"Yes, ye do," Elminster said, the twinkle back in his eyes. "Two Harpers and a Knight of Myth Drannor, to be precise. In Shadowdale right now, fresh from ably demonstrating that they can slay Malaugrym with speed and cool regard for the spillage of good ale!"
Storm covered her eyes. "Ah, no," she said weakly. "They'll be slain for sure…"
"Aye, they will indeed, after this night," Elminster agreed briskly, "with all the Malaugrym who must have been watching that fight, if ye just let those three go about their business unprotected. Their best defense is to be a part of this ruse, hip deep in the serious Malaugrym-slaying business."
The Simbul grinned broadly. "It seems our only shining strategy, Sister," she said. Storm looked to Sylune for support, but the ghostly image floating beside her spread half-seen hands and said, "So it looks to these eyes, too."
Storm shook her head. "If they die…" she muttered, and then let out her breath in a deep sigh and waved her hand in dismissal. "Do it," she said heavily.
The Simbul inclined her head in understanding and brought her hands up, fingers spread. Tiny lightnings leapt between them, accompanied by a high, shrill singing sound, and she murmured, "El…?"
Elminster spoke a few soft words of his own and pointed at three flagstones well back from the table.
Abruptly, three people were standing on the flag-stones: two men and a woman clad in leather armor, long swords at their hips, half-full tankards in their hands, and startled looks on their faces.
Behind them the singing sounds ceased as the Simbul raised her shields again. After a few darting glances about, the three relaxed, relieved smiles on their faces, as Storm leaned forward across the table on her elbows, and began, "We have a little task for you…"
Sharantyr groaned. "I know these little tasks," she told the ceiling.
"So do we," Belkram and Itharr said in chorus, catching sight of Sylune's shadowy form and beginning to bow.
Sharantyr drained her tankard at one gulp and went on, cheeks reddening. "Unless I miss my guess, we'll be guarding a certain irritable old wizard against some sinister and ages-old unseen menace, with the fate of all Faerun hanging about our shoulders."
Storm hid a smile by turning her head to address her own favorite spot on the ceiling (where she'd mounted a small round painting of a unicorn she'd done when she was very young, and was irrationally proud of) and replied, "Well, now that you mention it…"
3
Daggerdale, Kythorn 15
The horses snorted, as they always did, at the chill of the mists eddying around their ankles, the mists that cloak the Dragonreach lands of Faerun before dawn. Shoulders and neck tight in the cold, Sharantyr knew just how they felt. "I'll set coins that no gods get up this early," she muttered.
Itharr, riding next to her, chuckled and said, "I'll not bet against you on that, Shar."
"Nor me," Belkram agreed from behind, the white vapor of his breath eddying around him.
Storm turned in her saddle to look at them. "What sort of Knights and Harpers is Faerun breeding these days? Why, when I was your age…"
"I know, I know," Sharantyr interrupted her smoothly. "You went to bed at dawn after spending all night on your knees, cleaning the stables with your tongue, and enjoyed a deep and restful sleep for the time it took the stable master, roused by cock's crow, to walk the length of the stalls and empty his chamber pot over you. Then you had to run two miles to the river to bathe and draw enough water for all the horses to drink, run back with it, and get the axe to go out and chop firewood for the kitchen fires, before y-"
"When I was your age," Elminster said severely, "axes hadn't been invented yet. Nor horses. We walked everywhere to gather our firewood."
"Was it carrying armloads of all those whole, uprooted trees that got you all hunched over, greybeard?" Belkram asked merrily, steering his mount so that Storm was riding between him and the Old Mage.
Elminster swiveled a cold eye in his direction and replied gruffly, "Nay, I got my hunch from fathering dynasties and fortifying kingdoms, a baby and a boulder at a time. Trees were no trouble to carry in those days, lad. The gods hadn't thought of them much before, y'see, and none of 'em'd grown much more than halfway to yer knee."
His reply was a chorus of sighs and groans. There was even one from Storm, as they rode onward in the last dark, misty moments before dawn. Then the lady bard tossed silvery hair out of her eyes with a lazy shake of her head, a motion so beautiful that watching it still made Itharr's mouth go dry, even the fortieth time around. She turned again to regard them all and said, "I can't ride with you much longer. Other duties call. Guard the Old Mage well, now."
Snorts and sardonic chuckles answered her. Storm stilled them with a lifted hand and reined her mount in as spear points loomed suddenly out of the mists before her. A gruff voice behind one of them said, "Hold, in Lord Mourngrym's name! Who are you, riding out before dawn?"
"Storm Silverhand," the lady bard told him calmly, "with two Harpers, the Lady Sharantyr, and-"
"Nay, lass, don't tell 'em my name," Elminster said gruffly, spurring forward. "Let 'em guess."
A helmeted face peered at him out of the mists, and visibly swallowed. "Lord Elminster," he said, "you may pass, of course…"
The row of spear points was suddenly gone, even before Elminster could snarl out any sarcastic reply, and they heard the clink and rattle of men in chain mail moving hastily aside to salute.
"My thanks, men of the guard," Storm said kindly into the mists. "Brion, isn't it?"
"Aye, lady…"
"I'll be back very shortly, alone," she said, and rode on waving for them all to follow. Elminster inclined his head to her in sarcastic acquiescence and spurred past her into the mists.
"Ye bloody gods!" Storm muttered, rolling her eyes and galloping after him, hand going to her sword out of long habit. Seeing that, the three who rode hurriedly after her reached for their blades, too. They rode on, hands on hilts but not drawing their steel, and soon heard ahead the thud of slowing hooves and Storm's soft "Hooo!" to her horse.
They came to an untidy halt in the mists, old wizard and all, milling around thigh to thigh in an open place where trails met. Storm pressed ahead a little way down one grassy ride until they followed her, and then reined in again. "Here I leave you. Follow this trail onward, and may you find fair fortune, all of you." She turned her mount, squeezed Sharantyr's arm for a moment as she rode past, and then was gone back into the mists.
As the thud of hooves faded away down the way they'd come, the first real gray light of dawn came stealing slowly in around them. "Whither now?" Sharantyr asked, peering at trees she could just begin to see on all sides.
"Forward, of course," Elminster said gruffly, and dug a toe into his mount's flank. It snorted its annoyance and moved off briskly down the new trail. The other three riders met each other's gazes, rolled expressive eyes, and followed.
"We appear to be heading into Daggerdale," Itharr observed carefully, as the first brightness of the coming day broke forth around them, and birds began to call and flutter.
"Perceptive, aren't ye?" the Old Mage replied without turning. His three companions, riding in his wake, sighed in unison.
"By all the lazily ruling lords," Belkram said under his breath, "it is Elminster."
The Castle of Shadows, Kythorn 15
Shadows shifted uneasily around them, seeming to sense the tension in the Great Hall of the Throne. A Malaugrym who bristled thorny spines from every inch of his lizardlike skin stood erect on the black marble beside the flickering scrying portal.