Spellstorm (34 page)

T
HE TWO WIZARDS
had walked the last two turns of passage to their rooms in silence, side-by-side
in the gloomy magnificence of the mansion. Only to reach the Chamber of the Founder,
with its frowning statue, and the doors to their rooms. Malchor Harpell opened his
bedchamber door and gave Manshoon a polite nod of farewell, and Manshoon returned
the nod and backed away. Never turn your back, was his iron rule, and he wasn’t about
to change it now.

The door to Harpell’s room closed, and the founding lord of the Zhentarim heard Malchor
lock and bolt it.

No surprise there. Prudence is the first simple survival tactic of all archmages.

Manshoon sidestepped, well aside from that door, which brought him within reach of
his own.

And out of another long habit, he turned on one heel to look all around before he
laid hand to its handle.

Which was how he happened to see the stealthy movement in the gloom of the staue chamber,
beyond the grand staircase. That momentary flash and gleam of armor is unmistakable,
to one who has seen it so often.

Out of long habit—ah, but his habits were increasingly governing him, here in this
place of peril in the shadows—he sidestepped smoothly again, so the hand axe that
came whirling from the staue chamber passed harmlessly by his shoulder, to ring off
the side of the first Lord Halaunt’s brazen head, and thwack into a wall.

“I’ll ignore that,” he told the darkness whence the weapon had come, “so long as such
stupidity is not repeated. Is there a particular target you have in mind, or are you
slaughtering all archmages you meet with?”

By way of reply, there were more shifting gleamings in the darkness. Several shapes
stepped around the corner, resolving themselves into helmed men in full plate armor
as they advanced.

Six, a dozen, a score … and still they kept coming. By all the deaths unlooked-for,
it was a small army.

To enter his room would be to corner himself, and with magic unreliable, his death,
even if he defended the doorway to keep from being outflanked, would only be a matter
of time.

So he stood his ground, and bluffed, as he’d bluffed so many times before.

“Officer in charge, report!” he commanded calmly.

“Saer? Are you—”

“I’m hardly going to give my name, in this house of so many spies,” Manshoon interrupted
flatly. “You’re late.”

“Sorry, Lord. We dared not take on the war wizards; reinforcements have just arrived,
and they’re too strong. A few Crown mages we can take—they’re apt to be arrogant and
careless—but with none of us bowmen or spellhurlers …”

“So if you fought them not, how did you get inside?”

“There was a wizard, an old man in rotting robes. He looked
dead
—face rotting away, not much left of his nose—but he gave the password right enough,
and when we were all gathered where he led us, he worked a long spell, a complicated
one, that conjured up a door of blue fire in front of us, and waved us through it.”

Manshoon nodded as if this was no surprise at all.

So a lich had reopened one of the gates into Oldspires! Well, well … who was he, and
why?

And was he, perhaps, one of the liches he’d been so cautiously seeking?

“Beyond the password, he said nothing to you?” Manshoon asked sharply, putting on
a frown of disapproval.

“Nothing, beyond reminding us that we were to remember the master pays us well—generous
purses in gold coins of old mintings for achievements, and swift death for failure
or treachery.”

Manshoon nodded and added a brief, wintry smile.

“L-Lord Torr, your orders? And … and if I may be so bold, why do you look different?”

Manshoon let his smile go softer and deeper. “I’m in disguise.”

So this was Maraunth Torr’s little private army, hired to come along in his wake,
conquer Oldspires, and help him seize and hold the Lost Spell. Well, well. They were
too late to help their master, but could still prove useful to him.

“First,” he told them crisply, “beware a woman with scaly skin. If you see her, kill
her swiftly and without mercy. She’s deadly. Don’t give her a chance to touch you,
for she uses many poisons.”

“Lord,” they chorused, nodding.

Manshoon smiled. Yes,
very
useful.

“That way,” he commanded, “lies the entry hall, the largest room in this mansion.
The easternmost door in its south wall opens into the kitchen—which has other doors,
so some of you should go through the copper-clad room you’ll find, and wait around
the other side of the kitchen, before you assault any of its doors, or make noise.
Inside that kitchen are three persons: a gaunt bearded old mage, a fat man with a
wheeze and a limp, and a woman. Kill them all, behead them, and bring the heads back
here to me.”

M
YRMEEN LOOKED ACROSS THE KITCHEN AT
M
IRT, AND LET OUT A
moan of longing.

“That smells
so good
!” she exclaimed. “And when did we eat last?”

Her stomach loudly informed the room that whenever it had been, it was too long ago.
“Here,” Mirt growled, handing her an onion off his chopping board. “Eat.”

She wrinkled her nose at it, and then at him. “
Uncooked
onion? You Waterdhavians are barbarians!”

“Compliments, compliments,” he replied amiably, picking up his knife and returning
to his chopping.

Across the kitchen, Elminster sniffed at one of Myrmeen’s bowls. “That’s perfect,
lass. It just has to cool, covered over and somewhere dark, before we pour it into
little bottles—ye saw the crates of them down in the cellars, yes?—and stopper them
and label them
before anything can get mixed up.”

He moved to the next bowl, picked it up—and there was a sharp, insistent knocking
on the nearest door. The door into the entry hall.

Elminster, Myrmeen, and Mirt all looked at each other. Then they caught up the best
weapons they had, and in unspoken accord went to the feast hall door instead, to slip
out and go around to see who was knocking.

Just in case, El and Myrmeen flanked Mirt as he set aside the bar, shot the bolt,
unlocked the door, and opened it.

Outside stood a huge crowd of identically armored men, swords and axes drawn. Gleaming
new coat of plate, open-faced helms with great-rib noseguards—and not a badge nor
blazon to be seen. Head to toe metal, save that they wore heavy hobnailed leather
boots, armor plated just down the top of the foot, to the toes. Swords and hand axes,
daggers at belts. Like thousands of blankshield mercenaries, only far better equipped
than most.

They pressed forward with enthusiastic shouts, trying to force their way in.

In their path stood Mirt, shoulder to the door and shoving hard. The door thundered
under the impacts of charging warrior after charging warrior, but Mirt, his floppy
boots sliding on the stone floor, snarled and lowered his head and shoved harder.

The door got to a little more than half-closed, shuddering under many blows, when
the first arms appeared around its edge, thrusting and slashing at the air with swords
and hand axes. Reaching for Mirt, reaching for anyone, seeking to hack.

Elminster parried some of them coolly with a cooking tray, but amid its loud clangor,
Myrmeen reached in with the largest kitchen cleaver she’d been able to find and tried
to lop off limbs, armor shrieking under her blows. Plate armor prevented her performing
butchery, but sword after sword she dashed from numbed fingers, and one gauntlet failed
and left its wearer screaming and yanking back a hand that let fall fingers amid much
blood.

Elminster snatched up the door bar and thrust its end into helmed faces and across
mailed throats, bludgeoning everyone he could reach. A warrior made a grab for the
end of the bar to wrest it from his grasp, but Myrmeen hacked that hand away viciously
and Elminster thrust the timber into that man’s armored gut, folding him up and dumping
him back into a retching, arm-flailing collapse that knocked two of his fellows to
the floor—and gave Mirt his chance.

The moneylender snorted his way forward like an angry bull and slammed the door shut,
crushing some trapped hands to the accompaniment of shrill shrieks of agony and the
clatter of fallen and bouncing weapons—and Myrmeen leaped to shoot the bolt home even
before the door was locked. Elminster slammed the door bar into its cradles a bare
instant later.

That timber was still settling into place as the Sage of Shadowdale turned and sprinted
into the butlery, leaving Mirt and Myrmeen to stare
after him in surprise in the bare instant before both of the other kitchen doors started
to thud and thunder under a heavy and continuous onslaught of bodies and axe blades.

El ran hard, heading for the kitchen stairs. Four other staircases led down into the
cellars, five if one counted the secret plate and cutlery cupboard stair, and he had
to get to the heavy door at the bottom of these stairs and secure it before that army
of warriors—not Purple Dragons by the looks of them, so who were they?—came swarming
up the stairs to infest all the food rooms attached to the kitchen.

There was no one in sight, and he was tempted to race past the cold cellar to the
wine and wrestle a handkeg or two onto the bottom steps before seeing to the door.
The top of the flight of stairs was fitted with only a flimsy wooden gate, designed
to keep people or things that toppled over from falling down the entire flight of
steps, so it was this door or no defense at all.

The temptation to procure kegs passed in the time it took him to race to the bottom,
where El swung the heavy door shut with a deep boom, shot its stout double bolts,
and turned to hurry back up the stairs. Too swiftly; his foremost foot caught on a
tread and he almost went face-first onto the steps. All that saved him was his swiftness,
but he reared back so suddenly that he overbalanced and fell back two steps.

At the same moment that something dropped from above to crash heavily onto the treads
where he’d been—something that reached out with raking arms as it fell past, trying
to claw him.

It was—

Gods, it was Calathlarra!

Elminster leaped back a few steps more, until his shoulders met the door with a thud—and
what was left of the Runemaster came
slithering
down the steps after him.

Her head lolled lifelessly, the eyes glazed and staring, able to see him, yet not
quite focused. Her mouth was open and drooling, in part because her shriveled face
was slashed across by her death wounds, the deep slices left by Tabra’s poisoned fingernails.

Her own lacerated and broken fingers had been bound tightly together with strips torn
from a shift, and their fingernails cut to sharp points tipped with glistening dark
purple and green; venoms. A few fingers bore long, wickedly pointed metal finger sheaths
that turned them into talons.
There was a venom-coated knife at her belt, and she was hauling herself down the steps
at El with her taloned hands, dragging her legs behind her.

“Shaaan’s work,” El murmured aloud, as he hastened to the left-hand end of the bottom
step. The Serpent Queen’s undead slayer turned to follow him in eerie silence, descending
another few steps ere it reared up to rake at him again.

El raced to the other end of the step and upward, springing into the air and kicking
out as he went, a—yes!—perfectly timed kick that brought the sole of his boot hard
into her reaching talons and dashed them down and aside, turning her body so her desperate
slash with her other arm, across her own body, couldn’t help but fall far short of
ever reaching him.

Then he was up the stairs in a panting rush, and whirling to face the Serpent Queen’s
slithering slayer, who was clawing her way around and coming up the stairs after him,
nails scraping on the steps.

Coming with alarming ease and speed. Ah, but of
course
she’d be faster than he’d prefer.

“Mirt! Myrmeen!” he shouted. “Get ye
out
here!”

Whatever replies they might have made were lost in the sudden, deafening boom of the
locked door that separated the passage wrapping around the stair from the feast hall.
At least two of the small army of warriors on the other side of it must have taken
a run at it and struck it with their shoulders together.

Calathlarra swarmed up the steps and slashed at his feet as she came; El jumped back
and looked around wildly for something to defend himself with. One slash from a fingernail—

“Mirt!” he bellowed again. “Myrmeen!”

There was a thunderous crash from the door, a different sort of sound than the earlier
boom. Sharper, and with an edge to it that bespoke splintering. They were using their
hand axes this time, half a dozen of them, the blades biting in unison. It was a large,
imposing paneled door, fitted with glossy-polished relief carvings of the Halaunt
arms surrounded by a wreath of sculpted grapes and sheaves of wheat and a pleasant
array of fruits and vegetables. It had a stout lock, but no bar El could use to fend
off poisoned claws, and no cradles for one; the Halaunt builders hadn’t anticipated
the need for a barricade between the feast hall and the various pantries. Those axes
would be through it in short order.

“What, El?” Myrmeen called, through the door that led into the butlery. “We’re just
bottling the remedies, and—”

“Get a sack, bring what ye can, and get me one of the roasting spits!”

Myrmeen came running past the door that the edges of axe blades were now crashing
through, and peered past El. She winced in disgust at the sight of Calathlarra, who
was now undulating along the passage from the stairs as she hauled herself along with
her taloned hands. “Just how does a wizard animate someone into undeath if magic doesn’t
work, hey?”

“Doesn’t work
reliably
, lass,” El called back, as he sped past the axe-imperiled door to unlock the door
at the end of the passage, into the south servery. Domed platters, there were huge
domed platters in there that he could use as shields … So
that
was the casting that had so sorely harmed Luse, the most recent time …