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?
Eighteen: No Shortage Of Victims
The one certainty in a coup, orc raid, or well-side gossip session is that there'll be no shortage of victims.
It was dark and silent, once the scrape of his boots had stilled. He was alone in the midst of cold, damp stone, the dust of ages sharp in his nostrils…and a feeling of tension as something watched him from the darkness, and waiting.
Elminster let himself grow as still as the stone handholds he still clung to, faced the aware and lurking darkness, and called up one of the powers Mystra had granted him. It was one he'd used far too little, because it required quiet concentration, and time … far more time than most of the beings he shared Faerun with were ever willing to give him. Too often, these days, life seemed a headlong hurry.
His awareness ranged out through the waiting, listening darkness. Things both living and unliving he could not see, but magic, when El concentrated just… so, he could feel so keenly that he could make out surfaces on which dweomer clung, the tendrils of spell-bindings, and even the faint, fading traces of preservative magics that had failed.
All of those things lay before him. Faint magics swirled everywhere, none of them strong or precisely located, but outlining a large cavern or open space. A good way off, on the floor of this chamber or cavern… or down in a pit, he could not tell which…several closely clustered nodes of great, not-so-slumberous magical might throbbed and murmured ceaselessly. El blinked.
Trap or no trap, he had to see what waited here that could hold such magical might. He'd been led here, the swirling sentience that had done it was watching him or at least knew of his coming…so what was the point of stealth? El cast a stone-probing spell, seeking pits or seams ahead of him. Shrouded in its eerily faint blue glow, he stepped warily forward.
Great expanses of the floor were the natural rock of the cavern, as El proceeded, this gave way smoothly to a floor of huge stone slabs, smooth-polished and level, no mosses had stained them, but here and there, the fine white fur of salts leaching out of age-old rock trailed finger-like across the stone.
A throne or seat of the same stone faced Elminster… empty of magic, surprisingly, though it was almost hidden from view behind the dazzle thrown off by the seven nodes of magic when he viewed it with his mage-sight. Thankfully, the seat was empty.
El sighed, threw back his head, and stepped forward. Seven nodes blinding in their magical might. Predictable or not, he could not ignore such power and remain Elminster. He smiled, shook his head ruefully… and took another step.
He might well die here, but he could not turn away.
The human was coming nearer. The Great Foe would soon be within reach…but also close to the runes that were too powerful to safely approach.
Too close.
He would probably get only one chance, so it would have to be a shattering blow that even a great god-touched mage could not hope to survive. After all these years, a few days or even months more would matter not at all. The slaying stroke did.
The strike that would reveal him and harm the Foe all at once had to be one that destroyed…or at least ruined his foe into something powerless but aware-aware of the pain he would then deal to it at leisure, and of who was harming it during that long, dark time … and why.
So wait a bit more, like a patient ghost in the shadows.
Two dark eyes that blazed like two inky flames of fury peered from the depths of one of the darkest clefts in the rear of the cavern and watched the wary wizard step forward to his doom.
Years consumed by the ache to avenge, the gnawing need that ruled him night and day … years that had all come down to this.
"Yes, Vaelam?" Dreadspell Elryn asked, his voice dangerously soft and silky. A long, tense creeping advance to a ruin where powerful foes were almost certainly waiting for them had not improved his temper-especially after one of his boots had found its first muddy, water-filled old burrow hole. That had occurred three paces before his other boot found the second. He'd lost count, since then, of how many creeper thorns had torn at him and raked across his hands and face … and all of it, of course, watched sneeringly from afar by the cruel upperpriestesses of the House, among them the Darklady herself.
Vaelam was practically dancing with excitement, his eyes large and round. The foreguard of the Sharran "wizards" was a thin, soft-spoken priest, both careful and thorough in his duties. He was more excited, now, than Elryn had ever seen him.
"Dark Brother," he hissed excitedly, "I've found something."
"No," Elryn murmured, frowning, "Really? You do surprise me."
"It's a stone," Vaelam continued, astonishingly not catching Elryn's thick sarcasm at all…or displaying uncommonly swift skill at hiding his recognition of it. "A stone with writing on it."
"Writing that says..?"
"Well, ah, just one letter actually…but one as long as a man is tall. It's a 'KT
"No!" Femter gasped sarcastically. "Could it be?"
"Brother, it is," Vaelam confirmed. He seemed genuinely oblivious to their derision.