Spellstorm (33 page)

He sat down on his bundle, there in the darkness of the larder, and let his attention sink into the Weave …

Brightness rising into view, the endless silent rushing, darting, and swirling. He descended to meet it, to join it, and be swept along, seeking … seeking the mind of the Steel Princess. Alusair Nacacia she’d been, the little spitfire against her elder sister’s serene urbanity, the fierce spirit, tossed head, and ready sword. The daring, the daring … There! That was her! Or what little was left, torn and sobbing and ebbing away. Regrets like weeping sores on her soul, lost mother, lost father, words unsaid, too late now, the icy farewell to her nephew the fifth Azoun, the long walk away …

Ye did what ye had to do
, El told her tenderly, as he gathered what was left of her together and knit those tatters with bright Weave strands, woven as best he could.
And what ye did was thy best, and far, far better than anyone else sought to do for Cormyr. Ye cannot win every battle, but ye saved the realm we both love, saved it time and again. Ye have earned peace, and deserve to be honored even more than thy father and mother. Ye are Cormyr, lass, its heart and soul. Rise again
!

And he let slip the tiniest bit of his own vitality into the Weave cradle he’d woven, to forge and fuse her tatters together. Just a little, lest he burn her away utterly … a Weaveghost she was, now, and must remain.

El? Old Mage? Sly old bastard, I have had the most horrid dreams! All lost, and torn, and weeping—and part of you in me, with Mystra’s sad eyes boring through me!

Luse, Luse, ye’re back, and look! Quite by accident, I’ve woven ye a shield, a Weave shield! Wear it like armor, and try not to fly too close to any powerful castings, moth to their flames! Will ye do that for me?

Elminster, I will do
anything
for you
. Anything.

Try not to remind me of that, lass. If ever I’m tempted to call on that debt, it might destroy thee. Now fly free—out of this Weave chaos, and back to Oldspires!

And abruptly he was gone from the rushing brightness, and blinking in chill, dank darkness, sitting on a bundle made of his own robe.

With the disbelievingly happy laughter of a Weaveghost wild in his mind.

El got up and trudged through the darkness, and returned to the kitchen in time to claim the last clear stretch of countertop to set down his sack of ingredients. Myrmeen looked up at him, acquired a twinkle in her eye, and said not a word.

Mirt, turning from running a skewer through the last braerwing, raised one eyebrow and remarked, “Lean meat is becoming all the rage in rural Cormyr these days, I’m told. Well-aged lean meat brings the highest coin, as it’s always in short supply.”

El gave him a look, put on his robe again, and started preparing and mixing ingredients. “Shaaan won’t keep us waiting forever, lean-meat lovers,” he told the countertop he was swiftly littering with powders, reaching for the nearest pestle.

“With what that lad saw when he was spying, and what we told him,” Mirt grunted, “she won’t leave Oldspires unseen and unopposed.”

“Valiant deaths are still deaths,” the Sage of Shadowdale replied. “She’s been shut up in her room so long that I’m wondering if she’s preparing something that can spread like a plague, once she looses it.”

Myrmeen looked up sharply. “She’d destroy a realm, to end up ruling it?”

Elminster nodded. “She’s done so before.”

The former Lady Lord of Arabel stared at him for a moment, then shook her head and said, “I don’t want to know. Not yet. Perhaps not for years to come. I don’t want to know what crawling plagues she can loose, until she’s safely dead, and burned, and scattered, her ashes enspelled to make sure she won’t rise and return in undeath.
Without
having let loose any more such afflictions.”

“Dead, burned, and scattered? You’re making our tasks-to-be-done list steadily longer, lass,” Mirt complained, as he bent over to peer at the cooking fire.

“Deeper drudgework is oft the price of lasting victory,” she quoted back at him.

He winced and then wheezed his way back upright and replied, “I heard enough trite phrases from the priests and the elder nobles of Waterdeep in my day to last several lifetimes. I’m no longer in the speechifying business, so pray don’t add to my store of them.”

It was Myrmeen’s turn to arch an eyebrow. “Oh? What business are you in these days?”

“The revenge business.”

“Oh? Taking your revenge upon whom, exactly?”

“Everyone. I really mean I’m in the meddling-in-everything business, like Elminster here, but ‘revenge’ has that grander grim ring to it.”

“I’ll order the carving of your tombstone the moment we’re done in Oldspires,” Myrmeen promised.

Mirt rolled his eyes. “You think that’ll be in this century?”

T
HE TWO WIZARDS
had walked the last two turns of passage to their rooms in silence, side-by-side in the gloomy magnificence of the mansion. Only to reach the Chamber of the Founder, with its frowning statue, and the doors to their rooms. Malchor Harpell opened his bedchamber door and gave Manshoon a polite nod of farewell, and Manshoon returned the nod and backed away. Never turn your back, was his iron rule, and he wasn’t about to change it now.

The door to Harpell’s room closed, and the founding lord of the Zhentarim heard Malchor lock and bolt it.

No surprise there. Prudence is the first simple survival tactic of all archmages.

Manshoon sidestepped, well aside from that door, which brought him within reach of his own.

And out of another long habit, he turned on one heel to look all around before he laid hand to its handle.

Which was how he happened to see the stealthy movement in the gloom of the staue chamber, beyond the grand staircase. That momentary flash and gleam of armor is unmistakable, to one who has seen it so often.

Out of long habit—ah, but his habits were increasingly governing him, here in this place of peril in the shadows—he sidestepped smoothly again, so the hand axe that came whirling from the staue chamber passed harmlessly by his shoulder, to ring off the side of the first Lord Halaunt’s brazen head, and thwack into a wall.

“I’ll ignore that,” he told the darkness whence the weapon had come, “so long as such stupidity is not repeated. Is there a particular target you have in mind, or are you slaughtering all archmages you meet with?”

By way of reply, there were more shifting gleamings in the darkness. Several shapes stepped around the corner, resolving themselves into helmed men in full plate armor as they advanced.

Six, a dozen, a score … and still they kept coming. By all the deaths unlooked-for, it was a small army.

To enter his room would be to corner himself, and with magic unreliable, his death, even if he defended the doorway to keep from being outflanked, would only be a matter of time.

So he stood his ground, and bluffed, as he’d bluffed so many times before.

“Officer in charge, report!” he commanded calmly.

“Saer? Are you—”

“I’m hardly going to give my name, in this house of so many spies,” Manshoon interrupted flatly. “You’re late.”

“Sorry, Lord. We dared not take on the war wizards; reinforcements have just arrived, and they’re too strong. A few Crown mages we can take—they’re apt to be arrogant and careless—but with none of us bowmen or spellhurlers …”

“So if you fought them not, how did you get inside?”

“There was a wizard, an old man in rotting robes. He looked
dead
—face rotting away, not much left of his nose—but he gave the password right enough, and when we were all gathered where he led us, he worked a long spell, a complicated one, that conjured up a door of blue fire in front of us, and waved us through it.”

Manshoon nodded as if this was no surprise at all.

So a lich had reopened one of the gates into Oldspires! Well, well … who was he, and why?

And was he, perhaps, one of the liches he’d been so cautiously seeking?

“Beyond the password, he said nothing to you?” Manshoon asked sharply, putting on a frown of disapproval.

“Nothing, beyond reminding us that we were to remember the master pays us well—generous purses in gold coins of old mintings for achievements, and swift death for failure or treachery.”

Manshoon nodded and added a brief, wintry smile.

“L-Lord Torr, your orders? And … and if I may be so bold, why do you look different?”

Manshoon let his smile go softer and deeper. “I’m in disguise.”

So this was Maraunth Torr’s little private army, hired to come along in his wake, conquer Oldspires, and help him seize and hold the Lost Spell. Well, well. They were too late to help their master, but could still prove useful to him.

“First,” he told them crisply, “beware a woman with scaly skin. If you see her, kill her swiftly and without mercy. She’s deadly. Don’t give her a chance to touch you, for she uses many poisons.”

“Lord,” they chorused, nodding.

Manshoon smiled. Yes,
very
useful.

“That way,” he commanded, “lies the entry hall, the largest room in this mansion. The easternmost door in its south wall opens into the kitchen—which has other doors, so some of you should go through the copper-clad room you’ll find, and wait around the other side of the kitchen, before you assault any of its doors, or make noise. Inside that kitchen are three persons: a gaunt bearded old mage, a fat man with a wheeze and a limp, and a woman. Kill them all, behead them, and bring the heads back here to me.”

CHAPTER 16

Too Many Murderers

M
YRMEEN LOOKED ACROSS THE KITCHEN AT
M
IRT, AND LET OUT A
moan of longing.

“That smells
so good
!” she exclaimed. “And when did we eat last?”

Her stomach loudly informed the room that whenever it had been, it was too long ago. “Here,” Mirt growled, handing her an onion off his chopping board. “Eat.”

She wrinkled her nose at it, and then at him. “
Uncooked
onion? You Waterdhavians are barbarians!”

“Compliments, compliments,” he replied amiably, picking up his knife and returning to his chopping.

Across the kitchen, Elminster sniffed at one of Myrmeen’s bowls. “That’s perfect, lass. It just has to cool, covered over and somewhere dark, before we pour it into little bottles—ye saw the crates of them down in the cellars, yes?—and stopper them
and label them
before anything can get mixed up.”

He moved to the next bowl, picked it up—and there was a sharp, insistent knocking on the nearest door. The door into the entry hall.

Elminster, Myrmeen, and Mirt all looked at each other. Then they caught up the best weapons they had, and in unspoken accord went to the feast hall door instead, to slip out and go around to see who was knocking.

Just in case, El and Myrmeen flanked Mirt as he set aside the bar, shot the bolt, unlocked the door, and opened it.

Outside stood a huge crowd of identically armored men, swords and axes drawn. Gleaming new coat of plate, open-faced helms with great-rib noseguards—and not a badge nor blazon to be seen. Head to toe metal, save that they wore heavy hobnailed leather boots, armor plated just down the top of the foot, to the toes. Swords and hand axes, daggers at belts. Like thousands of blankshield mercenaries, only far better equipped than most.

They pressed forward with enthusiastic shouts, trying to force their way in.

In their path stood Mirt, shoulder to the door and shoving hard. The door thundered under the impacts of charging warrior after charging warrior, but Mirt, his floppy boots sliding on the stone floor, snarled and lowered his head and shoved harder.

The door got to a little more than half-closed, shuddering under many blows, when the first arms appeared around its edge, thrusting and slashing at the air with swords and hand axes. Reaching for Mirt, reaching for anyone, seeking to hack.

Elminster parried some of them coolly with a cooking tray, but amid its loud clangor, Myrmeen reached in with the largest kitchen cleaver she’d been able to find and tried to lop off limbs, armor shrieking under her blows. Plate armor prevented her performing butchery, but sword after sword she dashed from numbed fingers, and one gauntlet failed and left its wearer screaming and yanking back a hand that let fall fingers amid much blood.

Elminster snatched up the door bar and thrust its end into helmed faces and across mailed throats, bludgeoning everyone he could reach. A warrior made a grab for the end of the bar to wrest it from his grasp, but Myrmeen hacked that hand away viciously and Elminster thrust the timber into that man’s armored gut, folding him up and dumping him back into a retching, arm-flailing collapse that knocked two of his fellows to the floor—and gave Mirt his chance.

The moneylender snorted his way forward like an angry bull and slammed the door shut, crushing some trapped hands to the accompaniment of shrill shrieks of agony and the clatter of fallen and bouncing weapons—and Myrmeen leaped to shoot the bolt home even before the door was locked. Elminster slammed the door bar into its cradles a bare instant later.