by Ed Greenwood
Silently he led them on through the cellars and up the grand staircase, watching warily for more warriors—or anyone else.
They hooded their lanterns before they reached the ground floor, because they could hear the movements of something large and heavy and many-legged through the open door to their left, which led into the Chamber of the Founder.
The rooms of Malchor and Manshoon both opened into the chamber, where the forbidding bronze statue of the first Lord Halaunt brooded endlessly over its couches and side tables.
Myrmeen laid a hand on Elminster’s arm and then on Mirt’s, to tell them the same thing. I’ll go see.
Handing Mirt her drawn sword, she went to her knees and crawled up the last few steps to where she could peer. Then she rose to her feet and sidled to the door, keeping to one side of it until she leaned out to see—for but an instant.
She came back to them in some haste, and found them standing with hands touching, so she could mindspeak them both by adding hers atop theirs.
She shared her swift glimpse with them: a creature with its back to her, larger than the biggest pair of yoked oxen she’d ever seen. It had a stinger-tipped tail like a scorpion, thrusting up from an eight-spindly-legged body like a spider’s—and its head was like that of a rat, only with a boar’s tusks. Its eyes were large and dark and full of malice, as it faced … Malchor Harpell.
Who stood in the open doorway of his bedchamber frowning up at it, mouth already shaping a spell.
Never seen one like that before, Mirt thought grimly. Came through that gate, d’you think?
Nor have I, Elminster mindtold them—as there came a flash through the open doorway, the air rocked with that soundless fury they were getting used to, now, and—there came a deep, shuddering groan of pain.
They hastened up the last few steps and advanced warily to where they could peer through the doorway together.
Malchor Harpell was pinned against the far wall of the Chamber of the Founder, impaled on that stinger—which was as long as he stood tall, and so large around that it was almost as wide as his torso.
Which meant that he was almost cut in half, and dying. Blood spilled from his mouth as his eyes darkened, motes of light like restless fireflies still winking around his hands from where the spell he’d tried to cast had failed. Leaving him helpless before the monster.
The stinger pulled back out of him, dark and glistening, and the patriarch of the Harpells collapsed.
As the door beside Malchor’s opened, and Manshoon stepped calmly out into the hall, gave the giant spider-thing a cold smile as it turned to confront him, and raised his hands to work a spell.
“I suppose,” he told the monster conversationally, “it’s doom time for one of us.”
THE GENTLEST wisp of a cold breeze caressed Elminster’s cheek.
Well met, Old Mage, Alusair’s voice stole into his mind. It was weak and faint and wavering.
Luse! Ye should not be here! Yon mage—
Is about to hurl a spell, or have it go wrong, I know. The mind voice of the ghost princess was wry. El, I have been through utter agony, and am back. Thanks to you. You gave me enough of a shield against the buffeting of spells, cast or miscast, to at least fly again, and spy. I can’t carry things, yet, nor become visible, but that’s returning. It’s all coming back. Such a wonderful world you who work with the Art inhabit, beyond what we mere swordswingers can perceive.
True. Aye, Princess, very true. But let me see ye up close …
Alusair drifted into his nose, chilling him so utterly that he struggled to breathe. It was like a chunk of ice, numbing all it touched, behind his eyes …
And then the pain was gone, and she was outside of him again. Well?
’Twill serve ye well enough. And this should serve ye better. El thrust power into her, so much and so swiftly that she gasped aloud, even as he staggered, feeling weak and sick. Alusair Obarskyr, I need ye to do a thing.
El, I owe you—Cormyr owes you—more than I can ever repay. Command me.
Elminster reached out to her again, and felt her stiffen in the enthralling collision of ecstasy and agony he’d just visited upon her.
Ohhhh, what is this?
Silver fire. I need ye to race across yon room—fast and dodge, because Manshoon at least will be able to see its glow—and plunge into the wound in Malchor Harpell, tarry there until the fire leaves thee, then hasten back to me. He must live. Do it swiftly.
It would have to be fast, or it would consume her utterly; a non-Weave ghost wouldn’t be able to do this at all. Just as a recipient who didn’t have a long mastery of the Art, as Malchor Harpell did, couldn’t survive the silver fire’s sudden and ungoverned arrival inside them. He really should tend Malchor himself, gently guiding the silver fire through him and taking the time to do things properly—but with Manshoon and an unfamiliar and murderously hostile creature from another world in the same room, he dare not try that either.
Alusair moaned in rapture, her mind shuddering in his, then collected herself enough to tell him, I go!
And then she swooped through the doorway, a twinkling silver star.
“ELMINSTER,” MANSHOON SAID calmly, “I know you’re there. An assist, if you would. Steady me with the Weave—and this just might work. To all our benefit.”
The monster was towering over the founding lord of the Zhentarim now, its stinger drawn back to strike, its foremost pair of legs thrust forward like pincers, bracketing him to prevent his escape.
El sighed inwardly. Only in bards’ ballads did monsters charge or slither through every gate between the worlds the moment such ways opened; this prowling spidery beast had been sent or compelled through the gate, which meant it was almost certainly serving as eyes and ears for Larloch’s liches.
Who were going to be an increasing problem, it was dunderheadedly obvious, unless they were stopped in a way that was either final, or so devastating that the surviving ones learned and heeded their lesson. Hmmm …
One more problem for the platter. Right now, he had this pressing problem.
Which meant he had to trust Manshoon.
He raised his voice enough to make sure Manshoon heard him clearly without his having to show himself in the doorway, for that stinger looked like it had a long reach, and unlike a scorpion’s, could strike in nigh any direction.
“Trust in me,” he told the Zhentarim firmly, and plunged into the Weave. Of course, he was having to trust Manshoon, too, for if the vampire betrayed him now—
The loudest gasp he’d ever heard, ragged and astonished, rising to a high and trilling sob, erupted in the Chamber of the Founder. Malchor.
So it had worked. He only hoped Luse would have sense enough to get clear instead of lingering to feel that rapture just a little too long …
Why was the monster waiting so long? Towering over its prey rather than striking? There was something not right here …
Manshoon snarled out his incantation and clapped his hands together to finish the casting. The Weave channeled the energies of the surrounding world into the spell calling for them, the bright and temporary shifting weaving that would twist them into the magical effect—and aye, that weaving started to twist awry, like a badly woven basket collapsing under the strain of holding heavy and leaking water.
Elminster tugged at the Weave here and there, deftly shoring it up, making of the Weave great cradling hands that held the spell together for the mere moments it would need to shape its effect and discharge it—scores of tiny blades, like the blade barrier so beloved of veteran adventuring clerics, only Manshoon’s spell made them slicing edges of acid, not of hardened force—and the spell worked.
Except that it didn’t.
The monster absorbed the energies of the spell, rather than suffering its effects. Before their eyes, the beast was drawing in all the magical force that should have manifested as a cloud of slicing whirling blades of acid. So to this creature, a spell that twisted awry was as good as a spell that was
perfectly cast; it drained them all. Either making itself stronger, or storing that energy for … what? A spellfire-like blast of raw magical energy, or some other attack? Or something the liches could make use of?
El shrugged. He knew not; this was a creature he’d never seen before. Had the liches magically amalgamated several beasts, and spell-augmented or bred them or both, to make something found nowhere else but in their clutches? It had been done before …
Something else of interest, to be dealt with later. Probably much later.
Right now, all he could do was watch and think quickly. The monster had tarried, rearing up and waiting, offering clear menace to its foe—who could readily see that it could use that stinger or those pincerlike sharp-pointed foreleg sheaths or, for that matter, its tusks and teeth at any time, ending its wait in murder—to provoke Manshoon, as it had prodded Malchor, into hurling a spell at it.
“Elminster!” Manshoon shouted. “The Weave! Help me shapechange, and use my bite!”
Of course! Changing to mist form must have been what Manshoon had attempted when first arriving outside the walls of Oldspires. Where swirling energy leakages from the gates were making the Weave unstable, that sort of mutability was chancy, and anything necrotic nigh impossible.
Unless you had a Weavemaster to hold the Weave smooth and stable in a specific spot just large enough to encompass source, target, and the space between, for just long enough for the ability or the spell or an item’s magical discharge to take effect.
This was going to drain him, and hurt, particularly in the wake of giving some of his silver fire to Malchor. Moreover, it would leave him more vulnerable to Manshoon than any sane mage would accept, knowing what he did of the Manyfaced One.
On the other hand, fail to deal with this beast now, while it was still confined within Oldspires—a creature that magic aided rather than hurting, so all the enthusiastic war wizards in all Cormyr couldn’t stop it—would be a peril far, far more grave than the fate of one old Sage of Shadowdale.
Particularly with liches—perhaps more than a hundred of them—spying out through the creature, possibly directing it, and certainly valuing it and wanting to keep it hale and hunting.
Elminster swallowed another sigh and called back, “Do it!”
The stinger was already stabbing down.
Manshoon flung himself desperately to one side, those stabbing pincers reaching for him, and flung himself into mist form at the same time.
Three long, sleek points thrust into the wispy emptiness where he’d been. The mist swirled and rose up in a ragged cloud as the tusked creature turned right through it, stabbing at the air with all of its legs, and … became a dark and solid man again wrapped around the ratlike head, drawing daggers and driving them deep into both eyes at once.
And as the beast screamed and bucked, wild with pain, and tossed its head wildly to try to fling off the tormentor that had caused it such agony, Manshoon dragged both of his daggers back toward himself, back through the monster’s collapsing eyes to the undersides of the bony brow ridge where they could hook and hold, keeping him on its head for long enough to … bite its foul, furry head in the same way vampires served their chosen victims.
He hung on through the frenzied, squalling battering that followed, grimly riding the thing as it smashed him repeatedly against the walls and ceiling, his roars of pain muffled by its fur, healing himself repeatedly as bones were shattered and shattered anew … and when at last the thing feebly scraped him off by ramming its head against and then past the open door frame to Manshoon’s room, the creature was weak and unsteady, its long legs curled and quivering.
Which was when Elminster, half-numbed and dazed with the pain of holding the Weave steady through all the battering—pain he shared with Manshoon, but without the means to mitigate it through regeneration—sensed the monster was leaking the energies it had absorbed.
With the last of his strength, he gathered the Weave like a great sling to momentarily enfold those energies, so that even as they leaked into its strands and dissipated, he flung their fury to—topple the bronze statue of the first Lord Halaunt over onto the spiderlike creature like a giant’s hammer.
The crash of its fall shook the room, hurling the still-dazed Malchor, the regenerating Manshoon, and what was left of the crushed and splintered furniture into the air—and smashing the blinded head flat.
As a dark and malignant will sent something flashing out of the doomed and dying creature, through the open doorway like a dark snake, curving to smite—
Elminster had just time enough to shove Myrmeen one way and kick Mirt the other before it struck him, a wall of dark magic that tore at him and through him.
He clung to the silver fire he had left, a core he wrapped himself around and fought to submerge himself in, as everything else was savaged in the roaring and hungry dark destruction …
It had been a long time since pain had utterly overwhelmed him, snatching him away from all awareness of Toril around him, but it did now.
ELMINSTER WAS COLD, unbearably cold, and the black winds were howling, over him and through him, eyeless skulls that nonetheless saw him and gloated over him as they loomed large above him for their fleeting moment each as the winds brought them and then swept them on …
Liches, more liches, never an end to them, never a moment to rest …
Someone was speaking. In an icy, unfriendly manner he’d heard so many, many times before.
“If you believe you can defend him against me, woman of Arabel, you are sadly mistaken,” Manshoon was saying, a cold and triumphant sneer in his every purred word.
“I believe I can attempt to defend him,” Myrmeen Lhal replied softly. “So if you think differently, Manshoon, try me.”
“One day I shall,” the Zhentarim replied. “Don’t forget—for I shan’t.”
“She’s not alone, look you!” Mirt snarled, “I stand guard over the Old Mage, too.”
“Oh, I tremble, buffoon! Stand aside, or my mirth may overcome me!”
Elminster felt for the Weave … and found himself gazing into the worried face of Alusair. Kisses of Mystra! If he was in the Weave, face-to-face with a Weaveghost, he must have come so close to dying that …
Surreptitiously, so as not to betray his return to consciousness to Manshoon and provoke an immediate attack, he tried to gather his strength so he could move. Rise, or lift a hand and work a spell, or …
He had no strength at all.
There was a sudden flurry of movement above him that he could sense more than he could see. Then a grunt from Mirt, followed immediately by a second and more startled one, and a gasp from Myrmeen. Followed by distant thuds, and a darkening of the light.
El fought to open his eyes.
Could he not at least see?
He could, it seemed. Through a swimming view of the freshly cracked ceiling of the Chamber of the Founder—Lord Halaunt was going to need plasterers in, to give him a new overhead medallion—Elminster beheld a darkly handsome face above him.
It was smiling a wryly crooked smile.
“I could destroy you easily now, Aumar,” Manshoon told him. “At long, long last, and forever. Yet remember this: I withhold my hand, and spare you. For I pay my debts. Both ways.”
He let the smile slide off his face, and added softly, “You lucky, lucky bastard.”
CHAPTER 18
Dark and Stormy Knights
MANSHOON PUT ON HIS MOST ENGAGING SMILE. THE ONE THAT HELD not a hint of mockery. He even made his voice contrite. “I do wish to apologize for my earlier violence toward you, Lady Lhal. I did not want to do it, and took care to deal you no lasting harm, but some deeds are regrettably necessary in life, to achieve things of great and wide-reaching value—and peace between myself and Lord Aumar here has now become one of them.”
Myrmeen remained thin lipped, and the look she gave him was as dark as ever, so he tried a different gambit.
“I’m aware that it’s early in the day�
�very early, some might say—and yet I can’t help but notice you’re here and not busy in the kitchen,” he said. “Only three days of spellstorm left, I believe. Morningfeast will be served today, yes?”
Myrmeen frowned. “Not until someone deals with the army of warriors in full coat of plate that laid siege to the kitchen, and presumably—knowing fighting men as I do—have ransacked it and carried off everything they couldn’t eat on the spot. I know where there are some rotting raw carrots we can get to, but otherwise …” She shrugged.
Manshoon didn’t have to feign amusement. Black Hand of Bane, but he liked this woman. Intelligent, practical, and spirited, but not full of herself. Give him a dozen like this, and he could conquer a few cities with ease, and enjoy doing it.
His forbearance would make Elminster treat him differently, and Mystra regard him differently—how could it not? So why destroy his old, old foe now, when doing so gained him only the removal of Elminster from the scene? No, far better to wait, to profit from his newfound patience by tolerating the enemy he’d hated so much, and come to know so well, and was so used to, and await a better time.
A better time that would come. There would be plenty of opportunities ahead to destroy Elminster, given the inevitable collisions and confrontations their natures and interests would lead them into—opportunities when blaming Elminster, or taking down Elminster in a certain way, would profit Manshoon greatly.
He could wait until then.
And until that day, he could benefit repeatedly from Elminster’s meddling, Elminster’s very presence, Elminster as dupe and interceptor and deterrent. Right now, for example, Elminster made his own battle triumphs possible—and there was the Serpent Queen to contend with, yet. Not to mention whichever of Maraunth Torr’s blundering warriors yet survived. And the War Wizards of Cormyr surrounding this place. Alone, he would be the logical target to most, but with Elminster in view, their attention went to the Sage of Shadowdale and left him free to operate.
In the immediate thereafter of Oldspires, whatever happened, he would need Elminster as a shield, a decoy, and perhaps even an ally against Larloch’s liches.
