Spellstorm (31 page)

“Look you,” Mirt rumbled, from where he’d flattened himself against the passage wall
to peer along the threads, “I can’t see anything these threads trigger. No dart-and-spring-bow
mounts, no eyes redirecting the force of their disturbance up or down to a falling
block or spear or some such …”

“
Don’t
touch them,” El snapped, surfacing out of the bright surf of the Weave into the bleaker
here and now of the ruined passage. “What if they’re poisoned?”

“So a mere touch … our skulker’s Shaaan?”

El spread his hands. “Her, or working with her, or more likely nothing to do with
her at all, but she saw an opportunity to deal death, knowing we’d come up here.”

“Is there a way around these?” Myrmeen asked. “Or can we burn them, and just go back
there and wait for the fumes to clear?”

“There where the spell that tried for us and failed came from,” Mirt reminded her.

Myrmeen sighed, rolled her eyes, and said, “I’m getting a mite tired of shrinking
from shadows. When I could be sleeping. Or
getting back to the stew the Serpent Queen might be poisoning right now.”

“Enough of this,” Mirt growled, and threw his pry bar, putting a backspin on it so
it descended as it whirled—and neatly took down all four threads to the floor on its
way to clang, bounce once, and slide, dragging them with it … to a stop.

Nothing happened. No explosions, no racing darts or spears, and nothing came crashing
down.

“Treat them as poisoned, don’t step on them or touch them, leave the pry bar where
it lies,” the Lord of Waterdeep intoned patiently, “and let’s
get going
—or the death that claims me will be one of old age.”

And he swallowed a yawn and lurched forward. Myrmeen gave Elminster a shrug and followed.

He shrugged back, and brought up the rear.

The passage floor proved spongy just before the dogleg, but Mirt avoided putting his
boots right through it by rushing forward in a crouch to where the floor was firmer,
muttering, “In the ballads, things are more heroic than falling through floors!”

A moment later, he called back over his shoulder, “Middle door?”

“Middle door,” Myrmeen confirmed.

And then the silent smiting of air and ears and jaws came again, this time in a blast
that tore up from the floor beneath the old moneylender’s boots and slammed him against
the ceiling.

He let out a loud snarl of pain that almost drowned out the faint wail of agony that
arose behind Elminster—who whirled around, knowing it came from Alusair, but seeing
no trace of her.

So he was left grimly wondering if that was because there was no trace left to find.

L
USE
! L
USE
! A
LUSAIR
Nacacia!
El knew his mind shout would be painful to her, but in those first moments he was
too upset to curb it.

By all the backsides that have ever warmed the Dragon Throne
, her thought came back to him, as feeble as it was angry,
that it should come to this: someone speaking my second name to me. El, I
hate
Nacacia. Never
call me by that name again. Vangerdahast knew I hated it and delighted in using it
and it alone when I was young. I don’t want to kill him for that, I just want to tear
out his vocal cords so he can’t speak
.

Ye’re
—
well, not alive, but still with us! Well enough that ye can spit coherent fury at
me
.

Yes. Now can I just be left alone to slide down these stairs and suffer?

Only if ye’re sure ye can make it to the kitchen
. Elminster reached out to her through the Weave, gathering power to feed her, and
she writhed and trembled in agony as he steadied her and poured power into her.

Old Mage, I am sure of
nothing.
I’m astonished to learn that archmages can be sure of anything. But mostly, I’m in
pain. Leave me be. I want to groan, and moan, and say very unladylike things, and
I want to be alone to do it
.

Reluctantly Elminster stopped feeding her power, and watched her shudder back to some
sort of normalcy, a battered image of the Steel Princess once more, rather than an
eel-like torn and sagging thing.
Mystra bless and keep thee, Luse
.

Why now? Why couldn’t she have done that back when I was fighting the Tuigans? Or
helping me smite the dragon before it could kill my father? Or in my worst moments
of being regent? Why are gods never there when you need them?

Elminster had no answer for that, and they both knew it.

M
IRT CAME LIMPING
groggily back to Myrmeen and Elminster to growl that there wasn’t much floor left
of the place where the passage ended in the three doors—and that he couldn’t recognize
the shrouded-in-darkness room on the ground floor below that the spell that had flung
him into the ceiling had come from.

“Is there enough floor left to let us get to that middle door?” Myrmeen asked.

Mirt shrugged. “I’m no builder, lass—and I’m a mite heavier than you.”

“A mite? That wobbling barrel of a belly is a ‘mite’?”

“Lass, you need no cleaver, not while you’ve got that tongue of yours!”

Myrmeen chuckled, put the lantern on the floor, and set off briskly down the passage
to where the dust was still swirling and tiny fragments
of floor were tinkling and rattling back down from the ruined ceiling they’d been
hurled into.

Mirt and Elminster followed her more cautiously, El plucking up the lantern as he
went. He felt weak and light-headed in the wake of using the Weave to bolster Alusair;
some of the energy he’d given her must have come from him.

He and the moneylender strode warily, but were in time to see her rush past the hole
in the floor where exposed and splintered beams sagged, to fetch up against a wide
door that she boldly turned the handle of, and sprang aside, dragging it open as she
went.

To reveal—crowded darkness, a half-seen labyrinth of stacked crates. Myrmeen kept
still, and they all peered and listened. To unbroken silence.

A stillness that stretched and stretched, until Myrmeen shrugged, slipped around the
door, and plunged into the dark room.

Where they heard her disturb something metallic that clattered against other metal.
She cursed, and sprang hastily back.

As wood groaned, wavered, groaned more deeply—and came toppling over with a slow and
mighty
kerrashhh
into other wood. That in turn groaned, toppled, crashed in its turn, and so on. Stack
after stack of crates, one after another, until silence fell.

“Mreen?” Mirt barked. “Mreen?”

There was no reply, but a moment later the lanternlight caught a shapely behind swarming
up over the angled tops of the fallen and wedged crates and disappearing from view,
long legs kicking.

And a moment after that, there came the ringing clang of metal glancing off metal,
and a triumphant “Hah!” from Myrmeen, and another clang.

Then someone came swarming back over the crates, breathing hard and in a hurry, and
El shone the lantern full in that someone’s face at the same time as he gave Mirt
a shove that sent the moneylender staggering sideways into a hard meeting with the
passage wall.

Two darts came hurtling end over end and passed just over and under the lantern—which
El had let go of a moment before.

He caught it
just
before it would have smashed into the passage floor, and aimed it again. In time
to see the masked man—slender, short, and not moving like anyone familiar to him—hauling
two more darts out of leg sheaths.

And Myrmeen dropping down on him from atop the crates, cleaver held high.

The masked man spun around, but her forearm came crashing down on one of his arms,
dashing it to the floor, and she landed on his legs,
hard
.

He shrieked in pain—a cry that ended abruptly when his chest and face crashed into
the floor and drove all the wind he had to shriek with out of him.

And then Myrmeen was atop him, and had his arms pinned and one arm around his throat,
and was murmuring calmly, “One move—just one—and I’ll wring your neck.”

Elminster got to him before Mirt could, laid a firm hand atop the man’s head, and
said into his mind,
Tell the truth, or I’ll gnaw your brains out from within while ye live, and force
ye to stay awake and aware and feel every shrieking moment of it. ’Tis a slow death,
and a very painful one. Trust me
.

“I—I do. Oh, I do!” the man stammered. “D-don’t hurt me. Please. I surrender! Mercy!”

“Mercy?” Myrmeen asked softly, into his ear. “To a poisoner?”

“I—it brings on sleep, nothing more! I swear!”

“And where is this poison?” she inquired, tightening her hold around his neck. “
All
of it!”

“On m-my darts!”

“And how many darts do you have?”

“Six. Did have. Threw …”

“All but these last two. Lie still. Try to get up, and I’ll kill you. Just answer
our questions.”

El kept hold of the man’s head and slid into his thoughts as he panted out his fearful
replies, so he knew they were being handed truth by …

Drace Taulith, a burglar in these parts, who’d seen some of the war wizards, known
what they were, and concluded their presence meant there must be something
very
valuable inside Oldspires right now.

So he’d spied on them until he’d figured out how to slip through their lines by night,
in the Halaunt woods. They were a lazy lot, these Crown mages, so there were two places
where an agile man with a lashpole ladder and a strong cord could swing himself over
their precious—and impressively enormous—almost invisible magical wall. The ‘ring
of force,’ he’d heard them call it, when they were talking of what spells would
need renewing and what would stand by itself for as long as they needed it, and knew
that it enclosed a ‘spellstorm’ or fog surrounding Oldspires.

So Drace Taulith had won his way over the ring-shaped barrier and into the fog and
into Oldspires through its wood chute, after peering through the large windows of
a darkened grand room and promptly fleeing from folk inside who seemed very interested
in seeing who he was.

And Drace genuinely knew nothing of any wizards inside the mansion, only ghosts, and
had managed to speak to no one at all, and was now utterly terrified.

Once he’d learned the burglar now had only an unpoisoned spare dagger in one boot
and a garotte wrapped around his forearm under his leather jerkin, El let go of the
man and went to murmur instructions to Mirt.

A
ND SO IT
came to pass that as they were leading him through the grand floor of Oldspires to
“chain him up,” Mirt and Myrmeen stumbled into each other and fell in opposite directions,
with startled curses—and Drace Taulith saw his gods-sent moment of opportunity and
took it, turning and sprinting away through the open front doors of the mansion (the
same doors that Mirt had wheezed and lurched ahead to fling open mere moments earlier)
into the night.