Elminster in Hell

Cold flames raced outward and around. Out of them leaped a masked figure, blade ready in hand. The room was dark and empty. After a quick and silent look around, it shrugged and stepped within the flames once more. The fire and light dwindled to nothing, and darkness returned.

The mouse scurried out in case the strange visitor had left something edible, but there was nothing. Not like the old days. Tilings were never like the old days, the mouse reflected, slowly and dimly. Perhaps that was the way of the world.

Lord of the pit, wizard, where is the devil-damned magic?

[silence, mindworm burrowing grimly on through vaulted darkness]

"Through here," Mirt wheezed, trotting bent over low. "The way opens out-"

"So it does! All the more danger for someone who's a lord of Waterdeep, but Faerun is a dangerous place!"

The voice was cheerful and unexpected, very close to Mirt's ear. The Old Wolf was faster than he looked. He had his sword raised and ready, in just the right spot, and he ducked back with a snarl.

His would-be slayer hissed out a curse. Slender steel sang out in a vicious thrust that skewered only air.

Mirt's stouter blade lashed in over it, biting hard into leather and flesh beneath. The man sobbed at the sudden pain. Mirt brought his sword back trailing a dark ribbon of blood and batted his attacker's sword down.

They strained, steel against steel. Mirt used his free hand, candle and all, to deliver a punch to where the wound must be. His foe groaned and shuddered, reeling back. For the first time, Mirt dared to scuttle out of the passage into the room.

Asper snapped his name, tense and low, from behind Aleena.

Mirt growled, "Still alive-and dancing with a masked man, for a change."

"My turn," Asper replied. "You killed the last ruthless slayer who attacked us, remember?"

"Huh," Mirt grunted in reply. He swung steel with all his strength to parry another deadly thrust. The blow struck the slender sword. It clanged from stone to stone and must have numbed his foe.

The gloved and masked man waved his sword as if he was fa

Mirt scrambled after him, thankful that this new passage was full-height.

"Who is it?" Asper called, pelting after him.

Aleena clanked and stumbled along in their wake, clumsy in her armor.

"I know not," Mirt snarled, bounding down a short flight of steps with his wounded attacker stumbling along just out of reach. "Someone who knows what I am and how to find me, obviously-ho! Your name, Sword-for-Brains! A lady demands it!"

Gasping, the slender masked figure scrambled across a chamber and plunged into the stinking darkness of a sewer-arch. Mirt bounded after him with grunting enthusiasm.

Ahead, a flickering light flared. Mirt glimpsed his leather-clad foe lunging through a wheel of cold white flames. The flames blazed in a slowly turning ring, perhaps a handspan from a stone wall. A gate, gods be thanked again.

He came to a lurching halt, ignoring a rat that scurried out to see if his boots might be supper, and peered around the chamber. Reeking pipes let into it. Cha

Mirt eyed the rat that fearlessly nibbled his boot, and peered at the gate again-ere his blade stabbed down.

Its curving length rose an instant later when Asper burst into the room. She spun away from his steel even as he snatched it back, and skidded to a halt within easy reach of the flames.

"You didn't have to wait," she gri

The Old Wolfs blade barred her way. He held up a warning finger, clipped his sword to transfix the rat, and tossed it lightly into the ring of fire.

There was a flash, a loud sizzle, and a smell that made the armored warrior entering the chamber gag and sag back. Aleena raised a disgusted hand. She winced in the sudden blazing light of the whirling wheel of flames. It flared bright, shrank, flared again... and was gone, leaving nothing but a little smoke behind, and the stink of cooked sewer rat.

"That might have been you," Aleena gasped hollowly, between gulps of nausea.

Asper tossed her head. If she was frightened, she gave no sign of it. Only anger was on her face as she glared around the room. "He could be in the lowest of the Hells by now," she said bitterly, "or in the next sewer over- and we'll never know."

Amusing, elminster. I laugh. Now snow me magic!

Somewhere in Waterdeep, a vial clattered onto a table-top. There came a sigh of satisfaction. A moment later, a gloved hand reached down to the table and took up a silver harp pin. Chuckling, the figure waved, bringing cold flames to pinwheel out of nothingness. The leather-clad form leaned through this fresh flickering and was gone.

Magic, yes, and another memory given you by mystra, but again i find not what i seek! This is ridiculous! wizard, get on with it!

The tale unfolds, Lord Devil. [bright images flying]

The time before dawn grew more difficult as he got older. Durnan stood in the cold, getting dressed for another long, long day. The Yawning Portal was his home and his life, and he loved it dearly, but sometimes- these dark fore-dawns, usually-he wanted to be somewhere else. Somewhere that did not allow i

The high, ragged scream made Durnan jump half out of his hose. Tamsil, from the taproom downstairs! He hopped awkwardly, kicked his garments away with a curse, snatched up his sword belt by the hilts, and launched himself bruisingly through the door frame into the dimness.

In the brief whirl of his naked charge down the stairs, he shook the hilts in his hands for all he was worth until the belt fell away, roaring wildly all the while to distract whoever might be attacking his daughter. Tam was more than old and curvaceous enough to catch the eye of a" thief who might think that i

Skidding through a doorway with sword and dagger glittering in his hands, Durnan found himself with no foe to fight.

Tamsil and her mother Mhaere both looked up at-" him with eyes large and dark with fear. His wife was;.] holding a double crossbow in her hands, its strings still thrumming enough to tell him that both quarrels had been fired. No foe lay dead or groaning on the floor before them-but it did offer the discerning naked i

"Are you all right?" Durnan snapped. "And where is-" He gestured at the wreckage on die floor. "-he?"

Mhaere smiled thinly. "Yes, and gone. A masked man, armed with a blade. He-"

She drew in a deep, shuddering breath that told him she wasn't half as calm as she appeared to be, threw back her head to gasp for air, then resumed speaking as gently as if she'd been discussing the weather. ''In leathers, alone, not familiar to me. An oval-an upright oval, like a lady's gazing-glass-of flames that were cold white, not hot, was suddenly right there, and he stepped out of it and charged at Tamsil. Thank Tymora, she was carrying water-yon ewer you see in pieces on the floor-and flung it in his face."

Durnan turned slowly to peer around the field of battle, nodding. "Whereupon you," he replied, "took up the ready-bow from behind the bar and gave him both bolts."