The Temptation of Elminster

Seventeen: A Fine Day For Travel

"You're doing just fine, brave Uldus," Dreadspell Elryn said soothingly, prodding their trembling guide with the man's own sword. Brave Uldus arched away from the blade, but the noose around his neck…held tight and short-leashed in the fist of Dreadspell Femter…kept him from entirely missing its sharp reminder. Dreadspell Hrelgrath was walking along close by, too, his dagger held ready near the ribs of their unwilling guide.

"Shar is very pleased with you," Elryn told the man, as they went on along the almost invisible game trail, deeper into the Dead Place. "Now just show us this ruin … oh, and Uldus, reassure me again: it is the only ruin or building or cave or construct you know about, anywhere in these woods, is it not?"

Choking around his noose, Uldus assured him that it was, oh, yes, Dread Lord, indeed it was, may the Nightbringer strike me down now if I lie, and all the watching gods bear witness…

Femter didn't wait for Elryn's sign this time before jerking the noose tight enough to cut Uldus off in mid-babble. The guide silently clawed at his throat, stumbling, until Femter relented enough to let him breathe again.

"Iyrindyl?" Elryn asked, without turning his head.

"I'm watching, Dread Lord," the youngest Dreadspell replied eagerly. "The first sign of walls or the like, I’ll cry hold."

"It's not walls I'm seeing," the deep drawl of Dreadspell Daluth put in, a few strides later, "but an elf-alone, and walking with a drawn sword in his hand, yonder."

The Sharran priests stopped, unnecessarily clapping their hands over the mouth of their guide, and glared through the trees. A lone elf looked back at them, disgust written plain on his face.

A moment later, Elryn snarled, "Attack!" and the Sharrans surged forward, Elryn and Daluth standing still to hurl spells. They saw the elf sigh, take off his cloak and hurl it high over a tree branch, then turn to face them, crouching slightly. "Damned human adventurers!" he cried. "Haven't I killed enough of you yet?

Ilbryn Starym watched the wizards run toward him…charging wizards? Truly, Faerun was plunging deeper into madness with every passing day…took up the blade that was battle-booty from the last band of fools, and said a word over it. When he threw it like a dart at the onrushing men, it glowed, split into three, and leaped away like three falcons diving at separate targets.

At the same moment, a tree just behind the line of running wizards turned bright blue and tore itself up out of the earth with a deafening groan, hurling earth and stones in all directions. Someone cursed, sounding very surprised.

An instant later, a sheet of white lightning broke briefly over the running mages, and a man who seemed to have a noose around his neck convulsed, clawed at the air for a few moments and shrieked, "My reward!" and fell to earth in a twisted heap. The wizards ran on without pause, and Ilbryn sighed and prepared to blast them to nothingness. His three blades should have done something.

One of the running mages grunted, spun around, and went down with something glowing in his shoulder. Ilbryn smiled. One.

There was a flash, someone cried out in surprise and pain, and the three remaining wizards burst through the still-shimmering radiance and came on, one of them shaking fingers that trailed smoke. Ilbryn lost his smile. Some sort of barrier spell, and it had taken both of his other blades.

He raised his hands and waited. Sure enough, now that they were close enough to him that the army of Ilbryn and the army of half a dozen mages could count each other's teeth, the panting wizards were coming to a halt and preparing to hurl spells at him.

Ilbryn cloaked himself in a defensive sphere, leaving only a keyhole open for his next spell. If his measure of these dolts was correct, he'd not have overmuch to fear in this battle … even with the wizard who'd taken his blade slowly crawling to his feet and the two who hadn't come running strolling slowly closer in the distance.

Abruptly the air in front of Ilbryn's sphere was filled with blue flowers, swirling about as they drifted to earth. An elf mouth crooked into a smile. By the startled oaths coming to his ears, that hadn't been supposed to happen. Perhaps he was caught up in some school of wizardry's battle test of the inept apprentices. He waited politely to see what else would come his way.

A moment later, he blinked with new respect. The earth was parting with a horrible ripping sound, between the boots of one of the mages…and racing toward Ilbryn, zigzagging only slightly as it came. Trees, boulders, and all were hurled aside in the chasm's swift advance, and Ilbryn readied his lone flight spell, just in case. He'd have to time this just right, collapsing the sphere and bounding aloft more or less in one smooth sequence.

The chasm swerved and snarled on past, trailing the awed yells of a wizard who seemed astonished he'd cast it. Ilbryn's eyes narrowed. What sort of madmen were these?

Well, he'd wasted more than enough time and magic on them already. He hurled a quick spell of his own out of the keyhole, and stood watching as the trunk of the shadowtop he'd shattered, a goodly distance above the wizards, spun about almost lazily, then came crashing down.

Wizards shouted and hurled themselves in all directions, but when the dancing, flailing branches receded to a shivering, one man lay broken like a discarded doll under a trunk ten times his girth.

Ilbryn risked another spell through the keyhole. Why not a volley of magic missiles? These idiots seemed almost like bewildered actors playing at being mages, not foes to fear at all.

He hoped, a moment later, that he hadn't just given the gods some sort of awful cue.

"If Mystra is dead, what's helping his spells?" Dread-spell Hrelgrath snarled, puffing his way back to where Elryn stood watching, cold-eyed.

"Whatever god of magic elves pray to, dolt," Daluth answered…an instant before blue-white bolts of force came racing their way.

"Back!" Elryn snapped, "I don't think these can miss, but back, anyway! This is costing us too much!"

Elryn's prediction proved to be right, none of the bolts missed. The Dreadspells grunted and staggered their ways back through the trees, hoping the elf wouldn't bother to follow them.

"Femter?" Elryn snapped.

A head snapped up. "I'll be all right, the next time the power surges into us," Femter replied grimly. "Some sort of magical blade. Can't use my arm, though."

"Our guide…dead?"

"Very," Femter said shortly, and there were a few dark chuckles.

"Iyrindyl?"

"Down. Forever. Half a tree fell on him."

Elryn drew in a deep breath and let it out in a ragged sigh, very conscious of the unseen eyes of Darklady Avroana upon him. "Right…consider that fiasco our first battle-practice. There'll be no more charging into any fray. From now on, we creep through these woods like shadows. When we find the ruin, we wait for the Weave to feed us once more, then…and only then, even if it takes all night…we advance. Out in these woods, only the Chosen really matters to us, and I'm not going to be caught off-guard again."

Blue-white fire burst forth from the book. The skeleton almost dropped the book in surprise, its bony fingertips clawing at its covers, as the flames that burned nothing washed over its bones, racing from the book to … her.

Sharindala shuddered as blue-white fire ran up and down her limbs, leaving something in its wake. She stared down at her glowing bones in wonder, then back at the book, feeling something rising in her throat.

"That's a good plan," Ilbryn agreed sarcastically, as tie let his clairaudience collapse, said farewell to the idiot wizards and their chatter, and cast the guidance spell that would take him to these ruins they'd been heading for. He bid it seek out man-touched stone, in any mass larger than four men…which should eliminate tombstones and the like…and in this general direction …

Almost immediately he felt the pull of the magic, Ilbryn followed it obediently, striding off through the woods along an invisible but unwavering line. Ah, but magic could be useful at times.

It had been cold and dark in Scorchstone Hall for many years. Too cold for the living.

A skeleton threw back the shutters of one window to let the sun in and went back to a table where a spellbook lay. Sitting down carefully in the stoutest chair left in the Hall, the skeleton took up the tome, clutched it to its ribcage with both bony arms enfolded around it, and called on the power of the spell it had cast earlier. The power that let it speak.

It said only two words, firmly enough that they echoed back from the dark corners of the room. "Mystra, please."

Baerdagh stiffened at the sudden sound that came through the trees, and almost dropped his walking stick. He turned, to be absolutely sure that the faint weeping was coming from Scorchstone.

It was. In the very heart of that ruined mansion, a woman was sobbing…crying as if she'd never find breath to speak again. In dark, haunted Scorchstone, where the skeletal sorceress walked.

Baerdagh broke into a frantic shuffle, heading for the Maid…where strong drink, and plenty of it, would be waiting.

"Along here, it should be," Beldrune said, as they came around the bend and almost rode down an old man with a walking stick, who looked to have just taken up trotting, and was wheezing loudly to let the world know. "There! Up ahead, on the left…the Fair Maid of Ripplestones. We can get a good meal there, and decent beds a few doors on, and ask in both places about where Elminster's been hereabouts. I know he likes to look at old mages' towers."

"And their tombs, too," Tabarast put in. "It's been some years since I stopped here, but old Raider, if he's still alive, used to roast a mean buck."

The down-at-heels Harper with the pale brown hair and eyes, riding between them, nodded pleasantly. "Sounds good," was all he said, as they slowed their horses at the ramshackle porch and rang the gong that would bring the stable boys.

An old man sitting on a bench deep in one corner of the porch looked at them sharply…especially at Tabarast…as they strode inside. After a moment, he got up and drifted into the Maid on their heels.

It seemed Caladaster was hungry enough for a second earlyevenfeast this day. By the time Baerdagh came puffing up to the front door of the Maid, Caladaster was sitting with the three horsemen who'd almost ridden him down as if they'd known each other for years.

"Aye, I know this Elminster, right enough," Caladaster was saying, "though a few days back I'd have answered you differently. He came walking up to this very tavern. Baerdagh…oh, hey! This is Baerdagh, come sit down with us, old dog…and I were warming yon bench, where you saw me just now, and he came striding up and bought us dinner…a huge feast it was, too!..in return for us telling him about Scorchstone Hall. Gods, but we ate like princes!"

"We can do no less," the youngest, poorest-looking of the three horsemen said then, saying his first quiet words since handing a stable boy some coins. "Eat hearty, both of you, and we'll trade information again."

"Oh, a-heh. Well enough … that's very kind of you, to be sure," Caladaster said heartily as he watched platters of steaming turtles and buttered snails brought to the table. Alnyskawer even winked at him as the tankards were set down beside them. Caladaster blinked. Gods, he was becoming a local lion!

"So where and what is Scorchstone Hall?" Beldrune asked almost jovially, plucking up a tankard and taking a long pull at it. Baerdagh didn't fail to notice the face the newcomer made at the taste of the brew or how quickly he set down the tankard again.

"A ruined mansion just back along the road a ways," he said quickly, determined to earn his share of the meal. "You passed it on your way in…the road bends around it, just this side of the bridge."

"It's warded," Caladaster said quietly. "You gentlesirs are mages, are you not?"

Three pairs of eyes lifted to him in brief silence until Tabarast sighed, took up a buttered snail that must have burned his fingers, and grunted, "It shows that badly, does it?"

Caladaster smiled. "I was a mage, years ago. Still am, I suppose. You have the look about you … eyes that see farther than the next hedge. Paunches and wrinkles, but yet fingers as nimble as a minstrel's. Not to mention the wardings on your saddlebags."

Beldrune chuckled, "All right, we're mages…two of us, at any rate."

"Not three?" Caladaster's brows rose.

The man with the pale brown eyes and the tousled hair smiled faintly and said, "Here and now, I harp."

"Ah," Caladaster said, carefully not glancing at the regulars in the Maid, who were bent almost out of their chairs straining not to miss a word of what passed between these travelers and the two old tankard-tossers. Wizards, now! And haunted Scorchstone! Mustn't miss this….

A Harper and two wizards, hunting Elminster. Caladaster felt a little better, now, about telling them things. Hadn't Elminster had summat to do with starting the Harpers?

"Scorchstone Hall," Caladaster continued, in a voice so low that Baerdagh's sudden humming completely doaked it from the ears of folk at other tables, "is the home of a local sorceress…a lady by the name of Sharindala. A good mage, and dead these many years. Of course, there are the usual tales of her being seen walking around past her windows, as a skeleton and all… but you'd have to be a damned good tree-climber to get to where you could just see a window of the Hall…let alone look through its closed shutters!"

He got smiles at that, and continued, "Whatever-Elminster asked us all about her, and we warned him about the wards, but it's my belief he went in there and did summat. We asked him to stop by our places…we live, Baerdagh an' I, in the two cottages hard by Scorch-stone, 'twixt there and here…when he was done, so's we'd know he'd fared well…"

"And we wouldn't have to go in there looking for his body," Baerdagh growled and went back to his humming. Tabarast and the Harper exchanged amused glances.

Caladaster gave his old friend what some folks would call a dirty look and took up his tale again. "He did drop by to see us…looked right happy, too, though he had a little sadness about him, like folk get when they remember friends now gone, or see old ruins they remember as bright and bustling. He said he'd a 'task' to get on with, and had to head east. We warned him about the Slayer, o' course, but…"

"The Slayer?" the Harper asked quietly. Something about his words made the whole Maid fall silent, from door to rafters.

Alnyskawer, the tavern master, moved quickly forward. "It's not been seen here, lords," he said, "whatever it be…."

"Aye, you're safe here," someone else grunted.

"Oh? Then why'd old Thaerlune pack up and move back to…"

"He said he was going to see his sister, her beta' sick an' all…"

Caladaster's open hand came down on the table with a crash, "If you don't mind," he said mildly into the little silence that followed and turned to the three travelers again.

"The Slayer is summat that has the High Duke, up in his castle Starmantle way, very worried. Sum-mat is killing everything that lives in the forest, or travels the coast road past it, between Oggle's Stream…just beyond us here…and Rairdrun Hill. Cows, foxes, entire bands of hired adventurers, and several of 'em, too…everything. They've taken to calling it the Dead Place, this stretch of woods, but no one knows what's doing the killing. Some say the dead have been burned away to bones, others say other things, but no matter. We don't know what killer we're facing, so folk've been calling it the Slayer." He looked around the taproom. "Well enough? Said it all, didn't I?"

There were various grunts and grudging agreements, one or two hastily shushed dissenting opinions, and Caladaster smiled tightly and lowered his voice again. "Elminster walked straight into the Dead Place, he did, an' must be there now," he said. "I don't know right why he had to go there … but it's summat important, isn't it?"

There was a brief silence again. Then the Harper said, "I think so," at the same moment as Tabarast snapped, "Everything Elminster does is important."

"You're going after him?" Caladaster asked, in a voice that was barely above a whisper.

After a moment, the Harper nodded again.

"I'm going with you," Caladaster said, just as quietly. "That's a lot of woods, an' you'll need a guide. Moreover, I just might know where he was headed."

Beldrune stirred, "Well," he said gravely, "I don't know about that. You're a bit old to be going adventuring, and I'd not want to be…"

"Old? Old? Caladaster asked, his jaw jutting. "What's he, then?" He pointed at Tabarast. "A blushing young lass?"

That old mage fixed Caladaster with a gaze that had made far mightier men quail, and snapped, " 'Just might know' where Elminster was heading to? What did he tell you…or are you guessing? This blushing young lass wants to know."

"There's a ruin in that forest," Caladaster said quietly, "in, off the road. You can tramp around in the trees all day waiting to get eaten by the Slayer while you search for it, or I can take you right to the ruin. If I'm wrong…well, at least you'll have one more old, overweight mage and his spells along for the jaunt."

"Overweight?" Tabarast snapped. "Who's overweight?"

"Ah," Beldrune said, clearing his throat and reaching for a dish of cheese stuffed mushrooms that Alnyskawer had just set down on the table, "that'd be me."

"I don't think it's a good idea to bring one more man along," Tabarast said sharply, "whom we may have to protect against the gods alone know what…"

"Ah," the Harper said quietly, laying a hand on Tabarast's arm, "but I think I'd very much like to have you along, Caladaster Daermree. If you can leave with us in the next few minutes, that is, and not need a night longer to prepare."

Caladaster pushed back his chair and got up. "I'm ready," he said simply. There was something like a smile deep in the Harper's eyes as he rose, set a stack of coins as tall as a tankard on the table…many eyes in the room bulged…and said, "Tavern master! Our horses… here's stabling for a tenday and for the feast. If we come not back to claim them by then, consider them yours. We'll walk from here. You set a good table."

Baerdagh was staring up at his old friend, his face pale. "C–Caladaster?" he asked. "Are you going yon, in truth…into the Dead Place?"

The old wizard looked at him. "Aye, but we can't take along an old warrior, so don't fear. Stay…we need you to eat all the rest of this for us!"

"I…I…" Baerdagh said, and his eyes fell to his tankard. "I wish I wasn't so old," he growled.

The Harper laid a hand on his shoulder. "It's never easy, but you've earned a rest. You were the Lion of Elversult, were you not?"

Baerdagh gaped up at the Harper as if he'd just grown three heads, and a crown on each one. "How did you know about that? Caladaster doesn't know about that!"

The Harper clapped his shoulder gently. "It's our business to remember heroes…forever. We're minstrels, remember?"

He strode to the door and said, "There's a very good ballad about you…."

And then he was gone. Baerdagh half rose to follow, but Caladaster pushed him firmly back down. "You sit, and eat. If we don't come back, ask the next Harper through to sing it to you." He went to the door, then turned with a frown. "All those years," he said, scowling, "and you never told me you were the Lion! Just such a little thing it slipped your mind, huh?"

He went out the door. Tabarast and Beldrune followed. They just gave him shrugs and grins at the door, but Tabarast turned with his fingers on the handle and growled, "If it makes you feel better, you're not the only one who doesn't know what's going on!"

The door scraped shut, and Baerdagh stared at it blankly for a long while…long enough that everyone else had come back from the windows and watching the four men walk out of town, and sat down again. Alnyskawer lowered himself into the seat beside Baerdagh and asked hesitantly, "You were the Lion of Elversult?"

"A long time ago," Baerdagh said bitterly. "A long time ago."

"If you could go back to some moment, then," the tavern master asked a tankard in front of him softly, "what moment would it be?"

Baerdagh said slowly, "Well, there was a night in Suzail … We'd spent the early evening running through the castle, there, chasing young noble ladies who were trying to put their daggers into one another. Y'see, there was this dispute about…"

Turning to Alnyskawer to properly tell him the tale, Baerdagh suddenly realized how silent the room was. He lifted his eyes, and turned his head. All the folk of Ripplestones old enough to stand were crowded silently around him in a ring, waiting to hear.

Baerdagh turned very red and muttered, "Well, 'twas a long time ago…."

"Is that when you got that medal?" Alnyskawer asked slyly, pointing at the chain that disappeared down Baerdagh's none-too-clean shirtfront.

"Well, no," the old warrior answered with a frown, "that was…"

He sat back, and blushed an even darker shade. "Oh, gods," he said.

The tavern master grinned and slid Baerdagh's tankard into the old warrior's hand. "You were in the castle in Suzail, chasing noble ladies up and down the corridors, and no doubt the Purple Dragons were chasing you, and…"

"Hah!" Baerdagh barked. "They were indeed…have you ever seen a man in full plate armor fall down a circular stair? Sounded like two blacksmiths, fighting in a forge! Why, we …"

One of the villagers clapped Alnyskawer's shoulder in silent thanks. The tavern master winked back as the old warrior's tale gathered speed.

"Not all that much more sun today," Caladaster grunted, "once we're in under the trees."

"Umm," Beldrune agreed. "Deep forest. Lots of rustlings, and weird hootings and such?"

Caladaster shook his head. "Not since the Slayer," he said. "Breezes through the leaves, is all…oh, and sometimes dead branches falling. Otherwise, 'tis silent as a tomb."

"Then we'll hear it coming all the easier," the Harper said calmly. "Lead on, Caladaster."

The old wizard nodded proudly as they strode on down the road together. They'd gone some miles and were almost at the place where the overgrown way to the ruins turned off the coast road, when a sudden thought struck him…as cold and as sudden as a bucket of lake water in the face.

He was very careful not to turn around, so that the Harper could see his face…this Harper who'd never given his own name. But from that moment on, he could feel the man's gaze on him…a cold lance tip touching the top of his spine, where his neck started.

The Harper had called him by his full name. Caladaster Daermree.

Caladaster never used his last name … and he hadn't told the Harper his last name, he never told anyone his last name. Baerdagh didn't know it…in fact, there was probably no one still alive who'd heard it.

So how was it that this Harper knew it?