Spellstorm (35 page)

“Shall we relocate, regardless?” Myrmeen suggested. “This is a pleasant enough venue, but someone of military competence may be down there, and prevail after the thicker heads have failed and run out of oh-so-bright ideas.”

“Relocate where, lass?” Mirt rumbled, around mouthfuls of braerwing. “We’re fleeing too many warriors to stand against—but may just wind up fleeing right into their arms, so to speak.”

She shrugged.

Mirt looked to Elminster.

“I’d like to thank the cooks,” the Sage of Shadowdale announced. “Very nice. Best I’ve eaten in ages, actually.”

“Old Mage,” Mirt growled, “you may not have noticed, being an ancient and doddering archmage and the most gleaming Chosen of Mystra and all, but we’re in the middle of a little private war here, and—”

“I’ve been
thinking
,” Elminster interrupted severely. “We ancient and doddering archmages sometimes need more time to do that than we used to. Especially when we’re distracted by delicious and much-needed food. Yum.” He swallowed, wiped his lips with one forefinger, and said briskly, “Right. Follow me.”

“Where?” Mirt asked suspiciously.

“This way.”

Mirt sighed, rolled his eyes, and looked at Myrmeen. Who chuckled, gave him a smile, and started after Elminster, who was crawling on hands and knees to one of the buckled doors in the walls of the roofless room, and out through it.

Mirt sighed again, more heavily, took a good big bite out of the next braerwing on the skewer, and crawled after them both.

The moment they were through the door and standing again, in the decaying passage beyond, he growled at Elminster’s back, “All right, where are we headed and
why
?”

“To Malchor. Hopefully he’s in his room. Against all those warriors, I need an ally.”

“He can spellblast them while you try to wrestle the Weave so his spells blast, rather than sprout flowers or turn them hairy,” Myrmeen offered.

El gave her a broad smile. “Ah, I
do
love companions who have wits, and use them! Yes, ye’ve stated my plan precisely.”

“Not much of a plan,” Mirt grumbled. “More warriors’ spur of the moment desperation stuff, to my ears.”

“So ’tis, friend Mirt. Spur of the moment desperation is my specialty, and has been for centuries now. I like to think I’m getting good at it.”

“More braerwing?” Mirt asked, offering the skewer.

“Later. Heroics now, before ’tis too late.”

They’d worked their way three rooms farther along, and through a particularly spongy area where summer rains and winter snow and ice had not been kind to the old mansion, when Oldspires quivered from end to end beneath them under the soundless shock of yet another spell.

This one was particularly powerful, if the strength of the rolling shuddering underfoot was anything to go by, but there was no way of telling who’d cast it, or if it had accomplished its usual or intended effect.

No sooner had they recovered their footing than the air around them glowed a brief and odd purplish blue and all three of them felt a strong tingling.

Everyone’s hair stood on end, in rigid forests of bristles, and Myrmeen looked at El and asked calmly, “Any guesses?”

“A powerful working, by a caster unknown. It set off a large discharge or leak—the glow we saw—from one of the closed gates, which must be up here, very close to us.”

“Not the one you felt being opened?”

El shook his head. “Nay, that would have sent us flying, in what would have been not far different than a short-lived gale.”

He held up a hand for quiet, edged forward to peer around a door, then turned to add, “No talking, now.”

And led the way down a steep, narrow staircase that wasn’t quite a spiral stair, but came close—short, steep flight after short steep flight, with landings on the house side.

Myrmeen frowned and spread her hands in a silent “Where are we?” query.

El reached a closed door on the next landing, opened it in stealthy silence, then relaxed and waved at them to follow him.

Out into … a huge stairwell, in which a grand staircase ascended, flanked with statues, past dark old paintings larger than the walls of many houses, and tapestries of dusty, aged splendor.

Myrmeen frowned, cleaver at the ready. “Why build
two
stairs, cheek by jowl?”

“Old noble family,” El muttered. “Flourished back before King Duar’s time, when servants were not to be seen moving from floor to floor
—certainly
not by way of the same steps used by the highborn. So the Halaunts, finding they needed servants to ply them with viands and drink—mostly drink—in the Summer Room, but not wanting their noble guests to encounter scurrying servants on their ways to and from the look-out-over-the-lands cupola that used to grace the upper floor above the Summer Room, built the tiny winding stair we’ve just come down. Just for the servants, and in its own half tower built onto the walls.”

Myrmeen rolled her eyes. “Nobles,” she sighed. “I’ll never understand them.”

“Lass, lass, they’re just folk like all others—save that they’ve had wealth and power for long enough to indulge their innate eccentricites. And to grow bored, and dabble in various weirdnesses—or treasons—to alleviate that boredom. And gotten away with it all for long enough to fool themselves that ’tis their right to live thus. So they’ll do anything to protect their ‘rights’ and stay atop the social heap.”

Mirt chuckled. “Best summation of nobility I’ve heard in a long while.”

El put a warning finger to his lips. “To get from this side of Oldspires over to Malchor’s room, our best way is through the cellars—so we go
down
yon grand stair,” he almost whispered, “as quietly as we can.” He gave Myrmeen a smile, and added, “And before ye ask, Mreen, we couldn’t just proceed on down there by the servants’ stair, because the wall’s collapsed down there—frost heave from a too-close underground spring, by the looks of it—and blocked the door at the bottom.”

She nodded. “Wouldn’t that make a good place to hide the antidotes, so we don’t have to carry them everywhere?”

“Indeed
—if
ye can make it certain that we don’t ever need them, in the space of a breath or so, except when we’re down at the damp and rubble-filled bottom of that stair rather than clear across Oldspires, on another floor.”

“Ah,” Myrmeen replied, and waved at him to lead on.

Like three silent shadows they stepped out into the soaring and splendid stairwell and descended into … darkness.

“We forgot the lantern,” Myrmeen muttered.

Elminster whirled around and put his finger to her lips.

“Foes ahead,” he whispered in her ear, feeling Mirt thrust his head close to hear. “At the bottom of these steps—slide thy heels to feel their edges of each one, so ye don’t fall—set down the sacks
to one side
, out of the path of anyone using the stair, and keep weapons ready. See that glow?”

“No,” Myrmeen whispered back.

“Very faint, very deep blue,” he breathed. “Wait, and thine eyes will …”

“Yes. I see it now.”

“That blue means gate—open, active, and almost certainly guarded. We want to take down the guards swiftly but quietly, before they can raise any sort of alarm.”

“You’ve done this before,” Mirt grinned.

“A time or two,” El replied. “A time or two.”

Weapons ready—Elminster commandeered the skewer, which still had an intact braerwing and a somewhat nibbled one impaled on it, well up it near his hand—they warily approached the distant blue glow, which awaited several cellars away from where they’d set down the sacks.

Slow and silent, slow and silent …

The Sage of Shadowdale came to a stop on one side of the last archway before the room that contained the floating upright oval of cold blue fire—flames that flowed endlessly while burning nothing. The oval was wider back and forth than top to bottom, and within it was utter darkness.

And standing in front of it, strolling and chatting and looking bored, were seven plate-armored warriors identically equipped to those they’d fled from earlier.

Myrmeen put her lips right into Elminster’s ear and breathed, “Can you make the glow go dark, so we can rush them?”

Nay
, he thought into her mind.
Not as I am now—and the Weave is, here
.

Suddenly there was a new mind speaking into theirs. It was old and cold and surprised—but gleeful. And there were other old, cold minds linked with it.

Elminster Aumar?

Something like a striking snake, but of purple-black fire and impossibly long, burst out of the darkness of the gate in a great arc that raced across the cellar and through the archway, curving in the air as it came, to try to curl around the edge of the arch, reaching for the Sage of Shadowdale.

As Myrmeen, already wrapped around El, flung herself sideways and hauled him along with her.

They struck cold and grimy cellar floor together and rolled, his skewer skittering along before their noses amid the strong reek of disturbed mildew—as they were pursued by a horrid stink of scorched stone.

When they came to a stop, they turned in each other’s arms to look back.

The purple-black flames had spattered the bare bedrock behind them and melted into it with a hungry, seething snarl.

It was dissolving the solid stone—down a foot deep already, and melting deeper with frightening speed.

CHAPTER 17

Manshoon’s Magnificent Moment

H
OLY
M
OTHER
M
YSTRA!
” M
IRT CURSED, GAPING DOWN AT THE MELTING
stone. Then he added in a mutter, “Well, at least it missed. This time.”

The astonished warriors flung uncertain and fearful glances over their shoulders, cursing fervently—and then looked at where the flames had headed. Then they came running for the archway in a general rush, swords raised and looking for foes.

And Mirt, standing in darkness and taking a step back and to one side to be in even deeper gloom, smiled like a wolf, hefted his cleaver, and waited for them.

The foremost warrior was still six running strides or so away when the purple-black flames arced out of the gate again—and seared right through the running men.

By the time a new section of stone floor was melting away into its own pit, four sets of legs were stumbling and falling, the bodies they’d been attached to a moment earlier gone into empty air.

“Someone doesn’t like you, Old Mage,” Myrmeen panted, as they broke apart and hastily found their feet, keeping well back.

“So it certainly seems,” Elminster replied grimly, hefting the skewer. The partly eaten braerwing fell off it with a plop. Minds that cold … he’d felt such minds before, but were these—

The three remaining warriors, eyes wild with terror, pelted through the archway and veered toward his voice. Ignored on his side of the arch, Mirt snarled in irritation, took a step after them—and then drew hastily back.

The third gout of magical flames kissed the bare bedrock floor of the cellar beyond the first two melted—and still slowly spreading—pits, and devoured only stone.

As Mirt hurled himself across the stretch of cellar visible through the archway from the glowing gate, and caught up to the hindmost warrior.

Who’d glimpsed him when turning to look at the latest flaming spume, and now turned to hack at him with a snarl to match his own.

Mirt ducked backward so that the slash would miss—and overbalanced, falling hard onto his behind. And drove his right boot up between the man’s legs hard enough to send the warrior hurtling over his head, face-first into the first and largest pit.

The man’s scream became a sob and then a wet bubbling, all in less time than it took Mirt to wheeze once and roll sideways.

So the second warrior, turning to rush at him and hack, found the fat old man just out of reach.

By then Myrmeen had driven her cleaver up under the first warrior’s chin, twisted it free in a spray of blood, and was one swift leap from that second gate guard.

She sprang, landed hard with both boots on the back of the man’s hindmost foot, and sent him crashing face-first into the floor. He was dazed, broken nose gushing blood, when she rolled him over and laid open his throat.

In the sudden stillness, she and Mirt stared at each other, panting, and then at Elminster. There was a clear question in Myrmeen’s eyes.

El could see she wanted something from him. He strode to her, put a hand on her arm, and asked in her mind, Aye, lass?

What now?
She asked.
Can you close the gate?

Nay. Not as things stand now
.

And if the floor there keeps melting? Will all of Oldspires eventually collapse into it, and melt away?

Nay. I’ve seen such spells before, long ago. They will melt a little more, then be spent
.

Myrmeen stared into Elminster’s eyes, unsmiling. So, the most patient of women asked the Old Mage:
What now?

Mirt was lurching up to them, rubbing his backside and wincing, aware from their faces and Myrmeen’s intent, forward-thrusting chin that they were conversing. Myrmeen reached out her free hand to him, he clasped it—and could hear their thoughts.

Whoa! This could be the death of many a marriage!
He thought, blinking in amazement.

Not
now,
Mirt
, Myrmeen ordered crisply.
I want to stay alive a little longer!

And then Elminster’s memory—old, vast, deep, dark, and failing though it was—delivered up what he’d been trying to recall.

The minds on the other side of the gate were liches, of course. He’d known that much right away. Yet it had been only fleetingly that he’d mindtouched this particular sort of lich, and most of those meetings had been long, long ago.

These were thralls of Larloch. A handful of the many, many liches who served the Shadow King.

Or perhaps
former
thralls, now, but somehow he doubted Larloch had been destroyed. Burned and lessened, aye, perhaps nigh as badly as Lord Halaunt, and hurled out of Toril into an unknown otherwhere …