Authors: Ed Greenwood
Elminster’s Weave vision worked well no matter where they were, so they all took seats
and watched the powerful spellhurlers out on the lawn one by one hurl mighty spells
at the spellstorm, trying to pierce it and get in.
And one by one, Mystra let them succeed.
Laragaunt of Threskel trudged into view several times, making increasingly gloomy
circuits of the outside of the rambling mansion. By the last one, he was peering up
at high windows, trying to judge what could be climbed to—and forced open, once one
was somehow perched precariously up there.
“That’s all of them,” Myrmeen murmured. “Eleven strong, I see.” Out of habit, she
looked around for a weapon.
Five women and six men milled warily by the walls of Oldspires, peering all around
and glaring at each other. The fogs were unbroken again, walling them in and stretching
up overhead in a dome that enclosed the mansion. The sun shone down through the dome
as if through a light haze, but for the height of two tall men up from the ground,
the spellstorm was like thick, dark roiling smoke.
The Weave vision allowed the four inside Oldspires to see outside as if the walls
were transparent, so they all noticed as Manshoon hastened around the mansion to where
he was out of sight of the other ten who’d just passed through the spellstorm, espied
a high balcony, and almost casually started to swarm up the stone wall.
His descent was as violent as it was swift; a hand slipped and he scraped once against
the stones on his way to a solid, thudding crash onto the ground.
Elminster’s chuckle was the loudest.
Manshoon winced, groaned, clambered to his feet feeling at one arm and then the opposing
thigh, and tried again to climb but with far more caution. Only to come right back
down with a jar, and stand shaking his head. Rage and terror were clear on his face.
After a moment, he wandered back toward the other ten wizards.
“He’s gotten used to his vampiric powers,” El muttered, “so now their sudden loss
confounds him.”
“They’re gone?” Myrmeen asked.
“While he’s here, inside the spellstorm. Thanks to Mystra. So no spiderlike climbing
for him—nor flying around as a bat, either. He’s never been vulnerable to sunlight,
as most vampires are, but then again, he can’t charm as a true vampire does, either.”
And with those words, Elminster got up from his seat and added briskly, “Cooks, to
the kitchens—where you’d best secure all knives. Lord Halaunt, with me. Time to greet
our guests, before they get so restless that mischief erupts.”
“Me, I
like
mischief erupting,” Mirt replied, but headed for the door the Weave vision showed
led to the kitchens, even as it started to fade.
Myrmeen chuckled as she went with him, murmuring, “We’re going to get along just fine,
I’m thinking.”
“How much can
you
use magic in here, Old Mage?” Alusair asked softly, as they went to the front doors
together.
El shook his head. “Reliably, not at all. The Weave vision is just that: seeing things.
If I tried to
do
anything through the Weave …” He shook his head again.
The front door was fitted with large cradles to hold beams so it could be barred from
within to withstand anything short of the mightiest giant, but it was also fitted
with stout, well-oiled iron bolts. El and the Alusair-animated lord unlatched them
and slid them back into the walls together.
“Look haughty,” El muttered when they were done—and pushed the doors wide.
Eleven wizards peered suspiciously at him from outside.
He gave them a broad and affable smile, and spread his arms wide. “Welcome to Oldspires!”
“Elminster!” Manshoon snarled. “What’re you doing here?”
“I,” Elminster replied mildly, “have retired from wizardry, and accepted the post
of steward to Lord Sardasper Halaunt. Who stands here within, to welcome you into
his home.”
He stepped back and with a broad flourish indicated the lone figure standing in the
gloomy hall waiting for them.
Who, if glowering could be described as “welcoming,” was silently welcoming them into
Oldspires.
Laragaunt and a young mage, who looked by his robes to be a Red Wizard, both snapped
out, “It’s a
trap
!”
And flung a spell and leveled a staff, respectively.
Nothing happened.
The Red Wizard grounded the staff with both hands, crying out an incantation—and it
flickered briefly, pulses of light racing up and down it like ripples in a pond … and
faded to nothing.
Laragaunt turned in a whirl of robes, rushed back to the roiling fogs of the spellstorm,
and worked the same spell that had forced a passage through it before.
The moment the fogs parted again to let him through, he started to run, and the Red
Wizard was right behind him, staff flickering into fresh life.
Some of the others started to back away from Elminster and toward the fleeing pair,
warily trying to keep an eye on both and each other.
Laragaunt’s voice rose in sudden fear, words rushing out of him in increasingly frantic
haste, and more heads turned his way.
In time to see the fog roll in to close over the wildly gesturing mage and the Red
Wizard in his wake. That staff flashed once, and falteringly spat lightning about
the length of a man’s forearm … and then fell from view as its owner howled in despair.
As that howl died waveringly away, roiling fog hid both men from view.
After a few moments of silence, the gibbering began. Wordless slobbering that rose
into wild, shrieking laughter; high, discordant, and somehow full of despair, even
before it turned into sobbing.
Keening wails died away as the witless men wandered, stumbling in different directions
through the fog.
“Mystra
forfend
,” one of the women outside the mansion door gasped.
“Be welcome in my home,” Lord Halaunt growled. “So come in, if you’re coming. With
the door open, there’s a decidedly unpleasant draft. Come in, or go back out into
the spellstorm,
I
care not. Sounds like they’re having fun out there, those two.”
A tall, bald-headed, strikingly beautiful woman in an ankle-length gown of emerald
green glared daggers at him, with eyes that matched her gown but had vertical, snakelike
black-and-gold pupils. “You planned this, didn’t you?”
“I planned nothing. I escaped with my life from a fire I still don’t recall any details
of, and came home here to clear my lungs—only to find all sorts of strangers seem
to want to visit me. Come for the Lost Spell, have you? Well, accusing me of things
is a poor way to start negotiating with me, Scalyface.”
Shaaan’s face tightened in anger, and she raised one pointing finger and hissed something
that made a snakelike tattoo that spiraled up her forearm move, undulating around
and up to fill her palm.
As the tattoo snapped back into its former location, a bright green glow erupted from
the end of her long-nailed finger and raced through the air at Lord Halaunt. Right
in front of his face it … faded away, and—nothing happened.
Shaaan’s eyes went a little wild.
There were in fact no scales on her face, which bore subtle shiny areas if one peered
closely.
“I see you managed to restore your looks in the wake of the fire,” Manshoon murmured,
from close behind her. “Pity about your hair.”
She turned hastily to face him and backed away, hissing wordless hatred.
He gave her a brittle, mocking little smile, hissed out the same incantation she had,
and pointed his finger at his own head before shrinking back in mock dismay.
“You shall pay for this!” Shaaan hissed at him.
Manshoon yawned in her face—then swayed back swiftly as she struck out at him, trying
to rake at his eyes. He was
just
out of reach.
“Much as I enjoy free entertainment,” a dark-haired, handsome man in fine clothing—his
gold belt buckle was worked into an intertwined “MT” monogram, his stylish overvest
of supple black leather was trimmed with long rows of matching rubies, and the shirt
beneath it was of the finest silk—commented, “our host has invited us inside, and
I’d not mind a glass of something, after all that time in the hot sun, hurling futile
spells. Can we take hold of our tempers, please?”
Somewhere out in the fog, one of the feebleminded men wailed like a child lost in
grief.
“If I lose my temper, Maraunth Torr,” Manshoon said coldly, “you shall not be unaware
of the fact.”
Maraunth Torr yawned, in perfect mimicry of Manshoon’s treatment of the Serpent Queen,
and the vampire reddened and snapped, “Such mockery betrays insecurity—or imprudence.”
“Of course it does,” Maraunth Torr agreed tenderly.
Behind them, the last few wizards edged through the door, and Elminster closed it
and shot the bolts home.
“Are we prisoners, Sage of Shadowdale?” Alastra Hathwinter asked him, her voice somewhere
between curious and challenging.
“Nay, of course not,” Elminster replied, giving her the briefest of stone-faced winks.
“This door doesn’t even have a lock. Now if ye’ll accompany the Lord Halaunt into
the parlor, I’ll see about drinks. Traveling in the countryside is always, I find,
a thirsty business.”
At the other end of the wary group of wizards, Lord Halaunt waved one beckoning arm
and set off through the gloom through one of the high, arch-topped doorways.
Slowly and with seeming reluctance, the nine remaining wizards followed him into a
low-ceilinged room filled with couches, chairs, sidetables, a long sideboard along
one wall, and a large fireplace across from it. The stuffed,
severed heads of an astonishing variety of rather moth-eaten monsters thrust out from
the wall above the sideboard.
“An impressive multitude of
death
,” the disfigured woman with the lurch commented with some distaste, making her slow
and less than graceful way down the chamber.
“What,” another of the female mages wondered aloud, peering at one of the wilder stuffed
heads, “is
that
?”
“A shapechanger caught in midshift,” Elminster offered brightly. “Takes a magic weapon
to manage that sort of slaying. The work of Lord Halaunt’s grandfather, I believe.
Now, how about a little winter wine? Jhuild? Or perhaps a nice firedrake?”
A panel grated open in the dark carved wood above the nearest sideboard, causing wizards
to whirl around and hands to rise instinctively to work magic. Yet it revealed nothing
more sinister than a pair of gloved hands—Myrmeen’s, El recognized—placing a tray
of decanters on the sideboard. And then another.
As a gleaming forest of drinkables grew along the sideboard, Elminster—who was keeping
a sharp watch over them all—saw the guests start to really study each other, eyes
darting here and there as they helped themselves and then sought seats.
There was Manshoon, of course, settling himself well away from both Maraunth Torr
and Shaaan.
But who was that, carefully positioning himself at Lord Halaunt’s elbow? A beardless
man with a receding hairline, and two gray-going-white daggerboard sideburns? Carrying
himself with the confidence of a mage, he wore classic wizard’s robes, but of plain
beige homespun rather than sporting the usual rich fabric and fancy adornments.
Alusair had noticed his attentions, and wanted to know more about him. “So,” Lord
Halaunt asked, “And who are you?”
“Skouloun is my name,” the man replied, and added grandly, “I am an Elder of Nimbral.”
“Nimbral, eh? I suppose rumors of its ruination were greatly exaggerated?”
Skouloun shrugged. “I know not—I was on another plane of existence when the Spellplague
hit, and learned of it from a dying mage who barely escaped with his life, so I stayed
away from Toril for some eighty years.”
“Huh. If you could stay away in a place hospitable enough to host you for a lifetime,
why’d you come back?”
“For my lifetime,” Skouloun replied. “I spent much of those eight decades perfecting
a longevity magic, but was forced to return to Toril when that ritual started to fail,
aging me. I hadn’t realized some of the materials I’d used must come from Toril; their
equivalents from other planes won’t work.”
“And having prolonged your life, are you now willing to share?” a buxom lady in homespun
robes very similar to Skouloun’s asked teasingly. Her eyes were a merry honey brown,
the same hue as her hair.
“This should not be discussed here and now,” Skouloun replied sharply.
“I can see you two know each other,” Lord Halaunt observed. “Care to share?”
He looked to Skouloun when he asked this, so it was Skouloun who replied, with a sour
sigh, “Behold Yusendre, a fellow Elder of Nimbral. She’s … a bit of an imp.”
“Which is Skouloun’s way of saying I have the sense of humor he utterly lacks,” Yusendre
told Lord Halaunt sweetly. “And before you ask, I survived the Spellplague, and the
century that followed its advent, by fleeing through a gate into another world, and
there finding a cozy little cave and employing the classic sleep-of-ages spell that
Phezult gave us all. Eventually, once the magic had consumed the gems, I awoke from
my stasis and returned here. Just in time for the
real
chaos, Tymora grant me better luck!”
Elminster dared not listen any further for fear of offending those standing nearer,
evidently awaiting access to the decanters to which his body was blocking their reach.
“May I pour ye something, Lady?” he asked the gaunt, disfigured lady who had one eye
higher than the other in a lopsided face, and mismatched breasts and hips, too.
Fire lurked deep in those dark brown—almost black—eyes, perhaps even madness, but
she replied almost gently, “You may, if I may have your name. I am Tabra.”
“And I am Elminster Aumar, often called Elminster of Shadowdale or the Sage of Shadowdale
or … less complimentary things.”
“Once of Thultanthar?”
“No, I am no Netherese, nor have I had any dealings with those of that returned city
that were not … violent.”