chair and carried it to her.
The wand came up, but he ignored it...even when magic missiles spat forth and streaked at him, trailing blue fire.
His spell defenses absorbed them harmlessly, El felt only gentle jolts as they struck. Pretending they'd never existed at all...or the second volley, that tore into his face from barely an arm's length away...the last prince of Athalantar set down the chair and gestured to the walking remains of Sharindala, then to the chair, offering it to her. Then he bowed and went back to the doorway.
After a long, silent moment, the skeleton went to the chair and sat down, crossing its legs at the ankles and leaning back on one arm of the chair out of long habit.
Elminster bowed again. "I apologize for my intrusion into thy home. I serve the goddess Mystra and am here on her bidding to leave magic for later searchers to find. I shall restore thy wards and trouble ye no more. Is there anything I can do for ye?"
After a long while, the skeleton shook its head, almost wearily.
"Would ye find lasting rest?" El asked gently. The wand shot up to menace him. He held up a staying hand and asked, "Do ye still work magic?"
The hair-shedding skull nodded, then shrugged, holding up the wand.
El nodded. "I've not searched for any magic ye may have hidden. I've only added, not taken away." A thought occurred to him, then, and he asked, "Would ye like to know new spells?"
The skeleton stiffened, made as if to rise, then nodded so emphatically that hair fell out in handfuls.
El reached into his cloak and drew forth a spellbook. Muttering a word over it, he strode back across the room, ignoring the hesitantly lifted wand...which spat nothing more at him...and gently placed the tome in her lap, holding it as her free hand came across to clasp it.