Elminster's Daughter

The character Farmer Crommor

in Scene the First

of the play Troubles In The Cellar

by Shanra Mereld of Mura

first performed in the Year of the Griffon

The outermost of the ward-spells that cloaked the far corners of the room in roiling mists flared into coppery flames of warning, and a telltale chimed.

The darkly handsome young man clad all in black—open-fronted, flaring-sleeved shirt, tight leather breeches, and gleaming

black boots—took his crossed feet down from the footstool, laid aside his book and his goblet, and rose from his chair.

He passed his hand over a dark sphere of crystal that shared its own upswept, teardrop-shaped duskwood plinth with an outer ring of smaller spheres. Another ring of roiling mists obediently wavered into emerald radiance and displayed an upright image in the air: a white-faced man in brown robes that matched his thi

The man in black smiled and touched two of the smaller spheres. Two rings of mist fell away into nothingness, and the third took on that emerald hue. The Red Wizard then passed his hand over the largest sphere, and the scene of Huldyl Rauthur vanished.

"Enter the archway and proceed," he told the air calmly. "The way before you is quite safe."

The emerald mists at his feet flowed away to one wall in a purposeful flood and climbed it to outline an archway on the unbroken stone—which promptly split to reveal a long, rough tu

"Be welcome," the Red Wizard said quietly. "Importance brings you, I trust?"

"Y-yes," Huldyl Rauthur made reply, as he entered the chamber. "I believe 'tis time." The War Wizard was chalk-white with worry, and his face glistened with so much sweat that it dripped from his chin.

A weak reed, Master Rauthur, Darkspells thought. And weak reeds break.

"Good," Harnrim Starangh told the man he'd bought. "Return to the chamber you came from, and I'll follow in a matter of moments."

As soon as the fearful Rauthur started back down the passage, Starangh passed a hand over a crystal and sent mists billowing up between them once more. He drained his goblet in a long, unhurried quaff, plucked one of the crystals from the plinth and slipped it into his codpiece, and said words to the empty air.

Two men were promptly standing before him, blinking in startlement and alarm. They went pale when they saw who was standing facing them.

Starangh gave the merchants Bezrar and Surth a sharklike smile. "I hope you've eaten well. You're going on a journey."

"Eh? What j—" Bezrar began, but fell silent as Surth kicked his ankle savagely.

Starangh let them both see his smile turn soft and menacing and commanded, "Stand still and silent. Please."

They did so, and he cast an intricate spell that laid a fog of for-getfulness on them. Until it expired, they'd be compelled to seek the retired Mage Royal, being drawn always in his direction—but stripped from them was all remembrance of why they were seeking Vangerdahast or who'd enspelled and sent them. Anyone trying to break the spell before it ran out would reduce the two Marsembans to quivering mindlessness.

They stood like two gaping statues, no longer seeing the man who worked a second, minor spell to place images of the animated suits of armor known as helmed horrors in their minds. "When you see such a one," Harnrim Starangh told his two minions gently, "one of you will throw one of these at it, so as to strike it."

The black-clad wizard took the limp hands of the two oblivious men, and posed them so those of each man were cupped together. From a basket beneath his reclining chair, Starangh scooped many small, shiny, identical objects into those waiting palms: rune-graven ovals of metal that bulged plumply at their centers but thi

He smiled at his two enchanted idiots, stepped around them to lay a hand on the backs of both of their necks at once, and pronounced another word that made them both vanish.

Humming a jaunty song, Harnrim Starangh made a last adjustment of his crystals and rode a plume of mist down the passage to join Rauthur. It was time to go hunting—for Vangerdahasts were suddenly very much in season.

* * * * *

Aumun Tholant Bezrar blinked, wiped his sweating face, and looked wildly in all directions with every evidence of utter bewilderment. Trees, aye, definitely trees.

As always, standing behind him like one more tree trunk, was his companion in so many crimes, Master Malakar Surth.

Surth was clutching a handful of something that looked like oversized silver coins, and frowning in puzzlement.

Bezrar looked down and discovered that his own fat, sweaty palm was cradling another handful of the same things: ovals of gleaming metal graven with intricate runes—nothing he could read or had ever seen before, but the same things on each one. These long-as-his-fmgers gewgaws bulged in their middles like snail-cakes but were flattened out all around the edges like, well, again like snail-cakes.

So where by all the cozy Nine Hells had these come from—and where was here, anyhow? And how . . . how had he and Surth gotten here?

"Uh, Surth?" he asked, seeking some answers. "Surth?"

"Bite your tongue til it bleeds," Marsember's richest dealer in scents, wines, cordials, and drugs snapped, employing the standard polite port expression for what slightly more highborn Cormyreans usually rendered as "Belt up" or (if they were priests or elders) "Be silent."

Surth was glaring around at trees and vines and the deep damp green vista of more trees, that stretched away in all directions from the narrow trail they were standing on. His ma

"I don't know either," he muttered, as his face turned slowly to regard his longtime partner. And darkened.

"What did you do to get us here, Bez? You must have done something! You're an idiot, you know that? An idiot! You must have fiddled with something enchanted or lit the fuse of that . . . that. . ." His face went clouded, almost frightened, and he waved a dismissive hand. "You know: that . . . man."

Bezrar drew himself up like an indignant walrus, puffing and sweating, and jabbed Surth's chest with one fat, hairy finger. "Now, you listen here, O mighty Malakar! You're the one who's always dabbling with Shar-magic, dark little toys and mumble-spells and all that untrustworthy idiocy! B'gads, you wound me, you do! Twasn't anything I did to get us here! 'Twas that smiling . . . some magic word . . . that green glow . . . him ... he gave us these, didn't he?"

He thrust out his handful of shiny gewgaws and said, "He must've, because I sure by all the happy dancing gods haven't seen 'em before! You're holding some too!"

"I know that, you fat little dolt," Surth snarled. "I can see and feel, you know!"

"Odd's fish, but you can't think half as clever as you think you can, now, can you—hey?"

"Oh yes, I can," Surth snarled, reaching for the hilt of his knife.

"Well, then, use your thinking part, whatever 'tis, and tell me how we got here and what these things are and how we get back to Marsember!" the fat smuggler roared, his longknife already out and jabbing warningly at Surth's knife-hand. "Because sure as Shar's a dark lass, this ain't Marsember!"

His shout echoed a little way through the damp trees, and something unseen scuttled away from beside the trail nearby, leaving a trail of quivering leaves.

Malakar Surth drew in a deep breath, wrestling down his temper, and with a firm hand pushed the point of Bezrar's wavering knife aside. "Let me think," he snarled.