Spellstorm (20 page)

“Then it’s the cold cellar for her,” Elminster decreed. “The end one, with the good
lock.” As Mirt tucked in the errant arm and replaced the dome over the dead Nimbran,
he took the other end of the platter and announced, “When we get back, we’ll help
with morningfeast.”

“See that you do,” Alusair made the Lord of Oldspires reply. “Sardasper Halaunt is
no man’s lackey.”

That brought a snort from all three of the other living occupants of the kitchen,
whose day had begun. The bright morning sun was already lighting up the back kitchen
where the wines and spirits used in the cooking were stored. They knew that because
Mirt awakened with a dry mouth from all his snoring, and sought his own early morningfeast
by way of remedy; an entirely liquid repast.

Wherefore he was now a happy man, and hummed a bawdy old tune as he and El set off
with their grisly burden.

Myrmeen didn’t pause to watch them go. Soon the early risers among the guests would
be stirring and inevitably wanting food; there were dozens of dishes still to ready,
and she had a staff serving under her of precisely no one at all.

She built up the fires one more time and stirred the three cauldrons Elminster had
tended overnight, swallowing a sigh. For years she’d swung a sword and snapped orders
and rushed here and there doing things deemed dangerous or important or both, while
others had slaved, overlooked, in kitchens or laundry rooms; it was only fair that
the tables turn a time or two, in any life.

And there were two mouths fewer to feed since her arrival. How many more would drop
off the roster?

Roast boar was filling the kitchen with sizzling goodness when Mirt and Elminster
returned. “Wash that platter,” Myrmeen ordered them briskly. “You are
not
leaving it for me.”

Before anyone could reply, the cauldron at the back suddenly belched bubbles. She
leaned forward briskly and stirred its contents, then raised her ladle high enough
to sniff. What she smelled made her frown. “Unaccountable fetor,” she muttered.

“Oh?” Mirt reached past her with a ladle of his own, dipped out a small but steaming
sample, and slurped at it, heedless of its temperature.

They all watched him move it around in his mouth, as he acquired a thoughtful, considering
look. Then he swallowed, with visible discomfort, and pronounced decidedly, “Squamous.
Very squamous.”

“Poison, do you think?”

Mirt shook his head. “Probably the shadeberries were too old. They ferment from within.
We’ll have to toss it.”

“Over whose head?”

Rather than chuckling, he looked thoughtful. “We’ll have to see.”

E
LMINSTER LED
M
IRT
to the Summer Room, off in the northeastern corner of Oldspires, and examined the
doors. Mirt watched him open them and check that the thin threads he’d strung across
the door frames just inside the doors were undisturbed. The old moneylender said not
a word until they were well away from there, headed for the guest bedchambers.

“Myrmeen’s hair?” he asked quietly then.

El nodded. “And a little wax, to stick it taut.”

“No invasions, I noticed.”

“None yet,” was all El replied before they started the rounds of the bedchamber doors,
knocking and calling through the doors that morning feast would be served in the feast
hall three gongs hence.

“So, who’s our murderer, d’you think?” Mirt muttered, once they were on their way
back to the kitchen. “I can’t figure out who would be a common foe for the fallen—rival
for the spell, yes, but enemy enough to slay?”

El shrugged. “I share thy bafflement. Which leads me to suspect we have more than
one slayer.”

“Hmmph,” the old moneylender commented. “Cheery thought.”

They started setting out all the morningfeast dishes and condiments that didn’t have
to be kept warm. When they were done, Mirt had rung the great gong that hung on the
wall of the Blue Chamber; its reverberations had in turn set smaller gongs on the
passage walls outside the bedchambers to echoing its call. Thrice, with a trot back
to the kitchens for the two-man tray of hot dishes between each.

By the time the hot platters had all been set out, to leak steam from under their
lids and make the feast hall smell delightful, the room had filled up with hungry,
and in some cases, sleepy-looking wizards.

The two Elders of Nimbral were missing, of course, and the captive Calathlarra, which
meant three empty seats.

But there were five.

Elminster counted them twice, and saw Mirt doing the same thing. They exchanged rather
grim looks.

Two ladies were missing. Tabra and Alastra Hathwinter.

M
YRMEEN
L
HAL HAD BEEN IN BETTER MOODS
. K
NOWING SHE WAS
being foolish—the murderer or murderers could, after all, be lurking anywhere—but
lost in the deepening feeling that the kitchen was becoming her prison, she’d seized
a moment while the men were off rousing the guests to briefly go exploring. She was
used to facing danger with a sword and dagger in hand, and a cleaver and a carving
knife would do.

Armed and ready, she headed into the rooms beyond the Copper Receiving Room that lay
behind its western door. The Green Audience Chamber, then the withdrawing room and
parlor, and some guest bedchambers here in this end of Oldspires, well apart from
those that had been given to the wizards. El had intended these rooms for her and
Mirt and himself. With only four days of spellstorm left now, she wondered if they’d
ever get a chance to use them.

There was a disused nursery opening off the room meant for her, right in the southwest
corner of the mansion. Its windows were shuttered, and it had that dark, cavernous,
slightly musty gloom of so many of the lesser-used chambers of Oldspires.

To Myrmeen, it seemed the house was waiting in silent, stubborn patience to be filled
with the laughter and ragings of a large and willful family again—but until then,
it endured slow rot and spreading mildew as it waited for one cantankerous old man
to die.

Once, this had been the crowded, noisy mansion of a proud noble family who rode to
the hunt whenever they weren’t riding to defend Cormyr. Now it held a larger crowd
than it had done for many decades, but not of heroic riders. No, these menacingly
malicious mages were far from heroism, or being square and direct about anything at
all. They went through life slicing and stabbing at folk with their wit, as if it
were a sharp dagger they couldn’t help lashing out with.

And didn’t care how much blood they spilled, along the way.

Shaking her head at that thought, Myrmeen went into the bedchamber meant for her.
Nice tapestries, and a magnificent four-poster like an ornate wooden castle with doors—fastened
back right now—that could turn it into a box against the winter chill. Once a Halaunt
had slept here, but in the current Lord Halaunt’s much-shrunken household, it had
housed his steward. Its shutters were open, and she could see the rolling sward of
a meadow descending to the dark trees of Halaunt Chase. Somewhere between her and
that wood was a wall of force, and somewhere beyond it, wizards of war on watch, but
she could see neither—the one was invisible, and the others were probably sitting
on chairs and benches back amid those trees, rather than on display for all to see.
Waiting to see how many of us walk out of here again, and how many are carried in
shrouds …

That grim thought came back to Myrmeen in the kitchen as she started chopping sausages
to make sausage fingertarts for highsunfeast. They’d be greasy as anything, but there
was nothing like a hot sausage fingertart to set mouths to watering …

Gods, but she was becoming domesticated! A right proper cook, where once she’d been
the most warlike Crown lord in the land …

The kitchen door swung open, and she turned swiftly, cleaver up and ready.

It was Elminster, an empty platter in his hands.

“Chop me gently, lass, I’m an old man!” he said, so mournfully that she couldn’t help
but giggle.

And how many years had it been, since last she’d giggled?

“El,” she asked him, pointing with her cleaver at the next tray ready to take out,
“is the magic likely to turn reliable again soon? Inside these walls, I mean?”

Elminster shrugged. “I doubt it, but … ye’ve lived more than long enough to know that
strange things happen. Why d’ye ask that now?”

“Before I started all the mess and fuss of baking a large batch of loaves,” Myrmeen
told him dryly, “I was wondering how many mouths would still be around to eat them.
Or to put it more directly, how many owners of those mouths would still be alive.
I know how long it takes a good warrior to hack down other good warriors, but can’t
just one of these archmages blast us all to jelly in a trice, if they get their spells
back?”

El shrugged again. “They could, I suppose, if we all obligingly stood together in
one spot, and let them leisurely conjure our deaths.”

Myrmeen lifted an eyebrow. “You’re telling me the realm needn’t have feared the war
wizards all these years? Wizards can’t beat a boy with a slingshot, or a yeoman with
his bow?”

“If ye want to go a-slaying, spells work, but a sword is always easier. Or thy fist.
Ye cannot
trust
magic, for it has a mind of its own.”

“Oh? Whose?”

“The one belonging to whichever of the voices in the Weave gets there first, and is
in the mood,” Elminster told her gravely.

“So, have the two missing women shown up yet?”

Elminster shook his head. “I’ve sent Alusair to look for them. It seems Lord Halaunt’s
vitals are in uproar, and he has to visit garderobes often. The ones that have stout
locks. She can drift in through bedchamber door keyholes in silence, and—”

“Do it invisibly, to boot,” the voice of the ghost princess interrupted smoothly,
from the empty air by his shoulder. “So I can sneak around, and see folk when they’re
unguarded and being themselves. Or hunting high and low for hidden Lost Spells.”

“Well?” El and Myrmeen demanded together.

Alusair became visible, leaning back against the counter in her usual arms-folded
pose. “Both are still locked in their rooms, but I’m afraid Alastra is dead—murdered;
there’s blood everywhere, obvious violence, and oh, El, I can’t back away from the
thought that we doomed her, by hinting she’d be given the spell—and Tabra lives. For
now. She’s alive, awake, and abed, but doesn’t look well.”

“Get back to Tabra and stand guard until morningfeast is done,” Elminster ordered
grimly, “to stop her stealing out and getting up to anything, or anyone sneaking in
to attack her.”

Without waiting for Alusair’s reply—which was a silent nod as she faded into invisibility
again—he picked up the tray Myrmeen had indicated and went out into the feast hall
with it.

At the door, he passed Mirt, on his way in for the next tray, and muttered grimly,
“After the meal’s done, conclave in the kitchen, just the four of us.”

“Four?” Mirt asked.

Alusair’s smiling face melted into view right in front of his nose. “Four,” she confirmed,
winking at him.

“Ye gods, woman,” the Lord of Waterdeep muttered, “my heart!”

A rude sound of derision answered him out of the empty air, and he grinned and walked
right through where it had come from—encountering nothing at all—to pick up the tray
Mreen’s cleaver was patiently pointing at.

Then he turned and took it out into the feast hall, to feed the folk he was increasingly
thinking of as … the condemned.

They seemed to agree with that dark judgment this morning. There was little chatter
and more than a few sidelong glances at empty chairs. Including the one at the head
of the table that Lord Halaunt had hastily vacated.

It seemed death disagreed with the old lord. Or perhaps it was just the fried boar.