Spellstorm (16 page)

And hauling around his lordship’s body, overweight and out of shape and with a bad
back and worse knees, was even more work. Like wearing full sacks of grain strapped
to her arms and legs while trying to move normally. Not that just being her ghostly
self was much better. Lifting and wielding objects required intense, tiring concentration
that sapped her strength in a hurry—living things more than nonliving, and large and
heavy items far more than small and light. Just shoving someone, or swinging a sword
not of her own spectral blades left her kitten-weak for a time, though she could chill
someone by rushing past them like a wind all day long.

Right now, she was exhausted.

And pondering a worrisome thought: If murders were taking place where she was flying
around being a ghost, did that make the victims more likely to rise as undead?

Not that the Elder of Nimbral was dead yet.

Yet.

The Twisted Rune bitch had subsided into grim silence as she was hustled to a bedchamber
and firmly locked in.

The stricken Skouloun of Nimbral had been given the best herbal antidotes Elminster
and Mirt could think of and plunder the pantry for, but looked none the better for
it. He was alive, but not much more—still senseless, still gray-faced, eyes still
seeing wildly different nothings. El and Mirt had left him in Myrmeen Lhal’s care,
in another of the bedchambers.

With Halaunt safely bundled into a garderobe and locked in, Alusair had flown as fast
as she could while still keeping invisible—she could become invisible to most creatures,
so long as she didn’t rush too swiftly or squeeze herself too far out of the shape
and volume her living body had commanded—to the kitchens, to make sure no one stole
in to try to mess with the food while Mirt and Myrmeen were absent.

The Serpent Queen, for one. All that sudden outrage over someone else’s attempted
poisoning of others. Probably because she thought that if anyone was going to deal
death by poison, it should be her.

Alusair shook the head she no longer had—she was
still
finding lifelong habits hard to lose—and sighed again. She’d peered at Shaaan’s fingernails,
and was sure every last sharpened one of them had been tipped with
something
deadly.

Gods, but she was tired. She could still see, and think, just as when still alive.
And fly around, and squeeze through keyholes, and move in utter silence. She didn’t
know enough about magic, even after all the years of dealing with Vangey—hmm, perhaps
because
of having to deal with Vangey, and his love of secrets—to know if any of these wizards
could do the same, with big showy spells that might go wrong here in Oldspires, or
by little things they could do inwardly, and might well get away with.

Even when being an invisible, flying ghost, she couldn’t see in all directions or
hear at a distance or read thoughts when she mindtouched—but could they?

How exactly did you foil a wizard, when you didn’t know what they could or couldn’t
do?

She knew there were different ghosts, but just which sort she was, and all the details
of what she could and couldn’t do—these were things she’d never had the chance to
discuss in detail with anyone she trusted enough to share all about the ghost princess
she now was. Her vulnerabilities, in particular.

Yet she was still here, still part of the Cormyr she loved so much, here beyond death
when her mother was but a fleeting warm and silent comforting presence she found on
rare occasions in certain corners of the palace, and her father was gone entirely.

Sometimes, she wondered why.

Usually, however, she was too blamed busy for wondering. Right now, for instance,
as she swooped into the kitchen at last and took up a post swirling invisibly in a
corner of the kitchen behind the gentle wisps of steam rising from three simmering
pots. A trio that Myrmeen had just told Mirt would run out of fuel and cool down before
they boiled dry and their bottoms got burned out.

So here she was, silent, invisible, and standing sentinel against a poisoner who might,
after all, be anyone among the guests.

The Runemaster had undoubtedly tried to eliminate her adjacent table-mates, Yusendre
and Manshoon, but had looked genuinely taken aback when accused of felling Skouloun.
Alusair was there not to grapple with
any intruder, or try to frighten them by confronting them as a furious, admonishing
apparition, but rather to see what they did, and warn El and Mirt and Myrmeen about
it.

They all believed there was more than one serpent loose in Oldspires now, and Mystra’s
hope of prudence and cooperation was a forlorn, thin, and tattered thing … but this
crazed experiment had to be tried, and if it succeeded, might well bring a glorious
payoff for battered Toril. If even two or three of these archmages fell into friendship,
and saw the benefits of working togeth—

A door opened softly and cautiously, and its opener came through it in the same manner,
slipping inside the kitchen like a spy.

It was Shaaan the Serpent Queen, sinuously stealthy and sly, her usual cold hauteur
set aside. Coming into the room by the back way, from the great entry hall.

Well, well. The most dangerous poisoner of them all, by far, come to tamper …

But no. Shaaan peered unblinking into this, and slunk to where she could see into
that, swiftly and deftly prying into the simmering pots, other pots set ready, and
decanters and jars all around the kitchen.

What she did
not
do was add anything to their contents.

And when Alusair made a small jar of spice paste, which Shaaan had just replaced the
lid of, slide across the counter, seemingly by itself, the Serpent Queen shrank back
in a hurry and made for the door she’d come in by, never turning her back on the room.

Alusair watched her feel behind herself for the handle, then let herself out, all
in unbroken deft silence.

A bare breath before the main kitchen door—the wide one that opened into the feast
hall—swung open with rather less stealth, and the wheezing, floppy-booted bulk that
was unmistakably Mirt the Moneylender lurched into the kitchen.

He saw the jar of paste out of place in an instant, and firmly closed the door behind
himself ere rumbling, “Princess lass? You there?”

“I am,” Alusair whispered nigh his ear, as softly as any lover, just to see him jump.

He robbed her of that satisfaction; all he did was flinch, just for an instant, ere
growling, “You enjoyed that, didn’t you?” He wagged a finger at the jar. “Well? Mreen
never
leaves things that forrard on a countertop. You, or—?”

“Shaaan, the Serpent Queen. Came, poked into everything, but introduced no poison
that I saw—and took care not to put a finger into anything, or breathe into anything,
either; if she was doing more than looking, she certainly fooled me.”

“Planning for later, then,” Mirt concluded. “Or searching for the Lost Spell, hidden
in a jar of something dry and granular.” He sighed. “This is right madness, lass.”

“I know,” Alusair told him crisply, turning visible so she could lock eyes with him.
“Yet it’s one more adventure for the both of us, yes? And in the best of bright causes,
so—”

“So I’m in it, to the death,” Mirt agreed. “The question is, whose?”

“Isn’t that always the question?” Alusair asked archly as she waved farewell and set
off through the keyhole of the door Shaaan had used, like restless smoke swirling
up on the far side of it once she saw there was no one out in the entry hall to watch,
to shape herself into a speeding arrow in flight—well, an arrow that could swoop in
tight arcs around corners—back to Lord Halaunt’s body.

He’d be missed, and remarked upon, if she took much longer. Even if moldering in a
locked garderobe was the best place for the old muleback.

E
LMINSTER WAS WAITING
when Lord Halaunt opened the garderobe door.

“Ready, Lord?” he asked, with just the slightest hint of mockery.

The ghost princess made Lord Halaunt grunt wordless, grumpy assent as she said in
El’s mind:
Ready. No change in the plan?

None yet
, he told her dryly.
Though I suspect this night ahead of us may change that
.

You surprise me not
. The ghost princess sent a tart thought in reply.
I just hope we’re not dooming one of the nicest of our guests
.

Elminster winced. She might very well be right.

Yet if that doom didn’t fall, it still felt right to give the Lost Spell to someone
who really didn’t seem to want it—and it was too late to back away from the plan now.
Every eye in the feast hall had already turned their way, as they strode in together,
and all of those gazes held wariness.

“My guests,” Lord Halaunt said gruffly, “it has been a … surprising evening, after
a day most of you must have found stressful. I think it best if we retire now; my
good steward Elminster here will show all of you to your rooms. I have decided who
shall almost certainly be given the Lost Spell—”

And he looked directly at Alastra Hathwinter, long enough for everyone in the room
to notice, before adding, “Yet if I’ve learned one thing in my long life, it is not
to be overly hasty in making important decisions. Therefore, I promise to meet privately
with each and every one of you on the morrow, to entertain your offers for the Lost
Spell—with due courtesy, as befits your stations in life and the importance of this
matter. You will find my home not up to the latest fashion, but sufficient to provide
for all reasonable needs. I suggest, given what has transpired here this night, that
you all lock yourselves in for safety.”

And to no one’s surprise at all, everyone did.

I
T WAS LATE
enough that the guests should all be abed and snoring, but “should” was certainly
the word to watch in that opinion. Yet servants work when superiors sleep, so the
kitchen in Oldspires was abustle, despite the late hour.

As Elminster came in from stringing a few spiderweb-like threads across a few doorways,
and using the Weave to lay a binding across the door of Alastra Hathwinter’s room
that might prevent timid attempts at entry, but would fail utterly if she opened the
door from within, or an intruder successfully used powerful magic, his too-empty stomach
growled a protest at him.

“Ye and Mreen have been working wonders, I must say,” he said approvingly, helping
himself from a crock of olives.

“Are those the poisoned ones?” Mirt asked Alusair teasingly.

Lord Halaunt’s chuckle was rather sour. Abruptly the old lord sat down in an angle
where the cupboards under one countertop abutted the cupboards under another, leaned
against the cupboards, and went limp.

“Easier to be myself, if you don’t mind,” said the ghost, swirling up from Halaunt’s
lolling body like thin smoke. “It’s
tiring
, dragging that
old wreck of a body around.” She became visible enough that they could see a spectral
head and shoulders as she looked at Mirt and added, “And the two of you
have
been cooking up a storm. The palace kitchens in Suzail were always crowded and noisy,
with lots of shouting and rushing around—but there, it took twenty or more staff to
do what just the two of you manage.”

The kitchen door opened, and Myrmeen stepped through it, saying, “Why, thank you!
It’s nice to be appreciated, I must say. The—”

“Ye left Skouloun why?” El asked sharply.

Myrmeen gave him a look and a shrug. “Because he’s dead.”

She went straight to the simmering pots, lifted lids, sniffed, and reached for some
spice vials. “And,” she added, “he didn’t die of what Calathlarra was trying to slip
Manshoon and the other Nimbran—because that particular poison turns the eyes of those
it kills yellow green and causes rigidity of the limbs.”

“So what did he die of?” Mirt growled.

“Some other sort of poison that turned his face bright purple, and made him foam green
from the mouth. Very colorful. He had some sort of contingency magic that manifested
at his death, but it collapsed and failed without accomplishing anything that I could
see.”