Elminster let go of her hand and strode away, reachinginto his robes for his pipe. Storm stood staring after him for a moment. Then,in two quick strides, she caught up to him. Setting a firm hand on hisshoulder, the bard spun Elminster around.
"Not a step farther," she warned. "Notuntil you tell me just what's going on. Where are our horses? Why'd we have toride across half of Faerûn for the key, anyway? Can't this Duara teleport? Andwh-"
Elminster laid a finger over her mouth and said,"The need for haste is past. I doubt anyone could have followed us throughall the places I took us-not yet. Our mounts have preceded us to the Twisted Tower's stables. Come to my home. There ye'll meet a friend to us both: Lhaeo."
The Old Mage lit his pipe and said not a word moreuntil they were strolling up the flagstone path to the door of his ramshacklestone tower.
It opened at his approach, and he turned and said,"Put away thy blade, Storm, and be welcome."
As they went in, his scribe Lhaeo called from thekitchen, "Tea shortly, Old One!"
"For Storm, too," Elminster said softly.
By some trick of magic, Lhaeo heard his master andcalled out, "Welcome, Lady Bard!"
"Hello, Lhaeo," Storm replied, looking atthe Old Mage with amusement.
Elminster was calmly shoving piles of papers onto thefloor, emptying a chair for her to sit in. Dust curled up in thick tendrils.Muttering, he gestured, and it was gone.
"A mite dark in here for me to see beautiful ladyguests," the Old Mage murmured, then reached out to touch a brass brazier.
He made a popping sound, and flames flared up, castinga warm, dancing glow on the chair. Elminster gestured with courtly grace,indicating that Storm should sit down. The bard stared at the brazier inpuzzlement.
"How does it burn," she asked, "withoutany fuel?"
"Magic, of course."
Elminster turned away, raising yet another dust cloudon his foray through more piles of parchment.
"Of course." Storm reached out and tappedhis shoulder, "Elminster," she said coldly, "talk."
Her tone held the sudden ring of steel.
The Old Mage seated himself calmly on thin air, puffedon his pipe, and grinned at her through the rising smoke.
"Ye deserve to know, lass. Right, then, Duara wasbriefly an apprentice of mine. She dwells in Telflamm these days, and joinedthe Harpers a summer back." He puffed his pipe, and a blue-green smokering rose slowly up into the low-ceilinged gloom overhead. "She can't usea teleport spell because she hasn't the power yet. Like all young, overeagermages, she took to adventuring to gain magic quickly-and unlike most magelings,came across a dragon's hoard."
Another smoke ring rose up from the pipe. The Old Magewatched its drifting journey, nodded approvingly, and went on.
"Er, the hoard had a dragon attached to it, ofcourse, but that's another tale. Among the baubles, she found my key, so shesent word to me by caravan letter that she had it and would bring it to themagefair if I was interested."
"Who are your mysterious foes, then? How did youlose the key?" Storm asked. "And why was Duara so dim as to send openword to you?"
Elminster shrugged and replied, "She'd no ideaanyone save me would be interested in the key-or even know what her letter wasabout. When I got her note, I used magic to farspeak with her, telling her I'dbe coming to the fair. She told me that since sending the letter, she'd beenattacked several times, twice found her tower ransacked, and even beenthreatened one night in her bedchamber by a mysterious whispering voicedemanding the key."
Storm rolled her eyes. "So what is thiskey?"
"The key to this closet, of course,"Elminster said calmly, reaching out a long arm into the dusty gloom behind him.
The key gleamed in his hand as it slipped through aslyly smiling dragon head carved into the wall. Lines appeared in the stonearound the small carving, outlining a door. It began to swing open by itself.
Elminster pulled the key out and waved it at her.
"This was stolen from me by an unscrupulous man,long ago, who was-very briefly, mind ye-my apprentice. He was an ambitiousCalishite, I recall, named Raerlin. I suppose he ended up in the jaws ofDuara's dragon."
"Well, what do you keep in there, that mageschase after the key?" Storm asked, looking at the closet's dusty door.
"Old spellbooks, picked up over the years whilewandering the world," Elminster replied as the door swung wide.
Storm saw an untidy pile of thick, moldering tomes.
Eerie green and white light flashed suddenly frombehind her. As it lit up the Old Mage's face, Storm saw his look of surpriseand whirled around, upsetting her chair.
The eerie light came from a flickering oval of flame.It hung upright in the air, in the middle of the tiny, cramped room. Itspresence defied the mighty magic that guarded Elminster's tower, magic, Stormknew, that kept the place safe from the archmages of the evil Zhentarim, theRed Wizards of Thay, and worse. No one should have been able to open a gateinto the tower.
But the oval of flame was, Storm decided, most certainlya gate. When the bard looked through the flickering magical doorway, she saw along, stone-lined hall, stretching away into darkness. And something wasmoving in the gloomy passageway….
Elminster strode forward, frowning, hands weavingspells out of the air.
"Impossible," he murmured.
A shadowy figure was walking slowly toward them, outof the darkness of the phantom hallway. The creature was tall and very thin.Its eyes were two cold, glittering points of light set in dark pits. As it camenearer, Storm could see that the robes it wore hung in tatters, eaten away byrot.
The bard's heart sank. It must have been a lich, awizard whose magic was so powerful that he lived on, beyond death. Few couldfight a lich and hope to survive, few even among the ranks of the greatarchmages of Faerûn.
The lich came still nearer, and Storm met its fellgaze, staring into the cold, flickering lights of its eyes. They danced in theempty sockets of its skeletal face, measuring her, and turned from hercontemptuously to Elminster.
"Death has come for you at last, Old Mage,"the lich whispered, its hissing voice surprisingly loud. It was still far downthe hallway.
"D'ye know how often I've heard those words?Every murderous fool in Faerûn tries them on me at least once." Elminsterraised an eyebrow and added, "Or in thy case, Raerlin, twice."
With one hand he traced a glowing sign in the air.
The lich gave him a ghastly, gap-toothed smile andkept coming. Elminster's other eyebrow went up. His hands moved swiftly inseveral intricate gestures.
A barrier of shimmering radiance sprang into beingacross the mouth of the portal. Raerlin's hands moved in response, and thebarrier burst into tiny motes of light that scattered like dancing sparks froma campfire, then winked out.
The lich's fleshless skull managed, somehow, to sneer.
"You thought yourself very clever, duping my twoservants at the magefair, Elminster," came that hissing whisper again,"but I am not so easily fooled or defeated."
The skull seemed to smile.
"I was at the fair, too," the lich went on."Your blindness spell failed against me, of course, and you did not evensee through my spell-disguise. Are such simple sorceries beyond yourunderstanding now?"
From the kitchen, muted by its stout, closed door,came the sudden rising, incongruous shriek of Lhaeo's kettle coming to a boil.
Elminster's hands were moving again. Storm saw linesof crackling power form between his fingers before he cast forth a bolt at thelich. As the energy flashed away from his hands, it lit up his face in tints ofgrowing worry.
The lich laughed hollowly as Elminster's bolt crackledaround its desiccated form. Tiny lightnings spat and leaped around its body,but seemed unable to do any harm. The lich raised a bony hand and cast a spell ofits own.
Storm looked back at Elminster in alarm-and saw one ofthe books in the open closet behind the Old Mage glow suddenly with the samegreen and white radiance as the flames of the lich's gate. And when she glaredat the lich, its eyes glinted at her in triumph. Ghostly gray tendrils of forcewere moving from the undead mage, toward them both. Raerlin was very close, onlypaces away from entering the room.