The Herald

CHAPTER 4

It might have been wiser not to use one of the old gates, but the Great Shield was up, and the gates of Candlekeep were firmly shut to the outside world in these times of war and tumult, no matter how valuable the tomes that supplicants waved under the noses of the monks who guarded the way in. Moreover, this latest doom coming down on Faerûn wouldn’t wait forever; Abeir and Toril were more or less apart already, even if most mortals knew nothing of such matters but wild rumors.

And, no less importantly, his feet hurt.

“Besides,” Elminster muttered to himself darkly, “ye gave up on being wise centuries ago. About the time ye decided to do something about the magelords, back in Athalantar.”

Athalantar, the vanished kingdom he was the last prince of. Not that anyone beyond sages and a handful of elves remembered more than its name, these days.

For that matter, he doubted very much anyone still alive-beyond, again, a handful of elves-remembered the gate he intended to use, which lacked side posts these days, or even a marker. One merely stepped between these two leaning boulders-in a crouch, if ye were human sized-after hooking around yon first stone in just the one direction-so-and murmuring “Amalaeroth” in the right intonation, at the right moment.

Which was … now.

Here on this brisk morning of the ninth of Marpenoth, in the Year of the Rune Lords Triumphant. The year 1487 in Dalereckoning. Not a bad day, if one didn’t mind chill winds, but winter-real winter-would be coming soon.

So, behold, one step took ye from the hills near Elturel past shut and guarded doors and warily watchful monks, to the tunnels that riddled the root rocks beneath Candlekeep, well down beneath the silent, endless thunder of the wards.

Where it was dark rather than sunlit and breezy, startlingly so after the open air, but his nose told him he was in the right place. Elminster stood in an ale-hued gloom lit faintly and fitfully by palely glowing fungi, the soft and flowing sluglike growths that fed on the, ah, aromatic cesspool outflows.

Aye, he wasn’t in the undoubtedly warded and dragon-guarded warrens that descended into the Underdark, but a far smaller, parallel webwork of passages, old cellars, and cesspools, carefully kept separate from the caverns that linked with the Realms Below. Three gates opened up into the monastery above-gates that even the most senior monks who led Candlekeep today knew nothing of. Their predecessors had known how to keep secrets, and spirit away written references, as well as any Chosen of Mystra.

So El doubted he’d meet with many traffic jams on this particular way up into the great fortress of learning. Wading through chest-deep sewage was never a popular pastime.

He pulled off his boots, moved the flask of oil from his belt into one of his boots to keep it upright and handy, and started disrobing, stuffing everything he took off into the deepest crevice he could find.

He would miss those boots. Comfortable boots were always hard to come by. Usually it took years of trudging in discomfort, aches and blisters and worse, to break them in. But most of the monks wore soft leather slippers that gave no cushion at all against the cold, hard stone …

Bah. Give thought to such luxuries later, after the rapturous fun of the moment. He began working oil into his hair, his beard, everywhere-nostrils and eyelashes last.

The oil would help the sewage slide off him more easily, afterward. There was a side sump that carried the water down from the baths, which joined the main cesspool outflow in the cavern with the large stripe of quartz down its walls. It should serve as a shower …

Carefully he lowered himself in, and started wading.

Back in the brown stuff again …

Mystra forfend, but the monks were spicing their fare more highly. And eating more cabbage too.

Clear proof of their diligent guardianship. Less food was arriving from outside, forcing them to rely more on their larders and what they grew themselves-and for some reason known only to the gods, cabbages thrived atop crumbling stone towers, hereabouts. It would be interesting to learn why they’d raised the Great Shield.

His progress was slow, foul work. Two caverns in, he felt the wards crackling and thrumming in front of him, thickening to prevent a living intruder so imbued with magic-the workings of his hectic centuries-from passing through them.

He’d added to these wards himself a time or two, and knew how they interacted with the Weave. That was the key to slipping through them; making himself so “of the Weave” that the wards would take him for it, and not for an old, naked man trudging through the cess …

El set about losing himself in the Weave, his body becoming more smoke and shadows than solid, sewage falling away from what it could no longer cling to. As a silent, patient cloud, he advanced, crossing another cavern before he felt the silent thunder of the wards behind him rather than around him, and let himself-slowly again, a gradual and patient shifting-slip back into solidity before someone or something might detect his use of magic.

It was a cavern later when his cautious feet struck something hard and solid, under the turgid brown flow, where there should have been nothing. Something El thought he knew, and had even been expecting, before he’d gingerly felt it up and down enough to identify it.

The body of a man, extra clothes knotted to his arms and legs and neck that had been wrapped around sizeable stones.

A corpse weighted down with stones to keep it submerged and hidden. Almost certainly a murdered monk. Well, well …

Two caverns later, he encountered another. Then another.

These two were in shallower sewage than the first, and El took the trouble to drag them to where he could haul their heads out and wipe at them to see if he recognized them.

He did. Two monks whose faces he knew. The name of one-a man from the far, far South beyond Faerûn who had coal-black skin, and who’d always spoken sparingly-he couldn’t recall, but the other was a freckled, red-bearded onetime trader from Tharsult.

“Dalkur,” Elminster muttered aloud, as the name rose out of his overcrowded memory. “Wrote a beautiful hand, as swift as some folk breathe.”

He let both bodies slip back down under the reeking brown current, and waded onward thoughtfully.

Oh, monks died and their brethren in Candlekeep didn’t trouble to let the wider world know. They kept to themselves as a matter of course. A great many folk in Faerûn had no idea there were women among the monks, although there had always been, simply because the Avowed of Candlekeep hadn’t bothered to let the world think any differently. Aye, monks could die and the world not be told about it.

Yet the penitent dead weren’t buried by being weighed down and hidden in sewage, and for years he’d had his own spies among the monks, and so had the Harpers, the Lords’ Alliance, and half a dozen less savory cabals and alliances … and if there’d been many losses among the Avowed of Candlekeep, some word of it would have leaked out.

Nor had any of the bodies been there all that long. Moving excrement that mixed with air as this flow did was far from a preservative.

No, these monks had been murdered and then impersonated, or he was a shade of Thultanthar. So others were as interested in what was inside Candlekeep as he was.

“Well,” he muttered to himself, “this makes matters slightly easier. Undoubtedly I won’t be the only impersonator. ’Twill be interesting when I run into my double.”

Dalkur would do. Close enough in height and build … aye.

El found the bathwater sluice and tarried there, letting its chill waters thoroughly rinse away what he’d been wading through, as he concentrated on calling up every last memory he could of the freckled monk’s voice and manner and looks.

Andannas Dalkur, once of Tharsult, before that from Secomber.

From once-mighty Athalantar …

This changed matters, to be sure. Repairing the Weave in a hurry was still of utmost importance, and the secrets Khelben had hidden about how to do that were here if they survived anywhere, but it now seemed he had numerous competitors in the hunt for those secrets, and dealing with them must come first. So, add a few more steps to this most crucial of missions-and in that, why should it be any different than most of his tasks? There were always more steps to everything than ye thought there’d be, at the beginning. El chuckled and scrubbed his scalp with his fingers, trying to get the last of the sewer stench off himself. His freckled, bony-jointed, sunken-chested new self.

He failed, of course. It’d be the baths for him, once he stole a robe from the spare stores nigh the stables. And a good roll in mule dung in one of the stalls that hadn’t been mucked out yet, to cover one stink with another. Then the baths.

And then it would be time for the new false Andannas Dalkur to find the older false Andannas Dalkur in the halls of Candlekeep.

If that other impersonator didn’t find him first.

Ah, Norun Chethil. The cook among the cooks of the Avowed, and foraging alone in the deepest back pantries. Ideal.

Maerandor waited until the cook-a stout man, like most who tasted as they went-was bent over and rummaging through cobwebs at the back of a shelf in search of the oldest jars of preserves-oysters in spiced oil, as it happened-because they should be used first.

“Come out of there, you skulking rat of a jar,” Chethil grunted, smooth crockery spinning under his stubby fingertips. “Hah! Got you!”

That sounded like too good a cue to waste. Maerandor silently solidified right behind the monk. And pounced.

The moment his fingers closed on Chethil’s throat and head, the Shadovar put all the weight of his body and the speed of his bound into one swift, ruthless wrenching.

The cook’s neck broke with a soft, sickening splintering, the man’s arms writhing wildly enough that Maerandor had to fling out a hasty foot to kick one jar of oysters back onto the shelf before it could fall and shatter.

Then Chethil went limp. His slayer held him in a grip like unyielding steel, keeping the dying man immobile and alive for as long as possible.

It took but a moment to awaken the right magic and invade the dimming, helpless mind. The wards, reveal all you know of them …

Ah, much indeed. The wards, tell more! The kitchens had their own doors through the wards, which were opened when it was both safe and needful to use such swift alternatives to traders’ wagons coming up the Way of the Lion to the gates. That wasn’t often.

Tell more! Ah, and these gates were there and there and there, opened thus and so and with these safeguards …

Chethil’s next culinary work would begin three chants from now, after visits to the cellars that held onions and leeks and peppers, then up to the tower where the greenleaf was flourishing in the window boxes.

Yes, let’s have where all the cellars and pantries are, and what they all hold. Aha, yes. There were no keys to lock any of the deep back pantries, but few of the monks knew their ins and outs, and only a handful ever went to them. Unless Chethil took longer than three chants to appear in the kitchens, no one would come down seeking him. The apples many monks liked to sneak for themselves were a good five levels above.

Chethil’s undercooks were the monks Rethele and Shinthrynne, merry young women Chethil was fond of and whose jests and lively converse the stout cook heartily enjoyed-even if dusky-skinned Shinthrynne was from the hot jungles where they had strange ideas about fiery seasonings, whereas Rethele was from upcountry Impiltur and thought dry thistles made fine salads. They’d both be in the kitchen right now, making sauces and dicing marrows … and they knew what he’d gone to fetch. So he must depart the pantry with three jars of oysters.

What did Chethil know of the rest of Candlekeep?

Huh. Just about all of it, though no monk alive had been in all the turrets of the main keep. Some of the turrets had been walled off for centuries. Chethil had lived much of his life within Candlekeep’s walls, and had walked the well-worn route of the chant for the first score or so of those years.

The cook’s mind was darkening fast, his anger and fear mere dull echoes, his formerly frantic thoughts a slowing, drifting chaos as he slipped away.

Maerandor bore down, seeking what he needed to feign the man himself. Favored sayings, habits, hues, hobbies, Norun’s own preferred food.

Ah, that caused a last flare in the fading mind. Chethil himself detested ale and smoked meats, and loved strong cordials and the marinated lizard dishes once popular in Var the Golden … back when it had still been Var the Golden.

Back when … back when … the last life faded in a flickering, and all of Norun Chethil became a “back when.”

Maerandor lowered the stout body. Good. He’d plundered more than enough from the monk to fool others that he was Chethil. Once his body was an exact match for the cook’s, of course.

He stripped the monk with unhurried care, so as not to damage the man’s robes. A simple apron, the usual clout, a truss-so Chethil was sensitive about his growing girth-and the usual soft leather slippers. A leather-bound chapbook on a neck thong, for the taking of notes. Cookery notes only, it seemed.

Maerandor worked several spells to change his body into an exact copy of the dead monk. That was the secret to a superior disguise-layers of spells, not just one.

Then he dragged the corpse to a closet that Chethil had known had once been a long-dead predecessor’s private wine cellar, stuffed it inside, and latched the door.

Time to call on what he’d just learned about opening a door in the wards. With the same patient calm, he did what Chethil would have done to open the wards, enabling himself to emerge momentarily among the purple-black northslope rocks of the ridge Candlekeep rose from, and retrieve the thorn-and-wax-sealed metal coffer Maerandor of Thultanthar had brought with him and hidden there.

After returning to the deep back pantry, he used Chethil’s belt knife to slit the seal, slicing aside the thorns the worms found poisonous, and opened the coffer. Inside were two flesh-devouring worms of the sort that consumed vermin in Thultanthar. Both as long as his forearm, glistening black, and plump, their segments rippled with hunger. Opening the closet he’d stuffed the dead monk into, Maerandor poured the worms onto the corpse’s chest and firmly closed the door.

Shut in for long enough, they’d not just strip the skeleton bare, they’d gnaw the monk’s bones to powder, too.

All very tidy. Now, three jars of oysters and a detour to a particular cellar to collect the wine he knew Rethele and Shinthrynne liked to sip when the ovens grew hot and the sweat started to stream.

The fewer monks left, the less resistance. And the Most High wanted no magic wasted and lost in fighting when it came time to drain the wards of this place for Thultanthar. So, his own task was to eliminate any who might fight against that draining. And Maerandor had a reputation to maintain. He did swift, efficient work.

All of which meant it was high time to bring about Candlekeep’s downfall.

Elminster hadn’t visited Candlekeep often, and had never stayed long. There’d always been so many pressing tasks to do, things he couldn’t neglect or delay. Yet many times he’d wanted to tarry in this most lore-filled of monasteries, drawn to the rooms and rooms full of grimoires and spellbooks and histories and every other sort of book he’d not had the time to sit and really enjoy. Even with twelve centuries to find time enough in.

He was drawn to them now, but knew better than to wander and search shelves and so be noticed as behaving oddly. Dalkur had been an intense devourer of tomes on just one “enthusiasm” at a time, only to turn to another after a handful of years, rather than a voracious reader who enjoyed variety.

Though he had no idea just what Andannas Dalkur’s current enthusiasm was, El knew his best course would be to casually select a book, take it to a quiet corner table somewhere near where it had been shelved, and peruse it with care. While listening and watching what was going on around him among his fellow Avowed, without appearing to do so. He had to know what the current tenor of daily life was like among the monks, and to spot any sign of an impostor, or collusion, or some swiftly approaching planned violence.

Besides, it was high time for a little reflection. His mind had been swimming in the Weave and concentrating on repairing and augmenting it for so long that he needed to think again of daily life in Faerûn, and what he needed to watch of that to be warned of trouble in time. If, that is, he might possibly snatch time enough to deal with all the troubles he should do battle with.

He knew better than to seek one of the inner rooms that housed books of powerful magic or inestimable value, which could only be examined with the permission of the most senior and highest-ranking monks, and in their presence.

If fate, the conspiracies of others, and the whims and striving of the gods were going to allow him time enough to accomplish what he sought to do here at all, then there would be time enough in the days ahead to seek out and read through everything his longtime colleague the Blackstaff had written, that had found its way here or been placed here deliberately by Khelben. Just now, something less precious would arouse less suspicion in any impostor seeking the same lore he was, and so would do just fine …

He turned into one of the smaller chambers that opened off the Everwinding Stair with an open archway rather than a door, gently ignored several monks who were deep in books at the study tables with the same eyes-down silence with which they ignored him, and selected Archemusk’s Trends in Approaches to the Art, its thousand-odd well-worn pages shedding their crumbling edges with the same enthusiasm he remembered from when the book had sat in a wizard’s tower in upland Amn more than six hundred summers ago.

It was large and heavy, bound with ironroot panels clad in black peryton hide, and El cradled it in both hands as he shuffled to the vacant back corner table, sat himself down, and relaxed into the gloomy, dusty patience of Candlekeep. There was a glowing globe hanging dark and motionless in midair beside one of the older bookcases, whose graceful serpentine side pillars differentiated it from its later neighbors. The globe detected El’s arrival and drifted gently over to hang behind his right shoulder, a gentle radiance kindling within it. When it was bright enough, El glanced up at it, and it stopped brightening and held to a steady level of glow.

Archemusk was a beautiful calligrapher, his hand fluid and flowing, generous with ornamental swashes-which more than atoned for the utter lack of limning. There were no illustrations, beyond depictions of runes, sigils, and the drawn arrays of the complicated castings that were popular after Netheril had fallen, and then again in the earlier 1100s. Everything in black atharnscale ink that never faded, so it all sprang out at his eyes fresh, dark, and crisp even though the pages he turned were mottled brown with age.

El-Dalkur, he must think of himself only as Dalkur-passed over the early sections of the book, having little taste for reading again the utterly fantastical admiration Archemusk had held for the magelords of Athalantar and the early self-styled “emperor wizards” who’d left ravaged Netheril behind them to conquer this or that corner of Faerûn.

Once Archemusk had reached the founding of Thay and the earliest squabbles over what magic was of which school, things grew interesting, and El settled in to read-with half his mind, anyway. The rest of him pondered what little he’d heard and seen of Candlekeep thus far.

The Endless Chant was just rising into audibility, still far off in a distant tower, and the chambers around him held the usual number of monks and books, in the usual near silence.

What was different was the atmosphere of the place: tension.

A tension he’d never felt in Candlekeep before.

He turned a page of Archemusk’s writings, hearing again from memory the dry and superior voice of the man, though Orold Archemusk had been dust for two centuries now, and listened to the chant draw slowly nearer. It sounded smaller than he remembered, as if there were fewer novices marching behind the Chanter, chanting in plainsong unison as they traversed the long, familiar, smooth-worn circuit through the great monastery.

As the chant swelled, El thought of all the rooms around him, both the walled-off towers and those in use and lined with books. Monks shuffling silently from chamber to chamber, cowls shading their faces, lost in thought. Inevitably, he found himself wondering how many foes were among them, lurking within these thick and ancient stone walls.

Intruders like he was, wearing the faces of monks they’d slain.

Waiting for … what?

The chance to steal or seize the mighty spells of centuries past? Or the magic of the monks of Candlekeep? Come to think of it, he’d not seen any magical rods thrust through the belts of the Avowed since his arrival, though that habit had once been usual. On the other hand, he’d not yet laid eyes on any highranking monks …

Or were the disguised intruders just hiding from the war and tumult outside the fortress, judging the ancient monastery to be the best refuge they could think of to ride out worse things that might well be coming?

Or were they here to try to harness the wards of Candlekeep for some fell purpose? Or find the same secrets of the Weave he himself sought?

High time to think about such things, or at least about how he should best proceed to learn more about them, indeed. Without, of course, seeming to do so.

El turned pages as if seeking something. He stopped when he found one of the casting arrays drawn out, with its triangles and radiating lines and encircled runes of power, and peered at it, pretending to study it intently.

While he really stared right through it, and let himself feel the Weave. It was bright and many knotted around him, of course, yet he saw it through ale-brown smoke of varying thickness: the wards.

Here in the old fortress that was the heart of Candlekeep, the wards shaped and constrained the Weave, binding it into walls and floors and the many-layered domes of surrounding force.

Making it hard for him to send unseen spying arms of his awareness anywhere within its bounds without having to fight the Weave-and making his presence and intent obvious to anyone attuned to the wards. As all of the older and higher-ranking monks were.

Which meant he’d have to do things the old way. Use spells only when absolutely necessary, and otherwise use his feet, his eyes, and his thinking.

Hmph. All of his failing faculties.

The chant was much nearer now. It was lesser than it had usually been during his visits, with fewer voices raised in the chanting. He knew the prophecies of Alaundo as well as any monk here did, and it was surprising how few of them had come to pass, and so had been dropped from the chant, since his last stay at Candlekeep.

The chanted words were clearly audible now.

“One shall rise out of thorns and fire, and seven shall be the swords that cleave to him, seven the crowns he binds together. One shall fall from the skies, and free dragons from their dungeon, and they shall scour the lands for their imprisoner. One shall-”

“Pray excuse, Brother,” a voice murmured from the next table, a man’s hand, palm down, moved gently into Elminster’s field of vision and stopped, hovering as was the custom, waiting for a response.

El put his finger down on an inscription in the upper right of the casting array as if to tamp the spot down in his mind, stiffened his oldest and least detectable mantle spell to shield himself from an attack, and looked up-into a kindly, anxious face. “Yes?”

It was a monk he’d met only once before, when the man had been much younger. Myndlar. Of Athkatla. Ah, yes, this was the monk who believed dragons sought to steer human thought by writing books, purporting to be human women, and by sending dreams to humans who’d established reputations as writers.

“Archemusk, yes?” Myndlar asked eagerly, yet timidly. “The page before that array … does he mention Aravril as having claimed that several Netherese archmages hid by taking wyvern shape? Or was it the half-elf Talastaril who made that claim?”

“Neither,” El replied from memory, turning back a page, and adding hastily, “I think.” What he knew to be true might well not be what Archemusk had written … but in this case, it was. The book mentioned Moranveril of Myth Drannor as having seen archmages take the shape of wyverns, in ruins deep in Raurin-Moranveril who shortly thereafter vanished, and “was seen no more by anyone.”

Myndlar studied that passage for a long moment, then nodded, thanked Dalkur, and returned eagerly to his own reading, flipping the pages of three open books until he found several passages to compare, in light of what he’d just learned.

Typical behavior of a monk of Candlekeep, when not dealing with a monk of exalted rank or one known to be difficult. And not a word, look, or hesitation that might suggest he viewed Dalkur with the slightest suspicion.

El turned back to the casting array, found the inscription he’d put his finger on, and went back to thinking.

If the old stiffneck hid anything coherent anywhere for others to find, it will have been here. And I know he wrote everything down, in flowery full-know it as sure as I know my own name. His pride would demand nothing less.

Aye, he had known Khelben Arunsun through and through, just as Khelben had known him. Which is why they’d never stopped arguing with each other, or going about things in very different ways, yet never stopped working for the same cause. Even if not always together, or without deliberately getting in each other’s way.

Now, the question was, had Mystra imparted secrets of the Weave to Khelben greater than the understanding of its great tapestry one Elminster Aumar had reached?

And if she had, had anyone else suspected as much, and come here looking for them?

A bell so deep throated as to be felt more than heard tolled then, just once.

In response, more than one stomach in the small chamber rumbled.

El hid his amusement at how swiftly his fellow monks set aside their books and departed the room.

Food for thought seldom triumphed long over food for the belly.

“So, Old Wolf, we meet again,” purred a voice Mirt hadn’t expected to hear in a place such as this. Here in one of the dimmest and farthest of the discreet upper rooms of the Dusty Knight, an establishment of far less than savory reputation that graced a dirty back street halfway across Suzail from the Queen Fee.

Manshoon stood in the doorway, tall, thin, and as darkly handsome as ever, his cloak swirling as he drew one gloved hand along his belt to rest on … something Mirt didn’t recognize, that looked both magical and menacing.

Mirt gave the women seated around him silent looks that suggested it would be safest if they left the room, right now. Experienced night-coin takers all, they melted out of the room by the three side doors in a few swift and quiet moments, leaving the onetime Lord of Waterdeep alone with the cloaked vampire who’d ruled both Zhentil Keep and Westgate in his time.

Under the table, Mirt readied some handy magic of his own. “You our first patron?” he inquired gruffly.

“ ‘Our’? You co-own the Dusty Knight now? My, you do move swiftly!”

“Not that quickly. The ladies and I have just formed a go-to-patrons venture. To cater to citizens and visitors who’d rather not be seen coming here.”

Manshoon strolled into the room and shut the door. “Promising-if you can get word to the right ears in the right manner-a warm, safe haven in these times of tumult.”

Mirt fixed his unexpected guest with a suspicious eye. “Aye. And would a safe haven be the subject of your current hunt?”

Manshoon lowered himself into one of the vacated chairs across the table from Mirt, took up the decanter from the table and an unused tallglass, and drawled, “Not particularly. Say rather, I prefer to move from good vantage point to good vantage point-the better to watch unfolding doom-for entertainment’s sake. Rather than plunging into the fray.”

“Until?” Mirt asked, interpreting the pitch of his guest’s last few words.

“Until the Shadovar, at least, have made their move.”

“Ah. The archmages of the floating city, who now rule Anauroch. Again, some are saying.”

“The same.”

“You’re acquainted with them?”

“I’ve learned enough to decide on my present, ah, course of inaction.”

Mirt accepted the return of the decanter, filled himself a glass, and asked dryly, “So does a certain Manshoon have any plans to refound, or take over, a certain Brotherhood, or Black Network-or whatever it’s called these days?”

The vampire smiled. “Another year, perhaps.”

Mirt set down the decanter and asked, “After Elminster has made his own intentions regarding the continued existence of the Zhentarim, and your blossoming career, in particular, clear?”

Manshoon paused with his glass almost to his lips and asked coldly, “And why would I concern myself in the slightest with the doings of that ancient and overblown hedge wizard?”

Mirt shrugged. “Mayhap ’twould be that he seems to go looking to thwart you, and whenever you and he cross blades-or spells, or whatever wizards do when they fight-Elminster always seems to win.”

“Always seems to, yes. Thanks to Mystra. Truth be known, his so-called triumphs often make things worse for us all. He’s Mystra’s doomsman, her destroyer. Her herald, showing us the darkness before she rides in to rescue us all with her divine benevolence and light. He doesn’t even see how badly he’s being used. Or worse, perhaps he does see it, and is too insane to care about the damage he does.”

Mirt nodded calmly. “Did it never occur to you that Mystra might be using you just as she does Elminster? Herald and dark herald?”

Manshoon gave the old man a coldly level look. “I see Lords of Waterdeep regard heralds in rather a different light than the rest of us.”

“ ‘Rest of us’? There are more of you? I seem to recall hearing about a war of many Manshoons that … took care of that.”

The vampire sneered. “Believe what you want to believe, Mirt. The truth is seldom so tidy.”

Mirt raised his glass. “At last, something we can agree on. I’ll drink to that.”

Mockingly his guest toasted him, and they sipped in unison.

Mirt sighed gusty appreciation of the vintage, set down his glass, and observed, “I’m sure you’ll eventually get around to telling me your reason for troubling to seek me out-here in the less than publicly prominent Dusty Knight.”

Manshoon smiled. “Soon.”

“Shall I save you the dallying? You think I’m working with Elminster, and want to know what he’s up to right now.”

“My, old wolves retain sharp wits.”

Mirt shrugged. “That may or may not be, but this particular Old Wolf isn’t working with Elminster, and hasn’t the faintest where he’s gone or what he’s busy with. He’s meddling, of course, but as for where and why …” He shrugged again.

“Spells to compel truth are things even young apprentices can master,” Manshoon remarked idly.

“If you want to waste one just to learn I’m speaking truth, be my guest.” Mirt combed his beard with calm fingers, found a fragment of garlic hardbread crust from his last meal, and ate it with gusto. “Isn’t it a trifle … dangerous, being this candid with me?”

The vampire smiled again. “You’re no fool, Old Wolf. You know prudence. I, too, am no fool-and have more than enough magic to fry the brains of any lord or aging rogue who crosses me.”

Mirt matched his guest’s cold smile. “You mean you have more than enough magic to try.”

Manshoon set down his glass. “And there you take the inevitable step too far, old man. A bold stride into foolishness, to be sure. Wise men know better than to push the likes of me. We push back.”

The spell came across the table without warning, a boiling darkness that flared up and lashed out at Mirt’s face like a wide-fanged snake.

Only to rebound with a bright flash, parried by an unseen mantle spell that turned it back entirely upon Manshoon, whose startled grunt soared into a shriek of pain before-

The chair across the table from Mirt held only silence, and a thick tendril of rising, drifting mingled smoke and mist.

“Contingencies,” the Old Wolf muttered disgustedly. “Wizards never do taste the full consequences of their folly.”

He reached for the decanter. Once he’d raised it, clearing his field of view, he could see that the blackened seat of the smoldering chair across from him was now cracked right across.

“Still as overconfident as ever, I see,” he observed to the empty air. “Did it never occur to you, Lord of the Zhentarim, that someone who’s survived as long as I have might-just might-have fallen into the habit of anticipating rather obvious danger, and preparing for it?”

The rising, fading mist offered no reply, but then, Mirt hadn’t expected it to. He filled and promptly drained his glass, in one long gulp.

And then shrugged, reached across the table to pluck up Manshoon’s abandoned tallglass, and drained it, too.