Elminster Must Die

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Elminster gave the undead Steel Regent of Cormyr a long, hard look. “I thought I knew these halls. Evidently not.”

Not surprisingly, Alusair’s answering smile was thin and ghostly. “Evidently not.”

That was all she said, so after waiting vainly for more, El sighed and asked, “So just how many whirlbone traps don’t I know about?”

Alusair shrugged. “Six, perhaps seven. I could be more precise if I knew just how many secrets of my family you know about.” She held up a hand to forestall his reply and added, “I speak now of palace architecture only, not long-hidden heirs, bastards, scandals, and proverbial skeletons in wardrobes. We’d be here a tenday or more, I’m sure, if you started in on those.”

Elminster nodded. “At least. Well, then-”

Alusair flung up both her hand and her sword in urgent unison, whirled, and was gone, leaving behind the whisper: “He’s done something. The skeletons are down and done. Our Stormserpent continues to surprise. I must see.”

“Go, then,” Elminster murmured. “My time for flying and hurrying isn’t upon us yet.”

Not for the first time, he spoke to empty air. Much to Alusair’s displeasure, Elminster trudged along no more swiftly than before Storm had been at his side.

The two former Chosen walked patiently, trusting in the young noble’s men needing some time to plunder once they found what they were seeking. That did not suit the ghost’s patience-or lack of it-at all.

The passage they were traversing ran on into unseen gloomy distances, but Elminster suddenly stopped at a stretch that looked the same as the rest of it and flung out one hand to halt Storm. Then he touched a certain stone in the wall beside him with the other.

With the briefest of stony grating sounds, a section of wall slid inward, revealing the edges of a door-sized opening. El shoved on that moving door of stones-and they pivoted aside in unison, to reveal a dark passage beyond.

Storm rolled her eyes. “Are you still finding them? The early Obarskyrs must have been suspicious of everyone in all the Realms!”

“Now, now, lass; they probably told Baerauble to see to the making of some secret passages, and he did his usual thoroughly overefficient job of it: thrice as many passages as needed, plus a more secret passage for exclusively royal use, not to mention an utterly secret passage for his own use-to spy on both the royal passage and the secret way that had been ordered for mere palace courtiers to trot along.”

Storm regarded him with some amusement. “So he was as devious as you? I can scarce believe it! Fancy a wizard being sly!”

“Behave, stormy one,” he told her fondly.

Startled, Storm fell silent. He hadn’t addressed her by that term for centuries.

They padded along the new passage in companionable silence for some time ere once more starting to murmur to each other-low-voiced and often, as was their wont. They rarely mentioned Alassra. Instead, El spoke of items that held blueflame ghosts, items of real power, and the possibilities of seizing them to restore shattered minds. Which of course meant just one person who mattered to them both.

When he was done recounting snatches of blueflame ghost lore, El looked to Storm, seeking her willing agreement for such hunts.

She shrugged. “Why not? We’re losing her.”

“Hardly words of ringing eagerness,” he murmured.

Storm sighed. “We’ve run out of easily snatched magic items, and those who guard what’s left are watching and waiting for us. Our luck can’t hold forever, and our skills are failing us.”

“Well, there’s always the possibility of recruiting someone suitable to do the snatching for us.”

Storm regarded him soberly, knowing what was coming. “A blood descendant,” she said flatly. “And you have at least one young, vigorous, nearby, and quite likely suitable candidate in mind: Amarune Whitewave.”

At his nod, she frowned. “Just how much does she know of her heritage?”

Elminster spread his hands. “She’s heard that her father’s father’s mother, Narnra, was said to be the daughter of the notorious Elminster, but she considers such talk mere wild legend. One claim among so many others, in the small army of women reputed to have been fathered by everyone’s favorite Old Mage.”

Storm smiled thinly. “You were busy, weren’t you?”

El sighed. “So rumor has it. Now, if rumor could just turn its mighty power to making me again a worlds-striding, peerless-in-Art Chosen of Mystra, once more young, hearty-strong, and a dallier with, say, a slim hundredth of the women I’m supposed to have, ah, entertained …”

“You’d have that army and several more besides.”

El gave her a wry grin, sighed heavily … and said no more.

In companionable silence, they walked on along lightless passages for what seemed a very long time.

Until it was Storm’s turn to sigh. “This Amarune is going to be a temptation for you.”

“Aye,” Elminster muttered. “Try not to remind me.”

“For one who knows how and has the spell, taking over bodies is so stlarning easy,” Storm added.

El nodded. “And finding more magic around these halls that Alassra can subsume is getting harder. Pretending to inspect every crumbling inch of this palace only yields so many forgotten, free-for-the-taking baubles. The Crown of Cormyr quite reasonably wants to keep its crowns and such.”

“So right now …”

“Right now,” Elminster almost snarled, “our most pressing need is to stop young Stormserpent from getting any of these ghosts of the Nine. Our second need is to get those items ourselves. Our third is to recruit Amarune-without attracting the attention of whomever has been spying on us.”

“The ever-vigilant wizards of war?”

“No, not those particular everpresent annoyances, this time. Someone else. Someone who hides behind Cormyr’s spying mages, looking our way only fleetingly. Someone whose magic is much more powerful than theirs.”

Storm stopped abruptly to stare at him.

“Someone whose magic is likely stronger than mine, too,” Elminster added grimly.

She blinked. “Do-do you have any idea who it is?”

Elminster made a rude sound. “If I did, d’ye think I’d be chasing around this palace after silly young nobles?”

Whatever reply Storm Silverhand might have made was lost then, as the spell-glow those voices were coming out of flared into wildness.

And fell silent, to hang in midair in the heart of a huge room’s chill darkness, flickering fitfully.

“Back into a ward that resists my spells yet, the pair of them,” a cold voice sighed. “Yet those wards grow steadily fewer. Soon, old foe, there will be none left to you-and the time of my triumph will come at last.”

As if in reply, the glow spat sparks. Then it faded, dwindling swiftly to … nothing.

Hmmph. Strong wards indeed.

“For centuries before I did,” the cold voice added, “others said Elminster must die. They were right, and more than right. Old foe, you should have been swept from the fair face of Faerun long ago.”

The owner of that cold voice drifted across the vast chamber. “I should have done it myself, before you served me the same way so often. You thought you’d slain me for good, no doubt-but, as in so many other things, you were wrong. And even clever old archmages who consort with goddesses pay the price for their errors in the end. As you shall pay mine. Soon.”

A pincer-ended tentacle drew open a door, and the owner of that dark and sleekly deadly appendage drifted through the revealed archway, its eyes turning on agile stalks to peer warily this way and that into the darkness as its other tentacles arched and coiled almost lazily around it.

There were no intruders to be seen. Good.

These ancient spellcasting chambers, deep in the oldest part of the royal palace, were warded more heavily than the mightiest fortress the tentacled one had ever seen or helped enspell. They were never used these days, and no scrying but his own should be able to worm a way through all their interwoven layers of shielding-but Bane take all, the young and incompetent fools who now strutted Cormyr as its wizards of war were apt to blunder into every nook and corner out of sheer doltish curiosity …

Well, not there. Not yet.

“Soon, you’ll pay,” the floating, many-tentacled thing repeated firmly, rising up so its tentacles could hang at ease rather than trailing along the floor. “Soon. And forever.”

A glow flared ahead. The cold-voiced owner of the tentacles snarled in sudden satisfaction then departed that body for his own, slumped waiting in a grand old chair.

It shuddered all over as he returned, then it lurched to its feet and set about weaving and hurling a spell with deft speed, ending the spell with but one cruelly whispered word, “Dance.”

“Dance,” the empty air whispered-and the ghost of the Princess Alusair arched her back in midair, writhing in agony. The shriek that burst out of her was high and shrill.

Right in front of her, eerie light had flared into being without warning, magic where there had never been magic before.

It lashed through her, clawing and slicing and searing ruthlessly before it faded. In its wake, she faded toward the floor, moaning softly, little more than a flickering, shapeless wisp …

“What-what’s wrong?” Storm snapped as Elminster suddenly stumbled against the passage wall then slid limply down it.

“Alusair,” he gasped, turning a sweat-glistening face up to her. “Something ill has befallen her. She screamed.”

“Is she-?”

“Dead? As in, released from undeath? Destroyed and gone? I … think not.”

He shook his head grimly as she helped him to his feet, and muttered, “The surge of magic was very strong.”

Storm tapped her head. “In here, it’s been getting much worse,” she told him bitterly. “I rarely feel surges at all, anymore. For me, the Art is almost gone.”

Elminster gave her a look. It was a long time before he whispered, “For me, ’tis a warm, seething treasure within me, a waiting, beckoning pit I hunger to plunge into, as easily and as often as I used to. Power I ache to wield, no matter how witless it leaves me.”

He drew in a deep breath then blurted, “I need ye. To hold my mind together whenever I slake myself in the Art. We’re a team, the two of us together an archwizard formidable enough to face down most foes.” He put his arm around her. “Together, lass. Together we’ll guard the Realms yet.”

Storm’s eyes shone as she smiled. “And if it refuses to be guarded, El? What then?”

“Then we tame it and teach it, until ’tis willing!”

“Well, now!” snapped a harsh young voice out of the darkness. “Impressive words indeed! A pity they’ll be your last!”

Elminster and Storm had no time to roll their eyes and groan at how many times they’d heard such gloatings before.

They were too busy screaming in pain as the passage around them exploded in roaring emerald flames that flung them away like helpless scraps of rag.

“There’s no way in the world they could have survived that,” a somewhat shaken male voice offered into the smoke-reeking darkness.

Up and down the passage there was a restless din of groanings and crackings; stones cooling and complaining about it. Here and there louder crashes could be heard, as blocks of stone fell from their places to shatter on the floor below.

“Lord Ganrahast is seldom mistaken in his judgments,” the harsh young voice observed, a little smugly.

“I’d be happier if I could clearly see the Sage of Shadowdale lying dead at my feet and know there was no way he could rise again to face me. Ever,” a third voice observed.

“Oh, don’t be such a coward, Mreldrake.”

“I don’t think I much care for those words of yours, Rendarth,” Mreldrake replied stiffly. “You didn’t face him and his mad Witch-Queen out in the wilds. I did.”

“And ran like a scuttling rabbit, no doubt, and so lived to tell us all the tale,” Rendarth snapped right back. “So if you’re so bold and battle-hardened as all that, mighty Rorskryn, suppose you advance down the passage and find us Elminster of Shadowdale-or what’s left of him. We’ll need his head to bring back to Ganrahast and Vainrence, mind. Or, failing that, some bit of him large enough to identify him with certainty.”

“I did in fact listen to the orders we were given, too,” Rorskryn Mreldrake replied coldly. “You go, boldest of mages.”

“As I recall,” Wizard of War Andram Rendarth said in his harsh voice, “I was placed in command of this little trio, and I am giving you, Mreldrake, a direct order. Get down that passage and start hunting. And mind you bring back lumps of Elminster, and not the other one.”

“It was a woman,” the third wizard added helpfully as Mreldrake conjured light with an angry snarl. “So if you see large breasts, you’re not looking at-”

Elminster had heard more than enough.

Storm-still breathing, thank all gods-was lying atop him, silent and heavy and bleeding copiously all over him, but he could readily reach and aim the wand he’d taken from Wizard of War Lorton Ironstone, after Alusair had obligingly won that earlier battle for him.

It was a wand that dealt short-term paralysis, the weapon Ironstone should have used back then, right away and without warning, instead of issuing his grand challenge. Yet lost chances were part of the fast-fading past, and it should ably serve a certain Sage of Shadowdale now.

He leveled the wand carefully and murmured the word that brought it to life. Ganrahast and Vainrence weren’t training these dolts well; only utter fools stand side-by-side on a battlefield, when both are mages and face a foe they know wields magic.

There was a flash, and all three wizards toppled like trees. Mreldrake, Elminster saw sourly, had been standing behind the other two, and his fall was gentler, a hand going out to shield his face. Not paralyzed, to be sure.

The other two were, and Elminster thrust the wand back into his belt to snatch out the enchanted dagger. Mreldrake or no Mreldrake, Storm must be healed before all else.

As the dagger expired in a flare of light under his murmurings and crumbled to dust in his hand, he heard the faint scuffling he’d expected from where the war wizards lay.

“Before ye quite crawl off, Rorskryn Mreldrake,” he said sharply, “suppose ye avoid my slaying ye very painfully, here and now, with a spell that will literally turn thine innards out of thy body, by answering a few questions. Truthfully, if ye know how to tell truth.”

Mreldrake drew in his breath so sharply that it was almost a faint shriek.

“The wards,” Elminster continued. “Ye called on the ancient wards of the palace, all around us, to strike at me just now, didn’t ye?”

He waited, knowing the answer already. He’d cast some spells himself as part of those wards, a long time before, and knew very well the tingling of wards he’d worked on, all around him, being altered.

Rather than words from Mreldrake, he heard the faint scufflings of a frightened war wizard trying to crawl away without making a sound. And failing.

“Answer me,” he added calmly, “or die.”

A long moment passed. Elminster drew the wand from his belt again and held it warningly.

That brought results. “Y-yes,” the war wizard blurted. “But it was Rendarth’s idea!”

“I can scarce believe he acted on such a notion without the Royal Magician’s approval,” El replied as disapprovingly as any scandalized tutor. “Let us have truth, Wizard of War Mreldrake. In the name of the king. I do still hold a court rank in this kingdom that far outstrips thine.”

“I–I-Ganrahast said we could use the wards to hide and armor us against you,” Mreldrake admitted almost miserably. By the distant sound of his voice, he was slowly crawling away down the passage.

“And clever Rendarth took it upon himself to use it to augment the bolt ye three hurled at us,” Elminster said heavily. “Did ye not know doing so would ruin and consume the wards immediately around us here? Leaving a gap in them, and weakening the entire web loyal wizards before ye spent centuries weaving?”

“I … you must be stopped. At all costs.”

Elminster exploded. “Idiots! Ye three strip away centuries of defenses-warding spells ye don’t even know how to replace-just to smite me! What price Cormyr’s future, if ye toss it aside so readily to win one day’s victory? What of the morrow, hey? Despoilers! Fools! Irresponsible children!”

The reply that came out of Rorskryn Mreldrake then was a sort of shriek-the sort of strangled eep a man-sized mouse might blurt in unthinking terror. It was followed by wild scrabblings as he clawed his way to his feet and fled headlong down the passage.

Shaking his head in exasperation, Elminster let him go. The lesson he’d take back to Ganrahast was one that had best be learned swiftly and well.

Younglings, these days. Win the day, and bother not with looking beyond the end of one’s nose …

It was a wonder there were any realms left in the world, at all.

Wizard of War Rorskryn Mreldrake was almost sobbing from lack of breath as he panted his way around another corner, his frantic sprint falling into an awkward stumble.

He never even felt the spell that fell on him like a net, claiming his mind in mid-panic.

Before he knew it, a steel-hard grip was closing firmly on his mind.

“As it happens, wormling,” a gentle whisper rolled through his head, seeming to bring with it a floating pair of dark eyes as sharp and hard as the points of two daggers, “the Sage of Shadowdale is not the only one who has taken to hiding in this large and rather well-appointed royal palace. I, too, want all thoughts of altering its wards to be crushed and quelled, promptly and completely. I am Manshoon and am even more terrible than the legends about me suggest.”

The grip became a tightening cage.

“Rorskryn Mreldrake, you are mine now.”