Spellstorm

by Ed Greenwood

  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 d
ryly. “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?