Elminster Must Die: The Sage of Shadowdale

by Ed Greenwood

  With one exception that was making them both peer again into every corner of the crypt and check the ceiling once more.

  One casket—an old and rather plain, massive one, probably one of the kings not long after Duar—stood open, its unbroken lid laid neatly on the floor beside it.

  The two senior war wizards peered suspiciously around at all the silent, undisturbed coffins. Nothing moved, and there was no sound but that of their own breathing.

  Cautiously—very cautiously—they moved forward, Vainrence at the fore and Ganrahast shooting glances here, there, and everywhere around the crypt and back out the open doors at the empty passage they’d come from.

  There was nothing in the stone casket but unmoving, shrouded bones, under a thick cloak of dust.

  Vainrence put one hand slowly into the burial cavity, the ring on his smallest finger blazing a steady, unchanged white. No undeath there. Nothing stirred at his intrusion, and he felt no tingling of awakening magic.

  Withdrawing his hand, he stepped back and looked at the Royal Magician who had taken a pendant out from under his robes and was holding it up, turning toward this wall of the crypt and then that. It, too, glowed a faint, steady white.

  They traded suspicious frowns, then without a word strode to stand back-to-back and started to search all over the crypt, Ganrahast moving cautiously to look here and there, and Vainrence guarding his back.

  Still nothing.

  There was certainly no intruder—not an invisible one, and not a ghost. The wards that prevented all translocations were still pulsing strongly around them; the magic alive in the crypt was so strong and swirling that they had no hope of telling what spells, if any, had been used there recently … still less, longer ago.

  The alarm spells had told of two disturbed burials, yet there was only one open coffin. With nothing missing or disturbed, if that dust could be trusted. Still, there were simple, everyday spells to settle shrouds of dust on things …

  “Your guess?” Ganrahast asked calmly.

  Vainrence shrugged. “Some long-ago spell to lift a casket lid? Either it started to fade and was written so as to function before its energy ebbed too much for it to do so, or something among all the wards and shieldings in here triggered it?”

  “That,” Ganrahast murmured, “seems entirely too convenient. Not to mention overly benign.”

  “So I feel, too,” Vainrence agreed. “I await your better explanation, Mage Royal.”

  In the silence that followed, they traded wry grins.

  Then Ganrahast shrugged. “Let’s shift this lid back where it should be and see what that does to the alarms; reset, gone off and gone, or still awake and insisting an intrusion has occurred.”

  The coffin was old; there were certainly no spells to levitate the lid. They staggered under the weight of the carved stone slab momentarily, grunting and huffing to heave it high enough to restore it to the top of its casket—and only then saw a fresh piece of parchment on the floor under where the lid had lain. There was writing on it.

  Vainrence stooped. “You are doomed,” he read aloud.

  As he spoke, the lid of the closed casket beside them lifted just enough for magic to be triggered from within it.

  There was a singing sound, as if an idle hand had slashed across the highest strings of a harp—and the two war wizards stiffened in unison.

  To stand frozen, unseeing and unbreathing in the midst of their own new and pale auras.

  “Well, well,” Targrael murmured, lifting with casual ease the lid she’d lain concealed under and climbing gracefully out from atop the bones she’d been relaxing on during the blunderings of these two. “These old Obarskyr trinkets still serve quite effectively. Unlike the realm’s wizards of war, these days.”

  Ganrahast and Vainrence stood mute and immobile, caught in stasis. Targrael smiled at them almost fondly.

  “Pair of prize idiots.”

  She examined Ganrahast’s nearest hand then plucked the ring she wanted from its finger—it took a strong tug, but she’d known the stasis would hold and really cared not if she broke the man’s finger; he had plenty more—and donned it.

  No doubt he could trace its whereabouts when he was capable of doing anything again. That might well be a very long time later, however.

  The faint beginnings of a smile twisting her lips, Targrael put each of the stasis-frozen men into his own opened coffin and restored the two lids to their proper places.

  “Ineffectual dolts. That’ll keep you. Once I use this useful little ring to seal the crypt, no one will think to look here for you until the next Obarskyr dies. Whereupon they’ll hopefully be too upset and concerned with the succession to dare to go around opening up royal coffins to peek at moldering contents.”

  With a chuckle, the undead highknight departed that silent chamber, her dark cloak swirling.

  CHAPTER

  NINETEEN

  EXPECTING MUCH BLOOD

  Storm slowed a little, to try to catch her breath. It wouldn’t do to try to talk pleasantly to hostile guards if she was panting so hard she couldn’t even gasp out words.

  Inevitably, Elminster ran into her from behind, head-butting her rump and propelling her helplessly around the last corner.

  Where she was promptly greeted by far too many cold, vigilant stares.

  She found herself smiling wryly, despite the looming danger. It seemed that the Room of the Watchful Sentinel was very well named.

  Architecturally small and unimportant, a mere antechamber off the far larger and grander Starander’s Hall, it was guarded day and night to prevent covert departures—and unwelcome incursions—by way of the small, flickering doorway that stood in its northeast corner, bereft of surrounding walls or even a physical door or frame.

  The Dalestride Portal’s usual guardians were fourteen. Two highknights, eight battle-tested Purple Dragons, and four wizards of war.

  Right then, there were more guards than that just in the passage outside—and they had unfriendly faces and ready weapons. The passage ahead of Storm looked like a crowded forest, with every tree a waiting sentinel expecting battle, and with eyes fixed on her.

  Still breathing hard from her brisk run through the palace and from the brief tussle that had punctuated that journey, Storm turned her walk into a stroll as she approached the row of waiting spear points.

  Beyond those leveled spears, several wands were aimed her way, and she could see some dart-firing bowguns held in highknight fists, too.

  “El,” she murmured, “this is going to be messy. There’s no way I can force passage through this many—”

  “Keep moving. Duck aside against the wall, if they let fly at ye from inside the room once ye try to enter,” Elminster muttered from behind her, where he was lurching along bent over, an arm held up to shield his face.

  Storm lacked both breath and will to point out to him that he was fooling no one; any Purple Dragon or war wizard who’d been warned to watch out for Elminster of Shadowdale or any other old, bearded, male stranger walking the palace would know at a glance exactly what was scuttling along in Storm’s wake.

  “I don’t want to kill or maim scores of good and loyal folk of Cormyr,” Storm hissed over her shoulder. “These are our allies, remember; those who stand for justice and—”

  “I’ve not forgotten that. Don’t believe what ye’re about to see, overhead,” Elminster warned her. “I still have a little magic to spend.”

  Storm nodded, eyeing bowguns being aimed carefully at her throat—as the ceiling of the passage came down with a roar.

  The passage shook, a hanging lamp starting to swing wildly. Dust billowed, swallowing many of the arrayed guardians—who shouted in fear and started sprinting wildly along the passage.

  Right at Storm.

  “El,” she snapped, reaching for her sword, “I—”

  Darts came streaking at her, and there was a sudden snarl of crimson flame as a wand spat in her direction.

  The flames rus
hed at her, expanding with the usual terrifying speed—only to fall silent and begin to spin in a great pinwheel right in front of her that … that …

  “El, what’re you doing?”

  There came an all-too-familiar chuckle from behind her. “How many times have ye asked me that, lass? Down the passing centuries?”

  “Don’t remind me,” Storm replied sharply, sword up and out and seeking foes she couldn’t see. “How many times have you destroyed bits and pieces of palaces? Or castles?”

  “I don’t keep track,” came the gruff reply. “Always seemed a mite childish, all this keeping score. Those who do tend to be those I dislike. Now, don’t step forward, whatever ye do. The results would be … unpleasant.”

  “You’re sending what they hurl right back at them, aren’t you?”

  “Wise lass; I am indeed. And I’m destroying no palaces this day—at least, that’s my present intention. Yon collapse was no collapse at all.”

  “But if you try to scare them away, those who’ll flee will come running right into our laps!”

  “Oh? Has thy lap greeted anyone, yet?”

  “No, but—”

  “More years ago than I care to remember,” the Sage of Shadowdale announced, straightening out of his crouch with a brief wince, “ye may recall I had a hand in crafting some of the wards cast here. Without the Weave, I can’t twist them much now—there are so many later castings—but in some places I can temporarily cause a room or passage to, ah, adjoin another that’s really halfway across the palace. Wherefore—heh—a lot of guardians, whether fearful or enthusiastic, are now sprinting along the torchwalk outside the Hall of the Warrior King, heading for the royal court at a pace that shouldn’t break too many necks, if the door at the end of that passage is as flimsy as I remember it being. I do hope they’ve repaired the little bridge over the silverfin pond, or more than a few loyal defenders of Cormyr are shortly going to wind up rather wet.”

  Storm smirked, despite herself. “How far do your magics reach? Into the Room of the Watchful Sentinel itself—or are all the honor guard undoubtedly waiting for us in there going to be standing untouched, crowded to the very walls, and itching to fell Elminster, infamous enemy of the Dragon Crown?”

  The Sage of Shadowdale favored her with one of his more sour looks. “D’ye think I started spinning spells yestermorn?”

  “No,” Storm replied dryly, “I believe you only started thinking of your own neck about then. Yes?”

  “Stormy one, when did ye start wanting to take all the fun out of things? Eh?”

  A man in ankle-length robes came staggering out of the roiling dust just then, a wand in one shaking hand starting to spit sparks, so Storm ducked into a low lunge that gave her reach enough to shove him into the wall.

  The young and startled wizard of war rebounded off it hard, head lolling and wand cartwheeling away, so Storm didn’t bother braining him with her sword hilt. She just glided out of the way and let the handy, hard flagstones feed him that fate instead.

  “Yon overbold unfortunate wasn’t one of those waiting for us in the passage,” Elminster remarked, “so I’d say the portal guardians are coming out after us. Time to send my shield of return spell in to greet them—and let them harm themselves with everything they hurl at it. I am, after all, a hand that brings about the fitting justice of the gods.”

  “We all were, we Chosen,” Storm reminded him sadly. “When Mystra still spoke to us and the Weave still sang.”

  “Not now, lass,” Elminster grunted. “I’m busy.” The walls and ceiling ahead of them seemed to shudder, as the very air around them seemed to snarl and then whirl and rush loudly.

  “Keep thy sword up and handy,” he added a little grimly a shrieking moment or two later. What sounded like the wail of a gale-force wind was rising around them, as the Sage of Shadowdale wrestled his magic sideways and through a doorway that wasn’t made to accommodate it—at the same time as a dozen or more mages inside the room beyond that door hurled their own spells at the pinwheel of intruding magic, seeking to destroy it.

  Elminster’s face was suddenly drenched with sweat, so much of it that his nose dripped a stream like a village tap and his beard became a small waterfall.

  “El?” Storm asked sharply, eyeing him as he went pale. “Is there anything I could—should—do?”

  “No,” the Old Mage snapped. “Not unless ye—”

  A section of the passage wall ahead of them screamed like an agonized child and abruptly burst into shattered shards of stone that crashed into the far wall with force enough to rock and heave some of the flagstones beneath their boots. Amid the hail of falling stone descending that far wall was at least one wet and broken crimson thing that had been a man.

  Much of the wall that had separated the Room of the Watchful Sentinel from the passage was missing. The room itself seemed to be full of glowing smoke lit by frequent flashes and bursts of howling radiance—and to hold the turning pinwheel of Elminster’s shielding magic.

  Abruptly, somewhere in the distant midair of the room’s interior, something blinding bright exploded, hurling off great streamers of flame and sparks.

  “A wand!” Storm snapped, having seen wands destroyed by wild magical backlashes before. “Do you think the Dalestride can—?”

  “Withstand all they’re trying to hurl at us?” Elminster replied, throwing an arm around her from behind and dragging her hastily back. “Drop thy blade—now!”

  Storm was several centuries too old to argue with him or question such an order. She flung away her sword as if it were burning her hand, turned in a smooth shifting of her hips, and started to run with him down the passage to where it met—

  Behind them, a blast erupted that snatched them both off their feet, smote their ringing ears so hard that all sound abruptly went away, and flung them headlong down the passage, well past the intersection and through a servant’s door that gave way in an instant of wild, high groaning of rent wood and whirling splinters, onto a table where a cream sauce studded with mushroom and smelling strongly of nutmeg was being ladled over thick steaks of spit-seared lion on gold plates.

  Undercooks screamed or at least flung up their hands, wild-eyed, and opened their mouths wide, as the Sage of Shadowdale and the tall and curvaceous silver-haired woman at his side crashed breast-first down onto the hot sauce and slid the length of the table … straight into the ample backside of Nestur Laklantur, Royal Cook of the Low Kitchen, as he stood bent over at the end of the table, carefully applying garnishes to platters of dishes on an adjacent counter.

  Struck hard, Laklantur plunged helplessly face-first into a glazed and steaming manymeats pudding he’d spent hours preparing, and rose up roaring in scalded pain and rage, ready to turn and rend whoever had dared—

  He had managed only to half turn and snatch up the nearest ladle to serve as his weapon of retribution when Storm’s sword arrived.

  It raced like an arrow, pommel first and surrounded by a winking cloud of sparks. The outraged cook had no time to dodge or duck nor even to draw breath to frame an appropriately scorching oath of wrath ere the ladle numbed his hand with its clanging departure. His life was saved by its deflection of the sword, and the cloud of sparks left the ricocheting steel to become a crawling fan of blue fire that transformed the stamped copper sheeting of the kitchen ceiling into a sheet of solid sapphire.

  Laklantur and various maids and kitchen jacks stared up at it in astonishment and then either fainted or fled.

  A good long breath before the sheet cracked into a thousand shards and fell, with a crash that sent cauldrons rolling and lids and cleavers ringing all over the kitchen.

  And left a dazed wizard and former bard rolling slowly over, coated in sapphire dust and lumpy cream sauce, to stare at each other and then back the way they’d been hurled.

  They were in time to see a wizard of war part the roiling dust with an impatient wand blast and glare in their direction.

  In the suddenly clear air th
ey saw that the Room of the Watchful Sentinel now extended into the passage and right up to the kitchen doors. Though it held much heaped rubble, adorned with more than a few silent and sprawled bodies, the Dalestride Portal stood glowing and unharmed—behind a grim dozen wizards of the Crown and half that many Purple Dragons.

  “Those two, on yon table!” the wizard of war with the wand barked, looking at the Portal guardians and then pointing at Elminster and Storm. “They did this! They imperil the palace and us all, the king included. Slay them.”

  “Now, now, impetuous Cormyrean,” Manshoon murmured, smiling into the glows of his scrying scene. “Not just yet. I shall fell Elminster of Shadowdale when the moment is right. A killing I perform at the time I choose. None other shall come between us.”

  He worked a magic that sent the glows roiling more brightly and added, “After more than two centuries, I deserve that much.”

  A moment later, his spell took hold, sending his awareness plunging down into the warm, dark depths of a mind more twisted than most. A mind he was becoming all too familiar with.

  The mind of Wizard of War Rorskryn Mreldrake, who was hastening along a passage to a particular door, one of the most powerful magical scepters in all the palace in his hand.

  “Mystra, She Who Is Fallen, certainly enjoyed the dramatic last-moment appearance and rescue,” Manshoon purred, “and I begin to feel why.”

  Storm looked around wildly. “Where’d my swor—oh.” She snatched up her weapon. It looked unharmed … but promptly crumbled into glittering dust with a curious sigh, leaving her holding only a hilt.

  She dropped it in disgust, shot a glance at the warily advancing Purple Dragons and the wizards behind them—who were carefully aiming wands at her over the armored shoulders of those warriors—then ducked down again to join Elminster on the floor.

  “Might I suggest running away?” she murmured in his ear. “Now?”

  “Ye can,” the Sage of Shadowdale grunted, rolling over and clambering up to his knees, “but running is a deed my knees grow less and less fond of as the years pass. How many still stand against us?”