"Ed Greenwood - Forgotten Realms - Elminster 2 - Elminster In Myth Drannor" - читать интересную книгу автора (Greenwood Ed)

 from The High History of Faerunian Archmages Mighty
published circa The Year of the Staff

The young man was busy pondering the last words a goddess had said to him-so the arrow that
burst from the trees took him completely by surprise.
It hummed past his nose, trailing leaves, and Elminster peered after it, blinking in surprise. When
he looked along the road in front of him again, men in worn and filthy leathers were scrambling down
onto it to bar his way, swords and daggers in their hands. There were six or more of them, and none
looked kindly.
"Get down or die," one of them announced, almost pleasantly. El cast quick glances right and left,
saw no one charging him from behind, and murmured a quick word.
When he flicked his fingers, an instant later, three of the brigands facing him were hurled away as
if they'd been struck hard by the empty air. Blades flew spinning aloft, and startled, winded men crashed
into brambles and rolled to slow, cursing halts.
"I believe a more traditional greeting consists of the words 'well met,' " Elminster told the man
who'd spoken, adding a dry smile to his dignified observation.
The brigand leader's face went white, and he sprinted for the trees. "Algan!" he bellowed.
"Drace! A rescue!"
In answer, more arrows came humming out of the deep green forest like angry wasps.
El dove out of his saddle a scant instant before two of them met in his mount's head. The faithful
gray horse made an incredulous choking sound, threw up its forelegs as if to challenge an unseen foe, and
then rolled over onto its side to kick and die.
It came within a fingerlength of crushing its rider, who rolled away as fast as he could, hissing
curses as he tried to think which of his spells would best serve a lone man scrambling through ferns and
brambles, surrounded by brigands hiding behind trees with ready bows.
Not that he wanted to leave his saddlebag, anyway. Panting in his frantic haste, El reached the far
side of a stout old tree. He noticed in passing that its leaves were beginning to turn, touched gold and
brown by the first daring frosts of the Year of the Chosen, and clawed his way up its mossy bark to
stand gasping and peering around through the trees.
Crashings marked the routes of the hurrying outlaws as they ran to surround him. Elminster sighed
and leaned against his tree, murmuring an incantation he'd been saving for a time when he might be faced
with hungry beasts on a night he'd have to spend in the open. Such a night would never come, now, if he
didn't put the spell to more immediate use. He finished the casting, smiled at the first brigand to peer
warily around a nearby tree at him-and stepped into the duskwood he was leaning against.
The brigand's startled curse was cut off abruptly as El melded into the old, patient silence of the
forest giant, and threw his thoughts along its spreading roots to the next tree that was large enough. A
shadowtop, in that direction. Well, 'twould have to do.
He sent his shadowy body flowing along the taproot, trying not to feel choked and trapped. The
closed-in, buried feeling drove some mages mad when they tried this spell-but Myrjala had considered it
one of the most important things for him to master.
Could she have foreseen this day, years later?
That thought sent a chill through the prince of Athalantar as he rose inside the shadowtop. Was
everything that happened to him Mystra's will?
And if it was, what would happen when her will clashed with the will of another god, who was
guiding someone else?
He'd have been flying in falcon-shape over this forest, after all, if she'd not commanded him to
"ride" to the fabled elven realm of Cormanthor. A bird of prey would have been too high for the arrows
of these brigands to reach even if they'd felt like wasting shafts.
That thought carried Elminster out into the bright world again. He melted out of the dark, warm
wood into the bright sunlight with the Skuldask Road a muddy ribbon on his left-and the dusty leather of