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She snorted, struck a breathlessly excited hands-to-mouth pose like a young lass
about to swoon and slid back out of it to wink at him. Stepping back into her
darkness, the Queen of Aglarond murmured, "My old wreck," and was gone, taking
her rift with her, stars and all.
The transformed Elminster smiled fondly at where she'd been for a moment,
shaking his head, then made a face of his own. "In those centuries of loving my
mind, did she watch where my wandering body went and with whom, I wonder?"
He chuckled, shrugged, and strode down the cold, dark, and cobwebbed passage.
The damp made the spiderwebs thick, jeweled-with-droplets curtains. Elminster
pushed through them unconcernedly, acquiring a marbled pattern of silken filth on
his robes, and when he reached the remembered crossway, he turned left.
Cold blue fire flared in the emptiness in front of his nose immediately, but he
strolled right through that ward-spell and the next one, too.
By then a sleepy-eyed War Wizard, barefoot in her robes, was confronting him
furiously. A rod that winked and glowed from half a dozen attached side-wands was
cradled in her arms and aimed right at his face.
"Halt or be destroyed!" she snapped, as her fingers triggered a magic that sent
bells chiming in a dozen chambers, near and far. Whatever befell now, this obviously
not-so-secret passage would be swarming with War Wizards in a few minutes. Until
then, 'twas her duty to prevent this stranger from
He stepped forward, and she snarled and triggered three of the wands at once.
Their flash and roar almost blinded War Wizard Belantra, and sent her staggering
back as the passage flagstones rippled under her feet in a great Shockwave. In the
distance, behind the broad-shouldered intruder, stones fell from the passage ceiling,
amid much dust, and tumbled away.
He kept coming, as if the ravening magic hadn't touched him at all.
"Back, demon!" Belantra snapped, sudden fear rising inside her. No one should be
able to withstand such a blast! Even if the handsome man before her was mere
illusion, the magic that presented it should have been shredded, and
One long-fingered hand grasped the tip of one of her wands, even as she furiously
triggered it again. Calmly ignoring Belantra, the intruder lifted the wand so its emerald
beam of flesh-melting fury was trained not at his chest, but directly into his eyes.
Bright blue those eyes shone as they met hers for a moment, winked, and dropped
to examine the wand again.
"Ah, yes. I helped Vangey enspell this. Now, after all these years, he wastes it in
some sort of toy 'mightywand' gonne, such as the Lantanna fashion?" The
handsome intruder shook his head. "I thought I'd taught him better than that."
He looked up again, gently pushing the wand aside with one fingertip, and asked,
"What might thy name be, lass?"
"I'm a War Wizard of Cormyr," Belantra snapped, "and I'll ask the questions here,
man!"
"By all means," the broad-shouldered stranger agreed easily, taking her elbow in
one hand and steering her aside so he could pass. When she whirled furiously to
shove him against the wall, he turned nimbly with her as if they were dancing
together, ending up behind her with her wrist in a grip she could not break. Towing
her, he strode in the direction she'd come from.
"I'm here to see Caladnei," he explained, "but ye're welcome to ask all ye want
while we go fetch her, eh?"
"How do you kno the Mage Royal can see no one! She's sleeping, after a very
long night of defending the realm."
The handsome stranger smiled. "Long indeed. I know. I helped make it so. To
squeeze our doings into a shorter night might well have left her as a corpse."
"Who are y let go of me! Let go, stop right here, and tell me your name!"
Belantra shouted, thrusting the gonne of wands and rod into the intruder's face and
preparing to spend her life in the defense of the Mage Royal.
Black eyebrows lifted. "Demanding, aren't ye? War Wizards weren't quite so shrill
back in the early days, I must say. I did warn Amedahast she was shaping something [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
