FORGOTTEN REALMS®

ED GREENWOOD

SAGE OF SHADOWDALE
Elminster: The Making of a Mage
Elminster in Myth Drannor
The Temptation of Elminster
Elminster in Hell
Elminster’s Daughter
Elminster Must Die
Bury Elminster Deep
Elminster Enraged
The Herald (Book VI of The Sundering)
Spellstorm

THE KNIGHT OF MYTH DRANNOR
Swords of Eveningstar
Swords of Dragonfire
The Sword Never Sleeps

SHANDRIL’S SAGE
Spellfire
Crown of Fire
Hand of Fire

THE SHADOW OF THE AVATAR
Shadows of Doom
Cloak of Shadows
All Shadows Fled

THE HARPERS
Stormlight

THE CORMYR SAGE
Cormyr: A Novel (with Jeff Grubb)
Death of the Dragon (with Troy Denning)

ALSO BY ED GREENWOOD

Silverfall: Stories of the Seven Sisters
The City of Splendors: A Waterdeep Novel (with Elaine Cunningham)
The Best of the Realms, Book II: The Stories of Ed Greenwood

SPELLSTORM
©2015 Wizards of the Coast LLC.

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FORGOTTEN REALMS, D&D, WIZARDS OF THE COAST, their respective logos, and the dragon ampersand are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast LLC, in the U.S.A. and other countries.

All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. All Wizards of the Coast characters, character names, and the distinctive likenesses thereof are property of Wizards of the Coast LLC.

Cartography: Mike Schley
Cover: Aleksi Briclot

ISBN: 978-0-7869-6571-7
ISBN: 978-0-7869-6584-7 (ebook)
620B2369000001 EN

Cataloging-in-Publication data is on file with the Library of Congress

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v3.1

To Jenny,
For everything and more.

1. Front Entrance

2. Great Entry Hall

3. Red Receiving Room

4. Servery (accesses 3 through sliding panels; reached via cellar-level passage from 16)

5. Feast Dumbwaiter Antechamber (dumbwaiter elevator from cellar-level Underservery; also goes to disused upper floor)

6. Library

7. Front Staircase (cellar/ground floor/upper floor)

8. Servants’ Stair (ground floor/cellars)

9. Summer Room (lounge)

10. Armor Court

11. “The Passage” (Hall of Ancestors)

12. Blue Chamber

13. Copper Receiving Room

14. Feast Hall

15. Kitchen

16. Butlery

17. Back Kitchen

18. Kitchen Stairs (servants’ use: cellars [cold cellar and wine cellar adjacent to bottom of stair]/upper floor)

19. South Servery

20. Pantry

21. Larder

22. Green Audience Chamber

23. South Stairs (cellars/upper floor [upper floor: servants’ quarters and storage attics, currently ruinous])

24. Withdrawing Room

25. Parlor

26. Fire Stair (spiral)

27. Guest Bedchamber (assigned to Elminster)

28. Nursery (used by servants)

29. Family Bedchamber (used by servants; assigned to Myrmeen)

30. Family Bedchamber (used by servants; assigned to Mirt)

31. Lord Halaunt’s Receiving Room

32. Lord’s Wine Antechamber

33. Lord Halaunt’s Bedchamber

34. Lord’s Wardrobe

35. Lord’s Retiring Room/Robing Room

36. Lord’s Lounge (assigned to Tabra as her bedchamber)

37. Lord’s Study

38. Guest Servants’ Bedchamber (vacant)

39. Guest Bedchamber (assigned to Malchor Harpell as his bedchamber)

40. Guest Bedchamber (assigned to Manshoon as his bedchamber)

41. Guest Bedchamber (assigned to Skouloun as his bedchamber)

42. Guest Bedchamber (assigned to Maraunth Torr as his bedchamber)

43. Guest Bedchamber (assigned to Calathlarra as her bedchamber)

44. Guest Servants’ Bedchamber (vacant)

45. Ladies’ Lounge (assigned to Shaaan the Serpent Queen as her bedchamber)

46. Chamber of the Founder (statue of first Lord Halaunt [used as guests’ lounge])

47. Grand Staircase (cellars [furniture repair workshop, bulk larder stores]/ground floor/upper floor [ten vacant guest bedchambers])

48. Statue Chamber

49. Linens Closet

50. Bathing Chamber

51. Trophy Chamber

52. Garderobe

53. Documents Room

54. Messengers’ Bedchamber (vacant)

55. Messengers’ Lounge

56. Guest Wardrobe

57. Armory

58. Guest Bedchamber (assigned to Yusendre as her bedchamber)

59. Guest Bedchamber (assigned to Alastra Hathwinter as her bedchamber)

60. Guests’ Storage Room/Wardrobe/overflow Guest Servants’ Bedchamber (vacant)

61. Guest Servants’ Hall

62. Storeroom

63. Prayer Room

64. Writing Room

65. Dancers’ Robing Room

66. Garderobe

67. Garderobe

68. Dancing Hall

69. Plate and Cutlery (“secret stair” at end, cellars/ground floor/upper floor)

Seek no morrow, but make war ready; heed what I darkly warn
For you face blood, sorrow, fell treachery, and dread spellstorm.

Bardraskur, Bard of Immersea
A Dark Day for Cormyr
Published circa the Year of the Helm

CHAPTER 1

Sipping Choice Wines at the Dragon Rampant

SPYING ON BEHALF OF THE CROWN COULD GET FAR WORSE THAN THIS.

Tarnmark Lionmantle let the rich, tart Brodolvan red sluice its delightful way around his mouth until his tongue flirted with the edge of numbness, then swallowed. It burned wonderfully, all the way down. Truly, the older Chessentan vintages were coming into their own.

And wasn’t that the sort of arch and airy comment a noble would make. Hmmph.

He still didn’t feel like one, thanks to a dead father and an impoverished mother who’d been a commoner for far more years than she’d been styled “Lady.” Not to mention how, in his own ongoing service as a wizard of war, he was constantly being told what to do by mages whose every uttered word reminded him, often defiantly, that they came from far more humble families.

Tarn took a suitably dainty forkful of his plum-and-cheese tart, just the thing to cleanse the palate between roast stag and the usual platter of darkwine-drenched eels—ugh—and sat back in his chair. Across the table, his supper companion took this as a signal that Tarn wanted to talk. And since “talk” meant, to Lord Lareth Hardcastle the Younger, “gossip like a chambermaid,” that’s what Lareth did.

The fair-haired noble with the ridiculous new side-whiskers he was so proud of leaned forward conspiratorially across the table. Breathing great gusts of onion-and-pineapple flummery into Tarn’s face, he whispered, “Old Halaunt’s come alone tonight. They’re saying he hasn’t even coin enough left to hire a doxy for half an evening. Guess it’ll be a lonely night of looking through the naughty etchings for him.”

Tarnmark carefully did not turn his head to regard Lord Halaunt, whom he’d been watching sidelong for most of the evening. Of all the diners in the exclusive and expensive Dragon Rampant on whom he was spying on this unusually warm night in late Tarsakh of the Year of Dwarvenkind Reborn, Halaunt bore the nastiest reputation by far. Which was a large part of the reason the man was dining alone.

Halaunt had few friends, and no one was likely to strike up an acquaintance with a man so hunched and grim, who glared down at his plate as if he wanted to start a feud with it.

The old noble gave off a tension Tarn could feel, a readiness to erupt that meant … danger.

And no wonder. Certain senior courtiers were of the opinion that Lord Sardasper Halaunt had run through almost all of his coin, and was now on the brink of doing something desperate to replenish his coffers.

And anyone in the Forest Kingdom whose memory spanned more than a decade or so knew that “something desperate,” among nobles of Cormyr, all too often involved not just the illicit, but also actions dangerous to the realm.

“Perhaps so,” he murmured to Lareth. “Or perhaps he’s here on business.”

Hardcastle snorted. “Business? Since when did yon darkbeak dirty his hands with any sort of work, or warm his brains with trying to count coins? Isn’t that what got him into his present, ah, circumstances?”

Tarnmark shrugged. Darkbeaks were vultures of the Stonelands, and the term was fitting. Lord Halaunt was a nasty, grasping, reclusive widower of expensive tastes, and the Dragon Rampant was the only club in Suzail he’d ever set boot in, so far as the Crown spies knew. The man did count coins, and seek to hold on to them, too, sometimes in the face of the royal tax collectors. He’d ruined investors in the past who’d joined him in ventures, when matters had turned sour. As the saying went, he was one of “those who takes care to get more than even.”

“Have you not heard the rumors?” Tarn murmured across the pleasant aroma of their still-steaming tarts, leaning forward and speaking quietly in hopes of keeping Hardcastle quiet enough for the old lord not to overhear himself being discussed. “Regarding the Lost Spell?”

Lareth smote his own forehead. “Gods above and serpents below! I’d quite forgotten they were buckled to yon old lordship! ’Tis not as if he comes wrapped in the mantle of wizardry when you call him to mind, now, hey?”

“Indeed,” Tarn replied warningly, frowning and lowering his voice still further.

Hardcastle finally took the hint, and delivered his next words in a hiss that would have roused any snakes that might have been hiding in the far corners of the room. “I’ve never heard he had any aptitude for the Art at all! Isn’t he one of those who dismissed their father’s house wizard, and never hired a replacement?”

“He is,” Tarn confirmed, as—with some difficulty through the usual loud laughter of Lord Talcontin—his ears caught “Halaunt” and “spell” from two different tables behind him. Rumors were racing around the room regarding Lord Halaunt; the same talk he’d heard throughout uppercrust Suzail these last two days.

Though the Lord of Oldspires had never shown any aptitude for magic before, it was now being noised about that he’d somehow come into possession of a world-shaking enchantment wizards called the Lost Spell—and was prepared to sell it to the highest bidder.

This might all be so much fancy, of course, but Halaunt himself had been spreading word of it since his arrival in the city five days back. So it was truth, or the least subtle lure Tarn could recall since the matter of Lord Varweather’s three daughters …

“One last high table ere it’s back to fried cows and barn wine, hey, Halaunt?” old Lord Rathdale growled amiably, on his lurching way across the room to his own table.

Lord Halaunt gave him a curt nod. “You’ll be welcome at Oldspires if your offer is suitably rich,” he growled. “Otherwise, Horarrus …”

“You prefer prettier guests, I know.” Rathdale flung back over his shoulder as he settled himself into his chair and thrust one foot up onto his gout stool with a grateful grunt.

Tarn applied himself to his tart again. So it was true; Halaunt would be returning on the morrow to the seclusion of his country mansion, Oldspires, to entertain suitably rich offers for the spell.

It seemed Halaunt’s Lost Spell was the most interesting matter on offer in the Dragon that night; Tarn had made his own stroll to the garderobe thrice in hopes of hearing better, but all he’d overheard was the tawdry usual. In that corner Lord Alamber and Lord Battlebar were arguing the relative merits of their respective stables from adjacent tables while their wives yawned and frankly dozed, while over there Lord Darstan was smugly informing Lord Harcourt that, as a matter of fact, he owned the three fastest caravels berthed in Suzail or Marsember and wouldn’t part with them for coin or cozening—though he might entertain parting with them for three castles per caravel, provided they were the right three castles.

While over here, in his usual braying high spirits, Lord Talcontin was still trumpeting his triumphs to his table of kin and guests—several of the more impoverished noble couples, like the Orthwoods and the young widow Lady Scatterstars. “So I said to him, ‘Chalauncey,’ I said, ‘that’s not a horse—that’s what happens when a Sembian lets his cattle in to breed with his neighbor’s giant goats!’ Aww haw haw hah haw ho haw!”

Crown and Throne, but the man was loud!

Tarn weighed the relative merits of “accidentally” moving one of the empty chairs at his table in such a manner as to swing its legs with vigor into contact with the back of Talcontin’s head. Such a tactic would fleetingly win this end of the room a little peace, yet the feuds that would undoubtedly result would last for years, perhaps generations. Regretfully, he decided those disputes would hamper his daily work far too much to be the favored option.

“Well, he was less than pleased, I can tell you! So—”

Talcontin brayed on, but quite suddenly Tarn was no longer hearing him. Rather, he was hastily replenishing his goblet of Brodolvan so it could serve as a cover for watching a new arrival cross the table-studded floor of the Dragon’s dining chamber.

He was a stranger, slender and darkly handsome, with the confident air of a lord comfortable giving commands, an unreadable and gently smiling face, and the cold eyes of a ruthless murderer. Tarn dropped his gaze hastily, knowing the man had noticed his scrutiny—along with, quite likely, minute observable details of every other person in the room.

Gazing into the crimson depths of his wine, Tarn Lionmantle knew he’d never seen this man before, and yet … knew him. So then, from where?

Ah. Tarn’s momentary frown fled for a moment, only to return full force. One of the “heed all” warnings, that was it. The alerts sent out to all wizards of war, so often these days that they tended to become an unheeded blizzard, one blurring together with the next. The man wending his easy way among the tables, headed in Tarn’s direction, closely matched a description in one of those warnings. What was it, now? The latest Sembian trying to buy up half of eastern Cormyr on the sly? No …

Ah, he had it now. This guest, now indicating to one of the Dragon’s deft plattermen the empty table of his choice, which was just the far side of Halaunt, was a powerful wizard seen often in Cormyr; one who came and went as he pleased without bothering to report his strong mastery of the Art to any wizard of war. A dark archmage with frequent dealings in Westgate and Zhentil Keep, two cities that were no friends to the Forest Kingdom. A man to be watched, but also to beware of. Rumored to be the son, or a lookalike of—or even the very same man, kept young over the passing years through fell magic—a powerful man of Westgate. A criminal. Orbakh, that was the name; a Westar said by many to be a vampire.

And if he remembered Ganrahast’s words correctly, Orbakh of Westgate had been one of the “many Manshoons” magically crafted by the first Manshoon, the Lord of Zhentil Keep who had founded the Zhentarim.

Wonderful. Why did such things always have to happen on his shift?

This Manshoon had just ordered a meal, and tall, slender bottles of something exotic from the South were already on their way to his table.

Tarn turned his head away and devoted himself to Hardcastle’s gossip with far more dedication than it deserved, stroking his chin thoughtfully as he tilted his head just so—so the tall gold-and-silver salt-castle in front of him provided a small but perfect window of reflection that showed him Manshoon.

Damned if the man wasn’t winking at him!

Tarn raised his goblet hastily to his mouth, knowing he must be flushing to the very tips of his ears, and—found his attention ensnared again.

And “ensnared” was definitely the right word. This second new arrival was coming from the direction of the Dragon’s back staircase, more favored for hasty exits than for entrances, and she was … was …

Beautiful. Sleekly, dangerously beautiful, and clad in a simple flowing ankle-length emerald-green gown that matched the emerald irises of her disconcertingly direct gaze—a gaze that met Tarn’s ere he could look away. He caught his breath in startlement; the black rimmed-with-gold pupils of her eyes were vertical slits, like those of a snake! She crossed the room with a sultry, swaying grace. Those undulations not only drew attention, they made a sensual promise to every watcher.

It was only when a scuttling Dragon platterman guided her to a nearby empty table and she slid deftly into a seat that Tarn noticed her skin. As one flaring sleeve fell away, he saw that the revealed ivory skin of her shapely forearm had faint undertones of emerald and the soft brown of butter being melted in a pastry cook’s skillet. Undertones that showed through her soft white skin in the shapes of many small, overlapping arcs.

The woman had scales.

“Mendep’s Morningdew,” she commanded flatly, before the approaching wine steward could even open his mouth. “Of the vintage laid down in the birth year of Azoun the Fourth, if you have it. As close thereafter as your cellars furnish, if you do not.”

Tarn was as surprised as the wine steward but flattered himself that he hid it slightly better. An old and expensive wine, to be sure.

And her voice … a husky purr, with just a hint of sibilance. He’d seen the tip of her very pink and slender tongue only momentarily; had it, or had it not, been forked?

He risked a look at the salt-castle and then an oh-so-casual glance around the room to see if Manshoon’s interest had been kindled. It had. The archmage—and possibly vampire, too—was carefully examining his own goblet, a-sparkle with just-poured wine, but he, too, now had the same air of watchful tension about him as Lord Halaunt.

Definitely thanks to this scaled woman.

For his part, Halaunt was carefully not looking at either new arrival, but his shoulders were hunched and his eyes were a-glitter with … was that fear?

Tarn didn’t even dare sigh. Danger was imminent; he could smell it. Powerful magic rode these two new arrivals like cloaks raging with flames, and even if he could somehow call every wizard of war in all Suzail into this room in time, he dared not try.

He just might be dooming them all.

This haughty, strikingly beautiful woman certainly had scales here and there on her skin, and seemed very well aware—though Tarn could not say how he knew this, he was certain of it nonetheless—of who around her had any sort of mastery of the Art. She was smiling now, and that wide smile reminded Tarn of the fixed grin of a giant snake he’d seen lying dead on the edge of a bog in Hultail once, transfixed by many Purple Dragon spears.

Right now, as the wine steward hurried off and a hovering platterman turned away to fetch a goblet suitable for a lady of high station, she was …

Gods above! She was calmly and quite openly casting a spell! A coercive magic, some sort of mind lock, on Lord Halaunt!

That illegal act brought Lionmantle to his feet, but he didn’t even have time to open his mouth in a formal charge and challenge before he felt magic wash over him from behind, the merest tingling touch of something aimed not at him, but at—

Tarn whirled around.

And looked straight into the gentle smile of Manshoon, who’d just finished casting something on Lord Halaunt.

Who was visibly struggling, his eyes wild and his mouth an open and quivering thing that he was fighting to control.

As Tarn stared, all sanity and self-awareness went away in the old lord’s lost gaze. Sardasper Halaunt was … no longer there behind his own eyes. He started to mew and jerk spasmodically, plucked back and forth in the tug-of-war of the two magics affecting his mind. Halaunt was helpless under the onslaught.

Cutlery clattered as diners shot to their feet here and there in the Dragon Rampant’s softly lit dining chamber. Converse stopped, lords and ladies stared, and those now standing moved their hands in intricate gestures as they murmured incantations.

Tarn had known he wasn’t the only undercover war wizard on duty in the Dragon, but only one of the spellcasters had a face he recognized.

He hastily ducked down, giving Hardcastle—half-risen, sword half-drawn—a glare that sent his dining companion back down into his chair, and then Tarn started working a swift spell-shield.

Knowing, even as he started spellweaving, that he’d be too late.

The phrase raced out of him, the simple gestures were done without looking, and the spell slammed into something unseen in the air around the scaled woman, a shielding of a sort Tarn had never seen before, a sphere of nothingness that glowed briefly under the crackling lash of the incoming spells.

Yes, spells; no less than three other diners had attacked the woman in the emerald gown. She turned, hissing like a serpent in her fury, to regard them all with eyes that were very large and dark amid gold-ringed rage, and trilled forth an incantation that left no doubt that her tongue was long, slender, pink, and forked.

“I am Shaaan the Serpent Queen,” she told the room with a cold sneer, “and you have all just made the last mistakes of your lives!”

The emerald lightning that lashed out of her then crashed into Tarn Lionmantle’s shield like the blow of a giant’s fist, almost dashing him off his feet.

Beyond and behind him, Lord Lareth Hardcastle was not so lucky. He and the table and the salt-castle and all that was left of their food tumbled away through the air, hurled clear across the dining chamber.

Nor was Hardcastle the only diner dashed down the room. The air filled with chairs, tables, and flying food.

Tarn gaped at all the tumult, and thought the very same thing that a wart-faced old lord at a nearby table roared out then: “And just who the deuce is Shayan the Serpent Queen, and by what right does she trounce and confound my dinner?”

More angry men and women were on their feet now, here and there among the tumbled tables, glows kindling around their hands as they worked magics. A dozen or more mages, many of them folk Tarn would never have suspected for an instant of being wielders of the Art.

The young wizard of war ducked low as a table glanced off his shield and past, shedding a splintered leg as it went, and found himself looking into the furious glare of the scaled woman.

As she faced Manshoon. He still wore his gentle, half-mocking smile as his eyes locked on hers—and a mighty magic was building behind his shoulders like a great gray-black ocean wave topped and lace-edged with wintry white lightnings, crackling and snarling arcs of stabbing light that … suddenly rolled across the room and seared furniture and shrieking diners alike.

Only to part in the air right in front of the Serpent Queen, as if on the invisible prow of a sleek and slender ship, to roar past her on either side.

The divided wave of ravening magic struck Tarn’s shield like the scornful slap of a dragon’s tail, driving him back a few staggering paces—and lashed the far wall of the dining chamber, sending the ornamental draperies billowing up in hungrily writhing magical flames.

“Is that the best you can do, Zhentarim?” Shaaan sneered—and threw up both her hands, unleashing ruby-hued magic Tarn didn’t recognize, to arrow back across the room, melting all it touched into greasy smoke. Diners fell in limp grotesquerie, their flesh boiling away to join the gray billows … and when the fading fingers of that ruby death touched the far wall of the Dragon’s dining chamber, the wall started to melt and sag, too.

Tarn dared to race forward and take hold of the drooling, sagging thing that had been Lord Halaunt, dragging him from his chair as the emerald-gowned woman and her dark-clad rival traded spells in seeming glee.

Then Tarn started the long crawl toward the back stair, hoping it would still be there when he and Halaunt—a mewing, limply flailing burden he had to haul along the littered floor— reached it. He could scarce believe something like this was happening in the very glittering heart of Suzail, the capital city of a realm that had its own wizards of war. Spell duels like this just didn’t happen in Cormyr.

As if to mock him, parts of the ceiling started to groan down into collapse, the walls that were holding them up having already been ruined and set afire.

All around him, the Dragon Rampant was being spectacularly destroyed.

CHAPTER 2

What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

LADY GLATHRA BARCANTLE’S EYES WERE TWO DARK FLAMES OF ANGER.

Tarn had been expecting that, but still found himself flinching.

“It’s been five days,” she snapped. “I do hope, Lord Lionmantle, that your excuse is a spectacularly sturdy one.”

Tarn Lionmantle stared back at her rather dazedly. “Ah,” he began hesitantly, “uh, that is … you, ah, do know half a building fell on me?”

The senior wizard of war nodded impatiently, then turned that nod into a dismissive shake of her head.

“Just half. Young nobles, these days,” she snarled in disgust, and spun around to stride away, impatiently beckoning him to follow.

Tarn had thought he knew the Royal Palace of Suzail rather well, but two secret doors after Glathra had led him into the Green Stateroom, he was lost.

They were descending a steep dark stair hidden in the thick wall between two staterooms, headed he knew not where. But then, he had been struck senseless while fleeing the burning Dragon Rampant, and only now, four evenings later, had recovered enough to walk and know where he was and command his wits again.

If Lady Glathra’s manner was anything to go by, he was heading to his own doom, not just to report the events at the Dragon Rampant to the Royal Magician of Cormyr. But then, he reminded himself, Glathra always seemed to be in an icy rage, and surely Ganrahast was wise and fair enough not to blame a junior spy for what outlander archmages did.

“What’s left of the Dragon?” he dared to ask Glathra’s hurrying back, but she made no reply.

He swallowed the exasperated sigh that rose in him at that, and settled for rolling his eyes instead.

Wonderful.

His head was starting to ache again. He should still be back in that bed, under the care of those soft-voiced, attentive court healers, not pounding down unending stone steps in near darkness.

Where by the Nine Hells was Glathra taking him, anyway?

Well, possibly those very same Nine Hells, by the looks of this descent. Or mayhap she was going to settle for some deadly corner of the drow-haunted Underdark this time …

Tarn snorted. This time, indeed.

Quite suddenly, as Glathra laid her hand on a door, a shielding spell flared into visibility long enough for Tarn to be impressed by its thickness and strength—and then she was bursting through it and reaching back to take hold of Tarn’s tunic just below his throat, hauling him along after her as if he was a misbehaving scullery boy.

Out in the room beyond, Tarn tore free of her, lurched to a halt, and blinked in the sudden light.

“Junior Wizard of War Tarn Lionmantle has finally consented to grace us with his report,” Glathra announced sourly. She seemed to have forgotten that Tarn was a lord.

The two men sitting at a large table littered with layers of maps and intelligence reports looked up at Glathra and nodded rather wearily.

Then they both put on smiles as they transferred their gazes to Tarn, which he took as a good sign. Not that he could entirely quell the fear rising in him.

He was, after all, reporting something bad to the Royal Magician of Cormyr and the Lord Warder of the Realm, the two highest-ranking wizards of war in the Forest Kingdom.

“You will be hemming and hawing as to where to start,” Ganrahast told Tarn gently. “So let me begin by telling you that the lord Halaunt lives, thanks to your efforts, though his mind may be shattered forever. The Dragon Rampant burned to the ground, with a dozen dead, but every last person seen working magic in the club that night got away.”

“Except you,” Glathra put in, but Ganrahast waved her words away with a dismissive hand.

“What interests us,” said Vainrence, setting aside a report he’d been reading, “is why the duel? Why such a public crossing of swords, where so many nobles—and Crown spies, for even if they knew no spy by sight, they could hardly not have known that we do watch and listen in such venues—will see? What message is being sent?”

“That we cannot guard and police our own?” Glathra suggested. “That they can do as they please, within our borders?”

“Ah, but who are ‘they’?” Ganrahast asked quietly.

“I saw the man believed to be Manshoon,” Tarn Lionmantle said carefully, “sit down alone to dine near where Lord Halaunt was eating. He was aware of my scrutiny; he winked at me. And when the woman who proclaimed herself Shaaan the Serpent Queen arrived, sent the staff away to seek an obscure vintage, and immediately cast a coercive spell on Lord Halaunt—not one I recognized—Manshoon worked a magic on him first. I can only conclude he expected her arrival and her casting, and was waiting for her to act.”

“And just why would such deadly archmages choose Lord Halaunt to be their prize, or battlefield?” the Royal Magician of Cormyr asked quietly. “I’ve heard the rumors, but would prefer to hear it from someone not excitedly embellishing what they’re passing on. So much of what we hear is colored by Raedra this, or Baerovus that, or ‘I back a better future monarch than either.’ ”

“I know not Lord Halaunt’s politics, but I do know why powerful wizards would be interested in him: the Lost Spell,” Tarn replied grimly. “If such a thing truly exists.” He looked at Glathra, who shrugged and turned to Vainrence.

“I’ve heard that same talk,” the Lord Warder said, “and have been trying to verify it, thus far without success.”

Ganrahast spread his hands in a silent question, and Vainrence obliged. “They’re saying in the streets that the reclusive noble Lord Halaunt has somehow acquired the legendary Lost Spell, and intends to auction it to the highest bidder. Or rather, that Lord Halaunt is announcing that he has this magic, in such a way as to make it clear he’s interested in hearing offers.”

Ganrahast sighed and sat back in his chair, steepling his fingers in thought. “Ah, that ‘somehow’—as in, how did the likes of Lord Halaunt get his hands on the Lost Spell, if he has? How would he even know what he had?”

“You’re really asking who put the notion into the head of a noble with no grasp of the Art that he had a spell at all,” Glathra murmured. “And somehow convinced him that it was this legendary Lost Spell that’s said to provide its caster with an endless supply of their favorite spells, to cast and recast at will. Halaunt’s history bespeaks someone more suspicious and skeptical than gullible.”

“You oversimplify the purported nature of the Lost Spell,” Vainrence pointed out gently.

“True,” Ganrahast agreed, “but that hardly matters if it’s all a fabrication. I cannot believe something so unbalancing can be real, if it does work as the tales say. Why are we not all in the thrall of an archmage employing it already?”

“There is the belief, among those who revere Savras, that we are,” Tarn pointed out mildly, but even as the Royal Magician’s face creased in disgust and he waved a firm dismissal of that remark, Glathra spoke up.

“I, too, have a hard time believing there is a Lost Spell of the sort being bruited about—but my Lords, do you not see? Whether Lord Halaunt really has the Lost Spell or not, many powerful wizards seem to think he does, and are even now converging on his country mansion, obviously bent on seizing it.”

Vainrence snorted. “Where they’ll find Halaunt a mind-blasted idiot, probably for the rest of his days. He won’t be telling them anything useful.”

The Royal Magician frowned. “Daethur’s report spoke of three hopeful hedge wizards showing up at Oldspires. Separately. What is this ‘converging’ you speak of?”

The Lord Warder sighed and started digging through the papers in front of him. “Much has happened since you read Daethur’s first message. I’ve been setting them aside for rereading, to get a feel for any unfolding pattern—ah! Here we are!”

He plucked a sheaf of parchments out of the confusion, riffled them with a practiced finger, read for a moment, and then said, “Various Purple Dragons or wizards of war set on watch have identified Manshoon, Malchor Harpell—presumably of the Harpells of Longsaddle, Shaaan the Serpent Queen, and two former Elders of Nimbral—Yusendre and Skouloun, by name—as the most powerful wielders of the Art who have shown up at Oldspires since the Dragon Rampant burned. Among, as you say, a dozen-some hopeful hedge wizards.”

“Purple Dragon forfend!” Ganrahast muttered, turning to give Vainrence a hard look. “And no one thought to tell me?”

His longtime friend and colleague said gently, “It was thought—”

Under the increasingly colder weight of Ganrahast’s glare, the Lord Warder squared his shoulders and amended firmly, “I thought—that your attention would all be taken up by the latest schemes to put Erzoured on the throne, and how they might clash with that plot to restore King Baerovus, and the bids by certain bolder nobles we’ve been watching—”

“What bids?” Glathra asked sharply.

Vainrence looked at her, then transferred his gaze meaningfully to Tarn, but Glathra gave him a look of disgust and snapped, “Lord Lionmantle here is a wizard of war. One of us. Are we keeping secrets now from our own? Really?”

Vainrence looked at Ganrahast, who seemed to quell a smile as he gestured that the Lord Warder should speak freely.

Vainrence nodded gravely, then said to Glathra, “The bids made by various overbold lords to persuade Raedra Obarskyr to marry one of them so Cormyr can have a king again.”

Glathra rolled her eyes. “And that king will be the winning bidder.”

Vainrence nodded. “Whereupon they can strike down the new boldness of the common folk and either recruit we wizards of war to be their ruthless right arm—or see us all exterminated in favor of swords sworn to loyal nobles.”

“Plunging Cormyr into some decades, perhaps centuries, of noble faction battling noble faction for the Dragon Throne, and bleeding the realm white in their strife,” Glathra said bitterly.

Vainrence smiled wryly, nodded again, turned to Ganrahast, and concluded triumphantly, “And that was why I hadn’t bothered you with this matter until now. I judged, perhaps wrongly, that—”

“There was plenty of time to burn down that bridge once we were standing on it,” Tarn Lionmantle told the ceiling, earning him a scowl from Vainrence but startled grins from Glathra and the Royal Magician of Cormyr.

Ganrahast went so far as to chuckle before he asked the Lord Warder, “And this promenade of the magically mighty arriving at Halaunt’s country mansion; what did they do? Blast Oldspires to the ground? Plunder it? Or just spirit Halaunt away for a real mind reaming?”

“Every one of them tried magics, openly but vainly, to force their way through a mysterious ‘storm of spells’ that now surrounds Oldspires. Literally, this is a swirling spell-chaos of unknown origin—one apparently well-known in local lore as appearing regularly, once a month, and enshrouding Oldspires for a tenday at a time.”

It was Ganrahast’s turn to favor the ceiling with a comment. “And how is it that every last wizard of war neglected to inform the Royal Magician of Cormyr of the existence of this minor enchantment manifesting monthly for years, within our borders?”

Vainrence and Glathra winced in unison. “I’ve checked the records,” Glathra said hurriedly, “and found instructions from Royal Magician Vangerdahast, who recorded it as a defensive enchantment of the building that’s to be left alone in case it proves useful in future.”

Ganrahast nodded. “I’m unsurprised at that, just a little taken aback at not knowing of it. What else have you learned about it?”

“Well, it’s not Halaunt’s doing, for neither he nor his father have ever been known to have any skill at the Art, nor to employ wizards—except when Halaunt’s father was dying, and hired a house wizard to seek remedies, almost certainly because that would have been cheaper than paying an independent mage by the day or tenday. Dismissing the man was one of the first things the current Lord Halaunt did, after his father perished.”

Ganrahast nodded again. “Fair enough, but surely my—ah, old Vangey set down some specifics about it; he did for everything else!”

Glathra inclined her head as she called up the memory, and recited in a singsong voice: “ ‘The storm of spells, as it is known locally, is a violently swirling opaque fog, having the appearance of the white smoke of a clean fire. It is no more than a navigational hazard to those who lack aptitude for the Art, but enfeebles the minds of all who have any ability to cast magic who try to march through it, though fleeting contact causes only a sickening nausea and does no harm if the affected individual flees its confines forthwith. It has always been observed to last for ten days at a time.’ ”

She ended her recitation and added in her normal voice, “Several ambitious minor Sembian mages have become its most recent casualties over the past four days. It has been around the mansion for four days now.”

“Halaunt and his household servants—who hustled him home, after Lionmantle here got him out of the burning Dragon—were observed to pass into it,” the Lord Warder put in, “and have not come out again.”

“So if any of them were wizards, they’re mindless now,” Tarn mused aloud, “and if a wizard snuck in while Halaunt was visiting us here in Suzail, any such intruder is presumably trapped inside Oldspires until the storm abates.”

“And in six days,” Vainrence observed, “any wizard can march right into Halaunt’s mansion and try to take the Lost Spell. I foresee the mother of all spell battles, as mage after mage …”

Ganrahast sighed. “Yes. Some will be wise enough to let someone else attempt the seizing first, and someone else pounce on that seizer, and so on. We could have mayhem all over the realm.”

All four wizards of war nodded in grim unison … and silence fell. Tarn tried not to be the first to break it, though he was eager to hear what Ganrahast decided. Yet the Royal Magician parted the heaped and strewn documents in front of him far enough to lay bare a splendid map of the Forest Kingdom, and studied it in silence for what seemed a long time. At last he looked up with a polite smile and said, “Well done, Lord Lionmantle. Both for your actions in the Dragon Rampant, and your contributions here and now. You left a sickbed to make your report, and must be both hungry and thirsty. Glathra here will take you to the kitchens to enjoy a good feast with her and the off-duty wizards of war who are here in the palace.”

Tarn summoned all the schooling of face and voice his Lionmantle elders had taught him to try to hide his disappointment, but knew, as Glathra silently swept him out, that he’d fooled no one in the spell-shielded chamber.

“You’ll grow used to that,” Lady Barcantle said softly, as she led him along still more dark secret passages, deeper into the palace. “I did.”

Tarn didn’t know how to reply, and settled for thanking her formally. He hadn’t known the infamous Glathra “Razortongue” could be kind or understanding.

Truly, Cormyr held fresh surprises every day.

THE SPELL-SHIELD SIGHED out a momentary wash of white sparks as it sealed itself over the door that had just closed behind Glathra Barcantle.

Whereupon Ganrahast sat back in his chair and cursed bitterly, a string of colorful oaths that ended with a heartfelt, “I’m far too busy trying to hold Cormyr together to deal with this just now!”

Vainrence nodded sympathetically. “Fresh trouble since this morn?”

“Of course. As long as the realm has its nobles …”

Ganrahast studied the map in front of him, sighed, and added, “Every new day brings new schemes and outbursts; it seems every last noble wants to revel in their own swaggering moment of arrogantly goading the rest of us. Today, the usual mix of lords grumbling about or passively resisting Raedra, and some others starting to talk about their own new ideas about reducing the ruler’s powers—notably the younger Lord Tathcrown, this morn.”

“Oh? Young Ralaghar? And what’s his ideal Cormyr?”

“He wants the monarch reduced to a first among equals, among nobles who can and should be a lot freer to do as they please. Starting with dismantling the wizards of war, and killing or exiling most of us, in favor of every noble having their own paid—by the Crown, if you please!—house wizards who are sworn-loyal to their noble patrons, not the realm!”

“Trifling demands, to be sure!”

“Rence, he’s one of the more reasonable ones! The moderates had their days of talking it all over in public, and we did nothing; that’s emboldened the out-and-out traitors, and they’re just warming up their tongues. Why—”

The light in the room changed, becoming silver blue. Ganrahast and Vainrence both looked up sharply, hands going to amulets even as they saw what was fading into visibility on the other side of the table.

And their jaws dropped in unison.

They were staring at a gently smiling, curvaceous woman clad from wrist to throat to toes in supple leather armor crisscrossed with baldrics and studded here and there with rounded armor plates and the sheaths of daggers. A long regal blade was scabbarded down her back, and a slender long sword rode her hip. Her hair was long and unbound, she wore a gorget and an oversized belt buckle, both adorned with the Obarskyr dragon, her riding boots flared to the tops of her thighs—and they could see right through her silver-gray form. Her eyes were two friendly flames.

They knew her, for they had both seen her many times down the years. They were looking at the ghost of Princess Alusair, the fabled Steel Regent of the Forest Kingdom.

“Well met, Lords,” she greeted them dryly. “Be at ease; I bring no harm.”

Then she turned to Ganrahast and added formally, “Royal Magician of Cormyr, know this: you don’t have to deal with Halaunt and his Lost Spell and this rabble of overly mighty mages it’s luring to the realm. As you well know, Vangerdahast has been itching to do something useful without meddling in the here-and-now politics of the realm—and this looks to be it.”

Before Ganrahast could even begin to make a reply, white sparks whirled up behind the ghostly princess as one of several secret doors into the room opened in well-oiled velvet softness. A woman slipped into the room, nodded and smiled polite wordless greeting to the two wizards at the table, and stepped forward.

It was Myrmeen Lhal, and out from behind her stepped a man whose life-size portrait glowered at everyone who ascended the main public stair of the Royal Palace: Vangerdahast, the former Court Wizard and Royal Magician of the Realm.

“Well?” he rasped eagerly, eyes alight.

Both of the wizards at the table sighed.

“I don’t think so, Father,” Ganrahast said sourly. “I find trusting what you tell me a trifle difficult. You’ve obviously been eavesdropping—and you’ve lied to me just about thirty times too many.”

“You’re keeping count? This is what the Royal Magician of Cormyr has fallen to?”

The Lord Warder lifted his chin and told Vangerdahast firmly, “There are some in the realm who deem your son weak, or a shirker because he tries to work with everyone, delegate all he can, and allow citizens leeway rather than playing tyrant. You chose the other path, and during your time, there are many who would have wished to ask you that very same question, had they dared: this is what the Royal Magician of Cormyr has fallen to?”

A tense little silence fell, during which the ghost of Princess Alusair turned to face Vangey and half drew the sword at her hip.

Suddenly, Vangerdahast chuckled. “Fairly said. Though the old me feels moved to snap: ‘My time’? Just who are you or anyone else to judge my time over, while I yet breathe?” Without waiting for a reply, he added more gently, “I chafe at idleness, and if I can help in this matter, in any way …”

Ganrahast sighed. “I appreciate that. Truly. Yet I cannot set aside my own view that if all these gathering mages are kegs of smokepowder waiting to be ignited, you set among them would be the flame that would send the whole lot up—but I really don’t have the time to deal with this Lost Spell mess myself, just now.”

“So delegate,” Vangey murmured archly.

Ganrahast gave him a reproving look. “What needs to be done is to ascertain if Halaunt truly has a powerful but useful spell that could endanger the realm, or if he was mistaken or just bluffing—and if he does have something really powerful, to prevent it falling into the hands of someone mighty in the Art who might use it against Cormyr. Ideally, the spell should be gained for the wizards of war, and if that’s not possible, destroyed before it can be copied and spread. At the very least, if any of these powerhouse wielders of the Art get inside Oldspires, some trusted agent of the realm has to get in there with them, and see what they get up to.”

“Agreed,” Vangey said, “with every last word. I’d have done all of that, if this had landed in my lap when I was Royal Magician.”

“Ah, so you admit you no longer are?” Vainrence pounced. “Well, that’s progress!”

It was Vangey’s turn to tender a reproving look. Myrmeen and Alusair snorted in unison as they swallowed mirth.

“Father,” Ganrahast said quietly, “I respect you, and revere you for the service you’ve done the realm. Cormyr survives today in very large measure because of what you did.”

Vangerdahast regarded his son with a lopsided smile. “Thank you for those words. A little thanks was all I needed, down the years, and all too seldom got. However, those same long years did not leave me a simpleton: I can hear a ‘but’ coming, as loudly as if you’d blown a fanfare from the battlements. So …”

Ganrahast’s answering smile was thinner. “To put it bluntly, I don’t trust you off on your own—and for the sake of the realm, I dare not trust you. Luckily, I don’t have to, because I need you for something more pressing and more important.”

Vangerdahast promptly demonstrated that he could still arch an eyebrow eloquently, conveying interest, disbelief, and wry amusement in one silent movement.

“I need you,” the Royal Magician told him, “to tell me the closeted skeletons and backgrounds of all the most objectionable nobles who have been coming here to Suzail and staying in their city residences busily trying to influence court rulings and courtiers’ enforcement of Crown policies and generally making life like unto the Nine Hells for the monarch—not to mention for me and Vainrence here, too.”

“Gossipmonger? That’s your ‘more pressing and more important’?”

Vangerdahast seemed to have grown larger in an instant, and to be still growing, face purpling and trembling with real anger.

Vainrence grabbed for his amulets again, and Ganrahast kept his eyes fixed on Vangerdahast and his hands raised and ready.

Myrmeen and Alusair exchanged a silent look as the tension in the room rose to a singing knife edge, Vangerdahast obviously on the brink of defying Ganrahast by seeking to resume his deviously ruthless mantle of old—

And then they all saw Vangerdahast’s face relax. He sank back down with a sigh, nodded a little sadly, and managed a rather weary smile.

“Very well. You are Royal Magician now, and upon reflection, I would be delighted to help sort out the nobles. A job I should, though I say so myself, be able to truly shine at—not to mention have more fun doing, at the heart of clashing politics here in Suzail, than out in some drafty tumbledown country mansion away from all the cut and thrust.”

“Nobly said,” Vainrence murmured, “so why is it that I now sense a ‘but’?”

Vangerdahast tendered the Lord Warder a smile that was almost savage and replied, “Because you’re not entirely witless, perhaps?”

Vainrence winced, and Alusair chuckled and said, “Now that’s the Vangey I remember!”

“But,” Vangerdahast said to the Royal Magician, “I offer my wife in my place, to aid at Oldspires—along with the ghost of Alusair.”

“Hoy, now,” the princess said sharply, “your wife happens to be standing right there, and has a name and a voice of her own! By all means speak for me, but surely—”

Myrmeen held up a staying hand, gave the room an easy smile, and said gently, “Vangey and I did discuss this beforehand.”

Ganrahast frowned, his gaze roving thoughtfully from Myrmeen to Vangerdahast to Alusair, and back again.

“Well?” Alusair asked him gently. “Mistrust can be carried into churlishness. I was regent of the realm for no short time, and Myrmeen took dragon shape to guard it. Do you doubt us both that deeply?”

The Royal Magician sighed. “I … I respect all of you enough to give you blunt truth. Princess, I don’t doubt your fierce and steadfast loyalty to the realm. Moreover, I trust in your inability, so far as I can conceive of matters, to turn this mission to your own ends in any way that endangers Cormyr.”

“However?” Myrmeen asked quietly.

“However, I remain suspicious that my father will try to work through my mother to somehow control what unfolds at Oldspires.”

“Gan,” Vangerdahast murmured, “you have to starting trust someone, however briefly, or you shall truly stand alone. And I know what it means to stand alone; ’twas my folly for too long.”

“I know that for truth,” the Royal Magician replied calmly, “so I am reluctantly agreeing to accept Mother’s aid out at Oldspires, if Alusair will watch over her.”

Alusair turned to face Myrmeen directly, so neither of the wizards at the table could see her roll her eyes. Myrmeen’s smile crooked up at one end ere she told Ganrahast, “I find those terms quite acceptable.”

“As do I,” Alusair put in. “Now, can we—”

A fresh blossoming of sparks heralded the opening of another secret door, this one right behind the two seated wizards.

Who whirled around in their chairs, frowning—in time to gape in dismayed astonishment.

In the doorway stood someone they all knew: a gaunt, hawk-nosed old man in dark robes, a twinkle in the eyes that surveyed them from above an impressively long white beard.

Alusair was the swiftest to react. “Elminster of Shadowdale, be welcome!”

The old archmage winked at her, then told the Royal Magician of Cormyr, “Know ye that I’ll be taking care of this little Halaunt matter, too—so what could possibly go wrong?”

Ganrahast groaned

CHAPTER 3

No Shortage of Dark Schemers

ATTEND ME, IMBRA,” THE WOMEN SEATED BEFORE THE MIRROR TOLD the empty air coldly, and rose to stride into the next room. She was growing tired of gazing upon the wrinkled ruination of her once-considerable beauty, anyway.

She snapped her fingers as she went, and obediently six severed human hands that had been resting on various surfaces in her robing room rose into the air, the rings adorning them winking to life. They floated after the tall, shapely woman whose long fall of raven-dark hair descended like a supple ribbon down her back to brush at her heels. As she walked, as long-legged and undulating as she’d been these last sixty summers, the hands took their positions, in midair arcs behind her shoulders, to form her usual hovering escort of death-dealing. She doubted they’d be needed just now; one of these days Imbra would betray her, but it was highly unlikely to be this day.

Imbra was still young and ambitious and hungry for power, and one did not rise in the ranks of the Twisted Rune by seeming a clear threat to any Runemaster. So Imbra would continue to play the loyal little spy, thief, and ruthless slayer—for now.

Calathlarra was trusting in that. She’d sent the most competent of her apprentices off to spy on the current troubles in Cormyr, to see if the uneasily shifting situation afforded an aging archmage good opportunities to gain swift riches, and ideally install herself in a position of political power. Even Runemasters deep into their cronehood needed land, a steady income, and a few luxuries—otherwise, what was being an icy-cold bitch and indulging in cruel villainies for?

The tiny bells affixed all around the inner edge of the door to her outer receiving room chimed their cheerful little cacophony to announce her apprentice’s arrival.

“Runemaster,” Imbra announced a moment later, coming to a stop just beyond the space that the door swung through to shut itself behind her, with open and empty hands spread wide and pointing at the floor, as she’d been trained to do, “I am here. Command me.”

“Report,” Calathlarra replied, seeking her favorite seat. “Just what’s new, not all the mind-numbing details of which young lordling called another a bad word or disgraced himself in some tavern or club thanks to imbibing overmuch. You know what’s important; convey to me just those things.”

“The Dragon Rampant club in Suzail burned to the ground after a wild spell duel that began after someone calling herself Shayan the Serpent Queen—”

“Shaaan,” Calathlarra corrected, trying to hide how interested she suddenly was, but failing. She settled for trying to seem thoughtful.

“—and the Suzailan resident calling himself Manshoon traded spells over the mind of Lord Sardasper Halaunt, an old noble of Cormyr who’s fallen on hard times. Halaunt came to Suzail to try to sell—dearly—something he calls the Lost Spell.”

The Runemaster’s eyebrow rose in surprise, but she asked merely, “So who died?”

“Servants, a few lesser diners down on the street level who got trampled; no one of consequence. Halaunt’s mind, however, is said to be ruined. His servants whisked him back to his country mansion, Oldspires, as a drooling idiot, the rumors run.”

“Ah, yes, rumors always run …” Calathlarra drummed her long and still-beautiful fingers on the arm of her chair. “So has rumor galloped far enough afield, this time, to tell us what happened to the Lost Spell?”

“No,” Imbra replied promptly. Then asked, “Runemaster, what is this Lost Spell? The rumors are many, wild, and contradictory.”

Calathlarra smiled. “Of course. They commonly rage around the truth without ever truly grasping it. Know then that the Lost Spell enables its caster to store what may best be termed ‘echoes’ of other spells in their mind. When active—and used with certain obscure but simple cantrips that enable the caster to wrest magical energy from items they touch, spells they memorize, and even spells memorized in the heads of humans they touch—such energies can be willed to fill the echoes, as molten metal fills a mold.”

“Making new spells?”

“Making new spells; as many duplicates of the stored echoes as a Lost Spell caster desires and has energy to empower. In other words, anyone competent who wields the Lost Spell gains an ongoing supply of their favorite spells that they can cast at will.”

Her apprentice whistled. “So someone who has the Lost Spell can rule over all Toril, if they conduct themselves wisely. They’ll be all-powerful.”

“Yes to your first,” Calathlarra replied coldly, “but no to your second. The Lost Spell was one of the crowning achievements of the god Azuth—and bear in mind what happened to him.”

THIS DEEPEST AND dampest of the cellars hidden beneath the Royal Palace of Suzail was dominated by utter darkness and the slow and echoing drip of water seeping down from the low ceiling. It was a room Elminster remembered, and he had reason to know Vangerdahast recalled it too, but it was quite likely unknown to most current courtiers and Purple Dragons guarding the palace. In fact, he was counting on that.

He was standing in three fingerwidths of water, and its presence allowed him to maintain an old, old spell that should shield what was said and thought here even from the Royal Magician of Cormyr.

The pale glow given off by the ghost of Alusair was enough to illuminate the faces of the other two he was conferring with: Vangey and Myrmeen Lhal. Now that Ganrahast and his oh-so-earnest Lord Warder were safely elsewhere, it was time to make some decisions regarding what they were going to do about Lord Halaunt.

Halaunt’s mansion, Oldspires, was reputed to be haunted. Not by your typical, angry, grieving, or fell undead, but by spirits snared and caged by the Weave inside the mansion—a result of being built on a particular site by a long-ago Lord Halaunt who’d been something of an expert in the Art.

“That Lord Halaunt,” El explained to Alusair and Myrmeen, “chose the site of Oldspires so the mansion would house and hide several ancient gates to other worlds—portals that, these days, can only be opened with great difficulty. Long, complicated, and partially experimental rituals are now necessary, being as the ‘right’ ways to open them have been forgotten down the passing ages.”

“Within the mansion,” Vangerdahast put in, “the Weave is … ah …”

“Twisted,” El offered.

“Twisted, yes, in part because of leakage from the gates, and in part due to the decay of protective magics cast long ago to seal them off.”

“As a result,” Elminster interrupted smoothly, “some spells don’t work, or take effect in strange, unpredictable, and uncontrollable ways. Just which spells are affected isn’t known, and they shift at random from room to room and over time—so in general, magic isn’t reliable inside Oldspires.”

“The leakage from the gates causes the frequent and recurring spellstorms,” Vangey added brightly.

“They make quite a team, don’t they?” Myrmeen observed to Alusair.

The ghostly princess smiled, nodded—and swung around like shifting smoke to confront Elminster.

“How did Halaunt get the Lost Spell in the first place?” she demanded. “Has it been here in Cormyr for decades—centuries—just lying around for the first lucky finder to pick it up and try to rule the kingdom—gods spit, the world?”

Myrmeen shrugged. “Does it matter? Methinks Lord Elminster here will destroy it or hide it very securely upon his person, about three breaths after he gets inside Oldspires.”

El shook his head. “That’s where ye’re wrong. Hiding and denying to folk this or that magic would save all Toril a lot of trouble, time and time again—but denying the Art to anyone isn’t Mystra’s way. Magic belongs to all of us, and we must use it and develop it, and better ourselves and others by doing so. Greater evil flourishes whenever a few control it; they inevitably use it as a club against others.”

“Princess Alusair’s question,” Vangey put in darkly, “stands. How does a magic-blind, sedentary old widower and reclusive noble get his hands on the Lost Spell?”

“By being what all too many nobles are, and non-nobles would be if they could,” Elminster murmured. “By presenting a fair face to the world and behind it being the sort of weasel who’ll do anything to collect things of power, for profit and to trade and to threaten. He buys all sorts of things from unscrupulous adventurers, and the darker and more magical, the better. Being a dastardly villain in the shadows was what excited Lord Halaunt, and he enjoyed being so. If anyone can be said to deserve such a horrible fate, he does.”

Alusair gave El a hard look. “And you knew what manner of snake he was, and told us not? Ganrahast and Vainrence and Glathra should all have been told about this peril to the realm! If you truly loved Cormyr—”

“Ah, lass, but I do truly love Cormyr. Every last crofter and shepherd and blustering noble of it. And most of the nobles aren’t much better than Halaunt, if truth be told. And if I laid full details of every last one of them before the wizards of war, what would those Crown mages do? Imprison nigh every noble in the land, or worse? Ruining the very land they profess to guard and hold dear? And relying on Elminster the All-Seeing to espy the next foul threat to the land, and the next? How, tell me now, do I love and serve Cormyr by so weakening it?”

The ghost of the princess scowled. “Words, always clever words that bring me to a standstill with their very rightness, as they always did from your mouth, but still …”

Elminster’s smile was sad. “Are not words cheaper than spilled blood? If I refrained from cozening with words because being manipulated upset thee—or thy father, or Foril—and armies marched, and lives were lost and lands laid waste, what price my silence then?”

Alusair sighed. “I yield. Vanquished once more. So tell me, Lord So Clever, what is your counsel in this matter, in the days ahead? What do you think we should do?”

“For myself,” Myrmeen interrupted swiftly, “I expected this meeting would be to receive our orders from Lord Elminster, blunt or wrapped up in words that made them seem otherwise than commands. That bothers me not. However, there’s a price for my obedience: Lord of Shadowdale, lay out your reasoning rather than playing the mysterious all-knowing archmage.”

Alusair and Vangerdahast nodded agreement.

Elminster inclined his head gravely to the living lady warrior, and said, “It is my opinion that we need to play unfairly against such a host of power-hungry spellhurlers. As Lord Halaunt is now a drooling husk of a man, his mind almost certainly burnt out, I propose that Alusair here go into him, animate him, and speak through him. The Steel Regent acting the part of Lord Halaunt, in such a way that ‘he’ works with us to protect Cormyr—rather than being animated by every last ambitious guest trying to wrest the Lost Spell from him.”

Alusair was suddenly closer to the Sage of Shadowdale, and her eyes were blazing brighter. “And when they try to mindburn me?”

“Ye’ll be protected,” El assured her. “By me. A goddess has shown me how.”

Vangerdahast, the ghost of the princess, and Myrmeen all gasped out disgusted skepticism at his words.

“You can’t promise that,” Vangey added.

Oh, but I can, El replied in Alusair’s mind.

She stiffened. How—?

The Weave, he thought into her mind. If ye were still alive, I’d have to cast a spell, or touch ye and use my mind.

Your psionics?

Aye. Those.

Their flashing thoughts had taken mere instants, during which Myrmeen lifted her chin in a challenge and asked Elminster, “If Halaunt is a wreck, why impersonate him? What’s the point? Why not just blast every evil wizard who shows up looking for the Lost Spell, drive the nonevil ones away, then leave Halaunt’s servants to look after what’s left of him?”

“It is needful,” El told her.

“Oh? Why?” Alusair’s voice was sharp.

“Yes, why?” Vangey echoed.

“As you’ll recall, Lord Elminster,” Myrmeen added, “I mentioned my price …”

“There’s not a lot of trust in this room,” Elminster murmured.

“And why is that, I wonder?” Alusair mocked, suddenly floating nose to nose with him, her eyes two cold flames of anger.

El sighed. “Very well. Cards, as they say, on the table. I serve a goddess.”

“Mystra,” the only living woman in the room said flatly, her eyes, but not her voice, making it a question. Everyone knew Elminster served the goddess of magic, but Myrmeen wanted him to confirm he still served Mystra, and only Mystra.

“Mystra,” he reassured her. “And she wants this to happen—this gathering of powerful mages, that is. She needs to get them together for long enough that they can discuss how they’re going to conduct themselves in the years ahead, in the wake of the tumult that is hopefully now behind us. That’s not something easily achieved among such energetic, power-hungry, and suspicious folk.”

“And what does Mystra want them to achieve, aside from threatening each other and then starting spell duels like the one that destroyed the Dragon Rampant?” Vangerdahast asked. “For that’s what’ll erupt, if magic is unreliable within Oldspires, rather than nonexistent.”

“Mystra hopes,” Elminster replied slowly, his tone making it clear he wasn’t convinced that what Our Lady of Magic envisaged would come to pass, “they will come to some common agreements on certain things. So Toril isn’t ravaged by a war among archmages. And if they do make war on each other, let it be face-to-face, inside one building, and not slaughtering many innocents and ravaging realms in the process.”

“Send four hungry panthers in a room, and wait to see which wounded one will stagger out,” Vangey murmured. “Not a strategy unfamiliar to me.”

“Mystra hopes,” Elminster repeated, “that their time together will at least lead to frank discussion, and increased understanding.”

Alusair frowned. “If that’s the goal, why doesn’t Mystra just show up in their minds and threaten them into playing nice?”

“Ah. Well, now. Listen, heed, and remember this, for ’tis what one might call one of the secrets of our world.”

“And whenever a wizard says that, he’s trying to deceive you about something,” Alusair murmured.

“Not so!” Elminster told her sternly. “Or at least, not this wizard, and not this time. Mystra has told me that she can force and compel, or destroy, like any other wrathful god—and so win obedience, but no change of attitude. Leaving wizards full of resentment of imposed authority, not cleaving to a way or idea or accord they have willingly been a part of—wherefore some, perhaps most of them, will be secretly seeking to betray or subvert, in future.”

Three sets of eyes, two living and one ghostly, narrowed.

“So even an apparently solid agreement or new spirit of cooperation would be short-lived at best, and likely an utter cynical fiction from the outset. So instead, what ye might call ‘manipulating from behind a tapestry’ is best. Wherefore, Mystra needs to stay in the shadows and let me, and others I can persuade, do the work she deems needful.”

Alusair’s face now held something like pity. “And your own heir?”

Elminster’s face was suddenly a mask of stone. “I want to keep Amarune out of this as much as possible,” he said slowly, as if reluctant to let the words escape his lips. “She won’t stand a chance in a house full of powerful evil archmages. Still less, her impetuous young consort, Lord Arclath Delcastle.” He turned away and started to pace, his steps stirring ripples across the dark water. “Storm will take them somewhere to do something-or-other Realms-shakingly important. ’Tis how we’ve hoodwinked kings and dungsweepers alike, all these centuries.”

Myrmeen Lhal swallowed more mirth with a snort, and turned her head to give Vangey a level look, eyeball-to-eyeball. He coughed and shifted a little.

“And how will we get into Oldspires?” Alusair inquired. “Through this mind-shattering spellstorm?”

“I know how to open one of the gates,” El replied smugly.

“Oh? And how is it that you know that?”

“It’s a Weave gate, and below Mystra herself, I am now the Weavemaster. Be awed by no competing pretenders.”

Myrmeen snorted again.

“As for the spellstorm,” El added, “Mystra will let all of these grasping archmages through it when we’re ready—and let them believe whatever clever spells they worked created their own short-lived tunnel through the chaos.”

“I,” Vangerdahast commented, “just want to know how by all the gods—every last prancing one of them—you’re going to get all of these crazed, me-first, power-hungry and supremely independent and professionally difficult archmages to agree on anything, change their minds about anything, and tell you even a smidgin or two of truth!”

“Ah,” Elminster said with a wry smile, “as to that, I have a plan.”

Vangey wasn’t the only one in the room to roll his eyes then.

“You’re going to make things up as you go along,” the ghost of Alusair murmured. “As you always do. Charge in and ruffle feathers and ride out the hazards. You sly old rogue.”

Elminster’s gaze held a twinkle. “Eh, lass. Careful with the compliments, there; ye’ll turn my head.”

“Make you preen, more like. Old bastard.”

“Shadow of a woman,” El replied, just as affectionately.

“Still want me to go prancing off into a mansion of twisted magic with this, ah, personage?” Myrmeen asked Vangerdahast.

He shrugged and looked sheepish. “You’ve always loved adventure, and chafed when it wasn’t on offer.”

“You,” Myrmeen returned, “know me too well.” Then she looked across at Elminster. “Let’s get going.”

THIS DEEPEST ROOM beneath his tower was persistently damp, which was why its owner, who stood looking down at four robed men spread-eagled on a stout iron frame before him, used it only for butchery. Usually there were dead boar or cattle on the frame, but it seemed to work on men well enough,

“W-who are you?” one of the chained captives gasped, when he’d stopped shrieking long enough to pant his way back to framing words.

The dark-haired, handsome, and imperious man who was the source of the agonies being visited on the four captive arcanists smiled coldly. “My name is Maraunth Torr, but it’s no doubt unfamiliar to you. I am an archmage of some power, and arcanists of Thultanthar seem to believe powerful wizards who do not hail from their city are … mythical. But then, the arrogant fools of Thultanthar believe so many incorrect things. Such a pity. It always leads to their undoing.”

And as those gentle words left his lips, he gestured lazily and sent fresh ragged lightnings through the iron frames that held his captives fast. Skin sizzled with a reek akin to roast boar, and a sound almost lost amid the din of their raw, throat-stripping shrieks.

Maraunth Torr gave them a wintry smile and strolled back to his goblet of wine and the maps he’d been studying when his flying-chain spell traps had entwined and bound them—so easily that they might just as well have been common thieves bereft of magic. More easily, perhaps, for thieves might have been more suspicious of adornments, around the doorway of a room where powerful enchanted items were stored, that took the shape of chains than these four dolts had been.

When their screams had died away into panting groans, he raised his goblet and remarked to it, “I remain curious as to why arcanists of Thultanthar would dare to intrude into a wizard’s tower in the wilds near ruined Starmantle that’s widely known to be formidably guarded.”

Weak moans and nigh-incoherent pleas for mercy were the only replies he got, so the archmage drank deeply, sighed out his pleasure as the Shalassalur burned its silken way down his throat, and strolled back to match gazes with his nearest captive.

“Well?” he asked mildly. “I should hate to, ah, have to press you on this point.”

“I—we—ahhh …”

“A promising beginning,” Maraunth Torr said amiably, “but my patience is not infinite. Pray continue.”

“We were following orders,” the closest wizard blurted out.

“And who gave you these orders?”

“Our commanders,” the third wizard down almost sobbed.

“Who are?”

“Ah … er …”

“Come, come, you are like guilty children, caught but playing for time,” Maraunth Torr told them, almost tenderly. “Be more forthcoming, and be so swiftly. Or, as they say, else.”

“You’ll have heard of the fate of our city,” the nearest wizard told him. “Not many of rank survived its destruction. We answer now to three—their names may mean nothing to you—Lelavdra, Manarlume, and Gwelt. The Three, we call them.”

“We begin to get somewhere,” Maraunth Torr said approvingly. “And these orders were?”

“To plunder the country mansion of Oldspires, in Cormyr.”

“Why?”

“We, ah, former Thultanthans need to rebuild our magical power, and swiftly, for Faerûn has become dangerous, seemingly full of too many mighty mages.”

“Become? It became so before there was a Thultanthar, so far as I can tell. Why Oldspires?”

“The three who command us recently heard that its owner, Lord Halaunt, owns the Talking Skull.”

“Humor me,” Maraunth Torr said as jovially as an affectionate host, “and inform me what the Talking Skull might be.”

“A—a flying, horn-headed human skull,” said one of his captives.

“Purportedly that of an undead archmage millennia old,” the farthest one added brightly, sounding almost eager to volunteer information.

So Maraunth Torr strolled in his direction to ask, “And why would a talking skull be valuable? I have sixteen of them, if I recall rightly, and find them frankly more ‘nuisance’ and less ‘prized valuable.’ ”

“This talking skull knows the Lost Spell!”

“Splendid! Delightful! And what is the Lost Spell?”

“You’re an archmage, and you don’t …?” The captive Thultanthan faltered under the weight of Maraunth Torr’s tender smile, and added hastily, “It’s a—a mighty enchantment whose details are unknown to us, but it’s the opinion of our superiors that it could bolster their power, possibly enabling them to swiftly destroy formidable arcane spellcasters, and seize their magic.”

“Ah, I see. So why came you to be upon my doorstep rather than at Oldspires?”

“We … failed,” sighed another arcanist.

“Failure is the best teacher,” Maraunth Torr informed him merrily. “So how did you fail, exactly?”

“When we reached Oldspires, there was a … fog around it.”

“A storm,” said the farthest arcanist.

“A field of magical chaos,” the nearest one chimed in. “We saw lesser mages try to move through it, and be rendered witless. Drooling.”

“Their minds gone,” groaned the arcanist held next to him.

“A few more powerful wizards were there as well … some we recognized,” said the farthest captive.

“I recognized,” the nearest one corrected sharply. “Manshoon—once of Westgate, and before that, the Zhentarim—and Malchor Harpell, once of the Harpells of Longsaddle; his image is in the Gallery of Seemings Vangerdahast of Cormyr created for his wizards of war, as a wandering adventurer to watch. Even they tried and failed to magically force ways through the field. One could tell they marked the waiting danger to their minds and sought to push back the chaos storm and make themselves safe passage. Push it back they could—a few feet, and for a few instants. So they stayed outside, and sane, but mightily displeased that something could defy their magic. We departed.”

“To seek easier targets?” Maraunth Torr asked mildly.

“We dare not return to the Three empty-handed,” another of the arcanists said grimly.

“So we sought among the mages we could find thereabouts, for word of more talking skulls, and were told of your tower.”

“So you could bring your superiors a talking skull, and if it knew no Lost Spell, well then, the rumors or the old noble selling it must have been mistaken?” their captor asked the helpless quartet arrayed on the iron frame.

“Yes,” one confirmed. “Exactly,” Another echoed eagerly. “That’s it,” chimed in a third.

“Thank you,” Maraunth Torr told them. “You’ve been most helpful—for arcanists. Which means your usefulness is at an end.”

He waved his hand, and the frame erupted in leaping lightnings. Four bodies jerked, convulsed in arching, agonized spasms … and then fell limp and lifeless, amid wifts of drifting smoke and the spreading reek of burned hair.

Their slayer gazed down at the crisped bodies with a thoughtful air.

These had been Netherese—overconfident emptyheads, young and inexperienced even among the deluded and preening Thultanthans. Of course they had failed at a task one step beyond “utterly simple.”

He had none of those faults, and a kindling interest in something that lured so many long-lived mages of power. It was time to try his own luck at Oldspires.

CHAPTER 4

It’s All Up To You

MIRT INSPECTED THE BOTTOM OF HIS TANKARD, FOUND IT EMPTY, and stirred himself to call for more.

He was just drawing breath when a fresh tankard descended to the smooth-worn tabletop in front of him, then slid forward to come to a gentle stop under his nose.

He regarded it, and then the gaunt, white-bearded man behind it, and grew a slow smile.

“Heh. It’s been awhile, Old Mage. Well met.”

“Well met again,” Elminster replied dryly, sitting down. “I see ye’ve grown tired of the company of nobles.”

Mirt grunted and reached for the tankard. “Their chatter. Drives a man to drink—elsewhere.”

Elminster surveyed the dim and none-too-clean surroundings. The ceiling of this particular dockside tavern taproom was low, and braced with many old, stout, and diagonal beams that had been “improved” by the—mostly rude—carvings of many previous patrons’ belt knives. His eyes wandered over a few of them as he replied, “This is certainly elsewhere, I’ll give ye that.”

“You,” Mirt growled, “want something. Aside from me to have this free tankard of no doubt excellent ale, that is.”

“I am as transparent as always,” El replied serenely.

“Well?”

“How would ye like to be the seneschal and cook for a country lord of Cormyr gone mindless? For a tenday or less, but not more?”

“What’s the pay like?”

“Generous,” El replied, sliding a slender whetstone case of oiled and polished wood across the table. Mirt shielded it within practiced hands as he opened it just enough to see the row of large sapphires inside for a moment; in the next instant, it had vanished up his sleeve.

“Indeed. So how many archmages or eye tyrants or awakened and angry dragons will I be fighting—or roasting for his lordship’s table?”

Elminster shrugged. “The future hides so much from us all.”

Mirt snorted. “Indeed. ’Splain, Old Mage. If I’m walking into a lion’s den, I like to know how many lions are waiting, and how hungry they are.”

“Lord Halaunt is an unwed old nobl—”

“Him. Haughty old ironbottom who came to town to sell the Lost Spell to anyone with more coins than brains. Didn’t end well. Someone got him out of that fire, then?”

“Someone did. Not before spells had made him witless, probably forever. He was bundled back to his mansion in the country in some haste. Thy new friend Manshoon—”

Mirt snorted again.

“—and half a dozen other powerful wizards subsequently showed up on his doorstep and tried to get inside, but have been prevented from doing so by a, uh, spellstorm that has thus far kept them out.”

“But you, of course, can get me in. Why me? I’ll be naught but a swift target for mages with blasting spells up their sleeves.”

“Ye, because I need someone to play seneschal and actually cook, for those very mages and for me and some others I’ll be bringing with me, who’ll handle any spellwork any of us manage. Which shouldn’t be much; magic isn’t to be trusted inside the Halaunt mansion.”

“Or anywhere else, for that matter. Which others?”

“Two ye should have heard of: Myrmeen Lhal and the Princess Alusair—or rather, her ghost.”

Mirt took a long pull from the tankard, set it back down with a satisfied sigh, belched, and observed, “This sounds like a right disaster in the making, El. So, why?”

“Mystra wants it.”

“Wants mages to kill each other, and no doubt destroy the mansion and the vicinity while they’re at it? I thought she wanted magic preserved and nurtured and spread out among us all!”

“She does. This gathering of the powerful is an attempt to instill in them some sort of inner personal creed or code, so they’ll instinctively work against the reckless excesses of others who wield magic.”

“And if they somehow, incredibly, do decide to work together—and come charging out of the place welded into a tiny army of spell-hurling mages bent on destroying all of Cormyr that they can’t conquer? What then?”

“Outside the spellstorm, once all of the mages are safely inside the mansion, a force of Cormyr’s war wizards will assemble and cast a wall of force around it all. A great ring to keep warriors with knives and grudges against wizards out, and the mages—who can’t successfully hurl disintegrating spells through the spellstorm at this ring—in. Mystra will make sure the ring works, even if someone miscasts, or the coordination of the Crown mages involved is less than perfect.”

“Penning—imprisoning—a bunch of egotistical, ruthless, used to getting their own way in everything wizards together, in hopes that rather than tear each other’s eyeballs out, they’ll fall into firm friendships and everlasting trust.”

“Aye,” El said dryly, “that’s more or less it. ’Tis my private belief that Mystra is not a foolish misjudger of mortals so much as she’s heartily sick of the way some powerful and long-lived mages have been behaving, and wants them to cooperate—or, yes, kill each other. Their choice.”

Mirt shook his head. “The goddess of magic giving foolheaded wizards a choice?”

“ ’Tis what she’s always done,” El said softly. “The way forward for mortals to flourish is to choose freely, for good or ill, not be slaves to any deity.”

“Yes, yes, I’ve heard priests say as much many times down the years,” Mirt sighed, then squinted hard at Elminster and growled, “She really thinks they’ll behave reasonably, and even reach some accord, or even trust?”

“She really hopes,” El replied.

Mirt rolled his eyes. “Madness.” And then he grinned and leaned forward across the table and declared, “But I’m in. Despite the fool-headed danger.” He studied Elminster’s face and added, “As you knew I would be. That stone face of yours is anything but.”

“Thy boredom,” Elminster replied gently, “is apparent to all. Yet it’s good to find thee willing.”

Mirt shrugged, drank deeply again, and set down the tankard with the thunk of mostly emptied metal. “I want to be alive again, part of ‘important doings’ once more. But I’ll need a little more in the way of payment.”

El arched an eyebrow. “No knighthoods, now. Or country mansions. Unless Halaunt’s somewhat decayed manor survives our little get-together; if so, I’d not be surprised if I could convince the Crown of Cormyr to gift it to ye.”

Mirt waved a dismissive hand. “Nay, nay, nothing like that. Just some truths from you, to satisfy my curiosity. How Alusair came to be a ghost, how Vangerdahast went from being a dragon to a spider-thing and then a man again, and how Myrmeen Lhal went from being a dragon, back to human form—and not a wrinkled old totterer, either.”

Elminster nodded. “That I can do, in brief. The deeper details—the decisions each made, to result in their transformations—are for them to divulge, not me.”

“Fair enough. Say on.”

“So … Alusair died, as all mortals must. Died while in disagreement with her nephew the king—the fifth Azoun. Not over his policies, but over his mishandling of their implementation, which she saw as having deepened divisions between the realm and its nobles and hastened the death of her mother, Filfaeril. There were other, deeper reasons for their quarrel, but those remain matters of state.”

Mirt nodded acceptance, but waved at El to continue.

He obliged. “So Alusair died, ye might say, in the saddle, still riding the border wilderlands of the realm she loved, defending it against beasts and brigands. I happen to know more than a dozen invasions of Cormyr planned by greedy and wealthy Sembian citizens were canceled because of how well-known her tireless vigilance became. Alusair died unreconciled, feeling her duty to defend was unfinished and passed on to no competent replacement, so she lingers yet.”

“As a ghost.”

“As a ghost, defending Cormyr in ways not even the current Royal Magician and Obarskyrs fully know. Already accomplished at taking down Zhentarim, Thayan, and Sembian spies, she got very good at felling Thultanthan spies and agents undetected, so they simply vanished without trace—dozens of them, over the years. That worried Telamont Tanthul so much, it bought Cormyr decades more of peace.”

Mirt nodded. “And Vangerdahast the Mighty?”

El smiled. “A term of mockery in Waterdeep in thy day, as I recall. The man ye so labeled was one apprentice of mine who did very well for himself. When he finally tired of being Mage Royal—long after the realm had tired of him—he willingly bound himself in stasis as a dragon, with the song dragon Ammaratha Cyndusk at his side, also out of love for Cormyr. He awaited his awakening to defend the kingdom in a future time of need. Later, Myrmeen Lhal joined them, one more wyrm in stasis.”

“Until something either went wrong, or they were awakened because the realm was in need.”

“Indeed, though its defenders knew that not. Szass Tam was greatly weakened after his failed attempt to become a god, during what’s come to be known as the Spellplague. He has always hungered for magic—the stored magic of items, if he can get such power in no other way—and of course, he forever finds himself in need of more. He knew of certain vaults beneath yonder Royal Palace, and tried to break into them from afar, but succeeded only in shattering the outermost ward. That was enough to rouse Vangey and his fellow guardian dragons.

“Wisely, Szass Tam abandoned his attempt right then, but—”

Mirt grinned. “There’s always a ‘but’ in this world, when you’re talking wizards!”

“Indeed. ‘But’ the arcanists of Thultanthar had their spies here in Suzail, for Cormyr was the largest and best stable source of food near the preferred location for their city, and one of them reported the destruction of the ward to his superior, who was competent enough to pass it on to the ruler of the Thultanthans, a man as overconfident as his self-proclaimed title suggests, and—”

“Oh, the ‘Most High’?”

“Aye, Telamont Tanthul. Another who had endless hunger for enchanted items. He presumed that there would be only one more ward, and that Cormyr had no defenders who could hold the vault against a strike force led by half a dozen arcanists. So weak did he think the defense would be that he sent along eight untried novices to lead the assault, as a test of their abilities.”

“And the guardian dragons destroyed them.”

“Handily. So aghast was the senior arcanist assigned to scry on them from afar that he abandoned his duty in the opening moments of the fray to go and convince one of the Princes of Shade—without telling the Most High, mind ye—that there was a serious threat to Thultanthar under the Royal Palace of Cormyr. He succeeded; that prince came racing back with a much stronger force.”

“And broke into the vault?”

“And failed, fleeing battered but wiser, leaving most of this second wave of arcanists dead. However, the song dragon Ammaratha also perished in the fray, Myrmeen Lhal was forced back into human form, and Vangey only survived through Laspeera’s desperate intervention; she forcibly merged him with a spiderlike guardian monster he’d imprisoned in stasis down in the cellars centuries earlier. Hence the way he looked until recently, a human head mated to a spidery body. The goddess Mystra herself restored him to hale and whole human form.”

“Laspeera’s work on him; that’s a tale I’d like to hear in more detail, someday,” Mirt murmured.

“So would I,” Elminster replied dryly. “I suspect Myrmeen has told me less than half of what went on—and Vangerdahast, of course, even less.”

“Was the ghost of Alusair in that fight, too?”

“Who do ye think saved Laspeera and Myrmeen?”

Mirt shook his head. “I thought Waterdeep was an all-too-exciting place at times, but we only had crazed or evil humans and a few beholders scheming and running about …”

“Welcome to Cormyr, the Forest Kingdom, beautiful land of deep forests, verdant farms, and enough trouble for any dozen realms,” Elminster replied. And smiled. “I love it.”

ELURAUNT MALABRAK SMILED as the illusion of cracked and mold-covered wall sighed away into nothingness, and left him looking at a doorway into a storage niche crammed with things that glowed with magic.

His instincts had been right. This corner was where whatever wizard had once lorded it over this crumbling, nameless ruin of a tower had decided to hide his items of power. Now to decide which things to keep and hide elsewhere for himself, and which to take back to the Three.

This bracer, now, looked damaged …

“Not quite so fast, arcanist.”

Eluraunt Malabrak flung up a hand to redouble his personal ward even before he spun around.

And then froze, puzzled. A lone woman, as gaunt as a staff, barefoot and empty-handed in a nightrobe?

“Put that down,” she commanded calmly. “It was a gift from Telamont Tanthul—and now it is all I have to remember him by.”

“The Most H—who are you?”

Genuinely astonished, Malabrak surreptitiously activated the rings he wore as he set down the half-melted bracer. He’d come to this decaying mage’s tower to seize or steal magic on the orders of the Three, but obeyed them only because to do otherwise would be to walk alone, renouncing all memory of great Thultanthar. He considered himself their equal, if not more, in power; few wizards in Faerûn could hope to stand against him for long.

“Tabra is my name, and this is my home.”

The name meant nothing to Malabrak, so he shrugged.

“I do not recall inviting you here,” she added, lurching a step closer. Into the full light.

The arcanist felt his mouth tighten in disgust. She’d been disfigured by torture, her body a mass of protruding scars, so deformed that her right eye rose above the other, her head twisted out of shape. One breast was higher, and her hips tilted at the opposite angle so that her lower breast sat just above. She was almost impossibly gaunt, as thin as a maltreated slave. Yet her face, despite its twisted shape, was beautiful. Beautiful and arresting in its sadness. Grief rode her.

“You didn’t,” Malabrak told her scornfully, “but I don’t think I need your invitation.” He looked her up and down, lip curling. “I doubt you receive many.”

The disfigured woman smiled bitterly—and Malabrak felt and heard the faint, high-pitched tinkling sigh of his wards falling away.

He gasped, and let fly with all the blasting might of his readied rings, holding nothing back. Anyone who could do that to his war—

His own magics rebounded off something unseen and came roaring right back at him, so swiftly that he hadn’t time to dodge or do anything before he was snatched off his feet and flung the length of the room, back a long way to where a distant back wall was waiting for him.

He struck it with a thunderous crash that broke bones and drove all the wind out of him. As he writhed, stunned, the woman walked slowly toward him, lurching at every step, her face impassive.

Malabrak fought to work the swift and simple spell that would whisk him away from this place, returning him to—

He managed it, but all that happened was that his limbs quivered, the room seemed to dance sideways for a moment, and … he was still against the wall, the real pain beginning now, pinned in place.

“W-who are you?” he managed to gasp, tasting blood. By his last word, it was dripping from his chin.

The woman came to a stop in front of him. “I,” she replied, “am the last apprentice of Ioulaum. You Thultanthans captured me and tortured me, because your Most High desired to learn Ioulaum’s longevity. I was confined and enslaved, as he invaded—ravaged—my mind time and time again. He learned much, but saw glimpses of what I yet kept from him. So he forced me into stasis when he got too busy, rather than slaying me. I was freed by his death, left with the aches I’d become used to—and one new one.”

Malabrak shook his head, not wanting to ask what it was, as she lurched still closer.

“Now,” she told him softly, through that lopsided jaw, “I ache to destroy all arcanists of Thultanthar.”

“N-no!” Malabrak gasped out, truly frightened for the first time since the day Thultanthar had come crashing down. He’d been on his way back to the city then, to report, and if he’d been just a trifle faster …

He shivered.

“You interrupted my snack,” Tabra added, “but I see you have two eyeballs, ripe for the plucking …”

“No!” Malabrak screamed, spraying blood.

That earned him a lopsided smile. “Oh, I can be merciful, arcanist,” she told him, as gently as if she’d been telling him when the next washing day was. “Particularly if you tell me where I can find other arcanists.”

“You’re jesting,” he protested weakly. She leaned forward to stare into his eyes, and Malabrak winced and said hastily, “You’re not jesting.”

“No,” Tabra almost whispered, “my jesting days are done. Now, where else might I find arcanists? Or are they lined up downstairs, waiting for you to pillage whatever you can carry so it’ll be their turn?”

“N-no,” he managed to say. “I … I know that four arcanists, young and ambitious, were sent to a noble’s mansion in the countryside in eastern Cormyr. Oldspires, it’s called. They’ll be … magically disguised … of course.”

“Of course,” the disfigured woman murmured, as her long and many-times broken fingers closed around Malabrak’s throat.

“Aren’t you—aren’t you worried about my contingencies?” he gasped desperately.

“No,” she said bleakly. “I will welcome death. Though I’d much prefer to see every last arcanist of Thultanthar dead first. By my hands.”

Her fingers were tightening. Malabrak struggled to breathe, to will every last magic he wore or bore to erupt into life to force her off.

Some of them obeyed, bursting into crackling life.

Tabra smiled. “Ah, the pain! I’ve come to enjoy it, you know. That’s why I almost miss Telamont Tanthul. I never got the chance to share my agony with him.”

Malabrak strained for air, but knew by the way she shifted her cruel grip that she was going to break his neck before …

The last words he ever heard were Tabra’s calm murmur: “Oldspires. I shall go there and hunt them down, no matter what shape they take.”

KurrrakKKh.

MIRT HAD CHOSEN a less than savory corner of Suzail for wetting his gullet, but the dark and narrow alleyway was cleaner and safer than most other cities Elminster knew well. It was also, save for the occasional rat, empty.

Wherefore Elminster was alone when the voice that suddenly spoke softly and deeply in his mind made him stiffen in midstep, falter, and then sink down amid the refuse as if drunk.

Well met, trusted prince of Athalantar. That vibrant, rolling, and melodious thunder in the depths of his mind sounded almost … amused.

Well met, Mystra. El was genuinely glad at the mind touch of his goddess, though it almost certainly meant more work. Every meeting with her excited him, buoyed his spirits, and suffused him with energy. What cheer?

As impish as ever, Old Mage. A warm flood of pleasure this time. As you anticipate, I have a task for you.

I shall be honored.

Flirt. At the gathering at Oldspires, you must deal with my wayward Chosen.

Oh? Which one will be there? Or do you mean me?

Flirt, and jester now, too. I speak of Manshoon. You must either destroy him, or wrest from him something this particular clone of Manshoon carries within himself: An enchanted spindle that holds a spark of the fire of the goddess Mystryl. It is this divine essence that has allowed Manshoon to wield the Art far above his real mastery for centuries.

It’s inside his body?

Yes. And as I do not want to risk any more Chosen, you shall be the only one of my foremost servants at Oldspires—aside from Manshoon, of course.

A spindle.

A spindle. The image of what he was to look for—a long diamondlike shape that had been pulled by a blacksmith’s pincers at both ends, and drawn out long and slender—appeared in Elminster’s mind, so clear and firm and surrounded by Mystra’s blue-edged silver radiance that he knew she was emblazoning it among his memories forever. Cut it out of him if you must.

With pleasure, El thought, and meant it. He and I have been dancing around each other for far too long.

I would have wished matters otherwise, Mystra said sadly, then became brisk again. I have covertly allowed the wizards at Oldspires and headed there to learn some things that will lure them more strongly. Rumors of items in Lord Halaunt’s possession they personally covet, and the gates Oldspires houses and hides. Some of the attending mages know that dragons they are in league with, who dwell in the worlds beyond the gates, can be brought to Toril if the correct rituals are performed. More than this, I shall not do.

“No?” Elminster asked aloud, meaning it sarcastically. A young skulker who’d started warily down the alley toward him, dagger drawn, hesitated, and then ducked low and froze.

“Other than showing you how to shield the mind of Lord Halaunt to prevent any of the guests speaking through him, I won’t be protecting anyone, or causing anything to happen aside from controlling the barrier,” Mystra told Elminster, both in his mind and in a voice that thrilled the skulker into slack-jawed, trembling rapture, on his knees and staring around in wonder. “It’s all up to you, old friend.”

“Of course,” Elminster told the dark air with a shrug and a wry smile. “Isn’t it always?”

IT WAS A small room, even for this inn, but it was private, and its door fitted better than most, so no one standing just outside should see any betraying flashes of light.

Creeeek.

Oh, yes, and it had that creaking floorboard outside the door, so you could tell when someone was standing right outside.

“Lady Nightcloak, are you decent?”

“Never,” Alastra Hathwinter called back through the door, amused, as she passed her hand through the air to banish the scene from afar she’d conjured up and had been watching. Obligingly it fell into nothingness in a flashing instant. “But you can come in.”

It had been almost a century since she’d left the Night Cloak festhall in Longsaddle, but the nickname clung to her like a tail to a cat. Proud, sleek felines lazed and prowled everywhere in this inn. The maid bustled in.

“It’s potato and leek soup capped by roast venison tonight, and then sugared tarts, Lady—unless you prefer the fish?”

“The venison will be fine, thanks. A little mulled wine?”

“Here in my hand, Lady,” the maid said happily. “Thought I’d remembered rightly.”

“Thank you, Shaloale,” Alastra replied, accepting the jug and the jack. The maid’s surprised smile was dazzling.

“Fancy you remembering my name!”

“I always remember those who are kind to me,” Alastra replied, nodding as the maid bustled out to fetch the soup. “And otherwise,” she murmured to the closing door.

She liked this inn. The Falcon’s Fair Roost. Good name for a roadside inn in the wilderlands halfway to anywhere. Old but clean and well kept. A rather plump brindle cat had crept into the room and was purring at her from her pillow.

“So,” she asked it gently, “who are you, really?”

The cat blurred just long enough to show her shining eyes she knew; Delgorn, a local Harper agent she’d met with a time or six.

“Stay the night?” Alastra asked, patting the bed.

The cat purred louder, then abruptly went silent and vanished down under the bed. Alastra turned in time to accept the soup from the maid and receive the rather breathless news that the venison would be “up in a trice.”

“Bring me twice the usual,” she said swiftly. “I find myself very hungry.”

The moment the door had swung closed again, a voice from under the bed informed her, “So am I.”

Alastra chuckled. “What you see in a lady well over a century old is beyond me, lad.”

“I see a veteran Harper mage I am proud to work with, a mentor I am proud to serve, and someone of whom I remain in admiring awe. Not to mention a splendid woman who looks barely past thirty, and impishly good-natured. Former apprentice of both Elminster of Shadowdale and Khelben the Blackstaff, lover of Malchor Harpell—”

“Delgorn,” Alastra interrupted, all levity gone from her voice, “just where did you hear that?”

“You talk in your sleep,” came the reply. “I’m sorry, Lady Alastra, I had no idea Malchor was a secret.”

“Secret no longer, obviously. So you know where I’m heading.”

“Oldspires, where all the other mad wizards have gone, to see that no harm comes to Malchor Harpell.”

“That is not for passing on,” Alastra said severely, “to anyone.”

“Lady, I obey.”

Alastra sighed. “Try to keep the mockery out of your voice when you say that, lad.”

It was true. She had long secretly loved Malchor Harpell—the kindest adventuring wizard she’d ever met—and by the sounds of who was gathering at Oldspires, even he might need help.

Moreover, the Harpers should know all about who got the Lost Spell and what they tried to use it for—and who better at the Art among the Harpers was handy?

None but Alastra. “It’s all up to you,” she murmured to herself.

“Pardon? Ah, you don’t have to leave until morning, do you?” Delgorn asked in a plaintive whisper, his fingertips tracing a velvet-soft path up past her right knee.

Her fault, for changing into a gown.

“The venison’s coming,” she warned.

Her warning went unheeded, until she clamped her knees together with viselike firmness.

Young Harpers, these days.

CHAPTER 5

Very Bad, Very Soon

THE ROOM AROUND THEM WAS HIGH-CEILINGED, GRANDLY ORNATE, and dark. Cobwebs in the lofty corners told them that Lord Halaunt didn’t employ maids or jacks with long-pole mops, or didn’t look up much … or just didn’t care.

Well, he was past caring about anything now, but …

The four of them stood facing each other in a conspiratorial little group in the unwelcoming entry hall of Oldspires, listening to the one of them who wasn’t really a lord pretend to be one.

“You haven’t got the voice quite right,” Mirt commented. “Sharper, more waspish—and more phlegmy, too. Rough, as if he needed to clear his throat but didn’t bother.”

“Is this waspish enough?” Lord Halaunt snapped. “I’m a princess, not an actress!”

“All princesses are actresses,” Elminster told her. “Some of them are poorer than others, I’ll grant, but—”

“El, don’t make this any harder for me,” Alusair told him. “This old man’s body is heavy, and all the joints are stiff, and hurt. He hasn’t taken very good care of it.”

Myrmeen Lhal chuckled. “This is going to be a long tenday, I can tell.” She turned on her heel, surveying the gloomy, dark-paneled hall all around them. Cross-vaulted ceiling with gargoyle-head bosses, so thickly festooned with cobwebs that it looked like a forest of hanging gray curtains. Well, at least it was better than the servants’ quarters on the upper floor; Lord Halaunt obviously believed in his household enjoying fresh air, given all the gaps in the roof that had been there long enough to warp and rot floors, not to mention let large colonies of birds roost and soil plentifully … “And I had no idea that the customary garb of a second cook was not only this unflattering, but scratchy. I’m starting to itch all over.”

“Well, scratch yourself,” Mirt suggested. “Unless you’d like me to oblige.” He thrust his face forward in a leer so broad and tongue-waggingly exaggerated that the other three standing in the hall all burst into mirthful laughter.

“I doubt it’ll be the full tenday,” El put in, when he stopped chuckling. “The spellstorm’s been in existence for five days now. It only has five days left.”

“Before every last hedge wizard in Faerûn can come storming in here to try their luck, you mean?” Myrmeen asked dryly. “I hope Lord Halaunt pays the local farmers well, because his larders might well be empty, a few days after that.”

She knew whereof she spoke, for they’d finished touring Oldspires, ruined upper floor and all, and were now standing conferring in its dimly cavernous entry hall.

Vangerdahast had obeyed Ganrahast and remained behind in Suzail to help Ganrahast and Vainrence handle nobles. So just four from Suzail had appeared in a deserted cellar of the mansion, through a temporary portal El had conjured. Very shortly thereafter, Lord Halaunt had rather gruffly and stiffly ordered his servants to hasten away from Oldspires for a paid holiday, seen them get ready for travel, put heavy bags of coins in their astonished hands, and packed them off to Suzail through the same humming and flickering temporary cellar portal. El had created it with Mystra’s aid, linking to one of the mansion’s many existing gates to bypass the spellstorm. She’d assured him that no such aid would be forthcoming to any of the guest wizards trying the same way of getting in, and El’s gate was now closed.

The four had made the brief trip through it from Suzail with Alusair wrapped chillingly around El to keep from being torn at by the gate’s writhing magical energies. The cold she’d visited upon the Sage of Shadowdale had been more than bone chilling. Now, El could breathe again, but he was still rubbing his cold limbs and flexing numbed fingers after unwrapping them from around the battered copper chamberpot he’d insisted on bringing along, which he’d stuffed full of the new Sembian innovation that was now sweeping Cormyr and racing west along the trade roads: darvorr, or chamberpot wiping cloths. Which had met with Myrmeen’s firm approval.

“Sorry, Old Mage,” the ghost princess apologized, her own voice coming incongruously out of Lord Halaunt’s lips.

“Lass, lass, the day I can’t enjoy the embrace of a spirited woman …” El started to say, but at that moment Mirt and Myrmeen finished their separate surveys of the gloomy hall, turned back to face their companions from different directions, and announced in almost perfect unison, “This is not going to go well.”

Elminster shrugged. “Ye’re quite likely right, yet it’s worth a try. Mystra wants us to try this, and if it succeeds, we can achieve much of lasting worth.”

“You sound like a Waterdhavian noble trying to cozen investors,” Mirt growled. “So where’s the wine cellar?”

El chuckled. “Not quite so fast, Old Wolf. Mystra has just sent me a … smell.”

“A smell?”

“That would seem the act of an odd sort of goddess, I’d say,” Myrmeen agreed.

Elminster rolled his eyes. “It’s a wordless warning. A sharp smell in my mind. She knows I’ve secured the Lost Spell, and—”

Mirt gaped. “You have?”

“Ye should watch sly old men a mite more closely. We’re apt to be dangerous, ye know. Yes, I found it; his lordship isn’t—wasn’t—a very imaginative man. Under his pillow, for the love of Mystra! A pillow embroidered “Here rests a Talking Skull, nightly,” no less! At least Halaunt could poke fun at himself. And the spell is now safe. Mystra knows that, and I’d say she’s therefore ready to let our, ah, guests in.”

He closed his eyes, frowned in concentration, and twisted the nearest threads of the Weave over, pulling light through them and then fine-tuning and drawing them together so … he could share what he could see through it with the others, riding its shimmering flows of force—Myrmeen gasped in throaty pleasure as they became visible all around her, and Mirt threw back his head in amazement—out through the solid walls of the mansion and the thick, swirling fog of the spellstorm, to the clear and breezy air above the fields beyond.

Where quite a few haughty and confident men and women stood, none too close to each other, facing the spellstorm.

Most of them were shifting restlessly from foot to foot, obviously unaccustomed to being kept waiting. One of them, robes swirling, had struck a grand pose and was working a mighty magic that caused an intricate tracery of glowing lines to appear in the air above and in front of him, and hang there as immobile as a castle wall—but infinitely prettier.

“Alammath druawh ilbrue taraunt-tal,” he intoned, his hands shaping intricate gestures that made the glowing lines brighten and thicken. “Resurmregard!”

And he flicked his raised fingers in a shooing gesture that made the glowing lines roll away from him through the air, into the shifting smokes of the spellstorm.

Murmurs arose as the fog obediently parted, drifting aside to lay bare a narrow passage through them.

As wizards started to converge on it, peering and looking excited, its creator walked warily forward—and the fog obediently receded before him, extending the passage to reveal more of Lord Halaunt’s goat-cropped lawn.

The triumphant wizard raised his hands on both sides, to be ready to hurl back the fogs if they closed in on him, and strode along the passage he’d made.

Mirt made a wordless growl deep in his throat, and pointed to a mage far back across the lawns, whose hands had just darted through a swift spellweaving.

“Seeking to dispel the work of Laragaunt and doom him,” Elminster announced, watching. “I doubt Mystra will let him succeed.”

The effect of the surreptitious spell was immediate; the outer opening in the great hemisphere of fog, where the new passage began, started to fill in, the spellstorm tumbling forward like smoke let out of a window. Several of the boldest mages, on the brink of following Laragaunt along the passage he’d created, recoiled hastily. In a matter of moments, that end of the passage was gone, lost in thick fogs once more.

Laragaunt looked back, then turned and started to hasten—and obligingly the spellstorm continued to yield before him. He came out of the fogs in haste, into the open area right around the stone walls of the old mansion, gasped in relief, and made for the doors.

Only to find them closed and locked.

Almost contemptuously he worked a minor spell, to work the lock rather than damaging the door … and they all watched his face change as nothing at all happened.

He looked doubtfully over his shoulder at his passage, just as the last of it faded away, the fogs drifting in from both sides to swallow it. He stood on a narrow strip of lawn that stretched away along the walls of the mansion for as far as he could see in both directions, presumably encircling Oldspires like a green ribbon—that might now be his prison. For the roiling fog now stood like a great, unbroken hedge or fence around the strip of grass, walling him in.

Laragaunt tried the doors with all his strength, then sighed, stepped back to peer up at Oldspires, then set off around the house in search of other ways in.

“All doors and windows closed, locked, and barred or shuttered,” El remarked. “I made sure the servants obeyed thy orders.” He looked at Lord Halaunt.

Alusair snorted. “ ‘My’ orders.”

“Has a ring to it, hey?” Mirt offered, and received a withering look from her that would have been far sharper if made with her own features. Lord Halaunt’s expression was forbiddingly withering most of the time.

Myrmeen went to a massive high-backed seat along one wall, and cautiously seated herself. No clouds of dust or storm of scurrying rats arose, and it didn’t collapse under her, so she relaxed, and after a moment moved to one end where she could recline into its padding.

“We should enjoy this leisure, I’m thinking,” she said. “There’ll be precious little once all that lot are in here with us.”

Mirt joined her. “Good idea.”

Elminster’s Weave vision worked well no matter where they were, so they all took seats and watched the powerful spellhurlers out on the lawn one by one hurl mighty spells at the spellstorm, trying to pierce it and get in.

And one by one, Mystra let them succeed.

Laragaunt of Threskel trudged into view several times, making increasingly gloomy circuits of the outside of the rambling mansion. By the last one, he was peering up at high windows, trying to judge what could be climbed to—and forced open, once one was somehow perched precariously up there.

“That’s all of them,” Myrmeen murmured. “Eleven strong, I see.” Out of habit, she looked around for a weapon.

Five women and six men milled warily by the walls of Oldspires, peering all around and glaring at each other. The fogs were unbroken again, walling them in and stretching up overhead in a dome that enclosed the mansion. The sun shone down through the dome as if through a light haze, but for the height of two tall men up from the ground, the spellstorm was like thick, dark roiling smoke.

The Weave vision allowed the four inside Oldspires to see outside as if the walls were transparent, so they all noticed as Manshoon hastened around the mansion to where he was out of sight of the other ten who’d just passed through the spellstorm, espied a high balcony, and almost casually started to swarm up the stone wall.

His descent was as violent as it was swift; a hand slipped and he scraped once against the stones on his way to a solid, thudding crash onto the ground.

Elminster’s chuckle was the loudest.

Manshoon winced, groaned, clambered to his feet feeling at one arm and then the opposing thigh, and tried again to climb but with far more caution. Only to come right back down with a jar, and stand shaking his head. Rage and terror were clear on his face. After a moment, he wandered back toward the other ten wizards.

“He’s gotten used to his vampiric powers,” El muttered, “so now their sudden loss confounds him.”

“They’re gone?” Myrmeen asked.

“While he’s here, inside the spellstorm. Thanks to Mystra. So no spiderlike climbing for him—nor flying around as a bat, either. He’s never been vulnerable to sunlight, as most vampires are, but then again, he can’t charm as a true vampire does, either.”

And with those words, Elminster got up from his seat and added briskly, “Cooks, to the kitchens—where you’d best secure all knives. Lord Halaunt, with me. Time to greet our guests, before they get so restless that mischief erupts.”

“Me, I like mischief erupting,” Mirt replied, but headed for the door the Weave vision showed led to the kitchens, even as it started to fade.

Myrmeen chuckled as she went with him, murmuring, “We’re going to get along just fine, I’m thinking.”

“How much can you use magic in here, Old Mage?” Alusair asked softly, as they went to the front doors together.

El shook his head. “Reliably, not at all. The Weave vision is just that: seeing things. If I tried to do anything through the Weave …” He shook his head again.

The front door was fitted with large cradles to hold beams so it could be barred from within to withstand anything short of the mightiest giant, but it was also fitted with stout, well-oiled iron bolts. El and the Alusair-animated lord unlatched them and slid them back into the walls together.

“Look haughty,” El muttered when they were done—and pushed the doors wide.

Eleven wizards peered suspiciously at him from outside.

He gave them a broad and affable smile, and spread his arms wide. “Welcome to Oldspires!”

“Elminster!” Manshoon snarled. “What’re you doing here?”

“I,” Elminster replied mildly, “have retired from wizardry, and accepted the post of steward to Lord Sardasper Halaunt. Who stands here within, to welcome you into his home.”

He stepped back and with a broad flourish indicated the lone figure standing in the gloomy hall waiting for them.

Who, if glowering could be described as “welcoming,” was silently welcoming them into Oldspires.

Laragaunt and a young mage, who looked by his robes to be a Red Wizard, both snapped out, “It’s a trap!”

And flung a spell and leveled a staff, respectively.

Nothing happened.

The Red Wizard grounded the staff with both hands, crying out an incantation—and it flickered briefly, pulses of light racing up and down it like ripples in a pond … and faded to nothing.

Laragaunt turned in a whirl of robes, rushed back to the roiling fogs of the spellstorm, and worked the same spell that had forced a passage through it before.

The moment the fogs parted again to let him through, he started to run, and the Red Wizard was right behind him, staff flickering into fresh life.

Some of the others started to back away from Elminster and toward the fleeing pair, warily trying to keep an eye on both and each other.

Laragaunt’s voice rose in sudden fear, words rushing out of him in increasingly frantic haste, and more heads turned his way.

In time to see the fog roll in to close over the wildly gesturing mage and the Red Wizard in his wake. That staff flashed once, and falteringly spat lightning about the length of a man’s forearm … and then fell from view as its owner howled in despair.

As that howl died waveringly away, roiling fog hid both men from view.

After a few moments of silence, the gibbering began. Wordless slobbering that rose into wild, shrieking laughter; high, discordant, and somehow full of despair, even before it turned into sobbing.

Keening wails died away as the witless men wandered, stumbling in different directions through the fog.

“Mystra forfend,” one of the women outside the mansion door gasped.

“Be welcome in my home,” Lord Halaunt growled. “So come in, if you’re coming. With the door open, there’s a decidedly unpleasant draft. Come in, or go back out into the spellstorm, I care not. Sounds like they’re having fun out there, those two.”

A tall, bald-headed, strikingly beautiful woman in an ankle-length gown of emerald green glared daggers at him, with eyes that matched her gown but had vertical, snakelike black-and-gold pupils. “You planned this, didn’t you?”

“I planned nothing. I escaped with my life from a fire I still don’t recall any details of, and came home here to clear my lungs—only to find all sorts of strangers seem to want to visit me. Come for the Lost Spell, have you? Well, accusing me of things is a poor way to start negotiating with me, Scalyface.”

Shaaan’s face tightened in anger, and she raised one pointing finger and hissed something that made a snakelike tattoo that spiraled up her forearm move, undulating around and up to fill her palm.

As the tattoo snapped back into its former location, a bright green glow erupted from the end of her long-nailed finger and raced through the air at Lord Halaunt. Right in front of his face it … faded away, and—nothing happened.

Shaaan’s eyes went a little wild.

There were in fact no scales on her face, which bore subtle shiny areas if one peered closely.

“I see you managed to restore your looks in the wake of the fire,” Manshoon murmured, from close behind her. “Pity about your hair.”

She turned hastily to face him and backed away, hissing wordless hatred.

He gave her a brittle, mocking little smile, hissed out the same incantation she had, and pointed his finger at his own head before shrinking back in mock dismay.

“You shall pay for this!” Shaaan hissed at him.

Manshoon yawned in her face—then swayed back swiftly as she struck out at him, trying to rake at his eyes. He was just out of reach.

“Much as I enjoy free entertainment,” a dark-haired, handsome man in fine clothing—his gold belt buckle was worked into an intertwined “MT” monogram, his stylish overvest of supple black leather was trimmed with long rows of matching rubies, and the shirt beneath it was of the finest silk—commented, “our host has invited us inside, and I’d not mind a glass of something, after all that time in the hot sun, hurling futile spells. Can we take hold of our tempers, please?”

Somewhere out in the fog, one of the feebleminded men wailed like a child lost in grief.

“If I lose my temper, Maraunth Torr,” Manshoon said coldly, “you shall not be unaware of the fact.”

Maraunth Torr yawned, in perfect mimicry of Manshoon’s treatment of the Serpent Queen, and the vampire reddened and snapped, “Such mockery betrays insecurity—or imprudence.”

“Of course it does,” Maraunth Torr agreed tenderly.

Behind them, the last few wizards edged through the door, and Elminster closed it and shot the bolts home.

“Are we prisoners, Sage of Shadowdale?” Alastra Hathwinter asked him, her voice somewhere between curious and challenging.

“Nay, of course not,” Elminster replied, giving her the briefest of stone-faced winks. “This door doesn’t even have a lock. Now if ye’ll accompany the Lord Halaunt into the parlor, I’ll see about drinks. Traveling in the countryside is always, I find, a thirsty business.”

At the other end of the wary group of wizards, Lord Halaunt waved one beckoning arm and set off through the gloom through one of the high, arch-topped doorways.

Slowly and with seeming reluctance, the nine remaining wizards followed him into a low-ceilinged room filled with couches, chairs, sidetables, a long sideboard along one wall, and a large fireplace across from it. The stuffed, severed heads of an astonishing variety of rather moth-eaten monsters thrust out from the wall above the sideboard.

“An impressive multitude of death,” the disfigured woman with the lurch commented with some distaste, making her slow and less than graceful way down the chamber.

“What,” another of the female mages wondered aloud, peering at one of the wilder stuffed heads, “is that ?”

“A shapechanger caught in midshift,” Elminster offered brightly. “Takes a magic weapon to manage that sort of slaying. The work of Lord Halaunt’s grandfather, I believe. Now, how about a little winter wine? Jhuild? Or perhaps a nice firedrake?”

A panel grated open in the dark carved wood above the nearest sideboard, causing wizards to whirl around and hands to rise instinctively to work magic. Yet it revealed nothing more sinister than a pair of gloved hands—Myrmeen’s, El recognized—placing a tray of decanters on the sideboard. And then another.

As a gleaming forest of drinkables grew along the sideboard, Elminster—who was keeping a sharp watch over them all—saw the guests start to really study each other, eyes darting here and there as they helped themselves and then sought seats.

There was Manshoon, of course, settling himself well away from both Maraunth Torr and Shaaan.

But who was that, carefully positioning himself at Lord Halaunt’s elbow? A beardless man with a receding hairline, and two gray-going-white daggerboard sideburns? Carrying himself with the confidence of a mage, he wore classic wizard’s robes, but of plain beige homespun rather than sporting the usual rich fabric and fancy adornments.

Alusair had noticed his attentions, and wanted to know more about him. “So,” Lord Halaunt asked, “And who are you?”

“Skouloun is my name,” the man replied, and added grandly, “I am an Elder of Nimbral.”

“Nimbral, eh? I suppose rumors of its ruination were greatly exaggerated?”

Skouloun shrugged. “I know not—I was on another plane of existence when the Spellplague hit, and learned of it from a dying mage who barely escaped with his life, so I stayed away from Toril for some eighty years.”

“Huh. If you could stay away in a place hospitable enough to host you for a lifetime, why’d you come back?”

“For my lifetime,” Skouloun replied. “I spent much of those eight decades perfecting a longevity magic, but was forced to return to Toril when that ritual started to fail, aging me. I hadn’t realized some of the materials I’d used must come from Toril; their equivalents from other planes won’t work.”

“And having prolonged your life, are you now willing to share?” a buxom lady in homespun robes very similar to Skouloun’s asked teasingly. Her eyes were a merry honey brown, the same hue as her hair.

“This should not be discussed here and now,” Skouloun replied sharply.

“I can see you two know each other,” Lord Halaunt observed. “Care to share?”

He looked to Skouloun when he asked this, so it was Skouloun who replied, with a sour sigh, “Behold Yusendre, a fellow Elder of Nimbral. She’s … a bit of an imp.”

“Which is Skouloun’s way of saying I have the sense of humor he utterly lacks,” Yusendre told Lord Halaunt sweetly. “And before you ask, I survived the Spellplague, and the century that followed its advent, by fleeing through a gate into another world, and there finding a cozy little cave and employing the classic sleep-of-ages spell that Phezult gave us all. Eventually, once the magic had consumed the gems, I awoke from my stasis and returned here. Just in time for the real chaos, Tymora grant me better luck!”

Elminster dared not listen any further for fear of offending those standing nearer, evidently awaiting access to the decanters to which his body was blocking their reach.

“May I pour ye something, Lady?” he asked the gaunt, disfigured lady who had one eye higher than the other in a lopsided face, and mismatched breasts and hips, too.

Fire lurked deep in those dark brown—almost black—eyes, perhaps even madness, but she replied almost gently, “You may, if I may have your name. I am Tabra.”

“And I am Elminster Aumar, often called Elminster of Shadowdale or the Sage of Shadowdale or … less complimentary things.”

“Once of Thultanthar?”

“No, I am no Netherese, nor have I had any dealings with those of that returned city that were not … violent.”

“I heard,” a sardonic man’s voice came from behind Tabra, “that you single-handedly slew Telamont Tanthul, Most High of the Princes of Shade.” It was Malchor Harpell, and he was smiling slyly.

Elminster shrugged. “Single-handedly? No. Yet he did die. These things happen from time to time.”

“But you were chiefly responsible,” Malchor pressed. El shrugged again.

“That’s true?” Tabra whispered, trembling slightly, her eyes very large now, and very dark.

Elminster stepped back and picked up a decanter, in case he was about to need a weapon, and admitted gravely, “Lady Tabra, it is.”

The look she gave him then held pure adulation. She was smitten. Uh-oh.

“Berduskan, perhaps?” he asked quickly, holding up the decanter.

“Please,” she purred. “A very large glass.”

“And you, Malchor?” Elminster asked quickly, pouring and steering Tabra’s glass into her hand while trying to ignore the clear invitation in her mismatched eyes.

“I’ll have twilight wine, if you have any—fitting, for one who dwells in the Tower of Twilight.”

“Still?” El asked.

“Ah, you heard it had disappeared after the Blue Fire struck. Yes. Well. Contingencies, you know …”

“I do,” El agreed gravely, producing the smoky blue vintage that had been requested. Malchor Harpell looked, if anything, younger and sleeker than he remembered—glossy black hair, an immaculately kept, close-cropped beard that adorned the line of his chin, forbidding glossy black eyebrows, eyes so very dark blue as to seem black. And calm, always sardonically calm, his intellect very much on display. He wore two layers of robes, charcoal gray over black, which made him look like some priests El could remember. “Elder statesman of Longsaddle now?”

Malchor sighed. “A role I left behind me centuries ago. I rather suspect I’m forgotten in Longsaddle, these days—thought long dead, or worse. I did not leave on the best of terms. There was—but no, such things are better left unspoken. The kin I miss are long dead now—and I don’t miss being an elder. I’d much rather play the young rapscallion.”

“Wouldn’t we all,” Elminster and Lord Halaunt and Manshoon all started to say together, then broke off to eye each other in surprise and flaring amusement. Still smiling, El turned back to the sideboard—to find himself nose to nose with a wrinkled crone of a woman who stared bitterly at him, the remains of what once must have been striking beauty still apparent in her face. He knew her from some covert long-ago scrying, but it would be best to pretend otherwise. This one was trouble.

Calathlarra of the Twisted Rune, known to be icily rude, cruel, and inflexible even among their ruthless and hardened ranks. Though wrinkles and sagging flesh ruled her face and chin, the rest of her was still tall, shapely, and sleekly graceful, very straight and glossy jet-black hair framed her face and fell almost to her ankles. She wore a dark maroon gown over black breeches and leather warrior’s boots of the same hue. El nodded to her politely. After all, ’twas not every day he almost brushed noses with a Runemaster without murderous spells being hurled.

“Lady,” he asked gently, indicating the many decanters on the sideboard, “what can I get you?”

“Nothing, worm,” she said coldly. “I’ll pour my own. Only fools trust Elminster the meddler.”

“That,” he replied, amused despite himself, “is not true. If ye’d said, ‘only fools should trust Elminster the meddler,’ then ye would have uttered truth.”

Maraunth Torr was already serving himself, and paused long enough in doing so to give Elminster a sidelong smiling look.

“Pah! You always think yourself very clever,” Calathlarra said witheringly.

“Well,” Elminster replied, “it’s something comforting to think upon, at least. What do Runemasters think about?”

She hissed. “So you know.”

“But of course! I am very clever,” he replied, giving her a merry wink, and spun away—to find himself breast to breast with Alastra Hathwinter.

Who solemnly returned his early wink to him, and murmured, “Oooh, Lord Elminster, Scourge of Women! My heart melts, and so does my—”

“Excuse me,” Tabra interrupted them, giving Alastra a frosty look, “but my glass seems to need refilling.” Literally ramming one of her sharp hips into Alastra to push her aside, she faced Elminster and held up her glass, which was indeed empty.

The displaced Harper mage gave Elminster a twinkling little smile from behind Tabra, and glided away, clutching her already-filled glass to her bosom.

“But allow me,” El murmured, taking the glass from Tabra and turning to the decanter of Berduskan. His turn brought him around to face Lord Halaunt, who tendered him another solemn wink. Alusair was evidently amused. “The same again?” he asked Tabra.

“Oh, yes, Lord Elminster. Please.”

Inwardly, Elminster rolled his eyes. This was going to get bad. Very bad. And very soon.

CHAPTER 6

Laughter, Threats, and a Little Truth

ALUSAIR HAD OVER THE YEARS SEEN COUNTLESS GOOD “FEASTS FOR MANY” prepared and served, so it had taken her only a swift glance at Halaunt’s barely adequate pantries and superb wine cellar to plan a good feast—and not all that many moments to launch Mirt and Myrmeen along the road to preparing it. That wine cellar was going to come in very handy.

By means of the sliding panels, an array of cheeses had been set out—with the bluntest little ornamental knives Myrmeen could find—on the sideboards, along with more decanters of wine.

This had been done more to buy time for cooking than anything else, but Alusair, as Lord Halaunt, was sending Elminster amused glances as decanters were drained with impressive speed, and the talk grew louder and lewder. It seemed mighty archmages weren’t much different than the rest of the world—the prouder, more arrogant, self-centered part of the rest of the world—when one came right down to it.

Both the lord and his new steward kept circulating, thankful that the room was large enough that one had to walk to eavesdrop. They took care to keep moving, talking to one guest after another, and trying not to be too obvious watching which combinations of wizards were friendly to each other, and which were frosty.

And wherever he trudged in the room, Lord Sardasper Halaunt asked pleasantly, “So tell me, why do you want the Lost Spell? If it was yours, what would you do with it?”

Alusair wasn’t expecting to hear much truth—though she hoped the real reasons would come out later, when she met with each of her guests privately, and bade them make an offer—but she was almighty interested in whatever glib public reasons she might be given. They were, after all, standing in Cormyr, the land she loved beyond life itself, and the spell was something that would make an already powerful wizard mighty indeed.

“I am interested in magic for its own sake,” Manshoon replied gravely. “Some of my previous selves ruled here or there, and made bids for power, but I am past that now. I seek to fully understand the mysteries of the Art. Blessed Mystra is not called Our Lady of Mysteries for nothing.”

Alusair had no way at all of knowing if he was telling the truth. She doubted it, for his reputation suggested that his habit wasn’t to deal in truth when falsehoods served him better. However, he had suffered setback after setback this last century and more; perhaps disappointment after disappointment would turn some from courting fresh disaster. On the other hand, if he was telling the truth, some of those disappointments might not have been. Disappointing, that is. Hmmm.

When it was Calathlarra’s turn, she told Lord Halaunt fiercely, “For more power. What else? I have formidable foes, and my life is dangerous—if I can face each new day girded with more power, I can accomplish that much more, and shed that much more fear.”

Well, now. To horse and full charge straight ahead for this one. Or was that just a pose, a tactic put on in such powerful company? The Twisted Rune wouldn’t have achieved half what they had if they boldly plowed straight ahead; the Zhentarim had proven the folly of that. Hmmm again.

“To keep the Lost Spell from falling into worse hands than mine,” Malchor Harpell confided. “Mine, I trust. Those of others, I cannot—least of all most of the mages gathered in this room.”

A noble reason indeed—if it were true. But was it? To have ridden herd on as wild a family as the Harpells of old, Malchor must have become a master manipulator. Was this merely what he thought Lord Halaunt might admire, or approve of? Or did he mean it?

“I would use it for revenge,” Tabra said softly, her mismatched eyes flashing.

Oh, yes, this one meant the words she spoke.

This one will be trouble, Alusair thought at Elminster along the Weave, catching his eye. Yet I like her.

We both like trouble, El replied. Keep an open mind; ’tis early, yet.

Early has a distressing habit of becoming late too soon and all too swiftly, the Steel Regent of Cormyr retorted, and he sent her a wry and wordless burst of acceptance.

They’d promised Ganrahast that the Lost Spell would be yielded only into “responsible hands,” but they were both beginning to share the clear mistrust the Royal Magician had greeted that statement with. The hands of these mages were quite likely responsible for many dark things.

They both kept on strolling and talking, Lord Halaunt collecting answers, and Elminster collecting more badinage than anything else.

Shaaan’s reply to Lord Halaunt was that she liked to collect spells and study them, and this magic promised to be very interesting.

The woman lies like a snake, was Alusair’s silent judgment.

Maraunth Torr offered the opinion that every wizard of power and achievement sought to gain every last spell they could, and he was no different. Some mages might deny that hunger, but they were deceivers; he himself had long ago passed all need to practice deceit.

Oh? Really? I doubt it, my lord wizard. Alusair couldn’t keep a sneer of disbelief out of her thoughts. I doubt it very much.

Alastra told Lord Halaunt that she hoped to do some good in the world if she had the Lost Spell, and assured him that the very idea of ruling some place made her shudder. She then demonstrated that shuddering, in a way that displayed more of her bosom rather deliciously. Alusair made both of Lord Halaunt’s eyebrows go up, but inwardly felt not the slightest astonishment. Someone was bound to try, ah, fleshly wiles, and Alastra at least had the looks for it.

She was surprised when Yusendre of Nimbral tried the same tactic, but even more boldly—making a whispered promise—and confessed to a sensual longing to experience and master new spells. Was every last female mage here going to rush straight to the seduction gambit? Even when their looks couldn’t compete? What happened to using sharp wits to come up with alternatives?

By the Purple Dragon, the two women could warm a chill mansion all by themselves. Perhaps they should be installed in fireplaces at either end of the grandrooms, so the others could relax cozily of evenings …

The other Elder of Nimbral, Skouloun, gave more or less the same reason as Malchor, asserting that he himself was the most trustworthy custodian of the Lost Spell—for he would use it to smite evildoers, tyrants, and those who hoarded magic, not to mention rout the most dangerous monsters all across Faerûn, to usher in a new era of peace and prosperity, to better the lives of all.

Ye gods, what wind! It was tiring just listening to Skouloun, not that she believed him.

How fare you, El? Growing tired of the sheer piffle being served up yet? I am.

Lass, lass, after so many centuries, I breathe in piffle with every passing moment, and speak it out almost as often. Look upon it as entertainment, lass—as royalty, I’d’ve thought ye would have resorted to that tactic for retaining thy sanity long ago.

The ghost sent him a mental snort. Retaining my sanity? Too late, Sage of Shadowdale! Much too late.

El sent her back a mental chuckle.

While she as Lord Halaunt had been collecting answers, he hadn’t been indulging in mere idle banter while serving cheese and drinkables.

More than once questions were put to him about his presence, sometimes in a hostile manner. Skouloun had observed, “This is Lord Halaunt’s home, so his presence here is both natural and expected. But just what are you doing here? Want the Lost Spell for yourself, do you?”

El gave him a catlike little smile that he’d spent some time in front of mirrors practicing, after having seen Amarune do it, and replied, “I am here to help in deciding which of ye—if any—is worthy of possessing the Lost Spell.”

“Surely that should be a matter for our host,” Skouloun protested, waving one hand grandly in the direction of Lord Halaunt—as one of those awkward little lulls that happens early in almost any gathering of strangers or hostiles befell.

Leaving everyone gazing with interest at their host, to see what the bitter old noble would do.

Which, it turned out, was to give them all a level look and tell them, “We shall decide to yield the Lost Spell to just one of you, as I see that as the way to cause Cormyr—and all Toril, beyond—a minimum of strife and affray. ‘We’ because I hired Elminster to be my steward, as matters of magic are new and uncomfortable to me, and he has a certain reputation for competency. Or longevity, which when dealing with deadly spells seems to me to be very much the same thing. I trust that I know people, but not spells. So, all of you, know this: I trust Elminster of Shadowdale absolutely, and have placed half of the measure of judgment in this matter in his hands. Not to mention the Lost Spell itself, which he tells me he’s hidden where only he shall ever find it.”

All eyes turned to Elminster, who had to quell his inner amusement from rising to his face. Even when playing a stiff old noble, Alusair had certainly mastered the art of painting a target on a fellow. Still, this should help to force some of the wizards here to try one approach with the lord, and another with his steward, and so betray their own true worth.

El decided the best tactic, just now, was to look grave. He steepled his fingers like a pious priest and nodded slowly, contriving to look a trifle on the sad side of thoughtful.

One of the women—he dared not look to see who—snorted in clear derision. Well, aye, his act was barely believable, he had to give her that.

However, Lord Halaunt’s words had worked. Attention had left the old noble; every last guest was now focused on Elminster, and they were all sidling toward him.

He had to firmly squash another urge to laugh. This was as good as a play.

He just hoped it wouldn’t turn out to be the sort of production where bodies piled up on the stage …

“Sage of Shadowdale,” Shaaan murmured, as she reached Elminster and halted shoulder to shoulder, so she was looking past him but able to speak sidelong into his ear, “I’m sure a man who’s lived the sort of long and interesting life you have must have made many enemies, and accumulated many debts. I’m not called a queen for nothing; the wealth I could share with you could smooth away your every material want …”

She broke off as Maraunth Torr got close enough to obviously listen in, and added only, “Don’t forget this offer,” as she glided away.

Elminster turned and followed her, ignoring Maraunth Torr as if he’d been a pillar or a piece of furniture, and when she noticed this and whirled, he gave her a chuckle and the words, “Deftly done, lass. Not a hint of the salacious, just the coins proffered. Not that such blandishments have worked on me for the last twelve centuries or so. But I thank ye for the entertainment.”

Shaaan hissed, then asked, “And how are you at receiving threats?”

El shrugged. “Depends. How menacing are they?”

“Oh, I can be very menacing. Starting with your anointed successor, Amarune Whitewave.”

Elminster shook his head. “No. Too crude and obvious. There’s an art to it, Snakeshanks. Lead with the suggestive but minor, and build to thy stronger threats.”

And with that, he spun away, feeling the sharp prick of the envenomed needle she’d spat into the back of his hand before he’d taken his second stride.

It tingled rather than burned, so he knew he had to do nothing at all. Bone asp venom, by the rough edge of that tingling, and bone asp venom hadn’t been able to harm him for three centuries now. My, but it was nice to be wanted—gone.

Maraunth Torr was waiting patiently for him as El strode up. “I presume the Serpent Queen offered you riches, and threatened you as an incentive to accept them,” he said with preamble. “It’s her usual way.”

Elminster nodded. “And what’s thy usual way, Maraunth Torr?” The chatter and mingling around them were now loud and brisk enough that only those standing nearest could eavesdrop—and he didn’t really care if anyone did listen in. Yusendre of Nimbral, for one, was keeping close, but trying to stay behind him and out of his field of vision.

“I will be so bold as to offer you my service,” the urbane and handsome wizard replied smoothly. “I’ve assembled a collection of spells most individuals would find very impressive, but I can hardly hope to impress a Chosen of Mystra. Yet I’m sure you can always use an extra pair of eyes and hands—and mine can wield magic most can never hope to master.”

“If I yield the Lost Spell to ye,” Elminster said dryly. “Binding thyself in servitude, making thyself many new foes—for we who serve Mystra are not widely loved—to gain one spell? Forgive me if I doubt thy veracity. Or that thy service, if rendered, would be selfless. I smell the proverbial rat. Or perhaps an incontinent dragon.”

“It’s hardly prudent to spurn my offer out of hand with such gratuitous and unfounded insults,” Maraunth Torr replied with a smile. “Being as I wield power enough to be able to harm those near and dear to you, and hamper your causes. To prefer to face threats rather than to accept bribes is hardly the act of a sane man, I must say.”

“Aye, obviously ye must,” Elminster replied dryly. “Yet I’ve not been sane for these last thousand-some years, so thy point strays wide and leaves me unskewered. Manshoon yonder has been threatening me for more than a century—or rather, various of him have—yet here I still stand. That should tell thee something.”

“I,” Maraunth Torr said a trifle coldly, “am not Manshoon.”

“Aye,” El replied, almost purring out the words. “I’d noticed.”

Maraunth Torr reddened around the temples, a blush that spread down the line of his jaw as it tightened.

Ah, yes, that smarts. Ye very want to achieve as much as Manshoon, or at least assume half the mantle of his infamy. Smiling serenely at the glowering wizard, Elminster strolled on.

To find Yusendre suddenly in front of him, gliding to a stop with a little smile and nod of greeting.

“Bad form,” she commented, holding up her empty glass.

“What’s bad form?” he asked politely, selecting a decanter, proffering it, and when she nodded acceptance, refilling her glass.

“I know not what the scaled woman and Saer Torr said to you at first,” she replied, “but I know they both ended by uttering threats. They’re not accustomed to hiding their true feelings, so I or anyone who cares to can easily read their tone of voice, or facial expressions … proper little tyrants, the pair of them.”

“Whereas you are a proper little—what?” El asked her lightly.

“Would-be friend. Kindness and friendship achieve much more than fear, outright threat, and glowering menace.”

“So, Yusendre, is this the ‘sleep with me, Elminster; my price is merely the Lost Spell’ gambit?” Malchor murmured, from where he’d drifted up behind her.

She gave him a pleasant smile that held no hint of irritation. “Why not? Fun to play, even if it fails, hmm?” And turned her gaze back to Elminster, a clear promise in her eyes.

“Thy beauty and thy spirit are both … admirable,” El replied, “yet I have known the beauty and spirit of the goddess I serve, and it has … tempered me, as a swordsmith tempers a blade, in matters of seduction.”

Oooh, hearken to the man. I’ll just bet your blade is tempered! Alusair commented wickedly.

I thought it a suitably arch comment, myself, El thought back at her, letting her feel his amusement.

Around and between them, as decanters were emptied much faster than the cheese was disappearing, some of the guests were trading murmured threats, and others seemed to be tentatively trying to establish alliances.

The male Elder of Nimbral seemed irritated. “Though we’ve been here but a short time,” he complained to Malchor Harpell, “this entire situation has, to me, the feel of a cage, wherein we who seek the Lost Spell are confined until one of us wins it—and is thereby handed the chance to slaughter the rest of us, his or her conveniently gathered rivals.”

Malchor sighed. “Try not to say such things too freely, and impart ideas to those who just might try to make them reality. I’d rather not see dead bodies strewn everywhere around this nice old house. Just think what all of us gathered here in this room could achieve if we mustered all of our Art and worked together!”

“That will never happen,” Skouloun said flatly. “Not even if any of us were crazed enough to want it to.”

Malchor sighed a little sadly. “A realist, I see,” he said, staring at the Elder of Nimbral. “You and your kind always take all the fun out of things.”

And he turned on his heel and strode away. In his wake, Skouloun sniffed disparagingly, shrugged, and then departed in the direction of the nearest decanter.

Leaving Alastra Hathwinter, who’d been edging up behind Malchor, all alone in the suddenly vacated spot. She stared after Malchor longingly.

Then she took a step after him, and another, started to gather speed—and then stopped abruptly, some of the color draining from her face.

Elminster came to a stop beside her and murmured, “This would seem to me to be the time when a gallant old archmage would engage thee in gentle converse to soothe and restore thy heart.”

Alastra sighed. “You’re most kind, Lord Elminster, but I doubt even the most golden tongue can restore me so easily.”

Together they gazed across the room at the reason for her sudden stop—and despair. Malchor Harpell was now talking to both Manshoon and Shaaan, who were facing out into the room watchfully. That little group was a decidedly less than safe place for a Harper to be.

The lass, El thought at Alusair a little bleakly, is smitten.

With you, old buzzard?

Nay. Oh, she’s in awe of me, and reveres me a little—a founder of the Harpers, and all that. But she’s hopelessly in love with Malchor. Methinks she doesn’t really want the Lost Spell so much as she wants yonder former elder pillar of the Harpells kept safe. And, of course, she wants no foes of the Harpers to gain possession of the Lost Spell.

A platter heaped with wants, then. I wonder how many she’ll be able to halfway fulfill?

El smiled a little grimly. Well, Luse, given this company, precious few to none, I’d say.

Alusair sent him a wordless mind surge of resigned agreement.

Elminster bent his head close to Alastra’s and murmured, “Tell me now, as one Harper to another: what can ye tell me of our host, the Lord Halaunt?”

Alastra gave him a look of surprise, then smiled and replied, “He’s a rather unsavory individual who for years has been covertly hiring various less-than-law-abiding adventuring bands, often in Sembia, to further his ends—and damage the property and dealings of his rivals among the nobility.”

“A noble who resorts to bullyblades to make his will real,” El concluded.

“Precisely. Yet he’s no loner; he and Manshoon collaborated on swindling a wealthy Sembian merchant family eight summers back. Mlorgathyn of Selgaunt, a dealer in fine wines, scents, and sauces.”

“Interesting,” El replied, wondering how well Manshoon knew Halaunt, and, for that matter, Oldspires.

He let his gaze wander to Manshoon’s face, and his longtime rival felt or sensed the weight of his regard, looked his way, and when their eyes met, gave him a soft, dangerous “I’ll get you someday” smile.

Elminster chuckled aloud.

Oh, yes, this was going to get bad.

Very bad. And very soon.

MYRMEEN AND MIRT had worked miracles. Scores of candles flickered overhead in the great hanging maerifasturs, fires crackled merrily in all three of the feast hall’s great fireplaces, and the tables were covered with fine linens, old but gleaming silver, and a handsome feast, on abundant platters, of a quality and variety that outshone many a noble’s best.

Despite himself, and the many feasts he had attended in his long, long life, Elminster was impressed. He couldn’t mindspeak either Myrmeen or Mirt without working a spell, as unlike the ghost of the princess, they weren’t bound up in the Weave, so he would have to wait until he could speak to them alone to convey his gratitude. He owed them—boy, did he owe them. If this was the standard they were setting …

He shook his head, which prompted Tabra, who’d literally backed him into a corner with relentless small talk because she obviously wanted to ask him something, to inquire, “What in particular of what I’ve just said do you disagree with, Lord Elminster?”

“A stray thought,” he replied soothingly, “nothing more.”

“Ah,” she responded. “So I may ask you something?”

He gave her a smile and his full attention. “Ask away.”

“Thank you. You are aware I was Ioulaum’s last apprentice?”

El nodded.

“And that in an effort to pry certain spells out of me, the Netherese of Thultanthar captured and enslaved me?”

“They sought Ioulaum’s Longevity, no doubt,” El offered.

Tabra gave him a sharp look. “Do you seek it, too?”

Elminster shook his head. “Nay,” he replied. “For some years I’ve not wanted to live much longer, to say nothing of forever.”

“It was Telamont Tanthul who did this to me,” Tabra hissed. “I hate him, and all those who served him. I’m told you destroyed him with ease—how? Tell me, how?”

“The Weave,” El told her.

She gave him a look of disgust, but he protested, “Nay, misunderstand me not! I’m not being clever and taunting you with flippant glibness, denying you what you seek as a weapon against the Thultanthans you hunt; I’m seeking to tell you it’s no spell, nor combination of spells, that you can learn from me and use.”

Tabra frowned, and El added swiftly, “Aye, the Weave underlies all arcane spells, but what I meant was this … what befell me when the Blue Fire came was near madness, a loss of control; when I used the Art, unless other minds stabilized mine, I lost my mind. Every time.”

Tabra’s eyes narrowed as she stared into Elminster’s own, trying to judge if he told the truth.

“Not for good,” El told her, “but for long periods of witlessness. As all magic of the Weave weakened and went wild, I fought to mend the Weave, and learned it more deeply and in detail—because I dared not work spells—than I ever had before. By the time Mystra returned and commanded me once more, I was a Weavemaster. The Weavemaster; the one known, as the Srinshee was perhaps the only being to understand it more fully. When I struck down Telamont, he was … overextended, but ablaze with gathered power; he had just directed a magic all the arcanists who obeyed him had contributed to, he had drained many enchanted items into himself, and he was seeking to harness the mythal of Myth Drannor, all in obedience to Shar. The Weave was unstable, and if I’d tried to look at him through it, I’d have been blinded—his gathered power was that great.”

“So how—? How mighty are you?”

“As an archmage, hurling spells, not his equal. He had greater magic at his call, by far. His weaknesses were arrogant overconfidence, and years of overmuch reliance on the obedience of underlings without having to face all the betrayals, difficulties, and wide variety of experiences that tutored me.”

“He was inexperienced, measured against you.”

“Aye. Yet if we’d stood against each other and traded spell after spell, he’d have bested me. I was worn down, and he was fresh and empowered. I think we both knew it.”

“And so?”

“And so I used no spell, but the Weave. The magics he unleashed at me it drank, and became that much more spellfire, fueling what I was directing the Weave to do. He empowered what I did to him.”

“So can you teach me this?”

El shook his head. “Ye could learn it the same way I did, through long work with the Weave—if Mystra allowed thee, which is unlikely; the details of what I did are fading from my mind fast, which suggests she’s taking it from me because she trusts no mortal to carry it. And the Weave is Mystra, and Mystra is the Weave; each Mystra changes the Weave to make it her own, and this one has changed it since her return, to guard against what was done to her to bring on the Spellplague.”

He sighed. “More than that, the Weave is no longer as unstable, as awash with freed and dangerous power, as it was that day—and I and all who serve Mystra are trying to keep it from ever being so imperiled, so on the verge of utter collapse, as it was then. Nor would ye face a foe so bloated with excess arcane energy that ye could turn against him. I say again: I did not defeat the Most High of Thultanthar in a spell duel. There was no duel. I slapped him down with the Weave, in a way he did not believe I or anyone had the ability to harness, and so he had no defense against it that he could craft in time.”

“And if you had failed?”

“Both the Srinshee and Larloch could have done it, and would have done it. Thy former master could probably have done it, too, but I know not if he could have grasped how to wield the Weave swiftly enough to stop Telamont ere the Most High carried out its destruction, as Shar had commanded. Ioulaum, last I knew, was … lost in his own contemplations.”

Tabra nodded sadly. “You describe him aptly. And I thank you for your candor. You have not the weapon I seek.”

Elminster nodded. “And I hope never to have it again. The risk to us all, to the Art we all use, is too great.”

“So,” Tabra said slowly, “in this place, here and now, where magic won’t obey us, you can’t use the Weave in its place.”

El looked back at her gravely, and said nothing.

They regarded each other in silence for a long moment, among the chatter up and down the room, ere Tabra observed quietly, “You’re not the prancing mighty spellhurler most think you at all. You are as … misunderstood as my looks now make me misjudged.”

El gave her a wry smile. “Don’t tell, now! I’m in disguise! And that same prancing mask I wear achieves much for me.”

Tabra crooked an eyebrow. The effect was grotesque, thanks to her misshapen face. “More conquests? Females yielding to you?”

Elminster rolled his eyes. “That’s far more part of the pose than it is reality. I meant I further Mystra’s aims by playing the wise old fool so I am feared, and folk do what they think best to turn aside my wrath or my meddlings—and such doings are often the very deeds I hope they will do.”

“I believe,” Tabra said dryly, “I’d like a drink now. And some food to hold it down with.”

El chuckled. “Me, too. Nobly saving the world is such thirsty work.”

CHAPTER 7

A Feast to Die For

THE FEAST UNFOLDED STIFFLY AT FIRST, WITH AWKWARD SILENCES and diners turning to begin conversing and then thinking better of it and holding silence. Yet a smilingly silent Myrmeen and a sweating Mirt—Manshoon had recognized him in an instant and given him a hard glare, but had said not a word—served forth the food as serenely as if there were no uncomfortable atmosphere at all. The viands proved superb and Lord Halaunt’s wine cellar strong, and as food and wine took effect, the diners relaxed, chatter and even laughter arose, and Alusair was moved to mindmurmur to El, Convivial at last. I thought we’d never get there.

When the first three dishes were done, Mirt had suggested everyone rise and partake of wine and chat while the table was cleared and fresh dishes were prepared—and wonder of wonders, all of these powerful, superior mages had obeyed as meekly as nuns acquiescing to something they secretly agreed with and looked forward to.

El hastened to make sure glasses were filled and everyone who wanted a cheese tart had one, and by then the mingling was in full swing again, Lord Halaunt’s chattering guests strolling around the feast hall. It was a grand, soaring room, much larger than the Red Receiving Room where they’d first gathered, with three tall bay windows looking south into Lord Halaunt’s woods. Each window commanded its own alcove, and if you turned away from the views, you beheld faded stag-hunting tapestries hanging everywhere that didn’t have a window or a fireplace and huge rising stone chimney.

Elminster found himself facing the patriarch of the Harpells of Longsaddle, who favored him with the easy smile of a friend or trusted colleague.

“Retired from serving Mystra to serve yon old coot?” Malchor murmured. “Don’t believe it. None of us do. You aren’t really expecting anyone to swallow that line, are you?”

El grinned. “Frankly, no.” Then he added very quietly, “Yet ye’ve no idea how tired I am of riding to the rescue of realm after realm, again and again. I’ve so much reading to get caught up on.”

Malchor nodded. “A condition I am not unfamiliar with. Well, may this ride end in victory for you.”

“Ye’re not really after the spell, are ye?” El asked.

Malchor smiled. “No. I’m more after making sure certain individuals don’t get it—and live to use it on the rest of us.”

And he saluted Elminster with his goblet and strolled away. Alastra turned and abandoned a conversation to follow the senior Harpell, drifting in his wake.

“How touching,” a voice that held an edge of steel commented from nearby. “Young and lost in love. I was like that, once. And gave myself to matchmaking, to make all my friends happy, one after another. Not all of those matches lasted.”

It was Calathlarra. Elminster managed not to look disbelieving, but she wasn’t fooled. “Oh, yes,” she said, giving him a very direct look. “I was young and devoted to serving others once. A long time ago.” She sounded almost wistful.

El gazed at her and tried to imagine Calathlarra as young and generous and self-sacrificingly helpful.

He failed.

“So, Chosen of Mystra,” she said challengingly, “is the Art truly useless to us here? Won’t it work at all?”

Elminster sighed. “Oh, it’ll work, I daresay. It just won’t do what ye intend it to do. A casting ye’ve worked a thousand times before will cause something utterly surprising and unintended, not what ye want it to. Perhaps deadly to all, perhaps so subtle ye’ll have to search to see what the magic wrought. I think.”

“You ‘think’? You’re not certain?”

“As I get older,” El replied, “I find certainty increasingly elusive. Don’t ye?”

“No,” Calathlarra replied flatly. “As the years pass, I eliminate more of my foes, and their schemes and strivings die with them, so certainty—for me—rises. And one certainty looms steadily nearer and clearer: the certainty of death. Whenever I deal it, I simplify matters, and certainty grows. Admit it, Elminster Aumar: the most convenient enemies are those who’ve become but memories. Destroyed, and therefore done.”

“And are ye planning any such simplifications, in the near future?”

“Planning? No. Yet I find myself increasingly fond of certainty,” Calathlarra purred, giving him a mirthless smile as she started to drift away. “Cold certainty.”

Elminster turned back to the sideboard and its decanters for a replenishment, then turned slowly on one heel to survey the room and see if anyone else felt the need to have their glass filled.

Yonder, Alastra was talking to Malchor at last, the two Elders of Nimbral seemed to have reached a decision about something and were heading in El’s direction, and Calathlarra had just said something to Shaaan that had made Manshoon shake his head and depart their company briskly.

Also heading for … Elminster.

Uh-oh.

Yet when the vampire reached El, all he did was hold out an empty wineglass and ask politely, “Anything very red and very dry left?”

El found him something suitable among the gleaming glass forest of decanters, poured, and Manshoon nodded thanks.

By which time the two Elders of Nimbral were standing at their elbows, waiting politely. El proffered the decanter he was holding, but they shook their heads.

“I wanted to ask you about the Sundering,” Skouloun said calmly to El, and then glanced at Manshoon and added, “But perhaps now is not a good time.”

The vampire gave him a polite smile and said, “I don’t see why it shouldn’t be. I’m not the power-hungry tyrant many seem to think me.”

“Oh?” Yusendre asked him calmly, as if doing so was no boldness at all. “What are you, then?”

Manshoon’s answering smile was silky. “One who plays a longer game, Lady. I’ve learned one lesson too many times over, now: spell-hurling and marching armies often mar the prizes being fought for. Why fight, when by the right manipulations—often such small things that I’ve learned by watching Elminster here, for centuries now—can bring about what is sought without all the bloodshed? Every death can mean a feud, and more enemies. I’ve already had to learn patience. Now I’m learning … slyness.”

“What, all over again?” Skouloun asked gently—and then unflinchingly endured the level, heavy gaze Manshoon gave him.

“Ask, then,” Elminster prompted the Nimbran, a bare instant after Manshoon shrugged, smiled, and relaxed.

“The Sundering,” Skouloun asked, “is it done? In your opinion.”

Elminster smiled. “Its consequences shall be with us henceforth, but the sorting of what is Toril unto Toril, and what is of Abeir to Abeir—that’s done, yes. The two worlds are now sundered, and the Era of Upheaval is ended. Or so Mystra tells me.”

“So who or what caused the Sundering?” Yusendre asked.

El shrugged. “Strife among the gods, some say, or displeasing the Overgod, or the death of Mystra, or merely that it was time; Abeir and Toril have comingled before and shall again. Thy guess is as good as mine.”

“Oh, come, come,” Skouloun objected. “We all know Chosen of Mystra like to speak cryptically and cloak themselves in an aura of mystery, in veneration of Our Lady of Mysteries, but surely—”

“I know more?” El smiled. “I know what Mystra tells me, and what I saw and heard myself when working with the Weave. Yet how much of that can I trust, really?”

“Mystra tells one wizard one thing,” Manshoon murmured, “and another mage another thing. As I know from personal experience.”

“Just as every god or goddess tells their Chosen what they want their Chosen to believe,” El added. “Seeking to manipulate them to act thus and so, and thereby gain power through the deeds, worldly strength, and numbers of their Chosen, these last few years. All of the fighting that raged across Faerûn—that yet rages, in many places—was no accident.”

“So who won?” Skouloun demanded.

Elminster shrugged. “Those deities we thought dead and gone, who have returned. The great dance among the gods continues, the intrigues and the fighting. Shar lost, this time around, for a great measure of order has been restored, and Mystra is goddess of magic, so there is still a Weave and not the great night of ongoing chaos Shar hungers to bring about.”

“You tell us nothing we do not already know, or have heard, or guessed,” Skouloun observed with a frown. “Do you intend to tell us nothing?”

The Sage of Shadowdale shrugged again. “We can talk for days, and I can tell ye many things, but certainties are few. All I can be sure of is that I and Storm and others worked to anchor and repair the Weave when Mystra was silent—”

“Dead,” Manshoon corrected. “Dead and gone.”

El shook his head. “Dead but not gone, only silent. For Mystra is the Weave, and throughout all of this, there was always a Weave, however weak and damaged and imperiled.”

“A metaphor,” the vampire said dismissively.

“No. If Mystra had been utterly destroyed, her essence—her body, in mortal terms—scattered, the Weave would have collapsed and all the old ways of wielding magic with it. We came close to that.”

Manshoon shrugged. “The collapse, and the danger it posed to mages like myself, I foresaw, which was why I decided to watch and not join in the fray. Being in the thick of a battle when one goes mad and one’s spells go wild forever is no recipe for survival. Yet if that fool Telamont Tanthul had succeeded in seizing the energies of both the wards of Candlekeep and the mythal of Myth Drannor, I would have acted.”

“By gibbering as you reeled around randomly?” Skouloun asked. “Or something more decisive?”

“If I’d gone mad,” Manshoon told him coldly, “the other Manshoons that yet sleep would have awakened, and read the brief missives I’d left them, and would have attacked.”

“Attacked whom?” Yusendre demanded.

“Whoever was trying to reshape the Weave and pass it to Shar,” Manshoon snapped. “And I suspect there were other powerful wielders of the Art awaiting that same moment. Do not think Tanthul or anyone else would have had more than a breath or two to gloat.”

“There were others,” El agreed. “Two stepped forth. Larloch was tempted out of his own watching and biding by the power available to him—and the Srinshee then struck out at him. Leaving the Weave in my hands, so I could use it against Tanthul.”

“I always wondered if mages told war stories that were essentially different than those spouted by us coarse rogues and warriors, when they got together,” Mirt observed from behind them, “but I guess not. Lords and Ladies of the Art, the next trio of dishes have been served. Please resume your seats at table, for the fare won’t remain hot and at its best forever.”

All over the vast room, other guests were doing just that, though El noticed one thing amid all the movement, which made him smile grimly: the moment after Lord Halaunt tensed and grimaced—despite his shielding, Alusair could still feel attempts to invade her mind, and the sensations were less than pleasant—Calathlarra reeled and almost fell, clawing involuntarily at the nearest arm for support. It belonged to Maraunth Torr, and he hastily pulled away, leaving her staggering.

As the aged Runemaster regained her balance, seething, Elminster bit back a sigh of relief. What Mystra had taught him had not only protected the mind of Alusair within the ravaged mind of Lord Halaunt from someone trying to take over their host, it had, it seemed, delivered the gentlest of mind slaps to the would-be mental conqueror. Hopefully it would prevent Calathlarra from trying again.

So that was one doom avoided. So long as he and the Weave held, none of these Lost Spell–hungry archmages would be able to speak with Halaunt’s voice and so establish authority over everyone gathered here. And no one would at a stroke learn where the Lost Spell and all Halaunt’s other magic was, and precisely how to use it. Which meant everyone else here might just live a little longer …

Myrmeen slipped past El then, and he turned and matched strides with her, holding up his decanter as if asking her about it. What he really asked was, “Did ye see Calathlarra, just now?”

The Cormyrean warrior nodded. “Someone stung her inside her head, by the looks of it.”

“They did,” El agreed. “Have ye noticed anyone else acting as she did?”

Myrmeen shook her head. “No. If others caught such blows to their minds, I couldn’t tell so from their faces.”

“All faces are masks,” El told her gently.

“I was born a day or even two before yestereve,” Myrmeen reminded him wryly. “And have had many dealings with Vangey for … too long to count the years. Though thankfully, not with any of our esteemed guests before. Nest of vipers. Now, unless you want a kitchen fire to enliven the proceedings still further, I must get back in there now. So try not to start any big spell battles just yet; I wouldn’t want to miss that sort of fun.”

“Indeed,” El agreed gravely, and turned back toward the great feast table.

He was in time to see Lord Halaunt, in the act of sitting down in his highbacked chair at the end of the table while discussing something with Tabra, waver and then fall the rest of the way into his seat, face momentarily gone tight and pained.

Quickly, El tried to look around at every guest, in hopes of seeing which one was feeling a mind slap. There! Manshoon was shuddering in his seat and wincing. It seemed the longer game involved a step taken forward right now …

The platters ranged down the table were steaming, and the aromas arising from them made his mouth water.

El resolved to eat heartily and well. For if things went bad within these walls, who knew when his next meal might come? And what it would be like?

He’d come a long, long way from the rat pies of his youth in Hastarl, but along that journey had been countless bad situations. “Bad” as in bloodshed and dark unfolding consequences.

And he couldn’t shake the feeling that those sort of dark moments lay ahead, here in Oldspires. Very bad, and very soon.

THE CANDLES RANGED down the table were burning low, and everyone was full. Only the bowls of nuts and fruits were still being touched, between sips from wineglasses that had been filled and refilled again many times. There had been three clearings of the table now, and El was beginning to wonder if Mirt and Myrmeen had smuggled a small army of cooks into the kitchens, and were determined to empty the manor larders at one go. Another guest—Skouloun of Nimbral—had reeled in his seat between the undoming of the roast bustard and the serving of the woodwing hash, but Mystra was still standing vigilant guard over the mind of Lord Halaunt. It would be amusing to see who else tried to assail the old noble; El’s money was on Maraunth Torr, but probably not in front of everyone. The man would have to be a dullard not to have noticed at least one of the attempts, to conclude that there was some sort of protection he had to breach and overcome, and he would want to be alone for some elaborate spellcastings.

Around the table, there’d been a fair bit of verbal fencing as to who should be trusted with the Lost Spell, assuming the various would-be purchasers made Lord Halaunt the same or almost the same monetary offer. Who was worthy to wield such a mighty magic—and who clearly was not?

And how could Elminster be considered a worthy judge, given his past history with more than a few of the guests?

El smiled. He’d fought Manshoon and Shaaan more than once, separately; Alastra was his former apprentice, and he and Malchor, though they’d never been close, had been friends for a long time now …

He was still smiling when Maraunth Torr picked up one of the spoons set for his place at the table, examined its workmanship idly, and asked it, “And why shouldn’t every guest here in this hall arise in unison and smite Elminster and Halaunt both, and just take the Lost Spell?”

“Because if anything befalls me,” Lord Halaunt said softly, “none of you will ever get it.”

“And because if ye try,” Elminster added, affecting an almost jovial manner, “ye’ll discover just what lengths a Chosen of Mystra who doesn’t much care how much longer he lives will go to, to slay wielders of the Art who don’t much deserve to go on infesting Faerûn much longer. I’ve had years upon years of dallying in Cormyr to prepare more traps than ye’ll ever find—scores of them in this house alone.”

His last seven words were an utter falsehood, but more than one guest up and down that long table winced, obviously believing him.

“However,” Manshoon remarked pleasantly, “let us suppose you haven’t prepared any traps at all, and are doing what you usually do, Elminster Aumar: improvising as you go, bluffing and hinting and threatening … when you almost have to be just as helpless at the Art in this place as the rest of us.”

There was an almost tangible easing, up and down the table, a relaxing.

El matched his longtime rival’s pleasant drawl, and his eyes were merry rather than glaring out death, as he replied, “Well, of course ye could suppose that. It is rather a gamble, if ye go too far—being as ye hazard thy life. Most of us only get one life, so it’s precious to us. Ye, of course, can afford to risk everything—because if ye perish, it’s not the end … is it?”

The wary tension was back, hanging as heavy in the room as if the relief of a moment earlier had never happened.

Manshoon shrugged. “You seem to belittle the fact that when I die, Sage of Shadowdale, I die. My next self lacks the memories of what my last one did; everything is lost and wasted.”

“Save that those ye slew are still dead, and the effects of the things ye did still mar Faerûn, and all the memories ye’ve stored in gems and put with thy clones are not lost,” El replied calmly. “Wherefore I weep not overmuch on thy account.”

Manshoon regarded him balefully. “Did you ever?”

“Weep? No. Thy choices were thy follies. I betimes reflected sadly on those ye made, yes. Ye could have been so much more.”

Manshoon shrugged. “I’m not done yet, old man. Just as you aren’t done misjudging me. I am no longer the man you saw rise to lordship in Zhentil Keep.”

“Well, thank all the gods for that,” Alastra commented, draining her glass. “The ambition and vandalously frenetic strivings of all those magelings you sent rushing to their dooms got to be more than tiresome, after a while.”

Manshoon gave her a cold sneer.

That made her chuckle. “Still? Still the oh-so-menacing hauteur? How many times have the Zhentarim reached out to conquer or despoil—and failed? Tell me, Manshoon of the Zhentarim, exactly what have you achieved, with all the years you’ve had, to feel oh-so-superior about?”

Manshoon’s sneer turned to a cold, malevolent stare. “More, little minx, than you shall ever know, or have the wits and mastery of the Art to appreciate.”

Alastra chuckled again. “That the best crushing rejoinder you can muster?” She turned away, but not before Manshoon—and Elminster, and everyone else seated nearby—saw the merry contempt in her eyes.

Little minx, El thought, amused. And then found himself wondering when the last occasion was when he’d seen a big minx. Truly, the world changed whenever his back was turned, these days …

Another contest of sneers and biting sarcasm erupted from just beyond Manshoon, among the two Elders of Nimbral, Calathlarra, and Shaaan.

This, Alusair’s voice said in Elminster’s head, grows tiresome, and more than tiresome. The more they drink, the more their true hostile and repulsive natures are revealed. It’s high time these arrogant, so-certain-they-know-it-all archmages got a little … unsettled.

Lass, Elminster inquired almost sternly, what’re ye up to?

Oh, a-haunting I shall go, Alusair sang impishly. And none of your admonitions, Old Mage. I am, after all, a ghost—and I do believe it’s time to reveal my true hostile and repulsive nature.

Heh. Be careful, Luse, El told her fondly, watching Lord Halaunt quietly depart his seat and head for the door that led to the kitchen, and a certain capacious cupboard in the butlery, beyond. Don’t burn the place down with all of us in it, now!

Oooh, El, don’t give me ideas!

Luse!

Folk who’ve had a scare are sometimes more biddable, the princess replied, from behind Halaunt’s unreadable face. This just might help.

El sent a mental snort her way, and sat back to enjoy the fun. He did not have long to wait.

And she was doing what he’d intended. No accord could possibly hold if grudges were uneased, fury unspoken, and everything bottled up and simmering behind polite masks, as happened at too many courts across Faerûn. All of the petty grievances and irritants had to be aired, before the real getting to know others, and finding common ground with them, could begin.

The feast hall darkened abruptly as candles winked out in the maerifasturs overhead, the flames dying as if starved for air. The diners looked up, frowning, and Elminster was careful to join in this visible unease—as various of the unused chairs ranged neatly against the tapestried walls all around the room started to move by themselves, and the fire in one of the fireplaces went from orange flames to bright green ones in a flickering instant.

Manshoon and Maraunth Torr both flung looks of withering scorn at El, who feigned innocent dumbfoundedness as he gazed back at them, held up empty hands, and shrugged. Judging by their expressions, that cut no ice, but their attention wavered when a loud and mournful sigh seemed to emanate from the air above the table—and rushed down the length of it ere it faded.

Then Maraunth Torr reared his head back in haste as a lit candle seemed to leap from its perch overhead, descend swiftly toward the table, and then swoop up again, pursuing the sigh and passing right under the wizard’s nose.

“Parlor tricks, Aumar?” Shaaan spat, as she and Calathlarra tendered almost identical expressions of cold reproof. Their faces contrasted with the wry smile now decorating Tabra’s features. She, at least, was enjoying this.

“Enough,” the Runemaster snapped, standing up to lash out with a swift and mighty dispelling enchantment that should have seared all magic in at least half of the room—and through and beyond its walls in that direction for quite some distance.

What it did instead was make brief flowers of magical radiance blossom and then burst in a cluster in midair as a discordant tune of jangled harp-strings resounded—and everything became a thin plume of pink smoke, drifting away to one side in a sudden hurry.

Calathlarra glared at it as if she’d been personally betrayed, but the smoke seemed unperturbed. Yusendre and Manshoon, seated on either side of the Runemaster, looked up at her warily, undoubtedly wondering what she’d do next.

What she did was turn her rage and rising dismay on Elminster.

“Stop these childish pranks, Aumar! You demean yourself by such exhibitions!”

El gave her a raised eyebrow. “Oh? Which particular childish pranks?”

“The—this playing at being a ghost!”

“Yet I’m not, Calath, as it happens. And thy accusation is a bit much, coming from a woman old enough to know better, who nonetheless is fresh from playing at casting a spell! Surely a Runemaster can manage a mere dispelling!”

Calathlarra went white with fury, and lashed out at Elminster this time, with a breathtaking disregard for etiquette—or prudence, considering the deadly mastery of the Art commanded by those at the table, many of whom were seated near the Sage of Shadowdale. Some of them hissed out swift mantlings and wardings … only to falter and look taken aback.

The failure of magic—and powerful, brutal spells, at that—to do much of anything at all was apparent to everyone in the room.

A frowning Skouloun of Nimbral spread his hands and then carefully worked a novice’s cantrip with exacting care and frowning concentration.

And nothing at all happened.

The Elder’s face froze, and he turned and snapped at Yusendre, “We must away from this place! Safety here, there is none, and …”

He acquired a frown, deep and dark, as his gaze went to Elminster. “No, it’s you, you snake! You’re our jailer, here in this prison! Wh—”

“Prison?” El asked. “How exactly are ye imprisoned, Elder of Nimbral? I’m retired from the archmage business, remember? I now live and work here, whereas ye invited thyself inside these halls. I haven’t worked a spell on ye—on anyone here—since thy arrival.”

“You know what I mean! We all saw the Thayan’s fate!”

“Yet thine own spells brought ye here, and I bid ye up and leave if ye desire to! So what, pray tell, saith ‘jailer’ to ye, in that?”

Yusendre of Nimbral sighed. “So magic truly is … ineffective, here in Oldspires.”

“For now,” Manshoon put in.

“Now is all that matters,” Malchor Harpell observed, “for if anyone has come to trust overmuch in the strength of their Art, ‘now’ is all that may be left to them.”

“Speak for yourself,” Calathlarra snapped.

The patriarch of the Harpells gave her a gentle smile that did not reach his eyes. “Oh, I do, Runemaster.”

That was all he said and quietly, too, yet it held sufficient sting of reproof to make the Twisted Rune mage darken and hiss anger at him as she sat back. And said not another word.

As a sudden silence fell over the table, that lone, lit candle flying upright through the air was soaring serenely back to its perch in one of the maerifasturs. Everyone watched it settle itself gently back into place.

And then, almost mockingly, wink out.

As Lord Halaunt came slowly back into the room, resumed his seat, and seemed to slump instantly into slumber.

Maraunth Torr looked at the old noble, and then at Elminster. “So, is yon candle’s flight your doing? I’m genuinely curious.”

“No,” El replied gravely. “It’s not. Mystra be my witness and smite me if I speak falsely: I had nothing to do with what you just saw that candle do.”

As he spoke, a chair that had been gliding across the floor from the row of seats along the walls came to a sudden stop—and yet another chair began to move. The green flames in the fireplace were silently fading back to more normal fiery hues.

Nicely done, El thought in Alusair’s direction, without looking at her, but don’t overdo it, now. There was a time to prod the sleeping dragon, and a time to soothe and placate …

“As I recall,” Alastra Hathwinter said softly, “this house is said to be haunted. The chairs that move by themselves, the candles … all that’s missing, if I remember all the legends rightly, is the chalice.”

The table waited, but she said no more.

“The chalice?” Tabra finally asked.

“The chalice,” the Harper replied. “I’m waiting to see if—ahhh.”

She sounded more satisfied than apprehensive, and everyone at the table turned to see where she was looking. In time to see a large old ornate metal chalice sail into view, moving through the air at about chest height for an adult man—upside down.

“I didn’t want to say it’s always seen flying around inverted,” Alastra explained, “in case all of this is some spell-mischief worked by one of us here, and I could discover as much. You see, the scribe who wrote the definitive book on hauntings and legends of Cormyr omitted that important de—”

“Stop, woman!” Skouloun of Nimbral bellowed, upsetting his chair as he shot to his feet to lunge forward across the table, reaching for—

Calathlarra of the Twisted Rune. She snarled at him in frightened hatred, arms spread. The gems adorning the rings she wore on both middle fingers were swung outward like tiny doors, to reveal storage spaces beneath, and a few last grains of powder were still spilling from one of them. She’d obviously seized the distraction of everyone gazing at the chalice to empty something into the drinks of both Yusendre, seated on one side of her, and Manshoon, on the other.

Tabra was on her feet and on the move. “Elder of Nimbral,” she snapped at Skouloun, “you’re spilling drinks! No need to grapple with this foulness; we’ve all seen what she did!”

Mirt, who’d launched himself into a lumbering run from the kitchen door at the far end of the room, slowed with a relieved wheeze, and the half-risen Elminster subsided back into his seat. So, visibly furious and red-faced, did Skouloun.

Calathlarra tried to rise—but Tabra’s hands were on her shoulders, and held her in place like unyielding manacles.

“Stay,” Tabra hissed, “and face your perfidy. For once.”

And that was when Manshoon smiled, picked up his goblet, sniffed at its contents appreciatively—and drank deeply.

There was an intake of breath from several throats, a rising chorus of apprehension. Into which the darkly handsome founder of the Zhentarim turned, his smile growing wider and more wry, and announced sardonically, “Ah, yes, maruskaereg. Dry and nutty; unmistakable. One of my favorites. Swiftly fatal, if one hasn’t happened to sample increasing doses of it for some years, so one can safely drink with those one intends to slay. I’m practically immune to it now.”

“Maruskaereg!” Yusendre spat, white to her lips. “You could have slain us all!” She tried to draw back from Calathlarra, seated so close beside her, but her chair would only let her shrink back so much, and no more.

Calathlarra hissed fury at her and tried to lunge at the Nimbran—but Tabra’s grip remained unbroken, and the Runemaster could only tremble and quiver as she tried to struggle free.

“Should we expect much more of this sort of thing?” Maraunth Torr inquired, almost pettishly. “It’s not going to make for much in the way of trust, now, is it?”

By way of reply, Skouloun of Nimbral turned to face him, raised a reproving finger, reeled for a moment in his seat, quite gray in the face—and pitched forward, nose first into his emptied plate, his forehead upsetting several goblets across the table.

“Poison, poison,” Manshoon murmured mockingly, quoting a popular old play. “Oceans of poison …”

“So,” Shaaan snarled at Calathlarra, “you’ve claimed your first victim! Murderess!”

The Runemaster gaped back at her.

Looking, Elminster couldn’t help but notice, astonished.

CHAPTER 8

A Surprising Evening

I—I—I DID NOT,” CALATHLARRA STAMMERED, SURPRISE GIVING WAY TO fury and fear, “have anything to do with … that man.” Her arms firmly held by Tabra in a shoulder grip El recognized as one that would pinch nerves and leave the Runemaster’s limbs burningly numb, she moved the only bit of her she could—and gestured with her head in Skouloun’s direction.

At about the same time, Mirt reached the facedown Nimbran and plucked him back up to a sitting position. The Elder’s head lolled; slack-jawed and unseeingly staring. Eerily, his eyes gazed at separate nothings, the left orb peering up and the right one glancing down.

Definitely not maruskaereg, El thought to himself. Rymmthan? Ortolella? And then he told himself firmly: Later. There were many, many poisons it could be.

Just now, he had another murder—well, “another” if Skouloun was dead, and he certainly looked it—to prevent. The faces around the table wore ugly expressions as they glared at the Runemaster.

Not that she’d be much loss to the greater good of Toril, but Mystra had ordered him to try for accord, and—

“This is not,” Lord Halaunt said severely, scowling down the table—for Alusair liked Calathlarra and Shaaan, of this assembly, least of all—“the behavior I expect of my guests. Even outlanders … and even powerful mages. Poisoning someone at my table? ’Tis not done, woman! Now, what shall we do with you?”

“Kill her,” Maraunth Torr drawled at the backs of his fingernails. Then, becoming aware of a stiffening tension up and down the table, he looked up and amended, “Execute her, if you prefer.”

“And how does another death profit us?” Malchor murmured.

“By preventing her from ever trying anything like that to any of the rest of us,” Shaaan snapped. “Simpleton.”

Malchor merely looked back at her in expressionless calm.

“Justice,” Yusendre said heavily, “she must face. Now or later.”

Calathlarra glared around at them all, fear bright in her eyes, and said nothing.

“Now, if this were my manor,” Manshoon observed, nodding gravely to Lord Halaunt, “I’d give the Runemaster the choice of being forced out into the spellstorm right now—and taking her chances—or agreeing to be locked into a bedchamber for now, to face justice later.” He raised his eyes and gave Elminster a look that was a clear challenge, but El nodded and said, “Losing her mind now, or answering for her deeds. Seems fair enough.”

“I did not do anything to him!” Calathlarra protested. Mirt peered around Skouloun’s head to survey the vacant face with its misaimed eyes, and then looked at her, in meaningful silence.

“I did not!” she cried.

“Your choice,” Malchor said gently, “stands.”

Calathlarra glared wildly around from face to face, then turned her head as swiftly as any striking snake and sought to bite one of Tabra’s restraining hands. That earned her a slap across the face from Yusendre, so hard and furious that the echo of the smack rebounded off a far wall at about the same time as the Runemaster’s head snapped back.

“I hate you all!” the woman of the Twisted Rune hissed, her eyes now aflame.

“Really? Yet you hide it so well,” Manshoon purred. “Your choice stands.”

“Mindlessness or incarceration; a clear choice,” Maraunth Torr observed. “Yes, Runemaster, it stands.”

“So say we all,” Yusendre agreed.

Calathlarra looked from face to face, teeth bared, then spat, “The room, then! I would prefer to face the consequences of something I did rather than something I had nothing whatsoever to do with, but—”

“You will,” Yusendre said grimly. “Oh, you will.”

“THE GARDEROBE,” SHE’D made Lord Halaunt growl, as he departed the feast hall for the last time that evening. Alusair sighed. This deceiving business was a lot of work.

And hauling around his lordship’s body, overweight and out of shape and with a bad back and worse knees, was even more work. Like wearing full sacks of grain strapped to her arms and legs while trying to move normally. Not that just being her ghostly self was much better. Lifting and wielding objects required intense, tiring concentration that sapped her strength in a hurry—living things more than nonliving, and large and heavy items far more than small and light. Just shoving someone, or swinging a sword not of her own spectral blades left her kitten-weak for a time, though she could chill someone by rushing past them like a wind all day long.

Right now, she was exhausted.

And pondering a worrisome thought: If murders were taking place where she was flying around being a ghost, did that make the victims more likely to rise as undead?

Not that the Elder of Nimbral was dead yet.

Yet.

The Twisted Rune bitch had subsided into grim silence as she was hustled to a bedchamber and firmly locked in.

The stricken Skouloun of Nimbral had been given the best herbal antidotes Elminster and Mirt could think of and plunder the pantry for, but looked none the better for it. He was alive, but not much more—still senseless, still gray-faced, eyes still seeing wildly different nothings. El and Mirt had left him in Myrmeen Lhal’s care, in another of the bedchambers.

With Halaunt safely bundled into a garderobe and locked in, Alusair had flown as fast as she could while still keeping invisible—she could become invisible to most creatures, so long as she didn’t rush too swiftly or squeeze herself too far out of the shape and volume her living body had commanded—to the kitchens, to make sure no one stole in to try to mess with the food while Mirt and Myrmeen were absent.

The Serpent Queen, for one. All that sudden outrage over someone else’s attempted poisoning of others. Probably because she thought that if anyone was going to deal death by poison, it should be her.

Alusair shook the head she no longer had—she was still finding lifelong habits hard to lose—and sighed again. She’d peered at Shaaan’s fingernails, and was sure every last sharpened one of them had been tipped with something deadly.

Gods, but she was tired. She could still see, and think, just as when still alive. And fly around, and squeeze through keyholes, and move in utter silence. She didn’t know enough about magic, even after all the years of dealing with Vangey—hmm, perhaps because of having to deal with Vangey, and his love of secrets—to know if any of these wizards could do the same, with big showy spells that might go wrong here in Oldspires, or by little things they could do inwardly, and might well get away with.

Even when being an invisible, flying ghost, she couldn’t see in all directions or hear at a distance or read thoughts when she mindtouched—but could they?

How exactly did you foil a wizard, when you didn’t know what they could or couldn’t do?

She knew there were different ghosts, but just which sort she was, and all the details of what she could and couldn’t do—these were things she’d never had the chance to discuss in detail with anyone she trusted enough to share all about the ghost princess she now was. Her vulnerabilities, in particular.

Yet she was still here, still part of the Cormyr she loved so much, here beyond death when her mother was but a fleeting warm and silent comforting presence she found on rare occasions in certain corners of the palace, and her father was gone entirely.

Sometimes, she wondered why.

Usually, however, she was too blamed busy for wondering. Right now, for instance, as she swooped into the kitchen at last and took up a post swirling invisibly in a corner of the kitchen behind the gentle wisps of steam rising from three simmering pots. A trio that Myrmeen had just told Mirt would run out of fuel and cool down before they boiled dry and their bottoms got burned out.

So here she was, silent, invisible, and standing sentinel against a poisoner who might, after all, be anyone among the guests.

The Runemaster had undoubtedly tried to eliminate her adjacent table-mates, Yusendre and Manshoon, but had looked genuinely taken aback when accused of felling Skouloun. Alusair was there not to grapple with any intruder, or try to frighten them by confronting them as a furious, admonishing apparition, but rather to see what they did, and warn El and Mirt and Myrmeen about it.

They all believed there was more than one serpent loose in Oldspires now, and Mystra’s hope of prudence and cooperation was a forlorn, thin, and tattered thing … but this crazed experiment had to be tried, and if it succeeded, might well bring a glorious payoff for battered Toril. If even two or three of these archmages fell into friendship, and saw the benefits of working togeth—

A door opened softly and cautiously, and its opener came through it in the same manner, slipping inside the kitchen like a spy.

It was Shaaan the Serpent Queen, sinuously stealthy and sly, her usual cold hauteur set aside. Coming into the room by the back way, from the great entry hall.

Well, well. The most dangerous poisoner of them all, by far, come to tamper …

But no. Shaaan peered unblinking into this, and slunk to where she could see into that, swiftly and deftly prying into the simmering pots, other pots set ready, and decanters and jars all around the kitchen.

What she did not do was add anything to their contents.

And when Alusair made a small jar of spice paste, which Shaaan had just replaced the lid of, slide across the counter, seemingly by itself, the Serpent Queen shrank back in a hurry and made for the door she’d come in by, never turning her back on the room.

Alusair watched her feel behind herself for the handle, then let herself out, all in unbroken deft silence.

A bare breath before the main kitchen door—the wide one that opened into the feast hall—swung open with rather less stealth, and the wheezing, floppy-booted bulk that was unmistakably Mirt the Moneylender lurched into the kitchen.

He saw the jar of paste out of place in an instant, and firmly closed the door behind himself ere rumbling, “Princess lass? You there?”

“I am,” Alusair whispered nigh his ear, as softly as any lover, just to see him jump.

He robbed her of that satisfaction; all he did was flinch, just for an instant, ere growling, “You enjoyed that, didn’t you?” He wagged a finger at the jar. “Well? Mreen never leaves things that forrard on a countertop. You, or—?”

“Shaaan, the Serpent Queen. Came, poked into everything, but introduced no poison that I saw—and took care not to put a finger into anything, or breathe into anything, either; if she was doing more than looking, she certainly fooled me.”

“Planning for later, then,” Mirt concluded. “Or searching for the Lost Spell, hidden in a jar of something dry and granular.” He sighed. “This is right madness, lass.”

“I know,” Alusair told him crisply, turning visible so she could lock eyes with him. “Yet it’s one more adventure for the both of us, yes? And in the best of bright causes, so—”

“So I’m in it, to the death,” Mirt agreed. “The question is, whose?”

“Isn’t that always the question?” Alusair asked archly as she waved farewell and set off through the keyhole of the door Shaaan had used, like restless smoke swirling up on the far side of it once she saw there was no one out in the entry hall to watch, to shape herself into a speeding arrow in flight—well, an arrow that could swoop in tight arcs around corners—back to Lord Halaunt’s body.

He’d be missed, and remarked upon, if she took much longer. Even if moldering in a locked garderobe was the best place for the old muleback.

ELMINSTER WAS WAITING when Lord Halaunt opened the garderobe door.

“Ready, Lord?” he asked, with just the slightest hint of mockery.

The ghost princess made Lord Halaunt grunt wordless, grumpy assent as she said in El’s mind: Ready. No change in the plan?

None yet, he told her dryly. Though I suspect this night ahead of us may change that.

You surprise me not. The ghost princess sent a tart thought in reply. I just hope we’re not dooming one of the nicest of our guests.

Elminster winced. She might very well be right.

Yet if that doom didn’t fall, it still felt right to give the Lost Spell to someone who really didn’t seem to want it—and it was too late to back away from the plan now. Every eye in the feast hall had already turned their way, as they strode in together, and all of those gazes held wariness.

“My guests,” Lord Halaunt said gruffly, “it has been a … surprising evening, after a day most of you must have found stressful. I think it best if we retire now; my good steward Elminster here will show all of you to your rooms. I have decided who shall almost certainly be given the Lost Spell—”

And he looked directly at Alastra Hathwinter, long enough for everyone in the room to notice, before adding, “Yet if I’ve learned one thing in my long life, it is not to be overly hasty in making important decisions. Therefore, I promise to meet privately with each and every one of you on the morrow, to entertain your offers for the Lost Spell—with due courtesy, as befits your stations in life and the importance of this matter. You will find my home not up to the latest fashion, but sufficient to provide for all reasonable needs. I suggest, given what has transpired here this night, that you all lock yourselves in for safety.”

And to no one’s surprise at all, everyone did.

IT WAS LATE enough that the guests should all be abed and snoring, but “should” was certainly the word to watch in that opinion. Yet servants work when superiors sleep, so the kitchen in Oldspires was abustle, despite the late hour.

As Elminster came in from stringing a few spiderweb-like threads across a few doorways, and using the Weave to lay a binding across the door of Alastra Hathwinter’s room that might prevent timid attempts at entry, but would fail utterly if she opened the door from within, or an intruder successfully used powerful magic, his too-empty stomach growled a protest at him.

“Ye and Mreen have been working wonders, I must say,” he said approvingly, helping himself from a crock of olives.

“Are those the poisoned ones?” Mirt asked Alusair teasingly.

Lord Halaunt’s chuckle was rather sour. Abruptly the old lord sat down in an angle where the cupboards under one countertop abutted the cupboards under another, leaned against the cupboards, and went limp.

“Easier to be myself, if you don’t mind,” said the ghost, swirling up from Halaunt’s lolling body like thin smoke. “It’s tiring, dragging that old wreck of a body around.” She became visible enough that they could see a spectral head and shoulders as she looked at Mirt and added, “And the two of you have been cooking up a storm. The palace kitchens in Suzail were always crowded and noisy, with lots of shouting and rushing around—but there, it took twenty or more staff to do what just the two of you manage.”

The kitchen door opened, and Myrmeen stepped through it, saying, “Why, thank you! It’s nice to be appreciated, I must say. The—”

“Ye left Skouloun why?” El asked sharply.

Myrmeen gave him a look and a shrug. “Because he’s dead.”

She went straight to the simmering pots, lifted lids, sniffed, and reached for some spice vials. “And,” she added, “he didn’t die of what Calathlarra was trying to slip Manshoon and the other Nimbran—because that particular poison turns the eyes of those it kills yellow green and causes rigidity of the limbs.”

“So what did he die of?” Mirt growled.

“Some other sort of poison that turned his face bright purple, and made him foam green from the mouth. Very colorful. He had some sort of contingency magic that manifested at his death, but it collapsed and failed without accomplishing anything that I could see.”

“Oldspires wreaking its havoc on magic,” Alusair mused aloud.

Mirt plucked down a cleaver and a sharpening steel, and started the singing dance of steel that would restore a keen edge. When it was going well, he glanced over at Elminster. “So who killed him?”

Elminster shrugged. “That’s best answered when we know what poison it was, and thus how it works, and how swiftly.”

“So you don’t—?” Alusair asked.

El shook his head. “Ye’ll be surprised at how much I don’t know, lass.”

“So we won’t be burning the body out back, I take it?” Mirt growled, testing the cleaver with a thumb. In crowded Waterdeep, that was often the fate of the remains of someone who died of an unknown poison or disease.

“No. For now, we lock what’s left of Skouloun in one of the cold-cellar rooms, down below.”

“I foresee meat stews in our future,” Myrmeen joked, sampling a pot she’d just spiced.

“Are those safe to leave?” El asked her.

She nodded. “You want to stow the Nimbran right now?”

“I do, if Luse will stand guard again.”

“Do it,” the ghost replied, and Myrmeen set down her ladle and led the way.

They saw no one in the passages as they carried the dead and very purple weight of the Nimbran Elder. And they agreed that was one good thing.

And then they all had the same silent thought: it would have been better if it hadn’t been the only good thing, thus far, about this conclave in Oldspires.

“I hope Mystra’s doing the right thing,” Mirt muttered, as they headed back to the kitchen.

El sighed. “So,” he told his companions, “does She.”

“THIS IS JUST the first death of many, I’m thinking,” Mirt growled, fetching out a stockpot from under the countertop and inspecting it for signs of mice.

“Rodents? Worry not,” Alusair told him. “I’ve already checked. Every pot.”

Mirt grinned. “Thankee! That’s good to know.” He looked over at Myrmeen. “So, this Skouloun; did he waken and say anything interesting, ere he died?”

Myrmeen straightened up from feeding the hearthfire and said, “No. This isn’t a lurid chapbook, I’m afraid. He just died.” She wiped her hands on her apron. “I didn’t much like the look of that green spume leaking out of him. The poisoning attempts were less than pleasant, too … but perhaps Toril will be lighter by a few nasty, deadly wizards before the spellstorm fades.”

El sighed. “I hope not. A better world we might all share with certain mages gone, to be sure, but Mystra charges me to spread the use of the Art, not stand by while masters of it are destroyed—even if they’re destroyed by another master, using magic. No, however useful that may be, it’s not what any of us should want. Perhaps fear of it will cozen some into better behavior than usual, but I don’t consider even that very likely—”

At that moment, he lurched sideways as the floor rippled briefly under his feet, the walls shook with a nigh-soundless shuddering that sent spice vials toppling from racks and hanging pots clanging together, a staggering Mirt to ring the stockpot off the lip of the nearest countertop, and … the rocking faded as swiftly as it had come.

Myrmeen looked at Elminster. “What was that?”

He gave her a grim look. “Someone inside this house has tried a powerful spell. And it has failed.”

“Well,” Mirt growled, putting the stockpot in the sink in front of him and reaching for the handle of the pump, “we knew it was only a matter of time before—”

Something smote the far wall of the kitchen like a towering titan’s fist, sending Myrmeen flying with a hissed curse. She rebounded off Mirt and slammed into Elminster just as the lamps all died, plunging the room into utter darkness.

Luse, Elminster thought, give us some light, hey?

He felt no mind receiving his thoughts, and said the same words aloud, more loudly and sharply than he usually spoke.

Silence. Darkness. Myrmeen warm in his arms, turning herself around firmly and disengaging his grasp.

“So, was that another strong spell?” she asked him briskly. “It came from this direction, whereas the first …”

“Erupted from back that way. Aye, it was a spell, and mightier than the first. In fact, I believe it came close to achieving its usual effect.”

A moment later, absently, he added, “Interesting.”

“INTERESTING,” THE SAGE of Shadowdale commented, in the blind darkness.

A moment later, Myrmeen felt their hips bump together briefly as he strode past her in the total darkness. Then she heard the rattle of a door handle, followed by the thud of a body slamming into a door, a grunt of effort that rose into a snarl of strain, and—the faint groan of wood that’s been under stress now snatched away. Then silence, followed by just a hint of hard breathing.

“Elminster,” she inquired, “what are you doing?”

“Trying to open the door into the entry hall,” he replied a trifle testily, “and failing.”

She heard him turn and stride toward her, and got out of the way in time.

Straight across the kitchen he went, the sounds of his progress briefly drowned out by the clatter of Mirt pawing open a cupboard door and growling, “Got the lanterns, but damned if that second one didn’t suck all our fires right out! Flames, coals, the lot!”

“Striker mounted on the inside of that door you’re holding,” Myrmeen told him crisply. “Flint’s hanging beside it, on a cord.”

“Aye, lass, but I can’t see where I want the spark to go, now, can I?”

Mirt had Elminster right beaten in testiness, to be sure.

Myrmeen was still smiling wryly about that to herself when a terrific crash announced that Elminster had tripped over the fetch-down stool and gone flying, the stool tumbling, too.

She waited for what promised to be an impressive explosion of profanity, but instead got the emphatic words, “That’s enough. That’s quite enough.”

An eerie glow kindled in the darkness, a blue-white pulsing that was small and faint but growing swiftly in both brightness and extent—as she heard El growl, deep in his throat. It was a growl of pain.

“Elminster Aumar,” she asked the darkness in exasperation, “what’re you playing at?”

“Getting ye and yon Lord of Waterdeep light enough to get some lanterns lit,” came the reply—from the heart of the glow, which she saw now was Elminster’s body, glowing fitfully from within, as if many small lanterns were moving around under his skin.

“I thought you couldn’t cast spells here,” she said warily. “Or did those two spells going off change things?”

“I’m not casting a spell,” Elminster snarled. “I’m calling on the Weave to glow, inside myself.”

“Sounds like it’s agonizing.”

“It is,” he gasped. “The Weave is twisted, here inside Oldspires, so doing this is … painful in the extreme. Get those farruking lanterns lit!”

Myrmeen scrambled to the cupboard where Mirt was fumbling—just in time for his bark of triumph as a lantern wick flared into flame. El let himself go dark again with a grateful gasp, and lay there, sprawled on the stone floor, as she got two additional lanterns alight.

“Whither now?” she asked, proffering one.

Elminster rolled over and up to his feet with several grunts of discomfort before he took it, thanked her, and commanded, “Come with me!”

He led the way out through the widest door, into the now-deserted feast hall—where the fires were all out, amid a strong reek of drifting smoke, and darkness reigned—and then around the corner into the Copper Receiving Room, its burnished copper ornamentations flashing back splendid reflections in the lanternlight.

El strode straight through it and out into the entry hall, where the darkness continued unabated. Aside from their glimmering lanterns, all was dark and silent.

“What happened?” Mirt demanded roughly. “All this utter gloom, I mean.”

El waved the question away and strode along the wall toward the door he hadn’t been able to open from the kitchen side.

And then he stopped abruptly, holding his lantern high. Myrmeen was at his side in an instant, adding the light of her lantern to his.

One of the spells that had rocked the kitchen had done something after all.

The Sage of Shadowdale hadn’t been able to open the door from the other side because a huge sideboard had appeared out of nowhere to stand on this side of it—across it, right against the wall, where the door had to open into.

And jammed—crushed—between sideboard and wall was the body of a woman, collapsed over the top of the sideboard amid a spreading pool of blood, her slender arms flung wide.

“YUSENDRE OF NIMBRAL,” Mirt growled, and looked at El. “Her doing, d’you think? Her own spell, gone wrong?”

Elminster shook his head. “See the wisps like smoke rising from her? That was a magical binding. She got plucked from wherever she was standing—within eyeshot of whoever did this—and teleported with the sideboard.”

“It,” Myrmeen Lhal pointed out, “looks like one of the sideboards from yonder.”

She waved across the entry hall with her lantern, at the door that led into the Red Receiving Room, where they’d first slaked the thirsts of the arriving archmages.

El led the general rush to that door, and flung it wide.

To discover the room dark, deserted—and missing a sideboard.

“Now what?” Mirt growled. “Once they discover that their spells work, the damned archmages will blast each other until there’s no Oldspires left!”

Myrmeen caught at Elminster’s arm, and waved her lantern back the way they’d come. “Could Yusendre be shamming? She—”

“She’s bloody pulp from the chest on down,” Mirt growled. “If that’s a deception, it’s a damned effective one. She’s dead.”

“Two, now,” Myrmeen sighed. “Not good.”

“Not good, indeed,” Elminster agreed. “Come.”

He hastened to the bedchambers the guests had been installed in. Where they checked door after door.

Locked, every one, and no one answered their hailings—with one exception. When Mirt sought to peer in through the keyhole of Maraunth Torr’s room, a needle-thin stiletto promptly thrust out of the keyhole.

“That could have been my eye!” the Lord of Waterdeep growled.

“And the brain behind it,” El agreed cheerfully. “Yet it wasn’t. Well, there’s not much we can—”

“Just leave them all shut up in their rooms until morning,” Alusair whispered then, materializing right in front of him.

El swallowed a sigh. “Where have you been?”

“Recovering,” she hissed back. “That second spell did its work right through me—and it only worked at all because the first spell tore through all the Weave chaos, melting a short-lived hole for the second magic to flourish in. If that’s the right word.” She shuddered. “This place is … not comfortable for the likes of me. Energies leak from the gates constantly.”

“Huh,” Mirt commented, “that’s nothing. Lives seem to leak out of bodies around here if you turn your back for more than a moment.”

“ ’Tis a common affliction, it seems, wherever I go,” Elminster observed.

“That,” the ghost princess said tartly, before anyone else could, “is one more thing that utterly fails to surprise me.”

CHAPTER 9

Behold the Best Preening Idiot

SO IS IT TRUE,” MIRT GROWLED, “THAT YE CHOSEN DON’T NEED to sleep?”

Elminster nodded gravely. “We can renew ourselves through the Weave. Er, if we know how. So, yes, Luse and I can stand watch all night, while ye snore and Myrmeen—ah, Myrmeen …”

“Purrs,” Myrmeen supplied crisply. “Practice that courtly diplomacy, El. I’ve a feeling you’re going to need it.”

The ghost of the princess smiled and waved a silent salute to her for those words.

El nodded, but Mirt was busy stifling a yawn. “I’m too old for staying up with sun and moon, a-slaving away without a break in the kitchen, and waiting table for wizards who’re on edge and just waiting to take offense at the slightest trifle. I need my sleep.”

“We’ll sleep here in the kitchen,” she told the two men firmly. “Its doors can all be barred from within, I’ve noticed. Which should tell you something about Lord Halaunt.”

“About the lord Halaunts in the dim past, and the time when Oldspires was just this southeast corner, ye mean,” El pointed out. “But aye, if we close and bar the door that links the Copper Receiving Room to the feast hall, and bar the kitchen doors from within—not trusting that sideboard to stay where it is—we can bide safe until morning. Oh, and bolt the doors of the stairs down into the undercellars.”

“Stairs? Isn’t there just the one ’twixt the butlery and the south servery?” Myrmeen asked him, feeling something smooth and hard and reassuring under her hand. It was the hilt of her shortsword, riding in its scabbard at her hip; her hand must have gone to it out of long habit.

“There’s a secret stair at the end of the plate and cutlery storage,” El informed her.

“A plate and cutlery storage?” Myrmeen asked him rather wearily. “And just where might that be?”

El grinned wryly. “Hidden behind sliding panels, in the wall between the servery and the passage that leads to the larder.”

“Well, of course a hidden cupboard would have its own secret stair, so the forks and spoons can go visiting of nights,” she agreed sarcastically. “How remiss of me not to think of it.”

“Could happen to anyone,” Elminster replied airily. “Now, if ye’ll go with me and fetch some more chamberpots from the unused bedchambers, so ye need not share a pot with hairily uncouth males such as the Lord of Waterdeep here and myself—worry not, we shall share the darvorr … There’s a storeroom for such, but ’tis in the ruinous upstairs, and I’d rather not chance the floors.”

“Dropping in on the head of, say, Maraunth Torr right now would not end well, no,” Mirt agreed. “So if Mreen and I get some soups and stews going, and get these smallfowl onto spits, you can tend them the night through?”

“Of course. I expected to have such duties. To ready meals for the morrow without a night shift would require … magic.”

“Ha ha,” Alusair said politely. “What about what’s left of Yusendre?”

Mirt chuckled. “Aye, that’s going to stain something terrible.”

“I meant,” the spectral princess told him severely, “that when we can risk magic here again, spells can be used to learn things from the dead—but not if whoever slew her has spirited away the remains. I doubt even Elminster can interrogate a bloodstain.”

“Not sober, no,” Mirt agreed, “but—”

The room rocked soundlessly a third time, and they all exchanged sour looks.

“Better go check on Yusendre,” Myrmeen suggested, “and—I can’t believe I’m saying this—bring what’s left of her in here for the night. We can use the giant domed platter; the one intended for serving whole elk, by the look of it.”

Mirt headed for the door into the butlery. “If,” he suggested cheerfully, “there isn’t another body on it already, just waiting for us under the dome.”

Myrmeen rolled her eyes. “If I scream, will he stop?”

“I doubt it,” Alusair told her. “Does Vangey?”

Myrmeen sighed, shook her head, and went to the butlery door, in time to see Mirt lumbering into view with the great platter under one arm, and its dome under the other. She got a good look at both, as the Lord of Waterdeep turned to sidle past the big board where the keys to all the rooms hung, so his arm wouldn’t sweep half of them onto the floor.

Well, she’d seen less ornate litters for corpses.

How much use would it get, in the days and nights just ahead?

TALL AND CURVACEOUS in her leather armor, the Steel Princess leaned against the countertop, arms folded. She looked every bit as solid as a living person, but El knew he could reach right through her if he had to, to pick up a ladle or a spice vial or some of the hanging herbs. He tried not to, to spare them both the mild pain, and because it was politer. He knew that aside from a mind voice from an invisible source, this was the easiest form for her to take, and sapped her Weave energies the least.

For she was a Weaveghost, something El wouldn’t even mention unless she asked him directly. He knew how to make Weaveghosts his slaves, and would just as soon that knowledge wasn’t foremost in her mind whenever she had dealings with him, or any of the Chosen of Mystra. Underlying fear and mistrust do things to friendships.

They could speak mind to mind over short distances, but even that took more energy from Alusair’s all-too-paltry measure, so they’d been talking aloud, face-to-face.

Talking in low tones, as Mirt snored on the table behind them with teeth-rattling vigor, and Myrmeen slept still and much more quietly on the countertop across the room. Stoking the fires made the most noise, but El had done this a time or seven thousand before, and was able to keep it a matter of a calm minimum of movements and din. He was quite content to stand watch until morning, stirring the stews and turning the roasting smallfowl.

Around them, the old mansion was quiet, creaking from time to time as old houses do, but free of tumult—or at least, of affright and doings that reached this far, into what was really a servants’ wing.

“I found it was hard to let go, yes,” Alusair was admitting quietly. Then she smiled at the knowing look Elminster gave her, and added, “And still do.”

“That’s better, lass,” El said approvingly. “Honesty is best. Remember, when it comes to not being able to let go, I know. Believe me.” He drew forth a steaming gurthwing from under the hearth hood, inspected it critically, then plunged it into the waiting tray of sauce, ignoring the resulting sizzling and spitting to look up at her and add, “Perhaps it will help to reflect on this: every last aging noble of the realm, high and low, goes through the same thoughts, as their body fails them and their deathbeds beckon—and they know their children think differently than they do, see the world and Cormyr and their places in it in ways far from their own, may not even care if ancestral castles stand empty and abandoned until falling down … and there is nothing, nothing they can do to bind their willful offspring beyond their own greeting with the grave. Control passes; it happens to nigh everyone.”

“I know,” Alusair agreed quietly. “And yet …”

“So Vangerdahast watches his son wear the mantle of Royal Magician very differently than he did, and Myrmeen beholds an Arabel very different from hers, with a Crown lord nothing like she was, and ye—ye see a regent of the realm very different than ye were, who herself must cope with old nobles throwing the deeds and mien of the Steel Regent in her face.”

Alusair smiled a little bitterly. “And that is something I never foresaw, though I should have, I suppose. Not with all the years of nobles spitting at me that ‘Cormyr has kings, not women trying to sneakily rule in their stead,’ and ‘no regent has the right to do that, least of all an insolent chit of a girl who thinks she can outride and outhunt and out-duel any man.’ Should I visit her, and tell her to pay those who lash her with their twisted memories or empty legends of me no heed?”

“If ye think it will help. Myself, I think that right now, Raedra Linesse Enchara Obarskyr has quite enough on her platter, what with Baerovus still on the scene and Erzoured not only still around but now something of a hero—”

Alusair snorted. “That worm! I’d like to separate his black heart from the rest of him. Leaving him alive—for the short time it would take to sear it on a spit in front of his eyes and serve it to him on a platter.”

“My, my, aren’t we the bloodthirsty wench! Years of learning patience and prudence and diplomatic niceties swept aside in a trice …”

The ghost princess shrugged. “Can I not harbor my own opinions even now, El? I’m dead, remember! Only a memory in the land I love, shining or otherwise—mostly otherwise. Reduced to spying and helping in small ways, as I am here and now, while I sourly watch half the nobles in the realm hammering away at Raedra to get wed and have royal babies and so save Cormyr—oh, and heed their choice of who she should take to the marriage bed. Such as, hem hem, themselves, for instance. Fough! Have we accomplished nothing since I was getting into trouble with my mother and Tanalasta wasn’t?”

“Lass, lass, ye changed Cormyr forever. As markedly as thy father did before thee, and as Foril did aft—”

“Hah! And look how that turned out!”

“Easy, lass, easy. We none of us can refight what is in the past, nor change it. We can tell lies about it, aye, but that truly is hollow villainy. Is it not enough to know that ye left Cormyr a better place—not more carefree, not more proud and delusional, but better, for by far the greater part of its folk—than ye found it? Your riding with your Blades did more to knit the realm together than all Vangey’s strivings and thy father’s heroics!”

“You truly think so?”

“I know so, lass. I care about Cormyr, and watch over it as much as I can—what with all the lunacy and ambitious deviltry alive in Faerûn all the time.”

“Ah, yes. Tell me some of the latest, El. I miss the Harper agents murmuring in the ear of Queen Fee, and Vangey telling us what little he cared to.”

“And in the spirit of his prudent discretion, what is fit for thy delicate ears? Let me see now …”

“What isn’t, Old Mage?”

“Well, then, the Cult of the Dragon is stirring again. Right now, ambitious individuals within their ranks seek certain masks …” El let his voice trail off.

Ghostly or not, the face of the princess could register exasperation very clearly. “That’s all you’re willing to share? El, El—oh, to the Nine Hells with it; all I really care about is what peril this poses to Cormyr!”

“Precious little. Most of the strife I foresee will be on the Sword Coast and its backlands.”

“Well, then, tell me of perils Cormyrean! Conspiracies we should look for, hidden dealings soon to lash out in the light of day—the sort of things that gave Obarskyrs a reason to put up with the wizards of war.”

“I’m not infallible or all-seeing, and never have been. Moreover, I’ve been rather busy with … larger things. Protecting the Weave and preventing the triumph of Thultanthar over every farm and wilderland pool from sea to sea to ice sea, for instance—yet with that said, I know only of the usual small, petty cabals and schemes among nobles. Mainly concerned with ensuring that whoever sits on the Dragon Throne, their own noble House will have as much freedom as possible to do as they please, laws and taxes falling more heavily on others. In other words, the usual.”

Elminster flicked some hot stew into the palm of his hand from a ladle, tasted it, and reached for more salt. “Right now,” he added, “I’m more concerned with this noble ye’re giving tongue to, and what’s happening here under his roof. I don’t want these murders to become a runaway sequence of slaughters, and I fear they could turn into just that.”

“Pruning the ranks of the deadlier archmages of Faerûn isn’t what Mystra sent you here to do?”

“How much have you guessed about that?” El asked softly.

The ghost princess shrugged. “Almost nothing. Why speculate, when I can just ask you outright? I know what rides you, old man—and I know you love Cormyr as much as I do. So trust me. Talk.”

Elminster sighed, set down a ladle, strode a few restless paces away until he fetched up against the counter where Myrmeen lay deep in slumber, then turned and came back to where he’d been.

“The more gods meddle, the worse things get,” he blurted out. “I’m sure this comes not as news to ye. Nor does it to most of them, but they can’t resist trying to bend mortals to their will directly, especially when they see rival deities doing so. Mystra …”

He picked up the ladle again and waved it thoughtfully in the air, choosing his words carefully. “Mystra desires to stay out of daily doings in Faerûn as much as possible, to let mortals find their own ways in life. Yet She hopes the stresses of this scramble for the Lost Spell might scare the mages engaged in it into seeing a little more sense … or at least a trifle more daily self-discipline in their behavior. If we could just get them to agree on some things, or even work together, that would be a great step forward for life in Faerûn.”

“Hah! You think they’ll listen to anything the Old Weirdbeard suggests? Except as something to be fought against, renounced, or foiled as thoroughly and spectacularly as they can?”

“Ye see my problem as clearly as I do,” El replied wryly.

“And so?”

“And so we’ll see what I achieve through the good offices of ye and Myrmeen and Mirt.”

“And if we fail?”

El shrugged. “Then we fail. At least we’ll have tried, and will know where we stand with these particular preening idiots.”

“Well, that’s something,” Alusair observed wryly. “At least you see that mighty mages—like you—are preening idiots.”

“Oh, lass, I knew that centuries ago. I’ve spent more centuries trying to become the best preening idiot amongst them—and damn me if they haven’t given me savage competition for the title!”

“Once more, you leave me unsurprised,” Alusair murmured

THE NIGHT CLOAK regarded the thin stiletto that had just thrust viciously out through the keyhole, seeking her life. She was utterly calm. After all, she’d been a Harper for a long time—and before that, had apprenticed to, among others, both Elminster of Shadowdale and Khelben “Blackstaff” Arunsun.

“A rather pointed greeting, my lord,” she commented. “Have you problems at home with irritatingly persistent peddlers, perhaps?”

Her words fell into a little silence, but before it stretched so far that she was moved to shrug and walk away, a reply came from the other side of the door. “And who might you be, Lady?”

“Alastra Hathwinter,” Alastra replied, and added dryly, “We’ve met.”

“Indeed. Are you alone?”

“I am.”

“And do you often knock on the doors of strange men late at night?”

“No. Usually they knock on mine.”

“And the reason for this exception?”

“I seek to negotiate with you, Maraunth Torr. Your might in the Art is impressive, your accomplishments formidable, and for some time I have been wondering how best to contact you. We Who Harp could benefit from certain cooperations with you—as could you. As you’re obviously awake, this might be a good time to discuss matters. Or at least arrange a better time.”

The stiletto withdrew, she heard the door bolt rattle, its lock click open—and the door swung ajar.

Maraunth Torr stood a little way beyond it, a long dark rod in his hand, one end of it aimed at her. He regarded her expressionlessly.

She smiled politely, but that made a sneer rise to his face.

“Tell me, Lady Hathwinter, do your ‘negotiations’ of this sort often succeed? And why the coyness, for one of your known profession; whatever is wrong with the plain old word ‘seduction’?”

“Nothing,” Alastra replied flatly, “save that it has nothing to do with my visit. Your flatter yourself overmuch, Lord Torr. My ‘known profession,’ as you term it, has furnished me with an army of splendid bedmates, and a far larger one of less than splendid partners. I’ve ridden the ride more than enough times for one life, and am not here at your door for pleasures of the flesh. If you’re not interested in business propositions, I’ll depart.”

Maraunth Torr’s face became expressionless again.

“Perhaps I was overly hasty in my judgments,” he said politely. “Please come in.”

“Thank you,” Alastra said gravely, and stepped across the threshold.

“Please,” he said, setting down his rod on a side table, and waving at a desk and chair. “Will you sit? Oh, and pray close the door.”

She half turned to do so, then stopped turning and kept her gaze on him, reaching back and closing the door by feel. That expressionless face of his told her far more than he thought it did. He was going to try to kill her, here and now. This close to her, and trusting arrogantly in his own power to prevail where others had seen their spells go awry. Oh, yes, he meant murder. So was Calathlarra innocent; had he been the one in this high old house dealing death all along?

She watched him steadily as she closed the door.

Whereupon he shrugged and launched the spell meant to strike her down anyway, their eyes steady upon each other all the while.

The air boiled up into bright winking sparks that enshrouded Maraunth Torr’s head and shoulders; a trick of the twisted local Weave that was tugging magic awry, no doubt.

Yet his spell, over the bare two paces between them, lashed out at her with its usual fury, breaking over her in a wave of eldritch fire.

It harmed her not at all. Her counterspell was instantaneous and drew on the enchanted Harper pin she wore at her throat for its power, so it might well work, even here with the Art unreliable.

It did. There was a flash so brief it seemed hardly more than a flicker, and Maraunth Torr’s ravening fire was simply—gone.

His astonishment was so deep that his eyes went wide, and he almost gasped. He recovered quickly, though, turning that gape of his mouth into a swiftly hissed incantation.

The Night Cloak winced, recognizing the spell. A strong one that would go a long way toward slaying her if it struck home. She was either going to suffer great pain a moment from now, or—

There was a screech, as of rending metal, and a blinding burst of emerald flame that left her blinking at raging purple afterimages. Something swirled past her in the air like a scimitar trailing flames, and—

Maraunth Torr screamed.

Tears blinded Alastra in a sudden torrent, and she blinked furiously, sidestepping out of sheer habit. When she could see again, her would-be slayer was still staggering around his bedchamber, writhing in pain and clawing at the air with trembling, spasming fingers that wriggled like eels.

He was wild-eyed and soot-scorched, and the hair on the right side of his head was all burned off—to say nothing of his clothing, now gone all down that side of his body.

My, my; what a magnificent man. Blistered all down his flank and leg, mind; when magic went wild here in Oldspires, it really went wild.

He stared at her like a trapped animal, dazed and fearful, bewildered.

Well, well. Humbled by his own spell. Mystra did have a sense of justice, after all.

Alastra strode forward and took hold of one of his trembling hands.

“You,” she announced crisply, “need to be taught some lessons. Come with me, little boy.”

Then she looked him up and down, and smirked. “Perhaps a seduction is in order, after all. Just to seal whatever deal we make. Or I dictate.” She turned and made for the door, towing him along. Reeling a little, he accompanied her willingly.

“THE DOOR,” SHAAAN informed whoever had just knocked, “is open. Enter.”

In unhurried near silence the door opened, and she found herself gazing at Manshoon, tall and sleekly handsome in his dark robes. He wore his usual gentle half smile.

“You will be wondering why I am here,” he stated politely, stepping into her room.

“You find me irresistible and are here to enter lifelong slavery at my feet,” she replied, matching his tone of voice precisely.

“I am here to offer an alliance. Here in Oldspires and beyond.”

She did not trouble to hide her sneer. “I can see how that would benefit you, but what possible advantage would I gain, in return for the inconvenience of having an overconfident, clumsily manipulative man underfoot, trammeling my freedom?”

“I am not so much of a liability as you seem to believe,” her visitor replied calmly. “And you are not inexperienced; you should need no soft warnings from me of what a vampire can do to the living, even when magic cannot be trusted.”

“Threats this swiftly, Manshoon? Have you not even bothered to assemble the barest beginnings of arguments for why we should work together?” Shaaan shook her head, her contempt suddenly boiling up inside her until it almost choked her. “I am part serpent,” she told him bluntly, “and fear your undeath not at all. Your physical strength even less. And as for your grasp of the Art—hah!”

That gentle, sardonic smile was still riding his face, but she could tell Manshoon was taken aback. Ah, he must have recovered the use of some of his vampiric powers, and his smugness along with them. Well …

She strode right at him, reaching out to grasp his nearest hand. Even if he was immune to all the poisons her fingernails could dispense, she could break his fingers with ease, and that left most men weeping like babies, helpless in their pain.

A moment before she would have touched him, he lapsed into a cloud of mist. She smiled and breathed a cloud of venom right into his midst, watching it roil through him—emerald in places and a sickly yellowish-green hue like diseased leaves in others. He started howling in pain, even before it forced him back into solidity, and tried to flee. Hunched over and stumbling, he fled out the door racked with pain—a burning agony that should subside by morning. If he was still alive.

Listening to his wails fading away down the passage, Shaaan permitted herself an unguardedly nasty smile.

Wearing it, wide and triumphant, she strolled to her door to close it again.

She was still a step away when someone raced into her doorway, to come to a hasty, lurching halt there and stand peering at her warily.

It was Calathlarra of the Twisted Rune. Well, of course, the locks on these doors might stop a clumsy child, but …

The Runemaster was hunched over as if expecting rejection and pain, and blurted out hurriedly, “May I come in? I would speak with you.” Then she added hastily, “Fear no treachery from me. I know you are more powerful than I.”

Shaaan smiled. “You are wiser than the rest of the current occupants of this house. Come in; I have uses for you.”

The Runemaster scuttled past, and Shaaan smiled even more broadly, and shut the door.

MIRT LIFTED THE lid. “She’s still dead.” One of Yusendre’s arms fell limply off the platter and dangled eerily; Myrmeen gave it a sour look.

“Then it’s the cold cellar for her,” Elminster decreed. “The end one, with the good lock.” As Mirt tucked in the errant arm and replaced the dome over the dead Nimbran, he took the other end of the platter and announced, “When we get back, we’ll help with morningfeast.”

“See that you do,” Alusair made the Lord of Oldspires reply. “Sardasper Halaunt is no man’s lackey.”

That brought a snort from all three of the other living occupants of the kitchen, whose day had begun. The bright morning sun was already lighting up the back kitchen where the wines and spirits used in the cooking were stored. They knew that because Mirt awakened with a dry mouth from all his snoring, and sought his own early morningfeast by way of remedy; an entirely liquid repast.

Wherefore he was now a happy man, and hummed a bawdy old tune as he and El set off with their grisly burden.

Myrmeen didn’t pause to watch them go. Soon the early risers among the guests would be stirring and inevitably wanting food; there were dozens of dishes still to ready, and she had a staff serving under her of precisely no one at all.

She built up the fires one more time and stirred the three cauldrons Elminster had tended overnight, swallowing a sigh. For years she’d swung a sword and snapped orders and rushed here and there doing things deemed dangerous or important or both, while others had slaved, overlooked, in kitchens or laundry rooms; it was only fair that the tables turn a time or two, in any life.

And there were two mouths fewer to feed since her arrival. How many more would drop off the roster?

Roast boar was filling the kitchen with sizzling goodness when Mirt and Elminster returned. “Wash that platter,” Myrmeen ordered them briskly. “You are not leaving it for me.”

Before anyone could reply, the cauldron at the back suddenly belched bubbles. She leaned forward briskly and stirred its contents, then raised her ladle high enough to sniff. What she smelled made her frown. “Unaccountable fetor,” she muttered.

“Oh?” Mirt reached past her with a ladle of his own, dipped out a small but steaming sample, and slurped at it, heedless of its temperature.

They all watched him move it around in his mouth, as he acquired a thoughtful, considering look. Then he swallowed, with visible discomfort, and pronounced decidedly, “Squamous. Very squamous.”

“Poison, do you think?”

Mirt shook his head. “Probably the shadeberries were too old. They ferment from within. We’ll have to toss it.”

“Over whose head?”

Rather than chuckling, he looked thoughtful. “We’ll have to see.”

ELMINSTER LED MIRT to the Summer Room, off in the northeastern corner of Oldspires, and examined the doors. Mirt watched him open them and check that the thin threads he’d strung across the door frames just inside the doors were undisturbed. The old moneylender said not a word until they were well away from there, headed for the guest bedchambers.

“Myrmeen’s hair?” he asked quietly then.

El nodded. “And a little wax, to stick it taut.”

“No invasions, I noticed.”

“None yet,” was all El replied before they started the rounds of the bedchamber doors, knocking and calling through the doors that morning feast would be served in the feast hall three gongs hence.

“So, who’s our murderer, d’you think?” Mirt muttered, once they were on their way back to the kitchen. “I can’t figure out who would be a common foe for the fallen—rival for the spell, yes, but enemy enough to slay?”

El shrugged. “I share thy bafflement. Which leads me to suspect we have more than one slayer.”

“Hmmph,” the old moneylender commented. “Cheery thought.”

They started setting out all the morningfeast dishes and condiments that didn’t have to be kept warm. When they were done, Mirt had rung the great gong that hung on the wall of the Blue Chamber; its reverberations had in turn set smaller gongs on the passage walls outside the bedchambers to echoing its call. Thrice, with a trot back to the kitchens for the two-man tray of hot dishes between each.

By the time the hot platters had all been set out, to leak steam from under their lids and make the feast hall smell delightful, the room had filled up with hungry, and in some cases, sleepy-looking wizards.

The two Elders of Nimbral were missing, of course, and the captive Calathlarra, which meant three empty seats.

But there were five.

Elminster counted them twice, and saw Mirt doing the same thing. They exchanged rather grim looks.

Two ladies were missing. Tabra and Alastra Hathwinter.

CHAPTER 10

A Sword Is Always Easier

MYRMEEN LHAL HAD BEEN IN BETTER MOODS. KNOWING SHE WAS being foolish—the murderer or murderers could, after all, be lurking anywhere—but lost in the deepening feeling that the kitchen was becoming her prison, she’d seized a moment while the men were off rousing the guests to briefly go exploring. She was used to facing danger with a sword and dagger in hand, and a cleaver and a carving knife would do.

Armed and ready, she headed into the rooms beyond the Copper Receiving Room that lay behind its western door. The Green Audience Chamber, then the withdrawing room and parlor, and some guest bedchambers here in this end of Oldspires, well apart from those that had been given to the wizards. El had intended these rooms for her and Mirt and himself. With only four days of spellstorm left now, she wondered if they’d ever get a chance to use them.

There was a disused nursery opening off the room meant for her, right in the southwest corner of the mansion. Its windows were shuttered, and it had that dark, cavernous, slightly musty gloom of so many of the lesser-used chambers of Oldspires.

To Myrmeen, it seemed the house was waiting in silent, stubborn patience to be filled with the laughter and ragings of a large and willful family again—but until then, it endured slow rot and spreading mildew as it waited for one cantankerous old man to die.

Once, this had been the crowded, noisy mansion of a proud noble family who rode to the hunt whenever they weren’t riding to defend Cormyr. Now it held a larger crowd than it had done for many decades, but not of heroic riders. No, these menacingly malicious mages were far from heroism, or being square and direct about anything at all. They went through life slicing and stabbing at folk with their wit, as if it were a sharp dagger they couldn’t help lashing out with.

And didn’t care how much blood they spilled, along the way.

Shaking her head at that thought, Myrmeen went into the bedchamber meant for her. Nice tapestries, and a magnificent four-poster like an ornate wooden castle with doors—fastened back right now—that could turn it into a box against the winter chill. Once a Halaunt had slept here, but in the current Lord Halaunt’s much-shrunken household, it had housed his steward. Its shutters were open, and she could see the rolling sward of a meadow descending to the dark trees of Halaunt Chase. Somewhere between her and that wood was a wall of force, and somewhere beyond it, wizards of war on watch, but she could see neither—the one was invisible, and the others were probably sitting on chairs and benches back amid those trees, rather than on display for all to see. Waiting to see how many of us walk out of here again, and how many are carried in shrouds …

That grim thought came back to Myrmeen in the kitchen as she started chopping sausages to make sausage fingertarts for highsunfeast. They’d be greasy as anything, but there was nothing like a hot sausage fingertart to set mouths to watering …

Gods, but she was becoming domesticated! A right proper cook, where once she’d been the most warlike Crown lord in the land …

The kitchen door swung open, and she turned swiftly, cleaver up and ready.

It was Elminster, an empty platter in his hands.

“Chop me gently, lass, I’m an old man!” he said, so mournfully that she couldn’t help but giggle.

And how many years had it been, since last she’d giggled?

“El,” she asked him, pointing with her cleaver at the next tray ready to take out, “is the magic likely to turn reliable again soon? Inside these walls, I mean?”

Elminster shrugged. “I doubt it, but … ye’ve lived more than long enough to know that strange things happen. Why d’ye ask that now?”

“Before I started all the mess and fuss of baking a large batch of loaves,” Myrmeen told him dryly, “I was wondering how many mouths would still be around to eat them. Or to put it more directly, how many owners of those mouths would still be alive. I know how long it takes a good warrior to hack down other good warriors, but can’t just one of these archmages blast us all to jelly in a trice, if they get their spells back?”

El shrugged again. “They could, I suppose, if we all obligingly stood together in one spot, and let them leisurely conjure our deaths.”

Myrmeen lifted an eyebrow. “You’re telling me the realm needn’t have feared the war wizards all these years? Wizards can’t beat a boy with a slingshot, or a yeoman with his bow?”

“If ye want to go a-slaying, spells work, but a sword is always easier. Or thy fist. Ye cannot trust magic, for it has a mind of its own.”

“Oh? Whose?”

“The one belonging to whichever of the voices in the Weave gets there first, and is in the mood,” Elminster told her gravely.

“So, have the two missing women shown up yet?”

Elminster shook his head. “I’ve sent Alusair to look for them. It seems Lord Halaunt’s vitals are in uproar, and he has to visit garderobes often. The ones that have stout locks. She can drift in through bedchamber door keyholes in silence, and—”

“Do it invisibly, to boot,” the voice of the ghost princess interrupted smoothly, from the empty air by his shoulder. “So I can sneak around, and see folk when they’re unguarded and being themselves. Or hunting high and low for hidden Lost Spells.”

“Well?” El and Myrmeen demanded together.

Alusair became visible, leaning back against the counter in her usual arms-folded pose. “Both are still locked in their rooms, but I’m afraid Alastra is dead—murdered; there’s blood everywhere, obvious violence, and oh, El, I can’t back away from the thought that we doomed her, by hinting she’d be given the spell—and Tabra lives. For now. She’s alive, awake, and abed, but doesn’t look well.”

“Get back to Tabra and stand guard until morningfeast is done,” Elminster ordered grimly, “to stop her stealing out and getting up to anything, or anyone sneaking in to attack her.”

Without waiting for Alusair’s reply—which was a silent nod as she faded into invisibility again—he picked up the tray Myrmeen had indicated and went out into the feast hall with it.

At the door, he passed Mirt, on his way in for the next tray, and muttered grimly, “After the meal’s done, conclave in the kitchen, just the four of us.”

“Four?” Mirt asked.

Alusair’s smiling face melted into view right in front of his nose. “Four,” she confirmed, winking at him.

“Ye gods, woman,” the Lord of Waterdeep muttered, “my heart!”

A rude sound of derision answered him out of the empty air, and he grinned and walked right through where it had come from—encountering nothing at all—to pick up the tray Mreen’s cleaver was patiently pointing at.

Then he turned and took it out into the feast hall, to feed the folk he was increasingly thinking of as … the condemned.

They seemed to agree with that dark judgment this morning. There was little chatter and more than a few sidelong glances at empty chairs. Including the one at the head of the table that Lord Halaunt had hastily vacated.

It seemed death disagreed with the old lord. Or perhaps it was just the fried boar.

“THEY DON’T LIKE Halaunt walking out on them time after time,” Mirt growled. “Nor you sitting with them and not eating a thing. They don’t like that at all.”

Elminster shrugged. “I prefer their bruised feelings to our horrible, agonizing demises. We eat only what we prepare right here, as it’s ready. Overdone and no sauces, I’m afraid, but—”

Myrmeen shrugged. “I’ve eaten rough, with Purple Dragons riding to war. I can eat plain and dreadful for the few days we need to. I can even try to make it palatable for you two mighty lords.”

She and El both looked at Mirt, who sighed heavily and said, “So can I. Just let me at the cellars. I can avoid the casks, and tell when a cork’s been tampered with.”

Morningfeast was done, and everyone had hastened back to their own rooms without a suggestion of such prudence even having to be raised. The guests, it seemed, did not consider Oldspires a happy house right now.

“I wonder if they’re knifing each other in the passages right now,” Myrmeen wondered, “while we do dishes.” And with that disgusted comment, she handed Mirt the first dish to dry.

The Lord of Waterdeep winced as his hand closed on it; it was still hot enough that steam was rising from it. And now from his fingers, too.

“If they are, we’ll soon hear about it,” Elminster told her. “Luse is wandering about watching right now.”

“As she did most of the night,” Mirt grunted. “But why, El? Why did you have her just spying? And why tell her to stay out of bedchambers and not even peer in at keyholes? This isn’t a house full of blushing ladies; they’re mean, nasty, powerful archmages who’ve blasted foes down many a time before! And if we don’t want to know what they’re up to in the wee hours, why waste Alusair’s time at all with setting her to work skulking down passages all night?”

“She was obeying me, as it happens,” Elminster replied. “I don’t want her going into a wizard’s bedchamber and discovering the hard way that the mage she’s visiting has some means unknown to me of rending ghost princesses!”

Alusair promptly turned visible, leaning against the countertop in her preferred pose, and favoring Mirt with a teasing smile. “Why, my Lord of Waterdeep,” she said sweetly, “I didn’t know you cared.”

Mirt rolled his eyes, growled some less than polite words under his breath, then raised his voice to normal audibility. “Well, you’re here, and it’s conclave time, so what did you see last night?”

“Many guests were … active. First, Yusendre picked the lock of Skouloun’s empty room—or was it? Someone could well have been waiting for her there—presumably looking for something. She was not in there long before returning to her own chamber. This was early on, of course, before her unfortunate demise. Then, after the spells and her death, when you two settled down to sleep, El and I chatted for a bit and I went out to patrol.”

“And our wizards visited back and forth like an overnight sampling tour in a brothel,” Mirt guessed aloud.

Alusair smiled. “Drawing on your vast experience of same, I’m sure. Yes, aside from Tabra not stirring nor being visited by anyone. First, Alastra called on Maraunth Torr, then almost immediately the two of them went back to her room together, Torr looking rather scorched—and his customary confidence entirely absent. Then Manshoon visited Shaaan—”

“Oooh,” Myrmeen interrupted. “I like that not.”

“But the Zhentarim lord was rebuffed, and departed immediately, repeatedly calling out in pain as he went. Before our oh-so-charming Serpent Queen could get her door closed, Calathlarra—who’d somehow picked the lock and got out of the bedchamber we locked her into—arrived on her threshold and requested admittance. She was accepted, went in, and remained.”

“For how long?”

“Until I stopped patrolling, after you rang the gongs. I suspect she snuck back to the room we locked her into after everyone else had headed for the feast hall, and is playing starving imprisoned innocent in there right now.”

“Should we check on her?”

“Tabra first,” El decided, and nodded to Alusair—who raced for the kitchen door, winking out of visibility before she got there.

“Mreen,” El commanded, “lock thyself in until we return.”

“And when you do that, the dishes will be waiting,” she warned.

“Of course. The dishes are always waiting.”

THEY STOPPED OUTSIDE Tabra’s door.

“She’s in there. Still abed,” Alusair murmured, out of the empty air. “She locked her door, but didn’t bolt it.”

Mirt looked at Elminster. “And if she won’t let us in?”

Elminster drew on a length of fine chain at his throat, hauling a key up into view. “Master key,” he said, before pulling it off and using it. Luse, stand guard over her after we depart.

As you command, Alusair’s impish thought came back.

El rolled his eyes and knocked at the door.

There was a whisper from within that none of them could decipher. They traded glances, then El shrugged and swung the door wide.

The disfigured last apprentice of Ioulaum was in bed. She regarded them, managed the wan beginnings of a smile, and whispered, “Well met.”

“Ah, but how well are ye, Tabra?” El kneeled beside the bed. “Forgive me?” he asked, laying a hand on her bedcovers and raising his eyebrows in a query.

She nodded, and he gently drew back the covers.

She was naked, her ribs standing out clear all down her gaunt flanks. Intricate tattoos covered the inside surfaces of both her forearms, and there was something—ink?—on her fingertips.

No, just on the fingernails of the smallest end fingers of each hand, which had been clipped or carved into sharp points.

“Poison?” El asked quietly, holding up one of her hands so it was between their faces.

“Ink. I always keep my end nails sharp, so I can dip them in ink to write letters. It saves having to procure or carry quill pens, which are regrettably fragile, I’ve found.”

Elminster nodded, replaced Tabra’s arm gently by her side, and looked her body up and down closely.

She lay still, apparently unembarrassed or angered, but when he asked gently if there was anything she wanted to share with him, or needed, she gave him that wan half smile again, shook her head, and said, “Just let me sleep for now. And mind you lock the door again.”

They were around the corner of the passage and in front of Alastra Hathwinter’s door before Mirt jerked his head back over his shoulder in the direction of Tabra’s room and said, “She’s up to something.”

El nodded. “Of course. Aren’t we all? The question is, what?”

He tried Alastra’s door, and found it locked. He knocked, but there was no reply. A second and louder knock was also answered by utter silence. El used his master key. No one greeted them, and he and Mirt peered around the room, looking for anything out of place.

Alastra’s clothes had been laid out neatly across the seat that faced the fireplace. She, too, lay abed naked—but the bedclothes were a roiled mess beneath her, and she lay sprawled atop them, staring forever at nothing somewhere near the ceiling.

The Harper’s throat had been cut savagely—and she’d been sliced even more deeply all down her front, laid open in a huge trench full of blood, into and out of which small beetles were busily scurrying.

Into that trench of gore her Harper symbol had been thrust, upright and bloody, for whoever found her to see.

Mirt stared down at it. “Murdered by someone who hates Harpers?”

El shrugged. “Or by someone who wants all to believe so.”

Mirt gave him a sidelong glance. “Surely Mystra must know who did this.”

El shot back a sharp look. “That doesn’t mean she’s going to tell me—or any of us. The more foolish and brutish among the gods meddle openly, as they’ve always done. The wiser ones are now trying to leave mortal troubles to mortals—for the less gods walk among us and work openly upon us, the healthier we are and the greater we become.”

“Oh?” Mirt asked, with a frown. “Do all the priests know this?”

El shrugged. “The farmer who never stops uprooting and inspecting his cabbages nigh kills them with his attention,” he explained, “whereas the one who plants them well and then lets them be, grows sturdy ones, and many of them.”

“So I’m a cabbage,” Mirt said dryly. “That explains much.”

ELMINSTER HAD CHOSEN the lord’s study as the place for Lord Halaunt to meet with each aspirant seeking to gain the Lost Spell. It was a small, pleasant room hard against the west wall of Oldspires, dominated by its one window, which looked north along the west wall of the mansion, where moss and then grass fell away from the old stone walls.

Two comfortable chairs faced each other across a central desk, and the Sage of Shadowdale’s respect for the real Lord Halaunt had risen a trifle upon discovering that the chairs were in every respect identical; the lord did not seat himself taller or more grandly or comfortably than any guest in this room. A few shelves of trophies of past Halaunt lives were let into the magnificent wood-paneled walls, and the Halaunt arms stood proud in relief on the wall behind the desk, flanked on the side walls by expansive and magnificently detailed maps of the Heartlands and the North on one side, and the Shining South and the Utter East on the other.

The desk was gleamingly bare and empty.

Mirt and Myrmeen were back in the kitchens, barricaded in and preparing highsunfeast, but Elminster assisted Lord Halaunt in entertaining one guest after another. As a scribe and witness, so far as each spell-seeking wizard saw, but in truth, he mindtouched Alusair as he went to fetch each one and escort them in, and in silent flashing thoughts made her aware of what he deemed key about their pasts and characters.

“They’ll still do this, after Alastra?” Alusair asked Elminster, before he set off to escort the first guest in.

He nodded. “They know ye’re going to be slow and careful, after what befell Alastra. And I’m sure all of them are counting the days until the spellstorm fades away. They have time to make good cases, and know we’ll take time to consider carefully. They’ll do this.”

Manshoon came first, and El warned Alusair, Even more of a snake, this one, than ye know. Utterly evil, and a barefaced expert liar. Yet strong enough in his Art, and longsighted enough in his thinking about Toril, for Mystra to offer him the status of Chosen.

Was the Lady of All Mysteries drunk, or love-smitten, or so bored as to be unsane, when making that offer? Alusair thought back tartly, and added quickly, You needn’t try to answer that. I’m merely acquainting you with my reaction to your news.

She then made Lord Halaunt smile and nod gravely at Manshoon as the vampire entered the room, stopped to pose and tender his own smile, and then strode to the chair his noble host was wordlessly indicating.

“So, Lord Manshoon, you seek my Lost Spell, yes? No change of mind, no second thoughts on this matter?”

“I do seek the Lost Spell,” Manshoon confirmed smilingly, “and am prepared to pay handsomely for it.”

“We’ll get to such details; I have concerns I’d like to discuss with you first. I possess, as you’ll appreciate, only the one spell, yet would seem to have far more than one suitor for it.”

“And the notion of selling copies of the spell to more than one of us sits ill with you? You’d get much less from each purchaser, as they’d not be getting something unique, but perhaps the aggregate of all the payments …”

“Try to swindle wizards, my lord? I think I’d like to live a little longer than that.”

“I was not envisaging any deception, Lord Halaunt, merely an alternative to having to choose just one of us. However, as the choosing is entirely at your pleasure, if the idea is not one that engages you, let it be forgotten. For I do indeed seek the Lost Spell, and I mean to have it.”

“Why?”

“Pardon?”

Lord Halaunt’s face was a gentle picture of momentary puzzlement. Standing behind his chair like a watchful statue, Elminster’s face was expressionless. “Why do you want the Lost Spell? What would you do with it?”

“Why, to bring peace to Cormyr, and then between Cormyr and Sembia, fair lands that could enrich all Faerûn if all strife was settled within and between them, and they could use this peace to bend their best efforts to prosperity.”

“A grand venture, indeed, but I believe I’d like to hear something else.”

“Something else?”

“The real reason, Lord Manshoon. Not what sounds lofty or pretty, but the truth. I understand plain, unglazed honesty comes hard for many who rule or wield power among merchants, to say nothing of wizards always suspicious of rivals, but I would hear it from you, or at least the fruits of your attempts to grapple with it. So, the truth now; why do you want the Lost Spell, and what for?”

Manshoon’s calm was unruffled. “I have ruled both cities and organizations, large and small, and one of the lessons I’ve learned is that deceit comes expensive; there is always a cost, and therefore lies are to be avoided whenever possible, and the straightforward simplicity of the truth cleaved to. I have just done so, here and now, with you. The reason I gave is the real one. I foresee not only personal profit in dwelling in prosperous lands at peace, wherein enterprise and energies can be devoted to enrichment, but betterment for all. And from that core, hopefully an improvement that spreads, to make all Faerûn better. Is that not good enough reason?”

“It is. You are to be commended—for your eloquence, if nothing else. Tell me, what do you see as the role of nobles, in this better, enriched Faerûn of yours?”

“Why, the nobility are both the guides of commoners, fonts of worldly wisdom and judgment—in many places, they can continue to serve as magisters, adjudicating local disputes—and best placed to be sponsors and investors, to drive progress and profit from it. In this corner of Cormyr around us, for instance, Lord Halaunt need not be the lord who keeps to his house in serene privacy, but the key to mercantile success for many a hard-working commoner, who will then be beholden to House Halaunt, and look up to Lord Halaunt as a wise counselor and leader.”

“You paint an attractive picture. So, then, to your offer. You know what the Lost Spell is, but you alone can establish its worth to you. What are you prepared to render unto me, if I give the spell—solely and utterly, retaining no copy of it, nor sharing it with another—to you?”

“Coins almost beyond counting, Zhentish mintings in the measure of seven thousand thousand in all, and extensive land holdings in Sembia, consisting of twenty-three city properties in Saerloon, twelve dockside and two uptown buildings in Selgaunt, and three large upcountry farms, with all the superior horseflesh reared on them and the crops currently planted.”

“That would seem a rather ordinary offering, in return for the extraordinary. Generous in extent, yes, but utterly … mundane.”

“It is but a beginning,” Manshoon replied smoothly, “though I must confess that to me your reception seems a trifle cold, coming from a lord who I would think would not be willing to part with the Lost Spell at all, were he not in a state of material want. What do you seek, beyond coins and land? Valuable city land and rural properties, the smallest of them thrice as large as your land here?”

“I confess I’m not entirely sure what I seek,” Lord Halaunt replied. “Until I hear it.”

“Pardon?”

“You may have it again, Lord Manshoon. The pardon of a bored, jaded old noble who confesses to something of a gnawing inner emptiness … yet does not know what will assuage it. Wherefore I shall hear out every offer, before I accept one—or none. So if I thank you and ask you to withdraw now, do not think you have failed. Not yet.”

“And are you thanking and dismissing me?”

“That moment draws close, yet it would seem you have more to say to me. Pray proceed.”

Manshoon leaned forward in his chair. “Lord Halaunt, I am a favored of Mystra—I enjoy the respect of the goddess of magic herself. Of all the wizards who will seek to persuade you to place the Lost Spell in their hands, I am the only one you can trust to use the Lost Spell wisely, to bring peace to Cormyr and then between Cormyr and Sembia. I shall swear to pursue that noble aim, upon the secret names of Mystra and my own, sworn for years upon her altars—so that if I stray, or say false in this, she shall destroy me utterly. I alone you can trust.”

“I shall bear your words in mind, but be advised that I shall be less than surprised if the rival seekers of the Lost Spell make different claims as to their trustworthiness,” Lord Halaunt said mildly. “I thank you for your most generous offer, Lord Manshoon.”

It was a clear dismissal, underscored by Lord Halaunt starting to rise from his chair and Elminster gliding forward to stand by Manshoon’s seat.

The vampire rose, anger gleaming in his eyes for the first time, but he bowed and said as smoothly as ever, “Lord Halaunt, please remember: I am the only candidate who will use the Lost Spell responsibly. To give it to any of the others is to court disaster—perhaps swift and personal disaster. I myself am the only one who can handle the spell.”

“I shall remember,” Lord Halaunt promised, meeting Manshoon’s smoldering gaze calmly. “I seldom forget things, as it happens.”

And he stood behind his desk and watched Manshoon go out. Only after Elminster turned in the doorway to give him a wink did he add softly, “Though perhaps the Halaunt memory was better before a certain uncaring blackguard had a large and wantonly destructive hand in burning my mind out.”

Oh, well said, El commented, as he turned and went out into the passage to fetch the next supplicant.

Gods, he’s annoying, Alusair replied, letting her exasperation flare. A moment later she staggered, her face going tight, and Elminster rushed back in the door.

In time to see her smile, wave one arm dismissively, and sit back down again. It would seem Mystra is still on the job, the ghost princess thought. And Manshoon is hopefully now nursing another pounding headache.

He’s certainly persistent, El thought cheerfully, and went out again.

He left their minds in contact, in case Manshoon’s just-rebuffed mental charge was followed by a stealthier invasion, and so heard Alusair’s next thoughts as clearly as if she’d directed them at him, rather than to herself.

Favored of Mystra? Why, I wonder? What’s he working on for her? Was this peace in Cormyr and Sembia part of it, or is he up to something darker? That puts him on another throne somewhere, perhaps?

El nodded to himself. What was the old Manyfaced up to, indeed?

And was merrily slaughtering archmages who came within reach, here at Oldspires, for example, part of it?

SHAAAN’S SMILE AT Elminster, as he led her along the passage, held more than a little challenge. She was as beautiful as ever, long gowned and serene this morning. Ready for battle.

More vicious than Manshoon and more powerful, El warned Alusair, through their mind touch. She’s part serpent, she goes her own way and gets her own way, and her hauteur is a cover for a cold, calculating mind that sees and plans years ahead. She doesn’t want to rule all Toril, just be obeyed utterly in every corner of it she happens to set boot in.

Charming, the false Lord Halaunt thought back sarcastically. I loathe her more than ever—and with good reason, it seems.

Shaaan strode into the room, stopped, and struck a pose, obviously expecting Elminster to announce her. When he held silence and merely glided around the desk to take up his station behind Lord Halaunt’s chair, the tall, scaled woman announced herself.

“I am Shaaan the Serpent Queen. I have no equal in mastery of magic. I could have forced every realm to kneel before me, and now be ruling an empire that takes in all Faerûn and beyond—yet I have not done so, for tyranny over others does not interest me.”

It was a clear invitation to a particular question, so Alusair—quelling an inner sigh—asked it.

“Well met, Lady! Tell me, in light of what you’ve just said, what does interest you?”

“The beauty and elegance of magic, and what can be done with it. New things that can be accomplished through the Art. The Lost Spell is an opportunity to experience and explore something new to me, and I ache to have it.”

“And is that really the reason you want the Lost Spell?” Lord Halaunt asked, gesturing to the empty chair across the desk from him.

Shaaan ignored it, instead turning to one side, to stride across the room toward the map on that wall.

“But of course! Lies and deceptions are the tools of the petty, of those who lack the might of the Art and strength of morals to be bold and open and forthright! Why should I say anything to you that is not the truth? What do I gain by that, save to sow mistrust and waste time that is precious to both of us?”

“I quite see. Well, then, in the interest of wasting no more time, what is your offer to me?”

Shaaan whirled around from the map, drew herself up, and flung her arms wide. “Lord Halaunt, you shall be ruler over all of Cormyr—with every coin of its considerable wealth, from taxes and fees to the gems of the Crystal Grot itself—if you yield up to me the Lost Spell! For I shall use it to conquer Cormyr, Sembia, and all the lands of the Moonsea, the Dragonreach, and the Dragon Coast—and then whatever other lands take my fancy.”

Lord Halaunt blinked. “I say, that sounds—”

The Serpent Queen swept on. “I shall unleash my peerless magical power to bring about a burgeoning empire in which strife shall be curbed, and a new age of peace and prosperity brought to all!” She spun around in a flourish of her gown, and almost raced to the chair, seating herself with another grand flourish. “My own magic is so mighty,” she said fiercely, “that I can do this whatever the opposition; I just need the Lost Spell to make me unstoppable!”

Lord Halaunt blinked again, his jaw dropping. Alusair couldn’t help herself.

Shaaan smiled triumphantly and rose like a great ocean wave ascending to smash down a shoreline tower, adding, “And I will transform and rescue Faerûn—or else! You, sirrah, can stand with me, and benefit—or against me, and be destroyed!”

And with those dramatic words, the Serpent Queen turned and swept out, flinging the door wide in her wake.

And leaving Alusair to turn and stare at Elminster, who was struggling to keep a straight face.

I had no idea Shaaan was such an overly dramatic bad actress, the ghost princess thought. Does she really get her own way through such histrionics? I thought she’d be all cool, oh-so-superior menace.

So, El agreed, did I. Perhaps this making an offer business really bores her.

Lord Halaunt sighed loudly, then slumped in his chair and growled, “Bring on the next one.”

And Alusair added silently, into Elminster’s mind, I shall never understand archmages. Present company included. For all those years I thought Vangey was a royal pain in our collective behinds, but now I see what a gentle, reasonable, simple fellow he was. By comparison, you understand.

Oh, I do, El thought back at her. If it makes ye feel any better, I’ve never understood most archmages, either. And I’ve been one for centuries and tutored hundreds of them. The Art … does things to minds that wield it.

You don’t say. Alusair’s mind voice was caustic. You don’t bloody say.

CHAPTER 11

A Little Tumult

DO YE NEED A BREAK, BEFORE THE NEXT SUPPLICANT?” ELMINSTER murmured, leaning over the desk. “I know ye’re past drinking, but …”

“Your kindness is noted and appreciated,” Lord Halaunt rasped, “but no. I am man enough in my own house to sit through the blus-terings of—what is it? Two more wizards?”

“Ye’re keeping count?”

“I’m wondering if Calathlarra, having freed herself from the room we locked her in, will have the gall to make an appearance at this door, to say her piece.”

El chuckled. “Our minds stroll down similar paths. I doubt it, somehow, but I, too, have been wondering.”

He straightened up and made for the door. Malchor Harpell next. The closest thing to a ‘good man’ among our still living guests. Yet a shrewd man, a veteran adventurer, and although there’s a dark mark in his past, he was once the patriarch of a family that makes ye Obarskyrs look like staid, stay-at-home say-nothings. The Harpells have interesting minds.

Oh. They’re all wizards, right?

Ye have an overly smart tongue, Luse. It’s going to get you into trouble someday.

“Going to?” Old man, have you not been paying attention to my, ah, distinguished life?

Elminster chuckled again, by way of reply, and went out.

MALCHOR HARPELL STOPPED and bowed to Lord Halaunt. He looked quiet and distinguished, like someone accustomed to rule. Alusair made the Lord of Oldspires stand and bow in return, indicate the empty chair across the desk, and murmur, “Lord Harpell, please … have a seat.”

“Thank you,” Malchor replied politely, taking it. Alusair stared thoughtfully at the man. The neatest beard she’d ever seen, a razor-straight fringe outlining the man’s jaw and chin, those fierce black eyebrows, and almost black, dark blue eyes. Calm eyes, with a hint of steel in them, and a larger hint of lurking humor. She liked this one.

“So, Lord,” she made Halaunt say briskly, “you want my Lost Spell. Why?”

“To further my mastery of magic, and to keep it out of the hands of the cruel, the tyrannical, and the reckless. I am a man of scruples and self-control, and I fear I cannot extend that same judgment to some of the other mages under this roof.”

Alusair couldn’t keep Halaunt from smiling at that, and didn’t want to.

“Fair enough. It has been my custom at this point to ask folk sitting in that chair the real reason they want to gain the Lost Spell—but as it happens, I believe you.”

Malchor made no clever comment, but merely nodded and waited.

Leaving Alusair more impressed.

“So instead,” she had Halaunt say, “I’d like to hear your offer. What will you give me in return for the Lost Spell?”

“Service—and coin. I expect to pay handsomely for the spell, in coinage and tradebars and gems. Yet more importantly, I want to devote the services of many adventurers I’ve established working relationships with, down the years, to procure for you, Lord Halaunt, whatever you desire from all over Faerûn.”

“Whatever I desire?”

“Whatever things you most want to collect. Art, small decorative sundries, a menagerie—even, perhaps, companions to make your life less lonely. To restore House Halaunt with strong, vigorous heirs, and to show all of them the world and parts they can play in it, so you’ll sit at the heart of a busy, prosperous, happy family, engaged with the world and a major player in it. Respected and listened to in Cormyr and Sembia, and even in fabled Waterdeep.”

“And if this family proves not so happy?” Halaunt grunted. “And my sons and daughters betray me?”

Malchor gave the Lord of Oldspires a wry smile. “As to that,” he replied, “I have experience to spare in handling a fractious family, though it was long ago. I’ll be your guide and your chief defender and weapon.”

“All those? You’ll be a busy man.”

Malchor shrugged. “I am that already. Why not keep busy building and defending something good in the world? Lord Halaunt, your family can be that—a House Halaunt strong and ever-growing, with interests everywhere across Faerûn, and good lives for all your kin. Strong sons and smart daughters standing with you. Your own legion. Think on it.” Lord Halaunt sat back in his chair, blinked once or twice, and promised gruffly to do so.

GODS, EL, THAT man almost had me crying there. Promising a lonely old man a family. He had me.

He’s very good at it, isn’t he? He’s had to handle some difficult and strong-willed folk, his kin among them. And he can do what he promised, though if he made it sound as if ye’d be his only concern, he was misleading ye; that man juggles almost as many plots and concerns and projects as I do. So there are some good archmages. Ye might want to cling to that, as ye entertain our next supplicant.

Oh?

Aye. Imagine a younger and more brash Manshoon, who doesn’t think he needs to bother to be subtle.

Oh. Alusair’s mental wince was painful for them both. Like so many young nobles I’ve had to deal with, in my latter years, since the Blades.

Indeed. This one’s worse. Be on thy guard.

Wheeeee. Princesses of Cormyr mastered biting sarcasm at an early age, and for this one, that had been a long, long time ago. Elminster winced.

And went out to fetch in the last supplicant of the day.

MARAUNTH TORR WAS as handsome—and as full of himself—as ever.

He smiled at his host almost condescendingly, inclined his head graciously when offered the chair, and seated himself.

“I am prepared to pay thirty thousand thousand gold coins for the Lost Spell,” he said as he did so, “and to provide you with sixty spell scrolls that you can sell as your financial needs suggest—useful, valuable spells but not rare or unique magics.”

Lord Halaunt blinked. “And why is the Lost Spell so valuable to you? What will you do with it?”

“Keep it safe. It gives a wizard much power, and is therefore very dangerous. As I very much doubt any of the other wizards you’ve spoken with have bothered to point out. I alone respect the danger to Faerûn, and not just what I can do to my enemies once I wield this spell. Which makes me your only sensible choice.”

Lord Halaunt had grown a puzzled frown. “Say on.”

“I alone know the great responsibility the Art brings, because of its great power, and I alone of all mages here at Oldspires haven’t misused magic to rule or try to rule others, to shatter realms or conquer them. So if you yield up the Lost Spell to me, little will change in Faerûn except that a certain Lord Halaunt will be much richer.”

Maraunth Torr’s face grew sad. “If, on the other hand, you choose another, the only responsible thing I can do is to destroy whomever you have chosen, so the Lost Spell can’t be misused.”

He stood up, and added gently, “And when that distasteful deed is done, I will rightfully punish the lord who made it necessary, for his slighting stewardship of Faerûn, by killing him in some suitably slow, painful, and fitting manner.”

Elminster could feel Alusair silently seething, but she made Lord Halaunt’s jaw drop and the man shrink back in his chair and tremble, as if terrified.

“So,” Maraunth Torr said with a silky smile, “I must advise you, Lord Halaunt, to choose wisely. All of your guests are well aware that the spellstorm will last another four days. A lot can happen in four days. Would you prefer to spend them with me as your defender against the other wizards within your walls? Or … not?”

The old lord turned to look helplessly at Elminster, standing still and silent by his chair.

At that, Maraunth Torr added coldly, “Yonder old fool and charlatan has deceived you as he has deceived so many, down the years. He is no font of wisdom or sound advice, but merely the latest opportunistic grasper to take the face and name of a minor wizard who died centuries ago, and has been impersonated ever since by self-aggrandizing scoundrels seeking to gain much by trading on the fell reputation of Elminster of Shadowdale.”

And with that, Torr turned on his heel and swept out of the room.

Lord Halaunt regarded the open door this last supplicant had swept out through, and sighed.

I’m surprised you didn’t destroy him, Alusair thought, as Elminster passed her on his way to close the door.

El shrugged. “If I destroyed everyone who said rude or less than true things about me, Faerûn would be nigh-deserted of creatures that can talk. Besides, ’tis best to know more about foes, so as to best gauge what dangers will be left lurking and unattended when it does become necessary to destroy them.”

“So, old friend, what now? Do I go to my bedchamber and await some murderous mage deciding to just seize the Lost Spell rather than paying anything for it? Or do we sit back and wait for these survivors to have a go at eliminating each other?”

“Neither. Lord Halaunt goes back to the kitchen and we hide him in the plate and cutlery storage, but I tell everyone at highsunfeast that he’s retired to think over the offers—and ye patrol invisibly again, and see what everyone gets up to. I’m afraid the chance for any sort of friendly or even cordial accord among our guests is past; of those remaining, I think only Malchor has the will for it—and he needs someone else to accord with.”

“If we’re handing out the Lost Spell, he’s certainly the only one I’m inclined to give it to, as things stand now,” Alusair said, “but to announce him as our choice will be to doom him.”

“As surely as we doomed poor Alastra,” Elminster agreed. “But our choice or not, he has to survive this folly of Mystra. I’m expecting Calathlarra to try something before long … and I’d not be surprised if Tabra gets involved in a little tumult, too.”

“A little tumult?”

“A murder. Victim or murderer.”

“So is she—?”

“ ’Tis not that simple, lass. It never is.”

“That’s ‘Highness’ lass, to you.”

“Hah! I recall when ye were a squalling babe, wet at both ends!”

“I was one of those for most of my life, as I recall,” Alusair told him dryly. “Well, let’s take Old Crustiness here down to his secret plate cupboard, so I can start patrolling—and get all of this over faster. Four more days of murder or spell duels, before the spellstorm fades and some enraged archmages get unleashed on Cormyr, and Faerûn beyond. If, of course, they haven’t all killed each other first.”

“Nay, lass, that last won’t happen. Nothing’s ever that neat and tidy, except in books.”

HIGHSUNFEAST WAS AN informal affair of soup, roast wildfowl, cheeses, brandies, and wines, served in two adjoining rooms: the Copper Receiving Room and the Green Audience Chamber immediately west of it. Shaaan and Maraunth Torr kept to the dark bower of deep-emerald tapestries and black carpet, Malchor to the brighter burnished pink-orange copper-ceilinged and copper-plated chamber, and Manshoon strolled back and forth between the two.

Absent were Calathlarra and Tabra, of course; Elminster intended to serve them their highsunfeasts privately, later.

Lord Halaunt should hear their offers for the Lost Spell, too, but the need to do that could be used as a delaying tactic if need be, over the next several days. During which time, if El knew anything at all about the characters of the four guests now devouring everything in sight, the wizards trapped inside Oldspires were apt to grow more than a mite restless.

Aside from Malchor, all of them had sent insults and condescension Elminster’s way throughout the meal, but had derived little satisfaction from doing so; the smilingly silent steward simply ignored their barbs.

“He smiles,” Maraunth Torr told Manshoon as Elminster passed, “because he can’t think of replies to our sallies, and the truths we tell wound him.”

Elminster merely smiled more broadly.

“Smile on, Elminster of Shadowdale,” Maraunth Torr added coldly. “You’re not nearly as clever as you think you are.”

“Could we speak of something else?” Shaaan drawled. “Something at all interesting?”

Manshoon favored her with his usual half smile and asked politely, “And would converse on the topic of the future we’d like to see for, say, the Heartlands of Faerûn be deemed both interesting and safe common ground? Or have you another preference, Lady Serpent?”

Shaaan’s eyes flashed, and she smiled. “Lady Serpent—I like the sound of that. My thanks, Lord Manshoon.”

“Not at all, Lady Serpent. Pleased to be of service to you.”

“Actually,” Maraunth Torr put in, savoring some sharp purple-marbled cheese from Ulgarth with evident surprise, “I’m interested in hearing your future plans, both of you. As much as you care to share publicly, that is. Something a bit more detailed than ‘I intend to rule the entire world,’ please.”

“I intend to control whoever manages to get closest to ruling the entire world,” Manshoon drawled. “Let someone else do all the gruntwork before I step in and reap the fruits of their labors.”

“And what if you attempt that, Lord, and find a certain Lady Serpent standing in your way?” Shaaan asked quietly.

“That will be interesting,” was all the reply Manshoon made, ere raising a goblet to his lips and sipping long and deeply.

Maraunth Torr raised his voice enough to carry through the open doorway into the other room. “And what of you, Lord Harpell? What are your future plans?”

“My future plans,” Malchor replied dryly, coming to the door with a plate of peppered pickles breaded and fried in shaltikho oil, “are just that: in the future. As in, I haven’t made them yet. I’m too busy pursuing my present ones.”

“Which are?”

Malchor regarded Maraunth Torr thoughtfully. “Not for the likes of you to know. Yet there is one ongoing project I’ll share, being as it can scarcely be hidden from anyone who devotes an afternoon to looking and pondering: breeding. As in, making sure that members of wealthy or accomplished families have children together, thus knitting their clans … to create combined factions that can in time rival those now most prominent across Faerûn—or simply control them, from behind the scenes, by co-opting the highest-ranking and most senior faction members.”

Maraunth Torr crooked an eyebrow. “That would seem work that would benefit one’s children or grandchildren, not oneself—and frankly, I’m not in the business of pleasing grandchildren before myself. I need plans and schemes that bear immediate fruit.”

“So you do,” Shaaan agreed. “After all, for every man, the world ends when he dies. Knowing one has a legacy not easily swept away is all most do so far as the far future is concerned; triumphs are things happening now, not yesterday’s gone glory or tomorrow’s empty boasting.”

“Nicely phrased,” Elminster murmured, bending over her with a large decanter of wine in his hands. “Care for some Clalel?”

“Vintage, yes, but none of the muck they’ve bottled this decade. What year?”

“Forged Sigil,” El replied promptly. “Lord Halaunt has only just tapped the cask.”

“Has he now? Did he do so after finishing all the earlier Clalel in his cellar?”

“He did.”

“Hmmm. Pity, that.” The Serpent Queen drank deeply, murmured her appreciation, and sank back into the cushions of one corner of the high-backed lounge she had to herself, along the south side of the room.

As Elminster turned away, she added, “You might just leave the decanter, Elminster. And save yourself all those trips trotting back to refill me.”

“Ah, now, why didn’t I think of that?” he replied affably, setting the decanter down on the side table her drink was already at home upon.

Mirt and Myrmeen came in then with steaming platters of roast braerwing and tallgoose hash, and as the onetime Lady Lord of Arabel passed El, she murmured in his ear, “We took what’s left of Alastra down to the cold cellar, wrapped in an old weathercloak to spare the Halaunt carpets along our way. It’s getting a mite crowded down there.”

“I doubt we’re done yet,” he muttered in reply, “but—”

He broke off to stare as an unexpected visitor glided into the room from the south stairs: the silent, ghostly shape of a sad-faced gowned woman holding her nearly severed, much-bandaged head on her shoulders with the one hand she had left, her other arm ending in a cloth-wrapped but dripping stump.

The chatter in the room died away as everyone noticed the gliding apparition. She paid no one the slightest heed except Elminster; she met his eyes with a fierce look, then pointed with her stump through the Copper Receiving Room, drawing back her truncated arm to thrust it forward repeatedly to make the fact she was pointing clear.

Even to dunderheaded old Chosen of Mystra, El thought wryly, and was rewarded with the briefest of grins crossing that ghostly face.

So this was Luse, but he knew who she was pretending to be.

“Gentles,” El announced calmly, “behold one of the hauntings of Oldspires: an early Lady Halaunt, who was hacked to death by brigands. She seems to require the immediate services of a steward.”

The apparition nodded emphatically and swept past him, through the copper-clad chamber and out into the entry hall. Elminster strode briskly after her, followed hastily by Mirt and Myrmeen.

Alusair did not slow when they reached the entry hall, but turned to its open main interior door, into the Blue Chamber, and led them through it, gathering speed as she went.

El, Mirt, and Myrmeen all looked at each other.

“Another death?” Mirt asked. “So who—and who did it?”

Myrmeen gave Elminster a meaningful look. “Whoever got there first, and was in the mood.”

“Secure the kitchen!” he snapped at her, by way of reply, as he broke into a run—after the ghost.

Mirt lurched and huffed along in his wake, as El raced down the passages in pursuit of the ghost princess, dashing to … Tabra’s room.

Its door was closed but—unlocked. El flung it wide.

Someone lay huddled and still on the floor. Calathlarra.

Dead, hard by Tabra’s bed. The Runemaster’s fingers were lacerated with what appeared to be her own knife.

El barely looked at her in his haste to see to Tabra.

Who met his gaze calmly, from under the covers. “I’m fine,” she informed him. “She never reached me.”

“Oh? Then what did happen?”

“She picked the lock and came charging at me with that knife, but tripped on the rug—see?—and stumbled, and fell on her own knife. Then she fell still, just as you see her.”

El and a heavily wheezing Mirt looked down at the rucked-up rug and the still and huddled Runemaster. There’d be no avoiding bloodstains on this rug.

“I see,” Elminster said gravely, meeting Tabra’s gaze squarely. “I quite see. The gods must have been smiling on ye.” He gave Mirt a silent look, and the Lord of Waterdeep bent to take Calathlarra under the armpits.

El took the dead Runemaster’s feet, and as he and Mirt started to carry the body out of the room, the bloody knife balanced atop its belly, asked Tabra, “Shall I bring ye thy highsunfeast shortly? Or are ye no longer hungry, after … this?”

“I’m never ‘no longer hungry,’ ” the woman in the bed replied flatly. “Bring me food as soon as you can, please.”

El nodded, bowed, and withdrew from the room.

Outside, he locked Tabra in and turned to a dark shadow lurking by the closed door into the lord’s robing room. “Luse, I thank ye for summoning us. Will ye stand guard over the last apprentice of Ioulaum again, for now? We have … business.”

Of course. Involving a fresh corpse. How … typical.

El gave the tart shadow a merry grin over his shoulder, as he and Mirt began the long, laden trudge down to the cold cellar. “My, but royal tongues have sharp edges!”

And even sharper points, Old Mage. And sharper points. Try not to forget that helpful little detail.

And with that, the ghost princess shrank down into something long, ribbon-flat, and sinuous, then plunged through the keyhole of Tabra’s door.

El stared after her for a moment thoughtfully, but Mirt grunted from behind him, “Come on, wise old wizard. You can stare at that keyhole all day, and it won’t change—and for all that time, this dead one here won’t get any lighter.”

So they set off, taking the long way through the dark cellars to avoid parading past the four highsunfeast-devouring wizards with the obviously dead Runemaster.

Soon enough, they were lowering Calathlarra down in the chill dark beside—Mirt named them grimly aloud—“Skouloun, Yusendre, and Alastra.”

“Well,” El growled, “what d’ye think?”

“That this cellar is going to get even more crowded before we’re done,” Mirt grunted.

El nodded, but said, “I meant about this one we’ve just carried in.”

“Tabra’s lying, and this one died by poison.”

“Agreed,” El replied, “but I doubt it was her own poison. This blade here was poisoned, but I can’t see a Runemaster using poison she hasn’t dosed herself with for years until she’s nigh immune to it.” Mirt nodded at that.

“I’d say she died from a different poison, probably on a blade wielded by Tabra,” El added, and Mirt grunted agreement and nodded more emphatically.

They retraced their steps to regain the ground floor and return to the two rooms where the wizards were eating highsunfeast. As they passed Tabra’s guarded door, Alusair emerged through its keyhole again, adopting her own likeness this time, and said, “Before I rushed in to play Lady Halaunt and summon you, I was patrolling, and saw something different than what Tabra told you.”

“Of course ye did,” El replied. “Tell.”

“Calathlarra picked the lock on Tabra’s door and charged at Tabra with her knife, all right, but Tabra had a fireplace poker under her bed. She hauled it out and dashed aside Calathlarra’s knife with it, probably breaking a few of the Runemaster’s fingers in the doing, then clawed Calathlarra across the face—and Calathlarra fell and never got up again. She twisted around on the floor a bit, groaning, then went limp.”

El nodded. “Tabra’s killing with poison she’s put on her sharpened smallest fingernails—certainly Calathlarra, and likely Skouloun. The question is, why?”

“She fell into the hands of the arcanists of Thultanthar, who tortured her for years to gain all her secrets,” Alusair reminded him. “Perhaps she’s killing anyone who’s ever been an ally of the Thultanthans.”

“But Calathlarra attacked her,” Mirt put in.

El nodded again. “If she’d figured out, or even suspected, that Tabra was after allies of Thultanthar—meaning Tabra would soon be after her—why not strike first?”

He turned swiftly then, to look down the passage; someone was coming, in a hurry.

It was Myrmeen Lhal. “Well met,” she greeted them dryly. “I almost fell over Maraunth Torr on my way back to the kitchen. Dead on the passage floor, without a mark on him, though his skin’s a mite green. Poisoned, I’d say.”

“Poison, poison, poison—amazing the things that become fads in Cormyr,” El muttered. “Luse, Tabra’s just going to have to take her chances—and everyone else take their chances with her. Get to the kitchens just as fast as ye can, to see if anyone’s in there! Myrmeen, ye rush there, too! And once there, search very carefully to make sure nothing is disturbed or missing, or there’s less or more of something in its container than there should be!”

Myrmeen nodded, spun around, and sprinted back down the passage. Alusair had already vanished around corners in the distance, like a racing wind.

Elminster and Mirt followed at a more leisurely pace. When they got to Maraunth Torr’s body, they found it cold and unbreathing, the skin having a decidedly green tinge.

“Poisoned,” they agreed, though El frowned down at the corpse suspiciously.

“Shouldn’t be death cold for days, with any of the poisons that turn the skin green raging in him; they generate their own heat, until they’ve finished liquefying the underlying tissue.”

Mirt shrugged. “Magic?”

El gave him a sour look.

The Lord of Waterdeep was unabashed. “So, what do you want to do with him?”

“Cart him down to the cold cellar and lock him in with the others, for now. Those still standing are our greater worries.”

Mirt grinned. “Spoken like a true scourge of the living.”

El and Mirt lugged the late Lord Torr down to the cold cellar and locked him in with the four other still and silent bodies.

Mirt looked them over. “Soon,” he grunted, “we’ll have a good idea of who’s doing this, just by how few are still standing.”

El gave him an unsmiling look. “Oh, I think I know who’s doing it, but I can’t prove a thing—and before I begin with accusations, I want to know why.”

They trudged back through the dark cellars again, and were just ascending the last few steps of the grand staircase back onto the ground floor when Alusair swept out of the air and stood facing them.

She was her ghostly self, and looked exasperated. “Mreen thinks, but isn’t entirely certain, that certain spices and cleaning oils in the kitchen have been handled and slightly depleted since she last touched them. More importantly, one of the rings of servants’ keys that was hanging in the butlery is missing from its hook.”

Mirt smote his forehead. “Gah! We should have hidden those keys,” he growled. “We should hide the rest of them right now!”

Elminster shook his head. “Nay. I wanted them found and taken. Their theft I expected, but earlier than this.”

“You wanted—?”

“When we were preparing highsunfeast, I coated all of the hanging keys with a little turmeric and then dipped them in deepfire—dwarven brandy. It surface-dries in a clear coat that makes the turmeric gray when seen through it, but won’t really be dry all the way through to the metal until around dusk—when the turmeric will make it fall away like dust. The turmeric will thereafter get onto the fingers of anyone handling the keys, and will be its proper ochre. So anyone you see with stains of that hue on their fingers, or someone who suddenly takes to wearing gloves … but let’s hurry back to the cellar! Luse, fly ahead of us, and watch to see if anyone goes in—or out!—before we reach it.”

Alusair turned her nod into a formless plunge down the stairs, passing between them like a chill wind.

Mirt shivered in the wake of her passing. “She’s enjoying this.”

“She’s dead; grant her that small pleasure, will ye?”

They hurried back through the sequence of dark cellars, and found Alusair waiting for them outside the cold-cellar door.

“Locked,” she reported, “and no one has entered or departed since my arrival. Yet I fear I came too late: two bodies are missing. Skouloun and Maraunth Torr.”

Elminster smiled mirthlessly. “Of course two are missing. But is one of them merely a decoy, or has the slayer a use for it?”

“Why don’t we manacle Tabra to her own bedposts, or go stand guard over her?” Mirt growled. “I don’t mind pulling her fingernails out by the roots, if it’ll make those of us who’re left safer!”

“She’s not the slayer I’m thinking of,” El murmured. “I suggest we all return to the kitchens, prepare an evenfeast from scratch and trust none of the spices and such that are there—so, aye, it’ll be rather bland; we’ll use boiled fruit peel instead—and spend some of the later evening, after everyone’s dined, searching the rooms in Oldspires we’re not using. I suspect we’ll find one of the two missing bodies hidden somewhere. If, that is, our slayer doesn’t get too ambitious and something spectacular ensues to interrupt us.” Mirt and Alusair grew frowns as they tried to pick holes in the Sage of Shadowdale’s planning, but both soon shrugged, giving up their attempts.

As the ghost princess summed up: “We the Force of Good can’t search during evenfeast without splitting up, as someone has to serve the food forth and keep poisoners from getting unobserved into the kitchen to tamper, and above all we mustn’t split up, what with murderers on the loose who might have left all manner of traps behind in their rooms. You who have vulnerable human bodies must stick together. And for evenfeast, I’ll be with you, playing old Lord Halaunt the host. So we stand together, or we fall separately.”

“Too late, too late,” Mirt and Elminster replied in unison, quoting the same old bawdy song, then chuckled together.

“ ’Tis never too late to chuckle at thine own pratfalls,” El added. “As it happens, I’ve gotten good at it, down all the years.”

“I’ve noticed,” Alusair replied dryly, and flew away.

CHAPTER 12

A Truce Among Wizards

THEY TOOK ALL THE PRECAUTIONS ELMINSTER HAD SUGGESTED—AND nothing untoward happened.

Evenfeast was served in the feast hall to Lord Halaunt and the three surviving guests, who had grown understandably wary. They shot sharp glares in all directions, often.

And were more sharp and difficult than ever.

As Myrmeen put it, peering through the doorway at them, “Just three now, but that’s still too many.”

“You don’t like wizards?” Mirt asked her. “Or you want them to choose the winner of the Lost Spell by whittling themselves down to just one mage still standing?”

“I don’t like these wizards,” Myrmeen replied. “The Harpell possibly excepted. And don’t tempt me; as cook, I can whittle by poison all too easily.”

Lord Halaunt was visibly dozing over his wine, down at his end of the table. Around the other end of it, Manshoon, Shaaan, and Malchor conversed in low tones, as if fearing being overheard. Mirt eavesdropped shamelessly anyway, as he set down steaming platters for them, and was roundly ignored.

The wizards were more interested in discussing the deaths here in Oldspires. As they recalled matters, in midbadinage Maraunth Torr had muttered, “Too much wine,” risen and set down his drink, walked out to seek a garderobe—and had never returned.

“This house around us,” Shaaan observed rather bitterly, “seems increasingly like a trap. Which we happen to share with a rather enthusiastic murderer.”

“Or two,” Malchor told the roll he was buttering.

“I,” Manshoon said darkly, “suspect Elminster.”

“I don’t,” Malchor replied flatly. “Not his way, any of this. He’s sly, but not when facing down foes. He’d have had it out with us one at a time, not here with us all gathered together, where we could make common cause and overwhelm him.”

“Let’s,” Shaaan suggested silkily.

Manshoon snorted. “And fall straight into whatever trap he’s prepared for us? He got here first, remember, and has had ample opportunity to prepare matters.”

“Forethought. Strategy. Bah! I’m growing sick of such things,” Mirt commented, setting down the last platter and boldly taking his place at the table among the wizards. “What splendor is there, in a life spent forever planning ahead, scheming for the morrow? Doing so leaves you no ‘today’ to enjoy!”

“And why are you here, Old Wolf?” Manshoon asked coldly. “When did you become a clever mage obsessed with Lost Spells?”

“Oh, that’s not one of my schemes yet,” Mirt replied, skewering a whole roast braerwing and transferring it to his plate. “I’m in no hurry to become a wizard. Not when I’m still wondering why wizards are all such arrogant fools, who miss so much joy while they’re shut up with their books and armored in their disdain for the rest of us.”

“Have a care, dullard,” Shaaan reproved Mirt coldly, but Malchor was chuckling.

“Well said, Lord of Waterdeep,” he commented, “if you are still a Lord of Waterdeep.”

“Never renounced the title,” Mirt said, “but quite a count of years slid past while I was caught in a magical trap.” He looked at Shaaan. “So I know a thing or two about traps.”

“And what do the likes of you do, when caught in a trap?” she asked in soft challenge.

“Set aside all feuds and grudges to work together and get out of it,” Mirt replied promptly. “You should try it sometime.”

“I agree,” Malchor said firmly. “Too many have fallen already not to think one of us will be next.”

“You propose a temporary truce?” Manshoon asked sharply.

Mirt carefully didn’t look at Elminster—who’d been keeping silent in his comings and goings, ferrying wine into the room and decanting it.

Keeping his gaze on his own reflection in the goblet he was holding, so as not to look at any of the three wizards and give them cause to take offense, Mirt asked, “Why temporary? Strikes me you’d all get a fair sight more done in your lives, if you all cleaved to the same code, or an accord like we in Waterdeep sign with cities and realms we want to trade with; a few clear, simple rules all can trust in.”

“A pretty notion, churl,” Shaaan told him coldly, “but your words contain one fatal flaw: that word ‘trust.’ None of us are foolish enough to indulge in it.”

“Oh?” Mirt looked back at her. “Strikes me the foolishness is in not seeing you’ve more than reached the point where all of you need to trust in a code.”

Manshoon smiled thinly. “You really think you can get archmages to behave? You are a fool, old man.”

Mirt snorted. “I don’t think I can get you to do anything. Nor can anyone armed with but words and a sword, for that matter, even if they gather a great armed host of their friends to stand with them. Accords between wizards only work if the wizards want them to, and do the agreeing themselves. Strikes me it’s all up to you.”

And he got up from his place, wiped grease from his chin with the back of his hand, sighed gustily, belched, and added, “That wasn’t a bad feed. Must go fetch your desserts now.”

And he left, not looking back. He knew the gazes watching him go would be less than friendly, and there was no novelty in being glared at. Lords of Waterdeep soon get used to it, if their fellow citizens know they’re lords.

ELMINSTER HAD ALREADY finished setting out a row of full decanters and gleaming-clean goblets in a neat line down the center of the table, and was departing, supporting the stumbling, seemingly half-asleep Lord Halaunt. Desserts-bound, Mirt lurched off after the Sage of Shadowdale, old boots flapping at every step.

The wizards, left alone, all looked at each other.

“There’s truth in what he says,” Malchor observed quietly.

“And so?” Manshoon asked, spitting out those words in a fierce challenge.

“I’d like to live to enjoy more wine as good as this,” was the calm Harpell reply. “Is agreement between us on a few simple rules of conduct that impossible?”

Shaaan shrugged. “To put it in uncouth terms, what’s in it for me?”

“Your life?”

MYRMEEN HAD THE warmed hand towels, jug of rosewater, and bowls ready when Elminster and Mirt reached the kitchen.

They thanked her with smiles and nods, but took far more time readying themselves for a return to the feast hall than “real” servants would have.

When they did return to the evenfeast table to set out the towels and bowls of rosewater for guests to wash with, Malchor looked up at them and announced, “We three have agreed upon a … truce of sorts.”

El and Mirt kept silent, but put on identical half-smiling expressions of eager interest, and Malchor obligingly explained.

“No poisons, no attempts to enspell each other, no knives used on each other, and no behind-doors deals regarding the Lost Spell—negotiations will be in the open, in front of everyone.”

El lifted his eyebrows in frank disbelief, but Manshoon and Shaaan both nodded coldly.

“Amazing what good wine, comfortable chairs, and a few consecutive moments alone in a calm room can achieve,” El remarked, sitting down at the table and pouring himself a drink. “So tell me now, what are the deeper details of this accord? The ‘and if ye break it, this is what we’ll do’ provisions. Pray elucidate.”

“As for praying,” Shaaan observed glacially, “you might want to bear in mind, Elminster Aumar, that we needed no Chosen of Mystra—nor the blessings of the goddess, for that matter—to reach agreement. We are our own adequate salvation.”

“So ye are!” El agreed heartily. “I can retire now!”

“You might want to see if they manage to make it last at least a day, first,” Mirt pointed out, earning himself thin smiles from Malchor and Manshoon, and an even colder look from Shaaan.

“Ye may have noticed,” Elminster told the three surviving guests, “that Lord Halaunt has been frequently, ah, indisposed. He and I are both having a hard time deciding which of ye will make the best recipient of the Lost Spell. We shall probably wait until the spellstorm subsides before announcing our choice—so try not to break too many things around Oldspires, searching for the spell ye won’t find. Like many an elder, Lord Halaunt gets testy with those who break his keepsakes. Ye’d do better to try to convince us that ye’re the best candidate, if ye can leave off being nastily high-and-mighty for long enough to do so. I know it’ll be a strain.”

Malchor looked amused at that, but the looks Manshoon and Shaaan sent Elminster’s way were positively glacial.

“THEY’VE ALL GONE,” Mirt muttered, returning from peering around the feast hall. “We can get on with the washing-up, at least until the next time one of them tries to murder the others.”

Myrmeen looked up from the growing mound of dirty dishes. “You don’t think they’ll try for one of us first?”

Mirt snorted. “And have to play at being their own cooks and servants? No fear!”

A moment later, he added, “Well, except for El, here. The Serpent Queen’s last little crack was a clear reminder that they see all Chosen of Mystra as spies set over them—so if they want to go against what they know she stands for, and merrily continue eliminating powerful wielders of the Art, they’ll probably want Mystra’s eyes and ears gone.”

Myrmeen nodded, and turned to Elminster. “Does that have anything to do with your demand that we wash every last dinner plate? They only dirtied three each, you know, and you’ve stacked up three dozen here!”

“Lass, lass, I’ll be doing the washing of them. And ’tis not just my own skin I’m looking to save by washing plates; when they try for me, daggers are far more likely to be their means of choice for my demise. I’m merely remembering King Ulduth.”

“King Ulduth?”

“The ruler of a vestpocket realm in the Border Kingdoms that the Zhentarim had a useful working relationship with, until he grew tired of being swindled out of most of the pittance they’d agreed would be his share. Very soon after he rebuffed them, he and his seven wives, not to mention all their children and most of his royal court, died the same night, after a sumptuous feast. All poisoned in the same way. Nattalath.”

“The mingled oil of three nuts,” Mirt said slowly, “that come from Raurin and Durpar.” He shrugged. “That’s all I know, beyond the fact that the noble House of Kormallis in Waterdeep did a handsome sideline trade in the stuff, with traders from Amn and Calimshan. Until something happened we never learned the details of, to disrupt it. Nattalath oil is a normal part of traditional cuisine east of the Inner Sea, we were given to understand.”

El half smiled. “Ye could say that. If poisoning diners is ‘normal,’ that is. Nattalath has a light salty taste and dries clear, so some Zhent got into Ulduth’s scullery, doused all the feasting plates in it, and set them to dry undisturbed. Nattalath reliquifies when ye put hot food with hotter sauces atop it, and strong-flavored fare serves to hide its saltiness. So everyone who ate off those plates died. In their sleep, later that night; scores of them. So no more Ulduth, and his kingdom went with him, too. The Zhents just happened to have more than a few well-armed agents and magelings visiting the kingdom, who knew all about the deaths before the general populace—so they’d already stepped in and taken over before Ulduth’s barons could even begin to squabble for his crown. They’re still there today. And as diluting nattalath enough takes care of it, ye can be sure they wash their plates good and proper.”

Myrmeen looked at the stacked plates a little grimly, shaking her head. “So you suspect Manshoon?”

“I suspect all of our guests, living and dead. But I’m no watch officer, nor tyrant; suspicion is not enough to spur me to accusation or brutal action. So I take precautions, and watch my back warily, and wait.”

“Wait until it’s your turn to get murdered?” Myrmeen snapped. “Not a winning strategy, if I may say so.”

El shrugged. “In that case, it would seem to fit with the sour success of Mystra’s scheme for throwing mighty mages together to try to force accord among them.”

“Unless she wanted the most obstreperous to go down, and saw this as a way of letting it all be deeds mortals did to other mortals, and none of it by her direct hand,” Mirt pointed out. Then he flung his arms wide, and added, “Bah! I’m sick of holding my own hand back from heartily clouting a few magely faces—and backsides. I’m going for a walk!”

“Alone?” Myrmeen asked quickly. “That’s unwise.”

Mirt held up a large, full decanter. “I won’t be alone; I’ll have my friend here.”

“Watch thy back,” El warned.

“Always do,” Mirt replied, and strode out.

Myrmeen shot Elminster a worried look. “Should we go after him?”

“Luse is going with him,” the Sage of Shadowdale replied, heading for the sinks. “She’ll call on us if we’re needed. Just keep thy cleaver handy.”

Myrmeen grinned. “Always do.”

“OFF DUTY?”

Mirt prided himself on alertly noticing everything around him. In a life like his, it had become one of the daily essentials for staying alive a trifle longer.

Yet in the gloom, while trying to peer at the large and rather dark paintings that adorned the walls, portraits of Halaunts who’d been painted in the saddle, or striking dramatic sword-wielding poses atop Oldspires ramparts that had long since crumbled away, he hadn’t seen Manshoon, standing like a statue against the passage wall just ahead, until the founder of the Zhentarim had spoken.

“You could say that,” he replied calmly, taking another swig from his decanter. It was full of Amabranth Amber, a potent mushroom and iylbark whisky from Zazesspur. It had the hue and smell of old boot leather, and the taste of a hard spiced candle cheese … and it burned warm and delicious, all the way down.

Manshoon seemed to share his calm. “Have you time enough to spare for a private word?”

Mirt regarded his questioner thoughtfully. “I believe I do.”

Manshoon’s response was to step away from the wall and indicate a door that had been hidden behind him. It stood open, into darkness beyond.

Mirt hid a frown. No stained fingers on Manshoon—and El had warned him to look closely at fingernails, in case handwashing had scrubbed much of the stain away—but the door led into a bedchamber intended for the servants of visiting guests of high station, a room he doubted had seen use for years. Right now, it was supposed to be vacant—and locked tight, too. The next door along was the room that had been given to Calathlarra, and the big corner one beyond that to Maraunth Torr.

“I’ll fetch a lamp,” he said.

“No need,” Manshoon replied, and strode into the darkness. There followed a brief grating sound of stone on stone, and abruptly soft lanternlight illuminated the room.

Mirt peered in.

Manshoon had lifted an iron hood from over a lit lantern that stood on the hearth of the room’s fireplace. And was now rising, standing back from it, and beckoning.

As Mirt lurched forward, into what was almost certainly a trap, he felt a chill caress around his ankle. It was Alusair coiling momentarily around him, signaling that she was present and accompanying him. Invisible and silent, so Manshoon wouldn’t detect her presence, of course.

“Close the door,” Manshoon murmured.

Mirt took care to keep one eye on the Zhent as he looked up and down the door’s edge. Seeing no special locks or holes filled with waiting darts, he sidestepped until he could see the inside surface of the door and, almost to his disappointment, discern that it was bereft of monsters, lurking assailants, and dagger-firing trapguns. He took another step sideways, to be well out of line of the door, then swung it gently shut as he kept his gaze fixed on Manshoon.

If the Zhent had planned to work a spell or hurl a dagger, he showed no signs of doing so, but held patient silence and immobility until the door was closed, and Mirt had growled, “So? You wanted a word?”

“I did,” Manshoon confirmed gravely. “Or to be more precise, enough words to make it clear to you that I require your immediate assistance. You must work for me, without revealing that you’re doing so to anyone else here at Oldspires—and you must get me the Lost Spell, right away. I must make use of it just as soon as possible.”

“Or else?”

“Or else I’ll kill you—slowly and horribly. Something I need no magic to do, old man. I can deal death in many ways, and have had much practice; I’m good at killing.”

“Your threat is clear enough,” Mirt grunted, “but what if I’m unimpressed? Just why must you use the Lost Spell without delay?”

“Malchor Harpell and Shaaan the Serpent Queen have made a private pact. They will be unstoppable, working together. Unless, that is, I have the Lost Spell to make me formidable enough to thwart them.”

Mirt never let his gaze stray from Manshoon for an instant as he opened the door again. “Then I guess we’re all doomed, Zhent. You see, I don’t have the Lost Spell, don’t know where Elminster is keeping it, wouldn’t know it if I fell over it or took it to bed with me—and wouldn’t give it to you under any circumstances.”

He backed out into the passage, clapping his hand to his belt knife, as Manshoon asked almost gently, “And may I know why not?”

“I don’t take utter snakes as allies, Lord of the Zhentarim, not to mention murderers of thousands,” Mirt replied coldly. “You’d do better to give this accord you took the trouble to feign agreeing to a try, and see if the high road and fair dealing gets you a mite farther than your usual treacheries.”

And with that, he turned on his heel to lurch back the way he’d come.

Manshoon swallowed his fury in the briefest of hisses, racing after the moneylender with arms spread, reaching to strangle Mirt from behind—but the old man’s departure had been a ruse.

Whirling with surprising speed for his paunch and lurching gait, Mirt landed a solid punch in Manshoon’s face, then slammed home the halffull and very hard decanter into Manshoon’s throat, driving the Zhent staggering back in agony. Alusair was like a numbing chill between them, wrapped around Mirt so his blows could land with full force, but he was shielded against any vampiric attack, his skin coated in her and so not quite touching the Zhent’s.

For good measure, Mirt landed the toe of one boot deep into Manshoon’s crotch with a solid kick.

“Come after me, worm of a wizard,” he growled to the resulting groaning heap at his feet, “only if you’re willing to wash dishes. Lots of them, and without breaking a single one. I don’t know what you did when you were lording it over Zhentil Keep and Westgate, but Lords of Waterdeep do dishes.”

THE WALK-IN LINEN closet just down the passage from the trophy chamber in Oldspires wasn’t well lit at the best of times, and at this wee hour of an overcast night, it was darker, as the saying went, than the immodest insides of a witch, but its glowstone was still working, after a flickering, fading fashion, generating a very faint luminescence—and Manshoon and Shaaan didn’t need much light to stand nose to nose, in cold confrontation.

Manshoon was aching from the drubbing Mirt had given him not long ago, and his temper was short. “Don’t think this truce will save you from humiliating defeat and death at my hands, when the time comes,” he informed Shaaan in a soft and gently menacing voice. “And come it will.”

Shaaan smiled, her front teeth becoming serpent fangs as her neck elongated horribly, into an undulating and snakelike thing that could easily bob and swerve sideways to menace the Zhentarim’s neck and face from many angles.

“Oh, I await that coming time eagerly,” she hissed. “You refused Mystra’s mantle, and are about a tenth as powerful and important as you deem yourself. Even if you were as mighty as you believe yourself to be, you could not match my power. Some of us, Manshoon, don’t waste our time posturing and harassing others. We quietly go about what we choose to do, avoiding empty grandeur—and so, when the testings and challenges come, we’re strong enough to easily best pretenders. You should have learned that long ago. Yet you have not, and stand here almost as blind in your arrogance as that fool Telamont Tanthul was. Go now, little toy, and I’ll show you a small measure of mercy: I’ll not blind you by spitting poison—or do worse to you by biting.”

Manshoon snarled wordless defiance, but as he backed away and felt for the door handle behind him, the sweat of fear started to run down the back of his neck.

Then the door closed between them, and he turned and ran.

There was a time when he’d not have backed away. He’d have attacked without hesitation, trusting in his sleeping selves to rise and continue on if he fell. That aggression had won many battles, taken down many foes.

Yet the confident boldness to launch such attacks was no longer his; he’d lost a lot of the arrogant ignorance that had made it possible.

There was always someone more powerful, always someone two steps or more ahead of you.

He should never have refused Mystra.

With her as his sword, he could have felled foes like this spiteful bitch Shaaan, and even the likes of Larloch and Ioulaum, and lorded it over all wizards of Toril.

Yet he’d have had to do her bidding. He’d not thought that price worth paying then … what about now?

The sweat was trickling down his back like an icy river.

With magic wild and failing in this place, would she even hear him, if he pleaded with her now?

And what about her hound, the faithful slobbering Elminster?

Did she even want Manshoon?

The sweat kept right on trickling.

MALCHOR HARPELL STOOD alone in his bedchamber in the depths of the night, his truss at last unlaced and his old and aching feet immersed in a bowl of warm water.

Blessed relief.

Yet he found himself shaking his head sadly.

What a murderous debacle this has been, this clawing scramble for a Lost Spell that can’t be worth all this, he thought to himself.

This accord won’t last two days and nights through. If that. Yet it’s a first step I’d never have thought either Manshoon or Shaaan could agree to, let alone would agree to. Doomed, we all are, and our accord too, but like a banner, it’s a beacon, a thin measure of hope. Will the younger wizards of today, and mages yet unborn, be able to take more steps, to walk farther than we do? To forge some sort of real, lasting peace or code of conduct?

He shook his head again, doubtfully, and said aloud into the dimness of his room, “Poor Alastra.”

“POOR ALASTRA,” MIRT muttered, putting goblets away in a cupboard and noticing he was handling one she’d admired and chosen for her use. When the tidying away was almost complete and the countertops nigh bare, the kitchen of Oldspires looked so much bigger.

“Enough dallying,” Elminster told his fellow servants of the household. “We go and search now.”

Myrmeen yawned, tossed down a towel, and found herself yawning again. “I know this has to be done, but sleep is something I have to do occasionally, too!”

“Now,” Elminster told her, “is the only time when we can be sure our ‘guests’ are locked in their rooms. Their own rooms, and Tabra as well as the three. Luse is patrolling the passages diligently, and will come flying back to us if anyone ventures out of their rooms or tries to get into the kitchen. This is the best time to search.”

“For what, exactly?”

“Skouloun or Maraunth Torr,” Mirt growled, “or pieces of them.”

“Charming,” said Myrmeen. “Whither first?”

“The eastern rooms,” El replied. “That is, everything due north of the entry hall. Shaaan’s bedchamber opens into them, but ever since all the guests arrived and we entertained them in the Red Receiving Room, we’ve barely set foot in any of them, barring the main passage. And I doubt a fire’s been laid or lit in the Summer Room in a decade or more; anything could be hidden up that chimney.”

“If someone’s going to be looking up a chimney while pieces of corpse come falling down it to slam smack into their faces,” Myrmeen suggested crisply, “suppose you volunteer for peering duty—while I and my trusty cleaver stand guard against anyone sneaking up behind us.”

“Fair enough,” El agreed easily.

“You didn’t just speak of the Summer Room on a whim,” Mirt rumbled, wagging a finger. “I know your intonations, now; you’ve been thinking of it. Why?”

“It’s as large as the feast hall, is clear across the other side of Oldspires and away from the bedchambers and where we’re usually busy, and so makes an ideal neutral meeting ground for our guests. I’ve been deliberately avoiding it since I took the time to string those threads across its doorways.”

Myrmeen nodded. “So we can see if anyone’s entered it since.” She gestured with her cleaver. “Lead on.”

The Red Receiving Room was dark and deserted, the shutters that connected it to the servery they’d used when the wizards had first arrived still firmly closed and fastened. The corner closet was locked, but El turned with broken thread ends dangling from his fingers to show them that the dumbwaiter inside had been used. But by whom, and down to the underservery or up to the ruinous upper floor?

“Check above and below later, right?” Mirt growled. “Do the rest of these rooms first?”

El nodded, and led the way. The next room along was the library, home to the sort of books that a noble who intended to impress assembled, plus a row of well-used horseflesh bloodlines tomes. Nothing was out of place, and the chamber was dusty, the air stale. Genuinely disused, probably undisturbed since their own hasty search upon arriving.

That left the armor court, which was really just the end of the main passage beyond a pair of massive square pillars, some staircases, and … the Summer Room.

Where they found Elminster’s threads disturbed.

The large, lofty room beyond was deserted, and the clouds of the earlier hours of the night had blown on, to let cold moonlight flood in through the three tall and wide windows, and paint the room pearly silver.

Myrmeen strolled toward the trio of glassed-in arches, to gaze out at the surroundings by night. The mists of the spellstorm would probably look impressive indeed, all shimmering and swirling silver in the moonl—

She gasped, stiffened, and pointed, all in one convulsive movement, and El and Mirt peered quickly.

They were in time to see the dark shape of a cloth-masked face at the bottom corner of one window—in the instant before it vanished, racing west.

All three of them rushed to the westernmost bay window, and were rewarded—by the way the outer wall of Oldspries turned north there, and the brightness of the moonlight outside—with a glimpse of a lone dark figure, almost certainly a man in leathers or close-fitting dark heavywork clothing, fleeing along the mansion wall, and out of sight around the corner, where the mansion turned west again.

“So we’re not alone here, within the spellstorm!” Mirt almost roared. “What by the Nine Hells happened to the War Wizards and their vigilance and their splendid and mightily puissant ring-shaped wall of force?”

El shrugged. “Something, obviously. And without that barrier … well, to someone without the Art, yon spellstorm’s just mist, remember?”

Myrmeen nodded grimly. “All of our guests are—or were—mages of power. Any one of them could have ordered their own army of stealthy slayers to follow them to Oldspires, to help out if things went bad and it came to battle.”

“And things did,” Mirt grunted. “So, just how many lurking murderers are we hosting?”

Elminster gave them a lopsided grin. “In the realm, ye mean, or just here in Oldspires?”

CHAPTER 13

What Lord Halaunt Was Up To

MYRMEEN AND MIRT SIGHED IN UNISON.

“When you’ve finished failing to be funny, Old Mage,” added the former Lady Lord of Arabel, examining the window in front of her, “answer me this: the windows all over Oldspires open, don’t they?”

“Aye, from the inside. From the outside, they’d have to be forced.”

“Unless someone inside opens them to help someone outside get in,” Mirt pointed out.

Myrmeen waved her cleaver. “And Malchor and Manshoon—and for that matter, Skouloun and Maraunth Torr—all have bedchambers with windows in their outside walls.”

“Aye,” Elminster told them both. “We’re in the cesspond, good and proper. As usual. Now, shall we continue with the search? I’d say we leave Malchor, Manshoon, Shaaan, and Tabra alone; search around them, so to speak.”

“Yes, I’m more interested in these armies of war wizard–defeating intruders we didn’t know we were hosting a few breaths back, myself,” Myrmeen said sarcastically. “Lead on, Sage of Shadowdale.”

Elminster did that. Their search was swift but thorough, peering through room after room after wearying room. Twice, Alusair swept up to them like a gently glowing wind to tell them that the four wizards—Tabra and the triad of the uneasy truce—were in their bedchambers, alone, and staying there.

The dark ground-floor rooms they illuminated briefly with Myrmeen’s hand lantern were all empty of humans, alive or otherwise, and of anything suspicious. So they descended into the undercellars, where Mirt took two steps and then turned and growled at Elminster, “There’ll be a wood chute, aye? Where Halaunt’s foresters or gardeners or stablejacks deliver down here the wood they’ve felled and split, for all those fireplaces we’ve just seen?”

The Sage of Shadowdale looked back at him for a moment, nodded slowly, and said, “Thank ye; my mind is slower than it should be. Of course. This way!”

They hastened through a warren of twisting passages, flung wide a door—most of the undercellar doors were wider than the doors on the ground floor, and fastened with hasps and wooden pegs, not locks—and Elminster led the way down some worn stone steps into a room with a deeper floor than its neighbors, which was piled high with wood.

The air was fresh, thanks to a damp breeze that shouldn’t have been there.

It was coming from … yes, the wood chute, where the stout wooden weather hatch had been levered up and jammed open with a half log. In the moonlight spilling down the chute, the splintered edge of the hatch looked fresh.

Someone had just forced a way in, down the wood chute, into Oldspires.

“Our man at the window?” Myrmeen asked, pivoting on one boot heel to look all around her, cleaver at the ready.

“Or the army he brought with him,” El murmured, peering closely at the chute just below the hatch. Then he amended, “Nay, I’d say two at most came in this way … more likely just the one intruder.”

Their man at the window or not, the intruder was nowhere to be seen in the wood cellar, so they went out and on through the undercellars, searching warily now, weapons ready and expecting an attack.

That didn’t come, through cellar after cellar.

In the southwestern corner of the undercellars, they came upon a room that held many wine casks horizontally, in cradles. There, El glanced at the floor, flung up a warning hand, then reached for the lantern. Myrmeen passed it to him, and in its light he peered closely at the floor, proceeding with his nose near the floor like a dog puzzling out a scent along the row of casks, then around the endmost cask.

Where he stopped abruptly, and raised the lantern so Mirt and Myrmeen could see … a fine dark thread stretched from the cask across to the nearest ceiling-beam support post.

El followed the thread through an eye of wire, where it turned and ran up the post to a little box with an open end.

Nodding to himself, he lifted the lantern to look as far as he could past the thread and the box, to the far end of the cask.

Where there was a small heap of blankets and a bowl with a ladle in it.

“Someone’s temporary home,” El murmured, then pointed at the thread, and back along it to the box. “Poisoned-needle trap; it fires along the line of the thread but up this high, when the thread gets disturbed by someone’s ankle.”

“Our first search was in great haste,” Myrmeen recalled with a frown, “but I don’t remember this being here at all.”

“Nor was it,” Elminster replied. “It’s been here longer than the damage to the wood chute, though.”

It was Mirt’s turn to frown. “So where is the army of intruders? Alusair would’ve noticed if they were hiding in the room of one of our surviving guests, yes?”

“Oh, yes,” El agreed. “Though, mind ye, she’s patrolling just the north end of the house, where we housed all the Lost Spell–seeking wizards.”

“Most of the south end houses the kitchens and the feast hall and the rooms we were going to sleep in, that we’ve not dared use yet,” Myrmeen mused aloud. Then frowned again. “So intruders may well be lurking in my bedroom right now.”

“Best check under the bed,” El advised gently.

“I always do,” Mirt agreed. “Even mothers know that’s where the monsters lurk.”

Myrmeen sighed and asked him, “Now who’s failing to be funny?”

“We’ve still the southeastern cellars to look through,” El reminded his two companions. “Including the cold cellar where we’ve been putting the bodies.”

“For someone else to take,” Myrmeen commented. And then froze. “What’s that?”

Something half-seen stirred in the gloom ahead.

It was silent, and growing larger as it came toward them—and it vanished utterly in the lanternlight, but was there again when El held the lantern behind his back. An outline of a person, gliding rather than walking. It glowed so faintly that they could only just see it in the gloom—but could see the wall behind it right through it. It was tall, and had two dark pits for eyes, and when Myrmeen hefted her cleaver, its glow pulsed around its empty left hand … and grew a ghostly sword.

And at the sight of that, she could not help but feel a flickering thrill of fear.

“Well met, Lord Halaunt,” Elminster greeted it gravely, “we are here to guard the gates.”

The empty-eyed face turned to regard him as if considering his words thoughtfully. Then it turned, slowly and deliberately, to regard Mirt. He received the same slow, silent scrutiny ere the ghost turned to survey Myrmeen.

Who asked calmly, “El, with magic untrustworthy, how do we defend ourselves against this, if it attacks?”

“The Weave,” Elminster replied. “Yet it would be best if I need not call on that power, here, with the gates so close and numerous around us.”

Mirt cleared his throat then, scratched at his belly, and inquired, “I’ve been wondering just what, if anything, prevents someone outside the spellstorm from ferrying an army inside here through a gate. They’d have to know how to open it, aye, but doesn’t it, ah, bypass the spellstorm?”

El shrugged. “If they’re lucky, yes. If not …”

“Scratch one army,” Myrmeen commented, watching the ghost take a step closer. “Why is none of this reassuring me in the slightest?”

Mirt chuckled. “Because you’re keeping company with Elminster of Shadowdale, that’s why, lass. And sharing his unfolding life—of one disaster after another.”

“Entertaining disaster after another,” Elminster amended, keeping his eyes on the ghost.

Whose regard had flashed to focus on Mirt, at the sound of his mirth.

“Lord of Waterdeep,” Elminster asked with sudden heartiness, “what is silence?”

“Hey?” Mirt was taken aback.

“A condition utterly unknown to nobles of Waterdeep.”

Mirt blinked, then chuckled heartily. “Well said!”

The ghost of whichever early Lord Halaunt it was backed away, its attention riveted on the fat moneylender.

Myrmeen stared at it, then suddenly burst into a peal of merry laughter.

And the ghost shrank back from her, dwindled—and fled.

Mirt stared at where it had been. “What just happened?”

“We drove it off with laughter,” Myrmeen said triumphantly.

“I know that,” Mirt told her testily. “But how? What’s so frightening about a woman laughing?” And he flung up a wagging finger. “And before you feel moved to say something smart, know you that I’ve been married.”

“I’m guessing,” Elminster said slowly, “that yon ghost thrives on fear, and itself dislikes or even fears laughter.”

“You mean you haven’t the blithering faintest,” Myrmeen told him fondly.

El gave her an innocent look. “Isn’t that what I just said?”

“We’ve all ruled places,” Mirt growled, “so I presume it’s news to none of us that you can achieve much by pretending to know what you’re doing, and what’s going on, and acting as if you’ve prepared for it and so are calmly ready to handle whatever happens.”

“Indeed,” El agreed briskly, “so let’s get this done. After this last corner of the cellars, there’s the entire upper floor to do yet—the parts of it we can trust to hold our weight, that is.”

As they set off, El handing the lantern back to Myrmeen, she asked, “So which Lord Halaunt was that?”

He shrugged. “One of the early ones. Quite a few of them were up to no good, and one or two died violently and under mysterious circumstances—and with all the gates leaking energies …”

“A good place for ghosts, and strong causes for their creation,” Mirt concluded. Then he pointed ahead. “There’s another now.”

This haunting was a different Lord Halaunt; it was shorter and carried a war axe over its shoulder as it strode purposefully along a passage and vanished straight through a wall, not slowing or even hesitating as it gave them a brief but intent look.

Myrmeen turned to Elminster. “So we can conclude there are gates very close to us, hereabouts?”

“We can. Yet I’d know, this close, if one was open and active.”

“The Weave?”

“The Weave. Yet I’m seeking something else. Besides our missing bodies, that is.”

“Oh? Care to share? Or are we just the dunderheaded lackeys?”

“Now, now, lass, there’s no need to be—ahh. Shine thy light here.”

Myrmeen obeyed, and found herself looking at what appeared to be an old tapestry, hung so it draped down over a wall of stacked crates.

“Cleaver,” El ordered, extending his hand.

Myrmeen put her blade into it, and he leaned forward with his long reach and used the cleaver to sweep the tapestry to one side.

Revealing no traps, but a narrow gap between two stacks of crates, large enough for a man to sidle through.

“Light, in there,” El murmured. Myrmeen obliged, illuminating … a tiny room or space amid towering stacks of crates.

It held a small, delicately carved jet-black wooden table rather like a dressing table, with a kneeling mat on the floor in front of it. Rather than having a central mirror behind the tabletop, it had an empty circular frame that might once have held a mirror—and spaced at intervals around this frame were seven metal stars painted blue-white, the blue vivid but flat, and the white a faintly-luminescent enspelled paint that made the stars glow softly and steadily. On either end of the tabletop stood black metal candlesticks, with unlit candles in them that had been lit—and then extinguished—several times before.

El looked around the little room and saw a stool, a piece of parchment bearing rather untidy writing atop the stool, and a small metal box on the floor beneath it. The box was the sort carried to light fires; it probably contained candles, paper spills, and a rushlight stand, a flint, a steel striker, and a shallow metal bowl to hold tinder.

Holding up a warding hand to keep Myrmeen and Mirt back, El walked cautiously to the stool, bent to peer at the parchment without touching it, and read what was written on it.

“A hidden shrine to Mystra,” Mirt said, “but why was it hidden? Or rather, from whom?”

“This is Lord Halaunt’s fist,” Elminster replied, “so it wasn’t hidden from him; it was hidden by him. To keep his servants from knowing?” He shrugged. “A mere guess, mind ye, with nothing to support it.” He pointed down at the parchment. “This is a script for a prayer he’s composed; he was praying to the goddess to gift him with the ability to work magic.”

“So his offer of the Lost Spell was no bluff? He might have used it himself, or tried to?” Myrmeen asked. When he made no reply, she asked another question, slightly more loudly and sharply. “Did you know this was here?”

El looked up from peering intently at the tabletop—the altar, in front of the circle of stars and between the two candlesticks. “I knew it existed, somewhere in Oldspires.”

“Oh? How?”

“Mystra hears prayers sent her way, ye know. And that, in turn, is how I first learned of what Lord Halaunt was up to. Despite what Ganrahast and the other wizards of war may think, I’m not in the habit of magically eavesdropping on their every belch and scratch. Don’t tell them that, though; believing as much keeps Glathra behaving far better than she would otherwise. But setting that aside, Lord Halaunt informed Mystra he’d found the Lost Spell and wanted to be shown how to use it, but she thought otherwise and informed me.” El bent and peered very intently at the altar, then frowned.

“Ah,” he said, “that’s why.” He pointed at the black wood. Myrmeen peered hard, ducking her head from side to side to see if the spot where he was pointing caught the lanternlight differently than the rest of the tabletop.

She glanced over at Mirt, to make sure he wasn’t doing the same thing and might be on the verge of ducking his head right into a painful meeting with hers. He wasn’t. Instead, he was nodding grimly, as if he’d seen whatever El had spotted before.

Sensing her scrutiny, he looked at her and growled, “Some tiny stains; traces someone cleaning up missed.”

“Blood,” Elminster put in. “Human blood. Human sacrifice to Mystra.” He straightened up from his examination, looking grimmer than Mirt. “She wouldn’t like that,” he muttered. “She wouldn’t like that at all.”

He looked around the little shrine. “I wonder what lives Lord Halaunt spent to get the attention of Our Lady? Or if he stopped short of murder, and just paid the families of dying commoners to, ah, borrow their doomed kin?” He shook his head in distaste, picturing the old lord on his knees here, and asked aloud, “And why Mystra? Why not Tempus, or Malar, or—?” He shook his head again, turned to depart the shrine, and added, “Well, that leaves just the cold cellar.”

“The place bodies go missing from,” Myrmeen commented.

“That’s why we’re going to look in on it, one more time,” the Sage of Shadowdale told her. “Though it’s none too comfortable, what better place to try to hide when ye hear searchers coming?”

“Aye, our intruder of the chute,” Mirt growled. “What with the ghost and this shrine, I’d almost forgotten him. Not that I’ve left off looking behind me, expecting someone to rush me, blade in hand, all the time we’ve been down here. Let’s look in on our dead and be done with it.”

“Long time ahead before we’ll be done,” El reminded him. “Upper level to do yet.”

As it happened, there’d been no new departures from the cold cellar—but then, there’d been no new arrivals, either.

“Well, that’s something,” Myrmeen said, as they closed the doors on the chill once more, and turned away.

Mirt gave her a look, and she countered it with the words, “Small victories. Small victories.”

Elminster led the way back across the cellars to the south stairs, a grand staircase that ascended through the Halaunt family quarters on up into the upper floor. There’d been an upper study at its top, once, but its large windows had yielded to winter snows and howling gales years back, and been crudely boarded over. Birds roosting for the night shifted uneasily on rafter perches as the wizard, the moneylender, and the warrior passed them, peering everywhere and expecting trouble. The floor was bowed and spongy, uneven thanks to one board warping faster than its neighbor. The decaying wood creaked and groaned loudly underfoot in places and was silent and solid in others—but those others were increasingly rare as they went on and saw more moonlight and stars twinkling through gaps in the roofs and walls, and saw more puddles.

“So much space gone to ruin,” Myrmeen murmured. “Even with no staff needing housing, this could have been given over to a granary.”

Mirt grinned. “There speaks the warrior. We could face a siege at any time.”

“Well, we could. Cormyr today is no secure and peaceful realm. Not anymore.”

“I doubt it ever really was, from all I’ve heard,” the moneylender said.

Elminster turned, laid a hand on each of them, and mindspoke: Every word warns anyone up here of our approach. To reap your life only takes one arrow.

“True,” Mirt granted, as Myrmeen nodded. They proceeded in wary silence.

Through room after room, and eventually out into a chamber that had utterly collapsed and stood open to the sky, its walls—studded with warped and buckled doors—resembling the battlements of a turret top.

Here Elminster stopped and turned slowly to survey the moonlit lands around, breathing in the night air and peering down at the gently roiling fog of the spellstorm—and the wall of force beyond, catching the moonlight here and there. He could see a few of the less careful war wizards standing watch; some of them were looking back at him.

So the barrier stood.

Had their mysterious intruder slipped in through a gate?

Or was it someone already in Oldspires, a person they knew? Even masked, that face at the window hadn’t looked like any of the guests, living or dead. Yet a spell or two had worked within the mansion walls, after a fashion, and a spell that affected the caster without reaching out to others had a better chance of going right, in this chaos, than …

Hmmm.

Mystra be with us.

The prayer had become a habit to him, almost a curse, over the years. Save in the worst moments for the Weave or what passed for balance on Toril, the Mother of Magic tended to leave her Chosen to their own devices, providing more guidance and manifestations to convey her approval rather than divine smiting. Her Chosen were her fists, her thunderbolts, her shows of force. Her disapproval came as nightmares, and spells simply not working at all. Mystra was with her servant here in Oldspires in the form of a shield defending the mind of the ghost princess, so no unscrupulous wizard—and El had a dark notion that in Mystra’s regard, the ranks of such mages might even include him—could take over the mindless husk of Lord Halaunt and use his voice to set mage against mage, and confer the Lost Spell upon themselves.

Or was the intruder—a spy only, from what they’d seen, and one in great haste not to be caught by Elminster and his companions—a Highknight or some other agent of the Crown of Cormyr? Sent to try to watch over what was going on inside Oldspires?

Was Ganrahast that anxious?

Well, now, the lad certainly could be. Tight as a drum and breathing out tension that simply grew and grew, having none of the ease with which his father had defended the Throne and manipulated its nobles and high society in his later years … aye, this could be a watcher sent by the Royal Magician.

Or Vangey, for that matter. He’d always been one to make fallback scheme within fallback scheme, until his every endeavor had more layers to peel than an onion—even all those years ago, when he’d been El’s apprentice. And during his time as Court Wizard and Royal Magician both, he’d run his own private network of spies to watch over the Highknights and wizards of war he’d also commanded.

It was no secret that his restoration by Mystra had brought back his old confidence until he swelled up like a bustard courting hens in mating season, and he’d made little effort to hide his dismay at the state of the realm during his time as a twisted spider-thing. Aye. ’Twould be like Vangey to begin assembling his own spies, so he need not trust what he heard from the reports made to Vainrence, or chafe at what little Ganrahast and his Lord Warder chose to share. He’d justify it very much the same way Elminster himself would have, had he stood in Vangerdahast’s boots: for the sake of the realm, I dare not trust even these our most loyal agents, for are they not the greatest danger to the Dragon Throne, if they turn traitor? Or even prove false in small ways?

Yet perhaps he was overthinking this. Most likely it was a warrior hired by one of the archmages to follow along in case of trouble—or to ensure victory in the winning of the Lost Spell. Perhaps it was just a thief, something as simple as a former servant sneaking back to see what could be stolen with the rest of the staff gone. And perhaps it was a spy hired by an ambitious war wizard down there in the trees, desiring to impress Ganrahast or merely to “do a Vangey” and further his private warehouse of “what I know and no others do, so that I am wiser and more powerful thereby.”

Mystra be with us, indeed!

Entertaining such thoughts was a swift road to madness, conjuring up perils and shadows and lurking menaces where there were none, and building minor deceits and the dealings of self-interested nobles into rampant realm-wide treason …

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Myrmeen murmured softly, beside his ear. El turned to meet her gaze, realizing how long he’d stood here. All around them were the gables and ridgelines of the complicated roofs of Oldspires; above them was the moon and the great glittering vault of stars, and below and around them were the woods and rolling hills of the Halaunt lands, with the barest ghost of a breeze gliding past them now, and Mirt sitting like a patient gargoyle on a heap of fallen roof slates.

“ ’Tis indeed, lass,” El muttered. “We’ve been so much on the run since getting here, and ye and Mirt have slaved so much in the kitchen, that ’twas more than good to stop and breathe and think for a moment, in a spot where we can fool ourselves that we’re out and away from Halaunt rooms and Halaunt gloom and Halaunt stale air—’twas necessary.”

And he waved merrily to the growing cluster of war wizards at the edge of the woods below, who had gathered to get a good look at whoever was out atop Oldspires in the moonlight.

Then he drew in a deep breath, shook himself, announced briskly, “I’m getting old,” and strode across the ruined floor to one of the doors on the north side of the bared-to-the-skies room.

“I’m waiting for the room where we get threescore and more bats flying into our faces when we open the door,” Mirt remarked, as El tugged at the warped and stuck door.

El shook his head. “Not at this time of night; they’re already out and winging it down there, nigh trees’ edge, where the bugs will be most plentiful. Keeping those war wizards from getting quite so bitten as they would otherwise. Now, if we were doing this search by day …”

“Ah. Sorry. Indeed. Forgot bats start hunting at dusk; I’ve been too long a dweller in Waterdeep,” Mirt growled, losing patience and stumping past Elminster to haul hard on the door until it shrieked, groaned, and squealed all at once and came open with a wall-shaking shudder.

He grinned, bowed like a courtier, and with a flourish indicated the way was now clear to proceed.

Myrmeen rolled her eyes, stepped past him, and unhooded the lantern, holding it out at arm’s length beside her rather than standing behind it. If there was an archer ahead, he could at least work for his kill.

They found only roosting birds and their droppings—lots of their droppings—and the hanging, peeling decay of much water getting in, over many seasons. For room after room, many of them with old shields and canvas wagon shrouds nailed down underfoot as improvised patches where the weatherfall in ground-floor rooms below had become unacceptable.

As they advanced cautiously on, the patches of pitch applied in more thorough attempts at stopping leaks became more frequent and larger.

“I wonder how many country mansions across the Forest Kingdom look like this, up high where no one but the owners and their servants see,” Myrmeen commented.

“Most of ’em, if Cormyr’s anything like Waterdeep,” Mirt said, trying to peer through a gap where two floorboards had warped in different directions. “I wonder if we’ll meet with any ghosts up here?”

El shrugged. “In my experience, servants less seldom haunt houses than their masters—and ’twas all servants up here.”

“Too busy working when alive to want to tarry a moment longer at the place of their wearying toil, once dead,” Myrmeen commented, tugging on yet another door. “This one’s locked.”

“Lanternlight on the lock, if ye would, Lady,” El said calmly, then bent to peer at the lock in the illumination she provided. “Fresh scratches; used recently.”

“Trap?”

El shrugged. “The classic way of finding out presents itself.”

“So it doth,” Mirt replied mockingly, reaching behind his belt buckle to slide something forth with his thumb. A lockpick, which he calmly applied to the lock, keeping his body to one side and listening intently.

Myrmeen and Elminster stayed back and kept utterly silent. Mirt manipulated the pick for a few moments, frowning, then reached behind his ear with his free hand for a second pick, thrust it in beside the first, twisted, and was rewarded with a loud click.

Then he shrugged, turned the handle, and kicked.

The door banged open with oiled, unwarped ease, and—

Nothing happened. El plucked up a sliver of slate that some long-vanished scuttling furry invader had carried along this passage from two rooms back, and wordlessly handed it to Mirt—who tossed it forward into the darkness.

They heard it land, shatter, and skitter to a halt.

Nothing followed.

“Lamp,” Mirt growled. Myrmeen obligingly raised it on high and aimed its unshuttered opening so it illuminated—a wardrobe. Six wardrobes. More.

They were staring into a dry, intact room crammed full of wardrobes, obviously moved here at some time in the past from many other rooms on this upper floor, to keep them away from leaks.

Mirt waved his hand in a circle; Myrmeen correctly interpreted his signal and flashed the lanternlight in a slow circuit of the door frame and the floor and ceiling just inside. Mirt nodded, took off one boot, and held it across the threshold, then crossed in front of the open doorway to offer it inside the other side of the opening.

Unbroken nothing. Mirt stamped his boot back on, then stood and listened.

And then sniffed.

And sighed. “I know that smell.”

He strode forward through the open door to the nearest wardrobe, and flung its door wide.

And the arm of a dead man fell limply out, to hang loose and lifeless. It was Skouloun of Nimbral, his body slumped inside the wardrobe on a heap of musty weathercloaks and old boots.

Mirt edged past that wardrobe and flung open door after door, but the sixteen wardrobes he opened after that first one yielded up only clothes.

“No more bodies,” he growled at El and Myrmeen as he returned to them. “Just our curiously mobile dead Elder. Who seems to have been achieving much more dead than he did when alive.”

“Not without help,” Myrmeen pointed out, firmly tucking the dead wizard’s arm back into the wardrobe and closing the door on his reek. “Stinking wizards,” she joked.

Mirt chuckled. “So now what?”

“So now,” Elminster replied, “we go back to the kitchens, and send Alusair in through Maraunth Torr’s keyhole to see what he’s up to, before we burst in and confront him.”

“But he’s—”

“Not as dead as we thought, I suspect. If he’s not back in his room, we hole up in the kitchens and send Alusair, invisible, all over the mansion to hunt him. Looking for him, or someone she doesn’t recognize, or two versions of someone she does recognize.”

“Gods above,” Myrmeen muttered. “My head’s starting to hurt.”

“At least you’ve still got one,” Mirt joked, “and life enough to use it.”

“Yes, but for how much longer? This house is killing people!”

“I had started to notice that, lass. I had indeed,” the Lord of Waterdeep grunted.

Elminster, standing behind them, said nothing at all.

CHAPTER 14

Crudeness and Comeuppance

AS IT HAPPENED, MARAUNTH TORR WAS BACK IN HIS ROOM.

Lying sprawled on his back on the floor.

Dead and stiff, his face contorted in horror and his body in a convulsed and agonized pose, hands frozen in a frenzied clawing of the air. His skin was magenta all over—except for his fingers, which were stained ochre here and there—and yellow foam was hardening around his mouth, nose, and eyes.

He was naked, and there were fanged bites all over him.

“Our thief of the keys,” Myrmeen observed, pointing at the stained fingers.

“And Shaaan’s work,” Elminster murmured, pointing at the bites. “I’ve seen it before a time or two. This is the result of the overreaching ambition of Maraunth Torr, I’d say. She’ll now have our missing keys, too.” He smiled grimly. “Let’s awaken most of our other guests and bring them in here to see this.”

Mirt gave the Sage of Shadowdale a sharp look. “Nothing good will come of that. Stirring up trouble, Old Mage?”

El shrugged. “ ’Tis what I do.”

“I feel moved to say: I hope you know what you’re doing,” Myrmeen told him, “but you always seem to—and after what many will say is far too many centuries, you’re still here.”

Mirt grinned at Elminster. “Sounds like ringing praise to me.”

The Sage of Shadowdale sighed. “Go ye and rouse Manshoon, Malchor, and Tabra, and bring them here. I want them to see this, to see if we can goad one of them into letting slip just a hint of something. Not Shaaan, mind. Leave her be.”

Myrmeen gave him a look. “So she’s Torr’s murderer; has it been her, all along, taking down everyone?”

Elminster shook his head. “Nay. Would that it were so simple. Just as neither she nor Torr are our lurker outside the windows. Who’s shorter than both.”

Myrmeen sighed. “Far be it from me to deny old and eccentric wizards their Mystra-given right to be mysterious, but I like to know—purely for reasons of adroit operations, you understand—when someone I’m dealing with is a murderer, stone cold or otherwise.”

El gave her look right back to her. “They’re all murderers, lass. Ye don’t rise to the positions they have—Calathlarra, a living Runemaster merely feigning undeath; Manshoon, a ruler thrice over, formal or otherwise; Elders of Nimbral, and so on and on—without killing those who tried to kill thee. So treat them all accordingly.”

“Strike first?” Mirt grunted.

“Be polite, and never turn your back,” Elminster replied. “Now go and get those three—and if they give thee the slightest opportunity, peer past them. Those bedchambers are only so large, and armies, even stealthy ones, take up some space.”

Myrmeen grinned. “Armies I can handle, remember? Annoyed and frightened archmages, though … I’m not so sure. So they’re all mixed up in it?”

El nodded. “Though I don’t think they’ve all done murder, here at Oldspires. Yet.”

“But if only one wizard is left, only one can claim the Lost Spell,” Myrmeen murmured. “And even if that prize isn’t forthcoming, they’ll have left a lot of powerful rivals behind, forever.”

“No contingencies, in all this spell-chaos,” Mirt agreed.

Myrmeen looked at Elminster. “That’s not going to stop them trying, though, is it?”

He shook his head, and she turned and strode away with Mirt to fetch Tabra, whose lodgings were farthest distant from Maraunth Torr’s bedchamber; Malchor and Manshoon were much closer to hand, and could be collected on their return trip.

So, Old Mage, shall I go and camp outside the Serpent Queen’s door?

Her thought came into his mind just before the chill of her presence. Alusair could be both invisible and utterly silent when she wished to be, and Elminster’s feel for the Weave came in roiling waves in this place, so close to the leakages of the gates.

Aye, he mindspoke back. It will be very helpful to know if she stirs outside her room, or tries a working inside it.

Until next, then, she thought. And a moment later, from farther away, she added, I echo Mreen.

Eh? How so?

I, too, hope you know what you’re doing.

El smiled grimly. So do I, he told her.

If Tabra was still feeling ill, she didn’t show it. She had obviously been up and dressed when Mirt and Myrmeen had called on her, for here she was already, limping along with them, a wry smile on her face and her mismatched eyes alight with interest. Or was it mischief?

Malchor looked as if he was only half-awake, roused from deep slumber and still quietly close to toppling back into it. Manshoon looked as alert and superior and sleekly hostile as he always did.

“Frightened by night noises, Aumar?” he asked. “In need of a little company? Missing soft warm lasses to be your pillows?”

By way of reply, Elminster stood back and wordlessly ushered them into Maraunth Torr’s room with a flourish worthy of any doorjack.

The three wizards looked down at Torr’s sprawled body.

Malchor looked sad, Tabra on the not-quite-smiling side of satisfied, and Manshoon both unsurprised and annoyed.

None of them said anything.

Silence stretched.

Elminster gave them an inquiring smile.

When his eyes met Manshoon’s, the Zhent asked coldly, “Why are you showing me this? Is this your crude attempt to frighten me?”

“Nay,” El replied. “Rather, ’tis my crude attempt to reassure thee that the murderer has found his comeuppance.”

Manshoon shook his head. “Some day, Elminster,” he said softly, shaking his head, “you’ll reach too far—and great will be the glee of those who bring you down. There’ll probably be a rush to take part in your comeuppance.”

“I daresay,” El told him, gentle smile unruffled. “I do seem to have accumulated quite a host of enemies down the passing years. The burden laid upon me by she whom I serve, I deem it; the inescapable result of matters all being left up to me. Always.”

“Is that your excuse for forever meddling?” Manshoon snapped, then turned to Malchor and Tabra. “You’re both being very quiet; do you approve of Elminster manipulating matters great and small, all over Faerûn, for century after century?”

Malchor shrugged. “And you don’t? I don’t. He at least can claim to be serving the goddess who empowers and graces us all.”

“Anyone can claim such service,” Manshoon said darkly. “I wonder how much of what he does for Mystra is more self-serving than goddess-serving.”

“Whereas I,” Tabra said with sudden steel in her voice, “spend my time wondering about more important things. Those who concern themselves overmuch with other people’s business often make a mess of their own. Wouldn’t you agree, Saer No-Longer-Lord-of-Anything?”

Manshoon rounded on her with a sneer. “Grand words from a marred weakling whose largest accomplishment is being a captive.”

Tabra smiled and flexed her fingers, as weary warriors often do in a lull in fighting, when they’ve been gripping their weapons long and hard. “Try me, latest clone of so many failed predecessors,” she suggested softly, without a trace of fear in her eyes. “Try me.”

“Heh,” Mirt told the ceiling, “I love the peace and carefree ease of wizards’ accords, I do indeed.”

“I’ve agreed to no accord, fat man,” Tabra reminded him.

“Hah! Indeed you’ve not!” Mirt agreed jovially. “My mistake. A mere mutton-headed man of action, me, not a clever mage who—”

“Not much action, by the looks of that paunch,” Tabra interrupted, but her voice was jesting and her eyes held a twinkle.

“Well, here I be,” the old moneylender leered, swiveling his hips like a dancing girl. “Spurn not your fair chances!”

Tabra, Myrmeen, and Manshoon all rolled their eyes, as the three roused guests turned away to head back to their rooms. El waved to Mirt and Myrmeen to accompany them, and locked the door on what was left of Maraunth Torr.

No blatant slips, and everyone riled. So, now, could anything be salvaged of Mystra’s hoped-for accord? The surviving mages all knew each other better, true, and that would make them all behave differently in future toward rivals who were no longer strangers, but this many dead was hardly what a goddess who wanted more of the Art in the hands of nigh everyone would want …

Ah, but perhaps this Mystra was at last cleaving more to the thinking of her predecessor, his Mystra, that those who used magic for tyranny must occasionally be struck down to end their hoarding of magic and oppression of others who wanted to wield it or gain more of it. Her time in the Weave would have immersed her in the thoughts and desires of the earlier Mystra and the many, many servants of Mystra who were now voices in the Weave, marinating her in their views and emotions, their accumulated wisdom, their memories of what they’d had to do in the service of Mystra …

’Twas no easy thing, being the goddess of magic. A different deity than the rest, in a world so steeped in the Art, a divinity that had to care more for mortals, or embrace utter tyranny. And at the same time share the Weave—the Weave that was Mystra, as well as being so much more—with other deities, or what remained of them, like Eilistraee and—

“Well, that was fun,” Myrmeen commented, as she and Mirt returned. “They’re all back in their rooms, and both Tabra and Malchor were yawning before they shut and bolted their doors. No armies, by the way. So, what now?”

“Time for ye two to enjoy some slumber,” El told them, “back in the kitchen. I’ll tend the fires and the stewpots, Luse will fly patrol, and—”

“Tomorrow’s another day, that bids fair to be very much like this one,” said Mirt, starting the long trudge down the passage in the direction of the kitchen. “I’m getting to know that kitchen very well.”

“Well,” El pointed out, “ye do need skills for thy new career, whatever it turns out to be, and a dab hand in the kitchen is always …”

“You, Lord Chosen of Mystra, can go rut with two snakes blindfolded up a tree,” Mirt replied merrily, lurching through the Halaunt trophy chamber and—

Coming to an abrupt halt as Alusair loomed up before him, glowing almost solid, tall and stern and with her hands on the hilts of her spectral sword and dagger.

“News,” she announced crisply, as Myrmeen and Elminster came to their own halts looking over Mirt’s shoulders at her. “I found someone unfamiliar skulking around the passages—a masked man, in leathers, with several daggers about his person—and did my ghost act. He was impressed.”

“Terrified,” Myrmeen interpreted.

“Indeed,” the ghost princess agreed dryly. “He fled in some haste, up into the unsafe upper floor, and hid himself there.”

“Lock up the kitchen and food stores first,” El decided, “then let’s talk to this skulker.”

“Talk,” Myrmeen echoed, deadpan, hefting her cleaver. “Is that what we’re calling it these days?”

“THIS LOOKS NO more prepossessing than it did earlier tonight,” Mirt grunted, ascending stairs that creaked alarmingly under his weight. The cracking sounds were so loud that they echoed back off the nearest trees. He winced, and turned to regard Alusair. “Did it do this when you chased our masked marvel up here?”

“I’m lighter on my feet,” she replied dryly, drifting past him upright, with her arms folded across her chest.

Mirt sighed heavily. “Life continues to be so unfair.”

“A sentiment others have voiced before ye,” Elminster told him. “And will again, after ye’re gone.”

“And my companions continue to cheer me,” Mirt added sourly. “Now, where’s this skulker? I want to have at him for robbing me of the last few hours of slumber I might have managed to snatch before morning. Let me land a few good punches in someone’s face, and I’ll feel I’ve accomplished something.”

“You grow up on the docks of Waterdeep?” Myrmeen asked.

“Near enough, lass, near enough.” Mirt started along the unevenly warped floor of the widest passage on the upper floor—one made for lugging furniture along, where most of the others were narrower. Many doors lined its walls. “So, Princess, whither away?”

“Straight ahead, then follow the passage where it doglegs right,” she replied, “and—”

She stopped, in a sudden swirling flare of cold and ghostly radiance. “Hold,” she snapped.

“Onto who?” Mirt asked, but obediently lurched to a stop.

“Four threads across our path, see?” Alusair warned. “They weren’t there when I chased our intruder this way.”

“Taut threads says trap to me,” Mirt growled.

“Says trap to anyone,” Myrmeen snapped. “El, do you want to play expert again? I can shine the lantern wherever—”

Something seemed to erupt behind them like an invisible fist, lifting them off their feet into a forward stumble that almost pitched Mirt through the wall of threads. It smote their ears, too, in a soundless blast that rattled teeth and thrust like a needle through eardrums and then … passed and was gone.

“What,” Mirt rumbled, turning around and clawing the pry bar, which he’d found in the kitchens and adopted as his weapon of choice, out of his belt, “was that?”

“A spell that went awry,” Elminster said grimly, looking back the way they’d come. “Cast up our backsides while we stopped to deal with this rather obvious ‘trap.’ ”

“Our skulker’s a wizard? Or is this the work of one of our guests?”

“The latter, I’m thinking,” El replied, stretching out one hand like a priest bestowing a blessing and holding up his other in a “stop and silence” signal. His companions gave him both until he shook his head, sighed, and relaxed again.

“The Weave reveals nothing but the ripples of a powerful magic, just cast right here,” he announced, “which is obvious enough. It was meant to be a smiting spell of some sort, an unleashing to deal harm. I …”

He broke off, and then asked quietly, “Luse?”

The flickering in the air in front of the threads was dark and feeble, a mere wavering line of radiance.

“A few more spells going awry like that,” Alusair whispered raggedly, from somewhere near the floor, “and I’ll find my final rest at last.”

“Ye should get back to Lord Halaunt’s body and rest within it, lass,” El said gravely.

“And miss the fun?” Alusair’s mocking whisper was a hollow, husking echo of her usual self.

“And miss the fun,” El confirmed sadly. “Just tell us where thy skulker hid himself, and we’ll do the rest. There’s nothing to bind him to where ye saw him hide, mind; he could be anywhere in Oldspires by now.”

“After you deal with these threads, trap or no trap,” the ghost princess hissed, “and take the passage on through the dogleg, it ends in a little square room with three doors. The leftmost is another passage, much narrower, the rightmost opens into a storage attic, and between them, the widest one—the way our skulker went—opens into a large room crammed full of stout wooden crates stacked high. He went behind some of them, and can force them to topple by kicking at them with his shoulders braced against a wall, so beware!”

“Thank ye,” Elminster said. “Now please, lass, take thyself out of this peril and survive to haunt the morrow.”

“Not willingly,” Alusair husked, and drifted away along the floor, like a shadowy eel that left a chill in its wake.

The Sage of Shadowdale watched her go, then flung up a hand to request immobile silence from Mirt and Myrmeen, closed his eyes, and sank his concentration into the Weave. An ever-rushing tangle of bright flows, wavering and trembling from time to time like rippling reflections in disturbed water … and there she was, Alusair, a dark and tattered retreating coalescence. He reached out with the moving brightness and fed her power, hearing her hiss in glad pain, and grow brighter, writhing and trembling—

“Look you,” Mirt rumbled, from where he’d flattened himself against the passage wall to peer along the threads, “I can’t see anything these threads trigger. No dart-and-spring-bow mounts, no eyes redirecting the force of their disturbance up or down to a falling block or spear or some such …”

“Don’t touch them,” El snapped, surfacing out of the bright surf of the Weave into the bleaker here and now of the ruined passage. “What if they’re poisoned?”

“So a mere touch … our skulker’s Shaaan?”

El spread his hands. “Her, or working with her, or more likely nothing to do with her at all, but she saw an opportunity to deal death, knowing we’d come up here.”

“Is there a way around these?” Myrmeen asked. “Or can we burn them, and just go back there and wait for the fumes to clear?”

“There where the spell that tried for us and failed came from,” Mirt reminded her.

Myrmeen sighed, rolled her eyes, and said, “I’m getting a mite tired of shrinking from shadows. When I could be sleeping. Or getting back to the stew the Serpent Queen might be poisoning right now.”

“Enough of this,” Mirt growled, and threw his pry bar, putting a backspin on it so it descended as it whirled—and neatly took down all four threads to the floor on its way to clang, bounce once, and slide, dragging them with it … to a stop.

Nothing happened. No explosions, no racing darts or spears, and nothing came crashing down.

“Treat them as poisoned, don’t step on them or touch them, leave the pry bar where it lies,” the Lord of Waterdeep intoned patiently, “and let’s get going—or the death that claims me will be one of old age.”

And he swallowed a yawn and lurched forward. Myrmeen gave Elminster a shrug and followed.

He shrugged back, and brought up the rear.

The passage floor proved spongy just before the dogleg, but Mirt avoided putting his boots right through it by rushing forward in a crouch to where the floor was firmer, muttering, “In the ballads, things are more heroic than falling through floors!”

A moment later, he called back over his shoulder, “Middle door?”

“Middle door,” Myrmeen confirmed.

And then the silent smiting of air and ears and jaws came again, this time in a blast that tore up from the floor beneath the old moneylender’s boots and slammed him against the ceiling.

He let out a loud snarl of pain that almost drowned out the faint wail of agony that arose behind Elminster—who whirled around, knowing it came from Alusair, but seeing no trace of her.

So he was left grimly wondering if that was because there was no trace left to find.

LUSE! LUSE! ALUSAIR Nacacia! El knew his mind shout would be painful to her, but in those first moments he was too upset to curb it.

By all the backsides that have ever warmed the Dragon Throne, her thought came back to him, as feeble as it was angry, that it should come to this: someone speaking my second name to me. El, I hate Nacacia. Never call me by that name again. Vangerdahast knew I hated it and delighted in using it and it alone when I was young. I don’t want to kill him for that, I just want to tear out his vocal cords so he can’t speak.

Ye’re—well, not alive, but still with us! Well enough that ye can spit coherent fury at me.

Yes. Now can I just be left alone to slide down these stairs and suffer?

Only if ye’re sure ye can make it to the kitchen. Elminster reached out to her through the Weave, gathering power to feed her, and she writhed and trembled in agony as he steadied her and poured power into her.

Old Mage, I am sure of nothing. I’m astonished to learn that archmages can be sure of anything. But mostly, I’m in pain. Leave me be. I want to groan, and moan, and say very unladylike things, and I want to be alone to do it.

Reluctantly Elminster stopped feeding her power, and watched her shudder back to some sort of normalcy, a battered image of the Steel Princess once more, rather than an eel-like torn and sagging thing. Mystra bless and keep thee, Luse.

Why now? Why couldn’t she have done that back when I was fighting the Tuigans? Or helping me smite the dragon before it could kill my father? Or in my worst moments of being regent? Why are gods never there when you need them?

Elminster had no answer for that, and they both knew it.

MIRT CAME LIMPING groggily back to Myrmeen and Elminster to growl that there wasn’t much floor left of the place where the passage ended in the three doors—and that he couldn’t recognize the shrouded-in-darkness room on the ground floor below that the spell that had flung him into the ceiling had come from.

“Is there enough floor left to let us get to that middle door?” Myrmeen asked.

Mirt shrugged. “I’m no builder, lass—and I’m a mite heavier than you.”

“A mite? That wobbling barrel of a belly is a ‘mite’?”

“Lass, you need no cleaver, not while you’ve got that tongue of yours!”

Myrmeen chuckled, put the lantern on the floor, and set off briskly down the passage to where the dust was still swirling and tiny fragments of floor were tinkling and rattling back down from the ruined ceiling they’d been hurled into.

Mirt and Elminster followed her more cautiously, El plucking up the lantern as he went. He felt weak and light-headed in the wake of using the Weave to bolster Alusair; some of the energy he’d given her must have come from him.

He and the moneylender strode warily, but were in time to see her rush past the hole in the floor where exposed and splintered beams sagged, to fetch up against a wide door that she boldly turned the handle of, and sprang aside, dragging it open as she went.

To reveal—crowded darkness, a half-seen labyrinth of stacked crates. Myrmeen kept still, and they all peered and listened. To unbroken silence.

A stillness that stretched and stretched, until Myrmeen shrugged, slipped around the door, and plunged into the dark room.

Where they heard her disturb something metallic that clattered against other metal. She cursed, and sprang hastily back.

As wood groaned, wavered, groaned more deeply—and came toppling over with a slow and mighty kerrashhh into other wood. That in turn groaned, toppled, crashed in its turn, and so on. Stack after stack of crates, one after another, until silence fell.

“Mreen?” Mirt barked. “Mreen?”

There was no reply, but a moment later the lanternlight caught a shapely behind swarming up over the angled tops of the fallen and wedged crates and disappearing from view, long legs kicking.

And a moment after that, there came the ringing clang of metal glancing off metal, and a triumphant “Hah!” from Myrmeen, and another clang.

Then someone came swarming back over the crates, breathing hard and in a hurry, and El shone the lantern full in that someone’s face at the same time as he gave Mirt a shove that sent the moneylender staggering sideways into a hard meeting with the passage wall.

Two darts came hurtling end over end and passed just over and under the lantern—which El had let go of a moment before.

He caught it just before it would have smashed into the passage floor, and aimed it again. In time to see the masked man—slender, short, and not moving like anyone familiar to him—hauling two more darts out of leg sheaths.

And Myrmeen dropping down on him from atop the crates, cleaver held high.

The masked man spun around, but her forearm came crashing down on one of his arms, dashing it to the floor, and she landed on his legs, hard.

He shrieked in pain—a cry that ended abruptly when his chest and face crashed into the floor and drove all the wind he had to shriek with out of him.

And then Myrmeen was atop him, and had his arms pinned and one arm around his throat, and was murmuring calmly, “One move—just one—and I’ll wring your neck.”

Elminster got to him before Mirt could, laid a firm hand atop the man’s head, and said into his mind, Tell the truth, or I’ll gnaw your brains out from within while ye live, and force ye to stay awake and aware and feel every shrieking moment of it. ’Tis a slow death, and a very painful one. Trust me.

“I—I do. Oh, I do!” the man stammered. “D-don’t hurt me. Please. I surrender! Mercy!”

“Mercy?” Myrmeen asked softly, into his ear. “To a poisoner?”

“I—it brings on sleep, nothing more! I swear!”

“And where is this poison?” she inquired, tightening her hold around his neck. “All of it!”

“On m-my darts!”

“And how many darts do you have?”

“Six. Did have. Threw …”

“All but these last two. Lie still. Try to get up, and I’ll kill you. Just answer our questions.”

El kept hold of the man’s head and slid into his thoughts as he panted out his fearful replies, so he knew they were being handed truth by …

Drace Taulith, a burglar in these parts, who’d seen some of the war wizards, known what they were, and concluded their presence meant there must be something very valuable inside Oldspires right now.

So he’d spied on them until he’d figured out how to slip through their lines by night, in the Halaunt woods. They were a lazy lot, these Crown mages, so there were two places where an agile man with a lashpole ladder and a strong cord could swing himself over their precious—and impressively enormous—almost invisible magical wall. The ‘ring of force,’ he’d heard them call it, when they were talking of what spells would need renewing and what would stand by itself for as long as they needed it, and knew that it enclosed a ‘spellstorm’ or fog surrounding Oldspires.

So Drace Taulith had won his way over the ring-shaped barrier and into the fog and into Oldspires through its wood chute, after peering through the large windows of a darkened grand room and promptly fleeing from folk inside who seemed very interested in seeing who he was.

And Drace genuinely knew nothing of any wizards inside the mansion, only ghosts, and had managed to speak to no one at all, and was now utterly terrified.

Once he’d learned the burglar now had only an unpoisoned spare dagger in one boot and a garotte wrapped around his forearm under his leather jerkin, El let go of the man and went to murmur instructions to Mirt.

AND SO IT came to pass that as they were leading him through the grand floor of Oldspires to “chain him up,” Mirt and Myrmeen stumbled into each other and fell in opposite directions, with startled curses—and Drace Taulith saw his gods-sent moment of opportunity and took it, turning and sprinting away through the open front doors of the mansion (the same doors that Mirt had wheezed and lurched ahead to fling open mere moments earlier) into the night.

“Straight out into the spellstorm,” Myrmeen reported, firmly closing, locking, and bolting the doors again. “And off our present platter of troubles.”

She waved Mirt’s none-too-clean tunic, which was currently serving as a carrysack for six sleep-poisoned darts, and added, “but I’ll be happier by far when we have these safely hidden away somewhere. They can too easily be used on us, for my comfort.”

“On to the kitchens,” El ordered grimly. “And let us see how much of a ghost princess we have left, waiting for us.”

To Mirt’s meaningful look, he added, “Whoever was trying to spellblast us into Sembia will just have to wait. They haven’t earned the right to be our most pressing emergency. Yet.”

“Yet,” Mirt echoed. “And I suppose you’ll be wanting me to start the stew and stoke the fires.”

“Of course,” El replied. “What else are Lords of Waterdeep good for?”

“What, indeed?” Myrmeen asked archly, and they hurried off in the direction of the kitchens.

Never noticing a lithe masked figure in dark leathers that watched them go, from the darkness of the Red Receiving Room, and smiled silently in the darkness.

Off our present platter of troubles, indeed …

CHAPTER 15

The Army That Came Too Late

LORD HALAUNT WAS SLUMPED IN HIS CORNER, SITTING UP AGAINST the countertops, head lolling to one side and arms limp. “Well met,” he mumbled, as they unhooded the lantern and thrust spills into it to relight the kitchen lamps—and Alusair put more dripping sarcasm into those two words than Elminster would have thought possible.

“Luse,” he asked urgently, “how are ye?”

“I’ve been better. Much better. But I’m recovered enough—and have my thanks for that—to float around unseen and spy, so long as I don’t have to display myself to frighten anyone, or do anything at all physical. No lifting lamps or latches, no conveying small items through the air … I presume you need me on patrol.”

“If ye’re up to it, very much so. Watch over our four guests without so much as peeking into their rooms. Oh, and look for anyone starting fires, or any hint that a fire might have kindled, anywhere in Oldspires.”

“Someone may try to burn the place down around our ears? That’ll get their Lost Spell for them, to be sure!”

“Gaining the spell doesn’t seem to be everyone’s goal, lass. Far from it, in some cases.”

“Right, I’ll go see the sights. Until someone lets fly with another spell like the last one. One of those, and all promises are whirled away on the wind—along with me, if Tymora smiles not.”

Lord Halaunt stirred slightly, then seemed to slump a little farther as an unseen wisp of breeze rose from him to glide past Elminster’s cheek, and on out of the kitchens.

“Tymora smile.” Myrmeen murmured good luck wishes to the passing ghost, as she reached to close and bar the kitchen doors.

When she was done, Mirt wordlessly steered a tankard of something powerful into her hand, then offered one to Elminster.

Who took it, sipped it, made a face, and asked, “Where did ye find this? One of the cesspits?”

The moneylender spread large and pudgy hands. “Hoy, now! I’m playing cook, remember? In a working kitchen, you use up the oldest stuff, and that’s what I’m doing!”

El handed him back the tankard. “Go to it. I prefer to keep the throat I began my day with.”

“Speaking of which,” Mirt grunted, taking a swig, “we are going to get a chance to sleep sometime soon, aren’t we? We mere mortals here—”

“Bleed and dwindle and decay,” El finished for him. “Later, perhaps; right now, we have work to do! The stews and the fires beneath them, and those’ll be yours, Mirt, as I’ll be borrowing Myrmeen to fetch and carry some things I need from the pantry and the larder.”

“For what?” Myrmeen asked, not bothering to hide her suspicion.

“Old remedies,” El told her. “Antidotes for rare and virulent venoms and augmented-venom poisons. That will probably very soon be needed.”

“Wouldn’t it be easier to just make some smokepots and take down one Serpent Queen?” Mirt rumbled.

“It would if matters were that simple. Unfortunately, they’re not. Oldspires has entirely too many murderers under its roof for my liking.”

“Well, aye, every last one of us, but—”

“But I meant individuals who’ve slain a fellow guest, of the wizards who came here claiming to be after the Lost Spell.”

“Right, let’s get going on these remedies, then,” Myrmeen said briskly. “If I may be allowed to take time enough to offer a suggestion about the cooking.”

“Ye may.”

“Aye?”

“There’s that keg of beheaded and plucked braerwing in smallnut oil, in the larder?”

“Aye, spotted it.”

“Spit and roast a dozen of them, then put them to keep warm in trays of smallnut oil over low coals, weighed down with stones to keep them submerged. Handy ready meals henceforth. I’m not expecting we’re going to have too many more formal sit-down meals where we gather all in one place and dine together, guests included.”

“A capital idea! That and a ham, done the same way!” Mirt rubbed his hands, visibly excited.

Myrmeen smiled. “Glazed in sweet wine, I suppose?”

“But of course!”

Myrmeen turned to Elminster. “Expect us to soon be down one handkeg of sweet wine. A certain cook will need to sample. Repeatedly.”

“But of course!” Mirt said earnestly.

“But of course,” Elminster echoed, amused. “As long as—”

A chill breeze raced past their faces, swirled, and said, “No fires yet, but Manshoon has gone to visit Malchor Harpell. The two of them are now locked in Malchor’s room together.”

El smiled and nodded. “I expected that—but I can tell ye’ve more to impart, and that ye deem this ‘more’ to be far more interesting. Share, Steel Princess, share!”

“The burglar you let go? Well, let’s hope you’ve gained some expertise at dealing with masked men, because there’s another one.”

LEAVING SOME HEARTFELT profanity ringing in the kitchen behind them, Elminster, Mirt, and Myrmeen trotted down the gloomy passages of Oldspires once more.

“We stay together, no matter what!” El insisted fiercely. “Deal with this swiftly, and get back to the kitchens; we need those antidotes!”

“What chance this is Drace Taulith, unable to get back out past the barrier, and so returned to see if he can at least swipe some food?” Myrmeen asked.

“No,” Alusair replied, from the empty air beside her. “This man’s shorter and more slender—more graceful, too—and is wearing better leathers. Definitely a different person.”

“Mystra forfend,” Elminster muttered. “Are there no competent war wizards these days?”

“Heh,” Mirt wheezed, “how do we know this one wasn’t sent in through the fog by them? A Crown spy, to report back what’s going on inside these walls, so they’ve something to report back to Ganrahast? And ready themselves to best deal with what may come boiling out at them—because they know what that threat is? It’s what I would do!”

“Ye’ve probably pounced on the truth,” El said thoughtfully, “yet there’s another possibility—a worse one. Ganrahast’s busy back in Suzail with threats to the Throne, and from what admittedly little I’ve seen of the wizards of war left here to mind their wall imprisoning us, now that it’s cast, they seemed like the younger, greener, less powerful Crown mages.”

“That someone could easily overcome,” Myrmeen sighed, “and take down the wall, so only the spellstorm is left. Which means any number of warriors and thieves and spies can come scaling the walls and wriggling down wood chutes and smashing windows to get in here with us.”

“Exactly,” El confirmed. “Luse, once we’ve cornered our latest masked marvel, could ye shoot on up to that roofless room I tarried in, a while back, and have a look around at the war wizards? So ye can tell us, later, if there are any, and if they look like real war wizards to ye? Don’t race back to tell us right then, mind; I’ve more pressing need of ye back guarding the kitchens against those who’d poison us all.”

“You’re just full of pressing needs this last day or so, aren’t you?” Alusair teased. “Let’s corner this latest intruder first, and then I’ll certainly—”

And then she moaned, a despairing cry of wordless pain that seemed to recede eastward, a long way, ere it faded.

They were still hearing its keening fall when the surrounding air buffeted them as if it was a dry and silent ocean wave rolling in the same direction, outward from … who knew what?

“El!” Myrmeen snapped. “What just happened?”

Elminster staggered and went to his knees, clutching at his head and then shaking it slowly.

“Someone,” he muttered, “just opened one of the gates inside Oldspires—I don’t know which one, or precisely where. And it wasn’t Mystra … or any god, probably. It was a smaller, quieter working than that.”

“So who—?” Mirt growled, dragging Elminster back to his feet.

El shook his head. “I know not,” he said wearily. “And we’ve lost our spy and guide, for now. I’ve bolstered her enough with the Weave that she should survive—but she’ll be suffering; Luse just can’t withstand that sort of surge and be flying around in her full powers.”

“I heard her wail, and felt the gate opening, all right,” Myrmeen agreed. “So let’s find this new skulker and take ourselves back to the kitchen. Whoever—or whatever—is coming through that gate will find us soon enough.”

“So far as I can tell,” Mirt said slowly, “the Steel Princess was leading us toward the north row of bedchambers—where we put our four male guests. So if we head in that direction …”

“What if this skulker is no lone burglar, but a skilled slayer or spy working for—well, it’d have to be Manshoon or Malchor, wouldn’t it?” Myrmeen asked.

“The ‘what ifs’ we could conjure up in but a few breaths could well fill a wagon or two,” El reminded her. “I’d prefer we trust our eyes and ears, because if our speculations are wrong, and we heed them and do the wrong thing, and—”

“Yes, I quite see,” the former Lady Lord of Arabel agreed. “That could lead us gravely astray.”

Mirt held a finger to his lips for quiet as he led them out into the staue chamber, a widening of the end of a passage with four doors, opening out into the grand staircase and the bedchambers that had been given over to Skouloun, Maraunth Torr, and Calathlarra. He pointed at the doors of the three rooms as he looked at Elminster with a silent query on his face, and El nodded and came forward with his master key. Mirt and Myrmeen positioned themselves to deal with trouble, and El then unlocked Calathlarra’s door and stayed back to watch in all directions outside as Mirt and Myrmeen swiftly searched the room.

Finding it empty, they came out again, and El relocked the door so they could do the same to Maraunth Torr’s room, and then Skouloun’s. Dark and empty, all of them. They proceeded past the grand staircase to the Chamber of the Founder, a lounge for the guests of the Lord Halaunt, dominated by the glower of an ugly statue of the first Lord Halaunt, and stole across it like burglars past the rooms of Malchor and Manshoon, to try the door of a vacant bedchamber.

Where Mirt and Myrmeen found no one, as usual.

Until, that is, they had turned to leave, when Mirt happened to glance up into the gloom of a tapestry beside the door and saw two hands clinging to its support rail, nigh the ceiling. Without a word he lurched to the door, to depart—and without warning planted one fist deep in the tapestry, right about where the man hanging behind the tapestry would keep his stomach, or possibly tenderer organs below that.

The man behind the tapestry made an involuntary eeep sound, and fell to the floor—where Mirt gave him no time to ready any weapon or gain his feet, but hauled hard on some unseen part of him, and flung—sending the man sailing helplessly across the room into a solid meeting, face-first, with the far wall.

Where Myrmeen promptly put a knee in the small of his back and her arm around his neck and bore him to the ground, gently murmuring a greeting into his ear that promised him death if he failed to surrender and cooperate.

“I serve the Dragon Throne,” came the gasped response. “To harm me is a crime punishable by death or exile. Unhand me, in the name of the regent and of the Royal Magician.”

“Right,” Mirt growled, as Myrmeen rolled over and dragged the masked man over on his back with her, “unhand you where? Wrist? Elbow? Or just save all the judging and measuring and have your arms off at your pits?”

Before their captive could utter a reply, Myrmeen snatched his mask away and called softly, “Lantern!”

Silently Elminster unhooded it, and they gazed down on a temporarily blinded and blinking face that no one could put a name to, but that Myrmeen and Elminster both remembered seeing in the grand hallways of the Royal Palace of Suzail.

“So who sent you in here, and to do what?” Mirt growled.

The young man clenched his eyes shut and replied, “I’m forbid— Unngh.”

“Sorry,” Myrmeen murmured unapologetically, “but I’m afraid my knee slipped. It has a habit of doing that. You’ll understand, I’m sure. We lady lords of the realm spend so much time on our knees.”

“The Lord Warder ordered me to obey the commander of the wizards of war stationed here at Oldspires, and I have,” came the grudging response.

“Inside Oldspires,” Mirt growled, “or d’you mean the merry band of wizards watching and maintaining the ringwall? And it is still there, and they are, too, yes?”

“It is, they are, and yes, those charged to watch and guard the barrier.”

“How many are there? War wizards, Purple Dragons, and others like you?”

“That’s a state secret.”

“How many?”

“Bluster all you like, saer, I’ll tell you nothing of our strength!”

“Well, who commands? One of the Purple Dragon officers we’ve seen, or a wizard of war?”

“A wizard. Of course.”

“So he sent you in to do what? Kill us?” Myrmeen asked crisply. “Spy on us, or someone in particular? Procure something specific?”

“Lady, I cannot—”

“Nameless functionary, you shall answer my questions. As a lady lord of the realm—”

“Former lady lord of the—”

“As a champion of the Dragon Throne, appointed guardian of the realm by no less than the Royal Magician of Cormyr and the Court Wizard of the Realm, too, my authority outstrips that of any mere wizard of war commanding a force on the ground. Now answer me, without delay, or I’ll deem you a traitor and deal with you accordingly!”

Mirt chuckled. “Is ‘deal with you’ your polite phrase, here in Cormyr, for ‘torture the truth out of you’?”

“It could very well be,” Myrmeen said crisply. “And Nameless here has one swift way of finding out.”

“I—” Their captive let out a gusty sigh and said, “I’m here to kill only if you three had been slain by a wizard not of Cormyr, who’d gained control of this house and Lord Halaunt’s magic. My foremost task is to find out what’s happened within these walls and report that back as swiftly and fully as possible, so it reaches the Lord Warder’s ears. Spells cast here have been detected by those on duty at the ringwall, so our information—that magic can’t work in Oldspires—is obviously wrong or outdated, and the Lost Spell and every one of the wizards who gathered here to gain it has been deemed such a danger to the realm that—”

“Aye, we know the elegant phrases of courtiers’ blather,” Mirt interrupted, leaning close to the man in Myrmeen’s grasp. “So tell me now, are you one of them Highknights?”

“You, saer, are an outlander, and as such have no authority to—”

“Answer him,” Myrmeen suggested into the young man’s ear, silken steel in her soft voice.

“I-I—no, I’m not. Yet.”

“Ah,” El commented over his shoulder without turning his head, the lantern steady on the captive’s face but his eyes and attention now fixed on the dim chamber outside, “I quite see. If ye succeeded in this, ye might just become one, eh? Well, go and tell the wizards out there that a strong threat may yet come bursting out of Oldspires to menace them, and the Forest Kingdom beyond them if they prove not up to their guardianship. More than that, we cannot yet say. The situation is as, ah, murky as usual in a Cormyrean regency.”

“You’re … letting me go?”

“Aye. Ye’re young, seem reasonably intelligent and full of promise, and the realm always has need of the at least somewhat loyal and somewhat competent, so ’twould be a waste to have thee end up as a corpse now. Which is, I fear, highly likely if ye tarry in these halls much longer. We have what Ganrahast or Vainrence like to call ‘a situation’ unfolding here, even as we blather.”

“Blather?” the young less-than-Highknight repeated a little dazedly, as Myrmeen released him and Mirt hauled him to his feet.

“Have that hearing of thine seen to by a good healer, lad, will ye?” El responded, as they frog-marched the young man down the passage to the entry hall. “Oh, and ask Ganrahast from me if he’s been foolish enough to try to open a gate here inside Oldspires a short while ago, will ye?”

“A gate? You mean a—a portal?”

“His mind is softening under the strain,” El observed mournfully, as the young man was freed a step inside the entry doors, which Mirt then opened with a bowing flourish that would have done credit to any steward. El then shook his head and added, “Prospective Highknights, these days …”

The nameless not-yet-Highknight gave him a frowning look, then squared his shoulders, waved a farewell, put his head down, and rushed into the swirling fog of the spellstorm—now lit by the cold gray promise of the coming dawn—with the same swift and pelting enthusiasm as Drace Taulith had sprinted into it.

Mirt grinned at his dwindling back, secured the doors, and hastened to join Elminster and Myrmeen in the kitchens.

“Oh, good,” Myrmeen greeted him, from where she was standing guard at the door. “There are the trays of braerwings to roast, and here’s the first skillet of antidote base to simmer. Try not to get them mixed up.”

“Your task,” El told Mirt quietly, “I’ve something pressing to do.”

He went out without waiting for a reply, and started walking the rooms and passages of Oldspires.

As he feared, there was no sign of Alusair, though he called her name a time or six, and sent questing thoughts out, reaching with the Weave.

Silence. Empty silence.

It lasted until he’d reached every corner of the ground floor of the mansion. Whereupon he stopped and swallowed a bitter curse. Luse, brave Luse, tart and stalwart and … gone? Well, she’d come along on this willingly, and gone down, if gone she was, the way the Steel Princess would have wanted to go—in harness, fighting for Cormyr.

The way they’d all go, very soon, if they weren’t careful.

Trumpet fanfare over the graves. So, so many graves …

Enough! Back to the crisis at hand. Down to the cellars …

So, now, if Shaaan was a fan of the Mhair viper, they’d need some leaves of thrale, ground hrath nut, and … oh, Talona, ’twould not do to forget that last ingredient—ahh! Heart thorn! Dried whole, not the powdered muck Braelith had made his fortune selling, in the days when the Shaar routes were …

He shook his head impatiently to leave that reverie behind before he plunged wholly into it. Not now. He was indulging too often in these forays into the past.

Fresh will to go on or not, he was getting too old.

Yet Rune wasn’t ready. Might not be for centuries yet. And still the foes came thick and fast, scheme upon dark plot upon sly peril.

Hah, and hadn’t they always?

Azuth had said as much, back at the death of …

No. Later. After the matter of Halaunt and the Lost Spell had been put to rest, and Cormyr delivered from the latest threat to the Dragon Throne.

He found the right storage larder, and gathered the herbs and spices he’d thought of, adding roumrel and astig root and demmaethur along the way. And then, of course, found he’d accumulated too large an array of ingredients to carry, and unconcernedly stripped off his robe to make into a carrysack to bear all he needed back to the kitchens.

Nine venoms he knew how to counter, without rummaging through the Weave for minds that might or might not care to answer. Six of those poisons were quite likely favorites of the Serpent Queen, though he’d not kept as close an eye on her as perhaps he should have, down the years.

She’d been the Blackstaff’s burden, after all, and that had been back in the days when Mystra—the first Mystra—had trusted her senior Chosen and they’d trusted each other, so casting an eye over the work of another was seldom done.

There was, after all, always too much work to go around. And that had never changed.

So it was back to doing the good he must because it was pressingly needful and he owed someone dear, and because no one else would. It was time to try to find what was left of Luse, if he could, and bring her back, as much as he could.

He sat down on his bundle, there in the darkness of the larder, and let his attention sink into the Weave …

Brightness rising into view, the endless silent rushing, darting, and swirling. He descended to meet it, to join it, and be swept along, seeking … seeking the mind of the Steel Princess. Alusair Nacacia she’d been, the little spitfire against her elder sister’s serene urbanity, the fierce spirit, tossed head, and ready sword. The daring, the daring … There! That was her! Or what little was left, torn and sobbing and ebbing away. Regrets like weeping sores on her soul, lost mother, lost father, words unsaid, too late now, the icy farewell to her nephew the fifth Azoun, the long walk away …

Ye did what ye had to do, El told her tenderly, as he gathered what was left of her together and knit those tatters with bright Weave strands, woven as best he could. And what ye did was thy best, and far, far better than anyone else sought to do for Cormyr. Ye cannot win every battle, but ye saved the realm we both love, saved it time and again. Ye have earned peace, and deserve to be honored even more than thy father and mother. Ye are Cormyr, lass, its heart and soul. Rise again!

And he let slip the tiniest bit of his own vitality into the Weave cradle he’d woven, to forge and fuse her tatters together. Just a little, lest he burn her away utterly … a Weaveghost she was, now, and must remain.

El? Old Mage? Sly old bastard, I have had the most horrid dreams! All lost, and torn, and weeping—and part of you in me, with Mystra’s sad eyes boring through me!

Luse, Luse, ye’re back, and look! Quite by accident, I’ve woven ye a shield, a Weave shield! Wear it like armor, and try not to fly too close to any powerful castings, moth to their flames! Will ye do that for me?

Elminster, I will do anything for you. Anything.

Try not to remind me of that, lass. If ever I’m tempted to call on that debt, it might destroy thee. Now fly free—out of this Weave chaos, and back to Oldspires!

And abruptly he was gone from the rushing brightness, and blinking in chill, dank darkness, sitting on a bundle made of his own robe.

With the disbelievingly happy laughter of a Weaveghost wild in his mind.

El got up and trudged through the darkness, and returned to the kitchen in time to claim the last clear stretch of countertop to set down his sack of ingredients. Myrmeen looked up at him, acquired a twinkle in her eye, and said not a word.

Mirt, turning from running a skewer through the last braerwing, raised one eyebrow and remarked, “Lean meat is becoming all the rage in rural Cormyr these days, I’m told. Well-aged lean meat brings the highest coin, as it’s always in short supply.”

El gave him a look, put on his robe again, and started preparing and mixing ingredients. “Shaaan won’t keep us waiting forever, lean-meat lovers,” he told the countertop he was swiftly littering with powders, reaching for the nearest pestle.

“With what that lad saw when he was spying, and what we told him,” Mirt grunted, “she won’t leave Oldspires unseen and unopposed.”

“Valiant deaths are still deaths,” the Sage of Shadowdale replied. “She’s been shut up in her room so long that I’m wondering if she’s preparing something that can spread like a plague, once she looses it.”

Myrmeen looked up sharply. “She’d destroy a realm, to end up ruling it?”

Elminster nodded. “She’s done so before.”

The former Lady Lord of Arabel stared at him for a moment, then shook her head and said, “I don’t want to know. Not yet. Perhaps not for years to come. I don’t want to know what crawling plagues she can loose, until she’s safely dead, and burned, and scattered, her ashes enspelled to make sure she won’t rise and return in undeath. Without having let loose any more such afflictions.”

“Dead, burned, and scattered? You’re making our tasks-to-be-done list steadily longer, lass,” Mirt complained, as he bent over to peer at the cooking fire.

“Deeper drudgework is oft the price of lasting victory,” she quoted back at him.

He winced and then wheezed his way back upright and replied, “I heard enough trite phrases from the priests and the elder nobles of Waterdeep in my day to last several lifetimes. I’m no longer in the speechifying business, so pray don’t add to my store of them.”

It was Myrmeen’s turn to arch an eyebrow. “Oh? What business are you in these days?”

“The revenge business.”

“Oh? Taking your revenge upon whom, exactly?”

“Everyone. I really mean I’m in the meddling-in-everything business, like Elminster here, but ‘revenge’ has that grander grim ring to it.”

“I’ll order the carving of your tombstone the moment we’re done in Oldspires,” Myrmeen promised.

Mirt rolled his eyes. “You think that’ll be in this century?”

THE TWO WIZARDS had walked the last two turns of passage to their rooms in silence, side-by-side in the gloomy magnificence of the mansion. Only to reach the Chamber of the Founder, with its frowning statue, and the doors to their rooms. Malchor Harpell opened his bedchamber door and gave Manshoon a polite nod of farewell, and Manshoon returned the nod and backed away. Never turn your back, was his iron rule, and he wasn’t about to change it now.

The door to Harpell’s room closed, and the founding lord of the Zhentarim heard Malchor lock and bolt it.

No surprise there. Prudence is the first simple survival tactic of all archmages.

Manshoon sidestepped, well aside from that door, which brought him within reach of his own.

And out of another long habit, he turned on one heel to look all around before he laid hand to its handle.

Which was how he happened to see the stealthy movement in the gloom of the staue chamber, beyond the grand staircase. That momentary flash and gleam of armor is unmistakable, to one who has seen it so often.

Out of long habit—ah, but his habits were increasingly governing him, here in this place of peril in the shadows—he sidestepped smoothly again, so the hand axe that came whirling from the staue chamber passed harmlessly by his shoulder, to ring off the side of the first Lord Halaunt’s brazen head, and thwack into a wall.

“I’ll ignore that,” he told the darkness whence the weapon had come, “so long as such stupidity is not repeated. Is there a particular target you have in mind, or are you slaughtering all archmages you meet with?”

By way of reply, there were more shifting gleamings in the darkness. Several shapes stepped around the corner, resolving themselves into helmed men in full plate armor as they advanced.

Six, a dozen, a score … and still they kept coming. By all the deaths unlooked-for, it was a small army.

To enter his room would be to corner himself, and with magic unreliable, his death, even if he defended the doorway to keep from being outflanked, would only be a matter of time.

So he stood his ground, and bluffed, as he’d bluffed so many times before.

“Officer in charge, report!” he commanded calmly.

“Saer? Are you—”

“I’m hardly going to give my name, in this house of so many spies,” Manshoon interrupted flatly. “You’re late.”

“Sorry, Lord. We dared not take on the war wizards; reinforcements have just arrived, and they’re too strong. A few Crown mages we can take—they’re apt to be arrogant and careless—but with none of us bowmen or spellhurlers …”

“So if you fought them not, how did you get inside?”

“There was a wizard, an old man in rotting robes. He looked dead—face rotting away, not much left of his nose—but he gave the password right enough, and when we were all gathered where he led us, he worked a long spell, a complicated one, that conjured up a door of blue fire in front of us, and waved us through it.”

Manshoon nodded as if this was no surprise at all.

So a lich had reopened one of the gates into Oldspires! Well, well … who was he, and why?

And was he, perhaps, one of the liches he’d been so cautiously seeking?

“Beyond the password, he said nothing to you?” Manshoon asked sharply, putting on a frown of disapproval.

“Nothing, beyond reminding us that we were to remember the master pays us well—generous purses in gold coins of old mintings for achievements, and swift death for failure or treachery.”

Manshoon nodded and added a brief, wintry smile.

“L-Lord Torr, your orders? And … and if I may be so bold, why do you look different?”

Manshoon let his smile go softer and deeper. “I’m in disguise.”

So this was Maraunth Torr’s little private army, hired to come along in his wake, conquer Oldspires, and help him seize and hold the Lost Spell. Well, well. They were too late to help their master, but could still prove useful to him.

“First,” he told them crisply, “beware a woman with scaly skin. If you see her, kill her swiftly and without mercy. She’s deadly. Don’t give her a chance to touch you, for she uses many poisons.”

“Lord,” they chorused, nodding.

Manshoon smiled. Yes, very useful.

“That way,” he commanded, “lies the entry hall, the largest room in this mansion. The easternmost door in its south wall opens into the kitchen—which has other doors, so some of you should go through the copper-clad room you’ll find, and wait around the other side of the kitchen, before you assault any of its doors, or make noise. Inside that kitchen are three persons: a gaunt bearded old mage, a fat man with a wheeze and a limp, and a woman. Kill them all, behead them, and bring the heads back here to me.”

CHAPTER 16

Too Many Murderers

MYRMEEN LOOKED ACROSS THE KITCHEN AT MIRT, AND LET OUT A moan of longing.

“That smells so good!” she exclaimed. “And when did we eat last?”

Her stomach loudly informed the room that whenever it had been, it was too long ago. “Here,” Mirt growled, handing her an onion off his chopping board. “Eat.”

She wrinkled her nose at it, and then at him. “Uncooked onion? You Waterdhavians are barbarians!”

“Compliments, compliments,” he replied amiably, picking up his knife and returning to his chopping.

Across the kitchen, Elminster sniffed at one of Myrmeen’s bowls. “That’s perfect, lass. It just has to cool, covered over and somewhere dark, before we pour it into little bottles—ye saw the crates of them down in the cellars, yes?—and stopper them and label them before anything can get mixed up.”

He moved to the next bowl, picked it up—and there was a sharp, insistent knocking on the nearest door. The door into the entry hall.

Elminster, Myrmeen, and Mirt all looked at each other. Then they caught up the best weapons they had, and in unspoken accord went to the feast hall door instead, to slip out and go around to see who was knocking.

Just in case, El and Myrmeen flanked Mirt as he set aside the bar, shot the bolt, unlocked the door, and opened it.

Outside stood a huge crowd of identically armored men, swords and axes drawn. Gleaming new coat of plate, open-faced helms with great-rib noseguards—and not a badge nor blazon to be seen. Head to toe metal, save that they wore heavy hobnailed leather boots, armor plated just down the top of the foot, to the toes. Swords and hand axes, daggers at belts. Like thousands of blankshield mercenaries, only far better equipped than most.

They pressed forward with enthusiastic shouts, trying to force their way in.

In their path stood Mirt, shoulder to the door and shoving hard. The door thundered under the impacts of charging warrior after charging warrior, but Mirt, his floppy boots sliding on the stone floor, snarled and lowered his head and shoved harder.

The door got to a little more than half-closed, shuddering under many blows, when the first arms appeared around its edge, thrusting and slashing at the air with swords and hand axes. Reaching for Mirt, reaching for anyone, seeking to hack.

Elminster parried some of them coolly with a cooking tray, but amid its loud clangor, Myrmeen reached in with the largest kitchen cleaver she’d been able to find and tried to lop off limbs, armor shrieking under her blows. Plate armor prevented her performing butchery, but sword after sword she dashed from numbed fingers, and one gauntlet failed and left its wearer screaming and yanking back a hand that let fall fingers amid much blood.

Elminster snatched up the door bar and thrust its end into helmed faces and across mailed throats, bludgeoning everyone he could reach. A warrior made a grab for the end of the bar to wrest it from his grasp, but Myrmeen hacked that hand away viciously and Elminster thrust the timber into that man’s armored gut, folding him up and dumping him back into a retching, arm-flailing collapse that knocked two of his fellows to the floor—and gave Mirt his chance.

The moneylender snorted his way forward like an angry bull and slammed the door shut, crushing some trapped hands to the accompaniment of shrill shrieks of agony and the clatter of fallen and bouncing weapons—and Myrmeen leaped to shoot the bolt home even before the door was locked. Elminster slammed the door bar into its cradles a bare instant later.

That timber was still settling into place as the Sage of Shadowdale turned and sprinted into the butlery, leaving Mirt and Myrmeen to stare after him in surprise in the bare instant before both of the other kitchen doors started to thud and thunder under a heavy and continuous onslaught of bodies and axe blades.

El ran hard, heading for the kitchen stairs. Four other staircases led down into the cellars, five if one counted the secret plate and cutlery cupboard stair, and he had to get to the heavy door at the bottom of these stairs and secure it before that army of warriors—not Purple Dragons by the looks of them, so who were they?—came swarming up the stairs to infest all the food rooms attached to the kitchen.

There was no one in sight, and he was tempted to race past the cold cellar to the wine and wrestle a handkeg or two onto the bottom steps before seeing to the door. The top of the flight of stairs was fitted with only a flimsy wooden gate, designed to keep people or things that toppled over from falling down the entire flight of steps, so it was this door or no defense at all.

The temptation to procure kegs passed in the time it took him to race to the bottom, where El swung the heavy door shut with a deep boom, shot its stout double bolts, and turned to hurry back up the stairs. Too swiftly; his foremost foot caught on a tread and he almost went face-first onto the steps. All that saved him was his swiftness, but he reared back so suddenly that he overbalanced and fell back two steps.

At the same moment that something dropped from above to crash heavily onto the treads where he’d been—something that reached out with raking arms as it fell past, trying to claw him.

It was—

Gods, it was Calathlarra!

Elminster leaped back a few steps more, until his shoulders met the door with a thud—and what was left of the Runemaster came slithering down the steps after him.

Her head lolled lifelessly, the eyes glazed and staring, able to see him, yet not quite focused. Her mouth was open and drooling, in part because her shriveled face was slashed across by her death wounds, the deep slices left by Tabra’s poisoned fingernails.

Her own lacerated and broken fingers had been bound tightly together with strips torn from a shift, and their fingernails cut to sharp points tipped with glistening dark purple and green; venoms. A few fingers bore long, wickedly pointed metal finger sheaths that turned them into talons. There was a venom-coated knife at her belt, and she was hauling herself down the steps at El with her taloned hands, dragging her legs behind her.

“Shaaan’s work,” El murmured aloud, as he hastened to the left-hand end of the bottom step. The Serpent Queen’s undead slayer turned to follow him in eerie silence, descending another few steps ere it reared up to rake at him again.

El raced to the other end of the step and upward, springing into the air and kicking out as he went, a—yes!—perfectly timed kick that brought the sole of his boot hard into her reaching talons and dashed them down and aside, turning her body so her desperate slash with her other arm, across her own body, couldn’t help but fall far short of ever reaching him.

Then he was up the stairs in a panting rush, and whirling to face the Serpent Queen’s slithering slayer, who was clawing her way around and coming up the stairs after him, nails scraping on the steps.

Coming with alarming ease and speed. Ah, but of course she’d be faster than he’d prefer.

“Mirt! Myrmeen!” he shouted. “Get ye out here!”

Whatever replies they might have made were lost in the sudden, deafening boom of the locked door that separated the passage wrapping around the stair from the feast hall. At least two of the small army of warriors on the other side of it must have taken a run at it and struck it with their shoulders together.

Calathlarra swarmed up the steps and slashed at his feet as she came; El jumped back and looked around wildly for something to defend himself with. One slash from a fingernail—

“Mirt!” he bellowed again. “Myrmeen!”

There was a thunderous crash from the door, a different sort of sound than the earlier boom. Sharper, and with an edge to it that bespoke splintering. They were using their hand axes this time, half a dozen of them, the blades biting in unison. It was a large, imposing paneled door, fitted with glossy-polished relief carvings of the Halaunt arms surrounded by a wreath of sculpted grapes and sheaves of wheat and a pleasant array of fruits and vegetables. It had a stout lock, but no bar El could use to fend off poisoned claws, and no cradles for one; the Halaunt builders hadn’t anticipated the need for a barricade between the feast hall and the various pantries. Those axes would be through it in short order.

“What, El?” Myrmeen called, through the door that led into the butlery. “We’re just bottling the remedies, and—”

“Get a sack, bring what ye can, and get me one of the roasting spits!”

Myrmeen came running past the door that the edges of axe blades were now crashing through, and peered past El. She winced in disgust at the sight of Calathlarra, who was now undulating along the passage from the stairs as she hauled herself along with her taloned hands. “Just how does a wizard animate someone into undeath if magic doesn’t work, hey?”

“Doesn’t work reliably, lass,” El called back, as he sped past the axe-imperiled door to unlock the door at the end of the passage, into the south servery. Domed platters, there were huge domed platters in there that he could use as shields … So that was the casting that had so sorely harmed Luse, the most recent time …

Calathlarra came slithering after him, and he had the satisfaction of snatching up a platter that had many handholds worked into its raised and ornamented edge all around it, of a size and weight to make an ideal shield, before he turned back in time to reach out with a long fireplace rake and—hook the door half-closed, pinning the undead Runemaster against its frame.

She spat and squalled, making noise for the first time, sounding utterly enraged through the wet burbling.

When she tried vainly to claw him, finding him out of reach, yet trying again and again, El sprang high and came down hard with his boot heels on both of her arms, slamming them to the floor broken—only to have her tug hard and arch back to pull them free. He had to leap back or be toppled over, and the force of her pull, with his weight gone, had her back out of the doorway into the passage, so he slammed the door.

And raced across the servery to open the cupboard that had the secret panel at the back of it. In a trice he was in the pitch-dark plate and cutlery store, a long and narrow closet lined with shelves and drawers. It had another sliding panel right across from him that gave into the other end of the passage, so he could come running around to the staircase again. To reach the fast-being-hewn-down door into the feast hall, with the open door of the butlery beside it, and Calathlarra slithering back along the passage. She was moving more slowly now, trying to haul her slithering self along on shattered arms. Before she got there, Mirt burst out through the butlery door to confront her, with a triumphant roar.

He was brandishing a skewer of dripping roast braerwing like a rapier, a sack of stoppered bottles over his other shoulder, and right behind him was Myrmeen with a bare skewer in one hand and her preferred and smaller cleaver in the other; she bore a sack tied around her neck like a cape, that held cheeses, sausages, and the largest kitchen cleaver, which she’d used when defending the kitchen door.

“They’ll be through the kitchen doors in a breath or two!” she shouted to Elminster, and he called back, “This way! Come with me!”

Mirt jabbed at Calathlarra’s face with his skewer, she reared up to menace him hissing like a snake and drew back both arms to rake at him—and he turned and ran, following Myrmeen around the staircase to Elminster.

As the demolished feast hall door collapsed in shards and splinters and half a dozen warriors fell through it and onto Calathlarra with shouts and clangs and in utter confusion.

She clawed wildly amid all the rolling armored bodies, but El didn’t tarry to see any more. “Come,” he panted, leading the way back into the darkness of the plate and cutlery closet, and along it—Myrmeen’s cleaver in her sack banging against the unseen drawers on either side of her as she came—to the secret stair. It was a swift spiral of banging and bumping and soft cursing that delivered them in a few panting instants up into the ruined upper floor. Where the world seemed very different, with warped and uneven boards groaning underfoot, and the pale light and chill of predawn leaking in through scores of rents and places of mold and peeling collapse.

The doors weren’t locked up here. Most of them weren’t even closed, thanks to warpage; El led the way in haste through a warren of small former servants’ dens and low-ceilinged attics, out into … the roofless room, where he’d tarried earlier, with its pleasant view of the Halaunt woods and rolling hills. Dawn was threatening behind him, where the roofs, gables, and ornate stone chimneys of Oldspires blocked his view of all but a tiny strip of roiling spellstorm and the trees and lawns beyond; in the other direction, at the edge of the nearest trees below, he could see Purple Dragons and war wizards standing amid the trunks, looking up at him.

“Send in the Dragons!” he called to them, and tried to use the Weave to take his words to them, in rolling ripples that in normal circumstances would reach them in an instant, easily and surely … but now were lost and dragged down by the still-roiling spellstorm. He tried again, with the same result.

“Save your wind,” Mirt growled from behind him. “I saw a doorstop, in that room with the wardrobes. We drag it out, we scratch “Send Dragons: Gate Invasion of Cormyr” on it, and I hurl it high and hard, aiming for those idiot faces down there.”

“Do it,” El agreed.

“Right. Hold this. Eat some.”

And Elminster found himself holding a dripping skewer of well-roasted braerwing, with Myrmeen grinning at him from the far side of it. “I’ll gnaw this side, while you bite at that one,” she suggested.

“Lass, lass, what are we coming to? Where’s the wine, the servants to pour it, the nicely laid table, the godsbedamned chair for my old backside?”

“Complaints, complaints,” Myrmeen dismissed his words serenely. “Next you’ll be complaining again that we’re sharing Oldspires with too many murderers.”

“Well, we are. This house holds altogether too many murderers for my liking, lass.”

“For anyone’s liking, unless they revel in death,” Myrmeen muttered. “Now eat, for I see much fighting and running in our near future and a distinct lack of leisure to sit at tables and dine at ease. Oh, and I closed the secret panels behind us. Hopefully, after they’ve finished butchering Calathlarra—and they’ll have to dismember her to stop her, and probably find a chest or something to confine her fingers in—it’ll take them some time to find the way we took, and where we’ve gotten to.”

“Well, not long at all,” Mirt pointed out, returning with the doorstop, “if we stay up here bellowing to the dawn breeze.”

As he spoke, dawn broke over the roofs and chimneys behind them. “Ah,” he said in satisfaction, kneeling down and hauling out his dagger to assault the glossy-black-painted doorstop, “decent light to do this by.”

“And for crossbowmen to have a go at us by,” Myrmeen snapped, pointing. “Damned if those Dragons down there aren’t readying death for us!”

“So sit ye down,” El told her, doing so and taking the skewer with him, to force her down, “and stop giving reckless fools a target.”

“Scoot over yonder on your behinds,” Mirt suggested, “now that they can’t see you. So if they do waste bolts on loosing blind at where we were, they’ll have no hope of hitting us.”

“I was not,” Myrmeen reminded him, shifting across warped boards, taking the skewer with her, and so towing Elminster with it, “born yesterday. Nor even the day before that.”

She watched El twice try to take a bite of still-steaming braerwing and twice have his meal move away from the reach of his jaws as she kept going.

He acquired a frown, looked up at her, and instead of uttering the complaint she was expecting, said, “So we have three days of spellstorm left, and four wizards; Shaaan, Tabra, Malchor, and Manshoon still flourishing—and possibly holed up in their rooms, possibly not. Plus at least one undead on the loose that Shaaan’s probably responsible for and was certainly animated within these walls since our arrival, rather than getting in afterward. We also have at least a score of warriors in full plate hunting us through Oldspires, and a gate open somewhere in the house. Moreover, Alusair is gone or enfeebled and in hiding, and Lord Halaunt’s mindless body has been left behind in a kitchen that said army of warriors have almost certainly taken over by now … have I missed anything?”

“The Halaunt ghosts,” Myrmeen pointed out, “the intruders—two so far, and who knows how many more before we’re done here—and whoever else the war wizards and Dragons out there decide to send in through their ringwall. Oh, and the Lost Spell, wherever it may be.” She twinkled at him. “I’m sure we’ve both missed something, but surely that’s enough to be keeping us busy for now?”

“Done,” Mirt announced, before El could reply, and held up the doorstop. It bore the words he’d suggested on one side, and “Orders of Ganrahast” on the other.

El grinned. “Nice touch. That’ll stop them dismissing it out of hand, at least.”

The moneylender nodded, lurched to his feet, took two slow steps while swinging the doorstop back and forth by his side, and then hurled it underhanded, in a mighty heave that sent it sailing high and far.

A crossbow bolt snarled past him, heading for the empty sky beyond.

And above. Mirt sank down muttering curses, and padded on hands and knees to the skewer, to claim a meal. “Idiots,” he growled, jerking a thumb in the direction of the Cormyreans at the edge of the trees. “Do they think bolts can turn by themselves in midair, to plummet down at us?”

“Shall we relocate, regardless?” Myrmeen suggested. “This is a pleasant enough venue, but someone of military competence may be down there, and prevail after the thicker heads have failed and run out of oh-so-bright ideas.”

“Relocate where, lass?” Mirt rumbled, around mouthfuls of braerwing. “We’re fleeing too many warriors to stand against—but may just wind up fleeing right into their arms, so to speak.”

She shrugged.

Mirt looked to Elminster.

“I’d like to thank the cooks,” the Sage of Shadowdale announced. “Very nice. Best I’ve eaten in ages, actually.”

“Old Mage,” Mirt growled, “you may not have noticed, being an ancient and doddering archmage and the most gleaming Chosen of Mystra and all, but we’re in the middle of a little private war here, and—”

“I’ve been thinking,” Elminster interrupted severely. “We ancient and doddering archmages sometimes need more time to do that than we used to. Especially when we’re distracted by delicious and much-needed food. Yum.” He swallowed, wiped his lips with one forefinger, and said briskly, “Right. Follow me.”

“Where?” Mirt asked suspiciously.

“This way.”

Mirt sighed, rolled his eyes, and looked at Myrmeen. Who chuckled, gave him a smile, and started after Elminster, who was crawling on hands and knees to one of the buckled doors in the walls of the roofless room, and out through it.

Mirt sighed again, more heavily, took a good big bite out of the next braerwing on the skewer, and crawled after them both.

The moment they were through the door and standing again, in the decaying passage beyond, he growled at Elminster’s back, “All right, where are we headed and why?”

“To Malchor. Hopefully he’s in his room. Against all those warriors, I need an ally.”

“He can spellblast them while you try to wrestle the Weave so his spells blast, rather than sprout flowers or turn them hairy,” Myrmeen offered.

El gave her a broad smile. “Ah, I do love companions who have wits, and use them! Yes, ye’ve stated my plan precisely.”

“Not much of a plan,” Mirt grumbled. “More warriors’ spur of the moment desperation stuff, to my ears.”

“So ’tis, friend Mirt. Spur of the moment desperation is my specialty, and has been for centuries now. I like to think I’m getting good at it.”

“More braerwing?” Mirt asked, offering the skewer.

“Later. Heroics now, before ’tis too late.”

They’d worked their way three rooms farther along, and through a particularly spongy area where summer rains and winter snow and ice had not been kind to the old mansion, when Oldspires quivered from end to end beneath them under the soundless shock of yet another spell.

This one was particularly powerful, if the strength of the rolling shuddering underfoot was anything to go by, but there was no way of telling who’d cast it, or if it had accomplished its usual or intended effect.

No sooner had they recovered their footing than the air around them glowed a brief and odd purplish blue and all three of them felt a strong tingling.

Everyone’s hair stood on end, in rigid forests of bristles, and Myrmeen looked at El and asked calmly, “Any guesses?”

“A powerful working, by a caster unknown. It set off a large discharge or leak—the glow we saw—from one of the closed gates, which must be up here, very close to us.”

“Not the one you felt being opened?”

El shook his head. “Nay, that would have sent us flying, in what would have been not far different than a short-lived gale.”

He held up a hand for quiet, edged forward to peer around a door, then turned to add, “No talking, now.”

And led the way down a steep, narrow staircase that wasn’t quite a spiral stair, but came close—short, steep flight after short steep flight, with landings on the house side.

Myrmeen frowned and spread her hands in a silent “Where are we?” query.

El reached a closed door on the next landing, opened it in stealthy silence, then relaxed and waved at them to follow him.

Out into … a huge stairwell, in which a grand staircase ascended, flanked with statues, past dark old paintings larger than the walls of many houses, and tapestries of dusty, aged splendor.

Myrmeen frowned, cleaver at the ready. “Why build two stairs, cheek by jowl?”

“Old noble family,” El muttered. “Flourished back before King Duar’s time, when servants were not to be seen moving from floor to floor—certainly not by way of the same steps used by the highborn. So the Halaunts, finding they needed servants to ply them with viands and drink—mostly drink—in the Summer Room, but not wanting their noble guests to encounter scurrying servants on their ways to and from the look-out-over-the-lands cupola that used to grace the upper floor above the Summer Room, built the tiny winding stair we’ve just come down. Just for the servants, and in its own half tower built onto the walls.”

Myrmeen rolled her eyes. “Nobles,” she sighed. “I’ll never understand them.”

“Lass, lass, they’re just folk like all others—save that they’ve had wealth and power for long enough to indulge their innate eccentricites. And to grow bored, and dabble in various weirdnesses—or treasons—to alleviate that boredom. And gotten away with it all for long enough to fool themselves that ’tis their right to live thus. So they’ll do anything to protect their ‘rights’ and stay atop the social heap.”

Mirt chuckled. “Best summation of nobility I’ve heard in a long while.”

El put a warning finger to his lips. “To get from this side of Oldspires over to Malchor’s room, our best way is through the cellars—so we go down yon grand stair,” he almost whispered, “as quietly as we can.” He gave Myrmeen a smile, and added, “And before ye ask, Mreen, we couldn’t just proceed on down there by the servants’ stair, because the wall’s collapsed down there—frost heave from a too-close underground spring, by the looks of it—and blocked the door at the bottom.”

She nodded. “Wouldn’t that make a good place to hide the antidotes, so we don’t have to carry them everywhere?”

“Indeed—if ye can make it certain that we don’t ever need them, in the space of a breath or so, except when we’re down at the damp and rubble-filled bottom of that stair rather than clear across Oldspires, on another floor.”

“Ah,” Myrmeen replied, and waved at him to lead on.

Like three silent shadows they stepped out into the soaring and splendid stairwell and descended into … darkness.

“We forgot the lantern,” Myrmeen muttered.

Elminster whirled around and put his finger to her lips.

“Foes ahead,” he whispered in her ear, feeling Mirt thrust his head close to hear. “At the bottom of these steps—slide thy heels to feel their edges of each one, so ye don’t fall—set down the sacks to one side, out of the path of anyone using the stair, and keep weapons ready. See that glow?”

“No,” Myrmeen whispered back.

“Very faint, very deep blue,” he breathed. “Wait, and thine eyes will …”

“Yes. I see it now.”

“That blue means gate—open, active, and almost certainly guarded. We want to take down the guards swiftly but quietly, before they can raise any sort of alarm.”

“You’ve done this before,” Mirt grinned.

“A time or two,” El replied. “A time or two.”

Weapons ready—Elminster commandeered the skewer, which still had an intact braerwing and a somewhat nibbled one impaled on it, well up it near his hand—they warily approached the distant blue glow, which awaited several cellars away from where they’d set down the sacks.

Slow and silent, slow and silent …

The Sage of Shadowdale came to a stop on one side of the last archway before the room that contained the floating upright oval of cold blue fire—flames that flowed endlessly while burning nothing. The oval was wider back and forth than top to bottom, and within it was utter darkness.

And standing in front of it, strolling and chatting and looking bored, were seven plate-armored warriors identically equipped to those they’d fled from earlier.

Myrmeen put her lips right into Elminster’s ear and breathed, “Can you make the glow go dark, so we can rush them?”

Nay, he thought into her mind. Not as I am now—and the Weave is, here.

Suddenly there was a new mind speaking into theirs. It was old and cold and surprised—but gleeful. And there were other old, cold minds linked with it.

Elminster Aumar?

Something like a striking snake, but of purple-black fire and impossibly long, burst out of the darkness of the gate in a great arc that raced across the cellar and through the archway, curving in the air as it came, to try to curl around the edge of the arch, reaching for the Sage of Shadowdale.

As Myrmeen, already wrapped around El, flung herself sideways and hauled him along with her.

They struck cold and grimy cellar floor together and rolled, his skewer skittering along before their noses amid the strong reek of disturbed mildew—as they were pursued by a horrid stink of scorched stone.

When they came to a stop, they turned in each other’s arms to look back.

The purple-black flames had spattered the bare bedrock behind them and melted into it with a hungry, seething snarl.

It was dissolving the solid stone—down a foot deep already, and melting deeper with frightening speed.

CHAPTER 17

Manshoon’s Magnificent Moment

HOLY MOTHER MYSTRA!” MIRT CURSED, GAPING DOWN AT THE MELTING stone. Then he added in a mutter, “Well, at least it missed. This time.”

The astonished warriors flung uncertain and fearful glances over their shoulders, cursing fervently—and then looked at where the flames had headed. Then they came running for the archway in a general rush, swords raised and looking for foes.

And Mirt, standing in darkness and taking a step back and to one side to be in even deeper gloom, smiled like a wolf, hefted his cleaver, and waited for them.

The foremost warrior was still six running strides or so away when the purple-black flames arced out of the gate again—and seared right through the running men.

By the time a new section of stone floor was melting away into its own pit, four sets of legs were stumbling and falling, the bodies they’d been attached to a moment earlier gone into empty air.

“Someone doesn’t like you, Old Mage,” Myrmeen panted, as they broke apart and hastily found their feet, keeping well back.

“So it certainly seems,” Elminster replied grimly, hefting the skewer. The partly eaten braerwing fell off it with a plop. Minds that cold … he’d felt such minds before, but were these—

The three remaining warriors, eyes wild with terror, pelted through the archway and veered toward his voice. Ignored on his side of the arch, Mirt snarled in irritation, took a step after them—and then drew hastily back.

The third gout of magical flames kissed the bare bedrock floor of the cellar beyond the first two melted—and still slowly spreading—pits, and devoured only stone.

As Mirt hurled himself across the stretch of cellar visible through the archway from the glowing gate, and caught up to the hindmost warrior.

Who’d glimpsed him when turning to look at the latest flaming spume, and now turned to hack at him with a snarl to match his own.

Mirt ducked backward so that the slash would miss—and overbalanced, falling hard onto his behind. And drove his right boot up between the man’s legs hard enough to send the warrior hurtling over his head, face-first into the first and largest pit.

The man’s scream became a sob and then a wet bubbling, all in less time than it took Mirt to wheeze once and roll sideways.

So the second warrior, turning to rush at him and hack, found the fat old man just out of reach.

By then Myrmeen had driven her cleaver up under the first warrior’s chin, twisted it free in a spray of blood, and was one swift leap from that second gate guard.

She sprang, landed hard with both boots on the back of the man’s hindmost foot, and sent him crashing face-first into the floor. He was dazed, broken nose gushing blood, when she rolled him over and laid open his throat.

In the sudden stillness, she and Mirt stared at each other, panting, and then at Elminster. There was a clear question in Myrmeen’s eyes.

El could see she wanted something from him. He strode to her, put a hand on her arm, and asked in her mind, Aye, lass?

What now? She asked. Can you close the gate?

Nay. Not as things stand now.

And if the floor there keeps melting? Will all of Oldspires eventually collapse into it, and melt away?

Nay. I’ve seen such spells before, long ago. They will melt a little more, then be spent.

Myrmeen stared into Elminster’s eyes, unsmiling. So, the most patient of women asked the Old Mage: What now?

Mirt was lurching up to them, rubbing his backside and wincing, aware from their faces and Myrmeen’s intent, forward-thrusting chin that they were conversing. Myrmeen reached out her free hand to him, he clasped it—and could hear their thoughts.

Whoa! This could be the death of many a marriage! He thought, blinking in amazement.

Not now, Mirt, Myrmeen ordered crisply. I want to stay alive a little longer!

And then Elminster’s memory—old, vast, deep, dark, and failing though it was—delivered up what he’d been trying to recall.

The minds on the other side of the gate were liches, of course. He’d known that much right away. Yet it had been only fleetingly that he’d mindtouched this particular sort of lich, and most of those meetings had been long, long ago.

These were thralls of Larloch. A handful of the many, many liches who served the Shadow King.

Or perhaps former thralls, now, but somehow he doubted Larloch had been destroyed. Burned and lessened, aye, perhaps nigh as badly as Lord Halaunt, and hurled out of Toril into an unknown otherwhere …

Yet for now, gone. So these liches could dare to act for themselves for the first time in a long, long while. Their minds bore their master’s dark yoke—that was what made them feel different than the minds of other liches—but Larloch was not there to curb or guide them.

So why were they opening an old gate in the cellars of a noble’s country mansion in the deep countryside of Cormyr?

His own presence had obviously been a surprise to them, so they hadn’t been seeking him, nor scrying beforehand …

Liches? Larloch? Myrmeen was awed. El winced. Usually he veiled his innermost thoughts from those he was mindtouching, but either his strength was failing or he subconsciously trusted Mreen enough to share …

Liches, Mirt thought in disgust. Always want to rule the world, always making trouble. We have entirely too many of them back in Waterdeep.

Right, Elminster thought firmly. First, I very much doubt these liches will dare to come through the gate—not with the Weave chaos they can easily detect reigning here right now, and the leakage from the other gates. I can feel it even when trying to ignore the Weave rather than sensing by means of it. So they are not our foremost problem. This army of warriors they sent is, followed by Shaaan, followed by our other murderous guests—Manshoon and Tabra. And who knows, perhaps Malchor will surprise me! So for now, we salvage swords and daggers and axes from these two here, unless ye really prefer the cleavers, and turn back. If we turn south in that first cellar, at the bottom of the stair, and grope our way to the door I know is there, we’ll find a servants’ storeroom on the far side of it. A lantern each, get them filled and lit, then I’ll lead the way.

Lead the way where? Myrmeen asked gently.

Around this cellar where the gate is, and on to the bottom of the grand staircase—which will take us upstairs very near Malchor’s room. And let me, if I’m careful, examine this gate from its backside.

Can’t they see you just the same from all sides of the gate?

Some gates, aye, but not this sort. This one’s old; the Imaskari used to call these ‘shuttered’ gates. We can’t see into it from outside, and they can only see out of one face of it.

I’m getting older, Mirt thought. Let’s gather weapons and go.

They shared the last braerwing in the darkness, exchanged their cleavers for swords and as many daggers as they could comfortably carry—the warriors had borne four each, and Mirt could drop three sheathed daggers down the insides of his floppy old boots—and went.

THE CELLARS CLOSEST to the base of the grand staircase were given over to the mansion’s bulk food storage—there was a distinct smell of moldering carrots—and Oldspire’s furniture-repair workshop.

Elminster left Mirt and Myrmeen waiting there with all three shuttered lanterns and groped his way slowly and carefully the length of what his nose told him was the apple-storage cellar, to a door that thankfully didn’t creak when he lifted its peg latch and eased it open.

Far away, down a cluttered pathway of old broken furniture and rotting chairs and tables now so out of fashion that they betrayed the cruder tastes and lesser wealth of the Forest Kingdom’s nobility back then, was the endless deep blue glow of the gate. From the back, its upright ring gave off less light than the front, but still enclosed utter darkness.

El walked cautiously closer, then stopped, closed his eyes, and reached out with slow, careful stealth, to let the Weave tell him what he needed to know.

He learned what he’d expected.

What he’d feared.

He wanted to close the gate again, but even if there’d been no spellstorm nor leaking gates nearby, and the Art had been reliable and he’d been standing before it ready for battle wrapped in his full gathered power, it was a trap.

The five liches behind the one peering through the gate and keeping it open were linked to all the other liches who’d served Larloch, whenever they wanted to be, mindspeaking through the mental yoke they all shared. They visualized it as a dark skullcap crowning their heads and running down the backs of their necks and curving over their cheeks like the ramhorn leather caps some monks favored, and it was always with them.

So when they were on Toril, what one lich saw and thought could be communicated to all the rest.

And what the lich guarding the gate, and the five liches beyond him, and presumably all the others beyond that wanted was to keep the gate open. There were more than a hundred of those others, still. There had been five times that, not so long ago, but in his last moments of agony under the Srinshee’s goad, Larloch had reached out to many of his liches to let her ravening magic sear their brains instead of his, so many of his liches had been destroyed, snuffed out in mere instants. These hundred-some survivors intended to lie in wait for anyone who tried to use magic to close the gate, and then use its magic to suck that hapless being into the gate and through it, to be brought before them buffeted and helpless by their whirling journey—and there mindream them before draining them of all vitality.

Charming.

El withdrew his scrutiny with the same slow, exacting care and returned to Mirt and Myrmeen, who interpreted his grim silence correctly, and asked no questions.

Silently he led them on through the cellars and up the grand staircase, watching warily for more warriors—or anyone else.

They hooded their lanterns before they reached the ground floor, because they could hear the movements of something large and heavy and many-legged through the open door to their left, which led into the Chamber of the Founder.

The rooms of Malchor and Manshoon both opened into the chamber, where the forbidding bronze statue of the first Lord Halaunt brooded endlessly over its couches and side tables.

Myrmeen laid a hand on Elminster’s arm and then on Mirt’s, to tell them the same thing. I’ll go see.

Handing Mirt her drawn sword, she went to her knees and crawled up the last few steps to where she could peer. Then she rose to her feet and sidled to the door, keeping to one side of it until she leaned out to see—for but an instant.

She came back to them in some haste, and found them standing with hands touching, so she could mindspeak them both by adding hers atop theirs.

She shared her swift glimpse with them: a creature with its back to her, larger than the biggest pair of yoked oxen she’d ever seen. It had a stinger-tipped tail like a scorpion, thrusting up from an eight-spindly-legged body like a spider’s—and its head was like that of a rat, only with a boar’s tusks. Its eyes were large and dark and full of malice, as it faced … Malchor Harpell.

Who stood in the open doorway of his bedchamber frowning up at it, mouth already shaping a spell.

Never seen one like that before, Mirt thought grimly. Came through that gate, d’you think?

Nor have I, Elminster mindtold them—as there came a flash through the open doorway, the air rocked with that soundless fury they were getting used to, now, and—there came a deep, shuddering groan of pain.

They hastened up the last few steps and advanced warily to where they could peer through the doorway together.

Malchor Harpell was pinned against the far wall of the Chamber of the Founder, impaled on that stinger—which was as long as he stood tall, and so large around that it was almost as wide as his torso.

Which meant that he was almost cut in half, and dying. Blood spilled from his mouth as his eyes darkened, motes of light like restless fireflies still winking around his hands from where the spell he’d tried to cast had failed. Leaving him helpless before the monster.

The stinger pulled back out of him, dark and glistening, and the patriarch of the Harpells collapsed.

As the door beside Malchor’s opened, and Manshoon stepped calmly out into the hall, gave the giant spider-thing a cold smile as it turned to confront him, and raised his hands to work a spell.

“I suppose,” he told the monster conversationally, “it’s doom time for one of us.”

THE GENTLEST wisp of a cold breeze caressed Elminster’s cheek.

Well met, Old Mage, Alusair’s voice stole into his mind. It was weak and faint and wavering.

Luse! Ye should not be here! Yon mage—

Is about to hurl a spell, or have it go wrong, I know. The mind voice of the ghost princess was wry. El, I have been through utter agony, and am back. Thanks to you. You gave me enough of a shield against the buffeting of spells, cast or miscast, to at least fly again, and spy. I can’t carry things, yet, nor become visible, but that’s returning. It’s all coming back. Such a wonderful world you who work with the Art inhabit, beyond what we mere swordswingers can perceive.

True. Aye, Princess, very true. But let me see ye up close …

Alusair drifted into his nose, chilling him so utterly that he struggled to breathe. It was like a chunk of ice, numbing all it touched, behind his eyes …

And then the pain was gone, and she was outside of him again. Well?

’Twill serve ye well enough. And this should serve ye better. El thrust power into her, so much and so swiftly that she gasped aloud, even as he staggered, feeling weak and sick. Alusair Obarskyr, I need ye to do a thing.

El, I owe you—Cormyr owes you—more than I can ever repay. Command me.

Elminster reached out to her again, and felt her stiffen in the enthralling collision of ecstasy and agony he’d just visited upon her.

Ohhhh, what is this?

Silver fire. I need ye to race across yon room—fast and dodge, because Manshoon at least will be able to see its glow—and plunge into the wound in Malchor Harpell, tarry there until the fire leaves thee, then hasten back to me. He must live. Do it swiftly.

It would have to be fast, or it would consume her utterly; a non-Weave ghost wouldn’t be able to do this at all. Just as a recipient who didn’t have a long mastery of the Art, as Malchor Harpell did, couldn’t survive the silver fire’s sudden and ungoverned arrival inside them. He really should tend Malchor himself, gently guiding the silver fire through him and taking the time to do things properly—but with Manshoon and an unfamiliar and murderously hostile creature from another world in the same room, he dare not try that either.

Alusair moaned in rapture, her mind shuddering in his, then collected herself enough to tell him, I go!

And then she swooped through the doorway, a twinkling silver star.

“ELMINSTER,” MANSHOON SAID calmly, “I know you’re there. An assist, if you would. Steady me with the Weave—and this just might work. To all our benefit.”

The monster was towering over the founding lord of the Zhentarim now, its stinger drawn back to strike, its foremost pair of legs thrust forward like pincers, bracketing him to prevent his escape.

El sighed inwardly. Only in bards’ ballads did monsters charge or slither through every gate between the worlds the moment such ways opened; this prowling spidery beast had been sent or compelled through the gate, which meant it was almost certainly serving as eyes and ears for Larloch’s liches.

Who were going to be an increasing problem, it was dunderheadedly obvious, unless they were stopped in a way that was either final, or so devastating that the surviving ones learned and heeded their lesson. Hmmm …

One more problem for the platter. Right now, he had this pressing problem.

Which meant he had to trust Manshoon.

He raised his voice enough to make sure Manshoon heard him clearly without his having to show himself in the doorway, for that stinger looked like it had a long reach, and unlike a scorpion’s, could strike in nigh any direction.

“Trust in me,” he told the Zhentarim firmly, and plunged into the Weave. Of course, he was having to trust Manshoon, too, for if the vampire betrayed him now—

The loudest gasp he’d ever heard, ragged and astonished, rising to a high and trilling sob, erupted in the Chamber of the Founder. Malchor.

So it had worked. He only hoped Luse would have sense enough to get clear instead of lingering to feel that rapture just a little too long …

Why was the monster waiting so long? Towering over its prey rather than striking? There was something not right here …

Manshoon snarled out his incantation and clapped his hands together to finish the casting. The Weave channeled the energies of the surrounding world into the spell calling for them, the bright and temporary shifting weaving that would twist them into the magical effect—and aye, that weaving started to twist awry, like a badly woven basket collapsing under the strain of holding heavy and leaking water.

Elminster tugged at the Weave here and there, deftly shoring it up, making of the Weave great cradling hands that held the spell together for the mere moments it would need to shape its effect and discharge it—scores of tiny blades, like the blade barrier so beloved of veteran adventuring clerics, only Manshoon’s spell made them slicing edges of acid, not of hardened force—and the spell worked.

Except that it didn’t.

The monster absorbed the energies of the spell, rather than suffering its effects. Before their eyes, the beast was drawing in all the magical force that should have manifested as a cloud of slicing whirling blades of acid. So to this creature, a spell that twisted awry was as good as a spell that was perfectly cast; it drained them all. Either making itself stronger, or storing that energy for … what? A spellfire-like blast of raw magical energy, or some other attack? Or something the liches could make use of?

El shrugged. He knew not; this was a creature he’d never seen before. Had the liches magically amalgamated several beasts, and spell-augmented or bred them or both, to make something found nowhere else but in their clutches? It had been done before …

Something else of interest, to be dealt with later. Probably much later.

Right now, all he could do was watch and think quickly. The monster had tarried, rearing up and waiting, offering clear menace to its foe—who could readily see that it could use that stinger or those pincerlike sharp-pointed foreleg sheaths or, for that matter, its tusks and teeth at any time, ending its wait in murder—to provoke Manshoon, as it had prodded Malchor, into hurling a spell at it.

“Elminster!” Manshoon shouted. “The Weave! Help me shapechange, and use my bite!”

Of course! Changing to mist form must have been what Manshoon had attempted when first arriving outside the walls of Oldspires. Where swirling energy leakages from the gates were making the Weave unstable, that sort of mutability was chancy, and anything necrotic nigh impossible.

Unless you had a Weavemaster to hold the Weave smooth and stable in a specific spot just large enough to encompass source, target, and the space between, for just long enough for the ability or the spell or an item’s magical discharge to take effect.

This was going to drain him, and hurt, particularly in the wake of giving some of his silver fire to Malchor. Moreover, it would leave him more vulnerable to Manshoon than any sane mage would accept, knowing what he did of the Manyfaced One.

On the other hand, fail to deal with this beast now, while it was still confined within Oldspires—a creature that magic aided rather than hurting, so all the enthusiastic war wizards in all Cormyr couldn’t stop it—would be a peril far, far more grave than the fate of one old Sage of Shadowdale.

Particularly with liches—perhaps more than a hundred of them—spying out through the creature, possibly directing it, and certainly valuing it and wanting to keep it hale and hunting.

Elminster swallowed another sigh and called back, “Do it!”

The stinger was already stabbing down.

Manshoon flung himself desperately to one side, those stabbing pincers reaching for him, and flung himself into mist form at the same time.

Three long, sleek points thrust into the wispy emptiness where he’d been. The mist swirled and rose up in a ragged cloud as the tusked creature turned right through it, stabbing at the air with all of its legs, and … became a dark and solid man again wrapped around the ratlike head, drawing daggers and driving them deep into both eyes at once.

And as the beast screamed and bucked, wild with pain, and tossed its head wildly to try to fling off the tormentor that had caused it such agony, Manshoon dragged both of his daggers back toward himself, back through the monster’s collapsing eyes to the undersides of the bony brow ridge where they could hook and hold, keeping him on its head for long enough to … bite its foul, furry head in the same way vampires served their chosen victims.

He hung on through the frenzied, squalling battering that followed, grimly riding the thing as it smashed him repeatedly against the walls and ceiling, his roars of pain muffled by its fur, healing himself repeatedly as bones were shattered and shattered anew … and when at last the thing feebly scraped him off by ramming its head against and then past the open door frame to Manshoon’s room, the creature was weak and unsteady, its long legs curled and quivering.

Which was when Elminster, half-numbed and dazed with the pain of holding the Weave steady through all the battering—pain he shared with Manshoon, but without the means to mitigate it through regeneration—sensed the monster was leaking the energies it had absorbed.

With the last of his strength, he gathered the Weave like a great sling to momentarily enfold those energies, so that even as they leaked into its strands and dissipated, he flung their fury to—topple the bronze statue of the first Lord Halaunt over onto the spiderlike creature like a giant’s hammer.

The crash of its fall shook the room, hurling the still-dazed Malchor, the regenerating Manshoon, and what was left of the crushed and splintered furniture into the air—and smashing the blinded head flat.

As a dark and malignant will sent something flashing out of the doomed and dying creature, through the open doorway like a dark snake, curving to smite—

Elminster had just time enough to shove Myrmeen one way and kick Mirt the other before it struck him, a wall of dark magic that tore at him and through him.

He clung to the silver fire he had left, a core he wrapped himself around and fought to submerge himself in, as everything else was savaged in the roaring and hungry dark destruction …

It had been a long time since pain had utterly overwhelmed him, snatching him away from all awareness of Toril around him, but it did now.

ELMINSTER WAS COLD, unbearably cold, and the black winds were howling, over him and through him, eyeless skulls that nonetheless saw him and gloated over him as they loomed large above him for their fleeting moment each as the winds brought them and then swept them on …

Liches, more liches, never an end to them, never a moment to rest …

Someone was speaking. In an icy, unfriendly manner he’d heard so many, many times before.

“If you believe you can defend him against me, woman of Arabel, you are sadly mistaken,” Manshoon was saying, a cold and triumphant sneer in his every purred word.

“I believe I can attempt to defend him,” Myrmeen Lhal replied softly. “So if you think differently, Manshoon, try me.”

“One day I shall,” the Zhentarim replied. “Don’t forget—for I shan’t.”

“She’s not alone, look you!” Mirt snarled, “I stand guard over the Old Mage, too.”

“Oh, I tremble, buffoon! Stand aside, or my mirth may overcome me!”

Elminster felt for the Weave … and found himself gazing into the worried face of Alusair. Kisses of Mystra! If he was in the Weave, face-to-face with a Weaveghost, he must have come so close to dying that …

Surreptitiously, so as not to betray his return to consciousness to Manshoon and provoke an immediate attack, he tried to gather his strength so he could move. Rise, or lift a hand and work a spell, or …

He had no strength at all.

There was a sudden flurry of movement above him that he could sense more than he could see. Then a grunt from Mirt, followed immediately by a second and more startled one, and a gasp from Myrmeen. Followed by distant thuds, and a darkening of the light.

El fought to open his eyes.

Could he not at least see?

He could, it seemed. Through a swimming view of the freshly cracked ceiling of the Chamber of the Founder—Lord Halaunt was going to need plasterers in, to give him a new overhead medallion—Elminster beheld a darkly handsome face above him.

It was smiling a wryly crooked smile.

“I could destroy you easily now, Aumar,” Manshoon told him. “At long, long last, and forever. Yet remember this: I withhold my hand, and spare you. For I pay my debts. Both ways.”

He let the smile slide off his face, and added softly, “You lucky, lucky bastard.”

CHAPTER 18

Dark and Stormy Knights

MANSHOON PUT ON HIS MOST ENGAGING SMILE. THE ONE THAT HELD not a hint of mockery. He even made his voice contrite. “I do wish to apologize for my earlier violence toward you, Lady Lhal. I did not want to do it, and took care to deal you no lasting harm, but some deeds are regrettably necessary in life, to achieve things of great and wide-reaching value—and peace between myself and Lord Aumar here has now become one of them.”

Myrmeen remained thin lipped, and the look she gave him was as dark as ever, so he tried a different gambit.

“I’m aware that it’s early in the day—very early, some might say—and yet I can’t help but notice you’re here and not busy in the kitchen,” he said. “Only three days of spellstorm left, I believe. Morningfeast will be served today, yes?”

Myrmeen frowned. “Not until someone deals with the army of warriors in full coat of plate that laid siege to the kitchen, and presumably—knowing fighting men as I do—have ransacked it and carried off everything they couldn’t eat on the spot. I know where there are some rotting raw carrots we can get to, but otherwise …” She shrugged.

Manshoon didn’t have to feign amusement. Black Hand of Bane, but he liked this woman. Intelligent, practical, and spirited, but not full of herself. Give him a dozen like this, and he could conquer a few cities with ease, and enjoy doing it.

His forbearance would make Elminster treat him differently, and Mystra regard him differently—how could it not? So why destroy his old, old foe now, when doing so gained him only the removal of Elminster from the scene? No, far better to wait, to profit from his newfound patience by tolerating the enemy he’d hated so much, and come to know so well, and was so used to, and await a better time.

A better time that would come. There would be plenty of opportunities ahead to destroy Elminster, given the inevitable collisions and confrontations their natures and interests would lead them into—opportunities when blaming Elminster, or taking down Elminster in a certain way, would profit Manshoon greatly.

He could wait until then.

And until that day, he could benefit repeatedly from Elminster’s meddling, Elminster’s very presence, Elminster as dupe and interceptor and deterrent. Right now, for example, Elminster made his own battle triumphs possible—and there was the Serpent Queen to contend with, yet. Not to mention whichever of Maraunth Torr’s blundering warriors yet survived. And the War Wizards of Cormyr surrounding this place. Alone, he would be the logical target to most, but with Elminster in view, their attention went to the Sage of Shadowdale and left him free to operate.

In the immediate thereafter of Oldspires, whatever happened, he would need Elminster as a shield, a decoy, and perhaps even an ally against Larloch’s liches.

If he was to become the new Larloch, with the liches now seemingly stirring to reach out into wider Faerûn, abandoning the aloofness of their absent master, he would need a distraction. One who was powerful enough to last more than a few moments, and strong enough to be a credible threat demanding lichnee attention. One who could be an ally if need be.

It would take time to devise the right spells to seize command of the liches, and surely they would be watching living mages of accomplishment for such experimentations. Yet if Elminster could be steered into being their foe—which should be simplicity itself, for the Old Mage had been humiliated by how Larloch duped him, and would want to atone or make amends or take vengeance for that—to muster against them all the high priests and city lords and Harpers whose ears he was wont to whisper into, all the wizards he could warn by rumor as well as in person …

Yes. This was only possible at all because Larloch had burned into the minds of each and every lich who served him a yoke, a magic woven into their very undeath that gave him the ability to mindspeak to them across a world, to command their wills and spells and bodies utterly.

Which meant he need not hunt down, corner, and fool every last lich into obedience, he only had to fool the yoke.

I need not deceive more than a hundred wise and powerful veteran archmages, who chose servitude to one more mighty. I only need to deceive the spell they accepted and now cannot renounce, devised by that mighty but oh-so-sadly gone individual. And Mystra herself tolerates my tyrannies of those who wield the Art for my creativity in creating new spells. So crafting a new magic to take control of the means of command Larloch has put in place should be achievable. So long as I have the services of my duped distraction.

“You and I have a score to settle,” a rough and all-too-familiar voice growled, jolting Manshoon back to the here and now. He’d been quite enjoying thinking of becoming as powerful as Larloch.

Not being that mighty skulking power in Faerûn, behind a dozen thrones and subtly steering twoscore more, but the becoming, the pursuit of that ascendancy. Interesting.

“Someday, Lord of Waterdeep,” he told Mirt calmly. “Someday.”

There was a part of him that wanted to laugh at the lurching old man with the big belly and the food-stained clothes and the rotting, flapping old seaboots, but …

Mirt was playing a role as enthusiastically as he was. Of old Mirt the Merciless, thereafter the Old Wolf, then Mirt the Moneylender … womanizer, heavy drinker, glutton. His speech deliberately crude and simple, playing the country bumpkin who’d made a few coins by sheer luck and come to the city long ago, and was now in the twilight of his days braying about past glories and chuckling at empty gossip.

While behind those lazy, leering eyes lurked a mind as sharp as the proverbial drover’s whip, a shrewd judge of people and a worldly wise swindler and opportunistic investor and trader who knew every dodge prohibited in law and many more, and who above all knew people, what moved them and persuaded them. Mirt, who had already, and quite legally, amassed a small fortune in Suzail by taking more than a dozen foolish young nobles in hand, investing their gold wisely, and sharing in their profits. While buying low on the docks and selling high along the Promenade and at the back doors of the wealthy, not too proud to play the panderer and the chamberpot emptier along the way.

Mirt met his eyes for a long and gently smiling time while they wordlessly told each other: I know you, and just what you’re capable of, so don’t think you’re fooling everyone. Watch your back. I will be.

Finally Manshoon tired of this staredown of smug mutual detraction. He smirked and turned away.

To face his last and greatest adversary.

Elminster. Who was sitting on the floor in a corner of the wrecked Chamber of the Founder peering thoughtfully at the huge corpse of the tusked spider-scorpion, absently stroking his long white beard. There was no sign of his pipe. Come to think of it, he hadn’t seen the Old Mage using that floating “eversmoking pipe,” or whatever the minstrels called it, for some time now …

Oh, how he hated this man. Who’d always been in his way, always been a step or six ahead of him, always thwarted his greatest schemes and soured the triumphs he had managed, whose shadow had always fallen across his path, and had too often become a fortress wall girded against him.

And yet … just in the last little while, a mere winking moment compared to the long span of both their lives, he had come to realize that he would miss Elminster Aumar, if ever the Sage of Shadowdale wasn’t there. In a life wherein so many steady rocks had been swept away—some of them he himself had ruthlessly cut down—this was one unchanging feature, this tall, gaunt, hawk-nosed man of the wise smile and the whimsical humor.

This meddler, this man who lacked all pride, yet was but one rung below divinity. For where the Chosen of other gods were champions or prophets or even feeble and naive disposable tools, the Chosen of Mystra held a share of her power, so that the goddess of the Art, in this world so alive with magic, wouldn’t become the Overgod herself, the only deity. Other gods might trust their “Chosen Ones” because they endowed them with all power and could snatch it away again at their divine pleasure … but the Chosen of Mystra could defy their goddess, because they held part of her within themselves. The silver fire.

He envied Elminster that precious essence, that pure power, the fire that could destroy utterly and forever, or create and endow eternally. What was called spellfire was made up of the raw energies of life, the stuff usually harnessed and channeled by spells, left raw and ravening, a dangerous conflagration that destroyed all too easily, searing through most magical barriers where normal fire failed and clawed in vain and died away. Silver fire was the concentrated, tuned essence of magic, the controlled forge to spellfire’s wind-whipped smoky campfire … and this old man had carried the silver fire of the goddess of magic—the goddess of magic—during the Time of Troubles inside him, and survived, and still felt so confident that he’d given up some of his silver fire to heal old Harpell.

Bah, such nobility! Such foolheadedness!

It was time and far beyond the time when this old dodderer should have been swept aside into the echoing forgotten ghosts of history.

Past time that he, Manshoon, who surely had more fire of ambition in him and less senile whimsy, should have swept this erratic and no longer worthy Chosen aside and taken his place! Swept this—

And Mystra, Bane, and all the gods damn the man if he wasn’t looking up, and fixing Manshoon with a very direct and blue-gray eye and asking, “So, Manshoon, enlighten me, if ye’re in the mood. Why show me such mercy? Are ye changing at last? Or is today an off day for ye?”

And damned if he could think of an answer.

“MORNINGFEAST MAY BE late, Lord of the Zhentarim,” Myrmeen said gravely, as they turned to go, “but you will eat today. Hopefully something that’s to your liking, that comes plated to awaken your pleasure, from the Oldspires kitchen.”

“We just have to deal with some forty-odd warriors first,” Mirt grunted. “All in nice gleaming plate armor that’s come fresh from the same armorer, by the looks of them.”

“There are fifty-four of them, I believe,” Manshoon replied politely, and then added, in response to their hard looks, “and no, they’re not my army. I believe they came here through the gate; if peace within these walls is your aim, you might want to give some thought to closing that portal.”

“We shall bear that in mind,” Elminster told him gravely, inclining his head in a nod of farewell.

They were two rooms and a dogleg section of passage away before Mirt grumbled, “I don’t hear him offering to help close that gate—I suppose that’s a problem for mere servants, like his morningfeast.”

“And that would be the difference between him and me,” the Sage of Shadowdale replied.

“What struck me more,” came a thin voice from the empty air just in front of them, “was the difference betwixt him and Malchor—arrogant utter lack of thanks from the Zhent, versus astonished gratitude from the Harpell.”

“Hail, Your Majesty,” Mirt greeted the invisible Alusair.

“Your Highness,” she corrected. “I was regent, never queen.”

“You should have been,” Myrmeen said softly. “The best of your father and your mother flowered forth in you—and I speak as one who knew and loved them both.”

“Don’t start, Mreen,” the ghost princess responded. “Now, is Elminster playing Weavemaster rampant, or are the three of you marching to your deaths?”

“Fifty-four warriors waiting in the kitchen?”

“Forty-six. Shaaan’s slithering slayer acquitted herself well before they hacked her apart—they burned what was left, in the kitchen hearth no less, so that’ll be the burnt boar smell that greets you—and a handful of them were foolish enough to try to force their way into Shaaan’s room.”

“Charming discipline,” Myrmeen remarked. “Yet forty-six is a bit much, even for we peerlessly brawling heroes of the realm.” They all looked at Elminster, who sighed.

“A Weavemaster is not a battle mage,” he said, “but perhaps we’ll think of something. Luse, can ye scout behind, to make sure Manshoon isn’t skulking after us, and then before us, to keep us from walking right into their sentinels, or any ambushes they may have arranged? I do want to talk to at least one of them, to find out who they serve.”

“That I can tell you,” Alusair replied. “They were hired by Maraunth Torr, to come along after his arrival and aid him in seizing Oldspires. He didn’t tell them about the Lost Spell, or that they were walking into a den of hostile wizards—just that they should beware ‘one or two mages.’ I’ve been eavesdropping.”

After a moment, her voice came again, from behind them this time. “Oh, and they’re under the impression that after an ‘undead wizard’ met them and sent them in here through the gate, they met with Maraunth Torr himself—late last night. So that might be another dead wizard walking … or someone taking on the likeness of one.”

“Around here, wizards don’t stay dead for long,” Mirt put in. “Have you noticed?”

“Strangely enough, yes. I go to hunt Manshoon.” And with that, the invisible Alusair was gone.

She returned before they were through the trophy chamber, rushing past them like a wind and flinging out the words, “Hasn’t stirred from his room. Yet.”

Only to flash visible again mere moments later right in front of them, inside the closed eastern door of the trophy chamber they were heading for, her face and both hands raised and spread in a “stop” gesture.

“A dozen of Torr’s force are headed for the Serpent Queen’s door right now, to try to get at her—and there are none of their fellows this side of the Copper Receiving Room. Both the north and west doors of the entry hall are closed and unguarded, so no one’s going to hear or see anything relatively quiet that befalls in the main passage the other side of this door.”

“Well,” Myrmeen offered, “I for one am heartily ready for a fight. Against swords, not big strange marauding monsters from other worlds, or spells hurled out of gates whose caster I can’t get at. And I’d be very surprised if Mirt doesn’t stand with me in this.”

She glanced at the fat moneylender, and he nodded and grinned. “Let’s have at them!”

They all looked at Elminster. Who gave them a smile and the words, “I also find myself heartily ready for a fray.”

“Well, then,” Myrmeen said with a smile, drawing her sword and dagger. “Ready?”

And they quietly opened the door out into the passage and strolled north, keeping close to the near wall.

They were halfway to the pillars that marked where the armor court began when they heard a splintering crash in the distance, and a triumphant roar and thunder of booted feet. Myrmeen risked stepping away from the wall for a good look, only to have the voice of Alusair inform her from the empty air beside her ear, “They just broke down Shaaan’s door and charged inside—only to find the room empty. I’ll wager there’s a hole in her floor, under the carpet, that they haven’t dis—”

She broke off as a startled yell rang out, then amended, “Have just discovered now, that leads down into the cellars. I hesitate to say how many poisoned needles and coffers of poisoned gas Shaaan left behind to welcome visitors, but the lady herself is no longer in residence.”

“She can’t get the dead we stashed in the cold cellar to come to her until she’s animated them,” Mirt reasoned aloud, “so she’s gone to them.”

Myrmeen smiled. “Let’s hope Torr’s warriors were foraging down there and ran into her, and a merry dance of death was enjoyed by all.”

“Better that than an alliance between them,” Elminster put in warningly. “If they work together …”

Myrmeen gave him a pained look. “Old Mage, must you?”

Rather than replying, Elminster pointed down the passage. Three warriors had just emerged from Shaaan’s room and were running south, right toward Myrmeen.

Who stepped away from the wall with a lilt of her hips that would have done credit to many a tavern dancer, gave them a wide smile, and hefted her blades.

They slowed for long enough to gape at her in astonishment, then came on, the foremost one sneering openly. They were seasoned enough to split wide so they could flank her, so Myrmeen stepped back to the wall to rob them of that opportunity.

“One woman? Alone?” one of them asked in disbelief.

“Not alone,” Mirt rumbled, stepping away from the wall to confront the onrushing hireswords.

“Hah! Large enough target, to be sure! Look at that belly!” another of the warriors laughed, just before steel met steel.

Except that Myrmeen ducked and flung herself away from the wall at a diagonal, sweeping wide and low with her sword, reaping armored ankles. The center warrior fell with a crash, his yell more startlement than pain, and a moment later a rolling Mirt took the feet out from under the easternmost hiresword.

Which left just the one closest to the near wall, who’d been running to meet and hack down Myrmeen. His overhead hack at her was mighty, but too slow and too late; his steel rang off the floor behind her boot, and bit in just enough to catch and force him into a running stumble as he tugged it free.

Which meant that before he could recover, he was staggering past Elminster, who gave him a manic grin and the polite greeting of “Well met,” before snatching off the warrior’s helm with one hand and driving home the pommel of his dagger into the side of the man’s jaw with the other. Teeth flew, and the man went down, flopping to the floor like a wet fish.

El strolled to the other two hireswords, but Myrmeen had served them the same way, and was now surveying the senseless bodies. “That one,” she decided, and started unbuckling the man’s belt.

Mirt watched. “Lass, what’re you—oh.”

A mighty tug had freed the belt and spun the limp and lolling man half over on his side. Myrmeen looped his own belt around his throat, and ordered Mirt, “Bring that one over, back-to-back. We’ll put the third on top of them.” In a trice the three unconscious hireswords were belted together at the throat, and Myrmeen was unknotting and tugging free the loose peacestrings on their scabbards. El and Mirt stepped back and stood guard as she tied their thumbs together and then their smallest fingers together behind their backs, then removed their boots and did the same to their big toes—after hauling the leg armor and leather breeches off the largest one. The breeches were just large enough to go over three heads at once, and Myrmeen collected daggers and swords and then stood back in satisfaction.

“Nicely done,” Mirt told her.

“Swiftly done,” El added.

“You’d better be fast,” the unseen ghost princess commented, “if you’re going to do that to all of them. Though there may not be that many left, come to think of it—these three fled not because two of their fellows plunged down into the cellars rather precipitiously, but because all the others died from poison, right before their eyes. Most of them not prettily.”

Myrmeen looked at where Alusair’s voice had come from, and then at where she knew the door of Shaaan’s bedchamber was—or had been. “So there’s no longer any reason to go there?”

“None.”

Myrmeen turned to Mirt and El. “So if the princess scouts ahead for us, do we head for the kitchen again? That braerwing was nice, but I didn’t get much, and it seems like a long time ago.”

Mirt grinned. “Running and fighting’s hungry work.” His stomach rumbled, right on cue.

“We do head for the kitchen,” El agreed. “Torr’s warriors have to be dealt with some time.”

“Let’s rout them,” Mirt suggested. “I haven’t had a good rout in years and years!”

“Let’s rout them,” Myrmeen put in, “because we have no way of knowing if private armies belonging to any of our other guests will show up, and when. I’d like to clear the decks, so to speak, and get morningfeast—or highsunfeast, or evenfeast, or dark-of-the-moon snack, or whatever it turns out to be—done. I save the world better on a full stomach.”

“You too?”

“Luse?”

“On my way. So if those two that fell into the cellars are fine, and Shaaan’s slain no more, there are thirty-six left.”

“Manageable, manageable,” Mirt rumbled, “between the three of us.”

“ ’Tis the thought of food that does it,” Myrmeen teased. “Suddenly you can hew your way through hosts.”

“Well, if they stand between me and a goodly feast, yes,” Mirt replied, starting down the passage.

They had almost reached the door where the passage gave into the entry hall when it swung open and a dozen of Torr’s hireswords started through it.

“Halt,” Elminster barked, “in the name of Maraunth Torr!”

Warriors blinked at him, mouths falling open and drawn swords wavering.

“It’s a trick,” the oldest among them snapped. “That’s not the master!”

“You sure?” another asked, frowning. “He changes shape, y’know—uses spells and all to do it. I seen him.”

“Of course I’m sure! Doesn’t sound like him, doesn’t act like him—”

“Oh, for Mystra’s sake,” Mirt growled, striding into their midst and grabbing one warrior off his feet to use as a shield as he thrust his sword up into the throat of another. “Let’s be about it!”

And as the dying man staggered backward into his fellows, blood spurting, Mirt swung the struggling man he had in a chokehold around in a great kicking arc, jostling one hiresword into the next. Curses and shoving erupted everywhere—and Myrmeen darted in to stab and slash at faces and throats in the armored crowd.

Elminster dodged to come in behind her, lunging like a swordsman at warriors who’d started after her but promptly stumbled over their dying, falling fellows. The hireswords were all still hemmed in at the doorway, which could take three slender, disciplined servants walking abreast but only two large and armored men carrying weapons, and he meant to keep things that way.

“More will be coming up fast behind these,” the voice of Alusair warned. “You made enough noise and tumult that all of them in the entry and feast halls heard you. They’re all setting aside what they were eating and scrambling to get into the battle. ’Ware thrown axes.”

Mirt was tired of whirling around the weight of his choking captive and let go of the man, putting his hip into the falling back and depositing the shouting man against the thighs of three of his fellows; they all went down in a heap. Giving Mirt time to turn and put the entire weight of his body behind a backhanded slash that drove two men helplessly into Elminster’s reach.

Myrmeen was a whirlwind of deft stabs, in under chins and through helm slits, but as Torr’s warriors slowly sorted themselves out and the fallen gave them room to ply their steel, the fray became a frantic ringing clangor of slash and parry—and she was the one who panted, “Perhaps this wasn’t such a good idea.”

“A little late for that now, lass!” Mirt bellowed from beside her, as hireswords pressed in at him from several sides and he struck aside their reaching blades with his own sword and one he’d snatched up from the fallen. “Besides, that one over there—see?—has a book shoved down his breastplate, and I’m mightily curious to see what it is.” He was looking at a dead hiresword atop a heap of fallen fellows, whose slit throat was bleeding down and away from the half-exposed tome.

“Better Swordplay for the Masses?” Elminster suggested, striking aside a blade with one of his swords and running its owner through the throat with his second, just-snatched-up sword. “Some of these jacks could use such a read.”

“If,” Myrmeen called to him, “they know how to read.” She added a heartfelt “Hah!” as she broke her sword free of a warrior’s blade-binding, shoved with all her weight and forced him back a step—and used his off-balance moment to feed him a dagger right up through his jaw.

Mirt ran up a heap of the dead to leap feetfirst down into the side of a warrior already struggling for footing, and the man crashed into two men trying to get past, which slammed them all against the wall, where Mirt cut them all new red grins and then whirled to face other nearby hireswords and give them a triumphant, teeth-bared bellow.

And suddenly what was left of Torr’s army was running, fleeing back the way they’d come with fearfully hissed curses and in an untidy stumbling thunder of boots, leaving their dead—a lot of dead—behind them.

“Only twelve left now,” Alusair reported, “assuming Shaaan has taken care of the two who fell through the floor of her bedchamber, but hasn’t harmed any others.”

“Ah,” Elminster responded, pointing with a sword that was running dark red with the blood of others, “but she has. Look yonder.”

The high-ceilinged and gloomy entry hall had a three-servant-wide door in the center of its western wall. That part of the west wall between door and the corner where it gave into the Copper Receiving Room was cloaked in a dusty, faded, gray-cobweb-shrouded old tapestry of impressive size—that was now stirring, as two former warriors of Torr, now helmless and wearing only a few plates of their armor, here and there, so their sweat-stained and supple underleathers were revealed, came slithering out from underneath the moldering edge of the tapestry, and undulated across the floor.

Their faces were gray with death, the eyes milky-white and filmed over, and they wore no boots or weapons—but metal finger sheaths had been fitted to their fingertips to give them talons, and they were dragging themselves along by means of them. Those curved metal points, everyone knew, would be coated with venom.

“Busy little murderess, isn’t she?” Myrmeen murmured. “I won’t particularly enjoy dismembering them, but if it’s that or die horribly …”

“Let’s just close the door on them, and leave them in here for now,” Mirt suggested.

“The entry hall links the kitchen and the Halaunt family apartments with the rest of the ground floor,” Elminster pointed out. “So unless you want to go down into the cellars or up into the open air every time you want to traipse from cook hearth to guest bedchambers … or break holes through walls—between the Green Audience Chamber and the Blue Chamber, for instance—we must deal with these. And forcing them outside just sends their menace out into the arms of Purple Dragons and war wizards who won’t be expecting them, and perhaps out into all Cormyr, beyond …”

“All right, all right, my civic duty beckons,” Mirt growled. “So, the plan?” He hefted his sword in one hand and a hand axe he’d selected from the arsenal of the fallen in the other.

“How about we close the door on them for now,” Myrmeen suggested, “until we concoct a plan?”

“Fair enough,” Elminster agreed, and the door was closed. “Luse?”

“Yes?”

“Could ye check on Manshoon again for us, and then try to find Shaaan and what she’s up to?”

“Of course. I go.”

Myrmeen bent and plucked out the book Mirt had noticed earlier, from the body of the hiresword who would no longer be needing it.

She opened it, flipped a few pages, and snorted. “Poetry,” she said dismissively.

“Verse need not be bad, lass,” Elminster reproved her. “The best incantations are elegant poetry.”

Myrmeen looked up at him, her expression severe. “This is not elegant poetry,” she informed him, then cleared her throat, lifted her chin like a dowager duchess, and declaimed grandly, “It was indeed a dark and stormy night, in which there were many dark and stormy knights.” Then her voice returned to its norm, as she added in disgust, “Gods, who writes this chamberpot-wipe drivel?”

El chuckled. “There are worlds full of scribes, lass. Remember, whate’er the result, they put pen to paper out of love. There are saner ways to make a living.”

“Oh, like playing adventurer?” Mirt grunted. “Or trying to be a wizard, in a place where magic can’t be trusted?”

“Lord of Waterdeep,” Elminster said gently, “ye would do well to remember this always: magic can never be trusted.”

CHAPTER 19

Hunting the Sleeping Snake

RIGHT, LASS, I’M READY. OPEN THE DOOR.”

Myrmeen obliged, and Mirt threw one hand axe through it at the envenomed undead in the room beyond, leaning low into his throw and raising one leg like a dancer posing in a tavern. Then he hurled another.

The undead reeled, unbalanced by the force of the whirling axes. Severed fingers flew, and half-severed digits bounced and dangled. Mirt lurched sideways, picked up the next pair of salvaged warriors’ axes, and threw them. More fingers flew.

Then the undead he’d maimed was shouldered aside by its fellow envenomed, sliding into view from one side of the doorway to move through it. Myrmeen slammed the door into it, hard, then sprang free and ran to snatch up axes of her own from the long line she and Mirt had arranged. He was already burying two hand axes in this new target, pinning one arm to the undead warrior’s thigh with one of his throws.

Myrmeen’s throws weren’t as hard as Mirt’s, but they lopped off poisoned fingers with precision, metal talon sheaths and all.

By the time the undead were too close to throw more axes at them, they were down to a few dangling fingers each, so Mirt and Myrmeen dismembered them with relative ease.

“Well, that was easier than I’d thought ’twould be,” Mirt growled, looking down at a litter of severed fingers and a still-rolling head. Both of Shaaan’s envenomed undead lay strewn across the floor of the entry hall in grisly pieces.

“You’re the only one who’s found gauntlets that fit, so stop gloating and scoop them into this coffer for me,” Myrmeen snapped. “We still have to fight our way into the kitchens, clean up whatever we find there, hope the Serpent Queen hasn’t poisoned everything, and get cooking. I’m getting ravenous.”

Mirt smiled, bent down, then scooped up and held out a handful of fingers. “Magically invigorated meat fingers cloaked in mystery sauce?”

“Your sense of humor needs work, Old Wolf, really it does. Just put them in the damned coffer, before I decide a better use for this is hurling it at your head.”

“My, my, the lady bites!”

“No, we don’t know each other that well, yet.”

Mirt winced. “El?”

The long-bearded wizard’s face was suddenly severe, his expression’s falsity betrayed by twinkling eyes. “Don’t look to me for protection or support, old friend. Ye dug the pit, and ye leaped into it—and I’m not now inclined to rush past thee and lie down to serve as a mattress to soothe thy landing.”

“But you’re so good at that! You’ve done it so often, for so many others before me!”

“They were prettier,” Elminster told the moneylender, “and less massive, too.”

“Coffer,” Myrmeen reminded patiently, holding it up. Mirt carefully stowed all the fingers he could find within it, then looked at the larger remnants still adorning the floor. “And these?”

“There’s a large crock in the larders that should serve,” she replied, “but we’ve got to reoccupy all those rooms first, and that’ll probably involve fighting the last few Torr men. Being as they haven’t tried to fight their way past us, and out of Oldspires.”

Mirt shook his head. “What a crazed way to build a house. All this space, room upon room like the high house of one of the richest and most powerful Waterdhavian families—and only one door to the outside. Just the one.” He shook his head. “Is this, ah, usual among the country architecture of Cormyrean nobility?”

“You mean, are they all this mad?” Myrmeen’s voice was wry. “They are, but no, this is not the norm. Homes do burn down in Cormyr like everywhere else, so most people prefer to have more than one way out. I’ve visited many country mansions where every last ground-floor room in some wings had its own outside door. Keeps the servants right busy digging away snowdrifts all winter long.”

Mirt nodded. “And how is it there happened to be a handy coffer sitting on yon table? You didn’t just dump out the ashes of past Halaunts, did you?”

“No, I dumped out some pipeleaf that had moldered to near powder decades ago. It seems this Lord Halaunt didn’t smoke, but earlier Halaunts did. Now, are we done here? I want to get back into that kitchen!”

“Fight our way back into that kitchen,” Elminster warned. “Two Torr men have been watching us from the door on the far side of the Copper Receiving Room from the first swing ye took at their Shaaan-animated fellows.”

“So do we march right over and have at them?” Mirt asked. “Or try the kitchen door right here in yonder wall?”

“This one here,” Myrmeen decided. “Otherwise we don’t know how many of them could burst out and come around to shove their blades up our backsides.” However, she looked to Elminster for his approval.

He nodded and smiled. “With magic chancy, thy preferences rule, for ye have the blade skills, and are the swiftest and most agile of we three.”

“Oh,” Myrmeen teased, “thank you, saer, said she!” Then she whispered, “Ready?”

When they both nodded, she strolled over to where she could slide the coffer full of fingers down out of sight behind a carved stone umbrella stand in the shape of a wood nymph clad only in strategically placed grapes and the entwining-her-limbs vine they were growing on.

And then took two swift sidesteps, and hauled open the kitchen door.

It swung in well-oiled ease, neither locked nor barred, and the charging Mirt got a glimpse of three startled warrior’s faces, two of them dropping their jaws and the third yammering, “They’re over here! Two of the three the master ordered us to behead!”

Then the Torr warriors wasted precious time grabbing their helms and jamming them on their heads—by which time the lumbering Mirt, who could move quite fast once he’d wheezed his way up to top speed, had crashed through the doorway, stepped on a greasy roasting pan amid the ankle-deep litter of ransacked cookware, ladles, and the like that now covered the kitchen floor, and slid right up to them.

He did not even try to slow down.

With a kkrraaAAAsh that shook the last few pieces of crockery out of the cupboards to plummet and smash, the moneylender cannoned right into the nearest warrior, and betrayed his background as a back-alley brawler by planting a balled fist in the man’s throat so hard that he broke that neck—not that a man with an utterly crushed windpipe can breathe long enough to worry about such things—and drove its owner back into his fellow behind him. Who in turn stumbled back into the third warrior.

Leaving the stumbling second warrior busy windmilling his arms and fighting just to keep hold of his sword—which meant he couldn’t hope to stop Mirt’s sword from opening his throat, in a swing so wide and free that the moneylender managed to strike the third warrior’s sword right out of his hand on the backswing.

So Mirt’s free hand didn’t have to contend with a sword slicing at it, and could reach out, grab hold of the underedge of the third warrior’s helm where it ran along down below the man’s jaw, twist head and helm around so hard and abruptly that the man preserved his neck only by sacrificing all balance and turning on his heels—and then ram that head into the sharp edge of a cupboard, where it ended at the door frame of the wide door opening into the feast hall.

Where there were other Torr warriors, five—no, six—of them, presumably including those who’d been watching through the Copper Receiving Room, but possibly not, gaping at Mirt and bringing hand axes up to hurl his way.

They were distracted by a furious, high-pitched shriek from behind Mirt that if truth be told distracted him and Elminster almost into slipping and falling.

“You did this to my kitchen? You barbarians! You utter alley-rat pigs! How dare you stand there in armor and purport to be human! Yeeeeeaarrrgh!”

And in a raging fury Myrmeen vaulted the falling body of that third warrior, now slumping floorward with a cupboard-edge-shaped deep furrow all down the back of his helm, and landed in the midst of the feast hall at a dead run, the swords in her hands whirling.

Gleaming plate armor is admirable protection in battle, but if it lacks a gorget, or mail coif, to protect the throat, and a visor to defend the face, it isn’t much use when worn by someone not swift enough to parry attacks at those vulnerable spots.

Wherefore two of the six hireswords were gurgling and dying before a third managed a desperate parry only by dropping his hand axe and wrapping both hands around the hilt of his sword.

By which time the fourth, fifth, and sixth Torr warriors saw Mirt lumbering their way with bloodthirsty glee flaming on his face and Elminster laughing in the throes of the same bright-eyed emotion—and took to their heels and ran.

Out through the Copper Receiving Room with Myrmeen felling their unfortunate comrade and racing after them.

They were halfway across the entry hall when a dreadful voice out of empty air right in front of the foremost warrior’s nose whispered, “You run to your doom! The Halaunts shall tear your bones out of your running body!”

It wasn’t the most frightening thing Alusair might have said, but she was in haste and improvising. Luckily for her, the running hiresword was already terrified.

He skidded on his heels, screamed, and flung up his hands—losing his axe in the direction of the ceiling but somehow managing to keep hold of his sword—and his fellow warrior, sprinting right behind him, ran into him with a solid metallic crash, and they went down together, skidding on … lumps of severed body that had been left on the hall floor. They both screamed again, in the instant before the third and last Torr warrior trampled them hard, lost his footing doing so, and fell hard on his behind.

And Myrmeen Lhal, still seething in rage and racing even faster than any of the fleeing hireswords had been able to manage, caught up to them and hacked and hewed, snarling as she slew.

When she was done, and standing panting and looking around wild-eyed for more targets, Mirt said from behind her, “If you go on like this, I’m very much afraid we’re going to need more than just that one crock.”

MYRMEEN WAS STILL spitting mad, so Mirt and El hastily set about picking up smashed bowls and the litter of pans and forks and ladles from the floor, and tossed it all out into the entry hall to be dealt with later.

“The dead warriors can guard it,” the moneylender muttered. “Watching gods above, but she’s furious!”

“Ye think?” El muttered, taking hold of a dead man’s foot and starting to tug. “Give her some time to simmer down, and we’ll reintroduce her to the concept of pickles and preserved fruit.”

“Oh, no,” Mirt replied. “Not me. You can do that, and I’ll stand well back and watch her make you wear it.”

Although it would probably take days to go through everything, thus far nothing had been poisoned, so far as they could tell, but all the cooking fires were out, and everything readily edible had been eaten.

“And what they couldn’t eat, they spilled and trampled underfoot,” Elminster sighed, heading for the butlery, where the mops were kept.

“As I observed earlier,” Myrmeen said in a surprisingly calm voice, suddenly looming up over them, “charming discipline. So we have no food.”

“Well,” Mirt rumbled, “not here. There are cellars full beneath us, because Torr’s warriors just haven’t had time enough to spoil or carry all of it off. Not without magic—and if Shaaan could hurl around that sort of magic, she wouldn’t need to be cutting the fingernails of the dead to points and tipping them with poison.”

Myrmeen shook her head in slow and silent exasperation, and looked at Elminster. “I have a new appreciation for you, Sage of Shadowdale. These madwits matters drive me wild, and you’ve put up with them for centuries. I cannot believe you aren’t babbling, screeching mad!”

Elminster smiled. “Are ye sure I’m not?”

Into the little silence that followed those words, Mirt coughed and said, “So we’d best be waving our swords and walking all wary down to the cellars now, eh? There are sacks in the south servery we can use to carry the food back.”

“Aye, let’s do that,” El agreed. “But as before, no splitting up. We go together, ready for trouble.”

“Lots of spices are missing,” Mirt put in, and then added with a frown, “and the cleaning oils, too! Y’know, the ones you rub into the cutting boards or the countertops after they’ve been stained or you’ve had to scrape them. What in the Hell’s kindling blazes would hireswords—or Serpent Queens, for that matter—want with such things?”

Myrmeen’s frown was deeper. “You know, come to think of it, I think the oils went missing earlier. I’d thought you’d moved them, and forgot to ask you where …”

“Right, so our little armed foray will be like going to market,” El concluded. “Food, spices, and cleaning oils. We have to eat—and more importantly, drink—for three more days before the spellstorm passes. Three days of dodging poison. So we must stock up wisely—and let us be about it.”

So they set out. The food mess diminished swiftly as they got farther from the kitchen, but the bodies, fallen weapons, and blood were strewn in profusion everywhere. Thankfully, Torr’s hireswords hadn’t smashed or carried off all the servants’ hand lanterns, so three full ones were swiftly found and lit.

“They keep a messy battlefield, these mercenaries,” Myrmeen remarked, as they left the plate and cutlery storeroom behind, and she led the way down the spiral stair.

“Careful, Mreen,” El murmured. “Shaaan could very easily have left one of her envenomed at the bottom, to rake ye as ye slide open the panel.”

Myrmeen nodded and descended more warily.

“Adventurers explore dungeons and battle monsters,” Mirt commented, lurching after her. “We mount expeditions down to larders to get food.”

“It’ll sound better in the ballads,” Myrmeen promised. “If I write them, that is.”

“Better start now,” the moneylender told her. “We may be too busy dying later.”

“NOT A SIGN of her,” Mirt mused aloud, as he forked the last sausage up out of the sizzling oil. “Wonder where she’s hiding?”

Shaaan might have done any number of things down in the cellars, but none had left much of a trace. So Mirt, Myrmeen, and Elminster had cautiously retrieved their sack of antidotes from the foot of the staircase that was so uncomfortably near the gate, and a goodly amount of food from the larder cellars, and lugged it back to the kitchens.

Where Myrmeen had openly enjoyed the sight of the eldest and mightiest surviving Chosen of Mystra, and the closest thing in Toril to a Weavemaster, washing down sinks and countertops, then scrubbing floors on his knees.

They’d gathered and set out what they’d need to make an evening meal and more antidotes, then made morningfeast. And then, girding themselves for battle once more, set out for the rooms of Malchor and Manshoon at the far end of Oldspires, and delivered the meals.

Malchor had invited them in and gravely thanked Elminster for his life, as well as them all for the meal, but Manshoon had called through the door for them to leave the food outside his threshold and he’d get it later, so they’d done that.

“So tell me, El,” Myrmeen had murmured, as they’d departed, “the silver fire you gave to him, through Alusair … he has that forever, now?”

“Nay,” he replied. “Mystra didn’t prepare him to host it, and he can’t do that for himself without my aid or her aid or the assistance of another sufficiently powerful servant of Mystra, so it will slowly leak from him, its healing done, and find its way back to her—and she will in turn give it to me again.”

“So what if she just decides to keep it?” Mirt rumbled. “Gathering all the power from all her Chosen, bit by bit and oh so casually, to become mightier?”

El gave them the sad ghost of a smile. “No god goes unwatched, these days, and this Mystra ascended into a—call it a balance of forces—that will visit pain and instability on her if she grows too powerful. Divinity is a burden as well as a boon.”

“And you know this how?” Myrmeen asked softly.

“A good point, lass. That’s where the faith that priests speak so often of comes in. We mortals must trust what we are told and shown by the gods, and even the gods lie. Especially the gods lie.”

“In other words,” Mirt said, “this could all be so many empty words spewed out from altars and in our dreams and by manifested gods looming over the landscape like sky-filling titans to bellow directly … but ’tis all we have, so we may as well accept it as given and get on with our lives.”

“Exactly,” El agreed. “Ye’d make a good sage.”

“Hunnh. Do sages eat better than moneylenders? I hadn’t noticed that.”

Before returning to the kitchen to make themselves morningfeast, get started on the evening meal, and make more antidotes, the three had gone hunting Shaaan again—with an utter lack of success.

Though the ceilings above them had trembled once, as if an unseen and silent giant’s fist had punched Oldspires hard enough to move it a few inches south.

Someone had miscast another spell—which meant that poor Alusair was probably lost in silent suffering somewhere. Again.

There was no way to prove the source of the spell was Shaaan, of course. It was more likely Manshoon, testing to see if he could make his magic obey him.

They avoided the adjacent rooms given to Malchor and Manshoon, but checked in on Tabra. She was abed again, but serenely reading a book from the Halaunt library, propped up on her pillows, and Myrmeen checked that it was nothing to do with magic (it was, in fact, Arthredran’s Lives of Illustrious Nobles, widely held to be flattering where it wasn’t fanciful, but universally judged a good read.

Then they searched every other room on the ground floor of Oldspires, without finding any hint of the Serpent Queen.

It seemed as if Shaaan had simply … vanished.

“There are a lot of cellars in this mansion,” Mirt had growled at last. “And wardrobes, and decaying attics. Hells, she could even be out on the rooftops, just waiting until dark. Or curled up behind a tapestry or behind furniture, like a sleeping snake.”

“Not like a sleeping snake,” Myrmeen sighed. “She is a sleeping snake.”

THE MISMATCHED TRIO was moving cautiously closer to her, down what had been the busiest passage in Oldspires—back when there were enough living people in the mansion to make any part of it “busy.” They walked warily, with weapons ready, stepping around the sprawled bodies of fallen warriors. Of which there were many.

“Could she have come to some agreement with the liches, and gone through the gate?” That was the warlike kitchen wench, all frowning alertness and raised blades.

“Would you risk dealing with liches?” That was the wheezing man with the paunch and the floppy wrecks of old boots. One of them almost trod on Shaaan, but she kept motionless.

“Hmm. Good point, good point.” The kitchen woman again. The wizard Elminster, walking behind them, said not a word, but looked amused as they passed her by.

The three walked on in silence for a bit, and when they spoke again, far down the passage, their voices were barely audible.

Shaaan smiled to herself as all the sounds of the trio hunting her died away into the gloomy distance.

That fat man could lurch along with surprising speed when he wanted to.

One more thing to remember.

For a little while, at least; if things went well, he’d not be alive much longer.

She lay still, listening patiently, until she was sure they were several rooms away and unlikely to return. Her attempt to animate another dead warrior had failed utterly, but the chaos her casting had caused should have eliminated that helpful ghost Elminster kept talking with, for at least a day or so.

So there would be no lurking spy to see one of the sprawled and dead warriors in the passages clamber carefully upright, so as to make as little sound as possible, and walk warily northward, closer and closer to the rooms of Malchor and Manshoon.

Pinning her hair up and rubbing a little pitch from a cold firehearth onto her chin before pulling the helm down over her head had ensured that she looked enough like an unshaven male warrior to escape notice among so many sprawled corpses. The hardest part had been finding a dead man close to her in size and build, followed by getting the armor off him.

Since then, it had simply been a matter of patience, and she had plenty of that. Just like the liches she’d seen waiting so patiently for someone to come within reach. She’d almost made that mistake, their gate had lured her so strongly, but … she had wary mistrust of attractive things to spare, too.

Right now, she went right on being patient. Whenever anyone was near, she lowered herself quietly to her knees, then delicately arranged herself in a lifeless sprawl and played dead. When she was as certain as she could be that no one was near, she’d rise once more and sneak northward, toward the man she sought.

Oh, she despised him, all right. His string of failures, his self-absorption, his towering arrogance … but he was almost certainly the most powerful wizard of those left. After herself, of course. Malchor seemed a gentle old man used to getting his way, who loved acting mysterious, and who—like Elminster—was far less than his reputation. Aye, trading on what legend made of you had taken both of them far, but cut no ice with her.

She who knew what real might at magic was.

Under her borrowed warrior’s gauntlets, she wore metal fingertip sheaths tipped with a wide array of deadly venoms, in case of rejection or betrayal.

The man she sought would be an utter fool not to ally with her, given what the situation here at Oldspires had become … but then, most men were utter fools.

And a few swift strides past the grand staircase—her lip curled; “grand” only in the dreams of one sad and lonely old noble—and around a great dead hulk of a monster that looked impressively disgusting in death, and had probably seemed much, much worse when it had been alive.

And she was at the door she sought.

She knocked very softly, trying not just to avoid rousing Malchor, but to make her knocking sound feminine. After all these years, Manshoon still looked as if flirtatious blandishments worked on him.

“And who might it be, who knocks without?” his voice came through the door, sounding amused.

“A woman of the Art, who comes alone. On matters personal.”

There. If that didn’t do it …

It did.

The door opened about a hand width, revealing the unsmiling but somehow clearly pleased Zhentarim lord—or at least, a hand width-wide head-to-toe slice of him—inside the room beyond. Regarding her with interest but a total lack of surprise.

“Hail, Serpent Queen,” Manshoon greeted her. “I wondered when you’d come seeking my aid. With only three days left of spellstorm.”

Arrogant bastard. Well, she had poisons that could ravage vampires; he could die like all the rest.

“I, too, can count the passing days. May I come in?”

“Why?”

“To speak with you.”

“About?”

Shaaan didn’t bother to sigh. She’d half expected him to be this tiresome.

“An alliance. The two of us against everyone else inside this house—and the forces of Cormyr that surround it, on guard against the likes of us.”

Manshoon half smiled. “An attractive notion, I’ll grant, yet I fail to muster the barest beginnings of the trust I would need to feel to seriously entertain such a crazed notion. So, ‘Serpent Queen,’ my answer is: no.”

The door started to close.

And Shaaan gave him a half smile of her own and let fly with the spell she had held ready.

Hoping against hope that this time, this time, it would go off without a hitch.

It did.

The door exploded inward and Manshoon with it, lost in a blast that sent the entire front wall of his room hurtling out through his windows and into the surrounding spellstorm.

“A fool to the last,” Shaaan decreed triumphantly, listening to the shouts of those watching from afar—and no doubt hurrying now, to try to get a better view. O-ho, they’d built a rickety scaffolding of hastily felled Halaunt trees to try to see over the restless fogs, and it was now starting to sway under the weight of too many peering, climbing, imperiously shouting men … how sweet.

Yet even in the bright heart of her triumph, Shaaan was far too old and experienced a spellhurler to turn her back and stroll away until the roiling dust of her spell had cleared and she could be sure Manshoon of the Zhentarim was either lost in the mind-devouring fog, or pieces of him were to be seen bloodily decorating his bedchamber.

She did, however, sidestep toward the wall where the Chamber of the Founder met the grand staircase, so she was partially sheltered behind dead spider-scorpion monster. Purely out of defensive habit.

Which turned out to be prudent indeed, a moment later, when a flood of forked and spitting lightning bolts came racing at her out of the drifting cloud of debris underneath the now-gone windows.

And staggered her, despite the constant mantle emanating from her gorget. Which had been patchy to wavering to nonexistent all the time she’d been in Oldspires, and was sadly failing now.

Manshoon’s spells were obviously working, too.

Her acid bolts were best saved until the cloud whirled up by her initial blast was gone, revealing him, so she gave him a reversion of gravity, to whirl him up into an ungentle meeting with the ceiling.

And it failed, flooding the room instead with a glorious butterfly-blue radiance and the sound of a singing trumpet.

Shaaan sighed. If it came to battle, she’d hoped to be swift and relatively quiet, so as to avoid having Elminster and his two bumbling jesters of servants trying to harass her backside, but this damned chaos of unreliable magic …

Abruptly her blue glow was gone, swept away by a sudden driving rain, water pounding straight down from … nowhere at all. The floor under her feet shuddered briefly, as if she’d been standing on a raft that a small wave had passed under, and then the rain ended, as swiftly as it had begun, leaving a drenched and darkly handsome vampire glaring at her across scorched and tumbled wreckage.

Manshoon’s second spell had gone awry, too.

She shrugged, and fed him acid.

Or tried to.

Her racing bolts formed and faded at about the same time as they started to move, filling the air with a sharp and unfamiliar smell that made Shaaan think of kitchen fires involving things never meant to be cooked.

She stepped into the doorway leading to the grand staircase and rubbed at her gorget, hoping its mantle would do better than last time. Her limbs were still tingling and spasming.

A flash and a snarled curse, followed by a soundless blow that smote at her ears and rolled away through the mansion, marked the failure of his next spell.

Hmm. Perhaps a more personal magic, of less power …

She worked one of her oldest, simplest spells. She always kept several of her own version of vipergout ready, and if it worked now …

It did! The nine little vipers plunged out of her mouth in an eager flood and went racing at her foe, wriggling in an utter frenzy.

Go, my pets, and give the mighty Manshoon nine little problems. Nine deadly distractions to dog him while we fight. And if magic was going to be this faulty here and now, ’twas time to join their wriggling ranks, get close, and use her venoms.

And if the Zhent tried to take sneering refuge in the thought that a vampire could shrug off many poisons, destruction would greet him all the sooner. Under the caps on the sheaths she wore on the smallest fingers of both her hands were venoms that dissolved flesh.

And she’d never heard of a flourishing skeletal vampire.

She hastened. The faster she reached him, the fewer spell hurlings she’d have to risk.

He tried once more, bathing her momentarily in ale-brown murk that rang with weird clanging echoes and smelled strongly of mint, and then she scrambled over the fallen litter of what was left of his bed, her armor shrieking briefly on its forceful way through jagged ends of wood and metal, and strode right at him.

His body wavered for a moment, as he sought to become a mist and then a bat, then lapsed back into cursing, glaring solidity, drawing a dagger and backing into an area of clear floor where he could move swiftly.

There he awaited her, vipers undulating over the surrounding debris as they converged.

“You would have been wiser to accept my offer,” Shaaan told him as she came for him, “but then, wise judgments have never been your strong suit, have they? And now, as they say, it’s too late.”

Her vipers slithered down into Manshoon’s little chosen battleground, and reared up around him menacingly.

Shaaan gave him her nastiest, softest smile, raised her hands to try a spell that should tear him apart in agony, and added, “Much, much too late.”

He flung the dagger at her face, hard and accurately.

She caught it with casual ease, and tossed it away over her shoulder.

“I was catching and throwing knives while I danced naked on tavern tables long, long before you were born. Care to try again?”

Manshoon stared at her for a moment, then shook his head.

“Well, then,” she asked, “care to die? Again?”

And she strode toward him, not bothering with the spell. Let this be personal, and let it be now.

CHAPTER 20

The Snake Sleepeth Not

MANSHOON CALMLY WENT TO ONE KNEE FOR A MOMENT AND DREW another dagger from the back of one boot, then rose to meet her charge.

The vipers struck at him, reared up, and tried again, heedless of his tramplings, until they could move no more. He stamped once or twice, but otherwise paid them no heed, trusting in the protection of his tall boots as he kept his attention on Shaaan.

Seeing a splintered table leg lying on the littered floor, he snatched it up to serve him as a club, more to fend off than to hit. He knew better than to let her get within arm’s reach. Her plate armor left only her head vulnerable to his dagger, and she was a walking arsenal of venoms and other poisons. He was more or less immune to many poisons, thanks to long and patient years of dosing himself with ever-larger amounts, and she’d had more years and more expertise in poisons to more than do the same. So almost certainly she had no fear of her own poisons.

Which meant that every last edge, point, and surface of her, from head to toe, could be coated in venom.

And she was smiling her soft smile that promised death and walking right at him, one arm half-raised, ready to intercept his improvised club.

He briefly entertained the notion of flailing at her with all his strength, to shatter that arm and batter her to the ground where he could crack her skull and then every bone he could reach, to leave her lying helpless and dying, but not dead so any deadly contingencies on her wouldn’t trigger.

Let her pant in agony for a day or more, in a truly slow and miserable demise. He felt no pity at all for poisoners.

Yet all this was mere fantasy. What was really happening was a deadly dance of leaping, turning, and swift shuffling, so he was always facing her and always fending her off, while she constantly tried to get past his guard and claw him with the metal tips that adorned all her fingers. He tried to use his strength to drive her back into rubble, where her footing would be perilous, but he was facing a woman as tall and long of arm and agile as himself, and she knew exactly what he was trying to do and merely danced back out of reach, plucked up a surviving viper, flung it at his face, and charged in after, time after time.

And one of these times, Manshoon reflected, shaking the ichor of the latest serpent off his hand, he wouldn’t be swift or deft enough, and would get bitten before his razor-sharp dagger severed the viper’s head in midair.

And always the woman who called herself the Serpent Queen smiled at him, the smile that held no love nor mirth nor friendly favor, as she danced and ducked and lunged like the best swordsmen, trying to do just one thing.

Get close enough to embrace him.

Ironic, that, considering how many women who’d embraced him and yielded themselves to him out of fear, that now the crown was on the other head, and it was he who—

Damn!

His backswing with the club dipped just too low, and she sprang high and came down backside first on it, sitting it toward the floor, her weight too much for his arm. Which meant she sprang off it and right into him, face-first and lips reaching—

He twisted around in desperate haste and let go the club so he could stagger free, pivoting on his heel, trying to—

Failing. She clawed at him, and when he drove his dagger up at her fingers as viciously as he could, she clutched at it, risking severed fingers, long enough to fold it in between their bodies, so she could lunge, her bosom to his chest, collarbone to collarbone with his dagger trapped between them, and—

There was a jab at the base of his neck, fleeting but painful, and she shoved him away and backflipped, crashing through the ruined skeleton of his bed to wind up half the room away, laughing in triumph.

“And so you’re stung, and can count on four hands—four hands—the breaths you have left to live, unless you beg me! Beg me well enough, proud Lord of the Zhentarim, to give you the antidote—that only I have devised, so I am the only source. You’ll have to kneel to me at last!”

And with a wild peal of laughter, she turned and sprinted … and was gone, leaving Manshoon standing alone, staring after her, and clutching at his neck where sticky blood was welling out.

The point of his dagger was red with it, and must have made the wound in his neck. Yet could he risk the chance that his blood was flowing only because of that? She’d been close enough to kiss him, had been kept from doing so purely by his own desperate twisting and fending, but … he had to admit he hadn’t been able to defend all of himself, all over.

He couldn’t risk it.

The last viper reared up to strike—and he took great satisfaction in booting it across the room, to thump into the wall. Where he pinned it in place with his dagger, snarling out heartfelt curses, then jerked his dagger free and ran after the Serpent Queen.

He knew where she’d be headed.

SHAAAN LAUGHED LOUD and long as she plunged down the stairs into waiting darkness, the full-throated bellows of mirth that men indulged in all the time, and so few women allowed themselves.

And why not gloat? She was the Serpent Queen, and had styled herself thus so ruthlessly and regally down the centuries that some obeyed her out of respect for the title, not out of terror.

But terror was best. Terror was always best.

It even worked on Manshoons, and the founder of the Zhentarim was as worldlywise and long-lived—if you counted all of his various selves—as herself, not to mention far more accomplished than the Harpers and their ilk gave him credit for. They dwelled on his defeats and failures, not all that he’d built and ruled.

And for all that, he was doomed. She’d only managed to nick him with his own drawn dagger—and been sliced by it herself, in the doing. Yet her ruse had worked; that little gloat she’d done had duped him, and now he would be following her, running after Shaaan as she raced down to the cellars, would have to pursue …

Down to that gate, of course. Elminster and the rest of them must have arrived in Oldspires through it, and cloaked it somehow from her. Until their cloaking spell had faded and then failed, as unreliable as all other magic in the heart of the spellstorm.

Of course they’d tried to hide it from her.

She knew how to use it. Not stepping through it to reach its other end; any fool could do that, and many such wayfarers even did it by accident, blundering forward, not knowing where they were going or even that any translocation was involved.

No, she knew how to call on a gate’s power to power her own spells.

Which meant that here in Oldspires with magic unreliable and ringed by the out-and-out ravening chaos of a spellstorm, the gate was the key to everything.

She’d explored ancient gates a time or seven before, down her years, and successfully wrested energy from them before. Given an open gate, and the right spells—spells she’d readied while in hiding down in the cellars—she could drain energies from the gate to steady her spells. In the chaos of wild magic prevailing inside Oldspires—where, after all, some spells had worked, sometimes—her spells, and hers alone, should be reliable.

Racing down the grand staircase into the waiting gloom, she looked up and back.

And there was Manshoon, face white with fury, racing after her.

And behind and above the Zhent, the figure of—Malchor Harpell, staring down at them both, his expression grim.

As he reluctantly set foot on the stairs and followed.

Shaaan laughed again, loud and long, scaring up echoes.

Come, fools! Come to your deaths!

The more, the merrier.

ELMINSTER SWUNG ONE more cellar door shut, turned away from it, and told Mirt and Myrmeen, “Enough. For now, at least, we’ve spent quite enough time searching for the Serpent Queen. I suspect we’ll find her soon enough—when she wants to be found. I’d rather turn to dealing with something of wider importance than personal survival and victory here inside this mansion.”

“He’s going to say something grand,” Mirt told Myrmeen.

“Yes,” she replied, “and it’ll be something quite likely to get us killed.”

The Sage of Shadowdale gave them a rather weary smile, and said, “I’m going back to the gate the liches have opened, to have a go at closing it.”

“That’ll definitely get us killed,” Mirt told Myrmeen. “He’s trying to make up for not managing to do it last time.”

“If ye two jesters are quite finished,” El told them, “I don’t plan to imperil ye—both of ye can watch from the doorway as I come at it from behind.”

“Right,” Myrmeen replied, “we’re with you, El. Yet we would both appreciate knowing why, in this house full of murderous wizards and with the busy poisoner among them on the loose and in hiding, you feel the need to go after this gate, that wasn’t even part of our discussions beforehand or even well after arriving here, and do so now. Why can’t it wait until our murderer is caught, or has run out of mages to kill?”

Elminster nodded. “Fair enough. I don’t want to tackle the gate, with the Art so unreliable and the Weave in such turmoil from the leakages of all the gates. Larloch’s liches outnumber me and, for all I know, work very well together despite their master not mindriding and guiding them. I gamble much, if I try. It’s not a wise chance to take, and I lack the foolish overconfidence in my own abilities that will let me charge serenely ahead, taking on that many liches. Yet if I can close the gate, it cuts off an escape route for Shaaan that’s also a way in for more monsters or armies or whomever and whatever else the liches want to send. Moreover, the gate is a source of magical power she might use to try to anchor her spells, to make them powerful and, crucially, reliable in this spell-chaos we stand in.”

“So this has become about the needs of the moment, the here and now, after all,” Myrmeen pointed out.

“Nay,” El told her grimly. “Beneath our fates and the task Mystra gave me to try to do here, this meeting of mages that was supposed to nudge them toward eventual accord and instead led to so many deaths, the gate is part of something wider and deeper.”

“The liches,” Mirt said suddenly.

“The liches,” El confirmed. “Freed from Larloch’s yoke, they can now meddle and dabble, just as I and countless cabals of wizards—right up to the Zhentarim and the Red Wizards—do. Reflect on this gate standing open. Even if guarded by the war wizards and Purple Dragons now surrounding this house, it gives Larloch’s liches the ready means to become active behind the scenes in the politics of Cormyr. They know precisely how their master worked for so long, because they were his agents, the enacting part of that work. What if they decide to slowly and subtly subvert the minds of many nobles? They would be in no hurry, and don’t want to rule openly; their way would be to have fronts, duped hands and minds willing to do their bidding, whatever it is.”

Myrmeen shivered. “Knowing that, I could never feel safe in my own land again.”

“Aye, indeed,” El agreed, sounding almost satisfied. “Now, as I recall, the gate is this way …”

THE GLOW OF the gate was as bright as ever. Shaaan smiled and hurried the other way, into the first pitch-dark cellar of the chain of rooms she could use to work her way around behind it. Why give the liches the opportunity to know who she was, and lash out at her?

She had to cast her draining spell before Manshoon found her missing from in front of the gate, and either tried to treat with the liches himself, or headed elsewhere to search for her.

And if she cast it properly, and this gate wasn’t markedly different from the others she’d experimented with, she’d be able to draw on its energies over quite a distance—certainly from every nook and cranny of Oldspires. Which meant it was worth sacrificing one of her small magical baubles—the garter that enabled teleportation, perhaps—to steady her casting of the draining spell. After all, she dared not try to use the garter’s powers in this chaos of the Art, or to try to go from within the spellstorm to somewhere beyond it, so …

One last door snatched open, and she was panting her way along a cluttered room to the back of the gate, clawing at the straps that held the plate of armor covering the back of her right leg as she went. No need to get it off; if it hung free and she could get a hand in to touch the garter …

There! Done, and she was close enough. She stopped, fought down her swift breathing, put one hand to the garter and pointed with the other at the gate, and cast the spell.

“Anathroaz ilzurviss faezlar”—then the zigzag gesture as she visualized the flames of the gate sliding down her arms and into her, and then—“Varathos omdreth houlooond!”

And it was done. The garter was crumbling to dust under her fingertips as she fumbled for the straps that would buckle the plate closed again, doubting she’d have the time—

She didn’t.

There was Manshoon, stepping warily through the archway that faced the gate. He saw her in the gloom beyond it instantly.

That might have had something to do with the ruby-red bolt of searing-through-everything force she sent at him, well under the gate, at ankle level.

“One might call it,” she murmured aloud, pleased at the visible flow of cold blue flames down to join the bolt and augment it, “the first step in the de-feet of Manshoon.”

Bathed in ruby-hued flickerings, her target sprang hastily back, smoke rising from his boots, and he tried to retreat back through the archway. He disappeared out through it with a stumbling fall backward and a shout of pain.

Faint cold laughter erupted from the gate. The liches were watching.

Blue-white speeding bolts raced into the cellar from where Manshoon had disappeared.

Shaaan curled her lip. Really? This was the best the mighty lord of the Zhentarim could manage?

He must be even more feeble in wits and might of the Art than she’d thought.

She put a hand to her gorget and called on the energies of the gate to augment her mantle, so the arriving bolts would feed her protective power rather than harm her.

And damned if the man didn’t peek around the edge of the archway to see the results of his attack, like any eager novice! She lashed him with a raking claw of force, talons that should—

That did nothing. She wasn’t the only one with a mantle.

Manshoon stepped back into the archway and spread his arms dramatically, like a priest in full supplication behind an altar, casting a spell Shaaan didn’t recognize.

And then, beyond Manshoon frowning and then spitting out a curse, nothing happened.

Ah, this unreliable magic was truly a curse.

Unless, that is, you had your own source of power to ground your spells and make them happen as they were intended to. Shaaan smiled smugly and let fly once more.

By his involuntary screams, the stabbing lightnings encaging him hurt a lot.

So much for your puny mantle, Manshoon the Manyfaced. Now let’s see a little more of your tears, hmm?

Shaaan raked him with fire, then stabbed at him with conjured halberds. This was fun, and almost too easy; the man was so pitiful, it was like tormenting a helpless pet.

And then another man—Malchor Harpell—appeared behind the writhing Manshoon, frowned at Shaaan, and let fly at her with what was obviously a prepared spell.

A spell that set the liches to muttering as it roared past the gate and came at her, snarling as it rushed closer, its circular maw spinning, a great concentric spiral of countless whirling fangs.

This was trouble.

Shaaan dragged all the energy she could out of the gate, so that it flickered and bobbed—great hissing consternation from the liches—and flung it up like a shield, messy and roiling, no time for elegance or even to brace and buttress it to do a proper job, what with—

Malchor’s spell tore through it and flung ravening spellfire in all directions, searing through the very walls and ceiling in an instant. In a dozen small places were rents that shouldn’t cause a collapse in the old mansion, and—

And what was she doing thinking of all-the-godsbedamned Cormyrean countryside architecture when some of that fire was inevitably going to come lashing through her?

It did.

Ohhhh, the pain!

Shaaan screamed, long and loud and raw, as her mantle collapsed and she crashed through stacked coffers and chests and old, canvas-wrapped tapestries or some such, the fires clawing at her melting scales and flesh and simply devouring the stored things she was falling through. Yet even as ravening fire ravaged her, the fires of the gate were rushing in to fill and soothe and restore, and she just had to endure a few interminably long moments of sheer gasping agony before she was clambering her way out of half-melted debris, more or less whole—though there wasn’t much left of her armor, and what there was dangled in twisted, bubbled, half-melted grotesquerie—to face Malchor and Manshoon with snarling defiance.

Whereupon she was amused to see them both finish hastily casting spells that should have destroyed her utterly before she could recover … and watch their spells fail miserably. One evoked a plume of drifting beige smoke, and the other, a brief sound as of tinkling miniature bells, and then nothing at all.

They tried again, both of them weaving spells with great urgency and precision, as Shaaan calmly removed the most hampering pieces of armor and casually conjured herself a new defensive ward, drawing on the power of the gate to craft a floating shield.

Malchor’s spell failed, but Manshoon’s came racing at her, a great shadowy dragon’s head with jaws agape to bite and rend.

She intercepted it calmly with the shield, but Manshoon smilingly did something deft and sudden with his dragon head that collapsed the shield to one side while the head burst past it and at her.

Shaaan was forced to claw energy out of the gate in unseemly haste to keep the dragon head from biting down on her, and it flickered and darkened momentarily, so sudden and severe was her draining.

Whereupon angry words were exchanged within the gate, in a tongue unfamiliar to her—and the gate erupted in a dozen snakelike columns of purple-black fire that doubled back around the gate to quest for her, wavering back and forth as they came not out of any lack of control, but in a deliberate attempt to fill the cellar so that there would be no avoiding them.

And wherever they touched the stacked crates stored in the cellar, those crates melted away as if licked by a volcano—literally vaporized, leaving only momentary plumes of greasy black smoke behind.

Shaaan swiftly called on the energies of the gate to empower a defensive web that would gather in and ensnare those snakes of dark flame reaching for her, so she could hurl them all back at the gate that had spawned them. And if they should happen to bathe her two opponents in this ludicrous spell duel in flooding fire, reducing them to charred bones or less, what would really be the loss?

Nothing she’d mourn in the slightest. A notoriously crazed and eccentric family of wizards would lose their patriarch and most sober-minded member—a loss risked daily by every family that dabbled in the Art—and the creator and longtime head of one of the nastier organizations to infest Faerûn would be swept away, one more time, to either make Manshoon extinct at last, or give way to yet another in the long, long line of echoes of Manshoon the Manyfaced.

That second loss might well make her a hero to many.

Not that she was feeling heroic at this particular moment, with flaming purple-black death reaching for her, and the foes she was standing against unable to successfully shape spells to send against her …

Working coolly, with not an instant to waste, she shifted the web with her mind to intercept column after racing column of flame, as they bored through the air closer and closer—

More crates melted away. She had to get every last reaching snake of flame, or her body would suffer the same immolation as those crates … just five left now, and she was having to back away to win herself time to snare them. Yet retreat carefully, for the way back through the stacked storage was neither wide nor straight …

Four left, three—but each of this last trio seemed to have a mind of its own, seeking her at different speeds and in different directions.

And although it felt wrong, seemed almost suicidal to do so, the best thing to do was to move right into their midst, bringing her web with her, so the reaching snakes of flame rolled into its curving clutches before they had time to veer too far apart.

And while she still had room and time enough to haul on the web and use it like a giant sling to fling the snakes of flame back at their source.

Like … so.

Last three snared, she sprinted forward three steps and planted her feet, then swung her entire body in a mighty curving throw, and—

Purple-black flames roared at the gate itself and struck it, exploding like waves crashing ashore against a great prow of natural rock, spewing great washes of purple-black flame everywhere. Malchor and Manshoon were leaping for their lives, and the gate itself was shuddering, its deep blue glow flaring bright white and immediately dying away to black dimness, then flaring white again …

Purple-black flames spattered against walls and ceilings and melted them, while amid the spreading destruction, the air shuddered and shrieked and thundered, tearing apart in great rents of spewing radiation that promptly closed again, only to reopen anew. The gate groaned and started to lean, as if it was going to topple and crash, but furious voices hissed spells from within it, and deep blue flames sprouted out of empty air to race madly over its surface in all directions, richocheting and rebounding, and—

“Embraces of Mystra, woman, what have ye done?” Elminster snarled from behind Shaaan, and she whirled around in time to see him spread his arms wide, hands like two claws cupping empty air—and along those arms the air glowed blue-white, hundreds of rushing, shifting, racing strands becoming visible in the air that elsewhere looked dark and empty—and then he slowly brought his hands together, to point at the gate.

And roiling, melting-all purple-black flames came rebounding from all sides to curve in the air like mighty ocean waves, curling down and around to race along the line of Elminster’s pointing fingers, right at the dark and featureless backside of the gate.

It swallowed them as if they didn’t exist, more and more flames simply vanishing into that silent and serene black oval of utter darkness whose blue-glowing edge flared briefly, gouting out tendrils of blue flame, and then—

Burned out, in a sudden black and lopsided collapse into darkness, angry voices cut off as if by a knife.

The gate was no more, and the cellar was suddenly empty of blue glows and purple-black flames and all other manifestations of magic. The spells being angrily hurled by Manshoon and Malchor shivered into nothingness.

“How did you do that?” Shaaan asked, more protestingly than expecting a useful answer to her question.

“Weavemaster,” El said tersely, jerking his thumb in the direction of his own chest. “Ye let out enough wild energy to furnish me with ample power to shut down and destroy an operating gate. Liches or no liches.”

“What happened to them?”

“They just had a door slammed on their noses. They won’t forget that, Shaaan Serpent Queen. Ye might want to learn how to run. And hide.”

“Oh,” Shaaan blurted out, taken aback for a moment.

And then she recovered herself and her mounting anger, and snarled, “So you’ve meddled again, and this time in my affairs once more. Well, I’ll just—”

But the spell she flung at him did nothing at all. She cast it, and … nothing happened. From the other end of the cellar, Manshoon laughed.

At her, damn him.

She turned to give him a furious glare and hurl a spell his way that would be far more than a stinging slap, and—

Again, nothing happened. She was down two of her strongest spells with nothing at all to show for it.

Cast and … gone.

“Boo,” a pain-racked and feeble voice whispered in her ear, startling Shaaan more thoroughly than she’d been taken aback in a long time.

She backed up so suddenly she almost fell. There was no one there. It must be that damned ghost princess.

“I will destroy you all,” Shaaan hissed at Elminster, and the inevitable fat man and sleek woman peering from well behind him, and the invisible Alusair.

“Some other day, perhaps,” Elminster told her. “And perhaps not.” He took a step toward her. “Perhaps,” he added, as severely as a child’s disapproving tutor, “ ’tis high time ye learned to create and help and aid, Shaaan Surbraor, rather than destroy.”

Shaaan hissed wordless hatred at him this time, retreating still farther. How did he know her surname? No one still alive knew that name!

“Mystra knows it,” Elminster told her quietly, “wherefore, now, so do I.”

He’s reading my thoughts? Shaaan had suffered quite enough. She turned and fled into the darkness.

But not far. Into the next cellar, where she could peer back through a hole newly burned by lich-flames hurled by her web, and see and hear what happened in the cellar she’d just left.

What happened was that Manshoon turned on his heel and fled back up the grand staircase, leaving the Harpell mage standing alone.

Malchor gave Elminster a weary look, then turned and headed for the staircase Manshoon had just vanished up, not hurrying. To Shaaan, he looked like a man who felt that the trip back to his room was a long trudge indeed.

After that, Elminster asked the empty air, “Luse, how bad is it?”

And the empty air replied, “Bad. Yet I seem to be getting used to it, damn you very much.”

“The snake,” Mirt remarked, coming forward, “sleepeth not.”

“The kitchen,” Myrmeen ordered sharply. “Without their magic, and with us camping on the food so the Serpent Queen can’t poison it, they’ll all keep. I’m famished.”

At that moment, Shaaan’s stomach growled so loudly that Elminster and Mirt turned to peer in her direction. It seemed she was famished, too.

And suddenly so weary of it all that she found she hadn’t the slightest enthusiasm for racing to the kitchen to poison anything.

Silently she turned away, and started the long, roundabout trudge back to her own room.

CHAPTER 21

This Isn’t Over Yet

I DON’T KNOW ABOUT YOU,” MIRT GROWLED AT MYRMEEN, FROM WHERE he was kneeling and raking out the hearth, “but I cook better whenmy stomach isn’t a protestingly empty chasm.”

The former Lady Lord of Arabel gave him a look. “There’s a part of me that gazes upon your impressively large and rotund belly, Lord of Waterdeep, and protests inwardly that the sort of innards that swell such an, ah, achievement could never be any sort of empty chasm, protesting or otherwise—but then there’s another part of me that has been very, very hungry while preparing a meal, and agrees with you wholeheartedly.”

“Ah,” Mirt replied happily, “then pray take my lordly advice and listen to that second part of you. It’s wiser than the first, which seeks to judge from outward appearance only. Never a good idea, in any field of endeavor or situation.” The two of them had just made and fed Elminster a hearty meal, and shared it with him, and were now nearly finished preparing dishes chosen because they wouldn’t spoil if left to cool, and would still be pleasant when reheated a day later.

“El,” Myrmeen said to the tall, thin man unhurriedly washing dishes at the sink, “It’s almost time to ring the gong.”

“Ye’d like me to do it rather than Mirt?”

“No, I just wanted you forewarned. I don’t like to startle Weavemasters who can humble archmages and liches in the heart of a wild spell duel, and shut down ancient and powerful gates, to boot.”

Elminster chuckled. “Mreen, ye’d be surprised at how little I can do, startled or otherwise, in some situations. Thank ye for the warning.”

Mirt took the last roasting pan off the heat and covered it with its dome. “Strike it now?” he asked eagerly, flexing his fat fingers.

“Now,” Myrmeen and El agreed, and watched the old moneylender wipe his hands, and head for the great gong that would summon anyone hearing it to a meal.

Not that there were all that many left …

And then, amid the slowing bustle of the kitchen, the voice of Alusair piped up from the air right in front of Mirt.

“I bring word of yet more trouble, I fear.”

“Ye gods, don’t do that, Princess!” Mirt snarled. “My heart—!”

“You still have one, old rogue? Good to know! Heed, please, all of you: something that smells like roast boar cooking—but mingled with something less pleasant—is coming from Malchor’s room. I tarried, wondering if I should go through the keyhole to spy, and heard a rather horrible bubbling scream from inside the room, followed by feeble moaning.”

“Thank ye, Luse!” El snapped, pulling his hands out of the soapy water and drying them. “Everything off the heat and safe to leave? Good! Lock and bar all the doors, Mreen, except this one; I’ll lock it when we leave. Mirt, bring the sack of antidotes. Let’s hasten!”

“Bloody archmages,” the Lord of Waterdeep complained as they hurried out. “When will they be finished killing each other?”

“When there’s none of them left,” Myrmeen replied tartly.

Elminster sighed. “I wish ye were wrong, lass, but I very much doubt ye are.”

EL FINALLY FOUND the right key, unlocked the door with a rattling sound that seemed almost angry, and shoved it open.

The fireplace was lit. The unhealthy reek was coming from it, and no wonder. Three severed human heads were burning in the grate.

“Alastra, Yusendre, and Skouloun,” Myrmeen murmured, shaking her head.

“Our scaly mage was trying to make very sure the fallen stayed fallen,” El said grimly, as he and Mirt bent over the three bodies sprawled on the bedchamber floor.

Shaaan lay on her back, most of her fingers severed; they were scattered around the room, amid much blood. Her hands had been pinned gorily to the carpeted floor by daggers driven through both palms, and her throat had been thoroughly, deeply cut.

“No yellow on her fingers,” Mirt said with a frown. “I’d thought …” His voice trailed away as he stared at who was lying on either side of the dead Serpent Queen.

Facedown and moaning faintly as their bodies jerked in the last fading throes of various poisons, lay the two men who’d killed Shaaan: Malchor and Manshoon.

“Feed them half of every antidote bottle we brought,” El ordered briskly, “and then the restful sleep draft. I am not losing every last one of the archmages who gathered here. That would shame us and the Lady I serve, too.”

Myrmeen looked at him. “Some of the antidotes will clash, El. It could be fatal.”

El shrugged. “If we miss giving them the wrong ones, they’re dead anyway.”

“Good point,” she agreed, and set about it. “This Malchor was decent enough, for an archmage. Better than many. As for Manshoon …” She shrugged, then looked at Elminster. “You’d miss him, wouldn’t you? A right familiar old enemy.”

Elminster sighed, nodded, and asked Mirt, “Found any wounds?” The moneylender had just finished rolling the two men over. The eyes of both were rolled up in their heads, and their mouths were slack and ringed with dripping foam.

“Just scratches from her nails—oh, and a right deep gash across the back of Manshoon’s hand here. Looks like he backhanded her dagger out of her hand.” Mirt looked across the room, then pointed at where a roundel needleblade stood proud out of the frame of a bookshelf. “And it ended up yonder.”

El went and retrieved it. He peered hard at the blade, then shook his head and tossed it into the fire, drawing one of his own daggers from inside his boot.

When he cut away Manshoon’s clothing to bare ribs and a taut belly, Myrmeen frowned at him. “El, what’re you doing?”

“Obeying Mystra,” El replied, holding his hand a fingerwidth above the unconscious Zhent’s flesh and moving it around as if sensing something.

After a moment he nodded, pointed at a particular spot, and made a careful incision there. Ignoring the sudden gush of blood, he started calmly cutting deeper.

“I will never understand archmages,” Mirt growled, watching. “Cutting his throat’s easier—you can’t miss it, just as these two dolts couldn’t miss hers.”

A moment later, Elminster carefully drew forth something large and spindle-shaped that glowed faintly through coursing blood, and held it up.

Then he murmured a spell of healing over the wound he’d made, and ordered Mirt, “Bind him up. There’re smallcloths behind yon screen, in the garderobe corner.”

“You can heal?”

“ ’Tis an unusual circumstance,” the Sage of Shadowdale replied gravely, waving the spindle. “This holds some of the divine fire of the goddess Mystryl.”

Mirt and Myrmeen both peered at it. “The goddess of magic before Mystra? So that’s how old?”

El sighed. “Don’t make me count. I hate counting. I was never good at sums.”

“So now what?”

“Put these two wounded wizards to bed. Calathlarra’s room should do for Malchor, and we’ll put Manshoon in Maraunth Torr’s. Under guard, both of them. Luse, are ye up to being Lord Halaunt right now?”

“And miss all the fun by saying otherwise?” came the voice from the air. “No fear!”

“Then Mirt, Myrmeen, and I shall stand guard over Malchor—who deserves to survive this disaster of a wizard moot, if anyone does—and ye, as Lord Halaunt, watch over Manshoon. We’ll leave the doors open, so we can call alarm to each other from room to room.”

“Standing guard,” Mirt growled. “This isn’t over yet?”

“Nay,” El replied wryly. “There’s still someone who will try to get in and finish them.”

IN THE END, Elminster never stopped strolling back and forth between the two adjacent bedchambers, talking to all three of his companions.

He was not surprised, after about his fortieth time departing the room where Lord Halaunt was sitting vigil over the still-sleeping Manshoon, to hear a small sound far down the passage. He went on into the other bedchamber, resumed conversing there as if nothing at all was amiss—and then suddenly turned in midword, marched back out into the passage, and returned to the room he’d just left.

Whose door was just being quietly pushed closed—until it fetched up against his swiftly planted boot.

The closer drew it open again to see what was blocking the door’s swing—and found herself staring into the face of Elminster.

“Well met again, Tabra,” he said politely. “Isn’t it about time ye abandoned the profession of murderer?”

Tabra stared back at him, eyes blazing—and then sighed, slumped in dejection, and turned away, heading across the bedchamber for the vacant chair Alusair had just brought Halaunt up out of, to stand and bar the way to Manshoon.

El followed the limping archmage, hearing Mirt and Myrmeen hurrying in through the door behind him. He didn’t order them back to go on guarding Malchor.

They all ended up standing around the seated Tabra in a watchful ring.

As El asked her calmly, “So, Lady Tabra … ye slew Skouloun, then Yusendre, and finally Calathlarra. So tell me now: why do ye want to destroy Malchor and Manshoon?”

The look in Tabra’s mismatched eyes could have set parchment ablaze.

“With power comes responsibility,” she replied flatly, “and that goes for power in the Art as much as it does for crowns and thrones and grand titles. You should know that, Elminster Aumar, better than almost all mortals! You should stand with me on this! You threw down the Most High, who’d so overreached himself and who treated those not of his city like cattle—and it was you who made sure all of us were penned in here in Oldspires together. Wasn’t this why? So you could purge our battered old world of one lot of foul villains of wizardry? I burn to exterminate Thultanthans, for they are a blight on the rest of us foolhardy, power-hungry tyrants who despoil whatever they seek to rule. Is that judgment of them not truth?”

Elminster nodded grimly. “I fear so.”

“You know so. So help me slay these two—or stand aside and let me kill them.”

“Lass, lass, neither of these two are or were of Thultanthar. Nor did they ally themselves with the Shadovar.”

“So? Knowing what the Thultanthans were up to and turning your back and ignoring them is as bad as aiding them!” Tabra spat. “Wherefore Malchor Harpell is as guilty as Manshoon—and the Zhent actually helped the Shadovar, several times, soon after their floating city first reappeared.”

“Elminster naturally wants to know the why,” Mirt growled, “and so do I—but not before I know the how. The ‘how’ is what I lived through, here in Oldspires. Tell me the how.”

“Skouloun was not just a sanctimonious waste of wind who presumed to judge others while being deceitful himself—presumably because he thought himself ‘special,’ ” Tabra said with sudden venom. “He wanted coin, lots of coin. So for pay, he’d betrayed several wizards who happened to have magic the Shadovar wanted. Their magic, when they returned to Faerûn, wasn’t nearly as superior to the Art in use across the Heartlands as they like to portray matters. They grabbed whatever they saw and feared, or destroyed its wielders, as swiftly as they could, so the worst threats to them were gone before full word of their return and power had spread.”

“So ye slew him,” El prompted her, “by scratching him with the nail of thy smallest finger on thy—left?—hand.”

“Left,” Tabra confirmed, her voice calm again, lifting that finger so they could see that it had been clipped to a point. “Sarbrathrael. Works quickly, is pale yellow rather than darker and so not as apt to be noticed on my finger, and few know how to make the antidote.”

Myrmeen nodded. “So why Yusendre?”

“And how Yusendre?” Mirt rumbled.

“The two Elders worked together, though Skouloun lorded it over Yusendre, and she was sick of it. She’d soon have defied him—and if he’d been foolish enough to hurl spells, then the death of Skouloun wouldn’t have been a needful task for me or anyone else.”

Tabra sighed. “Yet she was as guilty as he in working the arcanists against the rest of us. Translocation spells are my specialty, and it was easy to let Yusendre ‘see’ me hide something in the sideboard. What I hid was one of my watchful eyes; I didn’t even bother to watch through it, just cast the teleport when I felt the eye blink open—which meant someone had opened the drawer containing it.

“Teleporting a thing, and a person or two touching it, is a spell I perfected long ago, but casting it here almost killed me. To keep the magic from twisting awry, I had to feed some of my life force into it. It dragged more than I intended to give, and that was why I took to my bed. I’m still weak.”

“And Maraunth Torr? Shaaan killed him, yes?” Mirt asked.

Tabra looked up at him. “Someone did. Not me.”

“Shaaan slew him, aye,” Elminster confirmed, “but not before he slew Alastra. He died trying to kill Shaaan.”

“If attacked, we may all slay while defending ourselves,” Mirt said, “but are all archmages cheerful murderers?”

El shrugged. “I suspect Torr enjoyed slaying, but took lives in cold calculation, for sufficient benefit—eliminating rivals around him here so he could seek their magic, wealth, and lands for himself, once he was out of Oldspires.”

“So who got to him?” Mirt asked. “When we found him dead? I was certainly fooled.”

“He was an expert poisoner,” Elminster replied. “Recall the spices and oils missing from the kitchen? Mix them in just the right measure and drink the result, and ye, too, can slip into unbreathing senselessness and feign death. By then, he knew we were storing the slain in the cold cellar—not carving anyone open to investigate, or burning the bodies. And given the spellstorm and the bedrock beneath the cellars here, there’d be no burials. So he stole a key to that cellar—”

“The missing ring of keys from the butlery,” Myrmeen murmured.

“Indeed. He let himself in; ye may note that the door to that cellar can be unlocked from within and without—which leaves me pondering Halaunt tastes in trysts, or perhaps the chill venues they prefer for secret negotiations—then hid the key in the cellar, probably under one of the corpses already there, let himself out, got to where he wanted us to find him, and dosed himself. I found the flask later; he simply put it in a drawer of one of the linen sideboards in the passage.”

“So we find him dead, and lug him down to the cellar, and then?”

“The effects don’t last all that long. The moment he revived, Maraunth departed the cellar, taking Skouloun’s corpse along so we wouldn’t simply take the disappearance of his body as a revival on his part. He stashed Skouloun’s corpse in that wardrobe on the upper floor where we later found it, and went into hiding, moving around Oldspires to avoid our searches.”

Myrmeen nodded, then stopped doing that and shook her head. “You make Torr’s ploy clear enough, but I still can’t keep all the deaths straight.”

El chuckled. “Small blame to ye for that. Right, then: Tabra’s first victim was Skouloun. Tabra slew Yusendre. Then Alastra fell to Maraunth Torr. Tabra then killed Calathlarra—when Calathlarra tried to kill her.”

He looked at Tabra for confirmation, and received a weary nod.

“Thereafter,” the Sage of Shadowdale added, “Maraunth Torr tried to kill Shaaan, but was destroyed by her instead. And just now, Malchor and Manshoon, realizing their strength, daggers, and numbers might prevail against Shaaan where their spells could not, overcame their mutual mistrust and burst in on her while she was busy trying to burn heads so the dead could not as easily be magically questioned—the least powerful deadspeech, cast by hedge wizards or most of the wizards of war stationed in their cordon around us, right now, requires an intact head to speak. They destroyed her, but were themselves laid low by her poison.”

“Well,” Mirt wheezed, “I’m glad we have crazed old archmages around to keep all of this sort of nonsense straight, so the rest of us can just get on with living our simple lives.”

“ANYTHING?” GLATHRA SNAPPED.

Tarnmark Lionmantle shook his head. “As strong as ever. How long do these spellstorms usually last?”

The Lady Barcantle wagged a finger at him. “Not something you should be thinking of. Your expectations will color what you observe, and we can’t have that.”

“ ‘We’?”

“Cormyr can’t have that,” she snapped. “The kingdom we all serve, remember?”

“I had not,” he told her gently, “forgotten.”

Glathra’s head snapped back as if he’d slapped her, and her face flooded a rich crimson. Uh-oh. He’d forgotten how touchy she was, about the lineages of nobles, and the highborn considering themselves superior to lowborn like her. Here it came …

“Just you remember, Lord Most-High-And-Mighty Lionmantle,” she snapped, “that nobles may have long memories and be good at feuding and holding grudges and trusting in foolish pride to carry them through life, but the yeomen of Cormyr, the farmers and crafters and common folk who do all the work in the realm (remember them?), they grumble at the sinister yoke and scrutiny of the wizards of war, yet trust in having us detested wizards around to deal with all of the nonsense, so they can just get on daily —unstalked by fearsome monsters, untransfixed with elven arrows, and undevoured by great dragons—with living their simple lives.”

“I’ll not forget,” Tarn told her even more gently.

“See that you don’t,” she said curtly, turned on her heel, and stalked off.

Alone again in the scrying room, Tarnmark allowed himself a long and gusty sigh.

Before wondering aloud, “I wonder just what sort of battle-hardened hero—or half-wit—would dare to sleep with such a dragon as Glathra Barcantle?”

Someone chuckled, right behind him.

His heart almost froze, his indrawn breath caught halfway down his windpipe, and he whirled around, trying to think of apologies to stammer.

To find himself staring at Vangerdahast. Former Court Wizard and Royal Magician of Cormyr, a power behind the Dragon Throne that nobles had hated, but feared even more. The Dragon Tyrant, he was still called, in unguarded moments, when old tales passed down by dead fathers and grandsires and uncles were retold in many a high house and country mansion.

Vangey was smirking. “In truth,” he told Lionmantle, “I know not the answer to your question. I know who she fancies, though. The question is, how great is your daring, scion of the Lionmantles—and are you battle-hardened hero, or half-wit?”

TEARS WERE RUNNING down Tabra’s face now, but she wasn’t sobbing.

She looked up at Elminster, face forlorn.

“So you know it all, now. What are you going to do to me?”

El gave her a smile. “Clip thy nails round again, give ye a good meal, and let ye go free,” he replied. “Mystra’s task for me is not to dispense justice, but to mark what befell among all of ye. Which turned out to be watching as all of ye sought to enact rough justice on each other.”

He pointed at her, and added sternly, “Just ye leave Malchor Harpell be, henceforth; anyone who kept order among the Harpells back in their wild days is a force for good and for order, who should be left to go on being both in these current times of chaos. Have I thy vow on this?”

Tabra lifted her chin. “In the name of Mystra, Lady of All Mysteries, and may she strip all the Art from me if I break this promise: I will do nothing to harm Malchor Harpell, nor aid another to do so, by action or silence or standing by when I could have acted.”

“Good,” Elminster replied. “Accepted. There’s a meal ready, and if ye’ll now excuse me, I have a spindle to toss out into a spellstorm. Which should quell it right away.”

“MYSTRA,” ELMINSTER MURMURED, “ye command, and ’tis done.”

And he threw the spindle high and far.

It winked once, flashing white radiance in midair that caught the eyes of the war wizards and Purple Dragons on the other side of the roiling fog, and then plunged down into the spellstorm and was gone.

Its descent was like pulling the plug on a wash-sink drain. The fog plunged after it, racing down out of sight as if plummeting underground, pulling the vast spellstorm in and in until the higher-than-a-man mists were shoulder-high, then waist-high, then mere wisps, and then … gone. A full three days early.

Revealing a lawn wet as if from a heavy dew, that lacked all sign of a spindle or a hole leading underground.

“Take Tabra,” El told Mirt and Myrmeen, “and a bowl of food if she’s not done, and climb yon hill, and wait there for me. Any Dragon or war wizard who tries to stop ye, tell them to stand aside in the name of the Dragon Throne and the regent, and that they risk the personal ire of the goddess Mystra, too. Luse, ye go with them; leave Halaunt’s body behind if ’tis easier. Malchor and Manshoon can stay where they are; they’ll keep.”

“We obey,” Myrmeen replied, “but there’s a price.”

The Sage of Shadowdale sighed. “Of course there is. Ye want to know what I’ll be doing, aye?”

She grinned. “Aye.”

“Taking care of the Lost Spell.”

“Now that,” the voice of Alusair said nigh his ear, “will be worth seeing.”

“Yet not feeling, lass. Remember what befell thee when Tabra crushed Yusendre?”

“Oh.”

“Oh, indeed. Get ye gone. And warn yon Dragons and war wizards that if they don’t stay back—right where they are now!—until I’m done, they hazard their lives.”

“And if they don’t believe me?”

It was Elminster’s turn to grin. “Tell them I’ll stop holding back the angry ghost of Vangerdahast—and the even angrier and very much alive Lady Glathra Barcantle. Tell them her wrath is terrible beyond imagining. And show them this.”

“That,” Myrmeen said, peering at it rather dubiously, “is one of Shaaan’s severed fingers. One of the nearly cooked ones. You collect trophies, El?”

“Evidently,” the Sage of Shadowdale replied. “Ye might tell them that this is all that remains of the last person to defy me. After I ate the rest.”

Myrmeen chuckled and took the finger. “I’m going to enjoy this.”

He gave her a merry wave and turned to step back inside Oldspires, accepting a ghostly kiss on his cheek from the passing chill that was Alusair as he did so.

She had left Halaunt’s husk of a body slumped in a chair in the entry hall. El gave it a jaunty salute as he opened the door to the kitchens.

He took a quick peer all around, just in case a hiresword had revived or someone else had been lurking in Oldspires all along, but … no. He was alone.

He swiftly retrieved his battered copper chamberpot, did something deft to its rim that released the outer pot from its inner liner, and lifted out that liner to retrieve what he’d hidden between the two soon after first arriving in Oldspires, and fixed in place with a dab of sealing wax to the bottom of the inner pot.

The scroll of the Lost Spell.

El peered all around again. There were a lot of young war wizards whose boldness far outstripped their sensibilities …

No. Still alone. El read the scroll carefully, then tucked it down the front of his robes, into the inner pocket there where several scrolls of mighty magics rode around with him, just in case. He strolled across the kitchen toward the far door—and then stopped, shook his head, took out the Lost Spell again, and murmured at the ceiling, “No one should have this much power.”

Yes, Mystra’s voice came down to him, sounding warm and affectionate and close, and, at the same time, as thunderous as if she was not only the entire ceiling of Oldspires and the ruined upper floor above it, but all of the cloud-streaked blue sky above that.

I believe, she added fondly, you know what to do.

Elminster blinked, a little taken aback.

As you’ve just proven you know what is right, Mystra added softly, as she faded away from his mind. You do know what to do.

El smiled, nodded, and did a slow and careful Weave working that left him shaking and exhausted.

The scroll dissolved between his fingers as the Lost Spell melted away into pure flaming magical energy, akin to spellfire.

El cupped it in his hands and let it rage and snarl there for a moment as he reached out with his mind to the worst of the failing spells that had sealed off the gates.

He guided the fiery energy into that deteriorating magic, refilling and restoring it, making it stronger and better than ever. And then did the next worst gate-sealing spell, and the next. And there was still fire left in his hands.

El used it to double the bindings on all of the gates, rendering them unusable by any but the most powerful and patient wizards, sealing them off behind layer after layer of wards, and ending—for now, at least—the leakage from them.

When he was finally done, he felt weak and sick. He was reeling on his feet as he staggered through the mansion, heading for Malchor and Manshoon as he rather dazedly tried to decide what should be done about them now.

“Elminster! El! Elminster Aumar! Sage of Shadowdale!”

Those cries were coming from behind him, and sounded very like Mirt and Myrmeen taking turns urgently calling his various names as they caught up to him.

He turned, and saw the by-now-familiar duo hastening their way along the passage after him.

“I thought I told ye to wait for me on yonder hill,” he greeted them testily.

“You did,” Mirt wheezed, “but that was before Cormyr came calling!”

“What?”

There came the squeal of a distant door from behind Elminster, and the tramp of many feet.

He turned, feeling more than testy.

Down the passage in the other direction from Mirt and Myrmeen were coming young Tarnmark Lionmantle, the Lord Warder Vainrence, three tall and broad-shouldered Purple Dragons in full coat of plate, and Glathra Barcantle—with Vangerdahast bringing up the rear, trying rather unsuccessfully to hide behind the lady war wizard.

“How did you get rid of the spellstorm?” Glathra demanded, by way of greeting.

El grinned, despite himself. “Have ye been trying to spy on me through it all this time?”

“We have,” she informed him crisply. “In shifts. Lionmantle here is quite pleased it went away on his shift.”

“Uh, well met,” Lionmantle said nervously to Elminster, who gave him a grave nod. And a wink that wasn’t quite swift enough for Glathra to miss it.

“And what do you mean by that?” she demanded.

El glanced back behind him. Mirt and Myrmeen seemed to have deserted him for a moment, but he could see Lord Halaunt stumping purposefully along the passage to join him. Mirt and Myrmeen emerged from different rooms along the passage, hefting fireplace pokers in their hands as if they intended to use them as weapons.

El turned again to face Glathra—just as the ranks of the Cormyreans drawn up beside her were broken by Vangerdahast bursting forward through them to rush into Myrmeen’s embrace.

“Disgusting,” the Lady Barcantle commented, as the former Royal Magician of the Realm and the former Lady Lord of Arabel kissed ardently, both of them beginning to growl deep in their throats as the lock of their lips lasted longer … and longer …

“We’ll leave them to that, shall we?” Elminster said gently, striding right through the Cormyrean ranks—one of the tall Dragons grabbed for him rather gingerly, but the attempt was belated and halfhearted, and missed—and along the passage.

“Lionmantle!” the Lady Glathra snapped, giving the young noble a shove, and obediently he raced in pursuit of Elminster.

Catching up to him just as the Sage of Shadowdale swung open a bedchamber door.

“Well met,” Elminster greeted Lionmantle dryly, then added, over Tarn’s shoulder, “Glathra, glad ye came. I have a task for thee—one that ye, Vainrence, and Ganrahast together just might be able to take care of.”

“And who are you, to be giving the most senior Crown mages of Cormyr orders, here on Cormyrean soil?” Glathra snapped.

“I’m the one who’s pointing out that if ye don’t undertake this service, tending this fell archmage here, one Manshoon by name—aye, that Manshoon; ye know some lore, at least—he’s going to wake up in great pain, and no doubt in a terrible temper to match, and do so unsupervised in this mansion here on Cormyrean soil.”

Vainrence snapped, “Enough!”

This order was clearly aimed at Glathra, and the Lord Warder hastened to Manshoon, drawing wands from his belt as he went.

“I’m awake,” a weak, husky voice greeted him, “and know you that Malchor Harpell and I reached an accord, and I intend to abide by it. I am no threat to Cormyr, Lord Warder.”

Vainrence stared down at Manshoon for a moment, then turned to Elminster. “And have you any other wizards or like surprises for us, in any of the other rooms?” he asked.

“Aye. Malchor Harpell, whom ye just heard mentioned,” El replied, over his shoulder. “He’s also wounded—and he’s my task. I’ll see him home with the help of Mirt here, and Lord Halaunt.”

Frowning, Vainrence looked into that room, and asked, “Lord Halaunt?”

The old noble nodded, from where he stood by the bed in which Malchor Harpell lay, blinking up at Vainrence, and muttering, “I heard. I, too, reaffirm the accord.” Yet he looked at Elminster when he said those words, not at the war wizard.

Lord Halaunt did address the Lord Warder directly. “Yes,” he said slowly but firmly, his eyes flashing fire as he looked at Vainrence. “I … have learned much, since these my latest guests came.” He put a hand on Elminster’s arm, and from within him Alusair said into Elminster’s mind: Can I keep this body? It will be very useful to have hands and—and so on—again.

Halaunt’s beyond restoring, he thought back at her, so why not? Let the master of Oldspires be seen to undo some of the evil he did. A, ahem, shining example to other nobles.

Lord Halaunt sighed then, and drew himself up straight and tall. “Nobles,” he said aloud. “It always comes back to us nobles.”

“Later is soon enough for philosophy and self-recrimination,” Mirt told him. “It’s a fair walk to Longsaddle from here; we’d best get started.”

“There are other gates, ye know,” El grinned. “But yes, we’d best get started. Lord Warder, best leave your Dragons to guard the mansion until the servants return. Ye never know who might come walking in.”

“Are those words aimed at us?” Glathra snapped.

El chuckled. “Ah, lass, lass, never change. Cormyr hath sore need of thy smooth diplomatic skills in these troubled times.”

He turned back to Vainrence. “I’ll visit ye anon. We must talk. These two wizards—and a far worse one—managed, however briefly and ill-fatedly, to reach accord on … well, call it a code of conduct for mages. I’m thinking such a code would be a good thing indeed to spread across Faerûn, if it were anchored in the support of the wizards of war. That is, if they professed and were seen to abide by it.”

“What’s this?” Glathra and Vangerdahast snapped, in almost perfect unison. “What did you just say?”

El grinned at them, and added to the Lord Warder, “As I said, I’ll visit ye and Ganrahast, and we’ll talk. Ye can even bring Glathra to the table; ’twill be entertaining to watch her explode.”

MIRT SAT BACK, set down his cutlery with a satisfied sigh that somehow became a belch, and let his gaze drift all around. The great dark beams overhead were the cleanest and least dusty he’d ever seen, with neat bunches of herbs drying from hooks, and underfoot was the smoothest flagstone floor he’d ever laid boot on, yet everything in this house amid the trees was simple and cozy …

Relaxing, that was it. Here, he could be utterly at ease.

He and Elminster had cooked a simple but hearty meal together, here in the kitchen of Storm’s farmhouse, not exchanging a single word about Oldspires or murdered wizards or Lost Spells.

Elminster was cleaning his plate now, too, and lifting his glass in a silent toast.

They drained their wine together, belched in contented unison, then said the same word to each other: “Dishes.”

Somehow, here in this lovely deserted house in Shadowdale, washing the dishes wasn’t a chore. Gazing out the windows over the sink, into an eating garden where the plants were as tall as trees, watching the sun sink slowly lower …

“Storm keeps beds made up, even when she’s not here,” El told Mirt, from the cupboard he’d just swung open to start putting just-wiped dishes away.

The Old Wolf grinned. “Perhaps to collapse into around dawn, to start snoring then, and my thanks for the offer, but if you’ll point me in the direction of wherever I can find doxies for hire, hereabouts …”

El chuckled, flung wide the front door, and pointed out into the approaching twilight.

“If ye turn left at the road, take it down to the crossroads, and turn right there, the place ye seek stands on the south side of the road ye’ll find thyself on. Right across from my old tower; the bald rock they call the Old Skull soars up behind my tower, and watches over it. If ye reach the bridge over the Ashaba nigh the Twisted Tower, ye’ve gone too far.”

“Thanks,” Mirt said, clapped him on the arm, and lurched out.

El watched the old moneylender wheeze his way down the path and disappear through the creaking gate—that Storm left in a creaking state these days, by way of being a doorbell—chuckled, shook his head, and started stowing dishes away.

“Is there any more wine?” a soft voice asked from behind him.

The Sage of Shadowdale stiffened—and then visibly relaxed, and turned around with a happy smile.

The goddess Mystra was sitting at the cleared kitchen table in the seat Mirt had warmed, smiling back at him.

“As ever, you deserve my thanks,” she said. “So thank you, El. You are … one of the treasures of being Mystra.”

“Even when things don’t go as ye’d hoped?” he asked, pouring her a brimful glass.

She took it, sipped deeply, sighed in pleasure—and smiling, waved away his proffered pan, with the last of dinner.

“Especially then. And stop tempting me with the food, you old rogue; it smells so good.”

“Ye don’t eat?”

“I feed more, these days, on the pleasure of others, as they taste and grow satiated,” she replied. “It feels odd, yet increasingly … right. Fitting.” She raised her glass again, swirled it, and said, “You did good work once more, despite my foolishness in trying to meddle yet stand back. How could I have avoided weakening you, my most useful servant—not to mention the closest friend I have—if in the throes of it, you didn’t think I was leaving it all up to you?”

“So did ye tell Storm and Amarune it was all up to them?”

“Yes, and they’ve gotten themselves into a fine mess, so I’ll be having Alusair guide the others home while you go and rescue your partner and your heir.”

El grinned wryly. “So it’s all up to me again, is that it?”

“Of course,” the goddess replied, and then, in perfect mimicry of Elminster’s own sardonic voice, added, “Isn’t it always?”

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