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.Elminster? Elminster, can you hear me?The voice was faint and distant, yet oddly flat.Strange.He sent a single thought toward it: Where?After a time of echoing emptiness an image came swimming up to him, spinning slowly like a bright coin on edge.He plunged into it, and was suddenly at its glowing heart, staring into a dark, stormy scene: somewhere in Faerun, with wind trailing across a rocky height, and treetops below.A woman was spread-eagled face down on that rock, wrists and ankles bound apart on saplings, her features hidden by the swirl of her unbound hair.It was a place he'd not seen before.The woman could be Shandathe.The viewpoint could not be made to move.It was time to decide.El shrugged; as always, there was only one decision he could make, and still be Elminster.The fool wizard.Smiling in bleak self-mockery at that last thought, he rose, holding firmly to the image of the peak with the bound woman—a striking trap, he'd grant its weaver that much—and crossed the room to touch the Srinshee's teaching crystal.It could store mind images, and so show her where he'd gone.The stone flashed once, and he turned his back on its light and stepped away, calling up the spell he'd need.When his foot came down again, he stood on the rocky height with the cool breeze sliding past.He was in the center of a vast forest that looked suspiciously like Cormanthor.The bound woman at his feet was fading and shrinking, her form flowing like pale smoke.Of course.Elminster called up what he hoped was the best spell for the occasion, and waited for the attack he knew would come.In a dark chamber, a floating figure sat up and frowned at where her human charge had last stood.Some battles must be faced alone, but.so soon?She wondered which elven foe was so swift in calling him to battle.Once news of the Coronal's proclaiming spread across the realm, yes, El would find no shortage of opponents, but.now?The Srinshee sighed, called up the spell she'd cast earlier, and gathered her will around the image of Elminster in her mind.In a few breaths' time she'd be seeing him.Gods grant that it not be to witness his death now, before their friendship—along with the Coronal's dream and the trail that led to the best future for Cormanthor—was truly begun.Without looking at her crystal, she beckoned it, and touched it when it came.The image of a rocky height amid the Cormanthan forest leaped into her mind.Druindar's Rock, a place none but a Cormanthan was likely to choose for a moot or spell duel.The Srinshee sent her spell sight racing toward it, seeing a familiar young, hawk-nosed man standing above a bound woman, who was no bound woman at all, but a.The woman and the spars she'd been bound to were both flowing and dwindling.Elminster calmly stepped back from the changing magic and glanced over the edge of the rock on which he stood.It was a long, long way down on two flanks, with a prow-like point between.In the third direction rocks rose into broken, tree-cloaked ground.It was from the concealing branches of those trees that cold laughter came as the lady captive shrank at last into a long, wavy-bladed boar sword that flickered and glowed green as it rose smoothly from the ground, turned on edge, and flew toward him point first.Knowing what is about to kill you doesn't always make it easier to evade the waiting death, as a philosopher — dead now — among the outlaws of Athalantar had once said.There was little space in which to dodge, and almost no time for El to act.This blade might be only animated by a simple spell, or it might well bear enchantments of its own.If he assumed the former and was wrong, he'd be dead.So.Elminster carried in his mind only one of the mighty spells known as Mystra's unraveling, and disliked casting it so soon when he stood in danger, but—The blade raced at his throat, turning smoothly as he sidestepped, and following his every move as he bobbed and crouched.At the last moment he hissed the single word of the spell and made the necessary flick of his cupped hand.The swift-flying sword shivered and fell apart in the air in front of him.Green radiance sputtered, tumbled away, and was gone as the blade became falling flakes of rust
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