by Ed Greenwood
Ah, how recently?
[gusts of laughter] AH, ELMINSTER, YOU’LL SLAY ME YET!
Ahem. A figure of speech, of course.
EH? INDEED, INDEED? LITTLE HUMAN BASTARD.
Silently, a pointed rock behind the archdevil moved, curling out like a dark finger.…
Nergal let healing fire wash briefly over the shuddering human in his hands. He bent his will and watched his magic turn the scrawny man slowly into a creature of Hell: a nupperibo, bloated and dirty and yellow-white. With a tight smile he dropped Elminster to hang, choking and strangling, at the end of the spike-studded chain. Fresh blood flowed as his captive’s new bulk was dashed helplessly against the barbs.
Nergal shook the chain, rattling his struggling captive against a rock. El clutched frantically at the chain to avoid having his neck broken. He danced for his life as the archdevil threw back his head and laughed.
With a sudden, dark surge, the point of rock stabbed forward—and thrust through the laughing pit fiend like a gigantic spear tip.
Nergal screamed.
Impaled and aflame, the pit fiend flailed vainly at the skies, beat his great wings in agony, and staggered frantically forward. He dragged himself gorily off the rock. The spear of stone flashed blue-white, searing the shrieking devil each time.
When the outcast devil staggered free, it was visibly smaller, and trembled violently with each step. A sudden flurry of small explosions—erupting magic left in it by the stone—rocked its guts. Gore and entrails spewed in all directions. Shuddering and bent over, Nergal sagged to the stones of Avernus. He groaned and dwindled into a shuddering thing of tentacles.
The stone that had pierced the archdevil moved again. It arched over to touch the ground, its matter visibly flowing. The tip grew thicker, and straighter, standing tall and then … breaking away and taking a bold step out onto the sharp rocks of Hell.
A white-haired, bald wizard stood above the chained heap that was Elminster. His eyes blazed with blue-white flame as he spun a web of the same glowing hue around the captive mage.
The net touched the chain, crackled angrily along it, and collapsed. Halaster muttered a curse and raised his hands to weave another spell.
He was three murmured words into it when a cloud of stones streamed up from a ridge behind him. It hurtled down and smashed into the wizard, sending him flying with a startled cry. The stones crashed onto the rocks of Avernus and stopped bouncing. Halaster was somewhere beneath them, unseen … and unmoving.
“In Hell, human, you get only one strike,” Nergal spat, rising into view from behind the ridge, his eyes flaming red. Four more boulders were clutched in his tentacles. “It’s best to make it a good one.”
The heap of stones he’d hurled heaved once, twice—and then flew apart, a blue-white flame roaring up out of their heart.
Nergal sneered and fed it flames of black and ruby-red, hungrily clawing at the stones. They shattered into deadly spraying shards.
The pain-wracked worm that Elminster had become undulated frantically away. Hot shards sliced into him and sizzled where they sank in.
The blue-white flame stood like a knife-blade in the heart of Nergal’s spell flames. It erupted into a flurry of bolts that beheaded the tentacled devil.
“Hah!” roared a face that promptly grew on the end of a tentacle. “Thought you’d slain me, wizard? This is how you hurl a brightbolt spell!”
A flurry of bolts twice as large and numerous as Halaster’s streaked back at the mage. The very stones on which he stood vanished in blast after blast that hurled the agent of Mystra into the air. Leaking blue-white flame, he fell back into the inferno of creaking, red-hot rocks and landed in a frantic whirl of magic. He staggered upright.
“I’m here for your blood, devil,” Halaster snarled, raising hands that crackled with lightning.
“And I,” Nergal snarled, growing scorpion-sting tails to match his many tentacles, “am here for yours!”
Halaster’s spell—a bright net of silver lances linked by lightning and girded about with spirals of holy water—crashed down on the outcast devil. Nergal roared out his pain.
The ground under Halaster thrust up in huge fangs of dark, smoking devil bone, much as the mad wizard had first attacked Nergal. Like that attack, those fangs transfixed their target.
Screaming hoarsely, Halaster wriggled, impaled on what proved to be one of Nergal’s tentacles—a tentacle that ended in a long, slender spike of bone. Shuddering off the effects of the archmage’s spell, the outcast devil managed a short, ugly laugh and thrust his foe up into the air.
The thorn of bone was twice as tall as the man it pierced. Striking between the wizard’s legs, it had thrust its way up through guts and lungs to burst out of Halaster’s throat, shoving his head aside. Blue-white flames leaked from the mad wizard in a dozen places as his failing, darkening eyes sought Elminster.
“I’m … sorry,” he gasped hoarsely. “I—tried.”
Blue-white flame blazed up and spun Halaster away from the bone-fang, leaving it bare. Fire whirled in a small, spinning sphere in the air. Nergal raised a taloned hand to rake it—but the sphere suddenly grew very small and very bright. Halaster tumbled inside it like a broken doll … winked out, and was gone.
Elminster and Nergal both blinked up at the empty blood-red sky. In unison, they dropped their gazes to peer around at the scorched and smoking rocks, seeking little dancing blue-white stars or some other evidence of Halaster’s survival.
There was nothing like that to be seen.
Nergal laughed, a sound that began out of relief, and became gloating.
SO FLEES YOUR LAST HOPE, ELMINSTER? ANYMORE RESCUE PACTS? MAGES WHO OWE YOU ENOUGH TO RISK THEIR LIVES COMING HERE?
[weary silence]
I THOUGHT NOT. WELL, THEN, LET ME DIVE INTO YOUR SHATTERED LITTLE MIND AGAIN AND SEE MORE MEMORIES OF YOU MEDDLING—ONLY THIS TIME LET IT BE WITH RULERS AND MAGES AND ADVENTURERS, NOT ANY COMELY LASS WHO HAPPENS BY … IT’S MAGIC I’M AFTER, REMEMBER? REMEMBER?
[mind lash, red pain, hasty flourish of bright images, fading and falling, then whirling up into a single display once more …]
“My lord,” said the Simbul, and tears shone in her eyes, “I cannot stay longer. Those fools of Thay would try to wrest my land from me again. I am needed.”
Elminster smiled.
The bard Storm Silverhand sat near, thoughtfully putting a better edge on her old and battered long sword. Only she and the Simbul knew him well enough to see the sadness hidden behind his eyes.
“Of course,” he said simply. “These things—as always—must be.” He stepped forward with surprising speed and embraced her.
The morning sun shone bright and clear through the trees of Shadowdale. Leaf-shadows dappled the rocks on the rising flanks of Harper’s Hill. Storm’s blade flashed back the sun as she turned it, keeping silence.
In his old and deep voice, Elminster muttered things into the Simbul’s hair, and she whispered words back. No other was meant to hear them. Storm took care that she did not. That was the way she was.
The two great archmages half-turned toward her as they parted. Storm saw the brief gleam of a large blue gem that Elminster put it into the Simbul’s hand. “ ’Tis a rogue stone,” she heard him say. “It will bring ye to wherever I am, should ye need to see me in haste. Go, now. These partings grow no easier to me as the years pass.”
The Simbul nodded, slipped the gem into a pocket of her girdle, and turned back to kiss him impulsively. She whirled away in silence and leaped into the air, her black robes dwindling and flapping. A black falcon rose on swift wings into the sun, banked sharply eastward, and was gone.
The Old Mage stood silent and unmoving for long minutes, watching where she had gone. When the birds in the trees started their calls again, Storm slid her shining blade into its sheath and went to him.
In silence the two old friends linked hands and turned to go down the trail together.
After about a do
zen paces, Elminster asked, “D’ye mind, lass, if I cry?”
Storm kissed his cheek softly and said, “Of course not. I think you should do so far more often.”
“Romantic,” he growled back, in mock disapproval.
“Fellow romantic,” she replied, and put her arm comfortingly around him. He growled but did not pull free. She did not have to glance his way to know how wet his face had become.
HOW SWEET. MORE LUST AND SUGARED WORDS. WEEP, LITTLE WIZARD, WEEP. I SUPPOSE SUCH REMEMBRANCES COMFORT YOU NOW, BUT I CAN’T THINK WHY. I’D BE RAGING. HOW MUCH TIME YOU’VE WASTED OVER FEMALES—JUST RUT AND MOVE ON, AND SAVE ME ALL THIS “LOVE.” THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS LOVE.
For devils, no. I’m not a devil, Nergal.
BUT WELL ON YOUR WAY TO BEING ONE, ELMINSTER? BELIEVE ME.
Oh? Is this something I should make a habit of?
[diabolic chuckle] ON WITH IT, WIZARD! YOU’RE WASTING TIME AGAIN! GIVE IT UP, IDIOT—NO ONE’S GOING TO RESCUE YOU NOW! SHOW ME WHAT I SEEK, OR AT LEAST WHAT HAPPENED AFTER YOU STOPPED EMBRACING AND CRYING AND KISSING.
As ye wish.
[bright images, flittering down, down]
She was young, slim, and very beautiful. Tarth swallowed and tried not to stare.
Silvery-gray hair flowed from her head in long waves, curling smoothly about arms and tiny waist and long, long legs. She reclined in a low bough of an old indulwood tree, smoking a clay pipe and regarding him in thoughtful silence. Her eyes were blue-green, flecked with gold, and very large.
“Ah … well met!” said Tarth awkwardly, leaning on his staff. He’d plundered old magic in forgotten tombs across the Dragonreach, and peered into forbidden tomes in places both dusty and dangerous, but he’d never been so close to a beautiful female moon elf before.
Tentatively he bowed and smiled. She returned his smile, enchantingly. Tarth stared deep into those exquisite eyes and cleared his throat.
“I—I’ve traveled a long way, good lady, to reach this place. Could you tell me, please, where the tower of the sage Elminster stands?”
The elf-maiden nodded. “Up yonder path, past the pool,” she replied, her voice husky, yet dancing. She giggled.
Tarth stared in helpless wonder.
A long, slim arm reached out to him. “This is his pipe, which I … borrowed. Will you return it for me?”
Tarth nodded. In a silent whirl of flashing limbs she vanished into the leafy shade overhead, leaving him holding the still-smoking pipe. He stared down at it for a moment, then peered vainly up again into the tree, shrugged, and went on.
HO, HO! I THINK I’M GOING TO SEE SECRETS OF MAGIC AT LAST! OR IS THIS JUST ONE MORE OF YOUR TRICKS, MAGE? HEY?
[silence]
STILL IN THE THROES OF AGONY DOWN THERE? TOO BAD.
The little path turned off the main road through Shadowdale just in front of Tarth’s well-worn boots. No sign or runestone marked it for what it was, but the directions given him had been clear enough. The young wizard stood alone for a long time, staring along the line of worn flagstones in the grass, before he stepped onto them.
The way led him between two tumbledown cottages and across a grassy field toward the great, rising rock of the Old Skull. A still, peaceful pond glimmered off to the left. Birds sang, and chipmunks called. Tarth Hornwood, known by some as “Thunderstaff,” walked slowly and fearfully up the garden path. He could see what lay at its end now: a squat stone tower that leaned slightly to one side.
Tarth held his staff menacingly in one hand, hoping he would not have to use it. Its power seemed to have been growing weaker of late. On his other hand gleamed the Lost Ring of Murbrand. Tarth hoped there would be no need to call upon its powers, either. Despite days of research and experimentation, he did not know how to command the ring to do anything.
At the spot where a trail of moss and beaten grass branched off and ran down to the pond, a large flat rock lay beside the path. Its top was worn smooth, as if many folk had sat upon it over the years. Just now it held a curved, smooth-carved pipe, twin to the one he carried. It was lit, smoking quietly in the morning air all by itself.
Tarth stared at it. Was it some sort of trap? The Old Mage himself, perhaps, shapechanged to avoid prying intruders? The young wizard looked at the pipe for a long time and then with a shrug reached down. He’d faced danger enough and lived to tell the tale—and this was only a pipe. He hoped. His fingers touched it, warm and hard and smooth, and he almost jerked his hand away.
His fingertips tingled against it as he waited. A bird flew past; silent minutes lengthened. Carefully Tarth picked the pipe up and quickly looked all around. Nothing menaced. Nothing was altered. It was exactly the same as the one the elf had given him.
Two pipes that smoked by themselves. Tarth held them carefully out before him to avoid breathing in their smoke, and walked on toward the waiting tower.
Its small, plain door faced him blankly. Tarth leaned his staff into the crook of one elbow and reached out with his freed hand toward the pull ring of the door, to knock.
His fingers were still inches away when the door swung open silently.
Tarth stepped back in alarm. After a few breaths of silence, he stepped forward again, and then hesitated, peering into the darkness.
“Well, stand not on the threshold, welcoming flies in! Enter, and unburden thyself of whatever matter ye have sought me out for, mageling!” came an imperious voice from within.
Tarth swallowed, and took a step forward. “How—how did you know I work magic?” he found himself asking, before he could stop the words from spilling out.
“ ’Tis written in foot-high letters on thy forehead, of course,” came the dry answer. “Have ye not noticed it before?” A sort of grunt followed, and the voice continued. “Hmm … ye must be an adventurer … such pay the least heed to the world around them … Well? Come in, then! ’Tis not so difficult—advance thy other foot, as ye did the last, use thy staff for balance, then boldly reach ahead thy first foot, again, and the deed is done!”
Tarth did so, and found himself in a dark, dust-choked chamber piled to the ceiling with parchments and thick leather tomes. Upon a stack of particularly massive books perched an old, straggle-bearded man in flowing robes. One gimlet eye fixed on Tarth.
In one hand the old man held a tiny bird, cupped carefully. The bird, too, regarded Tarth. It cheeped once disdainfully.
The old man’s other hand reached out. “My pipes,” he demanded simply. “Ye must have met Aelrue.”
Wordlessly Tarth handed over the pipes. The mage’s fingers brushed his, and Tarth felt a brief tingle of raw power. He stood awed in the dimness of the cluttered chamber, as the old man spoke softly to the little bird in words Tarth did not understand. It cheeped again, briefly, and flew into the darkness at the back of the room.
When it was gone, the old man looked up. “Tea?” he asked, almost roughly. “Ye look dry.” Without waiting for a reply, he called, “Tea, Lhaeo! For two.”
He waved at an old barrel, atop which were stacked several wrinkled maps of Thay and the Utter East, the hues of their magical inks glowing faintly in the dimness.
“Toss those aside and sit ye,” the old man commanded. “We may as well get started. Time not spent is not saved. Thy name?”
Tarth gave his first name, looking around for a place to set the maps and finding none. The old man sighed and waved a hand, and the maps wafted out of Tarth’s grasp and glided out of sight behind towering stacks of parchment. At the same time, the two pipes, which had hung patiently in midair at the old man’s shoulder, winked out and rose into the darkness, where they were lost to view.
Tarth sat hastily, leaning his staff against his shoulder.
Elminster nodded. “Elminster of Shadowdale,” he replied. “Your business with me, lad?”
Tarth swallowed, and tried to look fearless and uncaring. “I seek training to further my mastery of the Art,” he said softly. “If you are willing, and find my payment sufficient, I
’d like to learn from you what I can, by the passing of the next moon.”
The famous sage raised both his eyes this time to fix Tarth with a long, cool considering gaze. His eyes were very blue. Tarth soon felt uncomfortable, but dared not turn his own eyes away. Finally the Old Mage nodded slowly.
An instant later, Tarth found a steaming jack of tea floating silently down out of the darkness, past his nose. He closed a hand around it rather shakily.
“Ye mentioned payment,” that dry, imperious voice rolled out. “Would it trouble ye overmuch, lad, to be more specific?”
“Ah—this!” Tarth said, thrusting forward his hand. “The Lost Ring of Murbrand!”
Silence fell. The expected astonishment was not forthcoming. Elminster’s blue, clear eyes regarded him steadily. Out of the darkness overhead, another jack of tea floated down into the archmage’s waiting hand. The old eyes never looked at it, but remained fixed on him. Expectantly.
Tarth rushed to fill the silence with excited words. “One of the greatest treasures of the lost magecraft of Myth Drannor! A thing famous in bards’ songs and in old tales across the Realms! A—”
“A thing whose wielding is far beyond thy present powers,” Elminster replied dryly. Tarth looked back at him, crestfallen.
“Well, yes,” he admitted. “Yet its gaining was not easy … and I have Art enough to tell that it is a thing of great power, the greatest I have ever seen.”
Elminster nodded. “So it is.” He regarded Tarth steadily over the top of his jack as he drank. Silence grew and lengthened.
Tarth let his hand fall back to rest on his thigh. “Well?” he asked, suddenly afraid. The old man’s gaze seemed dark and menacing and somehow angry. With cold certainty Tarth knew that the great archmage could probably seize the ring and destroy Tarth Hornwood utterly, in a very short and simple time. Those eyes held his, now seeming somehow amused. Death must look like this, so close …
“Is it sufficient?” Tarth heard himself asking, calmly and firmly.
“Aye—and nay,” was the reply. “ ’Tis a thing of worth enough, aye. But I don’t want it. Ye keep it.” A hint of a smile twisted the mustache. “Ye may grow to have power enough to use it. Ye may even need it.”
