Spellstorm (28 page)

Where he stopped abruptly, and raised the lantern so Mirt and Myrmeen could see … a
fine dark thread stretched from the cask across to the nearest ceiling-beam support
post.

El followed the thread through an eye of wire, where it turned and ran up the post
to a little box with an open end.

Nodding to himself, he lifted the lantern to look as far as he could past the thread
and the box, to the far end of the cask.

Where there was a small heap of blankets and a bowl with a ladle in it.

“Someone’s temporary home,” El murmured, then pointed at the thread, and back along
it to the box. “Poisoned-needle trap; it fires along the line of the thread but up
this high, when the thread gets disturbed by someone’s ankle.”

“Our first search was in great haste,” Myrmeen recalled with a frown, “but I don’t
remember this being here at all.”

“Nor was it,” Elminster replied. “It’s been here longer than the damage to the wood
chute, though.”

It was Mirt’s turn to frown. “So where is the army of intruders? Alusair would’ve
noticed if they were hiding in the room of one of our surviving guests, yes?”

“Oh, yes,” El agreed. “Though, mind ye, she’s patrolling just the north end of the
house, where we housed all the Lost Spell–seeking wizards.”

“Most of the south end houses the kitchens and the feast hall and the rooms we were
going to sleep in, that we’ve not dared use yet,” Myrmeen mused aloud. Then frowned
again. “So intruders may well be lurking in
my
bedroom right now.”

“Best check under the bed,” El advised gently.

“I always do,” Mirt agreed. “Even mothers know that’s where the monsters lurk.”

Myrmeen sighed and asked him, “
Now
who’s failing to be funny?”

“We’ve still the southeastern cellars to look through,” El reminded his two companions.
“Including the cold cellar where we’ve been putting the bodies.”

“For someone else to take,” Myrmeen commented. And then froze. “What’s
that
?”

Something half-seen stirred in the gloom ahead.

It was silent, and growing larger as it came toward them—and it vanished utterly in
the lanternlight, but was there again when El held the lantern behind his back. An
outline of a person, gliding rather than
walking. It glowed so faintly that they could only just see it in the gloom—but could
see the wall behind it right through it. It was tall, and had two dark pits for eyes,
and when Myrmeen hefted her cleaver, its glow pulsed around its empty left hand … and
grew a ghostly sword.

And at the sight of that, she could not help but feel a flickering thrill of fear.

“Well met, Lord Halaunt,” Elminster greeted it gravely, “we are here to guard the
gates.”

The empty-eyed face turned to regard him as if considering his words thoughtfully.
Then it turned, slowly and deliberately, to regard Mirt. He received the same slow,
silent scrutiny ere the ghost turned to survey Myrmeen.

Who asked calmly, “El, with magic untrustworthy, how do we defend ourselves against
this, if it attacks?”

“The Weave,” Elminster replied. “Yet it would be best if I need not call on that power,
here, with the gates so close and numerous around us.”

Mirt cleared his throat then, scratched at his belly, and inquired, “I’ve been wondering
just what, if anything, prevents someone outside the spellstorm from ferrying an army
inside here through a gate. They’d have to know how to open it, aye, but doesn’t it,
ah, bypass the spellstorm?”

El shrugged. “If they’re lucky, yes. If not …”

“Scratch one army,” Myrmeen commented, watching the ghost take a step closer. “Why
is none of this reassuring me in the slightest?”

Mirt chuckled. “Because you’re keeping company with Elminster of Shadowdale, that’s
why, lass. And sharing his unfolding life—of one disaster after another.”

“
Entertaining
disaster after another,” Elminster amended, keeping his eyes on the ghost.

Whose regard had flashed to focus on Mirt, at the sound of his mirth.

“Lord of Waterdeep,” Elminster asked with sudden heartiness, “what is silence?”

“Hey?” Mirt was taken aback.

“A condition utterly unknown to nobles of Waterdeep.”

Mirt blinked, then chuckled heartily. “Well said!”

The ghost of whichever early Lord Halaunt it was backed away, its attention riveted
on the fat moneylender.

Myrmeen stared at it, then suddenly burst into a peal of merry laughter.

And the ghost shrank back from her, dwindled—and fled.

Mirt stared at where it had been. “What just happened?”

“We drove it off with laughter,” Myrmeen said triumphantly.

“I
know
that,” Mirt told her testily. “But how? What’s so frightening about a woman laughing?”
And he flung up a wagging finger. “And before you feel moved to say something smart,
know you that I’ve been married.”

“I’m guessing,” Elminster said slowly, “that yon ghost thrives on fear, and itself
dislikes or even fears laughter.”

“You mean you haven’t the blithering faintest,” Myrmeen told him fondly.

El gave her an innocent look. “Isn’t that what I just said?”

“We’ve all ruled places,” Mirt growled, “so I presume it’s news to none of us that
you can achieve much by pretending to know what you’re doing, and what’s going on,
and acting as if you’ve prepared for it and so are calmly ready to handle whatever
happens.”

“Indeed,” El agreed briskly, “so let’s get this done. After this last corner of the
cellars, there’s the entire upper floor to do yet—the parts of it we can trust to
hold our weight, that is.”

As they set off, El handing the lantern back to Myrmeen, she asked, “So which Lord
Halaunt was that?”

He shrugged. “One of the early ones. Quite a few of them were up to no good, and one
or two died violently and under mysterious circumstances—and with all the gates leaking
energies …”

“A good place for ghosts, and strong causes for their creation,” Mirt concluded. Then
he pointed ahead. “There’s another now.”

This haunting was a different Lord Halaunt; it was shorter and carried a war axe over
its shoulder as it strode purposefully along a passage and vanished straight through
a wall, not slowing or even hesitating as it gave them a brief but intent look.

Myrmeen turned to Elminster. “So we can conclude there are gates very close to us,
hereabouts?”

“We can. Yet I’d know, this close, if one was open and active.”

“The Weave?”

“The Weave. Yet I’m seeking something else. Besides our missing bodies, that is.”

“Oh? Care to share? Or are we just the dunderheaded lackeys?”

“Now, now, lass, there’s no need to be—ahh. Shine thy light here.”

Myrmeen obeyed, and found herself looking at what appeared to be an old tapestry,
hung so it draped down over a wall of stacked crates.

“Cleaver,” El ordered, extending his hand.

Myrmeen put her blade into it, and he leaned forward with his long reach and used
the cleaver to sweep the tapestry to one side.

Revealing no traps, but a narrow gap between two stacks of crates, large enough for
a man to sidle through.

“Light, in there,” El murmured. Myrmeen obliged, illuminating … a tiny room or space
amid towering stacks of crates.

It held a small, delicately carved jet-black wooden table rather like a dressing table,
with a kneeling mat on the floor in front of it. Rather than having a central mirror
behind the tabletop, it had an empty circular frame that might once have held a mirror—and
spaced at intervals around this frame were seven metal stars painted blue-white, the
blue vivid but flat, and the white a faintly-luminescent enspelled paint that made
the stars glow softly and steadily. On either end of the tabletop stood black metal
candlesticks, with unlit candles in them that had been lit—and then extinguished—several
times before.

El looked around the little room and saw a stool, a piece of parchment bearing rather
untidy writing atop the stool, and a small metal box on the floor beneath it. The
box was the sort carried to light fires; it probably contained candles, paper spills,
and a rushlight stand, a flint, a steel striker, and a shallow metal bowl to hold
tinder.

Holding up a warding hand to keep Myrmeen and Mirt back, El walked cautiously to the
stool, bent to peer at the parchment without touching it, and read what was written
on it.

“A hidden shrine to Mystra,” Mirt said, “but why was it hidden? Or rather, from whom?”

“This is Lord Halaunt’s fist,” Elminster replied, “so it wasn’t hidden from him; it
was hidden
by
him. To keep his servants from knowing?” He shrugged. “A mere guess, mind ye, with
nothing to support it.” He pointed down at the parchment. “This is a script for a
prayer he’s composed; he was praying to the goddess to gift him with the ability to
work magic.”

“So his offer of the Lost Spell was no bluff? He might have used it himself, or tried
to?” Myrmeen asked. When he made no reply, she asked another question, slightly more
loudly and sharply. “Did you know this was here?”

El looked up from peering intently at the tabletop—the altar, in front of the circle
of stars and between the two candlesticks. “I knew it existed, somewhere in Oldspires.”

“Oh? How?”

“Mystra hears prayers sent her way, ye know. And that, in turn, is how I first learned
of what Lord Halaunt was up to. Despite what Ganrahast and the other wizards of war
may think, I’m
not
in the habit of magically eavesdropping on their every belch and scratch. Don’t tell
them that, though; believing as much keeps Glathra behaving far better than she would
otherwise. But setting that aside, Lord Halaunt informed Mystra he’d found the Lost
Spell and wanted to be shown how to use it, but she thought otherwise and informed
me.” El bent and peered very intently at the altar, then frowned.

“Ah,” he said, “
that’s
why.” He pointed at the black wood. Myrmeen peered hard, ducking her head from side
to side to see if the spot where he was pointing caught the lanternlight differently
than the rest of the tabletop.

She glanced over at Mirt, to make sure he wasn’t doing the same thing and might be
on the verge of ducking his head right into a painful meeting with hers. He wasn’t.
Instead, he was nodding grimly, as if he’d seen whatever El had spotted before.

Sensing her scrutiny, he looked at her and growled, “Some tiny stains; traces someone
cleaning up missed.”

“Blood,” Elminster put in. “Human blood. Human sacrifice to Mystra.” He straightened
up from his examination, looking grimmer than Mirt. “She wouldn’t like that,” he muttered.
“She wouldn’t like that at all.”

He looked around the little shrine. “I wonder what lives Lord Halaunt spent to get
the attention of Our Lady? Or if he stopped short of murder, and just paid the families
of dying commoners to, ah,
borrow
their doomed kin?” He shook his head in distaste, picturing the old lord on his knees
here, and asked aloud, “And why Mystra? Why not Tempus, or Malar, or—?” He shook his
head again, turned to depart the shrine, and added, “Well, that leaves just the cold
cellar.”

“The place bodies go missing from,” Myrmeen commented.

“That’s why we’re going to look in on it, one more time,” the Sage of Shadowdale told
her. “Though it’s none too comfortable, what better place to try to hide when ye hear
searchers coming?”

“Aye, our intruder of the chute,” Mirt growled. “What with the ghost and this shrine,
I’d almost forgotten him. Not that I’ve left off looking behind me, expecting someone
to rush me, blade in hand, all the time we’ve been down here. Let’s look in on our
dead and be done with it.”

“Long time ahead before we’ll be done,” El reminded him. “Upper level to do yet.”

As it happened, there’d been no new departures from the cold cellar—but then, there’d
been no new arrivals, either.

“Well, that’s something,” Myrmeen said, as they closed the doors on the chill once
more, and turned away.

Mirt gave her a look, and she countered it with the words, “Small victories. Small
victories.”

Elminster led the way back across the cellars to the south stairs, a grand staircase
that ascended through the Halaunt family quarters on up into the upper floor. There’d
been an upper study at its top, once, but its large windows had yielded to winter
snows and howling gales years back, and been crudely boarded over. Birds roosting
for the night shifted uneasily on rafter perches as the wizard, the moneylender, and
the warrior passed them, peering everywhere and expecting trouble. The floor was bowed
and spongy, uneven thanks to one board warping faster than its neighbor. The decaying
wood creaked and groaned loudly underfoot in places and was silent and solid in others—but
those others were increasingly rare as they went on and saw more moonlight and stars
twinkling through gaps in the roofs and walls, and saw more puddles.

“So much space gone to ruin,” Myrmeen murmured. “Even with no staff needing housing,
this could have been given over to a granary.”

Mirt grinned. “There speaks the warrior. We could face a siege at any time.”

“Well, we could. Cormyr today is no secure and peaceful realm. Not anymore.”

“I doubt it ever really was, from all I’ve heard,” the moneylender said.

Elminster turned, laid a hand on each of them, and mindspoke:
Every word warns anyone up here of our approach. To reap your life only takes one
arrow
.

“True,” Mirt granted, as Myrmeen nodded. They proceeded in wary silence.

Through room after room, and eventually out into a chamber that had utterly collapsed
and stood open to the sky, its walls—studded with warped and buckled doors—resembling
the battlements of a turret top.

Here Elminster stopped and turned slowly to survey the moonlit lands around, breathing
in the night air and peering down at the gently roiling fog of the spellstorm—and
the wall of force beyond, catching the moonlight here and there. He could see a few
of the less careful war wizards standing watch; some of them were looking back at
him.