He was really enjoying it in Suzail.
Free of the role of well-known target he’d grown all too used to in the City of Splendors, for one thing. Suzail wasn’t half as large or wealthy or raw as his beloved Deep, but it offered plenty of excitement and danger, ready pleasures-for-hire such as those he was enjoying right now, and … well, he’d been thrust right into the heart of important doings, in a realm where things were happening. All in all, he was more alive, and having more fun, than he’d been for many a year.
“Lord,” Arelle murmured, sliding over his wine-slick chest, “will you take … more?” She scooped up a handful of sugared, cinnamon-tinged icing and held it out to him.
“After I take care of this icing?” he jested, and her eyes danced.
“Of course.”
Not wanting to be left out of things, Lhareene wormed her way up his other arm … “Aye,” Mirt decided contentedly, aloud but telling himself more than either of his tubmates, “I’ll stay here a while longer, I will.”
Stay, rather than making the long, bone-jolting wagon or saddle trek to Waterdeep. Seeing as magic seemed to have become far less reliable, with fewer mages abroad who could casually teleport an aging Lord of Waterdeep across half Faerun for any sort of affordable fee with much of a chance at all he’d arrive at his intended destination alive and … unaltered.
Elminster preened.
The tall, slender mirror was undamaged, the bedchamber around it untouched by the ravages of the glaragh. It was an odd, curlicued and dagged crescentiform shape, its “glass” a sheen-smooth sheet of polished mica that had been enspelled into a single gleaming sheet of black that reflected what stood before it.
Right now, that was Elminster in his newfound body. He turned it this way and that, setting his long, lithe legs to strike pose after hip-foremost pose.
This young body looked as good as it felt. Strong, supple, shapely-if a bit sharp-featured, both about the face and below-and attractive, oh yes, by Mystra and Sharess both …
He turned and watched himself-heh, herself, now-move, in the mirror.
“Hungry goddesses, aye,” he murmured, turning again to thrust his behind at his reflection, augmenting it with an impudent flash of his tongue. “I might even fancy myself. Not that many men would dare pursue such a fancy far, given the reputation drow ah, enjoy …”
Oh, have done, old goat. I was never this bad, even at my youngest and most ardent! We’re in a hurry, remember? Portals? Spider-kissing priestesses? Perhaps a bored glaragh coming back?
“Lady,” El protested, “spare me a moment, at least. D’ye know how long I’ve been in pain, dragging around an aging carcass that failed me a mite more and a mite more with each passing day?”
Elminster, I do. Yet think on this: you’ll have that aging to do all over again, dragging yourself around the Realms for another thousand years, or if not that, still long after I’m no more than a memory. A fading memory …
“Ye’ll not be forgotten, lady,” El said swiftly. “This I swear.”
He struck another pose. “Now enjoy this with me! Regard the sleek line of flank, hip, thigh, and calf! I’ve never had that before!”
Not for lack of trying-if half I’ve heard about you is true, Symrustar said tartly. And you sound like a butcher deciding where to land his cleaver!
Elminster made a rude sound, waved one long-fingered hand in a less than polite gesture, and glided into another pose with fluid grace.
Ah, but it was good to have a body that obeyed his will again-without stiffenings and stabs of pain and ever-present aches!
El squatted deep and then sprang high, again and again, in a series of frog hops across the room, just because he could, ere joyously doing a cartwheel through the door into an antechamber that seemed to be half wardrobe and half armory.
He swept up out of it to the tinkling accompaniment of delighted laughter in his mind. Symrustar evidently approved.
Now to cover his oh-so-velvet and shapely newfound hide …
He cared not if this body strode the Realms unclad in any of the various diaphanous drapery robes-hideously hued in dunglike, glistening mauves and yellows, wherever they weren’t black or sluggish-blood russet-he’d seen on most unarmored fallen she-drow around the riven citadel, but he did fancy some of the black drow armor. The lesser leather sort, rather than the fluted, pointed glass stuff. And knives, aye, he’d have himself some of those. There were wicked-sharp little obsidian daggers everywhere, their black blades upswept and beautifully balanced for throwing-and he’d always loved a good throwing knife.
Why, he’d taken down a magelord with a knife in the eye once, about twelve centuries back, and then there’d been that little duel in Cormanthor. Not to mention slicing a finger off that Zulkiir to ruin the spell the Thayan had been so proud of, and-
Is all this rolling around in past glories going to take long? In the depths of his mind, Symrustar sounded decidedly waspish. “Long” isn’t something I can spare much of, any more …
“Sorry,” El grunted, and he started to search. Hurriedly.
Despite that haste, it took him quite a while to find armor that fit properly-local dark elf fashion was skintight, which made finding the right garments rather important-but clouts and undercorsets and daggers in clip-on sheaths were plentiful. Good clouts had many uses, so El took an armful. Then he strapped daggers all over his body, not forgetting to fasten two sideways beneath his small, sleek breasts and a trio down inside the front of the corset to serve as extra armor.
“Not what a dark elf of good breeding might do,” El murmured, “but I fear I’ll never be that. Corrupt and fallen human, me.” He twirled, just to feel such a spin done without pain, and laughed aloud as a thought struck him. “I’ll be able to wear some of those splendid thigh-high boots! I’ve got the legs for it at last!”
Trying on the wrong boots can be painful, he discovered, but he was soon shod in comfortably fitting, soft lizardskin boots of a shining ebony hue. The mirror, at least, very much liked the look of them.
Deep in his mind, Symrustar snorted. Loudly.
Now a proper sword-the drow blades on hand all had wicked curves rather than a long, straight reach, but with this supple body he could dance in and out against a foe, rather than leaning and reaching as had slowly become his habit down the years, as his own aging body had gone gaunt and stiff. And he would need a staff.
Then he’d need two grapnel-ended climbing cords of the sort drow patrols hereabouts always carried; they could be tied around the trim waist he now had, riding on the largest hips he’d ever possessed. Then a shoulder sack, and food and drink-especially drink-to make that sack bulge to the last notches on its straps.
Hurry, man. You’re worse than an elf maiden primping for her first revel!
“Oh, I doubt that, lass,” El muttered, rushing along passages in search of kitchens or pantries to ransack. “I very much doubt that.”
He found both almost immediately by literally stumbling into a small dining chamber dominated by an oval table heaped with slumped, mindless drow. The food under them was almost all crushed or spilled, but archways at the back of the room led into similar feasting rooms clustered around a central kitchen-a kitchen connected to larder after larder.
Dodging collapsed or wandering drow who had no minds left to notice a boldly wayward priestess in warriors’ armor clambering among them, El ransacked the citadel’s food stores at will. The good wine was all in fluted, fragile, utterly impractical bottles and decanters, but the soldiers’ swill was in double-thickness skin belt pouches, and there was cheese, thin hard-smoked pack lizard steaks, and plentiful vallart, the dark, chewy crescentiform wayfarers’ bread favored by many near-surface drow.