Elminster Must Die

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Elminster stared down at all the sprawled and headless bodies for a long and silent time. The only movement he made was to fling out one arm as a barrier when Storm joined him, an arm that then pointed at the floor. It was awash in a dark, sticky carpet of drying blood.

“Should I-?” she asked, pointing past the bodies.

He shook his head. “Whatever Stormserpent came for-the long-lost Wyverntongue Chalice, most likely-is gone, and him with it. We’ve come too late.”

He turned back a few paces, moved purposefully to the wall, did something that revealed another hidden door, and waved Storm toward it.

Obediently she ducked through it. “We’re departing before the war wizards-and whatever Purple Dragons still survive in the palace-get here to blame us for this?”

“Exactly,” Elminster said shortly. “We’ve failed. Standing and staring won’t mend that.”

He set a brisk pace down the old and narrow secret passage he’d ushered Storm into; the strong smell of ancient and flourishing mildew grew stronger as they advanced.

“Just the two of us can’t do this anymore, lass,” he added grimly, as the passage split and he headed to the left without slowing, leaving the mildew reek behind. “And it’s time to stop fooling ourselves that we can.”

“Do ‘this’?”

“Save the Realms.”

“So we go now to find some comfy chairs and sit back to watch the world fall apart?” Storm asked softly, arching an eyebrow in devastating mimicry of his longtime mannerism.

El sighed, came to an abrupt stop, and spun to face her. “It’s time to recruit successors to take over the task of saving the Realms. We need new hands and sharp eyes and vigor.”

Storm studied his face. “You mean it.”

He nodded mutely, and they stared into each other’s eyes for a time. During which both silently found astonishment at how shaken this late arrival-this one theft not prevented-had left them.

Devastated and close to tears.

Storm nodded slowly, her gaze never leaving his. “Defending Cormyr from behind the scenes-even in the days when Vangerdahast prowled these halls like a sly old lion, meddling and manipulating and thinking he was protecting Cormyr-was what we did,” she whispered. “What we excelled at. The cornerstone of the Realms that should be, a world of justice and order and refinement …”

Elminster sliced the air impatiently with the edge of his hand, as if to chop aside her words. “We start training my unwitting descendant Amarune. Right now.”

Storm shook her head slowly, wincing. “It will take some time,” she murmured.

“Time we have,” Elminster snapped, “if we start right now. Shall ye approach her first, or should Elminster the Terrible frighten and enrage her?”

Storm frowned. “I’ll try luring her a bit, first. Then you can frighten and enrage her, if it becomes needful. In the meantime, start hunting up more suitable magic for feeding Alassra. In a palace so full of decaying and forgotten magical gewgaws, even after all your foraging, there must yet be something.”

“Heh. Lass, this place holds entire war wizard armories-walled away and ward-guarded, mind ye-full of enchanted baubles. This current crew of Cormyr’s most puissant guardian mages knows not the worth or working of half of them. Yet seizing any magic of Cormyr is going to upset Alusair.”

Storm smiled tightly. “Everything upsets Alusair.”

“Aye, but lass, lass, forget this not: given what we’ve become, if she catches us at the wrong time and uses all her power, she can readily destroy us.”

Storm shrugged. “I doubt it. The gods are seldom that merciful.”

That feeble jest did not bring a chuckle from Elminster or even a smile.

After a moment, she added, “And didn’t something or someone in these halls just come close to destroying her?”

The Old Mage nodded grimly. They shared another long look, then a mutual sigh-and with one accord turned and began the long trudge back out of the haunted wing, toward one of the older secret ways out of the royal palace. One that was least likely to be guarded by current and puissant Purple Dragons or wizards of war.

Amarune Whitewave was somewhere in the city outside the palace and wasn’t likely to be invited inside anytime soon.

Not unless King Foril developed a sudden taste for skilled mask dancers.

Six passages later, El stopped in midstride, glared at a certain stone in the passage wall as if it personally offended him, then bent down to the floor, felt among the stones where wall and floor met, and drew a small block out from between its fellows with a little grunt of satisfaction.

Behind it proved to be a flat, rusty iron coffer that El persuaded to open with one firm bounce of his fist. Inside was a little pendant on a fine chain, such as a court lady might wear, a mask, and two gleaming steel vials, firmly stoppered and sealed. El passed all but the pendant to Storm. “Nightseeing mask and two healing vials; ye carry them.”

He put the pendant around his neck; it vanished entirely beneath his beard.

Storm pointed at where she knew it was. “So what does that do?”

“Read passing surface thoughts. Nothing like a mind-ream, mind, but it should help me tell how many guards are standing on the other side of a door, or the like, as we go on from here. Back when Vangerdahast was building up the wizards of war to be what he wanted them to be, they established scores of identical caches all over the palace to aid them as they rooted out disloyal courtiers.”

He straightened up and pointed at the stone that had first caught his eye. “See yon slanting chisel mark? That tells ye to look low, if ye’re in a rough-walled passage like this one.”

Storm nodded. “Harpers told me to look for an inverted T of chisel-scars.”

“Ah, those were the caches that held poison-quelling as well as healing. They were for fighting nobles,” El informed her gruffly. “Not so many of them survive, and they were fewer to begin with. I remember-”

He stiffened then and fell silent, raising a hand sharply to command silence. Storm gave it.

A moment later, from beyond the wall on the other side of the passage-a wall that must be very thin-they heard a door open and a sneering voice speak in a loud and sudden pounce of triumph.

“And how brightly doth the spark of Tarandar shine across all the watching Realms this fair evening?”

El knew that voice. He put a finger on the pendant and felt the dark, hot flood of malice in the thoughts from the other side of the wall. So the sneering and sarcastic Master of Revels really was every bit as pompous and nasty as the wagging tongues of palace servants made him out to be.

Khaladan Mallowfaer, it was said, never did a lick of work and never stopped spying on his lessers, needling them, and decrying their work, either.

Just then, all gild braid and crisply uniformed magnificence, he had stepped out of nowhere into the path of …

El frowned and fought hard to steer the pendant away from Mallowfaer’s malice toward the other nearby mind …

… a weary Halance Tarandar, just as the senior chamberjack had started the long walk from his little cubbyhole of an office toward home and bed.

All these preparations for the council-plans, revisions, and new plans to sweep away the thrice-approved, thrice-modified revisions …

Halance was anxious to get some sleep before he had to present himself at the court-too soon, by the racing moon, too soon! — all over again for the next day’s work. However, the man who stood sneeringly under his nose, wearing his usual unpleasantly mocking smile, was eleven rungs above any senior chamberjack in the exacting ladder of palace rank, so Tarandar managed a smile.

“Tired, saer.”

“What?” Mallowfaer was playfully jovial. “How so? With all the-ahem-powers at your disposal?”

“Had to use those powers in my dealings with a certain noble lord, just now, to keep the arrangements right for the big day, and Cormyr safe, saer.”

“Oh? Which certain noble lord?”

“Not at liberty to say, saer. Sorry. Standing orders of Lord Ganrahast, saer; I’m sure you understand.”

The Master of Revels flushed a deep crimson that Elminster could feel through the pendant.

The whole palace knew Mallowfaer feared the Mage Royal and all war wizards, and deeply resented them and anyone else who had the authority to keep secrets from him, or to order others to do so. Every courtier who’d worked more than a few days at court knew the Master of Revels would never dare speak to Ganrahast. So Halance could be certain his words would never be checked for falsehood.

And Mallowfaer knew the darkly handsome young courtier standing so deferentially before him, eyes carefully downcast, understood full well the depths of his cowardice.

So he stepped aside with a wordless snarl and stalked away, whirling around three paces later to see if he could catch young Tarandar smirking.

The unseen Elminster rolled his eyes.

Rather than smirking, Mallowfaer had almost caught Halance yawning.

Gods, the senior chamberjack was thinking, but Mallowfaer is predictable …

It was a measure of Halance’s weariness that his feet had taken him down a side stair before he was quite finished with that thought. He passed the door guard at the foot of the stair with a trading of silent nods and went out into the night.

Elminster stayed with the chamberjack’s mind, hoping to learn something of the council preparations.

Halance Tarandar was stumbling-tired, but smiling.

Arclath Argustagus Delcastle was an exhausting friend.

His thoughts rushed through some of the airy nonsense Arclath had declaimed to the Realms around … then, for some odd reason, Tarandar found himself in another memory. He was staring into the dark eyes of that mask dancer at the club, posed as still as a statue in front of their table. Her arms had been flung wide to display all he was supposed to stare at … yet it was her eyes he remembered.

Because they’d been watching him intently.

Then Halance Tarandar realized what the subtle changes in her gaze had meant, and stopped in midstride, a little chill finding its way down his back.

She’d been listening to their every word.

Why?

“She’s my kin, all right,” Elminster muttered to Storm, letting go of the pendant. “Taking as much interest in doings at court as we do. Too much interest for her continued health, as it happens; yon courtier, a kindly and overworked young chamberjack, has just realized how much attention she was paying to them when young Lord Delcastle took him and a friend out to the club she dances at. Right now he’s wondering whom she’s working for, or what scheme she’s hatching herself. He’ll report as much to Delcastle, too, but thankfully for her-and us-he’s too falling-down tired to do it yet. We should be able to get to her first.”

“And bring Ganrahast and Vainrence and all their keen wizards down on her head?” Storm asked warningly.

El gave her a scowl. “She’s young and of my blood,” he growled. “She should welcome a little adventure.”

“A little, yes,” Storm replied. “I’m not so sure she’ll stay smilingly welcoming when half the realm comes after her. We’re used to it, remember?”

“Hmmph. Better for Cormyr if all its younglings happily take on anything the world hurls at them.”

“You’re sounding like a gruff old noble,” the silver-haired bard teased him.

“I’m feeling like a gruff old noble,” Elminster snapped back. “Distinctly underappreciated and beset by suspicious wizards of war at every stride I take. Not to mention experiencing a glut of foes that’s flourishing, not diminishing.”

Storm shrugged. “As I said, we’re used to that. Ride easy, El. Yes, you had to destroy more wizards and highknights than Cormyr should lose, but it hasn’t gotten really dark yet, for us or for young Amarune.”

“That,” the Sage of Shadowdale muttered, “is precisely what’s souring me. I’ve a feeling this is going to go very bad.”

“And I have a feeling you’re not going to be disappointed,” Storm sighed, putting a comforting arm around his shoulders.

He gave her another scowl, but it faded into something close to a wry grin.

Ere he shook his head and told her, “Just two of us, lass, until we secure Amarune’s loyalty and get her competent enough to do what we do and keep herself alive. Then we’ll be three. Not enough, not near enough.”

The air around them dimmed, then, as an enchantment on the cache abruptly took hold of them both.

Ganrahast had cast trap spells on the remaining caches that slowed every movement of someone who violated a cache without murmuring the correct password or wearing the right sort of enchanted ring.

Elminster and Storm had time to recognize what was happening and start to say so to each other, eyes meeting in dismay … but they lacked even a moment more to do anything about it.

“Such a simple trap! It seems the Chosen of Mystra are mighty no longer. So you are brought low at last, old foe. At last.”

The glow of the conjured spell-scene was by far the brightest light in the vast and gloomy cavern. In its heart, Elminster and Storm stood despondently facing each other in a secret passage deep in the royal palace, their faces grim as they started to speak words so slowly it would take them hours to finish.

“At last,” the beholder said again, smiling crookedly.

It was a very big smile, because the eye tyrant was as large across as the front door of any grand mansion. It had tentacles, some of them ending in hands of three opposed pincers, as well as eyestalks. The mind the tentacled hulk had begun life with was not the mind that still inhabited it.

It spent almost all of its time alone-and like many a loner who had not held that role lifelong, by choice, it spoke aloud to itself often.

“Yet the time to strike is not quite yet. Not with all the magics still tied to you. I’ve no wish to be destroyed alongside you in the fury of their unleashing. Your slaying must befall at just the right time. So I shall watch and wait still more. Yet now I know my wait will-finally-not be long.”

The eye tyrant smiled. “As your torment deepens, will you save the kingdom you so love, the rock you stand on when saving all the Realms one more time-or will you let that rock crumble and shatter to save the madwoman you love?”

It drifted across the cavern to a floating cluster of small, glowing spheres, each one a scrying eye that was busily showing its own moving, silent scene of a different place in the Realms. Sounds would arise from those images only if the beholder willed matters so.

At that time, it seemed to prefer the sound of its own voice.

“I need not even muster an attack on Cormyr, so feeble have you become. The pieces already in play upon the board will serve well enough. Soon, soon will come my revenge-and at last, at long last, Elminster of Shadowdale will die a final death.”

The tentacled terror drifted back to the large, three-dimensional image of Elminster and Storm, frozen in the narrow passage.

“And you will die, Elminster, knowing it is I who have slain you,” the beholder whispered, almost fondly.

It gave the cavern around a dry little chuckle. “Soon, soon …”

Halance fought again to keep his jaws shut. He could not seem to stop yawning.

Gods, but he was tired-with a whole day of work ahead of him, a day that bid fair to be a very full one, too.

Behind the dark weight of weariness, the chamberjack never felt the cold, cruel presence that was watching him from afar, lurking deep in his own mind.

Around him, the royal court was abuzz. Not just with the ever-mounting confusion and endless rearrangements for the council-coming down on them all very soon-but at what had befallen in the palace the previous night.

The uproar was bringing war wizards in all haste from every corner of the realm, a worried-looking Understeward Corleth Fentable had murmured to Halance. More than a dozen Purple Dragons dead-and Belnar Buckmantle, too. Murdered at their posts by unknown intruders who’d beheaded most of them and had departed by some secret way that had the highknights as well as the war wizards mightily upset.

Fentable had looked more than worried, come to that. He’d looked sick … and he happened to be one superior that Halance liked, trusted, and respected. The man must know things he wasn’t allowed to tell underlings, to make him look that way.

Halance shook his head. Things always happened all at once, stlarn it. When everyone was already too busy to tend to them properly. “Beshaba’s kiss,” the older courtiers called it. Mischance, farruking, ever-irritating mischance …

Manshoon smiled darkly. Mischance or artful manipulation.

Halance yawned again. He had to find Arclath and warn him that the mask dancer had been listening to their talk the night before and might well be the paid informant of some noble client or other.

Yet he hadn’t time to be seeking nobles across the fair city, with all the daily moving of furniture and linens and replacement of oil lamps to be done.

Not with all the extra council preparations on his desk, the untidy heap of fresh scrawled notes from Fentable and Mallowfaer and the gods alone knew who else about this, that, and the other little details.

Now prepare the lure …

Note, make a note; Halance snatched up a fresh scrap of parchment from the pile given him to make his senior chamberjack notes, and a quill from his stand, and wrote hastily, “Tell Arclath Delcastle, Belnar murdered. Also, the dancer in the Dragonriders’ was listening to all we said.”

“Tarandar,” Mallowfaer bellowed from down the hall. “The new chairs and stools are being unloaded at Zorsin’s dock right now! I’ve sent Emmur and Darlakan for wagons, but get yourself down there to see they don’t break or mar every last piece in their loading!”

Right on cue. As anticipated and planned.

“Saer!” Halance shouted back. “I hear! And I’m on my way!”

Hurry, chamberjack. Hasten; mustn’t be late. Neither Mallowfaer nor my agent who waits for you should be kept waiting.

He dashed to the door, then spun around, strode back to his desk to snatch up the still-wet note, and ran.

For a wagon, it was a long way to Zorsin’s dock, but not such a long route for one hurrying man. Which meant …

He had a fair idea of where Arclath would be. The Eel or the Dragonriders’ Club or possibly Saklarra’s Wonderful Willing Wenches if our young Lord Delcastle was feeling particularly frisky.

If the Fragrant Flower of House Delcastle happened to be elsewhere … well, there were half-a-dozen inspections and negotiations regarding the upcoming council that a senior chamberjack could parlay into depart-the-court forays. Yet telling Arclath soonest would be best and would get it off his desk and out of the way, the better to devote all his attention to all the council details …

Into his head, then, came a brief, bewildering vision. It seemed as if a beholder was staring at him fixedly, through an eerie glow, with a dark cavern all around it. A beholder?

Gods, he was having waking nightmares! This farruking council!

Shaking his head, Halance Tarandar hastened down one last hall, ducked past the guards with a smile and nod, and hurried into the streets, crossing the promenade and turning immediately into his favorite alley.

He never even saw the hand that struck him down.