Bury Elminster Deep

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Ahem, ah, dauntless guardian? Saer Dragon?”

Mirt put what he fondly hoped would be taken for a friendly smile on his face, and lurched up to the palace guard with his hands empty and spread out before him, to show that he was unarmed. The man did not look friendly.

“I’m looking for the Lady Glathra. Wizard of war, usually in a hurry, loud and forceful? Ye know her, aye?”

The Purple Dragon turned his head to give the stout Waterdhavian a long, measuring look, from his untidy hair down to his flapping boots and back up again, before settling in one spot. Mirt saw that.

“Heh-heh. Pay no heed to this that rides on my shoulder. ’Tis a pet, no more. Harmless, I assure ye. Harmless.”

Close beside Mirt’s ear, Vangerdahast gave a low, warning growl.

Mirt hastened on. “So, saer, can ye take me to the Lady Glathra? Or tell me the way to where she might be found?”

“Why?” the Dragon made reply, shifting his spear from “ceremonial upright rest” to a menacing, ready position. “Who are you, and what’s your business with her? What are you doing down here, anyway?”

“Looking,” Mirt explained patiently, “for Glathra. I’m Lord Mirt of Waterdeep, visiting my good friend King Foril Obarskyr. As for my business with Glathra…”

He leaned forward to give a wink and a friendly leer, but the horrific result made the guard recoil-then flush with irritation at having abandoned his urbane, neutral manner, and snarl, “I don’t believe you. Show me your pass!”

Mirt sighed and strode past the man. “I pass,” he explained, “like this. See?”

“A jester, eh?” the Dragon snarled, lowering his spear to point at Mirt’s ample belly.

“Hey,” Mirt said agreeably, steering the spearpoint aside with one hand. “I take it ye’re unaware of Glathra’s whereabouts? Aye? Well, then, I’ll just be-”

“Halt! Stand and surrender, you! Lord of Waterdeep, indeed!”

The Dragon made a jabbing movement with his spear, threatening to use it if Mirt tried to flee. Then he stood it against the wall with one hand and drew his sword with the other.

“Consider yourself,” he said sternly, “under arrest. As my prisoner, you will accompany me without challenge or violence, seeking neither to deceive me nor to flee from custody. And we won’t be going anywhere near the Lady Glathra, believe me-”

Without warning, Vangerdahast launched himself like a striking spider, right into the Dragon’s face. The Dragon fell to the floor.

“So, what did ye do to him?” Mirt rumbled, stepping over the fallen guard and hastening at full lurch farther down the passage.

“Enspelled him to sleep, at my touch,” Vangey replied. “Dragons didn’t dare to be that officious in my day. With a visiting head of state, too!”

Mirt chuckled as he rounded a corner and caught sight of another guard, standing to attention against the wall under another lantern.

“So, care to place a little wager on the conduct of this next one?”

“No,” Vangerdahast replied flatly. “You provoke them-and I’m just a pet, remember?”

Mirt had the grace to wince.

Glathra’s reappearance at the greatly enlarged hole in the palace wall caused an immediate clamor, as war wizards hastened from all sides to try to push through the Dragons and speak to her.

“Silence!” she barked-and the Crown mages obeyed, in midword. All around them soldiers blinked, raised eyebrows, or grinned openly.

Despite the way she felt, still lying on the ground in pain and feeling utterly drained, Storm joined in the latter reaction.

Glathra had it, all right. Dominance, with a single word.

Yet the wizard of war wasn’t done. “You can report to me later. The engagement here is obviously over, yet I observe my orders have still not been carried out, despite an assembly of more loyal soldiers and oathsworn wizards in one place than I’ve seen for a good long time. So let this disobedience be remedied, forthwith. Use spells to paralyze these three-this mask dancer, Amarune Whitewave; this Harper outlander, Storm Silverhand; and this noble lord of Cormyr, Arclath Delcastle. They are to be taken into custody and chained to the wall in the main Westfront holding cell to await interrogation. Do this now.”

Storm didn’t even try to stir. She was so exhausted that she’d be asleep at that moment if it weren’t for the pain. The beholder’s searing ray had caught her, though three Dragons had unintentionally shielded her from its full effects with their bodies and had paid the price. The Westfront cell was clean, dry, and well lit, and she could sleep dangling from chains about as well as she could in the street, where she was liable to be walked on or have a cart driven over her.

The war wizards obeyed Glathra with alacrity, probably because she stayed to watch long enough, this time, to make sure her orders were carried out. When the two standing over Storm finished their brief chanting, she felt no more than an immediate numbness. Followed by the inevitable itches she could now not scratch, of course. When she flexed a finger, she found she could move it-though she stilled it instantly to avoid anyone noticing.

The old Harper paralyzing glove. It was still thrust through her belt and must have absorbed the magic that should have frozen her. Which might mean it would again work, paralyzing at a touch, at least once or twice.

“You have no right-” Arclath started to shout, nearby, but broke off as magic silenced him.

“Rights?” a Dragon telsword growled as he struck the sword from the paralyzed noble’s hand, to clang on the cobbles. “Don’t make me laugh. Rights are what we carve out for ourselves, with the points of our swords!”

“They’re all done,” a mage reported. It was a voice Storm knew.

“Very good,” Glathra replied crisply. “Wizard of War Welwyn Tracegar, you will supervise the conveyance of the prisoners to the cell, and their securing. Dragons, you are to obey Tracegar as you would any battlemaster. Tracegar, see it done!”

“Lady,” Tracegar-the owner of the familiar voice-replied with a bow.

Storm tried to act paralyzed as firm hands took hold of her, lifted her, and carried her away.

Tracegar extended his hand. “The keys.”

The lionar shook his head. “No, saer. The Lady Glathra said we were to obey you as we would a battlemaster. Save in time of open war’s need, no battlemaster would break that standing order-the keys are to be retained by a soldier away from the dungeons, to prevent prisoners who overcome a guard from being able to win free of manacles or cells. The prisoners have been secured now-so I go, and the keys go with me.”

Tracegar gave the man a glare.

Stone-faced, the Dragon looked back at him.

“The Lady Glathra charged me with full responsibility for the prisoners,” he snapped, “and I can’t carry that out unless I have the keys.”

“Then declare yourself regent, saer. Whereupon, you’ll have them on the spot. While all of us await the interesting reason you’d soon have to offer the king for your declaration. Saer.”

Tracegar gave the lionar a long, cold stare, then snarled and waved at the Dragon to depart and take his fellows with him.

They went, one of them daring to make the low bow extended to regents, on his way out of the cell.

As Tracegar glared at their backs, Storm slipped on her glove.

Like Amarune, she was secured to the wall by ankles and throat and her right wrist, all manacled to wall-rings by chains about a foot long. Their left arms were free.

Men were deemed more dangerous, so Arclath-despite his noble birth-had both wrists chained to the wall. He was between Storm and Rune, sharing ankle and wrist wall-rings, but secured tightly enough that they could never touch.

Storm’s hair had been gathered into a rope and then stretched down her back and clamped to a chain that led down to the ring at her right ankle. It seemed Cormyr was taking no chances.

The Dragons had left the cell door open. As per standing orders, Tracegar or his designate would have keys to all doors, so any prisoner seeking to escape would need to cooperate with-or somehow vanquish-the two captors. Courtiers in Cormyr had long ago heard enough bards’ ballads not to make the most obvious mistakes.

Except, it seemed, the ones about turning your back on prisoners and gloating.

Tracegar turned to them once again and strolled right up to Storm.

He slowly traced a line down the side of her face, from temple to jaw, with one forefinger as he explained, “I am less than comfortable with any of you suffering this treatment, but there is much peril and uncertainty in the realm right now, and the Lady Glathra needs answers, above all. These manacles are to avoid unpleasantness until the veteran wizards of war the Lady Glathra wants to, ah, meet with you can be roused from their beds. Customarily, chains are unnecessary for persons such as yourselves-but these are extraordinary times.”

His face was so close to hers that he was almost brushing her with his lips.

Storm reached out with her glove, kissing him to quell any swift and desperate incantation-and Tracegar stiffened into helpless silence.

“My sentiments exactly,” Storm purred in reply, as she wrapped her free arm around the paralyzed mage and swung him around to thump against Arclath. She held him there, against a frozen Delcastle flank, so Elminster could get to work on the war wizard.

“El?”

The Sage of Shadowdale had no way of replying, but she could see by the movements of Arclath’s eyes that he’d noticed a healing potion-a shiny steel vial marked with a sun-at Tracegar’s belt.

Then ashes were trickling out of Arclath’s nose, and Storm knew El was on his way to Tracegar’s nose and mouth, to invade and conquer the war wizard’s mind.

To work a spell by will alone was beyond Tracegar’s skill at Art, but not Elminster’s.

Tracegar stiffened, and then his eyes flickered and he was moving, as smoothly and matter-of-factly as if he were an old friend. Taking the vial from his belt, twisting the stopper to break the wax seal but not opening it, then putting a finger under Storm’s chin so gently that it was a caress.

Storm opened her mouth obediently, and El made the war wizard pour the healing potion into her slowly and carefully. The familiar warm, then minty-cool flood coursed through her, banishing all pains and aches and weariness, leaving her feeling wonderful.

She sighed out her contentment as Tracegar stepped back and worked another spell, murmuring the words El chose for him aloud as he spell-spoke Vangerdahast from afar, telling him what had befallen.

Then the enthralled war wizard murmured a reply.

“Mirt will bring a coach to the Three Dolphins Door, for the conveyance elsewhere of Wizard of War Welwyn Tracegar with three still-shackled prisoners,” Vangey informed Elminster. “Provided you have the good sense, for once, to get out of Suzail fast. All of you.”

The alley behind the shop of Sraunter the alchemist was apt to be deserted in the dark, chill hours of very early mornings, but things were different this night. Two closed and loaded wagons stood in the nightgloom, their horses hitched and dozing, and the drover and carter of each wagon sitting like statues with their reins and whips, seemingly lost in personal dazes.

The lithe figure in dark thief’s leathers was little more than a shadow until it suddenly mounted one wagon, sat down beside the drover, and kissed him very thoroughly.

Whereupon he stirred, turned his head, and told her in a coldly familiar voice, “Go home now, and enjoy what’s left of Lady Deleira Truesilver’s slumber. Go to ground until I reach out to you again. You are not much suited to my next few battles.”

Talane nodded, dared to squeeze the drover’s hand in farewell, slipped down from the wagon, and was gone, melting into the night in silence.

She was three streets away before she dared to murmur, “You might have thanked me, Lord Manshoon. I merely saved your life. Not much suited… bah.”

She’d expected no thanks, but being left out of the fun rankled.

“Got it?”

Mirt winced. “Aye. Not that I enjoy having views of rooms an’ passages thrust into my head, mind ye. I can feel a headache coming on.”

“If you got yourself lost and ran afoul of the wrong war wizard, you’d soon learn what a real headache feels like,” Vangerdahast snapped. “Waste no time, mind. The longer you’re in the stables, the more loyal Cormyreans you may have to brawl with.”

Mirt grunted a wordless reply and set off along the passage.

Vangey smiled thinly at the Waterdhavian’s ample back. Well, at least the man had picked the right passage and was heading down it in the proper direction.

At that moment Mirt stopped, turned, and growled, “So, while I’m stealing coaches an’ horses an’ all, what’ll ye be doing?”

“Pretending to be a much younger and more callow wizard of war than I am,” Vangerdahast replied, “as I spell-send Glathra a false alarm about intruders getting into the palace to try to slay the king, to draw her-and most of the Dragons and other court mages who are up and awake right now-to the royal wing of the palace. Yet, I’ll be far from there.”

“Huh,” Mirt grumbled, setting off again. “Always take the easy part, wizards do. The talking. Always the talking. Some of us actually have to do things, ye know.”

“Where’s he going?” Amarune whispered as Tracegar strode out of the cell, leaving them chained to the wall.

He had just ended the paralysis on her and on Arclath, who looked at her now and replied-in his own voice, thank Tymora! — “Elminster’s using a spell to ride his mind from my mind; that’s why Storm pressed us together, all that time. He’s off to find the guard who has the keys to our shackles, and deal with him.”

“Deal permanently?”

“No,” Storm put in. “The gods frown on folk who slay unnecessarily-and they send misfortune by way of ‘reward.’ The Dragon will find a short sleep or paralysis, no more.”

Rune was still nodding when Tracegar reappeared and silently freed them all.

“Leave the unlocked shackles on,” Storm directed, as her hair, holding its ropelike shape, arched up to feed itself down the back of her neck, inside her clothes, “and move and act as if they’re still locked and we’re still prisoners. We’ll probably run into someone in the passages. We follow Tracegar.”

The silent war wizard waved a wand threateningly, his face grim, and strode out of the cell. Looking just as grim and keeping her wrists crossed, Storm followed him, so Arclath and Amarune fell into step behind her.

Behind a door that looked like many others they’d passed was a closet whose door shone with a warning sigil that Tracegar ignored, opening it to display shelves of gleaming vials. Storm gave them one each to drink, banishing all hurts and weariness, then two more each to carry.

Tracegar put the emptied vials in a basket on the closet floor, closed the door again, and waved his wand, pointing along a new passage.

Storm crossed her wrists again and looked glum, so Rune and Arclath did the same as they shuffled along after the silent war wizard, chains clinking.

They were heading for a distant lantern, by a large door that looked like it led out of the palace. Standing under the lantern were four impassive Purple Dragons, watching them make the long, long walk.

As they got closer, two of the guards lowered their spears to the ready, points up and inclined in their direction. The other two set their spears against walls, drew their swords, and stepped forward, looking decidedly unfriendly.

Mirt sighed heavily.

“I know not which harness to use, or what horses, either! But I know right well I was ordered to bring a closed coach-like this one, or that one yonder-around to a particular door just as fast as I could. And being as those orders came from the highest-ranking wizard of war ye’re likely to find, I’m not inclined to disobey them. Why are ye of a mood to, I wonder?”

“Because I’ve never seen you in my life before,” the senior hostler said bluntly, “because you talk like an outlander, and because it’s the middle of the stlarning night and what you’re telling me you want to do would be unusual at highsun! Why don’t we just wait for this highnosed wizard to show up himself and demand his coach, eh? After all, it’s you he’s going to be angry with, not me. I’m just the man responsible for all the coaches and horses and tack here, who’s not letting any of them out of my sight without clear orders from my superiors.”

Mirt sighed. “I was afraid ye were going to be like this, an’ I want ye to know that I regret what I’m now going to have to do.” He rubbed his knuckles, made a fist, and started forward threateningly.

The hostler sneered, stepping back and reaching for a long-tined hayfork-as a massively muscled telsword of the Purple Dragons stepped out of a stall to confront Mirt. “Any trouble, Neld?”

“Yes,” the hostler said triumphantly, glaring at Mirt. “This fat outlander is trying to steal a coach-and wants me to harness up the horses for him, first.”

“Nay, I’m not trying anything of the sort,” Mirt growled, still advancing with his hairy hands balled into fists-and ignoring the looming telsword. “I’m trying to get ye to obey orders that came from the royal magician himself.”

“Are you, now?” the telsword asked softly. “Being as the royal magician’s been missing for days, I’d like to hear those orders directly from him myself. In the meantime, what’s your name, outlander, and what’s your trade?”

“Mirt, an’ I’m a Lord of Waterdeep. It pays well.”

“I’ll bet it does, if you acquire coaches this way everywhere you go,” the telsword snapped, stepping forward to confront Mirt.

The Waterdhavian was a big man, but the telsword was head and shoulders taller and just as wide, his bulk being muscle and bone where Mirt’s was fat and bone. “Well?” he asked silkily. “Still going to try to bully Neld into helping you clout a coach, Lord Mirt?”

“I was asking nicely, but I suppose if local custom demands I bully him, then bully him I must,” Mirt growled. “Stand out of the way, Nameless Dragon.”

“Heh. My name is Voruld, and I don’t take orders from outlander thieves.”

“Stand out of the way, Voruld,” Mirt growled.

“Or you’ll what?”

Mirt shrugged, snatched one of his handy bags of pepper from his belt with the twist that undid its binding, and flung it in Voruld’s face. Sidestepping the inevitable blind charge, as the telsword bellowed in pain, he deftly slit the man’s codpiece straps with his dagger-and from behind the roaring Dragon, delivered a good hearty kick where it would cause impressive results.

Then he ran up the Dragon’s shuddering body, temporarily out of reach of Neld’s jabbing fork, stamped on the back of Voruld’s neck with both boot heels, and, as the Dragon fell heavily to the floor, snatched some filled and ready feedbags from their pegs and fed them into Neld’s face.

Avoiding the fork, he followed the blinding doses of oats with his fists, taking solid satisfaction in hammering Neld to the floor twice. When the hostler seemed disinclined to rise on his own the third time, Mirt took him by one ear and hauled him to his feet.

“I’m in a hurry,” he growled with a jovial smile, wiping away spattered oats until Neld could see him out of swelling eyes that were going to be impressively purple-black by highsun, “so I’ll refrain from breaking your nose or jaw. If, that is, you get the proper horses harnessed to that coach there, right away without any delays at all. And in case you’re thinking of giving me lame horses or the wrong harness and reins or some such trickery, I suppose I should warn you that I’ve readied coaches in my time. Cut a strap or leave anything important loose or undone or just missing, and I’ll break your fingers. Backwards.”

Neld swallowed.

Mirt gave him a tender smile. “Yes, I mean it,” he added lightly. “And I do believe time is sliding past us, Neld, my new friend. Just like the royal magician’s patience. And where I’m a simple man who just knows how to break things, he’s a mage who knows how to really exact lasting revenges.”

Neld ran to the nearest tack table. Fast.