The Making of a Mage

by Ed Greenwood

  The vortex struck the mages—and whirled through them to the back wall of Ithboltar’s spellchamber It smashed into those old stones, the tower shuddered … and slowly, with terrible purpose, the shattered room folded in on itself and collapsed, bringing down the upper reaches of Ithboltar’s tower in a titanic crash and roar of falling stone.

  An earsplitting explosion burst from where the chamber had been, flinging stones out of the avalanche of falling rock, and among them, one magelord was dashed across the courtyard like a rag doll. He was still struggling weakly to work a spell as his body smashed into another tower. The face of a servant, watching in fascinated horror from a window, was spattered with the wizard’s gore. What was left of the mage slid limply down the stone wall … and then vanished in a little cluster of winking lights as a last contingency magic awoke. Too late.

  Stones were cascading down the walls of the riven tower when the courtyard itself rocked and shuddered. Gratings, paving stones, and dust leaped aloft, borne on sudden geysers of magical radiance, as something exploded in the unseen dungeon depths of the castle.

  The shattered stump of Ithboltar’s tower swayed, sagged sideways, and crashed into utter ruin. Flames leaped up here and there about the courtyard, amid the frantically running armsmen. The soldiers of Athalantar stumbled on through smoke and dust vainly waving their halberds about as if cleaving the air would fell some invisible foe and set all to rights again.

  Somewhere a raw screaming arose and went on and on, amid fresh rumblings.

  “Come,” Myrjala said, taking Elminster’s hand and slipping up to the balcony rail. Elminster followed, and she stepped calmly off it into the air. Hands clasped, they drifted slowly down through the tumult. Athalgard was erupting with running, shouting soldiers. The two mages were still a few feet above the paving stones when a band of armsmen sprinted around a nearby corner and swept down on them.

  The guardcaptain saw wizards in his path and slowed, throwing his arms out to signal his men. “What befell?” he bellowed.

  Elminster shrugged. “Ithboltar got a word or two of a spell wrong, methinks.”

  The officer stared at them, and then at the fallen tower, and his eyes narrowed. “I don’t know you!” he said sharply. “Who are you?”

  Elminster smiled. “I am Elminster Aumar, Prince of Athalantar, son of Elthryn.

  The guardcaptain gaped at him. Then with a visible effort, he swallowed and asked, “Did you—cause this?”

  Elminster gave the wreckage around a pleasant smile, then shifted his gaze to the halberds blocking his way and said, “And if I did?”

  He raised his hand. Beside him, Myrjala had already raised her own. Small lights spun and twinkled above her cupped palm.

  The armsmen cried out together in fear … and an instant later were in full flight, flinging down their halberds and slipping and sliding on the stones underfoot in their headlong haste to get back around the corner.

  “You may go,” Myrjala grandly told the empty courtyard where they’d stood. Then she chuckled. After a moment, Elminster joined in.

  “We can’t hold on much longer!” Blood from a gash left by the axe-stroke that had split his helm was dripping into Anauviir’s eyes as he shouted desperately at Helm.

  The old knight roared back, “Tell me something I don’t know!”

  Beside him, a red-faced Darrigo Trumpettower was panting as he swung a heavy blade he’d snatched from a dead hand. The old farmer was protecting Helm Stoneblade with his faltering right arm and his life. That was a price, it seemed, soon to be paid.

  The surviving knights stood together on the slippery, blood-smeared cobbles of Athalgard’s outer courtyard. Armsmen were charging in at them from all sides now, streaming in the gates from barracks and watchtowers. A few old men in motley armor couldn’t stand against such numbers for long.

  “We can’t hold!” one knight cried despairingly, hurling an armsman to the ground and wearily stabbing the man in the face.

  “Stand and fight!” Helm roared out, his raw voice rising above them all. “Even if we fall, every armsman we take with us is one less to lord it over the realm! Fight and die well for Athalantar!”

  A First Sword got through Darrigo’s guard, laying the old man’s cheek open with the point of his blade. Helm lunged forward and ran the man through, his sword buckling against the man’s spine and the armor plate behind it. He let go of his weapon and tore the man’s own blade out of failing hands to fight on. “Where are you, Prince?” he muttered as he slew another armsman. Aye, the knights of Athalantar couldn’t hold out much longer …

  King Belaur was wont to partake of evenfeast at about the time lesser men sought their morning meal. He would dine heavily on fresh fish slathered in fresh-frothed cream, and then turn to venison and hare cooked in spiced wine. When he felt full to bursting, he’d retire to the royal chambers to steep his belly’s load off. He awoke now, stretched, and strolled naked into his larger, more public bedchamber. Belaur expected to find there fresh minted wine and warmer, livelier entertainment.

  This day, rising to the waking world amid the thunders of a strange dream of shakings and rumblings, he was not disappointed. In fact, he was pleased to see two women waiting in the ornate and gigantic bed. One was the woman who’d led that Moonclaws thieving band. Isparla ‘Serpenthips’ glittered, languorous and dangerous, amid the cushions. Smiling at him in her collar and hip-string of jewels, she looked like a cat strung with diamonds, and trembling beside her was the new wench he’d noticed the evening before outside a midtown bakery. Unclad, the new arrival was even more entrancing than he’d hoped. She wore only the spell-chains magelords used to make defiant prisoners more biddable, and for the occasion someone had polished the links and the collars encircling her wrist, ankles, and throat so they gleamed as bright as Isparla’s jewels.

  Belaur met her eyes with a savage grin, snatched up a goblet and a decanter from the shining row atop a nearby board, and expressed his approval with a long, rumbling snarl as he strode to the bed. Like a purring lion he lowered himself between them, quaffing wine lazily, and wondered which pleasure to enjoy first. The new treasure … or save her, turning first to familiar delights?

  Isparla gave a low, throaty purr of her own, and moved her body against him. The king cast a look at Shandathe, lying anxious and still in her chains, and then smiled and turned away from her. He laid a cruel hand on a rope of jewels, and pulled. Serpenthips hissed in pain as the stones cut into her and she was dragged against him. Belaur bent his mouth to hers, intending to bite. He remembered earlier tastes of her warm, salty blood.…

  There was a sudden flash and a singing sound, and Belaur looked up, startled, into a gaze as frowning as his own. The mage royal of Athalantar stood beside the bed. Belaur cast a quick look down the room at the still-barred doors and back at the master of magelords before he roared, “What are you playing at now, wizard?”

  “We’re under attack,” Undarl snarled at the king. “Come! Up and out of here, if you would live!”

  “Who dares—?”

  “We’ll have time to ask them who they are later Now move, or I’ll blast your head from your shoulders … all I need to take is the crown!”

  Face dark with fury, Belaur heaved himself up from the bed, spilling wenches in both directions, and snatched down the sword that hung on the wall. For an instant, he considered thrusting it into the back of the mage royal, who was striding down the room to a painting that could be swung aside to reveal a way up into the old castle. Undarl turned with more speed than the swiftest sword in Belaur’s bodyguard, drawing aside from the extended point of the blade, and said in a cold, clear, menacing voice, “Don’t. Ever. Even. Think. Of. Such. A. Deed.” He leaned closer, and added in a harsh whisper, “Your daily survival depends on my magic.”

  The blade in the king’s hand turned into a snake that reared up and hissed at him, throwing coils around his wrist.

  As he stared at it in frozen horror, it slid back into
sword shape, and flashed mockingly once, Belaur shuddered, reluctantly turned his gaze to meet the hard points of the magelord’s cold eyes, and managed a nod. Then he moved forward obediently as Undarl gestured at the passage door

  “Ye know I must do this alone,” Elminster said quietly as they stood together in the darkened passage.

  Myrjala laid a hand on his arm, and gave him a smile. “I shall not be far. Call if you want me.”

  El saluted her with the stump of the Lion Sword and strode away down the passage, exchanging the remnant of his father’s sword for a more serviceable blade.

  The last prince of Athalantar had very few spells left, and lurched in weariness as he went. In his tattered tunic and breeches, drawn sword in hand, he could not have been a usual sight in the grand central rooms and halls of Athalgard as he made his way to the throne room, Servants he passed—and there were many—kept their eyes downcast and stepped smoothly out of his way, as if long used to making way for swaggering warriors. Courtiers tended to stare, and then quickly looked away or turned down another passage or hastened through the door and closed it behind them.

  Save for many glances back over his shoulder, Elminster seemed out for a casual walk. Guards stiffened at their posts as he approached, but he’d cast a certain spell before parting from Myrjala. The guards tensed for battle … and then froze, held motionless by his magic as he strode past.

  When El approached seven armsmen with their backs to high arched double doors, and drawn swords in their hands, he murmured an incantation that sent creatures slumping into slumber beneath a magical cloak that stilled all sound.

  The blades raised against him fell to the floor in eerie silence, followed by their owners. El stepped calmly over the doorguards, drew one of the doors open a little, and slipped within.

  The high room beyond was hung with banners and encircled by a high gallery; the walls were richly tapestried. Pillars flanked a carpet of deep forest green that ran straight from where he stood to a high seat alone at the other end of the room.

  The Stag Throne. What he’d fought his way toward—not just the chair, he reminded himself, but a land around it free of magelords. Men and a handful of women were milling about just within the doors, all around him, talking and shifting their feet rather wearily: courtiers, merchants, and envoys nervously awaiting the return of the king for early court.

  Elminster ignored their curious looks, stepped around several in his path, and strode confidently along the green carpet.

  The steps leading up to the Stag Throne were guarded by a mountain of a man in gleaming coat-of-plate, standing patiently with a warhammer as long as he was tall in his hands. He wore no helm, and his balding head gleamed in the flickering torchlight as he glared coldly at the intruder, his gray mustache bristling. “Who art thou, stripling?” he asked loudly, taking a step forward, the warhammer sliding up to rest ready on one shoulder.

  “Prince Elminster of Athalantar,” was the calm reply. “Stand aside, if you would.”

  The warrior sneered, Elminster slowed his pace and gestured with his blade for the armsman to step aside. The guardian gave him a mirthless, disbelieving smile, and stood his ground, waving the hammer warningly.

  El gave the man a brittle smile and lunged with his blade. The warrior smashed it aside with the warhammer, twisting his wrists so the mighty weapon’s backspike would lay open this arrogant foot’s head on his return sweep. Elminster stepped smoothly back out of his reach and murmured something, raising his free hand as if throwing something light and fragile.

  It raced from those delicately spread fingers, and the guardian of the throne blinked, shook his head as if disagreeing violently with something, and crashed to the polished stone tiles beside the carpet. Elminster calmly walked past him and sat on the Stag Throne, laying his blade across his knees.

  A murmur arose from the stunned court, then broke off in a fearful hush as sudden light blazed into being from above. In the heart of the pulsing purple-white radiance, the mage royal appeared in the hitherto-empty gallery—flanked by a dozen armsmen or more, loaded crossbows in their hands.

  Undarl Dragonrider’s hand chopped down. In response, seven crossbow bolts sped at the man on the throne.

  The young intruder watched calmly as those bolts cracked and shivered in the air in front of him, striking something unseen and falling aside.

  The magelord’s hands were moving in the flourishes of a spell as the senior armsman ordered, “Ready bows again!”

  Elminster lifted his own hands in quick gestures, but the folk watching saw the air around the throne flicker and dance with sudden tight. El knew no magic would take hold where he sat now; he could raise no barrier to stop missiles or blades seeking his life.

  The mage royal laughed and ordered the armsmen who hadn’t fired their quarrels yet to loose them. Elminster sprang to his feet.

  A fat merchant standing under a pillar suddenly flickered and became a tall, slim woman with bone-white skin and large, dark eyes. One of her hands was raised in a warding gesture—and the crossbow bolts leaping toward the Stag Throne caught sudden fire as they flew. They flared and were gone.

  The senior armsman turned and pointed at Myrjala. “Shoot her down!” he ordered, and two crossbows cracked as one.

  Dodging around the throne, deciding which spell to use when he got far enough away from Undarl’s magic-rending field, Elminster watched those bolts streak across the throne room at his onetime tutor They glowed a vivid blue to his magesight.

  He stared in horror; spells flared out angry radiance around them. Undarl laughed coldly as a sudden burst of light marked the destruction of a shield spun around the sorceress. It was followed by a second flash, an instant later, as an inner shield failed—and Myrjala staggered, clutched at her breast where one bolt stood quivering, turned sideways so he saw the second bolt standing in her side—and fell. Undarl’s harsh laughter rang out loudly. Elminster started down the steps at a run, his own safety forgotten. He was still three running paces short of Myrjala’s sprawled form when she vanished.

  The green carpet where she’d lain was empty. Elminster turned from it, eyes blazing, and spat a spell. He was a single snarled word away from the end of the incantation when the mage royal’s cruel eyes, fixed triumphantly on his own, faded away into empty air. The wizard had vanished, too.

  Elminster’s completed spell was already taking effect. Sudden fire raged along the gallery, and armsmen screamed hollowly inside their armor, writhing and staggering. Crossbows crashed down over the rail, followed by one guard, armor blackened and blazing, who toppled over the gallery rail and crashed down atop a merchant, smashing him to the flagstones. There were fresh screams from the courtiers as they rushed for the doors.

  The portals they sought were flung open then, bowling over more than one hurrying merchant, and into the throne room strode King Belaur, naked but for a pair of breeches. His face was dark with anger, and a drawn sword glittered in his hand.

  Folk fell back before him—and then fled in earnest as they saw who was behind the king. The mage royal was smiling coldly as he walked, his hands weaving another spell. Elminster went white and spat out a word. The air flashed, and that end of the throne room shook, but nothing happened … except that a little dust drifted down from above.

  Undarl laughed and lowered his hands. His shield had held.

  “You’re on my ground now, Prince—and fool!” he gloated. Then his face changed, he gasped—and felt forward with a howl of pain.

  Behind him, belt knife red to the hilt, stood a certain baker, brows trembling in fury. Hannibur had come to Athalgard to find his wife. Courtiers gasped. Hannibur reached down to cut the magelord’s throat, but Undarl’s hand darted out in a gesture.

  The air pulsed and flowed, and the baker’s raised dagger shattered. From the whirling sparks of its destruction rays of light leaped out in all directions: a protective spell-cage flashed into being around the fallen mage.

  Elminster
glared at Undarl and spoke a clipped, precise incantation. A second cage, its glowing bars thicker and brighter than Undarl’s, enclosed the first. The mage royal struggled up to one elbow, face pinched in pain, and his hand went to his belt.

  Hannibur stared down at the purposeful magelord and the radiances that had just consumed his only blade, shook his head in slow anger, and turned away. It was only two steps to the nearest courtier. A quick jerk freed the startled man’s sword from its jeweled scabbard. Holding it like a toy, the baker turned slowly to survey the room, like a heavy-helmed knight peering about in search of foes, Then, implacably, he started down the green carpet toward the king.

  A courtier hesitated, and then followed, drawing his own belt knife. Elminster spoke a soft word, and the man froze in midstep, Overbalanced, the motionless man fell over on his face. A second and third courtier, who’d also reached for their blades, stepped back, suddenly losing interest in defending their king.

  Elminster sat down again on the Stag Throne to watch his angry uncle come for him. It seemed a fitting place to wait.

  King Belaur was furious, but not so rash as to rush right onto the unwavering point of Elminster’s waiting sword. He advanced with menacing care, his own blade held high, ready to sweep down and smash aside Elminster’s steel. “Who are you?” he snarled. “Get off my throne!”

  “I am Elminster, son of Elthryn—whom you had that caged snake over there murder,” Elminster replied crisply, “and this seat is as much mine as yours.” He sprang down the steps, sword flashing, and went to meet Belaur.

  EIGHTEEN

  THE PRICE OF A THRONE

  How much does a throne cost? Sometimes but one life, when sickness,

  old age, or a lucky blade takes the life of a king in a strong kingdom.

  Sometimes a throne costs the life of everyone in a kingdom. Most often,