Sharindala trembled all over, and for a long time blue-gray eyes and dark points of light in the sockets of a fleshless skull stared into each other.
El withdrew his stroking hand and said, "Lady, I must go. I must place more magic elsewhere...but if I survive to return to Ripplestones in time to come, I'll stop and visit ye properly."
He received a slow but definite nod in answer.
"Lady, can ye speak?" El asked. The skeleton stiffened, then the hand on his arm became a fist that smashed down on the arm of the chair in frustration.
El bent over and tapped the book. "There's a spell in here, near the back, that can change that for ye. It requires no verbal component, obviously...but I want ye to remember something. When ye have some unbroken time to devote to things and have mastered that spell, I want ye to hold this tome and say aloud the words, 'Mystra, please.' Will ye remember?"
The skull nodded once more. El took hold of bony fingertips and brought them to his lips. "Then, Lady, fare thee well for now. I go, but shall return in time. Be happy."
He straightened, gave her a salute, and strode out of the room. The skeleton managed a wave at its last glimpse of his smiling face, then its hand fell to the book, cradling it as if it would never let go.
For a long time the skeleton that had been Sharindala sat in the chair, staring at the door and shuddering. The only sound in the room was a dry clicking as fleshless jaws worked. She was trying to weep.
"But there's more!" Beldrune hissed, creeping forward with his fingers held out like claws before him.
Spellbound, the circle of pupils watched him with nary a titter at the appearance of an old and overweight wizard trying to tiptoe like an actor overplaying the part of a skulking thief. "This mighty mage has walked these very streets! Here...just outside, down yon alley, not three nights past...I saw him myself!"
"Think of it," Tabarast took up the telling excitedly, never knowing that the mage they were speaking of was at that moment kissing the fingertips of a skeleton. "We've walked with him, we studied magic at his very elbow in fabled Moonshorn Tower...and soon, just perhaps, you too may have this opportunity! To talk with the supreme sorcerer of the age...a man touched by a god!"
"Nay," Beldrune leered suggestively, "a man touched by a goddess!"
"Think of it!" Tabarast put in hastily, flashing a warning glare at young Droon. Don't the young ever think of anything else? "The great Elminster has lived for centuries! Some believe him to be a Chosen One, personally favored by the goddess Mystra...that's what my colleague was trying to say...and records are clear: he is a man who dwelt in fabled Myth Drannor when elven magic flowed like water, was respected enough to be accepted into a noble elf family there, advise their ruler, the Coronal...and even survive the darkness of its destruction at the hands of a shrieking army of foul fiends! Hard to believe? Ask the folk of Galadorna about Elminster's survival in the face of the fell magic of an archpriestess of Bane, while defying her in her very temple! This was before Galadorna's fall, when he was the court mage of that realm."
"Aye, all this is true," Beldrune agreed, taking up the tale. "And don't forget: he's been seen here...fearlessly strolling out of the tomb of the mage Taraskus in broad daylight!"
There were gasps at this last piece of news and many involuntary glances toward the windows.
A ghostly shape that had been floating outside one of those windows, listening intently, prudently fell away and dissolved into mists.
"I've lived for centuries, too," it murmured, chiming as it gathered speed to go elsewhere. "Perhaps this Elminster will make a fitting mate ... if he's alive and human, and not some cleverly cloaked lich or crawling netherplanar spirit." Unaware that excited pupils were crowding the windows to glimpse her as a supposed magical manifestation of the very mage she was musing about, the sorceress drifted away, murmuring, "Elminster ... 'tis time to go hunting Elminsters."
Fourteen: The Elminster Hunt
The deadliest sport among the Zhentarim is vying for supremacy within its dark ranks ... and in particular, the doom of the too young and nakedly ambitious: to be sent Elminster hunting. I'll wager that this has always been a perilous pastime. Some are wise enough, as I was, to use it as a chance to "die" our ways out of the Brotherhood. It was interesting...if a trifle depressing...to hear, while in disguise, what folk said of me, once they thought me safely dead. One day I'll return and haunt them all.
Destrar Gulhallow
from Posthumous Musings of a Zhentarim Mageling
published circa The Year of the Morningstar
The darkness never left Ilbryn Starym. It never would, not since the day when the last hunting lodge of the Starym had been torn apart in spells and flame, their proud halls in Myth Drannor already fallen, and the Starym had been shattered forever.
If any of his kin still lived, he'd never found trace of them. Once proud and mighty, the family that had led and defined Cormanthyr for an age was now reduced to one young and crippled cousin. If the Seldarine smiled, with his magic he might be able to sire children to carry on the family name... but only if the Seldarine smiled.
Again, it had been the Accursed One, that grinning human Elminster, his spells splashing around the temple as he fought the queen of Galadorna. A thousand times Ilbryn had relived those searing instants of tumbling down the temple, broken and aflame. To work magic that would restore his leg and smooth his skin to be what it had once been would ruin spells he'd never mastered, the spells that had cost him so much, to keep his ravaged innards working. Years of agony...if he lived that long...lay ahead. Agony of the body to match the agony in his heart.
"Have my thanks, human," he snarled to the empty air. The horse promptly jostled him, sending stabbing pains through his twisted side, as it clopped across a worn and uneven bridge. Ahead, through the pain, he saw a signboard. On his sixth day out of Westgate, riding alone on a hard road, it was a welcome sight, it told him he was getting somewhere … even if he didn't know quite where that somewhere was.
"Ripplestones," he read it aloud. "Another soaring human fortress of culture. How inspiring."
He drew his bitter sarcasm around himself like a dark cloak and urged his horse into a trot, sitting up in his saddle so as to look impressive when human eyes began their startled looks at him, an elf riding alone, all in black and wearing the swords and daggers of an adventurer, with...whenever he let the spell lapse...one side of his face a twisted, mottled mass of burn scar.
The weaponry was all for show, of course, to make his spells a surprise. Ilbryn dropped one hand to a smooth sword pommel and caressed it, keeping his face hard and grim, as the road rounded a thick stand of trees and Ripplestones spread out before him.
He was always wandering, always seeking Elminster. To hunt and slay Elminster Aumar was the burning goal that ruled his life...though there'd never be a House Starym to return to with triumphant news of avenging the family unless Ilbryn rebuilt it himself. He was close on Elminster's trail now, he could taste it.
He put out of his mind how many times he'd been this dose before and at the end of the day had closed his fingers on nothing.
Ah, a tavern, The Fair Maid of Ripplestones. Probably the only tavern in this dusty farm town. Ilbryn stopped his horse, threw its reins over its head to enact the spell that would hold it like a statue until he spoke the right word, and began the bitter struggle to dismount without falling on his face.
As it was, his artificial leg clanked like a bouncing cartload of swords when he landed, and he clung to a saddle strap for long seconds before he could clear his face of the pain and straighten up.
The two old men on the bench just sat and watched him calmly, as if strange travelers rode up to the Fair Maid every day. Ilbryn spoke gently to them, but grasped the hilts of a blade and a throwing dagger as a sort of silent promise of trouble to come ... if they wanted trouble.
"May this day find you in fortune," he said formally. "I hope you can help me. I'm seeking a friend of mine, to deliver an urgent message. I must catch him! Have you seen a human wizard who goes by the name of Elminster? He's tall, and thin, with dark hair and a hawk's nose … and he steps into every wizard's tomb he passes."
The two old men on the bench stared at him, frowning, but said not a word. A third man, standing in the tavern door, gave the two on the bench an even odder look than he'd given Ilbryn and said to the elf, "Oh, him! Aye, he went in Scorchstone right enough, and soon came out again, too. Headed east, he did, into the Dead Place."
"The Dead Place?"
"Aye, them as goes in comes not out. There's nary a squirrel or chipmunk 'tween Oggle's Stream and Rairdrun Hill, just this side of Starmantle. We go by boat, now, if'n we have to. No one takes the road, nor goes through the woods, neither. A tenday an' some back, some fancy adventuring band...an' not the first one, neither...hired by the High Duke hisself went in... and came not out again. Nor will they, or my name's not Jalobal...which, a-heh, 'tis. Mark you, they'll not be seen again, no. I hear there's another band of fools yet, jus' set out from Starmantle ..."
The elf had already turned and begun the struggle up into his saddle again. With a grunt and a heave that brought a snarl of pain from between clenched teeth, he regained his seat on the high-backed saddle and took up his reins to head on east.
"Here!" Jalobal called. "Aren't you be stayin', then?"
Ilbryn twisted his lips into a grim smile. "I'll never catch him if I stop and rest wherever he's just moved on from."
"But yon's the Dead Place, like I told thee."
With two swift tugs, the elf undid the two silver catches on his hip that Baerdagh had thought were ornamental and peeled aside his breeches. Inside was no smooth skin, but a ridged mass of scars that looked like old tree bark, a sickly yellow where it wasn't already gray. The twisted burn-scarring extended from his knee to his armpit...and above the knee were the struts and lashings that held on a leg of metal and wood that the elf had not been born with.
"I'll probably feel at home there," the elf told the three gaping men thinly. "As you can see, I'm half dead already." Without another word or look in their direction, he pulled the catches closed and spurred his mount away.
In shocked silence, the three men watched the dust rise, and beyond it, the bobbing elf on his horse dwindle from view along the overgrown road toward Oggle's Stream.
"Didj'ye see? Did d'ye see?" Jalobal asked the two silent men on the bench excitedly. They stared at him like two stones. He blinked at them then bustled back into the Maid to spread word about his daring confrontation with the scorched elf rider.
Baerdagh turned his head to look at Caladaster. "Did he say 'catch him up, or just 'catch him'?"
"He said 'catch him,' " Caladaster replied flatly. "I noticed that in particular."
Baerdagh shook his head. "I'd not like to walk in a mage's boots, for all their power. Crazed, the lot of them. Have you noticed?"