Spellstorm (41 page)

He did not even try to slow down.

With a
kkrraaAAAsh
that shook the last few pieces of crockery out of the cupboards to plummet and smash,
the moneylender cannoned right into the nearest warrior, and betrayed his background
as a back-alley brawler by planting a balled fist in the man’s throat so hard that
he broke that neck—not that a man with an utterly crushed windpipe can breathe long
enough to worry about such things—and drove its owner back into his fellow behind
him. Who in turn stumbled back into the third warrior.

Leaving the stumbling second warrior busy windmilling his arms and fighting just to
keep hold of his sword—which meant he couldn’t hope to stop Mirt’s sword from opening
his throat, in a swing so wide and free that the moneylender managed to strike the
third warrior’s sword right out of his hand on the backswing.

So Mirt’s free hand didn’t have to contend with a sword slicing at it, and could reach
out, grab hold of the underedge of the third warrior’s helm where it ran along down
below the man’s jaw, twist head and helm around so hard and abruptly that the man
preserved his neck only by sacrificing all balance and turning on his heels—and then
ram that head into the sharp edge of a cupboard, where it ended at the door frame
of the wide door opening into the feast hall.

Where there were other Torr warriors, five—no, six—of them, presumably including those
who’d been watching through the Copper Receiving Room, but possibly not, gaping at
Mirt and bringing hand axes up to hurl his way.

They were distracted by a furious, high-pitched shriek from behind Mirt that if truth
be told distracted him and Elminster almost into slipping and falling.

“You did
this
to my
kitchen
? You barbarians! You utter alley-rat
pigs
! How
dare
you stand there in armor and purport to be
human
!
Yeeeeeaarrrgh
!”

And in a raging fury Myrmeen vaulted the falling body of that third warrior, now slumping
floorward with a cupboard-edge-shaped deep furrow all down the back of his helm, and
landed in the midst of the feast hall at a dead run, the swords in her hands whirling.

Gleaming plate armor is admirable protection in battle, but if it lacks a gorget,
or mail coif, to protect the throat, and a visor to defend the face, it isn’t much
use when worn by someone not swift enough to parry attacks at those vulnerable spots.

Wherefore two of the six hireswords were gurgling and dying before a third managed
a desperate parry only by dropping his hand axe and wrapping both hands around the
hilt of his sword.

By which time the fourth, fifth, and sixth Torr warriors saw Mirt lumbering their
way with bloodthirsty glee flaming on his face and Elminster laughing in the throes
of the same bright-eyed emotion—and took to their heels and
ran
.

Out through the Copper Receiving Room with Myrmeen felling their unfortunate comrade
and racing after them.

They were halfway across the entry hall when a dreadful voice out of empty air right
in front of the foremost warrior’s nose whispered, “You run to your
doom
! The Halaunts shall tear your bones out of your running body!”

It wasn’t the most frightening thing Alusair might have said, but she was in haste
and improvising. Luckily for her, the running hiresword was already terrified.

He skidded on his heels, screamed, and flung up his hands—losing his axe in the direction
of the ceiling but somehow managing to keep hold of his sword—and his fellow warrior,
sprinting right behind him, ran into him with a solid metallic crash, and they went
down together, skidding on … lumps of severed body that had been left on the hall
floor. They both screamed again, in the instant before the third and last Torr warrior
trampled them hard, lost his footing doing so, and fell hard on his behind.

And Myrmeen Lhal, still seething in rage and racing even faster than any of the fleeing
hireswords had been able to manage, caught up to them and hacked and hewed, snarling
as she slew.

When she was done, and standing panting and looking around wild-eyed for more targets,
Mirt said from behind her, “If you go on like this, I’m very much afraid we’re going
to need more than just that one crock.”

M
YRMEEN WAS STILL
spitting mad, so Mirt and El hastily set about picking up smashed bowls and the litter
of pans and forks and ladles from the floor, and tossed it all out into the entry
hall to be dealt with later.

“The dead warriors can guard it,” the moneylender muttered. “Watching gods above,
but she’s furious!”

“Ye think?” El muttered, taking hold of a dead man’s foot and starting to tug. “Give
her some time to simmer down, and we’ll reintroduce her to the concept of pickles
and preserved fruit.”

“
Oh
, no,” Mirt replied. “Not me. You can do that, and I’ll stand well back and watch
her make you wear it.”

Although it would probably take days to go through everything, thus far nothing had
been poisoned, so far as they could tell, but all the cooking fires were out, and
everything readily edible had been eaten.

“And what they couldn’t eat, they spilled and trampled underfoot,” Elminster sighed,
heading for the butlery, where the mops were kept.

“As I observed earlier,” Myrmeen said in a surprisingly calm voice, suddenly looming
up over them, “
charming
discipline. So we have no food.”

“Well,” Mirt rumbled, “not here. There are cellars full beneath us, because Torr’s
warriors just haven’t had time enough to spoil or carry all of it off. Not without
magic—and if Shaaan could hurl around
that
sort of magic, she wouldn’t need to be cutting the fingernails of the dead to points
and tipping them with poison.”

Myrmeen shook her head in slow and silent exasperation, and looked at Elminster. “I
have a new appreciation for you, Sage of Shadowdale. These madwits matters drive me
wild, and you’ve put up with them for
centuries
. I cannot
believe
you aren’t babbling, screeching mad!”

Elminster smiled. “Are ye sure I’m not?”

Into the little silence that followed those words, Mirt coughed and said, “So we’d
best be waving our swords and walking all wary down to the cellars now, eh? There
are sacks in the south servery we can use to carry the food back.”

“Aye, let’s do that,” El agreed. “But as before, no splitting up. We go together,
ready for trouble.”

“Lots of spices are missing,” Mirt put in, and then added with a frown, “and the cleaning
oils, too! Y’know, the ones you rub into the cutting boards or the countertops after
they’ve been stained or you’ve had to scrape them. What in the Hell’s kindling blazes
would hireswords—or Serpent Queens, for that matter—want with such things?”

Myrmeen’s frown was deeper. “You know, come to think of it, I think the oils went
missing earlier. I’d thought you’d moved them, and forgot to ask you where …”

“Right, so our little armed foray will be like going to market,” El concluded. “Food,
spices, and cleaning oils. We have to eat—and more
importantly, drink—for three more days before the spellstorm passes. Three days of
dodging poison. So we must stock up wisely—and let us be about it.”

So they set out. The food mess diminished swiftly as they got farther from the kitchen,
but the bodies, fallen weapons, and blood were strewn in profusion everywhere. Thankfully,
Torr’s hireswords hadn’t smashed or carried off all the servants’ hand lanterns, so
three full ones were swiftly found and lit.

“They keep a messy battlefield, these mercenaries,” Myrmeen remarked, as they left
the plate and cutlery storeroom behind, and she led the way down the spiral stair.

“Careful, Mreen,” El murmured. “Shaaan could very easily have left one of her envenomed
at the bottom, to rake ye as ye slide open the panel.”

Myrmeen nodded and descended more warily.

“Adventurers explore dungeons and battle monsters,” Mirt commented, lurching after
her. “
We
mount expeditions down to larders to get food.”

“It’ll sound better in the ballads,” Myrmeen promised. “If I write them, that is.”

“Better start now,” the moneylender told her. “We may be too busy dying later.”

“N
OT A SIGN
of her,” Mirt mused aloud, as he forked the last sausage up out of the sizzling oil.
“Wonder where she’s hiding?”

Shaaan might have done any number of things down in the cellars, but none had left
much of a trace. So Mirt, Myrmeen, and Elminster had cautiously retrieved their sack
of antidotes from the foot of the staircase that was so uncomfortably near the gate,
and a goodly amount of food from the larder cellars, and lugged it back to the kitchens.

Where Myrmeen had openly enjoyed the sight of the eldest and mightiest surviving Chosen
of Mystra, and the closest thing in Toril to a Weavemaster, washing down sinks and
countertops, then scrubbing floors on his knees.

They’d gathered and set out what they’d need to make an evening meal and more antidotes,
then made morningfeast. And then, girding
themselves for battle once more, set out for the rooms of Malchor and Manshoon at
the far end of Oldspires, and delivered the meals.

Malchor had invited them in and gravely thanked Elminster for his life, as well as
them all for the meal, but Manshoon had called through the door for them to leave
the food outside his threshold and he’d get it later, so they’d done that.

“So tell me, El,” Myrmeen had murmured, as they’d departed, “the silver fire you gave
to him, through Alusair … he has that forever, now?”

“Nay,” he replied. “Mystra didn’t prepare him to host it, and he can’t do that for
himself without my aid or her aid or the assistance of another sufficiently powerful
servant of Mystra, so it will slowly leak from him, its healing done, and find its
way back to her—and she will in turn give it to me again.”

“So what if she just decides to keep it?” Mirt rumbled. “Gathering all the power from
all her Chosen, bit by bit and oh so casually, to become mightier?”

El gave them the sad ghost of a smile. “No god goes unwatched, these days, and this
Mystra ascended into a—call it a balance of forces—that will visit pain and instability
on her if she grows too powerful. Divinity is a burden as well as a boon.”

“And you know this how?” Myrmeen asked softly.

“A good point, lass. That’s where the faith that priests speak so often of comes in.
We mortals must trust what we are told and shown by the gods, and even the gods lie.
Especially
the gods lie.”

“In other words,” Mirt said, “this could all be so many empty words spewed out from
altars and in our dreams and by manifested gods looming over the landscape like sky-filling
titans to bellow directly … but ’tis all we have, so we may as well accept it as given
and get on with our lives.”

“Exactly,” El agreed. “Ye’d make a good sage.”

“Hunnh. Do sages eat better than moneylenders? I hadn’t noticed that.”

Before returning to the kitchen to make themselves morningfeast, get started on the
evening meal, and make more antidotes, the three had gone hunting Shaaan again—with
an utter lack of success.

Though the ceilings above them had trembled once, as if an unseen and silent giant’s
fist had punched Oldspires hard enough to move it a few inches south.

Someone had miscast another spell—which meant that poor Alusair was probably lost
in silent suffering somewhere. Again.

There was no way to prove the source of the spell was Shaaan, of course. It was more
likely Manshoon, testing to see if he could make his magic obey him.

They avoided the adjacent rooms given to Malchor and Manshoon, but checked in on Tabra.
She was abed again, but serenely reading a book from the Halaunt library, propped
up on her pillows, and Myrmeen checked that it was nothing to do with magic (it was,
in fact, Arthredran’s
Lives of Illustrious Nobles
, widely held to be flattering where it wasn’t fanciful, but universally judged a
good read.