by Ed Greenwood
“Planning for later, then,” Mirt concluded. “Or searching for the Lost Spell, hidden in a jar of something dry and granular.” He sighed. “This is right madness, lass.”
“I know,” Alusair told him crisply, turning visible so she could lock eyes with him. “Yet it’s one more adventure for the both of us, yes? And in the best of bright causes, so—”
“So I’m in it, to the death,” Mirt agreed. “The question is, whose?”
“Isn’t that always the question?” Alusair asked archly as she waved farewell and set off through the keyhole of the door Shaaan had used, like restless smoke swirling up on the far side of it once she saw there was no one out in the entry hall to watch, to shape herself into a speeding arrow in flight—well, an arrow that could swoop in tight arcs around corners—back to Lord Halaunt’s body.
He’d be missed, and remarked upon, if she took much longer. Even if moldering in a locked garderobe was the best place for the old muleback.
ELMINSTER WAS WAITING when Lord Halaunt opened the garderobe door.
“Ready, Lord?” he asked, with just the slightest hint of mockery.
The ghost princess made Lord Halaunt grunt wordless, grumpy assent as she said in El’s mind: Ready. No change in the plan?
None yet, he told her dryly. Though I suspect this night ahead of us may change that.
You surprise me not. The ghost princess sent a tart thought in reply. I just hope we’re not dooming one of the nicest of our guests.
Elminster winced. She might very well be right.
Yet if that doom didn’t fall, it still felt right to give the Lost Spell to someone who really didn’t seem to want it—and it was too late to back away from the plan now. Every eye in the feast hall had already turned their way, as they strode in together, and all of those gazes held wariness.
“My guests,” Lord Halaunt said gruffly, “it has been a … surprising evening, after a day most of you must have found stressful. I think it best if we retire now; my good steward Elminster here will show all of you to your rooms. I have decided who shall almost certainly be given the Lost Spell—”
And he looked directly at Alastra Hathwinter, long enough for everyone in the room to notice, before adding, “Yet if I’ve learned one thing in my long life, it is not to be overly hasty in making important decisions. Therefore, I promise to meet privately with each and every one of you on the morrow, to entertain your offers for the Lost Spell—with due courtesy, as befits your stations in life and the importance of this matter. You will find my home not up to the latest fashion, but sufficient to provide for all reasonable needs. I suggest, given what has transpired here this night, that you all lock yourselves in for safety.”
And to no one’s surprise at all, everyone did.
IT WAS LATE enough that the guests should all be abed and snoring, but “should” was certainly the word to watch in that opinion. Yet servants work when superiors sleep, so the kitchen in Oldspires was abustle, despite the late hour.
As Elminster came in from stringing a few spiderweb-like threads across a few doorways, and using the Weave to lay a binding across the door of Alastra Hathwinter’s room that might prevent timid attempts at entry, but would fail utterly if she opened the door from within, or an intruder successfully used powerful magic, his too-empty stomach growled a protest at him.
“Ye and Mreen have been working wonders, I must say,” he said approvingly, helping himself from a crock of olives.
“Are those the poisoned ones?” Mirt asked Alusair teasingly.
Lord Halaunt’s chuckle was rather sour. Abruptly the old lord sat down in an angle where the cupboards under one countertop abutted the cupboards under another, leaned against the cupboards, and went limp.
“Easier to be myself, if you don’t mind,” said the ghost, swirling up from Halaunt’s lolling body like thin smoke. “It’s tiring, dragging that old wreck of a body around.” She became visible enough that they could see a spectral head and shoulders as she looked at Mirt and added, “And the two of you have been cooking up a storm. The palace kitchens in Suzail were always crowded and noisy, with lots of shouting and rushing around—but there, it took twenty or more staff to do what just the two of you manage.”
The kitchen door opened, and Myrmeen stepped through it, saying, “Why, thank you! It’s nice to be appreciated, I must say. The—”
“Ye left Skouloun why?” El asked sharply.
Myrmeen gave him a look and a shrug. “Because he’s dead.”
She went straight to the simmering pots, lifted lids, sniffed, and reached for some spice vials. “And,” she added, “he didn’t die of what Calathlarra was trying to slip Manshoon and the other Nimbran—because that particular poison turns the eyes of those it kills yellow green and causes rigidity of the limbs.”
“So what did he die of?” Mirt growled.
“Some other sort of poison that turned his face bright purple, and made him foam green from the mouth. Very colorful. He had some sort of contingency magic that manifested at his death, but it collapsed and failed without accomplishing anything that I could see.”
“Oldspires wreaking its havoc on magic,” Alusair mused aloud.
Mirt plucked down a cleaver and a sharpening steel, and started the singing dance of steel that would restore a keen edge. When it was going well, he glanced over at Elminster. “So who killed him?”
Elminster shrugged. “That’s best answered when we know what poison it was, and thus how it works, and how swiftly.”
“So you don’t—?” Alusair asked.
El shook his head. “Ye’ll be surprised at how much I don’t know, lass.”
“So we won’t be burning the body out back, I take it?” Mirt growled, testing the cleaver with a thumb. In crowded Waterdeep, that was often the fate of the remains of someone who died of an unknown poison or disease.
“No. For now, we lock what’s left of Skouloun in one of the cold-cellar rooms, down below.”
“I foresee meat stews in our future,” Myrmeen joked, sampling a pot she’d just spiced.
“Are those safe to leave?” El asked her.
She nodded. “You want to stow the Nimbran right now?”
“I do, if Luse will stand guard again.”
“Do it,” the ghost replied, and Myrmeen set down her ladle and led the way.
They saw no one in the passages as they carried the dead and very purple weight of the Nimbran Elder. And they agreed that was one good thing.
And then they all had the same silent thought: it would have been better if it hadn’t been the only good thing, thus far, about this conclave in Oldspires.
“I hope Mystra’s doing the right thing,” Mirt muttered, as they headed back to the kitchen.
El sighed. “So,” he told his companions, “does She.”
“THIS IS JUST the first death of many, I’m thinking,” Mirt growled, fetching out a stockpot from under the countertop and inspecting it for signs of mice.
“Rodents? Worry not,” Alusair told him. “I’ve already checked. Every pot.”
Mirt grinned. “Thankee! That’s good to know.” He looked over at Myrmeen. “So, this Skouloun; did he waken and say anything interesting, ere he died?”
Myrmeen straightened up from feeding the hearthfire and said, “No. This isn’t a lurid chapbook, I’m afraid. He just died.” She wiped her hands on her apron. “I didn’t much like the look of that green spume leaking out of him. The poisoning attempts were less than pleasant, too … but perhaps Toril will be lighter by a few nasty, deadly wizards before the spellstorm fades.”
El sighed. “I hope not. A better world we might all share with certain mages gone, to be sure, but Mystra charges me to spread the use of the Art, not stand by while masters of it are destroyed—even if they’re destroyed by another master, using magic. No, however useful that may be, it’s not what any of us should want. Perhaps fear of it will cozen some into better behavior than usual, but I don’t consider even that very
likely—”
At that moment, he lurched sideways as the floor rippled briefly under his feet, the walls shook with a nigh-soundless shuddering that sent spice vials toppling from racks and hanging pots clanging together, a staggering Mirt to ring the stockpot off the lip of the nearest countertop, and … the rocking faded as swiftly as it had come.
Myrmeen looked at Elminster. “What was that?”
He gave her a grim look. “Someone inside this house has tried a powerful spell. And it has failed.”
“Well,” Mirt growled, putting the stockpot in the sink in front of him and reaching for the handle of the pump, “we knew it was only a matter of time before—”
Something smote the far wall of the kitchen like a towering titan’s fist, sending Myrmeen flying with a hissed curse. She rebounded off Mirt and slammed into Elminster just as the lamps all died, plunging the room into utter darkness.
Luse, Elminster thought, give us some light, hey?
He felt no mind receiving his thoughts, and said the same words aloud, more loudly and sharply than he usually spoke.
Silence. Darkness. Myrmeen warm in his arms, turning herself around firmly and disengaging his grasp.
“So, was that another strong spell?” she asked him briskly. “It came from this direction, whereas the first …”
“Erupted from back that way. Aye, it was a spell, and mightier than the first. In fact, I believe it came close to achieving its usual effect.”
A moment later, absently, he added, “Interesting.”
“INTERESTING,” THE SAGE of Shadowdale commented, in the blind darkness.
A moment later, Myrmeen felt their hips bump together briefly as he strode past her in the total darkness. Then she heard the rattle of a door handle, followed by the thud of a body slamming into a door, a grunt of effort that rose into a snarl of strain, and—the faint groan of wood that’s been under stress now snatched away. Then silence, followed by just a hint of hard breathing.
“Elminster,” she inquired, “what are you doing?”
“Trying to open the door into the entry hall,” he replied a trifle testily, “and failing.”
She heard him turn and stride toward her, and got out of the way in time.
Straight across the kitchen he went, the sounds of his progress briefly drowned out by the clatter of Mirt pawing open a cupboard door and growling, “Got the lanterns, but damned if that second one didn’t suck all our fires right out! Flames, coals, the lot!”
“Striker mounted on the inside of that door you’re holding,” Myrmeen told him crisply. “Flint’s hanging beside it, on a cord.”
“Aye, lass, but I can’t see where I want the spark to go, now, can I?”
Mirt had Elminster right beaten in testiness, to be sure.
Myrmeen was still smiling wryly about that to herself when a terrific crash announced that Elminster had tripped over the fetch-down stool and gone flying, the stool tumbling, too.
She waited for what promised to be an impressive explosion of profanity, but instead got the emphatic words, “That’s enough. That’s quite enough.”
An eerie glow kindled in the darkness, a blue-white pulsing that was small and faint but growing swiftly in both brightness and extent—as she heard El growl, deep in his throat. It was a growl of pain.
“Elminster Aumar,” she asked the darkness in exasperation, “what’re you playing at?”
“Getting ye and yon Lord of Waterdeep light enough to get some lanterns lit,” came the reply—from the heart of the glow, which she saw now was Elminster’s body, glowing fitfully from within, as if many small lanterns were moving around under his skin.
“I thought you couldn’t cast spells here,” she said warily. “Or did those two spells going off change things?”
“I’m not casting a spell,” Elminster snarled. “I’m calling on the Weave to glow, inside myself.”
“Sounds like it’s agonizing.”
“It is,” he gasped. “The Weave is twisted, here inside Oldspires, so doing this is … painful in the extreme. Get those farruking lanterns lit!”
Myrmeen scrambled to the cupboard where Mirt was fumbling—just in time for his bark of triumph as a lantern wick flared into flame. El let himself go dark again with a grateful gasp, and lay there, sprawled on the stone floor, as she got two additional lanterns alight.
“Whither now?” she asked, proffering one.
Elminster rolled over and up to his feet with several grunts of discomfort before he took it, thanked her, and commanded, “Come with me!”
He led the way out through the widest door, into the now-deserted feast hall—where the fires were all out, amid a strong reek of drifting smoke, and darkness reigned—and then around the corner into the Copper Receiving Room, its burnished copper ornamentations flashing back splendid reflections in the lanternlight.
El strode straight through it and out into the entry hall, where the darkness continued unabated. Aside from their glimmering lanterns, all was dark and silent.
“What happened?” Mirt demanded roughly. “All this utter gloom, I mean.”
El waved the question away and strode along the wall toward the door he hadn’t been able to open from the kitchen side.
And then he stopped abruptly, holding his lantern high. Myrmeen was at his side in an instant, adding the light of her lantern to his.
One of the spells that had rocked the kitchen had done something after all.
The Sage of Shadowdale hadn’t been able to open the door from the other side because a huge sideboard had appeared out of nowhere to stand on this side of it—across it, right against the wall, where the door had to open into.
And jammed—crushed—between sideboard and wall was the body of a woman, collapsed over the top of the sideboard amid a spreading pool of blood, her slender arms flung wide.
“YUSENDRE OF NIMBRAL,” Mirt growled, and looked at El. “Her doing, d’you think? Her own spell, gone wrong?”
Elminster shook his head. “See the wisps like smoke rising from her? That was a magical binding. She got plucked from wherever she was standing—within eyeshot of whoever did this—and teleported with the sideboard.”
“It,” Myrmeen Lhal pointed out, “looks like one of the sideboards from yonder.”
She waved across the entry hall with her lantern, at the door that led into the Red Receiving Room, where they’d first slaked the thirsts of the arriving archmages.
El led the general rush to that door, and flung it wide.
To discover the room dark, deserted—and missing a sideboard.
“Now what?” Mirt growled. “Once they discover that their spells work, the damned archmages will blast each other until there’s no Oldspires left!”
Myrmeen caught at Elminster’s arm, and waved her lantern back the way they’d come. “Could Yusendre be shamming? She—”
“She’s bloody pulp from the chest on down,” Mirt growled. “If that’s a deception, it’s a damned effective one. She’s dead.”
“Two, now,” Myrmeen sighed. “Not good.”
“Not good, indeed,” Elminster agreed. “Come.”
He hastened to the bedchambers the guests had been installed in. Where they checked door after door.
Locked, every one, and no one answered their hailings—with one exception. When Mirt sought to peer in through the keyhole of Maraunth Torr’s room, a needle-thin stiletto promptly thrust out of the keyhole.
“That could have been my eye!” the Lord of Waterdeep growled.
“And the brain behind it,” El agreed cheerfully. “Yet it wasn’t. Well, there’s not much we can—”
“Just leave them all shut up in their rooms until morning,” Alusair whispered then, materializing right in front of him.
El swallowed a sigh. “Where have you been?”
“Recovering,” she hissed back. “That second spell did its work right through me—and it only worked at all because the first spell tore through all the Weave chaos, melt
ing a short-lived hole for the second magic to flourish in. If that’s the right word.” She shuddered. “This place is … not comfortable for the likes of me. Energies leak from the gates constantly.”
“Huh,” Mirt commented, “that’s nothing. Lives seem to leak out of bodies around here if you turn your back for more than a moment.”
“ ’Tis a common affliction, it seems, wherever I go,” Elminster observed.
“That,” the ghost princess said tartly, before anyone else could, “is one more thing that utterly fails to surprise me.”
CHAPTER 9
Behold the Best Preening Idiot
SO IS IT TRUE,” MIRT GROWLED, “THAT YE CHOSEN DON’T NEED to sleep?”
Elminster nodded gravely. “We can renew ourselves through the Weave. Er, if we know how. So, yes, Luse and I can stand watch all night, while ye snore and Myrmeen—ah, Myrmeen …”
“Purrs,” Myrmeen supplied crisply. “Practice that courtly diplomacy, El. I’ve a feeling you’re going to need it.”
The ghost of the princess smiled and waved a silent salute to her for those words.
El nodded, but Mirt was busy stifling a yawn. “I’m too old for staying up with sun and moon, a-slaving away without a break in the kitchen, and waiting table for wizards who’re on edge and just waiting to take offense at the slightest trifle. I need my sleep.”
“We’ll sleep here in the kitchen,” she told the two men firmly. “Its doors can all be barred from within, I’ve noticed. Which should tell you something about Lord Halaunt.”
“About the lord Halaunts in the dim past, and the time when Oldspires was just this southeast corner, ye mean,” El pointed out. “But aye, if we close and bar the door that links the Copper Receiving Room to the feast hall, and bar the kitchen doors from within—not trusting that sideboard to stay where it is—we can bide safe until morning. Oh, and bolt the doors of the stairs down into the undercellars.”
“Stairs? Isn’t there just the one ’twixt the butlery and the south servery?” Myrmeen asked him, feeling something smooth and hard and reassuring under her hand. It was the hilt of her shortsword, riding in its scabbard at her hip; her hand must have gone to it out of long habit.