Elminster Enraged

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The blast seemed to begin somewhere distant, but rolled right at the lord constable’s office like a racing, raging dragon, its roaring and shaking growing louder and nearer with frightening speed.

That rising tumult almost drowned out the screams and shouts erupting from noble prisoners all over the castle as fresh dust fell and curled, more pebbles and stones rained down, and new cracks raced across walls that groaned anew.

The doors of the lord constable’s office-all of them, including three secret doors known only to him-burst open as the force of the blast reached the north tower. They banged wildly as an unseen titan’s hand seemed to snatch up the room and shake it, hurling the furniture and the room’s six occupants off walls, floor, and ceiling … and then, very suddenly, everything fell silent and still. Except for the ever-present drifting dust.

Only the drow stood unscathed, the dust shunning a sphere of clear air that surrounded her.

“Magic, obviously-probably fueled by the hrasted wand firings,” Farland snarled from the floor as he glared at her, too dazed to keep from thinking aloud. He and the other Crown loyals were still wincing, rubbing bruises, and picking themselves up when some dust-covered men staggered along the passage and in through the main door of the office.

These new arrivals were prisoners, by what could be seen of their dust-caked finery-mainly, that it wasn’t any sort of Purple Dragon armor or uniform. A few were clutching Purple Dragon swords in their hands, which meant some guards were down, probably dead …

Farland hefted his own weapon and strode forward, less than surprised to see that Lord Arclath Delcastle had acquired a blade from somewhere and was at his side.

“Down steel,” Farland ordered the coughing, stumbling nobles. “In the name of the king-”

The foremost noble spat at Farland’s boots. “That for the king!” He sneered, sketching an elaborate duelist’s flourish in the air with his stolen sword. “Now you down steel, sirrah, or I’ll carve that sword out of your hand-and go right on carving up the rest of you! I’ll have you know I took sword schooling with the famous Narlebauh! And had lessons with Helnan, too!”

A second noble sliced the air in an even more elaborate flourish. “Ah, Helnan, what an amusing little cockerel. Cut off their noses first, I say,” he drawled. “A man looks rather comical, without a nose …”

Of course these prisoners would be well-trained swordsmen. Farland sighed, drew himself up, and prepared to die fighting.

“Defend and disarm,” the drow murmured, “aren’t those your standing orders, lord constable?”

“Belt up,” Farland ordered savagely, not looking away from the leisurely advancing nobles for an instant. For their part, those recently escaped prisoners stopped and stared at the shapely dark elf, drawing back before swords could be crossed.

The drow languidly, almost wantonly strolled forward, a dark and eerie radiance flickering up and down her shapely limbs, a stranger glow flooding from her beckoning eyes.

The sword-wielding nobles gaped at her in earnest, going pale and backing into the rest of the escaped nobles right behind them.

“A drow! Run!”

“Invasion from the Underdark! They’ll butcher us all! Cormyr is doomed!”

Suddenly the nobles all turned and fled, running hard through the swirling dust, crashing into doorframes and each other, cursing and shouting.

Farland sprang after them, barking, “Back to your cells, gentlesirs! For your own safety, back to your-”

The rout lasted for two passages and a guard post, ere it reached the large ready chamber where two halls joined the main passage. There, amid the fading dust, some noble prisoners rallied to defy the lord constable, waving weapons they could only have wrested from more than a dozen guards-who must now be stunned, sorely wounded, or dead. Swords sketched salutes, slid through elaborate duelists’ exercises, and flourished with all the deftness of court champions.

Farland came to an abrupt halt, watching all the displays of swordsmanship, and wondered just how long he could last against-what, fourteen? — expert swordsmen.

Then he saw Lord Delcastle glide over to stand at his shoulder, his sword ready-and the dancer, or thief, or whatever she was; the Whitewave woman, appear beside his other shoulder, a fearless little smile on her face and several daggers between her fingers, ready for throwing …

“Well, well,” said one of the nobles, giving them a choice sneer. “Three of you, against all of us? What’ll that be-a few more moments of sport? Show us how well you can beg and scream! Leave the woman alive for, heh, the usual purposes …”

He strolled forward, slicing the air wildly with his sword like a butcher seeking to sharpen two blades against each other, the grinning line of armed nobles moving with him-when a horrible scream rang out from right behind them.

The nobles whirled around, snarling curses, afraid that guards had arrived in a stealthy attack to sword them down from behind-

But they saw only one fellow escaped inmate down on the flagstones, all alone with no one around him. They all knew him-couldn’t help but know him. It was Lord Quensyn Rhangobrar, one of the most arrogant and bullying prisoners ever to swagger around Castle Irlingstar. He lay on the floor clutching vainly at his own throat, blood spurting from between his fingers. He kicked feebly at the floor, writhing in his own blood, choking and gurgling.

And there was no one at all around him, no one nearby.

Rhangobrar gave a last, agonized gurgle-it rattled in his throat horribly-and slumped dead, twisted on his back with one knee up. His hands fell away, and they could all see the raw, gaping ruin under his jaw.

His throat was largely gone, torn or cut out.

Lord Quensyn Rhangobrar had just been murdered. By a person, beast, or force unknown, more or less in front of their eyes.

Thessarelle’s Platter was one of the most upscale dining establishments in Suzail, but had long since been deemed “so four summers ago” by the nobility. Its very unfashionability had long since left it quiet and desperate for trade. Therefore, it was eminently suitable for those seeking a superior experience without having to drop overmuch coin. Wherefore these nights, Thessarelle’s-to call it “the Platter” was considered distinctly uncouth-was a favorite haunt of high-ranking courtiers, outlanders visiting Suzail, and Cormyrean wealthy folk who lacked titles and harbored no ambitions to soar socially. On this particular early evening, two patrons of the establishment were dining alone at adjacent tables.

One always ate alone, by choice-the quiet, bespectacled Rensharra Ironstave, Lady Clerk of the Rolls. The head of tax appraisals for all of Cormyr, she had few friends, and had to be seen to be free of such encumbrances as Cormyrean dining partners who might be thought by watching eyes to be attempting to bribe her, work deals with her, or to get her drunk and then seek to poison her. She did not mind being given a table in a bad location, close to the kitchens and facing all of the traffic of arriving and departing diners.

The other bad table was customarily given, by Thessarelle’s gliding, murmuring, impeccably mannered staff, to the most boorish outlander or party of outlanders to darken their doors, in an attempt to keep them as distant as possible from other diners, regular clientele in particular.

On that night, a certain Mirt the Moneylender easily won the title of “Most Boorish Outlander” without even trying for it. So it was that he came to be seated, with three bottles emptied before him after only one platter of fried hocks-and-tongues, and well before the arrival of his ordered “best side of boar,” at the table beside the one Goodwoman Ironstave was smoothly conducted to.

“Well, now,” he said jovially, giving her a wide and welcoming smile. “Well met, beauteous lady! Which goddess are you, I wonder, stealing down to enchant mere mortals this fair even?”

Rensharra had been brought up to be polite, even if most of her daily work of dealing with deceitful nobles and wealthy merchants forced her to all too often be sharply and bluntly candid, so she turned away to hide the heartfelt roll of her eyes from him. He was, after all, an outlander-and by his accent, from the Sword Coast or somewhere equally westward and barbaric-and probably knew no better.

“You flatter me, saer,” she announced in a flat, no-nonsense voice.

“How can I do anything else, when yer beauty is like a sharp sword, piercing my heart-or somewhere rather lower?” His wink was large, exaggerated, and accompanied by genuine amusement. Gods, there was a proverbial fallen-star twinkle in his eye! Rensharra snorted. He was so … charmingly crude.

“Your vision, saer,” she told him tartly, “must be faulty. It leads your judgment astray.”

“Oh, but that’s wonderful,” he gasped, in the manner of a swooning princess in a badly acted play. “To be led astray by such a splendid woman, so swiftly! Tymora smiles upon me, surely-as, I see, do you. Could it be that yer own innate love for waywardness … dare I say yer hunger for straying … matches my own? Ah, but I’m too bold by half! Let me claw desperately at what is left of my manners, and offer you my name-Mirt, Lord of Waterdeep-and my purse, to furnish you with whatever you desire to drink and to eat, here in this superior dining establishment, this night! Pray accept my offer, by way of making amends for my coarse, forward, low outland ways! We are direct in Waterdeep, we charge at what we desire, we seek to board and conquer swiftly, but I daresay that’s less’n acceptable hereabouts …”

“Mirt,” Rensharra Ironstave said crisply. “I’ve heard that name around the palace. You … sat upon the head of a certain wizard of war recently, I believe.”

“I did, and-”

She raised one hand and her voice with it, firmly interrupting whatever sly lewdness he was uttering. “I’d like to hear all about it. Over a bottle of whatever wine you recommend, if your offer to get me drunk on your coin is real, and not mere lust-hungry-lad babbling?”

Mirt recoiled. “Lady, lady, do not think for a moment that my offers are anything less than real! I stand by my utterances, I do, and-”

“Lord Mirt, you less than surprise me,” the lady clerk of the rolls informed him, and she turned to tell the server who’d just glided up to her table, “I’ll have whatever the gentlesir here feels moved to feed me.”

The server’s half-lidded, bored eyes opened wide, and he cast a swift glance at Mirt, who dispensed another of his exaggerated winks, leaving the server to struggle to control his customary mask of facial impassivity. He blurted out, “Very good, Goodwoman Ironstave,” spun around, and rushed away.

“I do believe you’ve scared the man,” Rensharra said reprovingly, discovering that she was genuinely enjoying herself-and her company-for the first time in, well, years …

“I, lady?” Mirt protested in mock horror. “I said nothing to him, nothing at all!”

“You, lord, don’t need to!” Rensharra replied, lifting her hand to him in the court manner.

A moment later, her always-cold fingers were clasped in a warm, hairy, yet gentle paw that did not tug at her, but conveyed her fingertips to lips ringed with a long, sweeping mustache that … tickled.

She giggled helplessly, whereupon Mirt released her, proffered his fourth bottle-the only one that wasn’t already empty-and inquired, “Will you begin getting drunk, lady? Just for me?”

Rensharra burst into a guffaw. The man was outrageous! Like a playful boar, or a gruff old minstrel lampooning a flamboyant noble a-wooing-and, by all the gods, she loved these coarse flirtations. She was, after all, in Thessarelle’s, where the staff knew her rank and position; one scream from her could have this man hustled away in a trice, so she was quite safe. Moreover, she’d spent too many lonely, melancholy evenings here toying with food that was superb, yet … wasted, somehow, when one dined alone. Bah! Let this be a night of adventure, where she would give as good as she got.

“I believe I will, Lord of Waterdeep,” she announced. “Providing you answer me truly, gallant Mirt. Is it true, what they say about men of Waterdeep?”

“Which saying, lady?”

“The one about driving hard until the tide turns?”

Mirt coughed briefly, startled-by such a query from so demure a source-into taking some wine up his nose. Recovering, he grinned.

“Yes, lady. It is. I believe in candor, between friends.”

Rensharra looked at him over the rim of the just-filled tallglass he’d handed her. It had been clean, because he’d been drinking directly from the bottles.

“I accept you as my friend of the table, Lord Mirt, and quite likely my friend, period. Were you hoping for something … closer?”

“You do believe in candor, lass! Well, now, I do believe I am. Do yer hopes run along similar trails?”

“If you drink me under the table,” Goodwoman Ironstave told her tablecloth demurely, “you may have me under the table.” She set down her glass and looked up. “Or more sensibly, being as this is Thessarelle’s, under another table, elsewhere, of your choosing. Or, perhaps, wherever else we may both devise. After we eat and drink sufficiently for you to prove that saying true, of course.”

“Of course,” Mirt agreed, sketching a deep bow. Being as he was still seated, his dipping gesture merely planted his nose in the platter in front of him.

He straightened up, dripping, wearing an expression of long-suffering martyrdom, and snorted most marvelously like a boar backing away from a trough. Rensharra burst out laughing again as he reached for what little was left in his fourth bottle.

Only to hurl it hard and accurately past Rensharra’s shoulder, into something that squealed in wet and wordless pain.

“Down, lass!” he roared. “Under yer table, and keep going!”

The lady clerk of the rolls ducked in her chair, but turned to look at what was behind her as she slid out of it-so she was in time to see the elegantly dressed man with not much left of his face but blood and bottle shards collapsing back against the drapery-bedecked wall. His hand-which held a knife in it-fell away from a rope it had failed to slice.

The rope led up-she was under the table, but still peering-to a pulley lost in the shadows of the lofty ceiling, from which dangled a wicker basket about the size of a coffin.

Something flashed, out of an upper gallery, right at that rope.

Mirt gave a growl and came up out of his seat in a lumbering rush that sent his table over on top of Rensharra’s table, toppling it.

The heavy, metallic crash that slammed into those improvised shields a moment later splintered one tabletop before the basket spewed its deadly contents all over the vicinity: scores of cleavers, carving knives, cooking spits, and skewers, accompanied by broken glass and a glistening sea of lamp oil. Followed by racing flames, as the lit lamp that had been balanced atop it all met that flowing oil.

Rensharra was too startled to scream, but she managed a strangled peep as Mirt snatched her out from under the tables, tore the flaming half of her gown right off her and flung it into the growing conflagration. He took the instant necessary to comment, “Nice!” … then spun and towed her across the room.

“But-but-” she gasped, seeing other diners gawking, “this isn’t the way out!”

“Nay,” Mirt growled, bounding up the stairs and dragging her along like a child’s toy, “but ’tis the way to the gallery!”

Halfway up that stair, they met a man hurrying down. A man armed with a murderous snarl and a knife. He slashed at Mirt, who flung up his arm to take the blow-and sprang upward to turn that fending movement into a hard punch just above the man’s knee.

The man hopped, howling in pain, and Mirt’s slashed and bleeding arm crashed home, landing a hard punch in the man’s crotch. The knife clanged somewhere down the stair, the man shrieked and collapsed, and Mirt let go of Rensharra long enough to take the man by the throat and one knee, turn, and heave.

This was not a man meant to fly. Instead, he plunged and struck the knife-studded, blazing basket and tables with a crash even louder and heavier than the one that had ended the deadly basket’s fall. He struck, spasmed once, then lay still, his arms and legs dangling, his body impaled and starting to drip. Rensharra winced.

Mirt turned and offered her his arm. It was bleeding copiously, but she took it as if nothing were amiss. Mirt grandly led her back down the stair to where servers and a cook and Thessarelle herself were scurrying. Diners were fleeing or craning to see, buckets of potato water from the kitchens were being flung onto the flames, and the man sprawled in the heart of that fire, with several knives through him, looked very dead.

“I do hope,” Mirt said politely to Thessarelle, as that pillar of hauteur started to scream and sob, “you won’t be charging for the floor show.”

Pressing a small but bulging purse into the nearest hand of the dumbfounded proprietress, he led Rensharra toward the kitchens.

“The entrance is-”

“Never use a front entrance after a slaying’s gone awry,” Mirt growled. “That basket was meant for you, lass. Someone with coin enough to hire others … you haven’t angered any nobles lately, have you?”

Rensharra managed a weak smile as he hustled her through kitchens where pots neglected too long were starting to steam, and sauces to scorch, out into an alleyway.

“I–I’m the head tax collector of the kingdom,” she told him, as they hastened through its noisome gloom together, Mirt peering this way and that. “I anger nobles daily. And when I tire of it, I irk them some more.”

“Good lass,” he replied fondly. “You look much better with half yer gown gone, by the way.”

“My reputation-”

“Lass, lass, if yer head tax collector, yer reputation can only be helped by a little bouncing bared flesh! Yer precious reputation only has one way to go!”

They turned a corner at the end of the alley, out into a lamplit street, and Mirt added, “That’s a little better! The farther we get-”

A Watch patrol came out of the next alley, and promptly rushed to surround them, unhooding lanterns.

“What’s this, then?” the patrol leader barked.

Mirt grinned, bowed, and indicated his bedraggled partner. “As you can see, lads,” he crowed, “the lady likes it rough!”

Her face flaming, Rensharra struggled to manage a wink and a smile, then struck a pose she hoped was, well, provocative.

Silence stretched … then ended abruptly. On all sides, upstanding members of the Watch hooted, chuckled, or roared approval.

“Lucky bastard,” one added, clapping Mirt on the shoulder, as the patrol started to move on.

“Wait,” another said suddenly, turning back and shining his lantern full on Rensharra’s face. “Aren’t you-?”

“Yes,” she purred, taking a step toward him. “I am.”

The Watchman’s face split in a delighted grin, he gave her a salute, then bellowed, “Onwaaard!” and hurried after his fellows.

“You see?” Mirt said affably. “Yer reputation-”

Rensharra Ironstave found herself trembling, on the verge of tears, suddenly cold and afraid, as weary as if she’d worked a long day, and ravenously hungry.

“Mirt,” she said firmly, “take me home. Your home.”

“Of course, lass,” he rumbled, patting her arm. His hand left bloody marks on her sleeve-her only surviving sleeve. “I’ve a warm bed. And cold chicken.”