by Ed Greenwood
Unless those three wizards, whose writings had been proven true in all other respects, had told the exact same lie, Ganrahast and Vainrence also knew the rumors of “blueflame ghosts that could be commanded as deadly slaves” were true.
With two men trying to pace back and forth in it, the room near the top of the north turret suddenly seemed small and crowded.
Elminster was suddenly back in darkness, the only radiance a faint glow from the ghostly face bending over him. The dagger had melted away entirely, its magic spent; his mouth held only the taste of old iron, a tang like long-shed blood.
He was cold, damnably cold …
The ghost of Alusair drew back from him. “Still alive, El?”
“Still alive,” he mumbled through chattering teeth. “At least they’re not plotting against the king, those two.” Shaking his numbed arms to try to get some feeling back into them, he rolled over. “What of our greedy young robber noble and his merry band?”
“I’m going after them,” Alusair announced, her eyes two dark holes in what was little more than a woman-shaped wisp of gray, a glow so faint it was barely there at all. “I won’t slay them—yet. I, too, want to know what they’re up to, here in my home. Yet there is something I must know, Old Mage.”
She drifted closer to Elminster, her eyes darker still.
“Are you on Cormyr’s side in this? Or still playing your larger games across the Realms, using us all like pawns on a chessboard?”
Elminster regarded her gravely. “I have always been on Cormyr’s side, Princess. Yet, aye, I’ve always played those larger games, as ye put it, too. I must. There is no one else who can save the Realms.”
“No one else you trust, you mean.”
Elminster stared at her, and there was a tired look in his eyes. Silence stretched.
“Yes,” he whispered at last. “Ye’ve said it true. There’s no one else I can trust to save the Realms. That’s my doom, lass.”
As if in comment on his words, there came a faint metallic crash from behind them. It sounded as if an armored man had been hurled violently to the stone floor, two or three rooms back along the way they’d come.
Without a word Alusair whirled around and sped away, heading for the sound like a streaking arrow.
“There was a time,” Elminster muttered a little testily, “when the Weave let me send eyes wherever I desired …”
Aye, there had been a time.
Long gone, so he stood mute, one more pillar in dim silence, and waited.
Only to blink in genuine surprise at who appeared around the corner, walking beside the flickering shadow of Alusair like an old friend, to reach out long and shapely arms to him and offer her mouth for a kiss.
Elminster obliged, feeling as elated as he was surprised.
“I trust,” he said, when his lips were free to speak again, “ye’ll find time and will enough to tell me thy reasons for returning so swiftly, hey? I thought we’d agreed on a strategy.”
“We had,” Storm agreed, “but matters changed.” Her smile died swiftly, and she held out something small and round. “Behold one of the latest toys of the wizards of war.”
Elminster peered at it. “An orb. Tell.”
“Upon command, it captures speech and can later be made to emit what it has, ah, recorded as often as desired, for the hearing of others. The mages use it when questioning those they’re suspicious of.”
Elminster arched an eyebrow in the manner that meant it was a substitute for a mirthless smile. “Some war wizard is now missing this, I presume?”
“He will be when he wakes up,” Storm replied, “but that may be a day or so from now. I’m afraid I hit him rather hard.”
The look he went on giving her was both a silent question and the message that he wasn’t in the mood for waiting much longer for answers, so she added, “I dislike being surprised by someone I am unaware of, who has obviously been following me for some time. I dislike even more men who wait until I’m sitting relieving myself to attack me.”
Alusair’s glow grew a little brighter. “I fear our current Crown magelings share the poor manners of much of their generation,” she commented wryly.
“I doubt not thy justification for hitting a mage, nor decry thy wisdom in latching onto magic whenever possible,” Elminster said. “I’m merely curious as to why ye’re now back here, rather than a lot closer to Shadowdale.”
“I overheard something you should hear, too,” Storm replied, folding herself gracefully down onto the floor and murmuring something over the orb as she touched it. “The awakening word’s graven on its underside,” she announced. “You’ll hear two wizards of war who were unaware of my presence.”
The orb shook itself a little, and voices arose from it.
“Oho! Scared of the infamous Lady Dark Armor, are we?” A jovial, teasing man’s voice.
“No, not her. If she still exists—if she ever did—I’ve not seen her.” A younger, grimmer male voice.
“The Princess Alusair, then? Worth being scared of, that one, let me tell you!”
“No, it’s the one called Elminster.”
“Ah, the infamous Elminster! He’s been living in the haunted wing for some time, you know, hiding among its many ghosts—and posing with some old hag or other as the brother and sister Rhauligan.”
“Yes, yes. That’s not what worries me. It’s this trap they’re talking about, that they’ve set up for him when next he shows his face in the palace. If we blunder into any part of it, it’ll kill us, they’re saying!”
“So don’t go atrysting in the haunted wing, dolt! Huh. Elminster. Some ‘Great Old Mage,’ that one! A doddering old fool, sharp-tongued and scared of using magic, by the Dragon! At least watching him has been a bit of a diversion. Just what he’s seeking, I haven’t an earthly idea, but if the old fool is witless enough to think he can find royal treasure and get out of the palace with it undetected, he is an utter dunderhead.”
“They … the word is he just killed a lot of us, and they’re right out of patience with him. If he steps into the trap, it’ll kill him—and it might hurl a good bit of the palace into the sky, just to make sure!”
The orb quivered again and fell silent.
Storm looked up at Elminster. “El, Alassra will be no more mad tomorrow than she is right now,” she whispered. “But if you fall, neither she nor I have any hope, nor any reason to carry on. You need this, right now, more than she does—and the Realms needs you more than it does her. It can muster many Red Wizard slayers, but only a handful of men who can and have saved it time and again. And of those men, you are the only one I trust.”
She took the orb and held it up to him. “Yours, El.”
He took it with a wry grin. “More magic to guard my mind while I take a turn at hurling a good bit of this palace into the sky?”
“Hey, now,” the ghostly princess put in sharply. “This is my home you’re speaking of. A little less talk of hurling skyward, if you don’t mind.”
CHAPTER
NINE
IN THE NAME OF THE DRAGON
This is it,” Marlin announced triumphantly, gazing at the life-sized bronze staring dragon skull adorning the dark double doors before him. “The Dragonskull Chamber.”
Around him, his hireswords stirred restlessly, swords up and faces tense. Killing six Purple Dragon guards to reach this spot hadn’t bothered them in the slightest, but they were suddenly fearful.
Their employer surprised them then by turning away, pointing along the passage, and saying, “Now we go this way. To another room, not this one at all.”
Their gasps of relief were almost audible. Marlin hid a widening smile from them as he waved some of the men past him to take the lead as they turned the first corner.
Out of long habit, not just in accordance with the firm orders he’d given them, a few of the rearguard sellswords looked back behind them as they followed Stormserpent and their fellow hireswords.
They were men whose l
ives depended on seeing anyone who might be behind them, but dust swirled thickly where they’d slashed their way through great hanging draperies that had been drawn across the passage, to be sure no lurking guardians, undead or otherwise, awaited them. So none of them saw who was staring down at them from the deep gloom of a distant high balcony—the faintly glowing ghost of a princess, flanked by a dark, slender man and woman.
All three were watching Stormserpent’s band with eyes that burned like smoldering coals.
“And so the jaws begin to close. Slowly and patiently. Very patiently. There’ll be no escape for you this time, old foe.”
The darkly handsome man who drawled those words to no one but himself strolled across the chamber to watch another glowing, moving scene hanging silently in midair, where he’d cast it.
After observing it for some time he nodded unsmilingly, turned away, and went to a waiting decanter and tallglasses.
“This time, Elminster of Shadowdale,” he told the decanter politely, “I’ll wear you down. Spell by spell, ally by ally … one by one they’ll be stripped away. Worn out, exhausted.”
Manshoon poured himself a glass, held it up to catch the glow of one of his scryings, studied the hue of its contents appreciatively, and told it, “Yes, the days of your seeing all and always being two strides ahead of me are gone. Gone with the integrity of the Weave and the love of your oh-so-tolerant goddess. Gone with the lost mantle of being a Chosen. Now, Elminster, you’re no better than the rest of us.”
He glanced idly at another nearby glowing scene, one full of writhing tentacles and a silently shrieking victim in their coils, then walked past it. “Not that you’re a toothless lion. Ah, no. I’ve underestimated you in the past and have been humbled for that, but not again. Never again.”
The next scene showed him several wizards of war, heads together over a highly polished table in an ornate palace chamber. Manshoon did not bother to make his magic let him hear what they were so excitedly saying, but he added to the glass, “So there’ll be no grand spell battle between us. No chance for you to taunt me with your cleverness one more time then somehow slip away. We’ll not be seeing each other until you have no spells left worth mentioning.”
He moved on, waving a hand to dissolve a scene he no longer needed. “You’ll defeat this looming trap, I’ve no doubt. Almost certainly the one after that, too. Perhaps the third and fourth that await you. Yet I’ve prepared more, and I’m not going away, Sage of Shadowdale. I’ll cut at you and claw at you and stab at your back, withdrawing whenever you turn to see who wishes you ill, so time and again you face nothing and no one to hurl your spells at or put a name to. And when at last you’ve no sleeves left to hide your tricks, then I’ll strike. And I will strike.”
He stopped in front of another silently moving image. “Marlin draws closer to the prizes we seek. Talane shall shortly do my bidding in a far more subtle ploy, for I know, Old Mage. Yes, this time I know. Your hoped-for apprentice—your naive young descendant—will be corrupted to my will or destroyed, not become one more of your long line of handy rescuers. Expendable, weren’t they? All of them, expendable … just as my magelings were, in the name of the Brotherhood. As these fools who call themselves wizards of war are, in the name of the Dragon. And as the thousands you’ve slain or led astray down the centuries all were, in the name of Mystra. So much for your high and noble motives. You, Old Mage, are no better than I am. You never have been.”
He waved his glass at no one and asked almost jovially, “And now, what are you reduced to? Stealing magic to drag your brain-burned lover back from insanity for a few moments! With the loyal lass who can’t even sing anymore, let alone cast a spell worth a hedge wizard’s striving, fetching and carrying for you. Whither your Harper armies now? Your scores of apprentices? The thousands who cowered to your bidding whenever you sent a glare their way? Why, I fancy my paltry agents outstrip yours. At last.”
The darkly handsome man strolled on. “And I shall enjoy corrupting your little lass into joining their ranks … just as hope rises in you that you can count on her.”
Manshoon sipped, smiled approvingly—much better than Arrhenish and a credit to some long-dead cellarer of this sprawling pile of a royal palace—and murmured, “And where neither she nor Talane nor Marlin will serve, I have others. Nobles and wizards of war … and a certain Lady Dark Armor.”
The vampire who had ruled cities and citadels drank more deeply, smiled again, and added almost gently, “Nor am I less than formidable, myself. The score between us is deep, and I have thought long and hard on how best to settle it. While you, as is your wont, have wasted your time saving the Realms for others. This time, Elminster Aumar, Sage of Shadowdale, you are going down.”
Some of his hirelings were so frightened, he could smell it, but he was paying them well and had made himself as safe as he could be. His ironguard magic should protect him against their blades, and he had other magics he could call on. He bore a potion that could quell poison, his high metal collar and gorget should foil stranglings, and a deadly secret nestled against his chest, ready to strike the moment he loosed it.
More than that, he knew just where he was going and what to do when he got there.
Yes. Unlike the many courtiers who thought the legendary Wyverntongue Chalice was hidden somewhere in or near the Dragonskull Chamber, Marlin Stormserpent knew exactly where it was concealed. Even the notorious Silent Shadow, if he or she came looking for it, wouldn’t know that.
An Obarskyr family treasure, gifted to Queen Filfaeril by a Waterdhavian envoy not long before her death, it had been stolen from its display plinth in the Room of the Red Banner during a long-past palace feast … more as a drunken prank than anything else. For fear of being caught by war wizards using magic to trace the chalice, the thief had hidden it that same night elsewhere in the palace, before departing its gates.
That thief was Nethglas Stormserpent, Marlin’s eldest brother, whom Marlin remembered as a sharp-nosed, mustachioed, unpleasant shark of a man.
Nethglas had intended to boast of the theft all over Suzail to win the general acclaim of elder nobility, but quickly grew too scared of the repercussions to say a word, after war wizards seeking the chalice started mind-reaming other nobles who’d attended the feast—and those reamings ruined their minds and those of their war wizard interrogators too.
Not wanting the Stormserpents to face reprisals, or himself to be slain, imprisoned, fined, or even just banned from the palace, Nethglas publicly kept silent. He’d already boasted of what he’d done to his three brothers, but sought to mend that error by threatening them with murder if they told anyone. Elgrym, next oldest of the four brothers, told his best friend, Lord-to-be Nael Rowanmantle, anyway—and Nethglas promptly slew them both, making it look like an “unfortunate accident.”
Those were the very words he’d used when next speaking privately with his two youngest brothers, Rondras and Marlin. Who took full heed of the warning and kept very quiet for years, until Nethglas died fighting at the side of Crown Prince Emvar Obarskyr, when the prince and all of Cormyr who’d ridden with him were slain in a Sembian ambush south of the Vast Swamp in the Year of the Silent Flute.
As the body of Nethglas was being brought back for burial in the family crypt, Marlin had quietly poisoned his older brother Rondras. Though he and Rondras detested each other, he’d done it more to get his hands on the Flying Blade—a gorgeous sword that also happened to be a family magic traditionally worn by the Stormserpent heir—than to become head of House Stormserpent.
Marlin had longed to hold and wield the gorgeous weapon since he was small and had thanked the gods that Nethglas had not taken the Flying Blade to war but left it safe in the vault deep under Stormserpent Towers. He promptly purloined a key to the vault but visited the sword only rarely, to gloat over it and run a cautious fingertip down its gleaming length.
However, the possibility that it held one of the ghosts of the Nine made him really want to h
ave it. Not locked away but riding his hip and under his hand all his waking hours; power he could hold.
He’d left it at home for this foray, though. No sense risking it’s being seized by war wizards when he could use Thirsty instead—and his long, long dosings of paralyzing poison were done, leaving him immune to the mischance of the same stinger that should put paid to any Purple Dragon or war wizard his pet stirge could reach.
The chalice couldn’t be traced by the spells of war wizards or anyone, thanks to the magic on what it was hidden within—and its own enchantments, too.
Hidden within, aye. On that night, so long ago, Nethglas had hurriedly thrust the chalice up inside the hollow head of a yawning-jawed sculpted stone dragon in the huge sculpture that dominated the Chamber of the Wyrms Ascending, a rearing statue for which that glossy-floored, crossroads chamber had been named.
Marlin had been told the stone dragon was awash with enchantments that made an endless cycle of glowing lights arise and shift hues all over it. Images of dragons seemed to melt out of it and silently spread huge wings, beating them so as to soar up to and through the vaulted ceiling above and—
“Here ’tis, saer!”
The chalice flashed as one of the hireswords turned from the dragon statue, brandishing the cup. “Just where you said—”
“Cast down your swords, and surrender, in the name of the Dragon!”
The echoes of that thunderous bellow rolled off distant walls behind him as Marlin blinked his way back to the moment. His hirelings had found the chalice stlarning near the same farruking moment as a night patrol of Purple Dragons had discovered them!
His men had their orders, even if they hadn’t known what awaited prisoners taken in such circumstances. They were rushing the palace soldiers already, wasting no breath on shouts or war cries.