by Ed Greenwood
“For what, exactly?”
“Skouloun or Maraunth Torr,” Mirt growled, “or pieces of them.”
“Charming,” said Myrmeen. “Whither first?”
“The eastern rooms,” El replied. “That is, everything due north of the entry hall. Shaaan’s bedchamber opens into them, but ever since all the guests arrived and we entertained them in the Red Receiving Room, we’ve barely set foot in any of them, barring the main passage. And I doubt a fire’s been laid or lit in the Summer Room in a decade or more; anything could be hidden up that chimney.”
“If someone’s going to be looking up a chimney while pieces of corpse come falling down it to slam smack into their faces,” Myrmeen suggested crisply, “suppose you volunteer for peering duty—while I and my trusty cleaver stand guard against anyone sneaking up behind us.”
“Fair enough,” El agreed easily.
“You didn’t just speak of the Summer Room on a whim,” Mirt rumbled, wagging a finger. “I know your intonations, now; you’ve been thinking of it. Why?”
“It’s as large as the feast hall, is clear across the other side of Oldspires and away from the bedchambers and where we’re usually busy, and so makes an ideal neutral meeting ground for our guests. I’ve been deliberately avoiding it since I took the time to string those threads across its doorways.”
Myrmeen nodded. “So we can see if anyone’s entered it since.” She gestured with her cleaver. “Lead on.”
The Red Receiving Room was dark and deserted, the shutters that connected it to the servery they’d used when the wizards had first arrived still firmly closed and fastened. The corner closet was locked, but El turned with broken thread ends dangling from his fingers to show them that the dumbwaiter inside had been used. But by whom, and down to the underservery or up to the ruinous upper floor?
“Check above and below later, right?” Mirt growled. “Do the rest of these rooms first?”
El nodded, and led the way. The next room along was the library, home to the sort of books that a noble who intended to impress assembled, plus a row of well-used horseflesh bloodlines tomes. Nothing was out of place, and the chamber was dusty, the air stale. Genuinely disused, probably undisturbed since their own hasty search upon arriving.
That left the armor court, which was really just the end of the main passage beyond a pair of massive square pillars, some staircases, and … the Summer Room.
Where they found Elminster’s threads disturbed.
The large, lofty room beyond was deserted, and the clouds of the earlier hours of the night had blown on, to let cold moonlight flood in through the three tall and wide windows, and paint the room pearly silver.
Myrmeen strolled toward the trio of glassed-in arches, to gaze out at the surroundings by night. The mists of the spellstorm would probably look impressive indeed, all shimmering and swirling silver in the moonl—
She gasped, stiffened, and pointed, all in one convulsive movement, and El and Mirt peered quickly.
They were in time to see the dark shape of a cloth-masked face at the bottom corner of one window—in the instant before it vanished, racing west.
All three of them rushed to the westernmost bay window, and were rewarded—by the way the outer wall of Oldspries turned north there, and the brightness of the moonlight outside—with a glimpse of a lone dark figure, almost certainly a man in leathers or close-fitting dark heavywork clothing, fleeing along the mansion wall, and out of sight around the corner, where the mansion turned west again.
“So we’re not alone here, within the spellstorm!” Mirt almost roared. “What by the Nine Hells happened to the War Wizards and their vigilance and their splendid and mightily puissant ring-shaped wall of force?”
El shrugged. “Something, obviously. And without that barrier … well, to someone without the Art, yon spellstorm’s just mist, remember?”
Myrmeen nodded grimly. “All of our guests are—or were—mages of power. Any one of them could have ordered their own army of stealthy slayers to follow them to Oldspires, to help out if things went bad and it came to battle.”
“And things did,” Mirt grunted. “So, just how many lurking murderers are we hosting?”
Elminster gave them a lopsided grin. “In the realm, ye mean, or just here in Oldspires?”
CHAPTER 13
What Lord Halaunt Was Up To
MYRMEEN AND MIRT SIGHED IN UNISON.
“When you’ve finished failing to be funny, Old Mage,” added the former Lady Lord of Arabel, examining the window in front of her, “answer me this: the windows all over Oldspires open, don’t they?”
“Aye, from the inside. From the outside, they’d have to be forced.”
“Unless someone inside opens them to help someone outside get in,” Mirt pointed out.
Myrmeen waved her cleaver. “And Malchor and Manshoon—and for that matter, Skouloun and Maraunth Torr—all have bedchambers with windows in their outside walls.”
“Aye,” Elminster told them both. “We’re in the cesspond, good and proper. As usual. Now, shall we continue with the search? I’d say we leave Malchor, Manshoon, Shaaan, and Tabra alone; search around them, so to speak.”
“Yes, I’m more interested in these armies of war wizard–defeating intruders we didn’t know we were hosting a few breaths back, myself,” Myrmeen said sarcastically. “Lead on, Sage of Shadowdale.”
Elminster did that. Their search was swift but thorough, peering through room after room after wearying room. Twice, Alusair swept up to them like a gently glowing wind to tell them that the four wizards—Tabra and the triad of the uneasy truce—were in their bedchambers, alone, and staying there.
The dark ground-floor rooms they illuminated briefly with Myrmeen’s hand lantern were all empty of humans, alive or otherwise, and of anything suspicious. So they descended into the undercellars, where Mirt took two steps and then turned and growled at Elminster, “There’ll be a wood chute, aye? Where Halaunt’s foresters or gardeners or stablejacks deliver down here the wood they’ve felled and split, for all those fireplaces we’ve just seen?”
The Sage of Shadowdale looked back at him for a moment, nodded slowly, and said, “Thank ye; my mind is slower than it should be. Of course. This way!”
They hastened through a warren of twisting passages, flung wide a door—most of the undercellar doors were wider than the doors on the ground floor, and fastened with hasps and wooden pegs, not locks—and Elminster led the way down some worn stone steps into a room with a deeper floor than its neighbors, which was piled high with wood.
The air was fresh, thanks to a damp breeze that shouldn’t have been there.
It was coming from … yes, the wood chute, where the stout wooden weather hatch had been levered up and jammed open with a half log. In the moonlight spilling down the chute, the splintered edge of the hatch looked fresh.
Someone had just forced a way in, down the wood chute, into Oldspires.
“Our man at the window?” Myrmeen asked, pivoting on one boot heel to look all around her, cleaver at the ready.
“Or the army he brought with him,” El murmured, peering closely at the chute just below the hatch. Then he amended, “Nay, I’d say two at most came in this way … more likely just the one intruder.”
Their man at the window or not, the intruder was nowhere to be seen in the wood cellar, so they went out and on through the undercellars, searching warily now, weapons ready and expecting an attack.
That didn’t come, through cellar after cellar.
In the southwestern corner of the undercellars, they came upon a room that held many wine casks horizontally, in cradles. There, El glanced at the floor, flung up a warning hand, then reached for the lantern. Myrmeen passed it to him, and in its light he peered closely at the floor, proceeding with his nose near the floor like a dog puzzling out a scent along the row of casks, then around the endmost cask.
Where he stopped abruptly, and raised the lantern so Mirt and Myrmeen could see … a
fine dark thread stretched from the cask across to the nearest ceiling-beam support post.
El followed the thread through an eye of wire, where it turned and ran up the post to a little box with an open end.
Nodding to himself, he lifted the lantern to look as far as he could past the thread and the box, to the far end of the cask.
Where there was a small heap of blankets and a bowl with a ladle in it.
“Someone’s temporary home,” El murmured, then pointed at the thread, and back along it to the box. “Poisoned-needle trap; it fires along the line of the thread but up this high, when the thread gets disturbed by someone’s ankle.”
“Our first search was in great haste,” Myrmeen recalled with a frown, “but I don’t remember this being here at all.”
“Nor was it,” Elminster replied. “It’s been here longer than the damage to the wood chute, though.”
It was Mirt’s turn to frown. “So where is the army of intruders? Alusair would’ve noticed if they were hiding in the room of one of our surviving guests, yes?”
“Oh, yes,” El agreed. “Though, mind ye, she’s patrolling just the north end of the house, where we housed all the Lost Spell–seeking wizards.”
“Most of the south end houses the kitchens and the feast hall and the rooms we were going to sleep in, that we’ve not dared use yet,” Myrmeen mused aloud. Then frowned again. “So intruders may well be lurking in my bedroom right now.”
“Best check under the bed,” El advised gently.
“I always do,” Mirt agreed. “Even mothers know that’s where the monsters lurk.”
Myrmeen sighed and asked him, “Now who’s failing to be funny?”
“We’ve still the southeastern cellars to look through,” El reminded his two companions. “Including the cold cellar where we’ve been putting the bodies.”
“For someone else to take,” Myrmeen commented. And then froze. “What’s that?”
Something half-seen stirred in the gloom ahead.
It was silent, and growing larger as it came toward them—and it vanished utterly in the lanternlight, but was there again when El held the lantern behind his back. An outline of a person, gliding rather than walking. It glowed so faintly that they could only just see it in the gloom—but could see the wall behind it right through it. It was tall, and had two dark pits for eyes, and when Myrmeen hefted her cleaver, its glow pulsed around its empty left hand … and grew a ghostly sword.
And at the sight of that, she could not help but feel a flickering thrill of fear.
“Well met, Lord Halaunt,” Elminster greeted it gravely, “we are here to guard the gates.”
The empty-eyed face turned to regard him as if considering his words thoughtfully. Then it turned, slowly and deliberately, to regard Mirt. He received the same slow, silent scrutiny ere the ghost turned to survey Myrmeen.
Who asked calmly, “El, with magic untrustworthy, how do we defend ourselves against this, if it attacks?”
“The Weave,” Elminster replied. “Yet it would be best if I need not call on that power, here, with the gates so close and numerous around us.”
Mirt cleared his throat then, scratched at his belly, and inquired, “I’ve been wondering just what, if anything, prevents someone outside the spellstorm from ferrying an army inside here through a gate. They’d have to know how to open it, aye, but doesn’t it, ah, bypass the spellstorm?”
El shrugged. “If they’re lucky, yes. If not …”
“Scratch one army,” Myrmeen commented, watching the ghost take a step closer. “Why is none of this reassuring me in the slightest?”
Mirt chuckled. “Because you’re keeping company with Elminster of Shadowdale, that’s why, lass. And sharing his unfolding life—of one disaster after another.”
“Entertaining disaster after another,” Elminster amended, keeping his eyes on the ghost.
Whose regard had flashed to focus on Mirt, at the sound of his mirth.
“Lord of Waterdeep,” Elminster asked with sudden heartiness, “what is silence?”
“Hey?” Mirt was taken aback.
“A condition utterly unknown to nobles of Waterdeep.”
Mirt blinked, then chuckled heartily. “Well said!”
The ghost of whichever early Lord Halaunt it was backed away, its attention riveted on the fat moneylender.
Myrmeen stared at it, then suddenly burst into a peal of merry laughter.
And the ghost shrank back from her, dwindled—and fled.
Mirt stared at where it had been. “What just happened?”
“We drove it off with laughter,” Myrmeen said triumphantly.
“I know that,” Mirt told her testily. “But how? What’s so frightening about a woman laughing?” And he flung up a wagging finger. “And before you feel moved to say something smart, know you that I’ve been married.”
“I’m guessing,” Elminster said slowly, “that yon ghost thrives on fear, and itself dislikes or even fears laughter.”
“You mean you haven’t the blithering faintest,” Myrmeen told him fondly.
El gave her an innocent look. “Isn’t that what I just said?”
“We’ve all ruled places,” Mirt growled, “so I presume it’s news to none of us that you can achieve much by pretending to know what you’re doing, and what’s going on, and acting as if you’ve prepared for it and so are calmly ready to handle whatever happens.”
“Indeed,” El agreed briskly, “so let’s get this done. After this last corner of the cellars, there’s the entire upper floor to do yet—the parts of it we can trust to hold our weight, that is.”
As they set off, El handing the lantern back to Myrmeen, she asked, “So which Lord Halaunt was that?”
He shrugged. “One of the early ones. Quite a few of them were up to no good, and one or two died violently and under mysterious circumstances—and with all the gates leaking energies …”
“A good place for ghosts, and strong causes for their creation,” Mirt concluded. Then he pointed ahead. “There’s another now.”
This haunting was a different Lord Halaunt; it was shorter and carried a war axe over its shoulder as it strode purposefully along a passage and vanished straight through a wall, not slowing or even hesitating as it gave them a brief but intent look.
Myrmeen turned to Elminster. “So we can conclude there are gates very close to us, hereabouts?”
“We can. Yet I’d know, this close, if one was open and active.”
“The Weave?”
“The Weave. Yet I’m seeking something else. Besides our missing bodies, that is.”
“Oh? Care to share? Or are we just the dunderheaded lackeys?”
“Now, now, lass, there’s no need to be—ahh. Shine thy light here.”
Myrmeen obeyed, and found herself looking at what appeared to be an old tapestry, hung so it draped down over a wall of stacked crates.
“Cleaver,” El ordered, extending his hand.
Myrmeen put her blade into it, and he leaned forward with his long reach and used the cleaver to sweep the tapestry to one side.
Revealing no traps, but a narrow gap between two stacks of crates, large enough for a man to sidle through.
“Light, in there,” El murmured. Myrmeen obliged, illuminating … a tiny room or space amid towering stacks of crates.
It held a small, delicately carved jet-black wooden table rather like a dressing table, with a kneeling mat on the floor in front of it. Rather than having a central mirror behind the tabletop, it had an empty circular frame that might once have held a mirror—and spaced at intervals around this frame were seven metal stars painted blue-white, the blue vivid but flat, and the white a faintly-luminescent enspelled paint that made the stars glow softly and steadily. On either end of the tabletop stood black metal candlesticks, with unlit candles in them that had been lit—and then extinguished—several times before.
El looked around the little room and saw a stool, a piece of parchment bearing
rather untidy writing atop the stool, and a small metal box on the floor beneath it. The box was the sort carried to light fires; it probably contained candles, paper spills, and a rushlight stand, a flint, a steel striker, and a shallow metal bowl to hold tinder.
Holding up a warding hand to keep Myrmeen and Mirt back, El walked cautiously to the stool, bent to peer at the parchment without touching it, and read what was written on it.
“A hidden shrine to Mystra,” Mirt said, “but why was it hidden? Or rather, from whom?”
“This is Lord Halaunt’s fist,” Elminster replied, “so it wasn’t hidden from him; it was hidden by him. To keep his servants from knowing?” He shrugged. “A mere guess, mind ye, with nothing to support it.” He pointed down at the parchment. “This is a script for a prayer he’s composed; he was praying to the goddess to gift him with the ability to work magic.”
“So his offer of the Lost Spell was no bluff? He might have used it himself, or tried to?” Myrmeen asked. When he made no reply, she asked another question, slightly more loudly and sharply. “Did you know this was here?”
El looked up from peering intently at the tabletop—the altar, in front of the circle of stars and between the two candlesticks. “I knew it existed, somewhere in Oldspires.”
“Oh? How?”
“Mystra hears prayers sent her way, ye know. And that, in turn, is how I first learned of what Lord Halaunt was up to. Despite what Ganrahast and the other wizards of war may think, I’m not in the habit of magically eavesdropping on their every belch and scratch. Don’t tell them that, though; believing as much keeps Glathra behaving far better than she would otherwise. But setting that aside, Lord Halaunt informed Mystra he’d found the Lost Spell and wanted to be shown how to use it, but she thought otherwise and informed me.” El bent and peered very intently at the altar, then frowned.
“Ah,” he said, “that’s why.” He pointed at the black wood. Myrmeen peered hard, ducking her head from side to side to see if the spot where he was pointing caught the lanternlight differently than the rest of the tabletop.