Elminster Enraged

CHAPTER SEVEN

Royal Magicians and the senior courtiers they most trusted have been many things down the long years of Obarskyr rule over the Forest Kingdom, but one thing they were not-often-was fools.

Wherefore it had long been the practice in Cormyr to order matters such that one official or soldier watched over another, as part of daily duty. So it was that in Castle Irlingstar, Lord Constable Gelnur Farland was warden of Irlingstar’s prisoners, commander of those who guarded them and responsible for that guarding, but did not have command of the keep itself. Above Farland was the seneschal of Irlingstar, Marthin Avathnar, who gave direction to the lord constable and was in charge of the physical upkeep of the castle, but in truth had the most essential task of being a watchdog over any lord constable who might get too friendly with such urbane and wealthy noble prisoners.

Avathnar was a pompous little man, short and stout but proud of his appearance when he strode around Irlingstar in his brightly polished silvered armor. Yet he was neither dull-witted nor lax in his diligence, and had reported three lord constables in his time, all of whom had promptly been reassigned and one of whom had soon met with an unfortunate “accident” that many suspected hadn’t been accidental at all. Word of that had reached him, Avathnar knew, as a gentle reminder not to stray from the path of diligent loyalty.

He hadn’t the slightest intention of doing so. Cormyr was the fairest land in all the Realms, not to mention the best place to dwell in any hopes of enjoying a retirement to a modest country estate with a decent cellar of wine, boar and rothe enough to eat roasts every night if one wasn’t sick of them, and a fair young wife to wait upon one’s needs-even if one was short and unsteady and afflicted with bunions.

If Lord Constable Farland loved him not, too bad, and what a proud badge that dislike was, betokening his own proper fulfillment of his duties. A beloved seneschal was a lax seneschal, or even a seneschal happily and frequently bribed. And he would never be either the one or the other, by the Dragon on the Throne, oh, no, not Marthin Avath-

Someone interrupted his thoughts, just then.

Forever.

Someone reached out from a dark, yawning doorway just behind the strutting seneschal-where a door should not have stood open, a lapse Avathnar really should have noticed, though securing interior doors was more properly a constabulary duty-and briskly plucked the seneschal’s grandly plumed helm off his head. That headgear had always been a trifle too large for Avathnar, and came off easily-straight up, into midair. The same someone then stabbed a fireplace poker with brutal force, log-spike first, into the back of the seneschal’s exposed and balding head, crushing Avathnar’s overlarge skull like a raw egg.

There was just enough time, as the little man swayed onward but hadn’t yet toppled, to drop the helm back into place. A bare instant before Marthin Avathnar smacked down on his face like a large and fresh flounder being slapped down on a kitchen beating board to be flensed into mush for a fish sauce.

The wielder of the poker melted silently away, and a tomblike silence descended on the passage. It lasted for some time before the sound of distant boots arose, strolling in the right-or wrong, depending on one’s viewpoint-direction.

Marthin Avathnar had been a coldly polite, precise man. It was his duty to be so, but it was a duty that suited him and one he did all too well. Wherefore no one in Castle Irlingstar liked him. Not even his personal staff. As for the noble prisoners confined at Irlingstar, they didn’t like any of their captors much. So it was hardly to be expected two of them would grieve when they came upon Avathnar’s body. In fact, had a guard not been right behind that first pair of nobles, and hastened upon catching a glimpse of an armored form sprawled on the flagstones, they’d have swiftly plundered the dead man for weapons or keys. As it was, the two nobles merely bent to make sure the gleaming-armored seneschal of Irlingstar was dead, smirked when they saw he was, then went to lean against the nearest wall to fold their arms and enjoy the spreading tumult among their captors.

“I’m left quite desolate by this,” one noble murmured merrily.

“Oh?” another drawled. “Myself, I grieve deeply.”

“Desolated, are you? I was desolated once …” A third sneered, joining them.

“Go from this place,” the guard snapped at them. “All of you.”

None of the prisoners moved.

“Move,” the guard added. “Get you gone. Now.”

“Or?” A noble asked tauntingly, eyebrows rising in exaggerated fear.

“Or I’ll regard you as murderers, and execute you forthwith,” the guard said firmly, half-drawing his sword. “Before you can get word to your families or anyone else.”

Scowling, the three nobles pushed themselves off from the wall as slowly as they dared, dispensing rude gestures and insults, and retreated. Not far.

Glowering at them and keeping one hand near the hilt of his ready sword, the guard unlocked a door and struck the alarm gong waiting in the closet behind it. Then he went to stand over the body, giving it a glare for good measure.

This was going to be bad.

It was bad already, and if his years of service had taught him anything at all, things were going to get worse at Irlingstar before they got better.

Much worse.

The little eyeball floated just out of reach, just as it always did, its silent stare mocking him.

Mreldrake tried not to look at it, but he could feel the weight of its regard every instant, as he struggled to wield his new magic with ease and precision and not the wild, sweating messes his last few castings had been.

It was hard, hrast it all! Holding empty air together in a sharp, slicing edge of hardened force, an edge gathered around his own awareness, so he could “see” out of it at a distance and through solid walls and other barriers he couldn’t truly see through or around. That edge could cleave stone, with enough firm will behind it.

Far more strength of will than Rorskryn Mreldrake seemed to have, even when fiercely determined or desperate. Whenever he dragged his wavering edge of force into a wall or floor, the spell broke, leaving him reeling and clutching his aching head, half-blinded by a sudden flood of tears and momentarily at a loss to recall where he was or what he’d been trying to do.

Right now, in a bare room very similar to the one he was trapped in, on the far side of what until a short time ago he’d thought was a solid wall, a chicken was roaming freely. Pecking, strutting, even fluttering … as his will-driven edge of force pursued it, seeking to decapitate it.

It had seemed such a simple command: “Behead yon fowl.”

His view of the room wavered again, and with a curse he fought to focus the air once more into a sharp, clear edge. And … succeeded. He was drenched in sweat, tiring fast, and this hrasted chicken seemed to want to fly!

It fluttered its wings again, bounding into the air and squawking loudly. Across the room it scurried, flapping this way and that as it went, and bobbing up and down, too. Almost as if it were taunting him, just like the watching eyeball.

Die, you stupid bird, die!

Savagely Mreldrake bore down with his will, sweeping his invisible blade of force up and after the chicken.

Which obligingly landed, folded its wings, blinked, and started to peck.

It bobbed up, took a few steps, looked around-and bobbed again, a scant instant before Mreldrake’s blade swept through the spot where its neck had been.

“Nooo, you tluining little harrucker!” he spat, his mind-view of the room next door wavering again as his blade started to thicken, wobble, and slide toward collapse.

“No! Not this time!”

In a sharp surge of rage he narrowed the blade again and turned it, not caring if he crushed the fowl or starved it of breath by sucking every last whit of air in that room into his killing blade. This chicken was doomed!

Thinner and sharper than ever, the blade swept down. The chicken bobbed down to peck, took two slow steps forward without straightening up, then suddenly reared up to blink, look around, blink again, and look satisfied.

Which was when he finally reached it-and took off its head with the ease of a rushing wind, without it so much as uttering a peep. The bloody head landed with a wet plop behind him as his sharp awareness rushed on, and the room around him turned over and over, wavering … and was gone.

Exhausted, Mreldrake sagged down, stinging sweat running into his eyes, seeing his own prison chamber once more. The secret door he’d not known about before today, the one that connected his room to the one he’d just beheaded the chicken in, swung slowly open by itself to reveal the tiny, headless feathered bundle swaying amid much blood.

“Well, now,” came the voice of one of his captors out of the empty air above him. “Progress we can all be proud of.”

Yes, those words held distinct mockery.

“Rorskryn Mreldrake, you’ve earned your supper. Well done.”

Too breathless to answer, Mreldrake lay with his eyes closed, already knowing what the voice would say next.

“And it’s very fresh. Killed moments ago, in fact. Chicken!”

“Did you see the way Lady Glathra was looking at us?” Amarune murmured. “I was hard put not to shiver. She doesn’t want us working for throne and king, to be sure. I think she’d be happiest if neither of us lived through this night.”

Arclath smiled. “You think it was an accident Ganrahast told her he needed to meet with her urgently and immediately, as they left? Or that the king seems to have left more than a dozen guards behind, to spend the night standing around outside our walls?”

Rune frowned. “You think she’d dare-?”

The heir of House Delcastle shrugged. “ ’Twouldn’t be the first time a wizard of war-or a high-ranking courtier-decided to ‘help’ the hand of Tymora. Or even the most likely unfolding of events, either. I doubt Glathra’s that bold, myself, but the prepared warrior is the less dismayed warrior, as they say.”

He paused at a particular door and knocked softly at it. It promptly opened, and an elderly servant stepped out of the room beyond it to bow deeply to Amarune and hand her a lit lantern.

“All ready, lord,” he murmured to Arclath, and he hastened off down the passage without another word.

Lord Delcastle ushered his lady love through the open door. “My mother chose this room for you because the door has stout bolts, here and here, so you can keep all Cormyr at bay, the night through. The window’s too small for most men to get through, and overlooks a long fall into the courtyard-where some of our men are always standing guard. Oh, and there’s no secret passage.”

They traded grins, ere Arclath added, “Above you is only roof, and beneath you the ceiling of the back feasting hall-a good twelve man-heights above its floor. We’ve only two ladders tall enough to reach it, and we could scarcely fail to notice anyone trying to sneak in here with a ladder that long …”

“But if she tries anything at all,” Amarune murmured, “she’ll use magic, not the swords of Purple Dragons storming your house, surely?”

Arclath shrugged. “We have wards. If they aren’t strong enough, well, I guess that’ll be that.” He grinned. “You really think one angry Crown mage will go to all that trouble to punish the notorious Silent Shadow?”

Rune did not smile back at him. “Arclath,” she whispered, “I wasn’t thinking about me. My worry is for you.”

The lord constable of Irlingstar stared down the passage, over the body of the fallen seneschal, at all the Purple Dragons he’d summoned. Every waking guard in the castle was here except for the on-duty door guards, the stair wardens, and of course the mages. They were all his to command.

The faces staring back at him were grim. The guards of Castle Irlingstar were upset, of course. They’d been more angry than fearful at first, but that had changed when they’d discovered the kitchen staff slaughtered, and much of the food in the castle pantries taken or deliberately tainted. They had been less than gentle while shoving the prisoners back into their cells and locking them in-and the lord constable had agreed wholeheartedly with that rough treatment. Sneering murderers.

“Dumped chamber pots into the open ale keg, they did,” one Dragon snapped indignantly, “and emptied their bladders all over the puddings.”

“The spitted birds? The sausages?”

“Gone,” was the bleak reply.

Lord Constable Farland wasted no effort on curses. He merely pointed at two men and commanded, “Stand guard over the kitchens. They’re not to be left unattended for as long as it takes you to blink, from now on. Choose two more to relieve you when you grow tired.”

Then he pointed at four more Dragons. “Search everything. The flues of every last chimney, all the spices in the pantry; the lot. Set aside everything that’s been spoiled or even possibly poisoned, and make very sure the chimneys haven’t been blocked and no little traps left waiting for anyone trying to use kitchens or larders. When done, one of you-you, Illowhond-report to me. In my office, where I’ll be conferring with both senior constables.”

Farland looked slowly around at all of the gathered guards, his face as calm and expressionless as he knew how to make it, and said curtly, “There will be goading. Pay careful attention to anything any prisoner might let slip, but keep a close rein over yourselves. I expect you to remain the professional veterans you all are. Return to your stations and duties.”

Collecting Traelshun and Delloak with stares and a jerk of his head, he turned on his heel and started the long trudge back to his office, not bothering to look down again at what was left of Seneschal Avathnar.

This was one more headache he didn’t need, but there was something fitting, even satisfying, when the gods saw to it that vain, thickheaded men reaped the rewards of their own stupidity. Now, if the gods could just see to it that Cormyr held a few more Traelshuns and Delloaks, and a lot less of the likes of Avathnars …

Not that he expected them to. The gods had a long, long list of things to see to, and some of them had been waiting for centuries.

Sixteen left.

Elminster nodded; she was panting too hard to answer Symrustar aloud. This new body was as agile and deft as it was lovely, and she’d managed to find a small stretch of level, smooth rock underfoot, hard against of the tunnel walls, but sorely outnumbered was … sorely outnumbered.

It had grown to more than thirty against one when the fray had begun, and at least one of those outcast drow males was a wizard who’d been casting spellstop after spellstop at El, while taking care to keep well out of reach behind the rest as they’d closed in, stabbing and hacking.

The ironguard was all that had kept her alive in those first frantic moments. The profanely shouted desire of some of El’s attackers to “Leave enough of her to enjoy!” had helped her kill a few as they’d hesitated to be really brutal to her torso, though most of her armor had been so viciously and repeatedly hacked that it flapped and dangled, protecting her against nothing.

Just once, they’d gained sense enough to all rush her together, trying not to slay but rather to catch hold of her arms and legs and bear her down onto the rocks, to hold her helpless by sheer weight of numbers and cruel strength. So someone could stab her or slice open her throat, and make an end of her. At last they’d taken her down. Spread-eagled and struggling vainly, El had seared those holding her closest with the tiniest outrush of silver fire, a deadly momentary spitting she hoped no one would recognize for what it was.

In an instant, those who’d tasted it most deeply were far too dead to bear witness to anything. Giving off wisps of smoke and the hearty smell of cooked flesh, they sagged and fell away, leaving the less injured to hiss curses and scramble clear as fast as they knew how. Leaving their lone quarry to struggle to her feet and face them, breathless and bleeding freely from the bites of enspelled blades the ironguard could only lessen. El stood alone, the cooked dead slumped around her in a blackened and smoking ring, watching the surviving drow draw back to mutter together.

Their mage was hissing something at them, probably about how he could work a spell to see that most of their bolts got through whatever defenses a lone spider priestess could manage, if they held back and all fired their handbows at her at once. El didn’t wait for them to ready such a volley, but ran at the nearest drow, swinging her hooked sword in a vicious slash. The dark elf parried it easily, deflecting her blade aside with a triumphant sneer-whereupon she brought it swinging around to bite into the handbow hooked to his belt, ruining it, before she sprang back and ran on.

The next drow had seen what she’d done, and turned to shield his bow from her with his body. She took advantage of that to rush past and around him in a tight circle, until in his turning to keep facing her he overbalanced. She promptly made the same slashing attack, but this time the parry sent her blade up through his throat.

By then, all the drow were converging on El. She fled back to her open fighting ground with the blades of the fastest outcasts slicing at her backside. More of her leathers fell away as she sprang across a drift of tangled and blackened drow bodies, spun around, and ducked low in a lunge that spitted one pursuing dark elf who was too close and moving too fast to stop himself in time.

He went down noisily and messily, taking El’s sword with him, and she sprang back again to give herself space and time enough to snatch up some swords from the fallen before the sixteen surviving outcasts reached her.

She had a scepter that could blast down one drow at a time, if it behaved like all the other scepters of the same design she’d seen in the past, but she needed time enough to use it on one obliging target after another. The bite of just one sword would make it explode-and her ironguard would help this shapely body not at all against that.

Gnaw-worms as long as a drow arm wriggled down the tunnel walls, drawn by the smell of spilled blood and cooked death. The wizard’s spellstops hung in the air around El like unpleasant smells, clinging to her. They would hamper rather than truly stop spells, but just one of them would slow magics too much to keep her alive in a sword fight-and the dung pile had cast six of them, hrast him.

The drow were wary of her now, and moving slowly to ring her, keeping their blades ready and their eyes on her.

“I don’t like fighting,” Elminster murmured aloud, to no one in particular. “I’d rather be left alone, to spend my days messing around with the Art. Trying new things, creating, feeling the flows …”

Inside his head, Symrustar nodded wordless agreement and approval, as together they recalled magic unleashed, beautiful glows rushing out into the night …

The drow were coming.

El backed to the wall before the sixteen could encircle her, yielding most of the flat stone floor so as to have solid rock at her back. All they had to do was come at her four at once, one to each side and two in front of her, and not let her draw one of them into another’s way … and she couldn’t hope to parry them all.

Of the spells she’d just burned into her mind, she was using the ironguard, and could see an immediate use for the guardian blades, the timetheft, and the-oh, but hey, now! If she … aye …

Yes, Symrustar agreed.

She mustn’t forewarn them. Cast the whirlblade storm in careful silence and then hold it in abeyance, waiting until they were all emboldened enough to draw near. Aye, go down fighting, and let them think they’d slain her. There, ’twas done …

And here they came.