by Ed Greenwood
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.”
