Spellstorm (45 page)

And the empty air replied, “Bad. Yet I seem to be getting used to it, damn you very
much.”

“The snake,” Mirt remarked, coming forward, “sleepeth not.”

“The kitchen,” Myrmeen ordered sharply. “Without their magic, and with us camping
on the food so the Serpent Queen can’t poison it, they’ll all keep. I’m famished.”

At that moment, Shaaan’s stomach growled so loudly that Elminster and Mirt turned
to peer in her direction. It seemed she was famished, too.

And suddenly so weary of it all that she found she hadn’t the slightest enthusiasm
for racing to the kitchen to poison anything.

Silently she turned away, and started the long, roundabout trudge back to her own
room.

I
DON
’
T KNOW ABOUT YOU
,” M
IRT GROWLED AT
M
YRMEEN, FROM WHERE
he was kneeling and raking out the hearth, “but I cook better whenmy stomach isn’t
a protestingly empty chasm.”

The former Lady Lord of Arabel gave him a look. “There’s a part of me that gazes upon
your impressively large and rotund belly, Lord of Waterdeep, and protests inwardly
that the sort of innards that swell such an, ah, achievement could never be any sort
of empty chasm, protesting or otherwise—but then there’s another part of me that has
been very, very hungry while preparing a meal, and agrees with you wholeheartedly.”

“Ah,” Mirt replied happily, “then pray take my lordly advice and listen to that second
part of you. It’s wiser than the first, which seeks to judge from outward appearance
only. Never a good idea, in any field of endeavor or situation.” The two of them had
just made and fed Elminster a hearty meal, and shared it with him, and were now nearly
finished preparing dishes chosen because they wouldn’t spoil if left to cool, and
would still be pleasant when reheated a day later.

“El,” Myrmeen said to the tall, thin man unhurriedly washing dishes at the sink, “It’s
almost time to ring the gong.”

“Ye’d like me to do it rather than Mirt?”

“No, I just wanted you forewarned. I don’t like to startle Weavemasters who can humble
archmages and liches in the heart of a wild spell duel, and shut down ancient and
powerful gates, to boot.”

Elminster chuckled. “Mreen, ye’d be surprised at how little I can do, startled or
otherwise, in some situations. Thank ye for the warning.”

Mirt took the last roasting pan off the heat and covered it with its dome. “Strike
it now?” he asked eagerly, flexing his fat fingers.

“Now,” Myrmeen and El agreed, and watched the old moneylender wipe his hands, and
head for the great gong that would summon anyone hearing it to a meal.

Not that there were all that many left …

And then, amid the slowing bustle of the kitchen, the voice of Alusair piped up from
the air right in front of Mirt.

“I bring word of yet more trouble, I fear.”

“Ye gods, don’t
do
that, Princess!” Mirt snarled. “My heart—!”

“You still have one, old rogue? Good to know! Heed, please, all of you: something
that smells like roast boar cooking—but mingled with something less pleasant—is coming
from Malchor’s room. I tarried, wondering if I should go through the keyhole to spy,
and heard a rather horrible bubbling scream from inside the room, followed by feeble
moaning.”

“Thank ye, Luse!” El snapped, pulling his hands out of the soapy water and drying
them. “Everything off the heat and safe to leave? Good! Lock and bar all the doors,
Mreen, except this one; I’ll lock it when we leave. Mirt, bring the sack of antidotes.
Let’s hasten!”

“Bloody archmages,” the Lord of Waterdeep complained as they hurried out. “When will
they be finished killing each other?”

“When there’s none of them left,” Myrmeen replied tartly.

Elminster sighed. “I wish ye were wrong, lass, but I very much doubt ye are.”

E
L FINALLY FOUND
the right key, unlocked the door with a rattling sound that seemed almost angry,
and shoved it open.

The fireplace was lit. The unhealthy reek was coming from it, and no wonder. Three
severed human heads were burning in the grate.

“Alastra, Yusendre, and Skouloun,” Myrmeen murmured, shaking her head.

“Our scaly mage was trying to make very sure the fallen
stayed
fallen,” El said grimly, as he and Mirt bent over the three bodies sprawled on the
bedchamber floor.

Shaaan lay on her back, most of her fingers severed; they were scattered around the
room, amid much blood. Her hands had been pinned gorily to the carpeted floor by daggers
driven through both palms, and her throat had been thoroughly, deeply cut.

“No yellow on her fingers,” Mirt said with a frown. “I’d thought …” His voice trailed
away as he stared at who was lying on either side of the dead Serpent Queen.

Facedown and moaning faintly as their bodies jerked in the last fading throes of various
poisons, lay the two men who’d killed Shaaan: Malchor and Manshoon.

“Feed them half of every antidote bottle we brought,” El ordered briskly, “and then
the restful sleep draft. I am
not
losing every last one of the archmages who gathered here. That would shame us and
the Lady I serve, too.”

Myrmeen looked at him. “Some of the antidotes will clash, El. It could be fatal.”

El shrugged. “If we miss giving them the wrong ones, they’re dead anyway.”

“Good point,” she agreed, and set about it. “This Malchor was decent enough, for an
archmage. Better than many. As for Manshoon …” She shrugged, then looked at Elminster.
“You’d miss him, wouldn’t you? A right familiar old enemy.”

Elminster sighed, nodded, and asked Mirt, “Found any wounds?” The moneylender had
just finished rolling the two men over. The eyes of both were rolled up in their heads,
and their mouths were slack and ringed with dripping foam.

“Just scratches from her nails—oh, and a right deep gash across the back of Manshoon’s
hand here. Looks like he backhanded her dagger out of her hand.” Mirt looked across
the room, then pointed at where a roundel needleblade stood proud out of the frame
of a bookshelf. “And it ended up yonder.”

El went and retrieved it. He peered hard at the blade, then shook his head and tossed
it into the fire, drawing one of his own daggers from inside his boot.

When he cut away Manshoon’s clothing to bare ribs and a taut belly, Myrmeen frowned
at him. “El, what’re you doing?”

“Obeying Mystra,” El replied, holding his hand a fingerwidth above the unconscious
Zhent’s flesh and moving it around as if sensing something.

After a moment he nodded, pointed at a particular spot, and made a careful incision
there. Ignoring the sudden gush of blood, he started calmly cutting deeper.

“I will never understand archmages,” Mirt growled, watching. “Cutting his throat’s
easier—you can’t miss it, just as these two dolts couldn’t miss hers.”

A moment later, Elminster carefully drew forth something large and spindle-shaped
that glowed faintly through coursing blood, and held it up.

Then he murmured a spell of healing over the wound he’d made, and ordered Mirt, “Bind
him up. There’re smallcloths behind yon screen, in the garderobe corner.”

“You can heal?”

“ ’Tis an unusual circumstance,” the Sage of Shadowdale replied gravely, waving the
spindle. “This holds some of the divine fire of the goddess Mystryl.”

Mirt and Myrmeen both peered at it. “The goddess of magic before Mystra? So that’s
how
old?”

El sighed. “Don’t make me count. I
hate
counting. I was never good at sums.”

“So now what?”

“Put these two wounded wizards to bed. Calathlarra’s room should do for Malchor, and
we’ll put Manshoon in Maraunth Torr’s. Under guard, both of them. Luse, are ye up
to being Lord Halaunt right now?”

“And miss all the fun by saying otherwise?” came the voice from the air. “No fear!”

“Then Mirt, Myrmeen, and I shall stand guard over Malchor—who deserves to survive
this disaster of a wizard moot, if anyone does—and ye, as Lord Halaunt, watch over
Manshoon. We’ll leave the doors open, so we can call alarm to each other from room
to room.”

“Standing guard,” Mirt growled. “This isn’t over
yet
?”

“Nay,” El replied wryly. “There’s still someone who will try to get in and finish
them.”

I
N THE END
, Elminster never stopped strolling back and forth between the two adjacent bedchambers,
talking to all three of his companions.

He was not surprised, after about his fortieth time departing the room where Lord
Halaunt was sitting vigil over the still-sleeping Manshoon, to hear a small sound
far down the passage. He went on into the other bedchamber, resumed conversing there
as if nothing at all was amiss—and then suddenly turned in midword, marched back out
into the passage, and returned to the room he’d just left.

Whose door was just being quietly pushed closed—until it fetched up against his swiftly
planted boot.

The closer drew it open again to see what was blocking the door’s swing—and found
herself staring into the face of Elminster.

“Well met again, Tabra,” he said politely. “Isn’t it about time ye abandoned the profession
of murderer?”

Tabra stared back at him, eyes blazing—and then sighed, slumped in dejection, and
turned away, heading across the bedchamber for the vacant chair Alusair had just brought
Halaunt up out of, to stand and bar the way to Manshoon.

El followed the limping archmage, hearing Mirt and Myrmeen hurrying in through the
door behind him. He didn’t order them back to go on guarding Malchor.

They all ended up standing around the seated Tabra in a watchful ring.

As El asked her calmly, “So, Lady Tabra … ye slew Skouloun, then Yusendre, and finally
Calathlarra. So tell me now: why do ye want to destroy Malchor and Manshoon?”

The look in Tabra’s mismatched eyes could have set parchment ablaze.

“With power comes responsibility,” she replied flatly, “and that goes for power in
the Art as much as it does for crowns and thrones and grand titles. You should know
that, Elminster Aumar, better than almost all mortals! You should stand with me on
this! You threw down the Most High, who’d so overreached himself and who treated those
not of his city like cattle—and it was you who made sure all of us were penned in
here in Oldspires together. Wasn’t this why? So you could purge our battered old world
of one lot of foul villains of wizardry? I burn to exterminate Thultanthans, for they
are a blight on the rest of us foolhardy, power-hungry tyrants who despoil whatever
they seek to rule. Is that judgment of them not truth?”

Elminster nodded grimly. “I fear so.”

“You
know
so. So help me slay these two—or stand aside and let me kill them.”

“Lass, lass, neither of these two are or were of Thultanthar. Nor did they ally themselves
with the Shadovar.”

“So? Knowing what the Thultanthans were up to and turning your back and ignoring them
is as bad as aiding them!” Tabra spat. “Wherefore Malchor Harpell is as guilty as
Manshoon—and the Zhent actually helped the Shadovar, several times, soon after their
floating city first reappeared.”

“Elminster naturally wants to know the why,” Mirt growled, “and so do I—but not before
I know the how. The ‘how’ is what I lived through, here in Oldspires. Tell me the
how.”

“Skouloun was not just a sanctimonious waste of wind who presumed to judge others
while being deceitful himself—presumably because he thought himself ‘special,’ ” Tabra
said with sudden venom. “He wanted coin,
lots
of coin. So for pay, he’d betrayed several wizards who happened to have magic the
Shadovar wanted. Their magic, when they returned to Faerûn, wasn’t nearly as superior
to the Art in use across the Heartlands as they like to portray matters. They grabbed
whatever they saw and feared, or destroyed its wielders, as swiftly as they could,
so the worst threats to them were gone before full word of their return and power
had spread.”