by Ed Greenwood
She glanced over at Mirt, to make sure he wasn’t doing the same thing and might be on the verge of ducking his head right into a painful meeting with hers. He wasn’t. Instead, he was nodding grimly, as if he’d seen whatever El had spotted before.
Sensing her scrutiny, he looked at her and growled, “Some tiny stains; traces someone cleaning up missed.”
“Blood,” Elminster put in. “Human blood. Human sacrifice to Mystra.” He straightened up from his examination, looking grimmer than Mirt. “She wouldn’t like that,” he muttered. “She wouldn’t like that at all.”
He looked around the little shrine. “I wonder what lives Lord Halaunt spent to get the attention of Our Lady? Or if he stopped short of murder, and just paid the families of dying commoners to, ah, borrow their doomed kin?” He shook his head in distaste, picturing the old lord on his knees here, and asked aloud, “And why Mystra? Why not Tempus, or Malar, or—?” He shook his head again, turned to depart the shrine, and added, “Well, that leaves just the cold cellar.”
“The place bodies go missing from,” Myrmeen commented.
“That’s why we’re going to look in on it, one more time,” the Sage of Shadowdale told her. “Though it’s none too comfortable, what better place to try to hide when ye hear searchers coming?”
“Aye, our intruder of the chute,” Mirt growled. “What with the ghost and this shrine, I’d almost forgotten him. Not that I’ve left off looking behind me, expecting someone to rush me, blade in hand, all the time we’ve been down here. Let’s look in on our dead and be done with it.”
“Long time ahead before we’ll be done,” El reminded him. “Upper level to do yet.”
As it happened, there’d been no new departures from the cold cellar—but then, there’d been no new arrivals, either.
“Well, that’s something,” Myrmeen said, as they closed the doors on the chill once more, and turned away.
Mirt gave her a look, and she countered it with the words, “Small victories. Small victories.”
Elminster led the way back across the cellars to the south stairs, a grand staircase that ascended through the Halaunt family quarters on up into the upper floor. There’d been an upper study at its top, once, but its large windows had yielded to winter snows and howling gales years back, and been crudely boarded over. Birds roosting for the night shifted uneasily on rafter perches as the wizard, the moneylender, and the warrior passed them, peering everywhere and expecting trouble. The floor was bowed and spongy, uneven thanks to one board warping faster than its neighbor. The decaying wood creaked and groaned loudly underfoot in places and was silent and solid in others—but those others were increasingly rare as they went on and saw more moonlight and stars twinkling through gaps in the roofs and walls, and saw more puddles.
“So much space gone to ruin,” Myrmeen murmured. “Even with no staff needing housing, this could have been given over to a granary.”
Mirt grinned. “There speaks the warrior. We could face a siege at any time.”
“Well, we could. Cormyr today is no secure and peaceful realm. Not anymore.”
“I doubt it ever really was, from all I’ve heard,” the moneylender said.
Elminster turned, laid a hand on each of them, and mindspoke: Every word warns anyone up here of our approach. To reap your life only takes one arrow.
“True,” Mirt granted, as Myrmeen nodded. They proceeded in wary silence.
Through room after room, and eventually out into a chamber that had utterly collapsed and stood open to the sky, its walls—studded with warped and buckled doors—resembling the battlements of a turret top.
Here Elminster stopped and turned slowly to survey the moonlit lands around, breathing in the night air and peering down at the gently roiling fog of the spellstorm—and the wall of force beyond, catching the moonlight here and there. He could see a few of the less careful war wizards standing watch; some of them were looking back at him.
So the barrier stood.
Had their mysterious intruder slipped in through a gate?
Or was it someone already in Oldspires, a person they knew? Even masked, that face at the window hadn’t looked like any of the guests, living or dead. Yet a spell or two had worked within the mansion walls, after a fashion, and a spell that affected the caster without reaching out to others had a better chance of going right, in this chaos, than …
Hmmm.
Mystra be with us.
The prayer had become a habit to him, almost a curse, over the years. Save in the worst moments for the Weave or what passed for balance on Toril, the Mother of Magic tended to leave her Chosen to their own devices, providing more guidance and manifestations to convey her approval rather than divine smiting. Her Chosen were her fists, her thunderbolts, her shows of force. Her disapproval came as nightmares, and spells simply not working at all. Mystra was with her servant here in Oldspires in the form of a shield defending the mind of the ghost princess, so no unscrupulous wizard—and El had a dark notion that in Mystra’s regard, the ranks of such mages might even include him—could take over the mindless husk of Lord Halaunt and use his voice to set mage against mage, and confer the Lost Spell upon themselves.
Or was the intruder—a spy only, from what they’d seen, and one in great haste not to be caught by Elminster and his companions—a Highknight or some other agent of the Crown of Cormyr? Sent to try to watch over what was going on inside Oldspires?
Was Ganrahast that anxious?
Well, now, the lad certainly could be. Tight as a drum and breathing out tension that simply grew and grew, having none of the ease with which his father had defended the Throne and manipulated its nobles and high society in his later years … aye, this could be a watcher sent by the Royal Magician.
Or Vangey, for that matter. He’d always been one to make fallback scheme within fallback scheme, until his every endeavor had more layers to peel than an onion—even all those years ago, when he’d been El’s apprentice. And during his time as Court Wizard and Royal Magician both, he’d run his own private network of spies to watch over the Highknights and wizards of war he’d also commanded.
It was no secret that his restoration by Mystra had brought back his old confidence until he swelled up like a bustard courting hens in mating season, and he’d made little effort to hide his dismay at the state of the realm during his time as a twisted spider-thing. Aye. ’Twould be like Vangey to begin assembling his own spies, so he need not trust what he heard from the reports made to Vainrence, or chafe at what little Ganrahast and his Lord Warder chose to share. He’d justify it very much the same way Elminster himself would have, had he stood in Vangerdahast’s boots: for the sake of the realm, I dare not trust even these our most loyal agents, for are they not the greatest danger to the Dragon Throne, if they turn traitor? Or even prove false in small ways?
Yet perhaps he was overthinking this. Most likely it was a warrior hired by one of the archmages to follow along in case of trouble—or to ensure victory in the winning of the Lost Spell. Perhaps it was just a thief, something as simple as a former servant sneaking back to see what could be stolen with the rest of the staff gone. And perhaps it was a spy hired by an ambitious war wizard down there in the trees, desiring to impress Ganrahast or merely to “do a Vangey” and further his private warehouse of “what I know and no others do, so that I am wiser and more powerful thereby.”
Mystra be with us, indeed!
Entertaining such thoughts was a swift road to madness, conjuring up perils and shadows and lurking menaces where there were none, and building minor deceits and the dealings of self-interested nobles into rampant realm-wide treason …
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Myrmeen murmured softly, beside his ear. El turned to meet her gaze, realizing how long he’d stood here. All around them were the gables and ridgelines of the complicated roofs of Oldspires; above them was the moon and the great glittering vault of stars, and below and around them were the woods and rolling hills of the Halau
nt lands, with the barest ghost of a breeze gliding past them now, and Mirt sitting like a patient gargoyle on a heap of fallen roof slates.
“ ’Tis indeed, lass,” El muttered. “We’ve been so much on the run since getting here, and ye and Mirt have slaved so much in the kitchen, that ’twas more than good to stop and breathe and think for a moment, in a spot where we can fool ourselves that we’re out and away from Halaunt rooms and Halaunt gloom and Halaunt stale air—’twas necessary.”
And he waved merrily to the growing cluster of war wizards at the edge of the woods below, who had gathered to get a good look at whoever was out atop Oldspires in the moonlight.
Then he drew in a deep breath, shook himself, announced briskly, “I’m getting old,” and strode across the ruined floor to one of the doors on the north side of the bared-to-the-skies room.
“I’m waiting for the room where we get threescore and more bats flying into our faces when we open the door,” Mirt remarked, as El tugged at the warped and stuck door.
El shook his head. “Not at this time of night; they’re already out and winging it down there, nigh trees’ edge, where the bugs will be most plentiful. Keeping those war wizards from getting quite so bitten as they would otherwise. Now, if we were doing this search by day …”
“Ah. Sorry. Indeed. Forgot bats start hunting at dusk; I’ve been too long a dweller in Waterdeep,” Mirt growled, losing patience and stumping past Elminster to haul hard on the door until it shrieked, groaned, and squealed all at once and came open with a wall-shaking shudder.
He grinned, bowed like a courtier, and with a flourish indicated the way was now clear to proceed.
Myrmeen rolled her eyes, stepped past him, and unhooded the lantern, holding it out at arm’s length beside her rather than standing behind it. If there was an archer ahead, he could at least work for his kill.
They found only roosting birds and their droppings—lots of their droppings—and the hanging, peeling decay of much water getting in, over many seasons. For room after room, many of them with old shields and canvas wagon shrouds nailed down underfoot as improvised patches where the weatherfall in ground-floor rooms below had become unacceptable.
As they advanced cautiously on, the patches of pitch applied in more thorough attempts at stopping leaks became more frequent and larger.
“I wonder how many country mansions across the Forest Kingdom look like this, up high where no one but the owners and their servants see,” Myrmeen commented.
“Most of ’em, if Cormyr’s anything like Waterdeep,” Mirt said, trying to peer through a gap where two floorboards had warped in different directions. “I wonder if we’ll meet with any ghosts up here?”
El shrugged. “In my experience, servants less seldom haunt houses than their masters—and ’twas all servants up here.”
“Too busy working when alive to want to tarry a moment longer at the place of their wearying toil, once dead,” Myrmeen commented, tugging on yet another door. “This one’s locked.”
“Lanternlight on the lock, if ye would, Lady,” El said calmly, then bent to peer at the lock in the illumination she provided. “Fresh scratches; used recently.”
“Trap?”
El shrugged. “The classic way of finding out presents itself.”
“So it doth,” Mirt replied mockingly, reaching behind his belt buckle to slide something forth with his thumb. A lockpick, which he calmly applied to the lock, keeping his body to one side and listening intently.
Myrmeen and Elminster stayed back and kept utterly silent. Mirt manipulated the pick for a few moments, frowning, then reached behind his ear with his free hand for a second pick, thrust it in beside the first, twisted, and was rewarded with a loud click.
Then he shrugged, turned the handle, and kicked.
The door banged open with oiled, unwarped ease, and—
Nothing happened. El plucked up a sliver of slate that some long-vanished scuttling furry invader had carried along this passage from two rooms back, and wordlessly handed it to Mirt—who tossed it forward into the darkness.
They heard it land, shatter, and skitter to a halt.
Nothing followed.
“Lamp,” Mirt growled. Myrmeen obligingly raised it on high and aimed its unshuttered opening so it illuminated—a wardrobe. Six wardrobes. More.
They were staring into a dry, intact room crammed full of wardrobes, obviously moved here at some time in the past from many other rooms on this upper floor, to keep them away from leaks.
Mirt waved his hand in a circle; Myrmeen correctly interpreted his signal and flashed the lanternlight in a slow circuit of the door frame and the floor and ceiling just inside. Mirt nodded, took off one boot, and held it across the threshold, then crossed in front of the open doorway to offer it inside the other side of the opening.
Unbroken nothing. Mirt stamped his boot back on, then stood and listened.
And then sniffed.
And sighed. “I know that smell.”
He strode forward through the open door to the nearest wardrobe, and flung its door wide.
And the arm of a dead man fell limply out, to hang loose and lifeless. It was Skouloun of Nimbral, his body slumped inside the wardrobe on a heap of musty weathercloaks and old boots.
Mirt edged past that wardrobe and flung open door after door, but the sixteen wardrobes he opened after that first one yielded up only clothes.
“No more bodies,” he growled at El and Myrmeen as he returned to them. “Just our curiously mobile dead Elder. Who seems to have been achieving much more dead than he did when alive.”
“Not without help,” Myrmeen pointed out, firmly tucking the dead wizard’s arm back into the wardrobe and closing the door on his reek. “Stinking wizards,” she joked.
Mirt chuckled. “So now what?”
“So now,” Elminster replied, “we go back to the kitchens, and send Alusair in through Maraunth Torr’s keyhole to see what he’s up to, before we burst in and confront him.”
“But he’s—”
“Not as dead as we thought, I suspect. If he’s not back in his room, we hole up in the kitchens and send Alusair, invisible, all over the mansion to hunt him. Looking for him, or someone she doesn’t recognize, or two versions of someone she does recognize.”
“Gods above,” Myrmeen muttered. “My head’s starting to hurt.”
“At least you’ve still got one,” Mirt joked, “and life enough to use it.”
“Yes, but for how much longer? This house is killing people!”
“I had started to notice that, lass. I had indeed,” the Lord of Waterdeep grunted.
Elminster, standing behind them, said nothing at all.
CHAPTER 14
Crudeness and Comeuppance
AS IT HAPPENED, MARAUNTH TORR WAS BACK IN HIS ROOM.
Lying sprawled on his back on the floor.
Dead and stiff, his face contorted in horror and his body in a convulsed and agonized pose, hands frozen in a frenzied clawing of the air. His skin was magenta all over—except for his fingers, which were stained ochre here and there—and yellow foam was hardening around his mouth, nose, and eyes.
He was naked, and there were fanged bites all over him.
“Our thief of the keys,” Myrmeen observed, pointing at the stained fingers.
“And Shaaan’s work,” Elminster murmured, pointing at the bites. “I’ve seen it before a time or two. This is the result of the overreaching ambition of Maraunth Torr, I’d say. She’ll now have our missing keys, too.” He smiled grimly. “Let’s awaken most of our other guests and bring them in here to see this.”
Mirt gave the Sage of Shadowdale a sharp look. “Nothing good will come of that. Stirring up trouble, Old Mage?”
El shrugged. “ ’Tis what I do.”
“I feel moved to say: I hope you know what you’re doing,” Myrmeen told him, “but you always seem to—and after what many will say is far too many centuries, you’re still here.”
Mi
rt grinned at Elminster. “Sounds like ringing praise to me.”
The Sage of Shadowdale sighed. “Go ye and rouse Manshoon, Malchor, and Tabra, and bring them here. I want them to see this, to see if we can goad one of them into letting slip just a hint of something. Not Shaaan, mind. Leave her be.”
Myrmeen gave him a look. “So she’s Torr’s murderer; has it been her, all along, taking down everyone?”
Elminster shook his head. “Nay. Would that it were so simple. Just as neither she nor Torr are our lurker outside the windows. Who’s shorter than both.”
Myrmeen sighed. “Far be it from me to deny old and eccentric wizards their Mystra-given right to be mysterious, but I like to know—purely for reasons of adroit operations, you understand—when someone I’m dealing with is a murderer, stone cold or otherwise.”
El gave her look right back to her. “They’re all murderers, lass. Ye don’t rise to the positions they have—Calathlarra, a living Runemaster merely feigning undeath; Manshoon, a ruler thrice over, formal or otherwise; Elders of Nimbral, and so on and on—without killing those who tried to kill thee. So treat them all accordingly.”
“Strike first?” Mirt grunted.
“Be polite, and never turn your back,” Elminster replied. “Now go and get those three—and if they give thee the slightest opportunity, peer past them. Those bedchambers are only so large, and armies, even stealthy ones, take up some space.”
Myrmeen grinned. “Armies I can handle, remember? Annoyed and frightened archmages, though … I’m not so sure. So they’re all mixed up in it?”
El nodded. “Though I don’t think they’ve all done murder, here at Oldspires. Yet.”
“But if only one wizard is left, only one can claim the Lost Spell,” Myrmeen murmured. “And even if that prize isn’t forthcoming, they’ll have left a lot of powerful rivals behind, forever.”
“No contingencies, in all this spell-chaos,” Mirt agreed.
Myrmeen looked at Elminster. “That’s not going to stop them trying, though, is it?”
He shook his head, and she turned and strode away with Mirt to fetch Tabra, whose lodgings were farthest distant from Maraunth Torr’s bedchamber; Malchor and Manshoon were much closer to hand, and could be collected on their return trip.