Elminster Enraged

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The last of the three newly arrived wizards of war stood at the head of the other side stair. The last sparkling lights of his spell winked out, one by one, as they drifted away from his raised hands.

“Even for lord constables,” he told Farland, “there are penalties for killing wizards of war. Imbrult means you no menace. What you saw is the curse he lives with daily, not any sort of attack.”

The lord constable regarded him for a long, measuring moment, then turned to look more closely at the wizard with the tentacles-or whatever they now were.

“A magical curse,” Wizard of War Imbrult Longclaws explained quietly, holding forth his left hand. At the moment, it looked like a misshapen root dug up from a garden … a lump that was rapidly growing long, spiky hair. “Afflicting only my left hand. It changes continually. All manner of scaled, tentacled, or fungilike forms. Even after years, the forms it conjures still surprise me from time to time.”

“A spell-cursed war wizard? I’ve never heard of such a thing! Why don’t you have Ganrahast or one of the other senior mages rid you of it?”

“The curse holds far worse magics in check,” Longclaws said patiently; he’d evidently had to give this explanation many times. “Hanging spells we know too little about to dare tampering-but we know enough about to leave them alone. Unleashed, they’d harm far more than just one Crown mage.”

Farland looked from one war wizard to the other again, then said curtly, “My apologies, saer mages. We share more than one problem.”

He waved down the stair. “This one is the freshest, and the most pressing. Well?”

The mage who’d spell-struck the lord constable’s mace away-a tall, slab-faced man-joined Farland at the head of the stairs.

“Well met,” he said wryly, nodding to the lord constable as an equal. “Duth Gulkanun,” he added, tapping his own chest. Then he looked down the stair. His face went as expressionless as Imbrult’s had, and stayed that way. Neither of them had loved their superior. “Vandur. Pushed, I take it?”

Farland nodded.

Gulkanun shrugged. “I’ll thank whoever did this for their valuable service to Cormyr and to the two of us, after we imprison them and worm the ‘why’ of their deed out of them. Did anyone see it happen?” He looked sharply at Arclath and Amarune.

Who both shook their heads, keeping silent. It seemed safest.

“The murderer, presumably,” Longclaws said dryly, pulling off his cloak and draping it over his still-shapeshifting left hand with the deft ease of long practice.

“Well, now, I’d never have thought of that. I knew I was right to call in some brilliant wizards of war when things started to go wrong,” Farland said sarcastically.

“Lord Constable,” Arclath asked soothingly, “have you anything strong to drink in your office, or some other location where we could all sit down together in relative privacy?”

“Away from my other noble guests, you mean?” Farland asked with a tight smile, closing the gate across the head of the stair and locking it with a rattle of keys. He turned back in the direction of his distant office. “Come.”

As they fell into step around him, Longclaws taking the rear and Gulkanun the fore without any discussion or signal, Amarune asked, “Lord Constable, where are all the-ah, ‘guests’? I expected they’d be gathered here to gawk and smirk.”

“As per standing orders,” the tall war wizard told her, “we cast fear serpents down the passages when we set about the tasks Vandur gave us.”

“Fear serpents?”

“Spells that move on from where they’re cast, as far as they can drift without encountering a large and unyielding obstacle-like a wall or door. They make folk move away by radiating magic that makes anything that can smell or hear feel fearful and sick. They drove the nobles out of the passages, into their cells. Fear serpents fade fast; the effects will be gone soon.”

“So the murderer was immune to this spell?”

“Bore a Purple Dragon badge or the Crown ring most wizards of war wear, more likely,” Gulkanun replied, “or just fought through the magic. It can be done.”

“So we might be looking for a traitor among us,” Arclath said softly. “The guards, I mean.”

“We always look for traitors among us,” Farland told him grimly. “Day in and day out. Sometimes we even find them.”

Elminster sank back down amid the rocks, his eyes and throat stinging from the caustic reek of years upon years’ worth of dragon dung.

There were no side caverns. Everything narrowed to clefts and then mere cracks in the solid rock, all running in the wrong directions to reach the surface without passing through the dragon’s great cavern. She could abandon her drow body, of course, and easily drift up to the Realms Above as a trail of ashes. But, no. She’d fought in this body, reveled in its agility and freedom from ever-present pains, and did not want to relinquish it soon. She loved it. Nor did she want any part of the cruelty that would be leaving the ruined echo of Symrustar Auglamyr trapped to slowly die alone, in a body the fading Chosen was far too diminished to control.

And the dragon was awake.

Worse yet, it was a wyrm she knew. Wherefore it also knew her, albeit as a man with a different smell, and those memories-and most dragons had very good recall of the memories they chose to retain, remembrances they polished brightly and kept sharp-would make it eagerly hungry for vengeance.

Alorglauvenemaus had once, some seven centuries back …

But no, what mattered now wasn’t long gone days and the deeds done in them. The dragon was awake, malice glittering in its eyes as it fixed its glare on the dark hole it usually backed up to void into, awaiting an intruder.

It knew something alive was lurking nearby, beyond that opening, and it had risen and recurled itself atop its great hoard, settling itself amid the clinkings and slitherings of great drifts of collapsing coins into a new position that put its head chin-down amid its heaped loot, facing the back cleft in which it had smelled and heard life moving.

Movements that had continued, albeit with great stealth and patience, after it had twice spat gouts of slaying acid down the hole.

Something was down there, something that wanted to come up. And it would come while Alorglauvenemaus yet waited, for there was nothing more patient than a dragon.

El could have conjured a spying eye to peer at the wyrm, perhaps even goading it into spewing more acid-but doing so would tell it what it faced, and some dragons had mastered or collected enough magic to do great harm to wizards. Moreover, she didn’t need to see the dragon move into a new pose of vigilance to know what it was doing; she’d heard enough dragons, even taken a dragon’s shape herself in the past, to know it was ready and waiting for her.

No, she knew better magic to employ. In some ways, dragons could be as easily goaded as dwarves lost in gold lust. Threaten their hoard, move and handle treasures they deemed theirs, and the wyrms had to fight hard to resist the rages that awakened in them.

Alorglauvenemaus would have to fight harder than some, for it had begun to settle into the sedentary, stay-at-home life of the dragon that no longer boldly fared forth to forge respect and fear, making a place for itself forcibly in the life of the part of the Realms it chose as its dominion. It made bargains with humans and other lesser beings to work for it, to be its arms and jaws and bearers of influence, while it increasingly sat and pondered and slept. Alorglauvenemaus would feel more threatened than a young dragon, yet more angry and eager for a fray than a wyrm sliding from ancient into its twilight.

El rolled over to face the unseen dark stone ceiling overhead, biting her own lip to get the trace of blood she’d need to make the magic properly powerful, spread her arms wide, and began to cast the spell.

She worked slowly and carefully, opting for calm precision and near silence rather than the swift, bold gestures that went with a shouted battle incantation.

Either would work, for one who knew the Art well enough. And Weave or no Weave, she knew her magic.

It was a very old spell, powerful but essentially simple. Some Netherese mages had called it “the Awakening,” when they weren’t being too fanciful in namings that sought to claim older magics as their own. The Awakening, stronger and less limited than other such magics. It was rarely used these days, when wizards had become walking repositories of minor magics worn on the fingers, toes, earlobes, and everywhere else, and its casting would unleash the unintended unless they stripped away and left behind all of that enchanted clutter.

They got it from us, those arrogant archwizards, Symrustar said tartly.

“Aren’t all human archwizards arrogant?” El thought.

The answer came with a tone of amusement. Those particular arrogant archwizards.

Elminster sent her mind guest a silent smile. She had already removed the scepters and everything else magical she carried or wore, and left them in a cleft in the cavern below this one. She’d known the spell she would need, and the one that would be necessary after that, too.

“Rise, Alorglauvenemaus,” she whispered, after the first incantation was done. “Time to dance!”

Then she rolled over and ran for the cavern wall, hard by the nearest side of the opening into the cavern. In any cave, stalactites could fall like daggers when explosions set the stone to really shaking.

Right on cue, the Nine Hells erupted in the dragon’s lair.

It began with an ear-splitting crash, and a wild volley of crackling, ricocheting lightning bolts that blinded her and lashed on down the chute of melted, smoothed rock that descended to the Underdark. Bolts bounced and crashed and ripped the air as they went. By then, great gouts of emerald and ruby red radiance had flared, chasing the bolts, and the stones were shaking and groaning, splitting here and there and raining down dislodged fragments of themselves, large and small, in slumping roars that were lost in a greater, rising rumble that went on and on, almost drowning out the deep-throated roars of draconic rage.

In the thick of it all, Alorglauvenemaus was being tumbled this way and that, scorched and flung up against the sharp, scale-shattering ceiling by what was being unleashed beneath it. Startled and then bewildered and then enraged, it cursed loud and long in the tongue of dragons, great roars that echoed amid the heedless explosions, fury that turned inevitably to fear.

It had to get out. It had to flee while it still could.

Seared and scorched, buffeted and torn by scores of magics all clawing at it and the stone walls and each other, it scrambled and clawed its way up out of its lair. Its surging and whirling hoard pelted it with coins and shards of gems and hurtling swords as it sprang out, whirling with a great lash of its tail to glare back at where it had been, seeking its unseen foe.

The cavern was a raging chaos of erupting magics, spells that tore at each other, stabbed through each other, and shaped incongruous effects amid the tumult. The air was full of a whirling hail of tinkling, clashing coins, ricocheting in a singing, shrieking storm through which larger things hurtled and crashed.

Elminster’s very old spell simply awakened all magic in a small area of effect-in this case, the heart of the hoard the dragon had been lying on-the choice magics it had gathered from a thousand tombs and magetowers and battlefields.

Light of the Seldarine! Did the Srinshee teach you this? Symrustar was truly shocked, her awe plunging El’s head into tingling mind fires of excitement.

The tumult rose higher. In the cavern on the other side of a groaning wall of solid rock that had seemed thick and enduring enough a few moments ago, wands, rods, and scepters galore were spitting their discharges into a great shrieking and flashing maelstrom of Art. Explosion after explosion shattered treasures and hurled them against the cavern walls. Wards were breaking, small metal prisons failing, and more magics were escaping and flaring into life. A staff spun up into the air to spit ravening rays in all directions, seared stalactites plummeted, and glowing gems swirled through the buffeting storm like an angry swarm of bees.

Baffled and furious, Alorglauvenemaus peered vainly into the chaos, seeking a cause, the cause, an enemy it could fight and rend and exact proper payment in blood from, for this violation and destruction.

Magic lashed at it and burned it, crashed down upon it and clawed at its scales, battering it with such mounting pain that the dragon finally fled for good, springing out into the chill air outside. Who was meddling with its magic? Who?

Were there others, out here, abetting the foe within?

Surely no puny “walking meat” creature could have mounted this!

The dragon spread newly tattered wings and flew in a tight circle, so as to glide along the face of the peak that held its lair, peering narrowly …

No. No living thing was lurking, none could be seen but a few tiny, cowering birds on their usual ledges. No foe here …

Well, if that enemy or enemies was inside, and had come from below, it would come out sooner or later-and Alorglauvenemaus would be waiting for it. Or if it intended to steal, taking gold or gems back down to the depths it had come from, it would have to await the fading of all this unleashed magic to get to those treasures. And when that fading came, so too would Alorglauvenemaus, setting aside mercy and forbearance. No thieving from a mighty black dragon-not when it could seize the bones of thieves by force.

Alorglauvenemaus wheeled in the air to glide past the mouth of its lair again. Soon …

Manshoon smiled. Lord Crownrood, chancellor of the realm, had found the need to confer with certain sober-minded and just nobles of Cormyr as to the conduct of the leading families-and court and Crown, too-of the kingdom, in these troubled times.

The invitations had gone forth, and the time and place had been set. Andolphyn, Loroun, and Blacksilver would accept, of course.

Lurking like a shadow in their minds, Manshoon would see to that. Just as he’d seen to Crownrood’s conceiving of the meeting in the first place. It would be interesting to see which of the larger fish not already in his net would rise to take his hooks, and end up caught.

Patience. Deft and stylish patience. He’d never seen the appeal of fishing before-the steaming platter of results had engaged him rather more-but now he was feeling how fun it could be. Truly slow meddling, subtle manipulations … he was beginning to see the long game Elminster had enjoyed so much.

Damn the Old Mage and damn Mystra, too, but a certain Manshoon was enjoying the slow and subtle. At last.

Numbed by some of the earliest lightnings but otherwise unhurt, El stretched her arms, clawed the air experimentally with her long fingers-and ducked around the edge of the cleft leading into the cavern, keeping low.

Wand blasts were still bursting against the ceiling far across it, sending increasingly large chunks of rock crashing down into the already-scattered hoard pile. Alorglauvenemaus was going to be … quite irate.

“Well, that makes two of us,” El whispered aloud, surprised at the tremor of rising anger in her own voice. She was tired of constant battle … though there was doubtless a lot more of it ahead of her.

Bare-skinned and unhampered in the slightest, Elminster raced into the cave, his eyes fixed on a particularly large chest of sapphires that was lodged in a great heap of coins at an upthrust angle, like the prow of a ship breaking a tall wave. Its lid had broken open, revealing its gleaming contents. Rings scattered here and there among the spilled stones winked merrily as other magics raged around the cavern, as if in applause-or sympathy. Ah, she missed the Weave, that would have let her feel which magics lay here, what was yet slumberous and untouched, and if there was any measure of sentience among the Art in this lair at all …

El had to touch that chest as she spoke the last word of the incantation, then get back out of the cavern again, unscathed.

The coins were smoking hot in places, making her gasp with pain, and something that gave off a purple-green glow heaved slowly under a dune of coins as she dashed across it, a heaving that spat a great curling fireball at the ceiling-but with a whimper, El reached the chest, put her hand on its jet-and-silver side, and gasped out the one word she needed to say. And the chest took flight, rising out of the glittering hoard like a heavy, reluctant dragon taking wing, but soaring faster and faster …

As El scampered back to her cleft, flinging herself into a headlong dive when a fresh fury of wand bursts curdled and rent the air, the chest obeyed her will, hurtling out into the air high above Hullack Forest.

You still love to dice with death, El, Symrustar commented wryly, in a mind voice laced with a fleeting flash of emotion. Admiration? Or contempt?

El knew not, but she knew what she felt: anger. Anger at having to do such dancing, all the time, at the bidding of others.

Just now, a wyrm who was old and wise enough to know better.

Hah. Even before she landed in a bruising roll on hard rocks on the safer side of the cleft, El knew the ancient black dragon had succumbed to its essential nature. Outside in the mountain air, it was giving chase, diving after its errant gems with a roar. El forced the chest to turn sharply, and climb, then turn again and dive, trying to keep it out of the jaws of Alorglauvenemaus for as long as possible.

She wanted the dragon well away from its lair, because dragons could really move when they wanted to-and it would not go well for her if it came racing back, its retrieved chest in its jaws, and caught her in its lair or on the exposed mountainside, clambering down to greater cover and safety.

So take nothing from its hoard at all, the better not to be traced. Retrieve only what she’d brought from the riven drow citadel, and get gone, out onto the cliffs and down, down into the concealing forests of Cormyr!

A wise idea, Symrustar said wryly. The dragon returns.

The great flapping bulk of the dragon was growing larger, though it was probably still distant enough to be over the Wyvernwater.

El gave the chest a sudden twist with her mind, followed by a strong soaring, then a plunge.

The dragon whirled. Evidently it had lost its grasp on the chest. El made the distant gem container plunge again in the air. In hot pursuit, the dwindling speck of the pursuing dragon descended. Smiling, El made the chest zig and zag, soar and plunge, turning it again and again in screamingly tight curves. After all, even ancient black dragons deserve a good wingstretch …

Directing those aerial acrobatics all the while, she rushed through the cavern and out, then began the careful climb down the mountainside.

You should have cast a second flight spell on yourself, Symrustar mindspoke, after the second finger-bleeding slip.

“I should have done a lot of things these last dozen centuries,” El replied, watching a jaunty parade of stones dislodged by her boots plunge down, down to jagged rocks far below. Among those waiting stone points were treetops, hrast it! “I’ve never been the sharpest blade in the armory-and have spent a lot of time being one of Faerun’s utter dullards.”

Well, so she had. Perhaps she’d been succumbing to her own essential nature. Or perhaps she’d just been trying to stay alive, as more selfish, reckless, and evil beings galore lashed out at her or at folk and places she loved and was moved-or sworn-to defend. Hrast them all …

By the obvious scars on the rocks around and below, the dragon had repeatedly clawed away foliage and the most easily climbed spurs of rock, to make its lair as inaccessible as possible to anything that couldn’t fly.

However, it was easier-if one had nerves of battle steel-to descend than come up from below. All you needed was the strength, agility-and resolve-enough to jump to the next mountainside over, in the right spot where a long ago storm or perhaps dragon battle had toppled a peak into a shower of great boulders that had tumbled down between the two heights to wedge between them, in a rugged, misshapen natural bridge.

El found what she judged to be the best spot, then leaped. After all, there would be time enough to work a feather fall, before she was dashed to blood-splattering pulp on those waiting rocks, much lower down …

She hoped.