Well, he'd wasted more than enough time and magic on them already. He hurled a quick spell of his own out of the keyhole, and stood watching as the trunk of the shadowtop he'd shattered, a goodly distance above the wizards, spun about almost lazily, then came crashing down.
Wizards shouted and hurled themselves in all directions, but when the dancing, flailing branches receded to a shivering, one man lay broken like a discarded doll under a trunk ten times his girth.
Ilbryn risked another spell through the keyhole. Why not a volley of magic missiles? These idiots seemed almost like bewildered actors playing at being mages, not foes to fear at all.
He hoped, a moment later, that he hadn't just given the gods some sort of awful cue.
"If Mystra is dead, what's helping his spells?" Dread-spell Hrelgrath snarled, puffing his way back to where Elryn stood watching, cold-eyed.
"Whatever god of magic elves pray to, dolt," Daluth answered…an instant before blue-white bolts of force came racing their way.
"Back!" Elryn snapped, "I don't think these can miss, but back, anyway! This is costing us too much!"
Elryn's prediction proved to be right, none of the bolts missed. The Dreadspells grunted and staggered their ways back through the trees, hoping the elf wouldn't bother to follow them.
"Femter?" Elryn snapped.
A head snapped up. "I'll be all right, the next time the power surges into us," Femter replied grimly. "Some sort of magical blade. Can't use my arm, though."
"Our guide…dead?"
"Very," Femter said shortly, and there were a few dark chuckles.
"Iyrindyl?"
"Down. Forever. Half a tree fell on him."
Elryn drew in a deep breath and let it out in a ragged sigh, very conscious of the unseen eyes of Darklady Avroana upon him. "Right…consider that fiasco our first battle-practice. There'll be no more charging into any fray. From now on, we creep through these woods like shadows. When we find the ruin, we wait for the Weave to feed us once more, then…and only then, even if it takes all night…we advance. Out in these woods, only the Chosen really matters to us, and I'm not going to be caught off-guard again."
Blue-white fire burst forth from the book. The skeleton almost dropped the book in surprise, its bony fingertips clawing at its covers, as the flames that burned nothing washed over its bones, racing from the book to … her.
Sharindala shuddered as blue-white fire ran up and down her limbs, leaving something in its wake. She stared down at her glowing bones in wonder, then back at the book, feeling something rising in her throat.
"That's a good plan," Ilbryn agreed sarcastically, as tie let his clairaudience collapse, said farewell to the idiot wizards and their chatter, and cast the guidance spell that would take him to these ruins they'd been heading for. He bid it seek out man-touched stone, in any mass larger than four men…which should eliminate tombstones and the like…and in this general direction …
Almost immediately he felt the pull of the magic, Ilbryn followed it obediently, striding off through the woods along an invisible but unwavering line. Ah, but magic could be useful at times.
It had been cold and dark in Scorchstone Hall for many years. Too cold for the living.
A skeleton threw back the shutters of one window to let the sun in and went back to a table where a spellbook lay. Sitting down carefully in the stoutest chair left in the Hall, the skeleton took up the tome, clutched it to its ribcage with both bony arms enfolded around it, and called on the power of the spell it had cast earlier. The power that let it speak.
It said only two words, firmly enough that they echoed back from the dark corners of the room. "Mystra, please."
Baerdagh stiffened at the sudden sound that came through the trees, and almost dropped his walking stick. He turned, to be absolutely sure that the faint weeping was coming from Scorchstone.
It was. In the very heart of that ruined mansion, a woman was sobbing…crying as if she'd never find breath to speak again. In dark, haunted Scorchstone, where the skeletal sorceress walked.
Baerdagh broke into a frantic shuffle, heading for the Maid…where strong drink, and plenty of it, would be waiting.
"Along here, it should be," Beldrune said, as they came around the bend and almost rode down an old man with a walking stick, who looked to have just taken up trotting, and was wheezing loudly to let the world know. "There! Up ahead, on the left…the Fair Maid of Ripplestones. We can get a good meal there, and decent beds a few doors on, and ask in both places about where Elminster's been hereabouts. I know he likes to look at old mages' towers."
"And their tombs, too," Tabarast put in. "It's been some years since I stopped here, but old Raider, if he's still alive, used to roast a mean buck."
The down-at-heels Harper with the pale brown hair and eyes, riding between them, nodded pleasantly. "Sounds good," was all he said, as they slowed their horses at the ramshackle porch and rang the gong that would bring the stable boys.
An old man sitting on a bench deep in one corner of the porch looked at them sharply…especially at Tabarast…as they strode inside. After a moment, he got up and drifted into the Maid on their heels.
It seemed Caladaster was hungry enough for a second earlyevenfeast this day. By the time Baerdagh came puffing up to the front door of the Maid, Caladaster was sitting with the three horsemen who'd almost ridden him down as if they'd known each other for years.
"Aye, I know this Elminster, right enough," Caladaster was saying, "though a few days back I'd have answered you differently. He came walking up to this very tavern. Baerdagh…oh, hey! This is Baerdagh, come sit down with us, old dog…and I were warming yon bench, where you saw me just now, and he came striding up and bought us dinner…a huge feast it was, too!..in return for us telling him about Scorchstone Hall. Gods, but we ate like princes!"
"We can do no less," the youngest, poorest-looking of the three horsemen said then, saying his first quiet words since handing a stable boy some coins. "Eat hearty, both of you, and we'll trade information again."
"Oh, a-heh. Well enough … that's very kind of you, to be sure," Caladaster said heartily as he watched platters of steaming turtles and buttered snails brought to the table. Alnyskawer even winked at him as the tankards were set down beside them. Caladaster blinked. Gods, he was becoming a local lion!
"So where and what is Scorchstone Hall?" Beldrune asked almost jovially, plucking up a tankard and taking a long pull at it. Baerdagh didn't fail to notice the face the newcomer made at the taste of the brew or how quickly he set down the tankard again.
"A ruined mansion just back along the road a ways," he said quickly, determined to earn his share of the meal. "You passed it on your way in…the road bends around it, just this side of the bridge."
"It's warded," Caladaster said quietly. "You gentlesirs are mages, are you not?"
Three pairs of eyes lifted to him in brief silence until Tabarast sighed, took up a buttered snail that must have burned his fingers, and grunted, "It shows that badly, does it?"
Caladaster smiled. "I was a mage, years ago. Still am, I suppose. You have the look about you … eyes that see farther than the next hedge. Paunches and wrinkles, but yet fingers as nimble as a minstrel's. Not to mention the wardings on your saddlebags."
Beldrune chuckled, "All right, we're mages…two of us, at any rate."
"Not three?" Caladaster's brows rose.
The man with the pale brown eyes and the tousled hair smiled faintly and said, "Here and now, I harp."
"Ah," Caladaster said, carefully not glancing at the regulars in the Maid, who were bent almost out of their chairs straining not to miss a word of what passed between these travelers and the two old tankard-tossers. Wizards, now! And haunted Scorchstone! Mustn't miss this….