by Ed Greenwood
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.”
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“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.
