The Temptation of Elminster: Elminster, Book III (The Elminster Series) by Ed Greenwood

Author:Ed Greenwood [Greenwood, Ed]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780786959716
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast Publishing
Published: 2011-07-26T04:00:00+00:00

Ten

TO TASTE DARK FIRE

The best thing an archmage can do with his spells? Use them to destroy another archmage, of course—and himself in the doing. We’ll plant something useful in the ashes.

Radishes, perhaps.

Albryngundar of the Singing Sword

from Thoughts On A Better Faerûn

published circa The Year of the Lion

Unseen drums boomed and rolled, beginning an inexorable, unhurried beat that shook the temple. El watched narrowly as a large hand of Bane—a trifle taller than a man and seemingly carved of some black stone—rose into view behind the altar block. A halo of wispy red flames rose and fell around its fingers, and by their flickering light, as Dasumia leaped lightly back down from the altar, Elminster saw two long, metal-barbed black whips lying crossed upon the altar where she’d been lying.

The drumbeats quickened very slightly. Seeking a better view, El drew up the hood of his robes to hide his face in its cowl and slowly rose into a seated position on his pew, becoming just another slumped form among the many corpses. His decaying neighbors were no doubt onetime victims of rituals here. Delver and Ingrath—and one Elminster, too, for that matter—might well soon join them, if the Court Mage of Galadorna didn’t act with precise timing and do just the right things in the moments just ahead.

The two warriors stood facing Dasumia, and they were trembling with fear. She took their hands and spoke to them. The words were lost to El in the sound of the drums, but she was obviously reassuring them. From time to time she embraced or kissed them, ignoring—as they could not—the hulking helmed horrors floating just behind their shoulders.

The queen turned, took up the whips, and handed one to each man. Leaning back against the altar, she snapped a command to them and held up her hands toward the dark, unseen ceiling in a gesture of summoning.

With great reluctance they swung the whips in her direction—with no force, so the barbed lengths simply brushed against her and bounced off harmlessly. Elminster heard Dasumia’s angry order this time: “Strike! Strike or die!”

She held up her hands in a summoning once more, and the whips lashed out at her in earnest this time. Her body jerked under the blows, and a wisp of blue silk fell away. She hissed encouragement to Ingrath and Delver, who struck harder, their whips cracking. A lash wrapped around her, baring one of her breasts.

At their next blows, the first weals marked Dasumia, and she groaned at them to strike harder still. The guardsmen obeyed tentatively at first. Then with spirit as she shouted at them to strike ever harder, staring up at them as she had more than once overwhelmed Elminster with her will.

Delver and Ingrath reeled, then bent to their task, putting all their fear of dying here and resentment at her entrapping them behind each blow. Blood-drenched blue silk and smooth flesh beneath rapidly vanished under a rain of blows from whips that glistened dark with blood.

Abruptly Dasumia threw back her head and howled at them to stop.

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