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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 di
"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."