Elminster in Hell

by Ed Greenwood

  They were silent, for a time. Then Mirt asked again, roughly this time, “But why—sell yourself?”

  Nalitheen turned in his arms to face him, in the darkness. “What else have I?” she asked simply. “I can cook, aye, but there are a hundred hundred folk this side of the castle who can cook better than I. I have no skill at handiwork, nor strength to load or unload goods in the streets for whatever coin is offered. All else in this city is guild work, and I lack the coins even to apprentice to a guild. And ’prentice wages won’t feed two younglings, even if I near starve.”

  Mirt ran a hand along her ribs. “Naught else to spare, have you?”

  Nalitheen chuckled. “Borold used to say that. I have always eaten little.”

  “I’ve no complaints,” Mirt assured her, and they chuckled together. He fell silent then, and soon after began to snore. Nalitheen lay still in his arms, looking into the night—and surprised herself by falling asleep almost immediately.

  YOU HUMANS CERTAINLY RUT A LOT. IF YOU WASTED LESS TIME TALKING YOUR WAY INTO EACH OTHER’S ARMS, YOU’D HAVE MORE TIME FOR KILLING AND PLUNDERING.

  My thanks, Nergal, but some in Faerûn, as it happens, have noticed that already.

  [snort] REVEAL MORE, WIZARD. MY PATIENCE IS A SHORTER THING THAN IT WAS WHEN I FIRST CAPTURED YOU.

  And as it happens, I’ve noticed that.

  [diabolic chuckle, images flying by]

  When Mirt awoke and rolled over, it was gray dawn. Beside him, the bed was empty. He looked first for his sword and laid it by long habit close within reach. Then he dressed quickly and quietly, as was his wont, stretching once or twice as cats do.

  Nalitheen came into the room before he was done, with two steaming tankards of what smelled like bull-tongue broth. She stopped suddenly at the sight of him fully dressed.

  She was barefoot, and as a warming-robe wore a once-fine, patched gown, open down the front but loosely belted at the waist. She handed him one tankard with what might have been a smile and sat down on the edge of the bed, pulling what she wore more tightly around her.

  “You’ll be leaving, then?” she asked, raising her eyes to his. There was something strange in them.

  Mirt nodded slowly. “I must. The company rides again, this afternoon, after we’ve bought food enough to ride on.” He sipped, and nodded appreciatively. “My thanks—this is welcome, indeed.”

  Nalitheen looked at him. “So was your kindness last night,” she said. Mirt met her gaze steadily, and then deliberately drained his tankard and rose. A gold piece fell from his hand to clatter inside it as he set it down.

  “One more thing, if you will,” he said slowly. Nalitheen raised her eyebrows over her tankard, as she sipped her still-steaming broth.

  “Show me your daughters,” Mirt said softly, almost pleading.

  Nalitheen looked at him for a moment, the tankard suddenly forgotten in her hand, and then nodded and led him to a curtain in one corner of the room.

  The door behind it was locked. Expressionlessly, Nalitheen put one end of the curtain into Mirt’s hand. Then she bent and took a slim key from beneath a floorboard in a corner nearby, fitted it to the lock, and swung the door wide. A ladder led upward into soft gloom.

  Nalitheen waved him forward. Mirt nodded and climbed the ladder slowly and carefully. The rungs creaked under his weight. The ladder ended in a little room under the eaves of the house, rosy now with the first true light of dawn. Great, wondering dark eyes waited for him there, as two sleepy, tousle-headed lasses stared at him from their shared bed.

  “Naleetha and Boroldira,” Nalitheen introduced them from behind him. Mirt turned at the harshness of her tone and saw her knuckles white around a dagger she clutched, its wickedly sharp point toward him. “Borold’s,” she added, flatly, nodding down at it.

  Mirt met her burning eyes for a long, silent moment, then deliberately turned his back, to face the girls in the bed. “Ladies,” he greeted them gravely, bowing as if they were high ladies of a court, “I am Mirt the Wolf. Pray accept my apologies for disturbing your slumber. Naleetha, Boroldira; I am pleased to have met you.”

  He smiled and turned back to Nalitheen, the smile still on his lips. “Thank you,” he said simply. He stepped past her blade as though it was not there and went back down the ladder, not hurrying. He strode on, with Nalitheen behind him, on and down the stairs below, to the front door of the house.

  When he turned, Nalitheen was standing on the lowest step of the stair, trembling, the dagger in her hands. Tears glistened in her eyes.

  “Put the blade away, milady,” Mirt said softly. “There’s no need for that.”

  Nalitheen shook her head, slowly and helplessly, and let the dagger fall to the floor. She stared down at it silently, her hair fallen around her shading her face.

  “How long have you known?” Mirt asked her quietly.

  “T-they told me who killed him,” Nalitheen whispered, and then looked up at him angrily through her tears, head to one side. “They told me Mirt the Merciless killed my man. I’ve waited for you. Two long seasons, lying alone and crying every night. I wondered if you’d ever come close enough to me for this dagger to reach.”

  “And now?” Mirt asked, unmoving, holding her gaze.

  “Last night was different,” Nalitheen sobbed, and looked away, striding along the bottom step of the stairs. She wheeled at its end, and cried, “How long have you known? Who I was, and wh—that you’d killed my husband?”

  “Last night. When you told me how he died,” Mirt told her truthfully.

  “And you stayed?”

  “I’d paid,” Mirt replied mildly, and then added, “No, that was cruel. I trusted you with my life, Nalitheen. Then and now.”

  He drew his blade, slowly. Nalitheen flinched but did not draw back. Meeting her eyes steadily, Mirt upended his scabbard and shook a cloth bag out of its depths. The coins inside it clinked heavily as he put it into her hands.

  “This,” he said gently, closing her fingers around it with his own, “is for you, and Naleetha, and Boroldira. I’m sorry. I’ll come again, and there’ll be more. You have my word on that.”

  Nalitheen looked at him, unmoving and expressionless, the gold in her hands. Mirt kissed her forehead gently, resheathed his blade, and fetched down his cloak from a peg.

  “Gods bless you for your charity, Mirt,” Nalitheen whispered, sounding more weary than bitter. She shivered, shook her head a little, and closed her eyes, leaning against the door frame.

  “ ’Tis not charity,” the Wolf of Waterdeep told her almost fiercely as he turned to go out into the brightening street, “for I’ll be back.”

  AH, SO TOUCHING! THE MISPLACED PITY THAT HUMANS CALL “HONOR,” I BELIEVE. OR LOYALTY, OR SOME OTHER WEAKNESS LIKE THAT. AND YET—MINDS LIKE MAZES, THIS ONE ESPECIALLY.

  REST NOT, CAPTIVE WIZARD—NERGAL CRAVES ENTERTAINMENT! SHOW ON!

  * * * * *

  “You offend me, pig of a merchant,” the Calishite said, his accent as heavy as his perfume. Though Velzraedo Hlaklavarr of Calimport was hardly slimmer than the wheezing figure sprawled with his boots up on the chair, Velzraedo was far better dressed. His spade-beard wagging, the Calishite added a delicate stream of curses that called into question Mirt’s ancestry, personal hygiene, dietary habits, the hobbies and judgment of his mother, and his familiarity with camels. “Kindly,” he added with a sneer, “remove yourself from this seating you so indolently occupy. Its use is required by myself—Velzraedo Hlaklavarr of Calimport, First Finger of the Masked Vizier!”

  Mirt’s reply was a repetition of the mellifluous, echoing belch that had first offended the silk-clad envoy. “My,” he told his fingernails, not moving from his sprawled position at the best table in the Brave Bustard, “but it certainly seems mustard and quince were not meant to be in a sauce together—at least not in my stomach. Why, stop me vitals: my very proximity seems to have a marked effect on the sanity of visiting Catamites—or is it ‘Calishits’? I can never recall! Why�
��”

  The envoy interrupted this airy observation with a roar of rage. He snatched one of the dozen or so wicked silver-bladed throwing knives from the gleaming row adorning his belt. His arm was a blur of purple silk—right until the moment it crashed down on the table in the violent and bouncing company of Velzraedo Hlaklavarr’s nose.

  The Calishite’s generous behind and gilded boots rose into the air, driven up by the chair that Mirt the Moneylender’s boot had thrust into his guts. In the suddenly silent tavern, everyone heard the loud sob of pain and robbed breath that Velzraedo Hlaklavarr announced to the world.

  Almost lazily Mirt plucked the knife from the Calishite’s numbed fingers, used its point to skew aside the envoy’s turban, and delicately brought a decanter of firewine down onto Velzraedo Hlaklavarr’s balding head.

  In the wake of that wet, solid blow, the Calishite jerked once, arms flailing weakly, rolled to one side, and lay still. His tongue hung loosely over the edge of the table.

  Mirt looked up at the six grandly uniformed warriors the envoy had brought with him. He smiled, Velzraedo’s throwing knife waggling ever-so-gently between his fingers. “Pity overwhelm us all, but he’s collapsed. It must be the air in here—very bad, very bad. I fear my own offerings do nothing to improve that state of affairs, so perhaps His Fingerness will revive most speedily and completely elsewhere, hmm?”

  The envoy’s guards glared at Mirt, hands clenched on the hilts of their blades—then surveyed the dozen or so armed, scruffy men sitting tensely at the tables all around, weapons ready and bottles hefted for hurling. Dark eagerness burned in their eyes. Even the serving wenches had turned to glare, clay wine-jacks poised in their hands.

  The largest and most grandly mustachioed guard looked at Mirt and bowed his head. “Perhaps there is wisdom in what you say, merchant. We’ll take our master elsewhere, in peace, and remember your kind concern—and your face—in our prayers, for later.”

  Mirt’s smile was wintry as he replied, “As I will yours … and with two sets of gods heeding fervent entreaties, our next meeting should come soon, hey? I know I’ll be ready.”

  The guard froze for a moment to match stares with him, then slowly and deliberately dragged the senseless envoy back off the table and into the arms of the other guards. They went out, the two rearmost men facing back into the dining hall, hard expressions on their faces. Various gestures offered them a swift and eventful journey—even before a sudden tumult and clang of arms in the passage outside heralded their fate.

  Breathing heavily and wearing a smile as broad as the sun, Beldrigarr Stoneshield of the watch burst into the room. “Did those Calishites cause any trouble in here?”

  A dozen smoothly expressionless faces adorned as many shaken heads, telling him no.

  Stoneshield grinned. “Thought so. Well, two of them tried to cut down a serving lad right under my nose, there by the door—and we were already looking for that envoy for passing crooked coins in the Sunset Sail!”

  The tavern master of the Bustard cursed heartily and scooped his hand into the bowl under the bar. He brought up a fistful of coins and peered at them.

  The watch officer shook his head, chuckling, and sat down across from Mirt. “So, Old Wolf,” he growled. “I might have known I’d fi—hey! What’s amiss?”

  Mirt the Moneylender, most famous roisterer on the Docks, was frowning and shaking his head, an odd expression on his face. The Calishite throwing knife fell forgotten from his fingers to clatter on the table.

  Stoneshield drew back from it as if it were a coiling viper. “Is it—poisoned?” he rumbled, his eyes darting from it to Mirt and then back again.

  “N-nay,” the moneylender said slowly. “No, I—something just touched my thoughts.” He lifted one scarred hand to tap the side of his head, and added slowly, “Just about—here.”

  “Magic!” the watch officer spat, boiling up out of his chair. “Why, I’ll have those Calishites in chains in two hot moments, see if I don—”

  “No,” Mirt snapped, putting out his hand, “it’s not them. No. I hardly think they’d know of Nalitheen or her daughters.” His frown deepened, and he rumbled, “I’d best go check on them. Perhaps they’re in need, an’ the gods’ve sent me a sign.” He rose, tossed a handful of gold coins toward the tavern master, and said, “Top up all flagons, will ye?”

  A roar of approval followed him out of the Bustard, but it didn’t cheer him up much.

  * * * * *

  He set his hands on soft shoulders.

  Silver hair whirled around and coldly imperious eyes looked into his. “Do you have any idea what a foolish thing that was to do, Elminster of Shadowdale?” the Queen of Aglarond asked, anger lifting her voice like a drawn sword. “I might have slain you in an instant.”

  “I’ve spent my life doing foolish things and stepping into the path of peril,” the Old Mage replied gently. “I’m not going to stop now—no matter how beautiful the lady who admonishes me.”

  That brought a smile. “You flatter like a Thayan,” The Simbul observed, making the words almost a dagger-thrust.

  “They, Lady, learned flattery from me,” Elminster said in dignified tones. “They failed, however, to learn any good judgment from me if they are so foolish as to offer violence to a queen so powerful and passionate and wise.”

  Silver hair stirred as soft words fell like stinging blows. “And what if I like violence, old man?”

  “Then you may offer it to me,” replied the wizard in the patched and stained robes, spreading his hands. “Mystra has made me into an old anvil, to take the blows of many. Lady, do your worst.”

  A sudden smile like silver moonlight split the room. “I think I’m going to enjoy this,” the Simbul told the air around her. She plucked off her crown and sent it spinning into a corner. As she started toward him, she crooked one shapely eyebrow. “Which shall it be, now—my worst, or my best?”

  “Lady,” the old man replied in a purr that matched hers, “let me, I pray, be the judge of that.”

  WIZARD, DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW BORING THE FLIRTATIONS OF HUMANS ARE TO ME? NOW, IF YOU’D KNOCKED HER OVER WITH A SPELL-HURLED HORSE, OR ACCIDENTALLY BURIED HER UNDER DUNG OR ROTTEN FRUIT AND HAD TO ENDURE HER FURY AFTER, THAT I’D LIKE TO SEE. BUT HONEYED WORDS … D’YOU THINK DEVILS KNOW NOTHING OF SUCH BANDINAGE?

  MOREOVER, IT’S HARDLY A REVELATION TO ME THAT YOU CONCERN YOURSELF OVERMUCH WITH THE LADIES. WHAT RANDY OLD HE-WIZARD DOESN’T?

  MY IMPATIENCE GROWS? I THINK A LITTLE LESSON IS IN ORDER.

  AND IN HELL, WE TEACH WITH PAIN.

  * * * * *

  “All Faerûn bows before the beauty of the—the queen of Aglarond,” the Purseroyal of Tantras said tentatively, the sweat of fear glistening at his temples. Did one daresay “Witch-Queen” to the Simbul’s face? Or call her “the Simbul”? Indeed, what at all did one dare do in the presence of a lady who could be a purring kitten one moment and a castle-shattering tempest the next?

  The Simbul lounged barefoot on her throne, clad in a plain robe that hung open from her shoulders to the sash at her waist, and fell away from her magnificent legs high on her thighs. In both cases, the Tantran ambassador could tell with distressing clarity that the fiery ruler of Aglarond carried not an ounce of spare flesh on her body. Why, he could see every muscle and tendon, rippling as she shifted lazily, clear down to … Holy Sune! Guard my thoughts.…

  “An appropriate wish,” the Simbul murmured, loud enough for just the ambassador to hear. “Know that your musings do not offend me, but know also that I am in some haste, and would hear with rather less formality and more speed the wishes of Tantras toward our fair realm. In plain speech, get on with it, man.”

  “Wah—I—ah, that is—” the purseroyal began auspiciously enough. Irritation and then anger stole across the regal face before him. The blood drained right out of his own face. His mouth trembled in uncontrollable terror.

  One slim, long-fingered royal hand rose in a clawing, sweeping moti
on, as if to rake him away.

  The Tantran was suddenly aware that he might have only moments longer to live. The courtiers of Aglarond, ranged tightly around the walls of the throne room, had fallen tense and silent—and were leaning forward in unison to see every detail of his fate.

  He whimpered once, wondering where to run and knowing that such flight was doomed, and—and—

  Then it was all too late. The Simbul lifted her head almost in defiance, stiffened, her face going dark and her eyes starting to blaze. Abruptly she rose and turned away from the quaking ambassador. She strode a few catlike paces across the open stretch of floor around the throne, clawing at the air in frustration.

  What was it? Thrice now, whilst this fool gabbled and shook before her, it had touched her, stirring something in the depths of her mind. Oh, so faint a touch, but troubling, setting her nerves to jangling and the silver fire to flowing impatiently. When this happened, it always betokened something bad. It always made her restless, too. Part of her wanted to hurl off her clothes and fly, shifting from shape to shape, dragon and falcon and wyvern and pegasus, on and on as the spirit moved her, as she tore across the skies of Faerûn, seeking … something. Something she knew not what.

  Alassra Silverhand stood silent, motionless except for the shivers running up and down her body. She was clenching her hands so tightly that her fingernails pierced her palms, and blood began to drip through her fingers. She stared at the floor as if her gaze could burn through it.… From one courtier, a tiny, hastily stifled shriek ran around the throne room as smoke curled up from the floor tile that bore the brunt of the Simbul’s regard.

  The Purseroyal of Tantras shrank back, weeping as quietly as he could, visibly struggling to keep control of himself. Writhing in the icy claws of his own fear, he was on the brink of screaming his headlong way back to his ship, through closed castle gates, plate-armored guardsmen, and all. In a moment or two he might be blasted by the Witch-Queen of Aglarond in one of her fits of destructive fury—or as some folk called it, “insanity.”