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After a long while, the skeleton shook its head, almost wearily.
"Would ye find lasting rest?" El asked gently. The wand shot up to menace him. He held up a staying hand and asked, "Do ye still work magic?"
The hair-shedding skull nodded, then shrugged, holding up the wand.
El nodded. "I've not searched for any magic ye may have hidden. I've only added, not taken away." A thought occurred to him, then, and he asked, "Would ye like to know new spells?"
The skeleton stiffened, made as if to rise, then nodded so emphatically that hair fell out in handfuls.
El reached into his cloak and drew forth a spellbook. Muttering a word over it, he strode back across the room, ignoring the hesitantly lifted wand...which spat nothing more at him...and gently placed the tome in her lap, holding it as her free hand came across to clasp it.
Her other hand dropped the wand and reached up impulsively to clasp his arm. Rather than pulling free, El reached out slowly to place his own hand over the dry, bony digits on his forearm and stroked them.
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 Dra
"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 Dra
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 gri
"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.