by Ed Greenwood
“Where?” Mirt asked suspiciously.
“This way.”
Mirt sighed, rolled his eyes, and looked at Myrmeen. Who chuckled, gave him a smile, and started after Elminster, who was crawling on hands and knees to one of the buckled doors in the walls of the roofless room, and out through it.
Mirt sighed again, more heavily, took a good big bite out of the next braerwing on the skewer, and crawled after them both.
The moment they were through the door and standing again, in the decaying passage beyond, he growled at Elminster’s back, “All right, where are we headed and why?”
“To Malchor. Hopefully he’s in his room. Against all those warriors, I need an ally.”
“He can spellblast them while you try to wrestle the Weave so his spells blast, rather than sprout flowers or turn them hairy,” Myrmeen offered.
El gave her a broad smile. “Ah, I do love companions who have wits, and use them! Yes, ye’ve stated my plan precisely.”
“Not much of a plan,” Mirt grumbled. “More warriors’ spur of the moment desperation stuff, to my ears.”
“So ’tis, friend Mirt. Spur of the moment desperation is my specialty, and has been for centuries now. I like to think I’m getting good at it.”
“More braerwing?” Mirt asked, offering the skewer.
“Later. Heroics now, before ’tis too late.”
They’d worked their way three rooms farther along, and through a particularly spongy area where summer rains and winter snow and ice had not been kind to the old mansion, when Oldspires quivered from end to end beneath them under the soundless shock of yet another spell.
This one was particularly powerful, if the strength of the rolling shuddering underfoot was anything to go by, but there was no way of telling who’d cast it, or if it had accomplished its usual or intended effect.
No sooner had they recovered their footing than the air around them glowed a brief and odd purplish blue and all three of them felt a strong tingling.
Everyone’s hair stood on end, in rigid forests of bristles, and Myrmeen looked at El and asked calmly, “Any guesses?”
“A powerful working, by a caster unknown. It set off a large discharge or leak—the glow we saw—from one of the closed gates, which must be up here, very close to us.”
“Not the one you felt being opened?”
El shook his head. “Nay, that would have sent us flying, in what would have been not far different than a short-lived gale.”
He held up a hand for quiet, edged forward to peer around a door, then turned to add, “No talking, now.”
And led the way down a steep, narrow staircase that wasn’t quite a spiral stair, but came close—short, steep flight after short steep flight, with landings on the house side.
Myrmeen frowned and spread her hands in a silent “Where are we?” query.
El reached a closed door on the next landing, opened it in stealthy silence, then relaxed and waved at them to follow him.
Out into … a huge stairwell, in which a grand staircase ascended, flanked with statues, past dark old paintings larger than the walls of many houses, and tapestries of dusty, aged splendor.
Myrmeen frowned, cleaver at the ready. “Why build two stairs, cheek by jowl?”
“Old noble family,” El muttered. “Flourished back before King Duar’s time, when servants were not to be seen moving from floor to floor—certainly not by way of the same steps used by the highborn. So the Halaunts, finding they needed servants to ply them with viands and drink—mostly drink—in the Summer Room, but not wanting their noble guests to encounter scurrying servants on their ways to and from the look-out-over-the-lands cupola that used to grace the upper floor above the Summer Room, built the tiny winding stair we’ve just come down. Just for the servants, and in its own half tower built onto the walls.”
Myrmeen rolled her eyes. “Nobles,” she sighed. “I’ll never understand them.”
“Lass, lass, they’re just folk like all others—save that they’ve had wealth and power for long enough to indulge their innate eccentricites. And to grow bored, and dabble in various weirdnesses—or treasons—to alleviate that boredom. And gotten away with it all for long enough to fool themselves that ’tis their right to live thus. So they’ll do anything to protect their ‘rights’ and stay atop the social heap.”
Mirt chuckled. “Best summation of nobility I’ve heard in a long while.”
El put a warning finger to his lips. “To get from this side of Oldspires over to Malchor’s room, our best way is through the cellars—so we go down yon grand stair,” he almost whispered, “as quietly as we can.” He gave Myrmeen a smile, and added, “And before ye ask, Mreen, we couldn’t just proceed on down there by the servants’ stair, because the wall’s collapsed down there—frost heave from a too-close underground spring, by the looks of it—and blocked the door at the bottom.”
She nodded. “Wouldn’t that make a good place to hide the antidotes, so we don’t have to carry them everywhere?”
“Indeed—if ye can make it certain that we don’t ever need them, in the space of a breath or so, except when we’re down at the damp and rubble-filled bottom of that stair rather than clear across Oldspires, on another floor.”
“Ah,” Myrmeen replied, and waved at him to lead on.
Like three silent shadows they stepped out into the soaring and splendid stairwell and descended into … darkness.
“We forgot the lantern,” Myrmeen muttered.
Elminster whirled around and put his finger to her lips.
“Foes ahead,” he whispered in her ear, feeling Mirt thrust his head close to hear. “At the bottom of these steps—slide thy heels to feel their edges of each one, so ye don’t fall—set down the sacks to one side, out of the path of anyone using the stair, and keep weapons ready. See that glow?”
“No,” Myrmeen whispered back.
“Very faint, very deep blue,” he breathed. “Wait, and thine eyes will …”
“Yes. I see it now.”
“That blue means gate—open, active, and almost certainly guarded. We want to take down the guards swiftly but quietly, before they can raise any sort of alarm.”
“You’ve done this before,” Mirt grinned.
“A time or two,” El replied. “A time or two.”
Weapons ready—Elminster commandeered the skewer, which still had an intact braerwing and a somewhat nibbled one impaled on it, well up it near his hand—they warily approached the distant blue glow, which awaited several cellars away from where they’d set down the sacks.
Slow and silent, slow and silent …
The Sage of Shadowdale came to a stop on one side of the last archway before the room that contained the floating upright oval of cold blue fire—flames that flowed endlessly while burning nothing. The oval was wider back and forth than top to bottom, and within it was utter darkness.
And standing in front of it, strolling and chatting and looking bored, were seven plate-armored warriors identically equipped to those they’d fled from earlier.
Myrmeen put her lips right into Elminster’s ear and breathed, “Can you make the glow go dark, so we can rush them?”
Nay, he thought into her mind. Not as I am now—and the Weave is, here.
Suddenly there was a new mind speaking into theirs. It was old and cold and surprised—but gleeful. And there were other old, cold minds linked with it.
Elminster Aumar?
Something like a striking snake, but of purple-black fire and impossibly long, burst out of the darkness of the gate in a great arc that raced across the cellar and through the archway, curving in the air as it came, to try to curl around the edge of the arch, reaching for the Sage of Shadowdale.
As Myrmeen, already wrapped around El, flung herself sideways and hauled him along with her.
They struck cold and grimy cellar floor together and rolled, his skewer skittering along before their noses amid the strong reek of disturbed mildew—as they were pursu
ed by a horrid stink of scorched stone.
When they came to a stop, they turned in each other’s arms to look back.
The purple-black flames had spattered the bare bedrock behind them and melted into it with a hungry, seething snarl.
It was dissolving the solid stone—down a foot deep already, and melting deeper with frightening speed.
CHAPTER 17
Manshoon’s Magnificent Moment
HOLY MOTHER MYSTRA!” MIRT CURSED, GAPING DOWN AT THE MELTING stone. Then he added in a mutter, “Well, at least it missed. This time.”
The astonished warriors flung uncertain and fearful glances over their shoulders, cursing fervently—and then looked at where the flames had headed. Then they came running for the archway in a general rush, swords raised and looking for foes.
And Mirt, standing in darkness and taking a step back and to one side to be in even deeper gloom, smiled like a wolf, hefted his cleaver, and waited for them.
The foremost warrior was still six running strides or so away when the purple-black flames arced out of the gate again—and seared right through the running men.
By the time a new section of stone floor was melting away into its own pit, four sets of legs were stumbling and falling, the bodies they’d been attached to a moment earlier gone into empty air.
“Someone doesn’t like you, Old Mage,” Myrmeen panted, as they broke apart and hastily found their feet, keeping well back.
“So it certainly seems,” Elminster replied grimly, hefting the skewer. The partly eaten braerwing fell off it with a plop. Minds that cold … he’d felt such minds before, but were these—
The three remaining warriors, eyes wild with terror, pelted through the archway and veered toward his voice. Ignored on his side of the arch, Mirt snarled in irritation, took a step after them—and then drew hastily back.
The third gout of magical flames kissed the bare bedrock floor of the cellar beyond the first two melted—and still slowly spreading—pits, and devoured only stone.
As Mirt hurled himself across the stretch of cellar visible through the archway from the glowing gate, and caught up to the hindmost warrior.
Who’d glimpsed him when turning to look at the latest flaming spume, and now turned to hack at him with a snarl to match his own.
Mirt ducked backward so that the slash would miss—and overbalanced, falling hard onto his behind. And drove his right boot up between the man’s legs hard enough to send the warrior hurtling over his head, face-first into the first and largest pit.
The man’s scream became a sob and then a wet bubbling, all in less time than it took Mirt to wheeze once and roll sideways.
So the second warrior, turning to rush at him and hack, found the fat old man just out of reach.
By then Myrmeen had driven her cleaver up under the first warrior’s chin, twisted it free in a spray of blood, and was one swift leap from that second gate guard.
She sprang, landed hard with both boots on the back of the man’s hindmost foot, and sent him crashing face-first into the floor. He was dazed, broken nose gushing blood, when she rolled him over and laid open his throat.
In the sudden stillness, she and Mirt stared at each other, panting, and then at Elminster. There was a clear question in Myrmeen’s eyes.
El could see she wanted something from him. He strode to her, put a hand on her arm, and asked in her mind, Aye, lass?
What now? She asked. Can you close the gate?
Nay. Not as things stand now.
And if the floor there keeps melting? Will all of Oldspires eventually collapse into it, and melt away?
Nay. I’ve seen such spells before, long ago. They will melt a little more, then be spent.
Myrmeen stared into Elminster’s eyes, unsmiling. So, the most patient of women asked the Old Mage: What now?
Mirt was lurching up to them, rubbing his backside and wincing, aware from their faces and Myrmeen’s intent, forward-thrusting chin that they were conversing. Myrmeen reached out her free hand to him, he clasped it—and could hear their thoughts.
Whoa! This could be the death of many a marriage! He thought, blinking in amazement.
Not now, Mirt, Myrmeen ordered crisply. I want to stay alive a little longer!
And then Elminster’s memory—old, vast, deep, dark, and failing though it was—delivered up what he’d been trying to recall.
The minds on the other side of the gate were liches, of course. He’d known that much right away. Yet it had been only fleetingly that he’d mindtouched this particular sort of lich, and most of those meetings had been long, long ago.
These were thralls of Larloch. A handful of the many, many liches who served the Shadow King.
Or perhaps former thralls, now, but somehow he doubted Larloch had been destroyed. Burned and lessened, aye, perhaps nigh as badly as Lord Halaunt, and hurled out of Toril into an unknown otherwhere …
Yet for now, gone. So these liches could dare to act for themselves for the first time in a long, long while. Their minds bore their master’s dark yoke—that was what made them feel different than the minds of other liches—but Larloch was not there to curb or guide them.
So why were they opening an old gate in the cellars of a noble’s country mansion in the deep countryside of Cormyr?
His own presence had obviously been a surprise to them, so they hadn’t been seeking him, nor scrying beforehand …
Liches? Larloch? Myrmeen was awed. El winced. Usually he veiled his innermost thoughts from those he was mindtouching, but either his strength was failing or he subconsciously trusted Mreen enough to share …
Liches, Mirt thought in disgust. Always want to rule the world, always making trouble. We have entirely too many of them back in Waterdeep.
Right, Elminster thought firmly. First, I very much doubt these liches will dare to come through the gate—not with the Weave chaos they can easily detect reigning here right now, and the leakage from the other gates. I can feel it even when trying to ignore the Weave rather than sensing by means of it. So they are not our foremost problem. This army of warriors they sent is, followed by Shaaan, followed by our other murderous guests—Manshoon and Tabra. And who knows, perhaps Malchor will surprise me! So for now, we salvage swords and daggers and axes from these two here, unless ye really prefer the cleavers, and turn back. If we turn south in that first cellar, at the bottom of the stair, and grope our way to the door I know is there, we’ll find a servants’ storeroom on the far side of it. A lantern each, get them filled and lit, then I’ll lead the way.
Lead the way where? Myrmeen asked gently.
Around this cellar where the gate is, and on to the bottom of the grand staircase—which will take us upstairs very near Malchor’s room. And let me, if I’m careful, examine this gate from its backside.
Can’t they see you just the same from all sides of the gate?
Some gates, aye, but not this sort. This one’s old; the Imaskari used to call these ‘shuttered’ gates. We can’t see into it from outside, and they can only see out of one face of it.
I’m getting older, Mirt thought. Let’s gather weapons and go.
They shared the last braerwing in the darkness, exchanged their cleavers for swords and as many daggers as they could comfortably carry—the warriors had borne four each, and Mirt could drop three sheathed daggers down the insides of his floppy old boots—and went.
THE CELLARS CLOSEST to the base of the grand staircase were given over to the mansion’s bulk food storage—there was a distinct smell of moldering carrots—and Oldspire’s furniture-repair workshop.
Elminster left Mirt and Myrmeen waiting there with all three shuttered lanterns and groped his way slowly and carefully the length of what his nose told him was the apple-storage cellar, to a door that thankfully didn’t creak when he lifted its peg latch and eased it open.
Far away, down a cluttered pathway of old broken furniture and rotting chairs and tables now so out of fashion that they betrayed the cruder
tastes and lesser wealth of the Forest Kingdom’s nobility back then, was the endless deep blue glow of the gate. From the back, its upright ring gave off less light than the front, but still enclosed utter darkness.
El walked cautiously closer, then stopped, closed his eyes, and reached out with slow, careful stealth, to let the Weave tell him what he needed to know.
He learned what he’d expected.
What he’d feared.
He wanted to close the gate again, but even if there’d been no spellstorm nor leaking gates nearby, and the Art had been reliable and he’d been standing before it ready for battle wrapped in his full gathered power, it was a trap.
The five liches behind the one peering through the gate and keeping it open were linked to all the other liches who’d served Larloch, whenever they wanted to be, mindspeaking through the mental yoke they all shared. They visualized it as a dark skullcap crowning their heads and running down the backs of their necks and curving over their cheeks like the ramhorn leather caps some monks favored, and it was always with them.
So when they were on Toril, what one lich saw and thought could be communicated to all the rest.
And what the lich guarding the gate, and the five liches beyond him, and presumably all the others beyond that wanted was to keep the gate open. There were more than a hundred of those others, still. There had been five times that, not so long ago, but in his last moments of agony under the Srinshee’s goad, Larloch had reached out to many of his liches to let her ravening magic sear their brains instead of his, so many of his liches had been destroyed, snuffed out in mere instants. These hundred-some survivors intended to lie in wait for anyone who tried to use magic to close the gate, and then use its magic to suck that hapless being into the gate and through it, to be brought before them buffeted and helpless by their whirling journey—and there mindream them before draining them of all vitality.
Charming.
El withdrew his scrutiny with the same slow, exacting care and returned to Mirt and Myrmeen, who interpreted his grim silence correctly, and asked no questions.
