Spellfire

“Dirty work, is it? Who took off his boots, I’d like to know!” Rathan teased him.

“I thank you both,” Narm said, “despite your feeble attempts at humor. Again my lady and I owe you our lives. And our horses’, too, it seems. Your spell even took away the pain in my head.”

Rathan gri

Shandril giggled. “I don’t think that will be quite necessary, Rathan. I have a man to drive me beyond endurance, now.” Narm gave her a hurt look, to which she replied with a wink, but Torm looked delighted.

“Oh, you can leave him with Rathan, to learn how to ride and fight and worship and all,” he said, “and I’ll ride with you. I’m witty, agile, clean, quick, and experienced. I know lots of jokes, and I’m an excellent cook, so long as you’re partial to meat, tomatoes, cheese, and noodles all cooked together. I’m fully conversant with the laws of six kingdoms and many smaller, independent cities, and I’m an excellent gambler” He batted his eyelashes at her. “What do you say? Hmmm?”

Shandril gave him a look that would have melted glass. “Is there nothing you can do about him?” she asked Rathan.

“Oh, aye,” Rathan agreed. “Ye can give him first watch, so we can all get some sleep. Narm and I’ll sleep on either side, close against ye, and ye wont have to worry about him getting cold and wanting to snuggle up.”

“Ah, hah,” Shandril agreed dubiously. She rolled her eyes and flopped down into the bed of folded tent without replying. Rathan grunted and lowered himself slowly to a lying position, rolling his cloak up as a pillow. He lay on the grass fully clad, without bedding or blanket, grasping his mace. He nodded then, as if satisfied, and within a few breaths he was snoring. His booted feet twitched now and then.

Torm winked at Narm and reached out to pinch one of them. His fingers were still inches away from their goal when Rathan rolled open one eye and said, “Ye can forget pinching, stroking, and tickling honest folk-or even us- who’re asleep in the arms of the gods. Just see that the fire stays high.”

Narm fell asleep chuckling.

The soft morning sun breaking over the rolling hills and fields of Battledale and northern Sembia lit up the sky to the east, and found Rathan Thentraver thoughtfully warming water for tea over the dying fire.

He looked around at his sleeping companions, got to his feet with a slow grunt of effort, and clambered up the bank to look at the land about. It was bare of all but grass, rolling and very empty. He nodded in satisfaction, tucked his mace under his arm, and sat down again and cleared his thoughts of all but Tymora, as he tried to do every morning.

He opened his heart to her and prayed that the two young folk beside him-aye, and Torm, too, hang him-would see only her bright face until they had at least reached Silvery-moon and befriended Alustriel. Everyone needs at least one safe journey-and these two, more than most, because of the spellfire, he told himself.

Rathan looked across the twisted blankets to Shandril’s sleeping face and thought about her weeping spellfire and lashing out angrily with spellfire and tearing open her tunic to pour spellfire out the faster upon a foe. He would not want to carry such power for all the gold in the Realms…

He sighed. If they’d ridden a bit slower, that snake of a mage might have had her yestereve. So close, he’d been. A matter of breaths. Yet one couldn’t nursemaid one who could blast apart mountaintops!

They’d be ru

He looked at all the sleepers, and a smile touched his lips. Why wake them? The younglings needed a good, long sleep when they were guarded and could relax. Let ‘em sleep, then. He peered south to see if he could glimpse the River Ashaba, but it was too far away yet. Ah, well. We’ll ride with them until they’re up at dawn tomorrow, and then turn back. If Elminster is half the archmage he pretends to be, surely he can hold Shadowdale together that long.

Scratching under his armor, Rathan opened his food supply pack. Ah, well… another day, another dragon slain.

“Will ye never be done all that scratching and scribbling?” Elminster demanded, “you’re not writing an epic, ye know!”

Lhaeo turned calm eyes upon him. “Stir the stew, will you?” Elminster snorted, shifted his unlit pipe from hand to mouth, and began to stir.

“You miss those two, don’t you?” the scribe asked him softly without turning.

The old mage stared at Lhaeo’s back angrily for a long breath and then muttered, “Aye,” around his pipe, set the ladle back in its place, and sat down upon the squat cross-section of a large tree that served as a seat next to the tiny kitchen table. “ Tis not every day one sees spellfire destroy one’s own prismatic sphere without delay or a lot of effort. Or see the high-and-mighty Manshoon put to flight by a young girl who’s never cast a spell in her life.”

“A thief, she said she was-or at least, she joined the Company of the Bright Spear as a thief.”

Elminster snorted again. “Thief? She’s as much a thief as you are. If we had a few more thieves like that girl, the Realms would be so safe we’d not need locks! Swords, aye, but no more locks. Which reminds me… locks, and locked-away books, that is-Candlekeep-Alaundo. What did old Alaundo say about spellfire? We must be getting fairly close to that prophecy now, too, so it’s no doubt Shandril he’s talking about.”

Lhaeo smiled. “As it happens, I looked up the words and sayings of Alaundo the last night they spent here. To your left, under the jam jar, on the uppermost scrap of paper, I’ve copied the relevant saying. If a certain ‘war among wizards’ has already begun in Faerun, it is next to be fulfilled.”

Elminster halted his flailing about in the vicinity of the jam-jar to fix Lhaeo with a hard glance, but the scribe went on with his writing.

“What’re you doing?” Elminster demanded. “There you sit, scribbling, while the stew thickens and burns. What is it?”

Lhaeo smiled again. “Stir the stew, will you?” he asked i

Elminster stared at him a moment and then nodded, looking very old. “Aye, aye, you have the right of it, as usual.” He sighed. “But not that little girl. Not Shandril. Why, she’s but a little wisp of a thing, all laughter and kindness and bright eyes-”

“Aye. Like Lansharra,” Lhaeo answered simply. Elminster nodded, very slowly, and said nothing. There was silence for a long time. Lhaeo finished his work, blew upon the page, and got up. The sage sat like a statue, his eyes on the fire. Lhaeo reached over him, slid a scrap of paper from under the jam-jar, and laid it before Elminster. He turned away to see to food, without a word. Perhaps four breaths later, he heard the old mage’s voice behind him, and he smiled to himself. Put a recipe for fried sand snake in front of Elminster and he’d be reading it in a trice.

“ ‘Spellfire will rise, and a sword of power, to cleave shadow and evil and master art.’ “ Elminster read it as though it was a curious bard’s rhyme or a bad attempt at a joke. Lhaeo waited. Elminster spoke again. “ ‘Master art? What did Alaundo mean by that? She’s to become a mage? She has not the slightest aptitude for it-and I’m not completely new to teaching art, ye know!”

“I have found that Alaundo’s sayings make perfect sense after they have happened, for the most part,” Lhaeo said, “but they help precious little beforehand.”