Spellstorm (17 page)

“Oldspires wreaking its havoc on magic,” Alusair mused aloud.

Mirt plucked down a cleaver and a sharpening steel, and started the singing dance
of steel that would restore a keen edge. When it was going well, he glanced over at
Elminster. “So who killed him?”

Elminster shrugged. “That’s best answered when we know what poison it was, and thus
how it works, and how swiftly.”

“So you don’t—?” Alusair asked.

El shook his head. “Ye’ll be surprised at how much I don’t know, lass.”

“So we won’t be burning the body out back, I take it?” Mirt growled, testing the cleaver
with a thumb. In crowded Waterdeep, that was often the fate of the remains of someone
who died of an unknown poison or disease.

“No. For now, we lock what’s left of Skouloun in one of the cold-cellar rooms, down
below.”

“I foresee meat stews in our future,” Myrmeen joked, sampling a pot she’d just spiced.

“Are those safe to leave?” El asked her.

She nodded. “You want to stow the Nimbran right now?”

“I do, if Luse will stand guard again.”

“Do it,” the ghost replied, and Myrmeen set down her ladle and led the way.

They saw no one in the passages as they carried the dead and very purple weight of
the Nimbran Elder. And they agreed that was one good thing.

And then they all had the same silent thought: it would have been better if it hadn’t
been the only good thing, thus far, about this conclave in Oldspires.

“I hope Mystra’s doing the right thing,” Mirt muttered, as they headed back to the
kitchen.

El sighed. “So,” he told his companions, “does She.”

“T
HIS IS JUST
the first death of many, I’m thinking,” Mirt growled, fetching out a stockpot from
under the countertop and inspecting it for signs of mice.

“Rodents? Worry not,” Alusair told him. “I’ve already checked.
Every
pot.”

Mirt grinned. “Thankee! That’s good to know.” He looked over at Myrmeen. “So, this
Skouloun; did he waken and say anything interesting, ere he died?”

Myrmeen straightened up from feeding the hearthfire and said, “No. This isn’t a lurid
chapbook, I’m afraid. He just died.” She wiped her hands on her apron. “I didn’t much
like the look of that green spume leaking out of him. The poisoning attempts were
less than pleasant, too … but perhaps Toril will be lighter by a few nasty, deadly
wizards before the spellstorm fades.”

El sighed. “I hope not. A better world we might all share with certain mages gone,
to be sure, but Mystra charges me to spread the use of the Art, not stand by while
masters of it are destroyed—even if they’re destroyed by another master, using magic.
No, however useful that may be, it’s not what any of us should want. Perhaps fear
of it will cozen some into better behavior than usual, but I don’t consider even
that
very likely—”

At that moment, he lurched sideways as the floor rippled briefly under his feet, the
walls shook with a nigh-soundless shuddering that sent spice
vials toppling from racks and hanging pots clanging together, a staggering Mirt to
ring the stockpot off the lip of the nearest countertop, and … the rocking faded as
swiftly as it had come.

Myrmeen looked at Elminster. “
What
was
that
?”

He gave her a grim look. “Someone inside this house has tried a powerful spell. And
it has failed.”

“Well,” Mirt growled, putting the stockpot in the sink in front of him and reaching
for the handle of the pump, “we knew it was only a matter of time before—”

Something smote the far wall of the kitchen like a towering titan’s fist, sending
Myrmeen flying with a hissed curse. She rebounded off Mirt and slammed into Elminster
just as the lamps all died, plunging the room into utter darkness.

Luse
, Elminster thought,
give us some light, hey
?

He felt no mind receiving his thoughts, and said the same words aloud, more loudly
and sharply than he usually spoke.

Silence. Darkness. Myrmeen warm in his arms, turning herself around firmly and disengaging
his grasp.

“So, was that another strong spell?” she asked him briskly. “It came from this direction,
whereas the first …”

“Erupted from back that way. Aye, it was a spell, and mightier than the first. In
fact, I believe it came close to achieving its usual effect.”

A moment later, absently, he added, “Interesting.”

“I
NTERESTING
,”
THE
S
AGE
of Shadowdale commented, in the blind darkness.

A moment later, Myrmeen felt their hips bump together briefly as he strode past her
in the total darkness. Then she heard the rattle of a door handle, followed by the
thud of a body slamming into a door, a grunt of effort that rose into a snarl of strain,
and—the faint groan of wood that’s been under stress now snatched away. Then silence,
followed by just a hint of hard breathing.

“Elminster,” she inquired, “
what
are you doing?”

“Trying to open the door into the entry hall,” he replied a trifle testily, “and failing.”

She heard him turn and stride toward her, and got out of the way in time.

Straight across the kitchen he went, the sounds of his progress briefly drowned out
by the clatter of Mirt pawing open a cupboard door and growling, “Got the lanterns,
but damned if that second one didn’t suck all our fires right out! Flames, coals,
the lot!”

“Striker mounted on the inside of that door you’re holding,” Myrmeen told him crisply.
“Flint’s hanging beside it, on a cord.”

“Aye, lass, but I can’t see where I want the spark to go, now, can I?”

Mirt had Elminster right beaten in testiness, to be sure.

Myrmeen was still smiling wryly about that to herself when a terrific crash announced
that Elminster had tripped over the fetch-down stool and gone flying, the stool tumbling,
too.

She waited for what promised to be an impressive explosion of profanity, but instead
got the emphatic words, “That’s enough. That’s
quite
enough.”

An eerie glow kindled in the darkness, a blue-white pulsing that was small and faint
but growing swiftly in both brightness and extent—as she heard El growl, deep in his
throat. It was a growl of pain.

“Elminster Aumar,” she asked the darkness in exasperation, “what’re you playing at?”

“Getting ye and yon Lord of Waterdeep light enough to get some lanterns lit,” came
the reply—from the heart of the glow, which she saw now was Elminster’s body, glowing
fitfully from within, as if many small lanterns were moving around under his skin.

“I thought you couldn’t cast spells here,” she said warily. “Or did those two spells
going off change things?”

“I’m
not
casting a spell,” Elminster snarled. “I’m calling on the Weave to glow, inside myself.”

“Sounds like it’s agonizing.”

“It
is
,” he gasped. “The Weave is twisted, here inside Oldspires, so doing this is … painful
in the extreme. Get those farruking
lanterns
lit!”

Myrmeen scrambled to the cupboard where Mirt was fumbling—just in time for his bark
of triumph as a lantern wick flared into flame. El let himself go dark again with
a grateful gasp, and lay there, sprawled on the stone floor, as she got two additional
lanterns alight.

“Whither now?” she asked, proffering one.

Elminster rolled over and up to his feet with several grunts of discomfort before
he took it, thanked her, and commanded, “Come with me!”

He led the way out through the widest door, into the now-deserted feast hall—where
the fires were all out, amid a strong reek of drifting smoke, and darkness reigned—and
then around the corner into the Copper Receiving Room, its burnished copper ornamentations
flashing back splendid reflections in the lanternlight.

El strode straight through it and out into the entry hall, where the darkness continued
unabated. Aside from their glimmering lanterns, all was dark and silent.

“What happened?” Mirt demanded roughly. “All this utter gloom, I mean.”

El waved the question away and strode along the wall toward the door he hadn’t been
able to open from the kitchen side.

And then he stopped abruptly, holding his lantern high. Myrmeen was at his side in
an instant, adding the light of her lantern to his.

One of the spells that had rocked the kitchen had done something after all.

The Sage of Shadowdale hadn’t been able to open the door from the other side because
a huge sideboard had appeared out of nowhere to stand on this side of it—across it,
right against the wall, where the door had to open into.

And jammed—crushed—between sideboard and wall was the body of a woman, collapsed over
the top of the sideboard amid a spreading pool of blood, her slender arms flung wide.

“Y
USENDRE OF
N
IMBRAL
,” Mirt growled, and looked at El. “Her doing, d’you think? Her own spell, gone wrong?”

Elminster shook his head. “See the wisps like smoke rising from her? That was a magical
binding. She got plucked from wherever she was standing—within eyeshot of whoever
did this—and teleported with the sideboard.”

“It,” Myrmeen Lhal pointed out, “looks like one of the sideboards from yonder.”

She waved across the entry hall with her lantern, at the door that led into the Red
Receiving Room, where they’d first slaked the thirsts of the arriving archmages.

El led the general rush to that door, and flung it wide.

To discover the room dark, deserted—and missing a sideboard.

“Now what?” Mirt growled. “Once they discover that their spells work, the damned archmages
will blast each other until there’s no Oldspires left!”

Myrmeen caught at Elminster’s arm, and waved her lantern back the way they’d come.
“Could Yusendre be shamming? She—”

“She’s bloody pulp from the chest on down,” Mirt growled. “If that’s a deception,
it’s a damned effective one. She’s
dead
.”

“Two, now,” Myrmeen sighed. “Not good.”

“Not good, indeed,” Elminster agreed. “Come.”

He hastened to the bedchambers the guests had been installed in. Where they checked
door after door.

Locked, every one, and no one answered their hailings—with one exception. When Mirt
sought to peer in through the keyhole of Maraunth Torr’s room, a needle-thin stiletto
promptly thrust out of the keyhole.

“That could have been my eye!” the Lord of Waterdeep growled.

“And the brain behind it,” El agreed cheerfully. “Yet it wasn’t. Well, there’s not
much we can—”

“Just leave them all shut up in their rooms until morning,” Alusair whispered then,
materializing right in front of him.

El swallowed a sigh. “Where have you
been
?”

“Recovering,” she hissed back. “That second spell did its work right
through
me—and it only worked at all because the first spell tore through all the Weave chaos,
melting a short-lived hole for the second magic to flourish in. If that’s the right
word.” She shuddered. “This place is … not comfortable for the likes of me. Energies
leak from the gates constantly.”