Elminster Must Die: The Sage of Shadowdale

by Ed Greenwood

  “And ran like a scuttling rabbit, no doubt, and so lived to tell us all the tale,” Rendarth snapped right back. “So if you’re so bold and battle-hardened as all that, mighty Rorskryn, suppose you advance down the passage and find us Elminster of Shadowdale—or what’s left of him. We’ll need his head to bring back to Ganrahast and Vainrence, mind. Or, failing that, some bit of him large enough to identify him with certainty.”

  “I did in fact listen to the orders we were given, too,” Rorskryn Mreldrake replied coldly. “You go, boldest of mages.”

  “As I recall,” Wizard of War Andram Rendarth said in his harsh voice, “I was placed in command of this little trio, and I am giving you, Mreldrake, a direct order. Get down that passage and start hunting. And mind you bring back lumps of Elminster, and not the other one.”

  “It was a woman,” the third wizard added helpfully as Mreldrake conjured light with an angry snarl. “So if you see large breasts, you’re not looking at—”

  Elminster had heard more than enough.

  Storm—still breathing, thank all gods—was lying atop him, silent and heavy and bleeding copiously all over him, but he could readily reach and aim the wand he’d taken from Wizard of War Lorton Ironstone, after Alusair had obligingly won that earlier battle for him.

  It was a wand that dealt short-term paralysis, the weapon Ironstone should have used back then, right away and without warning, instead of issuing his grand challenge. Yet lost chances were part of the fast-fading past, and it should ably serve a certain Sage of Shadowdale now.

  He leveled the wand carefully and murmured the word that brought it to life. Ganrahast and Vainrence weren’t training these dolts well; only utter fools stand side-by-side on a battlefield, when both are mages and face a foe they know wields magic.

  There was a flash, and all three wizards toppled like trees. Mreldrake, Elminster saw sourly, had been standing behind the other two, and his fall was gentler, a hand going out to shield his face. Not paralyzed, to be sure.

  The other two were, and Elminster thrust the wand back into his belt to snatch out the enchanted dagger. Mreldrake or no Mreldrake, Storm must be healed before all else.

  As the dagger expired in a flare of light under his murmurings and crumbled to dust in his hand, he heard the faint scuffling he’d expected from where the war wizards lay.

  “Before ye quite crawl off, Rorskryn Mreldrake,” he said sharply, “suppose ye avoid my slaying ye very painfully, here and now, with a spell that will literally turn thine innards out of thy body, by answering a few questions. Truthfully, if ye know how to tell truth.”

  Mreldrake drew in his breath so sharply that it was almost a faint shriek.

  “The wards,” Elminster continued. “Ye called on the ancient wards of the palace, all around us, to strike at me just now, didn’t ye?”

  He waited, knowing the answer already. He’d cast some spells himself as part of those wards, a long time before, and knew very well the tingling of wards he’d worked on, all around him, being altered.

  Rather than words from Mreldrake, he heard the faint scufflings of a frightened war wizard trying to crawl away without making a sound. And failing.

  “Answer me,” he added calmly, “or die.”

  A long moment passed. Elminster drew the wand from his belt again and held it warningly.

  That brought results. “Y-yes,” the war wizard blurted. “But it was Rendarth’s idea!”

  “I can scarce believe he acted on such a notion without the Royal Magician’s approval,” El replied as disapprovingly as any scandalized tutor. “Let us have truth, Wizard of War Mreldrake. In the name of the king. I do still hold a court rank in this kingdom that far outstrips thine.”

  “I—I—Ganrahast said we could use the wards to hide and armor us against you,” Mreldrake admitted almost miserably. By the distant sound of his voice, he was slowly crawling away down the passage.

  “And clever Rendarth took it upon himself to use it to augment the bolt ye three hurled at us,” Elminster said heavily. “Did ye not know doing so would ruin and consume the wards immediately around us here? Leaving a gap in them, and weakening the entire web loyal wizards before ye spent centuries weaving?”

  “I … you must be stopped. At all costs.”

  Elminster exploded. “Idiots! Ye three strip away centuries of defenses—warding spells ye don’t even know how to replace—just to smite me! What price Cormyr’s future, if ye toss it aside so readily to win one day’s victory? What of the morrow, hey? Despoilers! Fools! Irresponsible children!”

  The reply that came out of Rorskryn Mreldrake then was a sort of shriek—the sort of strangled eep a man-sized mouse might blurt in unthinking terror. It was followed by wild scrabblings as he clawed his way to his feet and fled headlong down the passage.

  Shaking his head in exasperation, Elminster let him go. The lesson he’d take back to Ganrahast was one that had best be learned swiftly and well.

  Younglings, these days. Win the day, and bother not with looking beyond the end of one’s nose …

  It was a wonder there were any realms left in the world, at all.

  Wizard of War Rorskryn Mreldrake was almost sobbing from lack of breath as he panted his way around another corner, his frantic sprint falling into an awkward stumble.

  He never even felt the spell that fell on him like a net, claiming his mind in mid-panic.

  Before he knew it, a steel-hard grip was closing firmly on his mind.

  “As it happens, wormling,” a gentle whisper rolled through his head, seeming to bring with it a floating pair of dark eyes as sharp and hard as the points of two daggers, “the Sage of Shadowdale is not the only one who has taken to hiding in this large and rather well-appointed royal palace. I, too, want all thoughts of altering its wards to be crushed and quelled, promptly and completely. I am Manshoon and am even more terrible than the legends about me suggest.”

  The grip became a tightening cage.

  “Rorskryn Mreldrake, you are mine now.”

  CHAPTER

  TWELVE

  DARKER AND DARKER

  The darkly handsome man made his latest acquisition abruptly turn and slam himself face-first against the wall.

  Wizard of War Rorskryn Mreldrake groaned dazedly, staggered back from the wall, and reeled a little as he resumed his swift, gasping trot along the passage.

  Manshoon arched a critical eyebrow. His control over this wormling was complete, but weak tools do poor work. This coward Mreldrake was a wizard of war, yes, and a pair of somewhat useful hands, too, but no great prize. Certainly not up to the task he needed done.

  Mreldrake, Rendarth, and Nalander must all vanish or be silenced, soon, to send the right message to the Royal Magician and his trusted second that doing anything at all to the palace wards was a very bad idea. Then it would be time to put Ganrahast and Vainrence to sleep before they got any other clever ideas. Moreover, removing them without causing their deaths would leave the wizards of war in headless confusion for some time—time he intended to stretch for as long as possible—ere a new chain of command was settled and accepted.

  First, however, the more pressing task.

  The energetic young Stormserpent was about to fall afoul of the usual treachery, and must be rescued from it.

  It wouldn’t do to have the items he bore that were linked to the Nine fall into the wrong hands and plunge all Suzail into a tiresome battle as the war wizards and various ambitious nobles and mages—including both shadow-commanded and independent Sembians, to say nothing of all the wolves-for-hire in Westgate—got wind of something worth seizing and tried to take it for themselves.

  No, the overbold young fool of a noble needed rescuing. A swift and forceful saving that would require someone far more competent than Mreldrake. Someone who knew the palace well and served Cormyr—or at least her vision of it—with fierce loyalty. Someone undead, whom he commanded.

  The death knight who was called “Lady Dark Armor” in t
he dark tales whispered in back palace rooms. Targrael, whose twisted mind was already his.

  Smiling, Manshoon murmured a spell and bent his will down into chill, dusty darkness.

  Down, down into a certain old, seldom-visited tomb deep in the palace.

  Down to where someone smiled in her endless unbreathing, unthinking oblivion, and stirred …

  Targrael smiled in the darkness.

  Awake again, after too long asleep. She was aware of another mind, folded around her own and watching her. Strong and dark and terrible, a mind that had mastered her before …

  Abruptly her attention was forced away from that lurking presence to the point of her own nose. To the slab of smooth, unbroken stone just beyond it.

  “I am the last lady highknight, and the best,” she whispered fiercely to the lid of the closed coffin above her.

  There had been a time when, yes, she’d been as insane as your average gibbering wizard, but that was past; Targrael knew quite well she was beyond death, and what she’d become.

  And she’d found it quite suited her coldly ruthless self.

  Death was a curious thing. Neither precious Caladnei nor shiningly heroic Alusair had perished in the ways everyone thought they had—not that she’d found any trace of Caladnei, yet, around the palace. Alusair was a different matter …

  Targrael found herself quivering with rage at the mere memory and forced herself once more down into cold calm.

  Patience. Stately patience.

  I am, after all, Cormyr. Its sole true guardian; the Forest Kingdom and everyone in it depends on me, though they know it not.

  Wherefore I tirelessly—her lips curled in scornful amusement at that, for she was either lost in oblivion or awake and unsleeping—lurk in and around Suzail, slaying all who displease me. I decide who shall flourish and rule or fall in the Forest Kingdom. As the years pass and the vigilance of the realm fades and its foes grow darker and darker, I play no small part in hurling back Sembian and Shadovar interests seeking to covertly conquer the realm by their usual means: magically influencing, bribing, or blackmailing various nobles. They’d have succeeded long before, but for me—and that gives me the right, as Cormyr’s most effective protector, to decide just what Cormyr should be and will become.

  Three failures, only. Three who’ve resisted me. The intruders from Shadowdale, the wizard Elminster and the wench Storm … Bah. It is to sneer.

  Her one attempt to destroy them should have been ease itself but had not gone well. Alusair had suddenly been there, all fierce menace, barring her way with the announcement that the two were under her protection and Targrael would harm them at her own peril.

  She’d rightfully sneered at that, of course, but Alusair had taken her by the throat and had done something that had seared her very undeath.

  Targrael’s throat pained her still, months later. Her voice had become a hoarse, hissing whisper, and she burst anew into ghostly flames about her throat whenever upset.

  So she took bitter care indeed when in the palace, avoiding the ghost of the princess and those two thieves from Shadowdale as much as possible, and doing more watching than slaying.

  Cold flames were licking about her throat now, though, as excitement rose icy and fierce within her.

  Cormyr must be defended.

  Targrael thrust up the lid of the stone coffin she’d been lying in, stretched stiff arms, and drew her sword.

  The room around her was dark, empty, and unguarded—nigh forgotten, even at times when the royal court offices all around were bustling. Dusty and little regarded, like too many reminders of the kingdom’s past.

  She climbed out of the raised coffin and put its lid back into place.

  There. The Tomb of the Loyal Dragon looked as good as new.

  She’d long ago tossed out the crumbling bones of the long-dead soldier interred there, and had made it her favorite hiding place. The idiot weaklings who called themselves Purple Dragons and senior courtiers and wizards of war these days hadn’t noticed, of course.

  Targrael felt her lip curling. The darkness in her head was giving her orders without speaking, sending her marching off through the darkened passages of the royal court’s upper floors. Stalking slowly at first, blade held close to her chest as she stumbled into walls and closed doors.

  She was no clumsy, lurching zombie, but she was seeing much more than dark, empty passages. In her mind were unfolding scenes of a band of hireswords, plundering the royal palace!

  A band she was to aid and guard, or at least the man who led it: the young noble Marlin Stormserpent.

  He had seized two precious things, and she was to see he kept them and his life. So he could wreak great change upon Cormyr.

  She would be part of it. She would have a hand in the destiny of Cormyr.

  At last.

  She’d not miss her chance again …

  “The way ahead is barred, saer,” one of his two surviving hirelings muttered warningly, shifting the gore-dripping sack that rode on his shoulder.

  “I am aware of that,” Marlin replied firmly. “Matters have been arranged.”

  It had been a long, boring trudge through cold darkness toward a faint glimmer of light.

  They were almost at that light, a lantern hanging from an overhead hook in the Old Dwarf’s deepest winecellar. On the other side of the old and massive steel gate that walled off the end of the passage, where the lantern was, stood a row of massive oak casks, each in its own cradle.

  His trusted, long-serving “dirty work” accomplice, Verrin, was waiting under that lantern, smirking at him. Just where Verrin was supposed to be.

  Marlin stiffened. Not enough for anyone to see, but enough that Thirsty stirred restlessly inside his jerkin. Something was very wrong.

  For one thing, the spell-warded steel gate was still down and locked in place. The Spellplague had twisted its wards like so many others, and wisps of wild magic were eddying around its wide-spaced bars as they had done for years, casting eerie glows on everyone’s face.

  For another thing, Verrin wasn’t alone.

  That “everyone” included a tall man who was standing with Verrin: Marlazander, the head bodyguard of Marlin’s longtime rival, Rothglar Illance.

  As Marlin came to an expressionless halt, the chalice in one hand and his drawn sword in the other, his two hirelings with their sacks of severed heads flanking him, Marlazander put one large hand on Verrin’s shoulder, sneered at Marlin, and said gloatingly, “The problem with trusting in hirelings is keeping them bought. Or rather, your problem. Once more it seems Rothglar Illance is more than a little less miserly than Marlin Stormserpent.”

  Marlin sighed. “If no more noble.”

  He sent Thirsty flying forth again, making the little trill that told his pet to fell all strangers. It swooped through the bars while Verrin and Marlazander were still staring.

  The bodyguard hurriedly stepped back, shoving Verrin away to give himself room, and drew steel.

  His swing, despite being aided with his startled curse, missed the stirge entirely. Yet Thirsty wasn’t heading for him. It zigged, zagged—and struck, deftly lancing Verrin’s throat.

  The man started to topple, clutching at his throat in a vain and stiffening-fingered attempt to stop his lifeblood jetting everywhere. Thirsty was already whirling away, darting between two casks where Marlazander couldn’t hope to reach or follow.

  The bodyguard was still cursing and turning, trying to see where the stirge would swoop, when a tall, slender figure stepped out from between another two casks to confront him.

  It was female—or had been, when it was alive. The remains of a woman clad in black leather war-harness, bareheaded, her face white with death in some places and fetchingly streaked with mold in others. She held a sword almost carelessly in her hand.

  “Another swaggering, foolishly arrogant noble’s pawn,” she murmured, surveying Marlazander the Mighty and letting him feel the weight of a sneer. “They’re almost as annoying
as their noble masters. Almost.”

  Marlazander sprang at her, slashing at her viciously in one of the best attacks he’d ever learned. It was parried and turned aside with a flick of her blade—as was his next and his next. She danced around him, toying with him like an armsmaster—and when his first fury of increasingly frantic attacks started to falter along with his wind, she disarmed him with casual ease.

  And slid her blade past his frantically snatched-out daggers and into his throat, an unruffled moment later.

  Before he was finished falling and dying, she’d strolled to the limp, gory mess that was Verrin and had cut a ring of keys from his belt. Wiping her sword clean on a dry part of his breeches, she tossed the ring of keys through its bars to Marlin, saluted him with her blade—as he and his hirelings gaped at her, aghast—and stepped back between the casks again.

  Who—who was that? The Silent Shadow? Some long-dead agent controlled by another noble House?

  “I’ll be long gone by the time you get that gate up,” Targrael told the young noble mockingly as she continued to retreat into the shadows. “Waste no time hunting me, for you’ll not find me. Nor is there really any need to hunt me. As you can see, I’m dead already.”

  It took Marlin some time to manage to swallow, find his voice, and dare to ask, “W-who are you?”

  He was answered from deep darkness far away across the cellar by coldly mocking laughter.

  Manshoon chuckled despite himself. Gods, but she was evil. He should be able to resist this sort of behavior, all this mocking, prancing villainy, when his mind was riding and commanding hers, but … somehow …

  She enjoyed it so and made him enjoy it. More than he had in centuries.

  Centuries … too many passing years, drifting past darker and darker, too many friends and lovers and useful allies gone with them …

  Enough reverie. To work again.