Crown of Fire

Six Finding the True Way

“It worked! Hah-ha!” Fimril, mage of the Zhentarim, laughed in glee as the Zhentilar hastened to truss their senseless captives. They were careful not to do the three any further damage—the orders they had been so coldly given about this came from much higher up than this capering wizard, and had been most menacingly specific.

Fimril had spent a long and hard year in private, hurling spells and modifying his castings until he’d fashioned a shieldlike band of magical annihilation: a deadly magic that sucked in light, warmth—even campfires and braziers of fire—and solid things, like stools and unfortunate captives, too.

All the way here, through the forest, a tiny voice inside him wailed that his shield wouldn’t absorb spellfire after all, that he was marching to his doom. If the spell failed him, he was doomed … even if he escaped the girl’s blazing spellfire, any of the warriors who got away would see that he paid for his folly—painfully and permanently. Magelings were not well loved among the Zhentilar fighting men.

But it had worked—and now not a one of them dared betray him; their orders had been very clear about that. Fimril chortled and gloated, watching the warriors securely truss their unconscious quarry. Ah, but this was sweet! At last, he, Fimril of Westgate, would get what he deserved, rising in the ranks of the Zhentarim … perhaps even all the way.

He cast quick glances around, checking his bodyguard. Yes, they were ready—four burly, well-armed Zhentarim standing in a crescent at his back, making sure that no harm would come to him until he was safely back in Zhentil Keep.

Fimril laughed aloud and shouted down to the man who was busily checking the knots at Shandril’s throat, “Ho! Lyrkon! How are our losses this night?”

The Zhentilar finished his task, controlling his exasperation. The knots seemed tight enough: if she struggled, she’d strangle herself. Aye, good enough. Slowly the Zhentilar stood. “A moment, Lord Wizard; I’ll see.” Gods, but this mage was going to be insufferable now …

He dusted his hands and looked around. Four—no, five; he’d forgotten Duthspurn until his eyes fell on the poor bastard’s legs lying motionless on the ground. And that should be all …. Wait, wasn’t there a sixth, over there?

Lyrkon took a stride down the ruined wall—in time to see another of his men fall as silently as a gentle breeze glides through leafless trees. He stared at the hand that had appeared over Glondar’s mouth—and as the soldier slumped, the face that came into view behind it: a fat, grinning face adorned with fierce gray-white brows and mustaches. Its blue-gray eyes met his own—and winked. Gods!

“Out swords!” he bellowed, pointing at where Glondar was being killed. “We’re under attack!”

Along the wall, his men looked up at him, snatching up their clubs or drawing swords—and the one next to Glondar promptly collapsed, a sword through his armpit. The warrior next to him turned at the muffled groan—in time to get the blade of the fat, mustachioed stranger right through his throat.

“Where?” Fimril shouted, peering down at Lyrkon. “Who’s attacking us?”

Lyrkon pointed along the wall with his blade. “He is, wizard!” he snarled, making an insult of the last word.

Fimril’s nostrils flared in anger, and he felt his face going red. That was one soldier he could do without when this was over. Right now, though, he’d show them all.

Drawing himself up, Fimril pointed at the stranger, who was now battling his way along the wall. Turning his finger to keeping it aimed at the moving man, the Zhentarim thumbed open a finger-pouch in the breast pocket of his robe and spilled into his hand a dark powder that had once been a large black pearl. He cast it into the air in front of his lips as he spoke the echoing, awesome words that would bring death to the man—and to the nearest soldiers, but that was the luck the gods gave—and drew himself up in cruel triumph to watch the slaughter.

Light that was somehow dark flashed between wizard and fat man—and back again!

The eyes of Fimril, would-be ruler of the Zhentarim, and those of his bodyguard darkened as one. The mage and his men toppled to the ground like emptied husks, dead upon the instant.

The fat, puffing stranger sighed and shook the smoking remnants of a ring from his finger, saying regretfully, “Watchful Order make … they just don’t enchant these gewgaws the way they used to, when I was a lad …”

The last few Zhents, white to the lips, fell back before his lumbering advance, and as he crossed blades with the first and disarmed the man in a skirl of circling steel, they all turned and ran.

Mirt watched the man he’d disarmed scamper after the rest, and he sighed. When they were gone, he raised his voice in an eerie, singing, wordless call. It echoed mournfully off the tumbled stones of ruined Tethgard, and a long moment later, a soft reply came to him.

Mirt strode toward the origin of the sound. From a pile of rubble before him, a phantom lady slowly rose. She had long, swirling white hair and a beautiful face; her dark eyes stared into his with such sadness that Mirt found himself, as always, on the sudden edge of tears. Buried somewhere far beneath the debris, Mirt knew, lay the crypt where she had been entombed. Lady Duskreene of Tethgard, its door would say. Mirt silently added two words to the inscription he envisioned: Unquiet Spirit.

“Mirt,” she said, in that soft, sad voice. “It has been long since you called me.”

“Grandlady,” Mirt said huskily. “I have need of yer—powers.”

The translucent, dead-white watch-ghost frowned, emerging in a smooth, silent flight from the rubble, revealing her skeletal, legless torso. She floated in the air before him.

“Name your desire, son of my blood.”

“There are soldiers fleeing this place—Zhentilar. They must be destroyed.”

Duskreene smiled. “And your girth makes catching them all a doubtful prospect for you? Will you wait for me? I have been so lonely.”

Mirt went heavily to one knee and bowed. “I will,” he said formally.

She swirled over his head and arrowed off into the trees. After a moment, a terrified scream—suddenly cut off—came to Mirt’s ears. A few breaths later, there was another, fainter and farther away.

Mirt got to his feet, grunting at the effort, and went over to Shandril. Checking that she was still breathing, he cut the knots at her throat with his dagger, and set about unbinding her.

A few breaths later, as he was carrying the freed Narm over to the wall, he heard another scream.

Groggily, Shandril roused. “Whaa—”

“Peace, maid. Lie still while I free Delg, here. He’s got more nets on him than several boatloads o’ Moonsea fish.”

When the ghostly lady at last returned, Mirt and his companions were all awake and were nursing splitting headaches, rubbing at rope burns, and sipping cautiously at firewine from Mirt’s belt flask. Mirt had apologized to them for scouting in the wrong direction, and was telling Shandril what he guessed—not much—about magic that could swallow spellfire.

As the glowing apparition flew into view, Delg choked, grabbing Mirt’s arm and pointing. “Hast any spellfire left, lass? L—”

“Relax, Delg,” Mirt said, pushing him back against the wall with one large and firm hand. “This is a friend—an ancestor of mine—and a lady of high breeding, too. I’d like ye all to meet Duskreene, Lady of Tethgard.”

The three stared up at the translucent lady as she smiled and drifted slowly nearer. Long hair swirled about her bare shoulders and breast—and but for the white pallor and translucence of her form, she might have been still a living woman. Below her breasts, however, bare ribs curved from a spine that dwindled away into wisps of glowing radiance.

“Well met, friends of the son of my blood. Be welcome here, in what is left of my home.” Her voice was soft, almost a whisper, and her eyes were kind. She looked around at the crumbling ruins and shook her head. “It was once so grand—and now, so little is left.”

Then she turned and smiled at Mirt. “For once, you’ve missed the best accommodation.” She pointed. “There’s a door, the other side of that pile of stone. Behind it, several rooms are still intact—and safe from falling in on you, I believe.”

Mirt bowed. “My thanks, Lady.” He turned to the others. “Lady Duskreene ruled in this castle before there was a realm of Cormyr, very long ago. She’s now a watch-ghost—one of the few ghosts who do not always mean swift death to the living.”

“Here,” Duskreene added, “you sleep under my protection. Relax, and feel safe.” She glanced at Mirt, and mischief danced in her eyes. “And please bear with my kin—when he gets no sleep he’s apt to be as grouchy as a bear.”

“ ‘Gets no sleep,’ Lady?” Narm’s eyes were wide with wonder as he looked at her. He’d never seen a ghost before—and this gentle, dignified, half-beautiful and half-skeletal woman was nothing like the spectral monsters whispered of in ghost stories.

The lady who had laughed and loved a thousand years before he was born looked into his eyes sadly. “I’m very lonely here—and on the too-rare occasions when Mirt comes to call, he tells me what has befallen in the lands around since last we talked. I take a morbid interest, I’m afraid, in what the remote descendants of those I knew as friends—and rivals, and foes—are doing, and what contemporaries of mine still walk the world today.”

“Such as … Elminster?” Shandril asked on a hunch, inclining her head to one side.

It was an interesting sight, seeing a watch-ghost blush. “Yes,” she said, eyes far away, seeing things long ago. “He was much younger then. Yes,” she said again, and laughed, “such as Elminster, indeed.”

“Tell me more,” Delg said eagerly. “I’ve got to hear this ….”

“How quaint,” murmured one who watched from the darkness of the trees, concealed by layer upon layer of cloaking magics. It listened and spied all through the watch-ghost’s long talk with Mirt, and through her silent vigil over the sleeping foursome, in the hours before dawn. All the while, it took care to keep out of her sight.

There was very little in Tethgard that night that Iliph Thraun did not see and hear.

“The trick to finding your way back out of deep woods, look ye,” said Mirt to Narm, “is to glance back behind yerself often on the way in. Then ye know what to look for.”

“What if you must be leaving by a different way?” Delg asked sourly, almost challengingly.

Mirt froze, and then turned and blinked at the dwarf. His face looked as if he had just been spoken to by a stone, or he’d just seen a bird smoking a pipe. He blinked again and said mildly, “Well, then ye ask the elf who guided ye in to show ye the way out, of course.” And with a merry twinkle in his eye he strode on through the deepest stands of Hullack Forest in his relentless, rolling, brush-crashing way.

Delg snorted more than once as he followed. Mirt had urged them up in the chill dawn, bidding a hasty farewell to the wraithlike Duskreene. Without ceremony, he’d led them in a steady tramp through the trees. The going proved agonizing to Narm and Delg; limbs that had stiffened overnight cramped and groaned at the joints.

Mirt kept them moving along with a steady stream of jests and barbed digs directed at lazy dwarves and effete young mages. Shandril shook her head at some of his words, but she wisely kept silent and followed the bobbing axe the stout old merchant adventurer wore at the back of his belt.

Something about Mirt’s name was niggling away in her memories, something fleeting that the ranger Florin Falconhand had said, and a reply that Elminster had given, in Shadowdale, at some point in the whirlwind activities of her brief stay there. She looked back at Narm, as if meeting his eyes would bring the memory to her—and it did. She smiled at Narm and turned back to stare at the broad back in front of her. Mirt was one of the Lords of Waterdeep, the not-so-secret band of powerful folk who ruled that great and splendid city.

Striding along at Delg’s side, Narm returned Shandril’s brief and knowing smile. Her expression had been as bright and beautiful as the rising sun, which had just announced morning through the branches above them. Rosy lances of light struck amid the trees here and there. The sudden, broad dawn reminded Narm that the Realms were beautiful and vast, but of course safer when one walked them with friends. He chuckled his joy aloud and thus earned a sour look from Delg.

“When a lad chuckles like that,” the dwarf said gloomily, “it’s usually the sound of his wits escaping out his mouth. He’s sure to do something wildly stupid, all too soon.”

Ahead, Shandril turned, eyes flashing as she laughed. “Why, Delg! And what does a lass’s chuckle warn you of?”

The dwarf’s beard bristled as he clamped his mouth tightly shut and glared at her. A deep red hue slowly crept up his neck and across his face and balding head as he walked along in the general laughter. Almost thirty paces passed underfoot before a deep rumbling announced that Delg had joined in.

The morning sun was warm on the old wizard’s face. Elminster stood conferring with the youngest mage of the Knights of Myth Drannor, one Illistyl. The high balcony of the Twisted Tower in Shadowdale afforded a splendid view of the lush green meadows below.

The old sage’s pipe kept going out in the breeze. He tapped it on the stone parapet and said, “Mind ye watch Shaerl while I’m gone … she’s apt to act ere prudence governs. She’s young yet.”

Illistyl, who had seen but nineteen winters herself—rather less than the Lady Shaerl—smiled tolerantly. “Impetuous action being the province of the very young and the very old, my lord?” she asked, eyes all too innocent.

Elminster snorted. “Now girl, grant ye I could sit here happily amid books and all and let the Realms be hurled down and laid waste around me, but ’tis not impetuous nor foolish to lift a hand to prevent such a thing. Some of thy deeds, and those of thy fellow Knights, may be hastily thought on or taken at whim, but I do consider acts ere I take them—consider them well, as all sh—”

“Aye, aye,” Illistyl interrupted him smoothly. “I shall, I shall. As ever.” She patted the Old Mage’s arm. “I would be more at ease if most of us weren’t galloping all over the Dales, distracting those hunting for spellfire … and if Dove and Jhessail could spare more time from their little ones, though I know that above all we must keep such younglings safe. Alone, I can give Mourngrym little aid if aught demanding power or influence should befall.”

Elminster’s eyes were briefly moist. Her softly spoken, archaic words had reminded him of a young maid he had stood with long ago, as beautiful and as skilled in Art, a lady now only ashes. Too many young lasses laughed only in his memories now, gone to dust, naught left of them but their fading writings in spellbooks and his even more faded memories. Abruptly, the Old Mage looked south toward the trees that hid the millpond and the burned flagstones of Syluné’s Hut. Gods be struck down, there is another lost lady, he thought briefly, then swept aside his dark thoughts angrily. I must be getting old!

He raised his eyes to look at lazily drifting clouds and, with an effort he cared not to show, said teasingly, “Perhaps Torm will again come to thy aid.”

Beside him, slim Illistyl stiffened. “You jest, I trust,” she answered coldly.

The old sage’s eyes twinkled merrily as he gravely replied, “Aye. Of course.” He turned then, took her hand gently, and kissed it.

Illistyl stared at him, astonished. His mustache rasped across her knuckles like a bristle-brush for a moment, and she found herself staring into very blue, very keen old eyes. She shivered involuntarily; Elminster’s gaze made her feel quite naked, and more than a little ashamed. It seemed that he saw into the very depths and corners of her being, parting all the shadowy curtains of old jealousies, regrets, and small deceits. And yet his voice, when it came, was both tender and approving.

“I must go, little one,” he said. “I foresee a need to face the archwizards of the Zhentarim before long—and with the spells and monstrous assistance they employ in battles, I’ve no wish to be anywhere near Shadowdale when the fray begins. Forget not what Jhessail and I have taught thee, and follow thy good sense, and all will be well in the ending of it. Thy good reason is more important than all the power ye will ever wield.”

As he released her hand, Illistyl shivered again, closed her eyes briefly as if gathering her strength, and then snorted at him, eyes flashing open. “A lot my good reason will do if Zhentil Keep’s soldiers march down that road there!”

Elminster clucked, reprovingly. “Manshoon has other worries, girl, worse than ye know. Myself, for instance. He needs his armies—or thinks he does, and that’s all the same to us—to face other foes.” He patted her hand. “Abide here and keep the dale safe. Lhaeo will serve thee in need. Mystra shield thee.”

“And comfort thee,” she replied formally, and added, “mind you return speedily, Old Mage. You will be needed—and missed.”

“Many have said so,” he said over his shoulder as he swept down the stairs, “over the years. And when I was not there, the will of the gods unfolded anyway.”

Illistyl shook her head in amused silence, followed him down one flight of steps, and then crossed to a gallery with a window over the meadow.

Below, Storm Silverhand sat calmly upon a magnificent black horse and held the reins of a smaller, fatter dapple-gray for Elminster. Her alert eyes saw Illistyl arrive at the window, and she waved.

Illistyl leaned out and called, “Bring him back soon, good lady. And don’t let him talk your ears off.”

The bard smiled back at her as they both heard Elminster’s voice reply, “And why not? Listening does the young good, and makes the patience of the old supple. Besides, my tongue rests more often than it once did.”

“Truly?” Illistyl called from the safety of her window. “By the gods, you must have been an endless cataract of nonsense in your youth.”

The old sage clambered ungracefully into the saddle, patted the gray reassuringly, and made no answer. The flourishes of his hands as he lit his pipe, however, were eloquent.

He nodded to Storm without looking up, blew a smoke ring in the direction of Illistyl’s window, and set off at a trot. Storm followed, raising her hand to Illistyl in salute.

The youngest mage of the knights watched them ride until they were out of sight. Then she sighed and went down to join Mourngrym and Shaerl. She held dark fears about the days ahead.

“Not so long, now,” Mirt said. “I never thought I could grow tired of the sight o’ trees. Stop me vitals, but this clambering about is hard on old legs!”

“Tell me truth, do,” Delg answered sarcastically, sitting down hard on a nearby fallen tree with a sharp whuff of released breath. “Where, by Marthammor Finder-of-Trails,” the dwarf asked as the others took seats around him, “are we going … if you don’t mind my asking?”

“I don’t mind in the least, friend Delg,” Mirt said grandly and grinned. “I don’t know.”

Delg’s head came up like that of a dog, bristling to strike at a suddenly seen enemy. “You don’t know?”

“He says that a lot, doesn’t he?” Narm said to Shandril in the silence that followed.

Shandril was too apprehensive to reply. She had been looking constantly here and there into the trees around for signs of the Zhents who must be following them, but Mirt’s I don’t know had snatched her attention back to him.

The wheezing old merchant in tattered leather chuckled easily and pointed ahead into the trees. “It matters not exactly where we walk, look ye—as long as we keep alongside the road through the forest toward Arabel, and not too close to it. I hope to come out of the western edge of Hullack as close to deep night as we dare, so that prying eyes are fewer. A certain inn of my acquaintance stands there, The Wanton Wyvern by name. We spend a night in cozy luxury, and walk on west in the morning, suitably disguised. Yer way lies in that direction, does it not?”

“It does,” Shandril agreed cautiously. “And I would walk it with you, I think. But first tell us, Mirt, Lord of Waterdeep, what you know of us and the many who pursue us. I am tired of always running, and never sure why I must, and what awaits me.”

Mirt nodded, not reacting at all to her identification of his rank. “Get used to that feeling, Lady; it’s what life becomes for most of us.” He grinned and added more softly, “Wise caution, Lady. Forgive me if I am brief. These old bones grow stiff if I sit about too long.”

Clearing his throat pompously as if beginning a grand tale, Mirt said, “Ye are Shandril of Highmoon, raised by an old friend of mine, Gorstag. Ye recently left his inn to join a company of adventurers and therein met this noble and handsome dwarf”—Delg glowered and snorted—“and this young lad of thine, too. Along the way, ye also met Elminster and the Knights of Myth Drannor, first discovered yer power of spellfire—inherited, methinks—and sent to their graves a dragon and no less than three bone dragons, or ‘dracoliches,’ if ye prefer, as well as the Shadowsil. Ye also sent Manshoon of Zhentil Keep into headlong flight.”

Mirt scratched his nose thoughtfully, fixing eyes that were suddenly very blue on her. “All of this tells me Shandril Shessair is rather more than she appears. Elminster has spoken to Khelben Arunsun of thee in some detail, and the Blackstaff in turn has told me something of thy great power and importance. So have others I know who harp. They tell me ye would meet with a certain sister of Storm to learn more about thy powers, and are on the road to her.”

He chuckled. “Chasing thee, no doubt, are some self-interested mages and brigands who have heard of thy doings by now. Also at thy heels are the Zhentarim, the Cult of the Dragon, and priests of Bane still loyal to the High Imperceptor, all falling over themselves and each other in their hurry to seize thy spellfire. Behind at least two of these groups are darker foes, shapechanging beings of great power who dwell in a world of shadows. They call themselves ‘the Shadowmasters,’ and many wizards of Faerûn have fought them down the centuries. They seek to control Toril and other worlds, deciding who may pass from plane to plane. Here they take care to work through others, for when Elminster can catch them in Faerûn, he destroys them.”

Mirt leaned forward, his face for once serious. “Ye are still alive today, Shandril and Narm, because Elminster and the Simbul have been weaving spells, spying, and setting all manner of things to sprawling chaos in order to keep these Shadowmasters from striking ye down.”

Shandril, face pale, stared at him numbly. Was everyone on all the worlds and planes out looking to kill her? Why had the gods given spellfire to Shandril of Highmoon? She had asked herself this, she reflected ruefully, far more than once before.

“After ye were attacked in Shadowdale,” Mirt went on, “Torm and Illistyl of the knights took yer shapes, and camped on Harpers’ Hill. They were guarded by soldiers, the knight Rathan, and a few Harpers. There was an attack on the hill by things like the one ye fought two nights back—dark horrors, or ‘darkenbeasts’—fearsome things created from dogs, sheep, and the like by cruel magic. That attack was set by the two youngest, most reckless Shadowmasters, and they paid for it with their lives.”

Mirt sighed. “Elminster’s hands have been red with blood, indeed, protecting ye this last tenday; that attack was but one of many. Why, think ye, did he keep ye in a spell-sphere one night?—I hear ye brought it down, too, testing spellfire!—Well, outside the tower, several Harper mages spent much of the night darting all over the sky, trading lightnings—and worse—with these Shadowmasters.”

Delg’s eyes were large and round; Narm was somehow glad that this was as much news to him as to them.

“One of these dark ones died that night, too,” Mirt went on, “when he got past them to strike at ye. Elminster used some sort of spell I’ve never heard of before to snatch the sphere from around all of ye and hurl it about the Shadowmaster, like a tightening fist, until all its prismatic effects were visited on the creature. It was trapped, unable to escape to another plane, and was destroyed.”

Shandril shuddered, and cast a quick look at Narm. His fists were clenched in his lap, and he looked chilled and frightened.

Mirt frowned. “Yer faces say ye’ve not known of this before. Ah, well—perhaps that was for the best. Terrified folk seldom make wise decisions.” He got up with a grunt and added, “Enough talk for now. On, or night’ll come long before we see open land beyond these trees.”

Shandril nodded, her face rather white. “Why has no one ever told us about these ‘Shadowmasters’?” she almost whispered, as they all stood up. “I would rather have known.”

Delg shrugged. “What difference could it have made, lass, save to worry you?”

Mirt nodded. “Aye. One thing more, too. Does one put a sword into a child’s hand and march her out to face the gathered host of the Flaming Fist, just to see her expression? That’s sheer cruelty.”

“While standing her in the mist so she can’t see the army she faces, is merely slaughter—is that it?” Shandril asked softly, eyes steady on his, flames leaping deep within them.

Mirt held her gaze in silence for two long, slow breaths before he reached out one gnarled hand to touch hers. Then, to the astonishment of the others, he knelt before Shandril, as one does before a king. Looking up over her hand, her fingers still in his gentle grasp, he said roughly, “Aye. Ye have the right of it, Lady. That’s why I came here. It’s never nice to die alone.”

“It always takes longer to get out of a forest than it does to get in,” Mirt grumbled as the last of the light failed. Dusk hung heavy around them as they made a hasty camp amid the trees.

Delg seemed upset with their route and everything else; when Narm asked him what was amiss, the dwarf turned dark eyes up at him and said, “I feel ill luck ahead, soon.”

The gloomy dwarf stood first watch, and Mirt was soon snoring like a contented bear on one side of the fire. Shandril and Narm lay together in their blankets and held each other. After Narm fell asleep, Shandril stared into the fire.

It seemed very long ago that they’d flown over Shadowdale together at their wedding—and longer still since she’d left The Rising Moon in search of adventure. And now, folk she hadn’t even heard of plotted her death.

The watching skull was patient. It waited, floating low in the concealing darkness while silent tears fell onto Shandril’s blanket. It waited, motionless, while she settled herself down against Narm, stroking his cheek tenderly.

It waited, as she fell asleep, and waited still, until Delg’s attention was elsewhere. Then, silently, it drifted down to feed.

One bare shoulder had been left exposed as Shandril and Narm lay huddled together. The skull sank down and bit the smooth white flesh. Shandril stirred—and then, with a sort of sigh, relaxed. Spellfire flowed slowly, unseen, out of her.

Delg got up then, as good sentries do, to walk about and check on the safety of those he guarded.

The skull cast a hasty, silent spell to keep Shandril asleep as its fangs withdrew, and then another to quickly heal the wounds it had made.

By the time Delg looked down at Shandril, the skull was gone. Plucky lass. If she’d been a dwarf, now … Not for the first time, Delg wished he’d married. This was the sort of daughter he could be proud of. Tenderly he covered her bare arm and shoulder with an edge of the blanket, then stalked on.

The skull watched him go and made no move back to where it had fed. Its memories went back a thousand years. It had learned patience.