Nuglar shouted, or thought he did, and stretched out a hand to that ox's rump...only to feel a deathly, searing chill, numbing in an instant like icy winter water. He drew back his arm.
It was a stump, blood streaming from where his hand should have been. He opened his mouth to scream, and a wisp of that deadly whirlwind spun out of nowhere to plunge down his throat.
Less than a breath later, Nuglar's jawbone dropped away from a wavering, wind-scoured skull...an instant before his skeleton collapsed into whirling dust, whipped together into crumbling oblivion with the three oxen.
With a loud, triumphant chorus of chiming, like many exultant bells being rung together, a larger, brighter whirlwind rose out of the lane and poured itself across Aerhiot's Field, leaving the muddy lane empty of all but a stout, well-worn goad-stick. It danced in the air in the whirling wake of the chiming mist for an eerie moment, then fell to the mud for other frightened farmers to find later.
A long time passed in the gloomy lane before squirrels meekly scampered and the birds dared to sing again.
The Riven Stone must be a place, or more likely a landmark...a rock cloven by a spring or winter ice. A feature he'd never heard of, but then there was a lot of Faerun he knew nothing about, yet.
Was Mystra going to make him walk over every stride of it?
Almost reeling in exhaustion, Elminster trudged up a grassy slope, trying to keep in sight of the road that had brought him to the Tower ... and was now taking him on away from it. Leaving the tower had been a matter of flat urgency, aye, but the Lady...or Azuth, speaking for her... knew he'd have to search for the Riven Stone. Well, then, he couldn't be expected to find it immediately.
That was good, because he could barely find the strength to put one foot in front of another any longer.
El took another two clumsy steps, found himself sliding back down the slope to the roadside, stumbled, and a short rushing while later, fetched up hard against a duskwood tree.
It felt good to lean against the comforting bulk of the tree, when he was so gods-forsaken weary... bark burned against his cheek, and El caught himself halfway along a sliding fall. Sprawling a-snore in the road wouldn't be a wise thing, in this land of daggers ready for unprotected throats.
There was no branch handy to cling to, to climb the tree or even keep himself on his feet... and speaking of that, his knees were starting to buckle ... ah, but wait. What had the Srinshee taught him about a tree-shaping spell? Some simple change in the incantation of one of the spells he was carrying, Thoaloat's Variant aye, that's what it had been called. "Doabro Thoaloat was a wily old goat"...and that little rhyme brought back the memory he needed: the change was thus.
It was possible that Elminster snored gently twice or thrice during the incantation, but the duskwood that appeared an instant later, leaning against an identical duskwood that had been there rather longer, preferred deep silence to snoring, and so peace fell by the roadside.
When he was in the steward's chamber, the wards always warned him. They almost blazed in great measure of approaching magic, this time, so Mardasper was through the door and standing behind his lectern with the diadem on his head, its eyepiece over his accursed eye, and the Lady Scepter on his head before the door opened...without any knock...and an elf mage stepped within, cloak swirling around him, and the gems set into the staff of living wood in his hand winking on and off in an ever-changing display. The elf met the steward's eye, let go of the staff...it hung upright in the air, its lights continuing to wink and twinkle...and watched for Mardasper's reaction with the faintest of sneers playing about his thin lips.
The steward took care not to look impressed or even interested and managed to add a faint air of dismissal to his visual examination of the newcomer. With elves, status and control were always issues. Push-push-shove, disdain, sniff, sneer ... well, not this day, by Holy Mystra! He looked young, but Mardasper knew that even without spells to alter the body or appearance, one of the Fair Folk could look this green and vigorous for centuries. He looked haughty...but then they all did, didn't they?
"Well met," he said, in carefully neutral tones. "Be it known that I am Mardasper, guardian of this shrine of Holy Mystra. Have you business here, traveler?"
"I do," the elf said coldly, stepping forward. The steward willed the eyepiece to lift and gave the newcomer the full benefit of his blazing gaze. The elf slowed, eyes narrowing a trifle, then came to a smooth halt, hand not...quite...touching the butts of a trio of wands sheathed at his hip.
Mardasper resisted the urge to smile tightly and asked carefully, "You venerate Holy Mystra, Lady of All Mysteries?" He used the diadem to truth-read, saving his own spells for any unpleasantness that might prove necessary.
The elf hesitated. "Betimes," he said at last, and that was truth. Mardasper suspected the newcomer meant that he'd gone on his knees to Mystra a time or two in conditions of great privacy, in hopes of gaining an edge over rival elf mages. No matter, here, it would suffice.
"All who enter here," the guardian said, raising the tip of the Lady Scepter just enough to make an elven eye flicker, "must obey me utterly and work no magic unbidden. Anyone who takes or damages even the smallest thing from within these walls forfeits his life, or at the least his freedom. You may rest within, and take water from the fount, but no food or anything else is provided...and you must surrender to me your name, and all written magic and enchanted items you carry, no matter how small or benign. They will be returned upon your departure."
"I think not," the elf said scornfully. "I've no intention of ever becoming any man's slave, nor of yielding items entrusted to me, long venerated in my family, into the hands of anyone else...least of all a human. Do you know who I am, steward?"
"One of the Fair Folk, almost certainly a mage and probably of Cormanthan lineage, on the young side-and greatly lacking in both prudence and diplomacy,' Mardasper replied bleakly. "Is there more I should know?" He caused the spell-gems on the diadem to awaken and flicker, reinforcing them with the aroused dazzle of the scepter. We may not all have blinking staves, youngling, he thought, but...
Elven eyes flashed green with anger and that thin mouth tightened like the jaws of a steel trap, but the elf said merely, "If I cannot proceed freely...no."
Mardasper shrugged, lifting his arms from the lectern to call the intruder's attention to the Lad) Scepter once more. He did not want a spell battle even against a feeble foe, and he didn't need the ward-warnings or the hovering staff to tell him this was no feeble foe.
The elf shrugged elaborately, made his cloak swirl as he ostentatiously turned to go, and let his gaze fall way from the steward as if the man with the scepter were a piece of crumbling statuary. In doing so, his eyes fell across the open register...and suddenly blazed as brightly as Mardasper's own accursed eye.
The elf whirled around again, surging forward like a striking snake...and Mardasper practically thrust the Scepter into his nose, snapping, "Have a care, sir!"
"This man!" the elf spat, stabbing a daggerlike finger onto the last name entered in the book. "Is he still here?
Mardasper looked into that incandescent gaze from inches away, trying to keep the fear out of his own eyes and knowing he was failing. He swallowed once then said...his voice surprisingly calm in his own ears..."No. He visited only briefly, this morn, departing not long ago. Headed west, I believe."
The elf snarled like an angry panther and whirled away again, heading for the door. The staff followed him, trailing black spell flames, two large green gems in its head coming alight to look uncannily like eyes.