by Ed Greenwood
She stood up and struck a pose. Then she tossed her silver hair—as wild and unruly a mane as ever; right now, it looked more like a shrub than a head of human hair—and conjured up a mirror.
A reflective oval of silver as tall as she was, floating upright in midair.
Peering into it, she regarded herself critically. She was naked and besmirched with dirt, yet still shapely. Bony around midriff and hips—the sides of her pelvis stuck up in two sharp humps—but lush and womanly everywhere else, and with those long, long arms and legs that drove men wild.
Hmmph. Had driven men wild. None came to see her now, through all the wards. Once, long ago, one or two had won through, mages with swordsmen, hoping to find great magic.
“Well, so they did,” she said aloud, petulantly. “They found me!”
Yet then, of course, they’d made demands, cast spells on her pool, threatened and laid hands on her, assaulted her.
That had been fun. And when she’d grown tired of hurling them around the cave with spells, battered and broken, she’d eaten them.
Foolish, that. They were gone now, and she had no one to talk to. No one but herself, and she was too mad to comfort herself or convince herself of anything.
Elminster.
That was who she needed.
El, her El, back again. Here. Now, with his arms around her.
“Elminster?” she called into the darkness, listening to his name echo into great distances and then come back again.
“El, are you ever coming back for me?”
Arclath and Amarune looked at each other and discovered just how pale and wide-eyed they both were. How frightened.
They put their arms around each other, because it was more comfortable that way.
They had heard tales of Elminster since their childhood, and of Fallen Mystra who, before the Coming of the Blue Fire, had been Queen of All Magic, the goddess who somehow was the Weave, though bards disagreed about that. They had heard about the Seven Sisters and the Chosen of Mystra who walked the world doing magic and undoing magic, riding dragons and sundering mountains and … and …
They knew what they were hearing now was true, yet …
Oh, the woman across the room had to be older than her young body made her appear. Her eyes and manner marked her as almost thirty summers, perhaps, rather than her shapely twenty, and wiser than many rangers, to boot.
The younger-looking man yonder had worn a far older, bearded body when they’d first encountered him. One touch of his old, dark, and vast mind—that they’d both hosted and seen even more of—would tell anyone that he was far older than he appeared to be.
Yet, it was still rather staggering to hear Storm and Elminster calmly confirming they were, or had been, Chosen of Mystra. A little daunting, too, to hear that they seemed to think they still were.
Fallen from power yet serving a goddess the realms thought was gone, but whom they still talked to and worked for.
It was also more than a little sobering to hear fat, wheezing old Mirt telling the tale of how he was enspelled and forced into a blueflame item in Waterdeep almost a century ago. Against his will but by a foe desperate to avoid being slain by Mirt, one in so much of a hurry to avoid that fate that he laid no spells of compulsion on Mirt—so the Waterdhavian had emerged from a handaxe a few days back, here in Suzail, controlled by no one.
“So who are these Imprisoners?” Amarune asked at last, sinking down on the stool beside Mirt to sample the fat man’s seafood, er, concoction, and finding it surprisingly good. “Are they still alive?”
El shrugged. “With wizards, one can never tell.”
“Heh,” Mirt agreed. “Too true.”
He turned and hurled the carving knife he was holding the length of the kitchen, to neatly split a melon on the end counter, and added, “Which is why I prefer to rely on more primitive means of coercion and decision making, unwashed lout that I am.”
Amarune and Arclath couldn’t keep themselves from grinning.
Until Elminster’s head snapped up, his eyes flaring with a brief white light. He shook himself like a drenched dog ridding itself of water and announced, “My spell worked. Lord Huntingdown’s under attack. Someone’s out by day, now, hunting noble lords who can command blueflame ghosts.”
“So what do we do?” Rune asked, scrambling to her feet.
“Watch,” Elminster replied. “No more. Unless the ghost master everyone’s seeking is found. Then we’ll watch the great battle that will ensue, awaiting our best chance to rush in. I’ll conjure up a scrying eye.”
“While noble after noble of Cormyr gets butchered?” Arclath snapped. “In case you haven’t noticed, Old Mage, I’m a noble of Cormyr. And even with all our faults, Cormyr needs us. I am not going to let the realm discover that the hard way, when most of us are dead and our lands have gone lawless, given over to brigands and warring greedy merchants eyeing lordships.”
“So, ye want to run to Huntingdown Hall right now and carve up random folk?” El asked mildly. “And this well help whom, exactly? And how?”
“Pah!” Arclath snarled. “Always the clever words, always the—”
“Being exactly right,” Amarune interrupted crisply. “Listen to the man, love!”
Arclath stopped midsnarl to stare at her, a bright grin growing across his face.
“What?” she demanded, frowning.
“You called me ‘love,’ ” he murmured.
Mirt rolled his eyes, as El and Storm grinned.
“So, while these two younglings bill and coo for a bit,” the Waterdhavian rumbled, “tell me if I have all this straight: The Simbul can tell ye much more about these Imprisoners if she’s sane. But to get her that way, ye need to work magic on her, wherever she’s hidden, that will drink some gewgaw or other that’s the prison of a blueflame ghost. Presumably this gewgaw ye’re searching for, that someone in Suzail is hiding.”
“Ye have it straight,” El confirmed. “More than that, if I’m to recruit the war wizards to serve Mystra—as she has bidden me to do—I need The Simbul at my side. No one mage can slay and defeat them.”
Mirt spread his hands. “Then what’re we waiting for?”
“Some way of finding the hidden blueflame item,” Storm explained. “If the various hunts for it go on, the nobles may do that finding for us. Killing many of their fellows in their search. Hence Lord Delcastle’s objection.”
“That I have not withdrawn,” Arclath put in, from where he and Amarune stood in each other’s arms.
“So, instead of waiting until another dozen nobles are dead—and the wizards of war, Manshoon, and anyone else lurking near who’s interested have had another dozen chances to swoop in and seize the blueflame item, we try to lure the ghost master into using his ghost again on ground of our choosing, so as to lay hands on the item,” El announced. “The Blue Flame must dance.”
“Because using mask dancers as lures works so well,” Storm sighed.
“This will be different,” El said sharply. “None of us will be on that stage.”
“An illusion, sent from afar? They’ll see through it in an instant,” Storm told him.
“Not an illusion,” the Sage of Shadowdale replied and pointed at Amarune. “She will be the Blue Flame.”
“What?” Arclath roared, breaking free of his beloved’s embrace to confront Elminster.
“Easy, young lion,” the wizard replied, “easy! She’ll be dancing on the floor of an empty room somewhere, for me—and before ye get all huffily defensive of her virtue, lordling, know that I intend to have ye standing there as her bodyguard, never fear! My magic will make her image, mirroring her movements and wreathed in blue flames, of course, seem to dance on the stage of whatever club we’d most like to see destroyed.”
“Destroyed?”
“Aye. When the war wizards, Manshoon, the nobles’ various pet wizards, and our ghost master all converge on it to snap at our lure, that club won’t last long.”
Arclath nodde
d, then grew a wry smile. “I know a suitable place. Let’s do it.”
Word spread across Suzail like the howling winds of a shorestorm gale. She who was known as the Blue Flame was going to dance—a performance not to be missed.
No one knew quite where word of this had first come from, but everyone agreed on the where and the when.
It was to happen on the eve of the Festival of Handras, Suzail’s annual late-Mirtul reception for the senior caravan traders of the Sword Coast, when it was customary for such far traders and wagonmasters to present “fresh wonders from the Sword Coast” in dockside warehouses, where free food and drink were served to all who came to gaze on the latest goods, curios, and exotic fashions.
And the dance would take place at The Bold Blazon, an exclusive club catering to certain jaded young nobles and socially ambitious folk those nobles liked to drink, trade, and sleep with.
As it happened, the Blazon was not one of Lord Arclath Delcastle’s haunts, because the nobles who liked to frequent it included several of his longtime foes and rivals, such as Maerclorn Wintersun—the younger heir Lord Wintersun, not the patriarch—and Kathkote Dawntard.
In vain the proprietor of the Blazon, a greedy, shave-pated, many-earring-adorned snob by the name of Daerendygho Vrabrant, protested that he’d arranged no such performance for Handras Eve or any other night, had never even met the Blue Flame, and did not desire to host such “epicene diversions” at the Blazon.
Besieged with demands from half Suzail to rent stage-side tables, atop the clamorings of all his usual patrons, he hurriedly hired extra security—only to discover that dozens of nobles were outbidding him to buy the “first loyalty” of his security force to obey them first, rather than him. In other words, to let those nobles into the Blazon at will, and allow them to bring along extra friends and their own wine, weapons, and anything else they might desire.
Despairing and seeing both ruin and the palace dungeons in his nightmares, Vrabrant went to the wizards of war in secret and entreated their help in providing “unseen security.”
Not that Elminster or any of his companions knew about that entreaty until later—though Arclath slowly came to suspect the Sage of Shadowdale had anticipated it.
“Count me out,” Vainrence said with a grin, slurring the words.
The eyes of Ganrahast and Glathra met above the lord warder, and it was Glathra who said gently, “We didn’t expect you to leap up out of this bed and do anything about it, Rence. We just wanted you to know the particular disaster we were wading into, this time.”
“After all, once you asked about it,” the royal magician added, “we had to admit that, yes, all Suzail is talking about it, for you to hear about it in here.”
“So who is this Blue Flame?”
“No one knows,” Ganrahast replied.
“But,” Glathra added with wicked glee, “I suspect Elminster is behind it, that it’s an attempt to flush out the mysterious noble who commands that blueflame ghost—and it’s highly likely the Blazon will suffer greatly in the trouble that’s bound to erupt.”
“Including the trouble we will undoubtedly cause, after your scrying turns up something we absolutely must rush in to deal with?” Ganrahast asked dryly.
She widened her eyes into an innocence that fooled no one at all.
“Undoubtedly,” she said solemnly.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-FOUR
RATHER NOISY BATTLES
Why must it always end, these disputes over who has what
Or warms which throne, or gets to bathe or march first
In blood and death and the sowing of fear? Why must there
Always be rather noisy battles?
Janthress Harroweather, Merchant from her chapbook
A Merchant And A Lady: My Thoughts
first published in the Year of the Morningstar
The Blazon was packed that warm and breezy Handras Eve. Half of fashionable Suzail had shown up, crowding the doors to get in. They stood tightly packed along the walls and between the tables. More, who’d tried in vain to get inside, were milling around in the streets and down alleyways, all around.
Inside, all eyes were locked on the stage—that is, on the small cleared space where a lone dancer was leaping and whirling, her bare body glistening with sweat and ceaseless blue flames wreathing her body.
There had been no such space a few breaths ago. A despairing Daerendygho Vrabrant had gone to the trouble of having the Blazon’s tiny stage torn down, a new floor installed where it had been, and new chairs and tables brought in to fill the space. However, to his open-mouthed horror, several patrons had suddenly put down their tankards in unison, murmured magic—and made certain chairs, tables, and the startled diners seated on or at them vanish. The revealed wizards had similarly disappeared an instant later, leaving only their tankards behind.
This had not amused Wizard of War Glathra Barcantle, who was standing on a nearby rooftop trying to oversee a team of Crown mages, a lot of Purple Dragons, and a covert force of Highknights. She was already uneasy at the dozen-some bands of bullyblades and hedge wizards loitering in the alleyways below, obviously sent by various ambitious nobles. This evening was racing toward real trouble.
The sudden appearance of some startled diners, with tankards, platters of fried bustard, the tables those were standing on, chairs, and all their belongings in the middle of one filthy, refuse-choked alleyway did not strike Glathra as particularly helpful, though it made some of the wizards on the roof with her chuckle.
“Just watch for blue flames,” Glathra snapped at them, returning her attention to the conjured scrying eye floating in the air before her.
In it, she could see the Blue Flame, whom she’d been entirely unsurprised to learn looked very like a certain Amarune Whitewave.
“Elminster,” she snarled, as she kept one eye on the sensuous dance for any sign of something suspicious, and with the other tried to survey what she could see of the crowded audience. “You’re behind this, you are …”
She could tell Amarune was dancing elsewhere, and magic—Elminster’s, for all the gold in the palace vaults—was making the dancer’s image appear in the Blazon, and providing the cold, burning-nothing blue flames wreathing it, too.
There! A man among the many along one of the club walls toppled forward, face-first into the lap of a startled drinker at the nearest table, and a blue, flaming glow could be seen behind him. Men started abruptly scrambling to flee from that spot, clawing and shoving, as a figure surrounded in flowing blue flames stepped through the wall, sword first, stabbing ruthlessly at anyone in the way.
Shouts went up in the alleys—other scrying eyes besides Glathra’s were in use—and the bullyblades started to surge forward.
Dragons looked to Glathra. “Lady?”
“Stay where you are!” she ordered. “We couldn’t get through all the flesh down there, anyhail! Wait and watch, to see where we should rush, before we do it!”
Chaos had erupted inside the Blazon. The lone blueflame ghost was stalking through the crowd, apparently seeking specific nobles to slay. Everyone was shouting or screaming, swords and daggers were out everywhere, and men were fighting viciously just to get out of the club, hacking and trampling those in their way.
As the bloodshed grew, tables overturned, and chairs were hurled, the dancer danced on.
A stretch of the Blazon’s outer wall abruptly vanished, as some hired mage or other cast a spell no one should use in crowded city streets—and the elder Lord Wintersun, surrounded by a tight knot of bullyblades, charged inside.
He was making for his white-faced and weeping son, who was about seven men distant from the pursuing ghost and vainly trying to get farther away—as behind him, one by one, those seven fled or were hewn down.
Another spell burst right behind the ghost, shooting flames in all directions and flinging the blueflame slayer into the air and halfway across the club. Howls and shrieks arose as the fire spread, and in a tr
ice men who were aflame were staggering helplessly about, tripping over the wounded and senseless.
“Firequench!” Glathra shouted at the four war wizards who’d prepared for that duty. “Now!”
Someone else’s spell brought another section of the Blazon’s outer wall down, and patrons fled wildly, streaming out into the streets in all directions.
“Keep watching the ghost!” Glathra snarled at the senior war wizards standing with her. “Whatever happens, don’t let it slip away!”
“Uh, Lady Glathra?” one asked, daring to pluck at her sleeve.
“What?” she almost spat in his face, fury rising fast. He pointed over the rooftops.
Where a beholder had just risen into view and was floating serenely nearer.
“Lady!” an older, deeper-voiced Crown mage called, before she even had time to gape. “Over here!”
“We must get down there!” the ranking Highknight snapped, waving to his men. “Down the stairs! Move!”
“I give the orders here!” Glathra almost shrieked, but his reply, delivered at the full run without even bothering to look in her direction, was a silent but emphatic gesture of the sort never seen in polite company.
With a wordless snarl of rage, Glathra rushed across the roof to the deep-voiced mage, to see why he’d hailed her.
In the alley below, marching in a line abreast with their swords out and ruthlessly slaying the few bullyblades who hadn’t sense enough to flee from them, were five blueflame ghosts.
“The Blazon’s burning,” Mirt rumbled as they hastened together along a sidestreet.
“And not a moment too soon, from all Arclath’s told us of the place,” Storm replied as they came to a corner where their way joined a larger street. “Now, if I’ve guessed right, our lone blueflame ghost should be fleeing now and coming right along … here.”
“Fleeing? I didn’t think they ever fled!”
