Spellstorm (38 page)

Three long, sleek points thrust into the wispy emptiness where he’d been. The mist
swirled and rose up in a ragged cloud as the tusked creature turned right through
it, stabbing at the air with all of its legs, and … became a dark and solid man again
wrapped around the ratlike head, drawing daggers and driving them deep into both eyes
at once.

And as the beast screamed and bucked, wild with pain, and tossed its head wildly to
try to fling off the tormentor that had caused it such agony, Manshoon dragged both
of his daggers back toward himself, back through the monster’s collapsing eyes to
the undersides of the bony brow ridge where they could hook and hold, keeping him
on its head for long enough to … bite its foul, furry head in the same way vampires
served their chosen victims.

He hung on through the frenzied, squalling battering that followed, grimly riding
the thing as it smashed him repeatedly against the walls and ceiling, his roars of
pain muffled by its fur, healing himself repeatedly as bones were shattered and shattered
anew … and when at last the thing feebly scraped him off by ramming its head against
and then past the open door frame to Manshoon’s room, the creature was weak and unsteady,
its long legs curled and quivering.

Which was when Elminster, half-numbed and dazed with the pain of holding the Weave
steady through all the battering—pain he shared with Manshoon, but without the means
to mitigate it through regeneration—sensed the monster was leaking the energies it
had absorbed.

With the last of his strength, he gathered the Weave like a great sling to momentarily
enfold those energies, so that even as they leaked into its strands and dissipated,
he flung their fury to—topple the bronze statue of the first Lord Halaunt over onto
the spiderlike creature like a giant’s hammer.

The crash of its fall shook the room, hurling the still-dazed Malchor, the regenerating
Manshoon, and what was left of the crushed and splintered furniture into the air—and
smashing the blinded head flat.

As a dark and malignant will sent something flashing out of the doomed and dying creature,
through the open doorway like a dark snake, curving to smite—

Elminster had just time enough to shove Myrmeen one way and kick Mirt the other before
it struck him, a wall of dark magic that tore at him and through him.

He clung to the silver fire he had left, a core he wrapped himself around and fought
to submerge himself in, as everything else was savaged in the roaring and hungry dark
destruction …

It had been a long time since pain had utterly overwhelmed him, snatching him away
from all awareness of Toril around him, but it did now.

E
LMINSTER WAS COLD
, unbearably cold, and the black winds were howling, over him and through him, eyeless
skulls that nonetheless saw him and gloated over him as they loomed large above him
for their fleeting moment each as the winds brought them and then swept them on …

Liches, more liches, never an end to them, never a moment to rest …

Someone was speaking. In an icy, unfriendly manner he’d heard so many, many times
before.

“If you believe you can defend him against me, woman of Arabel, you are sadly mistaken,”
Manshoon was saying, a cold and triumphant sneer in his every purred word.

“I believe I can attempt to defend him,” Myrmeen Lhal replied softly. “So if you think
differently, Manshoon, try me.”

“One day I shall,” the Zhentarim replied. “Don’t forget—for I shan’t.”

“She’s not alone, look you!” Mirt snarled, “I stand guard over the Old Mage, too.”

“Oh, I tremble, buffoon! Stand aside, or my mirth may overcome me!”

Elminster felt for the Weave … and found himself gazing into the worried face of Alusair.
Kisses of Mystra! If he was
in
the Weave, face-to-face with a Weaveghost, he must have come so close to dying that …

Surreptitiously, so as not to betray his return to consciousness to Manshoon and provoke
an immediate attack, he tried to gather his strength so he could move. Rise, or lift
a hand and work a spell, or …

He had no strength at all.

There was a sudden flurry of movement above him that he could sense more than he could
see. Then a grunt from Mirt, followed immediately by a second and more startled one,
and a gasp from Myrmeen. Followed by distant thuds, and a darkening of the light.

El fought to open his eyes.

Could he not at least
see
?

He could, it seemed. Through a swimming view of the freshly cracked ceiling of the
Chamber of the Founder—Lord Halaunt was going to need plasterers in, to give him a
new overhead medallion—Elminster beheld a darkly handsome face above him.

It was smiling a wryly crooked smile.

“I could destroy you easily now, Aumar,” Manshoon told him. “At long, long last, and
forever. Yet remember this: I withhold my hand, and spare you. For I pay my debts.
Both ways.”

He let the smile slide off his face, and added softly, “You lucky, lucky bastard.”

M
ANSHOON PUT ON HIS MOST ENGAGING SMILE
. T
HE ONE THAT HELD
not a hint of mockery. He even made his voice contrite. “I do wish to apologize for
my earlier violence toward you, Lady Lhal. I did not want to do it, and took care
to deal you no lasting harm, but some deeds are regrettably necessary in life, to
achieve things of great and wide-reaching value—and peace between myself and Lord
Aumar here has now become one of them.”

Myrmeen remained thin lipped, and the look she gave him was as dark as ever, so he
tried a different gambit.

“I’m aware that it’s early in the day
—very
early, some might say—and yet I can’t help but notice you’re here and not busy in
the kitchen,” he said. “Only three days of spellstorm left, I believe. Morningfeast
will be served today, yes?”

Myrmeen frowned. “Not until someone deals with the army of warriors in full coat of
plate that laid siege to the kitchen, and presumably—knowing fighting men as I do—have
ransacked it and carried off everything they couldn’t eat on the spot. I know where
there are some rotting raw carrots we can get to, but otherwise …” She shrugged.

Manshoon didn’t have to feign amusement. Black Hand of Bane, but he
liked
this woman. Intelligent, practical, and spirited, but not full of herself. Give him
a dozen like this, and he could conquer a few cities with ease, and enjoy doing it.

His forbearance would make Elminster treat him differently, and Mystra regard him
differently—how could it not? So why destroy his old, old foe now, when doing so gained
him only the removal of Elminster from the scene? No, far better to wait, to profit
from his newfound patience by tolerating the enemy he’d hated so much, and come to
know so well, and was so used to, and await a better time.

A better time that
would
come. There would be plenty of opportunities ahead to destroy Elminster, given the
inevitable collisions and confrontations their natures and interests would lead them
into—opportunities when blaming Elminster, or taking down Elminster in a certain way,
would profit Manshoon greatly.

He could wait until then.

And until that day, he could benefit repeatedly from Elminster’s meddling, Elminster’s
very presence, Elminster as dupe and interceptor and deterrent. Right now, for example,
Elminster made his own battle triumphs possible—and there was the Serpent Queen to
contend with, yet. Not to mention whichever of Maraunth Torr’s blundering warriors
yet survived. And the War Wizards of Cormyr surrounding this place. Alone, he would
be
the
logical target to most, but with Elminster in view, their attention went to the Sage
of Shadowdale and left him free to operate.

In the immediate thereafter of Oldspires, whatever happened, he would need Elminster
as a shield, a decoy, and perhaps even an ally against Larloch’s liches.

If he was to become the new Larloch, with the liches now seemingly stirring to reach
out into wider Faerûn, abandoning the aloofness of their absent master, he would need
a distraction. One who was powerful enough to last more than a few moments, and strong
enough to be a credible threat demanding lichnee attention. One who could be an ally
if need be.

It would take time to devise the right spells to seize command of the liches, and
surely they would be watching living mages of accomplishment for such experimentations.
Yet if Elminster could be steered into being their foe—which should be simplicity
itself, for the Old Mage had been humiliated by how Larloch duped him, and would want
to atone or make amends or take vengeance for that—to muster against them all the
high priests and city lords and Harpers whose ears he was wont to whisper into, all
the wizards he could warn by rumor as well as in person …

Yes. This was only possible at all because Larloch had burned into the minds of each
and every lich who served him a yoke, a magic woven into their very undeath that gave
him the ability to mindspeak to them across a world, to command their wills and spells
and bodies utterly.

Which meant he need not hunt down, corner, and fool every last lich into obedience,
he only had to fool the yoke.

I need not deceive more than a hundred wise and powerful veteran archmages, who chose
servitude to one more mighty. I only need to deceive the spell they accepted and now
cannot renounce, devised by that mighty but oh-so-sadly gone individual. And Mystra
herself tolerates my tyrannies of those who wield the Art for my creativity in creating
new spells. So crafting a new magic to take control of the means of command Larloch
has put in place should be achievable. So long as I have the services of my duped
distraction.

“You and I have a score to settle,” a rough and all-too-familiar voice growled, jolting
Manshoon back to the here and now. He’d been quite enjoying thinking of becoming as
powerful as Larloch.

Not
being
that mighty skulking power in Faerûn, behind a dozen thrones and subtly steering
twoscore more, but the
becoming
, the pursuit of that ascendancy. Interesting.

“Someday, Lord of Waterdeep,” he told Mirt calmly. “Someday.”

There was a part of him that wanted to laugh at the lurching old man with the big
belly and the food-stained clothes and the rotting, flapping old seaboots, but …

Mirt was playing a role as enthusiastically as he was. Of old Mirt the Merciless,
thereafter the Old Wolf, then Mirt the Moneylender … womanizer, heavy drinker, glutton.
His speech deliberately crude and simple, playing the country bumpkin who’d made a
few coins by sheer luck and come to the city long ago, and was now in the twilight
of his days braying about past glories and chuckling at empty gossip.

While behind those lazy, leering eyes lurked a mind as sharp as the proverbial drover’s
whip, a shrewd judge of people and a worldly wise swindler and opportunistic investor
and trader who knew every dodge prohibited in law and many more, and who above all
knew
people
, what moved them and persuaded them. Mirt, who had already, and quite legally, amassed
a small fortune in Suzail by taking more than a dozen foolish young nobles in hand,
investing their gold wisely, and sharing in
their profits. While buying low on the docks and selling high along the Promenade
and at the back doors of the wealthy, not too proud to play the panderer and the chamberpot
emptier along the way.

Mirt met his eyes for a long and gently smiling time while they wordlessly told each
other: I know you, and just what you’re capable of, so don’t think you’re fooling
everyone. Watch your back. I will be.

Finally Manshoon tired of this staredown of smug mutual detraction. He smirked and
turned away.

To face his last and greatest adversary.

Elminster. Who was sitting on the floor in a corner of the wrecked Chamber of the
Founder peering thoughtfully at the huge corpse of the tusked spider-scorpion, absently
stroking his long white beard. There was no sign of his pipe. Come to think of it,
he hadn’t seen the Old Mage using that floating “eversmoking pipe,” or whatever the
minstrels called it, for some time now …

Oh, how he hated this man. Who’d always been in his way, always been a step or six
ahead of him, always thwarted his greatest schemes and soured the triumphs he had
managed, whose shadow had always fallen across his path, and had too often become
a fortress wall girded against him.

And yet … just in the last little while, a mere winking moment compared to the long
span of both their lives, he had come to realize that he would miss Elminster Aumar,
if ever the Sage of Shadowdale wasn’t there. In a life wherein so many steady rocks
had been swept away—some of them he himself had ruthlessly cut down—this was one unchanging
feature, this tall, gaunt, hawk-nosed man of the wise smile and the whimsical humor.