Elminster Must Die sos-1

by Ed Greenwood

  “I am alone,” Amarune assured him, sighing with relief. The gates had already been unchained and opened just enough to let someone slip through, and the tallest of the guards-there were four of them, this time-was standing in that gap, beckoning her. She followed him, smiling as pleasantly to the others as if they weren’t holding ready crossbows not quite aimed at her, on down the sweeping path that led to the looming mansion. He immediately waved her past him, then unshuttered a lantern and followed her, just to one side, holding the lantern low and shining it on the path ahead to light her way.

  Either the porter had a means of signaling, or the manor guards watched for approaching lanterns, because the doors of the great house stood open between watchful guards, with a steward waiting and two housejacks waving mistballs on long poles to try to keep night insects from entering.

  Wordlessly the steward smiled and bowed low to Amarune, then beckoned her and led the way within, one of the housejacks smoothly taking her cloak from her shoulders as she went.

  Amarune heard the doors being shut behind her as her guiding servant hastened through the lofty entry hall, leading her to the left and avoiding the grand sweeping stairs that led up into the warmly lit great rooms above.

  They passed through a door and into a darkened parlor, where the steward spoke for the first time. “Lady, are you here to see Lady Delcastle? Or the younger or elder Lord Delcastle?”

  “Torold,” a crisp, harsh feminine voice said out of the darkness ahead, “she’s certainly not here to see me. At least not by my invitation. Has Arclath taken to trying to sneak his strumpets in through the front doors? As if they-”

  “I-ah, pray pardon-,” Amarune began hesitantly, at the same time as the steward turned to her, bowed low, and announced, “The Lady Marantine Delcastle!”

  “Lights, dolt!” the unseen Lady Delcastle snapped, and lanterns were unhooded by a servant to reveal her standing in a wide doorway flanked by two unsmiling bodyguards in armor, glaring at Amarune and the steward.

  At the same time as a door swung wide in another wall to admit light and the young scion of House Delcastle.

  “Arclath!” Amarune cried. “Urgent news!”

  “Amarune!” he exclaimed in delight, striding to her and reaching out in greeting.

  Mother frowned at son. “Arclath? Do you know this wench? She looks common-hmmph, worse than that, either a strumpet or a thief, or both-to me!”

  Arclath gave her a bright smile and said almost jovially, “I’m sure to palace courtiers we look strange, Mother!”

  Firmly he took hold of Amarune’s hand and drew her to yet another door, murmuring to the steward, “Torold, light the lamps in the receiving room for us.”

  “If yon wench is from the palace, I’m the queen of Aglarond!” Lady Delcastle declared scornfully. “You’ll have nothing to do with her that I don’t see and hear!”

  “Suit yourself, Mother,” Arclath called calmly back over a shoulder that was busy shrugging.

  The receiving room had been made for a large Delcastle family to greet as large a family of guests; under the glare of Arclath’s mother, Amarune felt as if she was in some sort of hall of trial, standing alone at the center of its gleaming marble floor. Arclath whirled away to a sideboard-gods, did nobles have ready rows of decanters in every room of their vast houses? — and poured her a drink, unbidden, while Amarune stood blushing and silent.

  “Before you blurt out whatever’s most urgent,” he told her, obviously trying to set her at ease while his mother stared right through her with eyes like the points of two drawn daggers, “have a sip, and tell me what else is riding your mind.”

  Somewhat hesitantly, Amarune said, “Ah-uh-much news from city taverns and eateries of elder members of the nobility, newly arrived in Suzail for the council.” She sipped, winced at the strength and fire of the strong wine, choked it down, and added, “Brawls, the chasing and slaughtering of a live pig with swords, servants being flung from upper windows, a cart set on fire …”

  Her voice trailed away under Lady Delcastle’s darkening scowl, but Arclath chuckled and waved a dismissive hand. “The usual. The elder lords indulging all of their longtime feuds and vices, many of which must seem odd or even suspicious to the rest of the realm. Right, then, out with it: the reason you came rushing here to see me.”

  “The coin you offered her to satisfy your animal lusts here in our house, of course,” Lady Delcastle told the ceiling. “Probably on the scullery floor or over the arm of a handy lounge in my foreparlor.” Her expressionless bodyguards seemed to lean toward Amarune, as if they were impatient to topple onto her and crush her.

  Amarune kept her eyes on Arclath, swallowed unhappily, and sighed, knowing she was going to blurt and babble like a youngling, but not knowing how to say it better. “Three lords you know, of about your age,” she began. “Windstag, Dawntard, and Sornstern. The news is all over the city; they spent last night through hunting everywhere for a particular axe-a hand axe! Drawing steel on folk, turning rooms out, offering coin, threatening-”

  “What?” Arclath and his mother roared in unison.

  Arclath strode toward Amarune, waving furiously at a sputtering Lady Delcastle-who was launching into a tirade about “selfish, ill-behaved young nobles”-for silence. Surprisingly, he got it.

  And promptly filled it again by starting to think aloud. “Windstag, of course. Always up for a little mayhem, and Sornstern’s his lickspittle, but Dawntard has wits to set the other two to his bidding. And those three run with four rather more formidable lordlings too: Marlin Stormserpent, Mellast Ormblade, Irlin Stonestable, and Sacrast Handragon.”

  “Just as I said!” Lady Delcastle snapped. “The young rakes, the reckless, care-nothing idiots who’ll have all Cormyr at swords drawn-”

  “Exactly!” Arclath roared, whirling right beside Amarune-who flinched away from him involuntarily-to stride back across the room, waving his arms angrily.

  “What are they doing?” he snarled. “The war wizard’s’ll have their guts for soup, if the king doesn’t, first! Setting the city into uproar on the very eve of the council!”

  “Exactly,” Amarune agreed, daring to interrupt because the moment seemed right. “What are they thinking?”

  Arclath whirled to face her, his eyes afire. “Well, we’ll have to find out, before things get any worse.”

  “How?” Amarune asked.

  “We’ll go and ask them!” he replied fiercely.

  His mother laughed merrily. “And you think they’ll just tell you? Because you’re a fellow noble?”

  Arclath whirled to face her. “No,” he snarled, “because I’ll be holding the point of my sword at the throat of whomever I’m asking. I’ve found a man generally prefers to talk and live, rather than keep silent and die!”

  He rushed out a door, reappeared almost immediately with sword and cloak in hand, and dashed across the receiving room and out the door Amarune had been brought in through.

  Leaving Amarune and the Lady Marantine Delcastle to exchange startled glances and follow him.

  Where they found the front doors of Delcastle Manor already open, and Arclath gone.

  “Aye, the Lord has departed,” one of the door guards offered in answer to Amarune’s wild look around. Without a word Amarune hurried to the door, remembering only at the last moment to turn and bow in farewell to Lady Delcastle.

  Where she saw a doorjack scurrying off, obviously to retrieve her cloak-and Arclath’s mother looking after him, then back at Amarune. After a bare moment of hesitation, Lady Delcastle snatched her own cloak from the other doorjack and tossed it to Amarune-who caught it out of long habit of being on the stage and stared back at the noblewoman in astonishment.

  There was a strange look on Lady Delcastle’s face. “Keep it,” she blurted. “And-and look after him!”

  “Lady,” Amarune replied gravely in thanks and salute, bowing low again. Then she sprang up and sprinted out into the night, the cloak swirling around he
r as she went.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  A GREAT MAGIC UNLEASHED

  Mirt followed his second coinlass of the evening up a none-too-clean flight of stairs, a bottle and two metal flagons in one hand and a somewhat-gnawed leg of steaming mutton clutched in his other.

  “Been a long time, lass,” he told her shapely backside happily. “A long time …”

  Manshoon frowned in his scrying as he watched Mirt eagerly ascending the stairs, still pondering what use to make of the infamous lord of Waterdeep.

  “Well,” he murmured, “he’ll keep for now, at least. I have more important targets to savage.”

  Marlin Stormserpent was in a foul temper. He and a similarly terse Broryn Windstag were nursing headaches and huddling in bandages; they both snarlingly turned aside queries about how they’d acquired their wounds.

  Marlin leaned forward to glare down his meeting table and tell his conspirators, “This is all that’s left of us. Delasko and Kathkote are abed, healing, and will be for days. We must be very careful during the council; someone is on to us.”

  Before the excited talk could get going, he added sourly, “And not the war wizards, either. Someone able to hire wizards as powerful as Larak Dardulkyn.”

  “Windstag lives,” Sacrast Handragon pointed out. “So the hunt for the hand axe succeeded?”

  “It was found,” Marlin replied flatly, “but proved an utter failure. We gained no slayer who’ll obey us, but let loose some fat old thief of a lord of Waterdeep who obeys only himself and fled from us!”

  He lurched up out of his seat and told the table grimly, “So the scheme of harming the king or the crown prince in an ‘accident’ when plenty of nobles are gathered for the council to take the blame will have to be abandoned.”

  No one looked surprised. Handragon and Ormblade confirmed for him again that they would be attending the council to represent their families, and Stormserpent asked them to watch and listen for any talk of himself or any of them or their activities-such as the hunt for the hand axe-or any denunciation of younger nobles. If the Crownsilvers or Illances or any of the other oldblood families tried to wrest even more power for themselves, they must be vigorously denounced.

  “The rest of us,” Marlin advised, “would do best to stay away from council. We can move swiftly, ere everyone departs the city when all the formal clack and chatter is done, to reach disaffected nobles if need arises.”

  Handragon smiled. “And it will.”

  “This will be dangerous, you know,” Arclath told Amarune severely. “You shouldn’t …”

  His voice trailed away under the heat of her fierce glare, and he managed to add only, “Sorry.”

  “Accepted,” she told him, putting a hand out from under his mother’s cloak to touch his arm.

  Then close around it like a claw and drag him back, pointing with her other hand even before he could start to curse.

  An old man in flapping sea boots and leathers was lurching and wheezing along the street ahead in purposeful haste, bared sword in hand.

  Stalking along in his wake and closing in on him fast were two figures wreathed and cloaked in crawling blue flames.

  The old man cast a swift glance back over his shoulder at his pursuers, but kept going.

  “Arclath Delcastle,” Amarune hissed fiercely, holding onto the young lord’s sword arm for all she was worth, “don’t you throw your life away trying to fight those-”

  A patrol horn sounded, and the street was suddenly full of Purple Dragons-and the bright burst of a spell that blossomed all around the two flaming men and sang a weird cacophony as it sought to harden and the men fought to get free of it.

  The old man kept running, if that lurching shuffle could be termed a run.

  “Come,” Arclath said sharply, ducking down an alleyway that led in the direction the old man was going. “I-we-need answers.”

  “Doesn’t everyone?” Amarune replied as they started to sprint.

  His conspirators had departed, leaving Marlin Stormserpent pacing his rooms too excited-and in too much pain-to seek slumber. He contemplated forcing one of the maids to rut with him, but fancied none of them; the few he’d taken were familiar goods and hadn’t been all that entrancing the first time around. No, it was time to hire a playpretty instead …

  He rang for one of his trusties, and Whelandrin answered the summons. Marlin sent the impassive older man out into the streets to hire “a tall, dark, buxom lass-with most of her teeth, mind, and not sporting a face like an old boot or my backside-from the House of the Lynx, or the Lady Murmurs Yes, or the Blackflame Curtain. Give her ten lions and the promise of twenty more for my choice of deeds until dawn; no disfiguring, no floggings.”

  Still carefully expressionless, Whelandrin bowed and took his leave.

  The old man whirled around with a snarl, blade flashing up at Arclath’s throat-but the heir of House Delcastle had already backed out of reach.

  “Keep clear!” the old man growled warningly, ere turning to lurch another few steps-only to stumble as Amarune rolled right in front of his shins, her dagger up warningly.

  “We don’t want bloodshed,” Arclath said firmly, “just to talk. I’m Lord Delcastle, and this is … the Lady Amarune.”

  “I’m still Mirt,” the old man rumbled, “lord of Waterdeep. So speak.” His sword point moved from one of them to the other with the sure, deft speed of a longtime bladesman.

  “Where are you headed?”

  “Stormserpent Towers,” the old man snapped. “To kill the young bull-behind who set those two flaming killers on me, so I can command them myself-or to force him to call them off.”

  “Would that bull-behind be Lord Marlin Stormserpent?”

  “ ‘Marlin’ I know not, but aye, the young lord in Stormserpent towers.”

  “Let us take care of him,” Arclath said grimly. “If you go straight to the palace and tell any wizard of war-”

  “Hah. They wanted us well gone, remember?”

  “Their spells are still your best chance at safety. If you stand arguing with them and those two come to take you, the wizards’ll blast them out of fear for their own hides.”

  Mirt gave Arclath a thoughtful frown then backed away. “It rubs me wrong to let someone else fight for me, but aye, ye speak wisdom. I’ll do that. May ye taste victory!”

  As more patrol horns roared from where the flaming ghosts were confined, he lurched off in the direction of the palace, looking back warily several times.

  Amarune and Arclath exchanged glances.

  “I begin to admire you, Lord Delcastle,” the mask dancer told him quietly. “Don’t spoil it by daring to suggest I remain behind.”

  Arclath grinned and spread his hands. “I’d not dream of it!”

  Alusair heard the scuff of swiftly moving boots behind her, and turned.

  Elminster was looking grim. “Young Delcastle-ye know him?”

  “Yes. You cast a tracer on him?”

  “I used one of your Obarskyr baubles to let me spy on him. He’s just passed through the wards of Stormserpent Towers. Young Rune is with him.”

  “You want to be there,” the ghost said softly. “Right now. Why not cast a teleport?”

  “Because I go raving mad when I work magic, that’s why,” El snarled.

  Alusair made a sound that might have been a giggle. “And the rest of us would notice the difference in you how, exactly?”

  Elminster gave her a baleful glare.

  “Tarry a moment,” she whispered, sliding past him like a chill wind.

  A few moments later she returned, leading a bewildered, half-dressed Raereene-with a scared-looking Kreane right behind them.

  “Teleport this man into the forehall of Stormserpent Towers,” the Ghost Regent commanded crisply. “Just as carefully as you know how.”

  Raereene frowned. “Wh-”

  “Wizards of war no longer obey royal commands?” Alusair hissed, her eyes suddenly two cold flames.


  “Or mine?” quavered a thin voice from the floor below.

  Raereene looked down-and recoiled.

  “What ails you?” the dark spiderlike thing in front of her feet demanded. “Haven’t you ever seen a Royal Magician before?”

  Silently Whelandrin showed a tall, dark, and buxom woman into Marlin Stormserpent’s private chambers. She wore a nightcloak over high boots and a silken gown, and-

  Marlin frowned. There was a taller, darker, cloaked and cowled figure right behind her, who’d just slipped something to Whelandrin; Marlin caught a glimpse of gleaming gold before his trusty was gone.

  “Who are you?” he demanded, waving the girl aside with one hand while drawing his sword with the other and sweeping it up to menace his mysterious visitor.

  Who threw back the cowl to reveal a sardonically smiling face. It belonged to Lord Arclath Delcastle, who was suddenly taking a swift sidestep to put a solid stone wall at his back.

  “Well met,” he greeted Marlin pleasantly. “You look much more handsome here, in proper light, than skulking around in shadows by night in the royal palace.”

  Stormserpent stiffened. “What’re you talking about?”

  “I speak of a certain chalice,” Arclath murmured. “Sadly missing from its longtime hiding place. Sadly missed by some.”

  “War wizards?”

  “Ah, I knew Marlin Stormserpent wasn’t slow-witted. I was certain he’d grasp at once what I was speaking of, even at such an hour.”

  “What’re you doing here?” Marlin snapped, hefting his sword meaningfully as he took a step forward.

  Arclath waved an airily dismissive hand. “Merely seeking an answer or two, not a duel. Which is why I came protected by magic that will end any duel before it begins. So, no swordplay, just a few words between us, and I’ll leave you to your pleasure.”

  He glanced at the playpretty, who was standing to one side listening to them rather fearfully.

  “A few carefully chosen words, on my part,” Arclath hinted.