Bury Elminster Deep

by Ed Greenwood

  Mirt shook free of the last few coils and lurched to his feet, wincing and growling at the numbness—and the pain, wherever there was no numbness. “What’re ye baring him for, anyhail?”

  “I want every last bauble and stitch of magic on him, to take to Alassra,” Elminster replied. “Though none of it—even if we amass a cartload of it—will do her as much good as a blueflame item. If I could get one of those before we go to her …”

  Mirt shook his head. “Well, I just want to be free of nobles trying to harm me. D’ye know if anyone else in Suzail is likely to treat kindly old Helderstone like this one was planning to? For that matter, what’s to stop him trying again, when he wakes?”

  El and Storm looked at each other, then shrugged.

  “We’ll change thy appearance again and give ye another name, so ye can dwell in Suzail free of that particular problem,” El told him.

  “And we’ll spread word that Illance tortured and killed Helderstone, then hid his body, so our kindly old lord here will receive some very unwanted attention from the war wizards,” Storm added with a sly smile.

  Mirt grinned. “The two of ye would have made very good Lords of Waterdeep, ye know?”

  El and Storm exchanged glances again.

  “As I recall,” Storm added sweetly, “we did.”

  Lady Greatgaunt’s rented suite boasted three guest bedchambers, and although her war wizard escort bedded down in the most distant one, there was no one at all to see that he stayed there.

  Particularly in the hours just before dawn, when two tired walkers came home with some wine and a filched wheel of Illance’s cheese to share between them.

  “So,” Storm asked Elminster as they munched and sipped, “how do we find the mysterious noble who has a blueflame ghost up his sleeve? We can’t just go from mansion to tower all around Suzail knocking down doors and trying to shake the truth out of every lord and lady we meet!”

  El grinned. “No,” he agreed, “so we’ll lure a ghost to us, instead. I’ll use a spell to grace a certain mask dancer with blue flames, and wait for word to spread.”

  “Tress won’t thank you for getting her club wrecked by a blueflame ghost,” Storm said quietly. “And young Arclath will probably try to serve your beard up to you on a platter—attached to your head or not—for endangering his love.”

  “The dancer isn’t going to be at the Dragonriders’ and isn’t going to be Amarune,” El told her happily.

  “Then who …” Storm gave him a sharp look. “Oh, no, El. Oh, no!”

  “I’d much rather see you barepelt than young Rune, and I’ll wager most of Suzail will, too. You’re something splendid, lass. Truly. And you don’t look a day older than, say, twenty-two summers.”

  “You rogue,” she replied with a twinkling smile. “You lying, flattering rogue.”

  “Aye, that’s me,” he said serenely. “Shall we go out and purchase a mask?”

  “After I’ve had a good long sleep,” Storm replied emphatically. “There’s no longer a Weave to replenish us, Old Mage, and I get tired, these days. Weren’t you ‘about done’ most of the night ago?”

  “I was,” El agreed—and fell face-first onto her bed. He was snoring in a trice.

  Storm rolled her eyes.

  “Now that’s a useful trick, Sage of Shadowdale,” she told him.

  Then she bent closer and frowned. He really was snoring.

  She kicked off Illance’s boots, wriggled out of his clothes—they fit terribly, and she resolved to burn them before someone recognized them; Suzail these days seemed a city of tireless spies—and cuddled against him.

  In his sleep, Elminster stroked her then put an arm around her.

  Storm amused herself by trying to undress him, but fell asleep in his arms before she got very far.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-ONE

  THE DANGEROUS WORK OF LURING GHOSTS

  I cower not at head-shattering spells

  And tremble not at invading hosts

  For I have walked haunted fells

  On the dangerous work of luring ghosts.

  from the ballad My Long Ghostdance

  by Eleyera “Lady Minstrel” Dree

  first performed in the Year of the Haunting

  Manshoon leaned eagerly forward in his chair, straining to see and hear better.

  Or rather, to urge Ironhand, ever so gently, to shift to where he could see and hear better.

  Manshoon’s spell would let him observe what Ironhand was seeing and hearing for just a little longer. He wasn’t riding the man’s mind, because he didn’t want the risk of being where Ironhand was just then.

  He had found his best blueflame hunter yet. Imglor “Imhammer” Ironhand was very expensive, but worth it. The man was almost as ruthless, careful, and coldly calm as Manshoon himself, and had carved himself out an impressive career as a slayer-for-hire specializing in swift and covert killings disguised as accidents.

  No slaying was necessary, this time—only a slayer unmasked. The noble who commanded the lone blueflame ghost that had appeared at the Council.

  Thus far, Ironhand had helped make almost certain that three candidates for the blueflame noble were not, in fact, the one Manshoon sought.

  At that moment, Manshoon’s new hireling had wormed his way onto the roof of a high house adjacent to the one where Lord Harkuldragon was strutting around an upper room that had open windows. Through which Ironhand could hear a discussion between Harkuldragon and his longtime hired mage, the homely, aging sourface Sarrak of Westgate about the slaying of a certain inconvenient courtier.

  The courtier was one whose death half Suzail would greet cheerfully. The pompous Khaladan Mallowfaer, Master of Revels, was no one’s favorite or confidant, and as far as Manshoon knew was kinless, had never married, and had never romanced anyone. He’d hired doxies aplenty, of course, but that was an entirely different matter. His inconvenience to Harkuldragon was that he’d inadvertently learned something of the noble’s planned treason, and so could expose Harkuldragon, if he so desired. A situation the lord naturally found intolerable.

  What had made Manshoon pay far too much to have Ironhand eavesdropping on the noble and his mage was Harkuldragon’s grim comment over one too many goblets, at The Three Ravens some nights ago, that if “the usual magics failed” he had “something more to settle scores with.”

  Harkuldragon could have meant nothing more than blackmail, the fact that he was good with his fists and swift to use them, or that he owned a magic sword of great age and mysterious powers that adventurers of his hiring had once brought him. Or he might have a pet monster, or be able to call in a favor from a mage or two. But then again, it might mean he could send forth his own slayer wreathed in blue flame …

  So far, the converse Ironhand had overheard hadn’t suggested blueflame ghosts or anything of the sort, but they were getting to interesting words finally, as Harkuldragon’s temper started to slip.

  “The man’s as greedy and malicious as a snake, Sarrak! And as conceited as—what was that?”

  Ironhand had heard it, too, and leaned out so far in a neck-craning attempt to see and hear that his eavesdropping almost became literal.

  Someone had caused the lock on the door of that upper room to burst outward in all directions, showering the room with tiny pattering fragments of metal that would have been deadly if they hadn’t been almost dust.

  The door yawned open, evidently revealing no one at all outside the room.

  “Make whoever it is visible, wizard! Banish invisibility, or whatever the spell is!” Lord Harkuldragon bellowed.

  “Done,” Sarrak replied a moment later.

  “Who—who are you?” the nobleman demanded, hauling out his belt dagger and glaring at someone Ironhand couldn’t see. “Wizard, don’t just stand there! Smite her! Smite her down!”

  “I fear he can’t, noisy fool. He made the mistake of obeying you—and while he was making me visible, I was casting paralysis on him.”
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br />   With an easy, almost insolent stride, a tall and slender woman came into the room. She had pale white skin, a sharp-featured, cruel face dominated by large, dark eyes that snapped with simmering anger, and long, long legs. She was clad all in black except for a silver weathercloak that hung from her shoulders, and Ironhand was certain he’d never seen her before.

  A woman this beautiful, he would remember.

  “Who are you?” he demanded, hefting his dagger as he came around the table. “And what do you want?”

  “I am the Lady of Ghosts. And fear not, Lord Harkuldragon—my business here is not with you at all. I am here for Sarrak of Westgate.”

  “Sarrak? Why?”

  “Your questions grow tiresome. Perhaps you should fear me, after all.”

  “Oh? You wield no weapon, and I’m protected against spells. Perhaps you should fear me.”

  Harkuldragon strode toward the woman, who stood watching him come closer, making no move at all. She looked bored.

  Two strides from her the lord suddenly hissed out a curse, shook his dagger hand as he stepped back, then flung the dagger down. “Burned me!”

  He was flapping fingers that seemed to be dripping melted flesh.

  “Protected,” the woman said contemptuously. “By Sarrak’s spells, no doubt.”

  Then she moved like a striking panther, charging to take him by the throat so swiftly that Harkuldragon didn’t even have time to cry out.

  He managed to do so a moment later, when her hard-driven knee into his crotch lifted him off his feet, but thanks to her tightening fingers, his cry wasn’t much more than a croak.

  As he went down, she got behind him, hands still gripping his throat, and flung herself hard down on his neck, knees together.

  Ironhand winced as Lord Harkuldragon’s neck broke.

  The woman calmly twisted the lord’s head around at a gruesome angle as she stood up. Then she walked away, leaving the man dead and forgotten on the floor behind her.

  “Now, Sarrak, let us begin. I will see what is in your mind—destroying it in so doing, but that can’t be helped. You see, I’ve heard you know things about Orbakh, who once ruled your city. Things relating to who he really was. A man I seek, named Manshoon.”

  Manshoon sat frozen in astonishment. What was this?

  Sarrak emitted a sort of sob as her spell struck him. As she bored into his mind, the magic that was destroying his brain seemed to release him from her paralysis, but too late for him to escape; his limbs were trembling violently and thrashing wildly about from time to time, utterly out of his control.

  He staggered back into Ironhand’s field of view, tripping backward over Harkuldragon’s body and crashing to the floor, where he lay twisting and panting, his eyes bulging and sweat drenching his skin … which was going bone-white.

  “Please,” he blurted.

  Ten or twenty of Manshoon’s breaths passed before the stricken mage spoke again. “Please … please stop.”

  “I’m sorry, Sarrak, but I must know what’s in your mind, not just what you choose to tell me. Speak freely if doing so will bring you a little release. It makes my peering easier.”

  “No!” Sarrak gasped, in feeble defiance. “No.”

  He fell silent again, except for gasps, until his eyes started to go dark.

  Manshoon had seen wizards’ eyes do that before, when farscrying Thayan torturers; Sarrak’s end would come soon.

  “Manshoon,” the doomed mage quavered suddenly, through his streaming sweat, his eyes now dark pits. “You live to slay him. You burn to slay him. Is this the Manshoon of legend? Why do you hate him so?”

  “You seek to buy time and a little relief from pain,” came the calm reply, “yet, I’ll tell you, Sarrak of Westgate. I hate only one man more than Manshoon—if he is a man, at all, or ever was. Elminster, the Sage of Shadowdale.”

  “How … how so?”

  “I was Manshoon’s lover and apprentice. So was my mother. And my two sisters. Oh, he was a magnificent beast; when he stared into your eyes, there was nothing you wouldn’t do for him.”

  The Lady of Ghosts took a step closer. “He ordered them to attack and kill Elminster, and in their battle with the Old Mage—Manshoon watched from afar for his personal entertainment, rendering no aid at all—Elminster slew my kin. I was the youngest and Manshoon’s favorite. He held me back. I believe he knew he was sending them to their doom.”

  She took another step forward, her voice rising a little. “I was enraged, and in my grief turned on Manshoon, incredulous that he’d done nothing. He left me with this.”

  She tore open her black jerkin.

  Between her pale, revealed breasts protruded the bloody point of a dagger.

  A wound that should have been fatal. The blood glistened fresh and wet.

  “He left me for dead, knowing nothing of the curse I bore that kept me alive. Elminster had cast it on me earlier, to keep me safe from Manshoon’s ‘murderous cruelties,’ he told me—though it was really to give him a spy the lord of the Zhentarim could not slay; so, when Manshoon finally fell he could plunder my mind at will to learn all Manshoon’s deeds and treasures and secrets.”

  Her voice rose into a savage snarl. “He used me. They both used me. They will both die!”

  The Lady of Ghosts made a swift, complicated gesture—and Sarrak’s head burst like a rotten fruit. She turned away.

  “Much more slowly and painfully than I let you perish, wizard of Westgate. But then, your only crime was working for the wrong man. A crime I share twice over.”

  As Ironhand watched, not daring to move lest he make a sound she might hear, the Lady of Ghosts went to various places in the Lord Harkuldragon’s chamber and collected as many hidden magic items from them.

  “Thank you, Sarrak,” she told the headless corpse. “The entire roster, and how to safely recover them. You saved me much time.”

  Ironhand heard her walk away, across the floor and out and down the stairs.

  He waited a long time before he dared shift his position on the roof and take himself away.

  Manshoon never noticed. He was too busy staring into the darkness around his chair, shaken.

  “Cymmarra,” he whispered. “Is this fallen Mystra’s last slap at me? How much do you know of what I am now, Cymmarra? You hunt me here in Suzail, so you know something … oh, Bane blast all! Now what do I do?”

  Elminster came awake slowly, feeling the warmth of a loving embrace. Ahh, Alassra, at last …

  No. These were … Storm’s arms about him, her bare body wrapped around his. They were on her bed, and he wore only Applecrown’s breeches and clout.

  He rose on one elbow, and she stirred in her sleep then settled contentedly back against him, the side of her face against his breast.

  Hmm. Against Applecrown’s young, sleekly muscled chest, and flat stomach below. Nothing to compare with her rounded magnificence, of course …

  Mystra, but she was beautiful! The sun was high—stlarn, it must be almost highsun!—and lancing down through the window to paint her body with bright gold. Her silver tresses were writhing and coiling, slowly and lazily, in their own sensual pleasure.

  Such beauty …

  He was aroused, yes, stirring beneath her and causing her to purr and move against him in her sleep. Aroused, and why shouldn’t he be?

  Well, because she was his friend, and although she wasn’t his daughter, he’d raised her like one some seven hundred years ago. She was his companion, his sword sister, not his lover … never his lover …

  Storm’s eyes opened. She gazed up at him along his bare chest, her nose almost touching his belt buckle, and gave him a long, slow smile, regarding him dreamily.

  “Even in another’s body, El,” she whispered, her hair lashing him gently like the tails of a dozen playful cats, “you’re … a comfort to wake up to.”

  She had obviously changed what she’d been about to say midsentence. Unsettled, he looked aside before whispering, “Yes.”
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  Then, slowly, he rolled away from her.

  Just as reluctantly, she let him go.

  As he padded to the garderobe, he growled, “Ye’ll make a good mask dancer.”

  “No,” Storm replied, up on one elbow in the rumpled bed. “You will.”

  Elminster turned around to regard her, a silent question in his lifted brow.

  “El,” she asked softly, “why don’t you be the mask dancer? And spell-shift my face and this silver hair that marks me for all eyes, as well as using magic to wreathe yourself in blue flames? Then we’ll be two women, not ‘that silver-haired Storm, so the man with her must be Elminster of Shadowdale, no matter what he looks like.’ We’ll still be a lure—just not the lure that tells everyone who’s luring.”

  El blinked. “Oh, now. That is better. Well pointed, lass. Aye, we’ll do it thy way.”

  Storm smiled, not bothering to hide her pleased surprise. “Well, now. Progress at last.”

  Elminster’s reply, as he headed into the garderobe, was a rude noise.

  Storm chuckled and rolled over on her back, stretching her arms, legs, and hair wide, and flexing them.

  She was in the midst of gently groaning as she wiggled her cobble-worn toes, and their aches all throbbed in response, when she heard the unmistakable sounds of the inn’s guards admitting someone into Mirt’s rooms, across the hall from their own.

  Springing out of bed, she snatched a robe around herself and went across to Mirt’s forechamber, where Amarune and Arclath were smilingly greeting a still-dozing Mirt.

  Who had obviously spent the night snoring in the fore-chamber’s most massive armchair, after wenching and then dismissing the wenches, and then enjoying all he could manage of the best decanters on Lord Helderstone’s sideboard, which now littered the carpet around his floppy-booted feet.

  “Afraid you’d lose them all when you stopped being Lord Helderstone?” Storm asked, waving her hand at the array of emptied glass.

  Arclath chuckled, but Mirt’s response was a growl that was only a trifle more jovial than surly. Then his eyes focused on her, and he brightened, sitting up a little to properly take in the sight of a barely clad Storm.