“We … failed,” sighed another arcanist.
“Failure is the best teacher,” Maraunth Torr informed him merrily. “So how did you fail, exactly?”
“When we reached Oldspires, there was a … fog around it.”
“A storm,” said the farthest arcanist.
“A field of magical chaos,” the nearest one chimed in. “We saw lesser mages try to move through it, and be rendered witless. Drooling.”
“Their minds gone,” groaned the arcanist held next to him.
“A few more powerful wizards were there as well … some we recognized,” said the farthest captive.
“I recognized,” the nearest one corrected sharply. “Manshoon—once of Westgate, and before that, the Zhentarim—and Malchor Harpell, once of the Harpells of Longsaddle; his image is in the Gallery of Seemings Vangerdahast of Cormyr created for his wizards of war, as a wandering adventurer to watch. Even they tried and failed to magically force ways through the field. One could tell they marked the waiting danger to their minds and sought to push back the chaos storm and make themselves safe passage. Push it back they could—a few feet, and for a few instants. So they stayed outside, and sane, but mightily displeased that something could defy their magic. We departed.”
“To seek easier targets?” Maraunth Torr asked mildly.
“We dare not return to the Three empty-handed,” another of the arcanists said grimly.
“So we sought among the mages we could find thereabouts, for word of more talking skulls, and were told of your tower.”
“So you could bring your superiors a talking skull, and if it knew no Lost Spell, well then, the rumors or the old noble selling it must have been mistaken?” their captor asked the helpless quartet arrayed on the iron frame.
“Yes,” one confirmed. “Exactly,” Another echoed eagerly. “That’s it,” chimed in a third.
“Thank you,” Maraunth Torr told them. “You’ve been most helpful—for arcanists. Which means your usefulness is at an end.”
He waved his hand, and the frame erupted in leaping lightnings. Four bodies jerked, convulsed in arching, agonized spasms … and then fell limp and lifeless, amid wifts of drifting smoke and the spreading reek of burned hair.
Their slayer gazed down at the crisped bodies with a thoughtful air.
These had been Netherese—overconfident emptyheads, young and inexperienced even among the deluded and preening Thultanthans. Of course they had failed at a task one step beyond “utterly simple.”
He had none of those faults, and a kindling interest in something that lured so many long-lived mages of power. It was time to try his own luck at Oldspires.
CHAPTER 4
It’s All Up To You
M
IRT INSPECTED THE BOTTOM OF HIS TANKARD, FOUND IT EMPTY
, and stirred himself to call for more.
He was just drawing breath when a fresh tankard descended to the smooth-worn tabletop in front of him, then slid forward to come to a gentle stop under his nose.
He regarded it, and then the gaunt, white-bearded man behind it, and grew a slow smile.
“Heh. It’s been awhile, Old Mage. Well met.”
“Well met again,” Elminster replied dryly, sitting down. “I see ye’ve grown tired of the company of nobles.”
Mirt grunted and reached for the tankard. “Their
chatter
. Drives a man to drink—elsewhere.”
Elminster surveyed the dim and none-too-clean surroundings. The ceiling of this particular dockside tavern taproom was low, and braced with many old, stout, and diagonal beams that had been “improved” by the—mostly rude—carvings of many previous patrons’ belt knives. His eyes wandered over a few of them as he replied, “This is certainly elsewhere, I’ll give ye that.”
“You,” Mirt growled, “want something. Aside from me to have this free tankard of no doubt excellent ale, that is.”
“I am as transparent as always,” El replied serenely.
“Well?”
“How would ye like to be the seneschal and cook for a country lord of Cormyr gone mindless? For a tenday or less, but not more?”
“What’s the pay like?”
“Generous,” El replied, sliding a slender whetstone case of oiled and polished wood across the table. Mirt shielded it within practiced hands as he opened it just enough to see the row of large sapphires inside for a moment; in the next instant, it had vanished up his sleeve.
“Indeed. So how many archmages or eye tyrants or awakened and angry dragons will I be fighting—or roasting for his lordship’s table?”
Elminster shrugged. “The future hides so much from us all.”
Mirt snorted. “Indeed. ’Splain, Old Mage. If I’m walking into a lion’s den, I like to know how many lions are waiting, and how hungry they are.”
“Lord Halaunt is an unwed old nobl—”
“
Him
. Haughty old ironbottom who came to town to sell the Lost Spell to anyone with more coins than brains. Didn’t end well. Someone got him out of that fire, then?”
“Someone did. Not before spells had made him witless, probably forever. He was bundled back to his mansion in the country in some haste. Thy new friend Manshoon—”
Mirt snorted again.
“—and half a dozen other powerful wizards subsequently showed up on his doorstep and tried to get inside, but have been prevented from doing so by a, uh, spellstorm that has thus far kept them out.”
“But you, of course, can get me in. Why me? I’ll be naught but a swift target for mages with blasting spells up their sleeves.”
“Ye, because I need someone to play seneschal and actually cook, for those very mages and for me and some others I’ll be bringing with me, who’ll handle any spellwork any of us manage. Which shouldn’t be much; magic isn’t to be trusted inside the Halaunt mansion.”
“Or anywhere else, for that matter. Which others?”
“Two ye should have heard of: Myrmeen Lhal and the Princess Alusair—or rather, her ghost.”
Mirt took a long pull from the tankard, set it back down with a satisfied sigh, belched, and observed, “This sounds like a right disaster in the making, El. So, why?”
“Mystra wants it.”
“Wants mages to kill each other, and no doubt destroy the mansion and the vicinity while they’re at it? I thought she wanted magic preserved and nurtured and spread out among us all!”
“She does. This gathering of the powerful is an attempt to instill in them some sort of inner personal creed or code, so they’ll instinctively work against the reckless excesses of others who wield magic.”
“And if they somehow, incredibly,
do
decide to work together—and come charging out of the place welded into a tiny army of spell-hurling mages bent on destroying all of Cormyr that they can’t conquer? What then?”
“Outside the spellstorm, once all of the mages are safely inside the mansion, a force of Cormyr’s war wizards will assemble and cast a wall of force around it all. A great ring to keep warriors with knives and grudges against wizards out, and the mages—who can’t successfully hurl disintegrating spells through the spellstorm at this ring—in. Mystra will make sure the ring works, even if someone miscasts, or the coordination of the Crown mages involved is less than perfect.”
“Penning—
imprisoning
—a bunch of egotistical, ruthless, used to getting their own way in
everything
wizards together, in hopes that rather than tear each other’s eyeballs out, they’ll fall into firm friendships and everlasting trust.”
“Aye,” El said dryly, “that’s more or less it. ’Tis my private belief that Mystra is not a foolish misjudger of mortals so much as she’s heartily sick of the way some powerful and long-lived mages have been behaving, and wants them to cooperate—or, yes, kill each other. Their choice.”
Mirt shook his head. “The goddess of magic giving foolheaded wizards a
choice
?”
“ ’Tis what she’s always done,” El said softly. “The way forward for mortals to flourish is to choose freely, for good or ill, not be slaves to any deity.”
“Yes, yes, I’ve heard priests say as much many times down the years,” Mirt sighed, then squinted hard at Elminster and growled, “She
really
thinks they’ll behave reasonably, and even reach some accord, or even trust?”
“She really
hopes
,” El replied.
Mirt rolled his eyes. “Madness.” And then he grinned and leaned forward across the table and declared, “But I’m in. Despite the fool-headed danger.” He studied Elminster’s face and added, “As you knew I would be. That stone face of yours is anything but.”
“Thy boredom,” Elminster replied gently, “is apparent to all. Yet it’s good to find thee willing.”
Mirt shrugged, drank deeply again, and set down the tankard with the thunk of mostly emptied metal. “I want to be
alive
again, part of ‘important doings’ once more. But I’ll need a little more in the way of payment.”
El arched an eyebrow. “No knighthoods, now. Or country mansions. Unless Halaunt’s somewhat decayed manor survives our little get-together; if so, I’d not be surprised if I could convince the Crown of Cormyr to gift it to ye.”
Mirt waved a dismissive hand. “Nay, nay, nothing like that. Just some truths from you, to satisfy my curiosity. How Alusair came to be a ghost, how Vangerdahast went from being a dragon to a spider-thing and then a man again, and how Myrmeen Lhal went from being a dragon, back to human form—and not a wrinkled old totterer, either.”
Elminster nodded. “That I can do, in brief. The deeper details—the decisions each made, to result in their transformations—are for them to divulge, not me.”
“Fair enough. Say on.”
“So … Alusair died, as all mortals must. Died while in disagreement with her nephew the king—the fifth Azoun. Not over his policies, but over his mishandling of their implementation, which she saw as having deepened divisions between the realm and its nobles and hastened the death of her mother, Filfaeril. There were other, deeper reasons for their quarrel, but those remain matters of state.”
Mirt nodded acceptance, but waved at El to continue.
He obliged. “So Alusair died, ye might say, in the saddle, still riding the border wilderlands of the realm she loved, defending it against beasts and brigands. I happen to know more than a dozen invasions of Cormyr planned by greedy and wealthy Sembian citizens were canceled because of how well-known her tireless vigilance became. Alusair died unreconciled, feeling her duty to defend was unfinished and passed on to no competent replacement, so she lingers yet.”
“As a ghost.”
“As a ghost, defending Cormyr in ways not even the current Royal Magician and Obarskyrs fully know. Already accomplished at taking down Zhentarim, Thayan, and Sembian spies, she got very good at felling Thultanthan spies and agents undetected, so they simply vanished without
trace—dozens of them, over the years.
That
worried Telamont Tanthul so much, it bought Cormyr decades more of peace.”
Mirt nodded. “And Vangerdahast the Mighty?”
El smiled. “A term of mockery in Waterdeep in thy day, as I recall. The man ye so labeled was one apprentice of mine who did very well for himself. When he finally tired of being Mage Royal—long after the realm had tired of him—he willingly bound himself in stasis as a dragon, with the song dragon Ammaratha Cyndusk at his side, also out of love for Cormyr. He awaited his awakening to defend the kingdom in a future time of need. Later, Myrmeen Lhal joined them, one more wyrm in stasis.”
“Until something either went wrong, or they were awakened because the realm was in need.”
“Indeed, though its defenders knew that not. Szass Tam was greatly weakened after his failed attempt to become a god, during what’s come to be known as the Spellplague. He has always hungered for magic—the stored magic of items, if he can get such power in no other way—and of course, he forever finds himself in need of more. He knew of certain vaults beneath yonder Royal Palace, and tried to break into them from afar, but succeeded only in shattering the outermost ward. That was enough to rouse Vangey and his fellow guardian dragons.
“Wisely, Szass Tam abandoned his attempt right then, but—”
Mirt grinned. “There’s always a ‘but’ in this world, when you’re talking wizards!”
“Indeed. ‘But’ the arcanists of Thultanthar had their spies here in Suzail, for Cormyr was the largest and best stable source of food near the preferred location for their city, and one of them reported the destruction of the ward to his superior, who was competent enough to pass it on to the ruler of the Thultanthans, a man as overconfident as his self-proclaimed title suggests, and—”
“Oh, the ‘Most High’?”
“Aye, Telamont Tanthul. Another who had endless hunger for enchanted items. He presumed that there would be only one more ward, and that Cormyr had no defenders who could hold the vault against a strike force led by half a dozen arcanists. So weak did he think the defense would be that he sent along eight untried novices to lead the assault, as a test of their abilities.”
“And the guardian dragons destroyed them.”
“Handily. So aghast was the senior arcanist assigned to scry on them from afar that he abandoned his duty in the opening moments of the fray to go and convince one of the Princes of Shade—without telling the Most High, mind ye—that there was a serious threat to Thultanthar under the Royal Palace of Cormyr. He succeeded; that prince came racing back with a much stronger force.”
“And broke into the vault?”
“And failed, fleeing battered but wiser, leaving most of this second wave of arcanists dead. However, the song dragon Ammaratha also perished in the fray, Myrmeen Lhal was forced back into human form, and Vangey only survived through Laspeera’s desperate intervention; she forcibly merged him with a spiderlike guardian monster he’d imprisoned in stasis down in the cellars centuries earlier. Hence the way he looked until recently, a human head mated to a spidery body. The goddess Mystra herself restored him to hale and whole human form.”
“Laspeera’s work on him; that’s a tale I’d like to hear in more detail, someday,” Mirt murmured.
“So would I,” Elminster replied dryly. “I suspect Myrmeen has told me less than half of what went on—and Vangerdahast, of course, even less.”