by Ed Greenwood
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detected by those on duty at the ringwall, so our information—that magic can’t work in Oldspires—is obviously wrong or outdated, and the Lost Spell and every one of the wizards who gathered here to gain it has been deemed such a danger to the realm that—”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.”
