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.and all such leavings were in truth items he'd just finished Grafting, and made to look old.Almost always, part of the treasures he left for others included notes that should lead anyone with a gift for magic to experiment and successfully create a "new" spell.Mystra cared not overmuch who found these magics, or how they used them.so long as ever more magic was in use and ever more folk could wield it, rather than a few archwizards lording it over the spell-poor or magically barren, as had happened in the days of lost Netheril.El loved this sort of work and always had to fight a tendency to linger in the ruins and crypts, mischievously letting his lights and spell-effects be seen by others, to lure exploring adventurers toward his leavings."About as subtle as an orc horde," Mystra had once termed these tactics, pouting prettily, and El knew she was right.Wherefore today he firmly took up his cloak, worked the powerful spell Azuth had given him that obliterated all traces or magical echoes of his visit, and left in the form of a shadow.The thoughtful shadow restored a few of the wards and traps in his wake before he slipped back out onto the street, inches distant from the back of a guard whose attention was on a gold coin that seemed to have fallen from the sky moments before.Unnoticed, the shadow turned solid and strolled away.The cloaked, hawk-nosed figure had been gone from sight around a corner for exactly the time it took to draw in a single good, deep breath when a dark horse came trotting through the steady stream of walking folk and clopped to a halt in front of the guard.That worthy looked up, raising an eyebrow in both query and challenge, to see a young, maroon-robed elf in a rich cloak peering down at the coin in the guard's weathered palm.The guard closed his fingers around it hastily and said, "Aye? What d'you want, outlander?""Myth Drannan, was it not?" the elf asked softly "Found hereabouts?"The guard flushed."Paid to me fair and square, more like," he rumbled.The elf nodded, his gaze now lingering long and considering on the overgrown crypt the guard was standing duty in front of.The Moondarks … that bastard house of dabbling mages.And all of them who'd found their way home to die now shared a stone tomb-house, such as humans favor.In good repair, by the looks of it, with its wards still up.It was closed up much too securely for inquisitive birds or scurrying squirrels to pluck up a gold coin and carry it outside the walls.His eyes narrowed, and his face grew as sharp as honed flint, causing the guard to warily raise his weapon and shrink back behind it.Ilbryn Starym dropped the man a mirthless and absentminded smile and rode on toward the Stars and Sword.Wizards who came to Westgate always stayed at the Sword, in hopes of being there when Alshinree wandered in and did her trance-dance.Alshinree was getting old and a bit gaunt, now, her dances weren't the affairs they'd once been, with the house crowded with hungrily staring men.Her dance, too, was usually just so much playacting and drunken mumbling … but sometimes, a little more often than once in a month, it happened.An entranced Alshinree uttered words of spells not known since Netheril fell, advice that might have come from the Lady of Mysteries herself, and detailed instructions as to the whereabouts, traps, and even contents of certain archmages' tombs, ruined schools of wizardry, sorcerous caches, and even long-forgotten abandoned temples to Mystra.Bad things happened to mages who so much as spoke to Alshinree outside the Sword or who tried to coerce or pester her within its walls, so they contented themselves with booking rooms at the inn so often that some of them could be considered to have been living there.Even if a certain human mage.one Elminster, formerly Court Mage of Galadorna, before the fall of that realm.had not taken a room at the Sword, it held the best gathering of folk in Westgate who might just have seen him hereabouts or heard something of his deeds and current doings.The hard looks thrown his way by every guard and many merchants he'd passed suddenly hit home, Ilbryn blinked, looked all around, and found that he was galloping his startled mount down the street, its hooves slipping and sliding on the cobbles.He reined in and settled the horse into a careful walk thereafter.The bright, sparkling spell-animated sign of the Stars and Sword loomed ahead, and the champion of Starym honor steered his mount through the bustling folk to.he hoped.some answers, or even the man he sought.As he gathered the reins together in one hand to free the other for the bellpull that would summon hostelers to see to his horse, Ilbryn discovered that something he carried in a belt-pouch had found its way into his hand, and was now clenched there: a scrap of red cloth that had been part of the mantle of office of the Court Mage of Galadorna.Elminster's mantle.The elf looked down at it, and although his hand remained rock steady, his handsome face slowly slipped into a stony, brooding mask.His eyes held such glittering menace that both hostelers recoiled and had to be coaxed back.As he swung himself down from the saddle and reached for the handle of the Sword's finely carved front door, Ilbryn Starym smiled softly.And as one of the hostelers put it, "That were worse than 'is glaring!"Still smiling, Ilbryn put one hand.the one flickering with the risen radiance of a ready, deadly spell-behind his back, and with the other opened the door and went in.The hostelers lingered, half-expecting to hear a terrific crash, or smoke, or even bodies hurled out through the windows … but their hoped-for entertainment never came
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