Spellstorm

by Ed Greenwood

  Whereupon angry words were exchanged within the gate, in a tongue unfamiliar to her—and the gate erupted in a dozen snakelike columns of purple-black fire that doubled back around the gate to quest for her, wavering back and forth as they came not out of any lack of control, but in a deliberate attempt to fill the cellar so that there would be no avoiding them.

  And wherever they touched the stacked crates stored in the cellar, those crates melted away as if licked by a volcano—literally vaporized, leaving only momentary plumes of greasy black smoke behind.

  Shaaan swiftly called on the energies of the gate to empower a defensive web that would gather in and ensnare those snakes of dark flame reaching for her, so she could hurl them all back at the gate that had spawned them. And if they should happen to bathe her two opponents in this ludicrous spell duel in flooding fire, reducing them to charred bones or less, what would really be the loss?

  Nothing she’d mourn in the slightest. A notoriously crazed and eccentric family of wizards would lose their patriarch and most sober-minded member—a loss risked daily by every family that dabbled in the Art—and the creator and longtime head of one of the nastier organizations to infest Faerûn would be swept away, one more time, to either make Manshoon extinct at last, or give way to yet another in the long, long line of echoes of Manshoon the Manyfaced.

  That second loss might well make her a hero to many.

  Not that she was feeling heroic at this particular moment, with flaming purple-black death reaching for her, and the foes she was standing against unable to successfully shape spells to send against her …

  Working coolly, with not an instant to waste, she shifted the web with her mind to intercept column after racing column of flame, as they bored through the air closer and closer—

  More crates melted away. She had to get every last reaching snake of flame, or her body would suffer the same immolation as those crates … just five left now, and she was having to back away to win herself time to snare them. Yet retreat carefully, for the way back through the stacked storage was neither wide nor straight …

  Four left, three—but each of this last trio seemed to have a mind of its own, seeking her at different speeds and in different directions.

  And although it felt wrong, seemed almost suicidal to do so, the best thing to do was to move right into their midst, bringing her web with her, so the reaching snakes of flame rolled into its curving clutches before they had time to veer too far apart.

  And while she still had room and time enough to haul on the web and use it like a giant sling to fling the snakes of flame back at their source.

  Like … so.

  Last three snared, she sprinted forward three steps and planted her feet, then swung her entire body in a mighty curving throw, and—

  Purple-black flames roared at the gate itself and struck it, exploding like waves crashing ashore against a great prow of natural rock, spewing great washes of purple-black flame everywhere. Malchor and Manshoon were leaping for their lives, and the gate itself was shuddering, its deep blue glow flaring bright white and immediately dying away to black dimness, then flaring white again …

  Purple-black flames spattered against walls and ceilings and melted them, while amid the spreading destruction, the air shuddered and shrieked and thundered, tearing apart in great rents of spewing radiation that promptly closed again, only to reopen anew. The gate groaned and started to lean, as if it was going to topple and crash, but furious voices hissed spells from within it, and deep blue flames sprouted out of empty air to race madly over its surface in all directions, richocheting and rebounding, and—

  “Embraces of Mystra, woman, what have ye done?” Elminster snarled from behind Shaaan, and she whirled around in time to see him spread his arms wide, hands like two claws cupping empty air—and along those arms the air glowed blue-white, hundreds of rushing, shifting, racing strands becoming visible in the air that elsewhere looked dark and empty—and then he slowly brought his hands together, to point at the gate.

  And roiling, melting-all purple-black flames came rebounding from all sides to curve in the air like mighty ocean waves, curling down and around to race along the line of Elminster’s pointing fingers, right at the dark and featureless backside of the gate.

  It swallowed them as if they didn’t exist, more and more flames simply vanishing into that silent and serene black oval of utter darkness whose blue-glowing edge flared briefly, gouting out tendrils of blue flame, and then—

  Burned out, in a sudden black and lopsided collapse into darkness, angry voices cut off as if by a knife.

  The gate was no more, and the cellar was suddenly empty of blue glows and purple-black flames and all other manifestations of magic. The spells being angrily hurled by Manshoon and Malchor shivered into nothingness.

  “How did you do that?” Shaaan asked, more protestingly than expecting a useful answer to her question.

  “Weavemaster,” El said tersely, jerking his thumb in the direction of his own chest. “Ye let out enough wild energy to furnish me with ample power to shut down and destroy an operating gate. Liches or no liches.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “They just had a door slammed on their noses. They won’t forget that, Shaaan Serpent Queen. Ye might want to learn how to run. And hide.”

  “Oh,” Shaaan blurted out, taken aback for a moment.

  And then she recovered herself and her mounting anger, and snarled, “So you’ve meddled again, and this time in my affairs once more. Well, I’ll just—”

  But the spell she flung at him did nothing at all. She cast it, and … nothing happened. From the other end of the cellar, Manshoon laughed.

  At her, damn him.

  She turned to give him a furious glare and hurl a spell his way that would be far more than a stinging slap, and—

  Again, nothing happened. She was down two of her strongest spells with nothing at all to show for it.

  Cast and … gone.

  “Boo,” a pain-racked and feeble voice whispered in her ear, startling Shaaan more thoroughly than she’d been taken aback in a long time.

  She backed up so suddenly she almost fell. There was no one there. It must be that damned ghost princess.

  “I will destroy you all,” Shaaan hissed at Elminster, and the inevitable fat man and sleek woman peering from well behind him, and the invisible Alusair.

  “Some other day, perhaps,” Elminster told her. “And perhaps not.” He took a step toward her. “Perhaps,” he added, as severely as a child’s disapproving tutor, “ ’tis high time ye learned to create and help and aid, Shaaan Surbraor, rather than destroy.”

  Shaaan hissed wordless hatred at him this time, retreating still farther. How did he know her surname? No one still alive knew that name!

  “Mystra knows it,” Elminster told her quietly, “wherefore, now, so do I.”

  He’s reading my thoughts? Shaaan had suffered quite enough. She turned and fled into the darkness.

  But not far. Into the next cellar, where she could peer back through a hole newly burned by lich-flames hurled by her web, and see and hear what happened in the cellar she’d just left.

  What happened was that Manshoon turned on his heel and fled back up the grand staircase, leaving the Harpell mage standing alone.

  Malchor gave Elminster a weary look, then turned and headed for the staircase Manshoon had just vanished up, not hurrying. To Shaaan, he looked like a man who felt that the trip back to his room was a long trudge indeed.

  After that, Elminster asked the empty air, “Luse, how bad is it?”

  And the empty air replied, “Bad. Yet I seem to be getting used to it, damn you very much.”

  “The snake,” Mirt remarked, coming forward, “sleepeth not.”

  “The kitchen,” Myrmeen ordered sharply. “Without their magic, and with us camping on the food so the Serpent Queen can’t poison it, they’ll all keep. I’m famished.”

  At that moment, Shaaan’s stom
ach growled so loudly that Elminster and Mirt turned to peer in her direction. It seemed she was famished, too.

  And suddenly so weary of it all that she found she hadn’t the slightest enthusiasm for racing to the kitchen to poison anything.

  Silently she turned away, and started the long, roundabout trudge back to her own room.

  CHAPTER 21

  This Isn’t Over Yet

  I DON’T KNOW ABOUT YOU,” MIRT GROWLED AT MYRMEEN, FROM WHERE he was kneeling and raking out the hearth, “but I cook better whenmy stomach isn’t a protestingly empty chasm.”

  The former Lady Lord of Arabel gave him a look. “There’s a part of me that gazes upon your impressively large and rotund belly, Lord of Waterdeep, and protests inwardly that the sort of innards that swell such an, ah, achievement could never be any sort of empty chasm, protesting or otherwise—but then there’s another part of me that has been very, very hungry while preparing a meal, and agrees with you wholeheartedly.”

  “Ah,” Mirt replied happily, “then pray take my lordly advice and listen to that second part of you. It’s wiser than the first, which seeks to judge from outward appearance only. Never a good idea, in any field of endeavor or situation.” The two of them had just made and fed Elminster a hearty meal, and shared it with him, and were now nearly finished preparing dishes chosen because they wouldn’t spoil if left to cool, and would still be pleasant when reheated a day later.

  “El,” Myrmeen said to the tall, thin man unhurriedly washing dishes at the sink, “It’s almost time to ring the gong.”

  “Ye’d like me to do it rather than Mirt?”

  “No, I just wanted you forewarned. I don’t like to startle Weavemasters who can humble archmages and liches in the heart of a wild spell duel, and shut down ancient and powerful gates, to boot.”

  Elminster chuckled. “Mreen, ye’d be surprised at how little I can do, startled or otherwise, in some situations. Thank ye for the warning.”

  Mirt took the last roasting pan off the heat and covered it with its dome. “Strike it now?” he asked eagerly, flexing his fat fingers.

  “Now,” Myrmeen and El agreed, and watched the old moneylender wipe his hands, and head for the great gong that would summon anyone hearing it to a meal.

  Not that there were all that many left …

  And then, amid the slowing bustle of the kitchen, the voice of Alusair piped up from the air right in front of Mirt.

  “I bring word of yet more trouble, I fear.”

  “Ye gods, don’t do that, Princess!” Mirt snarled. “My heart—!”

  “You still have one, old rogue? Good to know! Heed, please, all of you: something that smells like roast boar cooking—but mingled with something less pleasant—is coming from Malchor’s room. I tarried, wondering if I should go through the keyhole to spy, and heard a rather horrible bubbling scream from inside the room, followed by feeble moaning.”

  “Thank ye, Luse!” El snapped, pulling his hands out of the soapy water and drying them. “Everything off the heat and safe to leave? Good! Lock and bar all the doors, Mreen, except this one; I’ll lock it when we leave. Mirt, bring the sack of antidotes. Let’s hasten!”

  “Bloody archmages,” the Lord of Waterdeep complained as they hurried out. “When will they be finished killing each other?”

  “When there’s none of them left,” Myrmeen replied tartly.

  Elminster sighed. “I wish ye were wrong, lass, but I very much doubt ye are.”

  EL FINALLY FOUND the right key, unlocked the door with a rattling sound that seemed almost angry, and shoved it open.

  The fireplace was lit. The unhealthy reek was coming from it, and no wonder. Three severed human heads were burning in the grate.

  “Alastra, Yusendre, and Skouloun,” Myrmeen murmured, shaking her head.

  “Our scaly mage was trying to make very sure the fallen stayed fallen,” El said grimly, as he and Mirt bent over the three bodies sprawled on the bedchamber floor.

  Shaaan lay on her back, most of her fingers severed; they were scattered around the room, amid much blood. Her hands had been pinned gorily to the carpeted floor by daggers driven through both palms, and her throat had been thoroughly, deeply cut.

  “No yellow on her fingers,” Mirt said with a frown. “I’d thought …” His voice trailed away as he stared at who was lying on either side of the dead Serpent Queen.

  Facedown and moaning faintly as their bodies jerked in the last fading throes of various poisons, lay the two men who’d killed Shaaan: Malchor and Manshoon.

  “Feed them half of every antidote bottle we brought,” El ordered briskly, “and then the restful sleep draft. I am not losing every last one of the archmages who gathered here. That would shame us and the Lady I serve, too.”

  Myrmeen looked at him. “Some of the antidotes will clash, El. It could be fatal.”

  El shrugged. “If we miss giving them the wrong ones, they’re dead anyway.”

  “Good point,” she agreed, and set about it. “This Malchor was decent enough, for an archmage. Better than many. As for Manshoon …” She shrugged, then looked at Elminster. “You’d miss him, wouldn’t you? A right familiar old enemy.”

  Elminster sighed, nodded, and asked Mirt, “Found any wounds?” The moneylender had just finished rolling the two men over. The eyes of both were rolled up in their heads, and their mouths were slack and ringed with dripping foam.

  “Just scratches from her nails—oh, and a right deep gash across the back of Manshoon’s hand here. Looks like he backhanded her dagger out of her hand.” Mirt looked across the room, then pointed at where a roundel needleblade stood proud out of the frame of a bookshelf. “And it ended up yonder.”

  El went and retrieved it. He peered hard at the blade, then shook his head and tossed it into the fire, drawing one of his own daggers from inside his boot.

  When he cut away Manshoon’s clothing to bare ribs and a taut belly, Myrmeen frowned at him. “El, what’re you doing?”

  “Obeying Mystra,” El replied, holding his hand a fingerwidth above the unconscious Zhent’s flesh and moving it around as if sensing something.

  After a moment he nodded, pointed at a particular spot, and made a careful incision there. Ignoring the sudden gush of blood, he started calmly cutting deeper.

  “I will never understand archmages,” Mirt growled, watching. “Cutting his throat’s easier—you can’t miss it, just as these two dolts couldn’t miss hers.”

  A moment later, Elminster carefully drew forth something large and spindle-shaped that glowed faintly through coursing blood, and held it up.

  Then he murmured a spell of healing over the wound he’d made, and ordered Mirt, “Bind him up. There’re smallcloths behind yon screen, in the garderobe corner.”

  “You can heal?”

  “ ’Tis an unusual circumstance,” the Sage of Shadowdale replied gravely, waving the spindle. “This holds some of the divine fire of the goddess Mystryl.”

  Mirt and Myrmeen both peered at it. “The goddess of magic before Mystra? So that’s how old?”

  El sighed. “Don’t make me count. I hate counting. I was never good at sums.”

  “So now what?”

  “Put these two wounded wizards to bed. Calathlarra’s room should do for Malchor, and we’ll put Manshoon in Maraunth Torr’s. Under guard, both of them. Luse, are ye up to being Lord Halaunt right now?”

  “And miss all the fun by saying otherwise?” came the voice from the air. “No fear!”

  “Then Mirt, Myrmeen, and I shall stand guard over Malchor—who deserves to survive this disaster of a wizard moot, if anyone does—and ye, as Lord Halaunt, watch over Manshoon. We’ll leave the doors open, so we can call alarm to each other from room to room.”

  “Standing guard,” Mirt growled. “This isn’t over yet?”

  “Nay,” El replied wryly. “There’s still someone who will try to get in and finish them.”

  IN THE END, Elminster never stopped strolling back an
d forth between the two adjacent bedchambers, talking to all three of his companions.

  He was not surprised, after about his fortieth time departing the room where Lord Halaunt was sitting vigil over the still-sleeping Manshoon, to hear a small sound far down the passage. He went on into the other bedchamber, resumed conversing there as if nothing at all was amiss—and then suddenly turned in midword, marched back out into the passage, and returned to the room he’d just left.

  Whose door was just being quietly pushed closed—until it fetched up against his swiftly planted boot.

  The closer drew it open again to see what was blocking the door’s swing—and found herself staring into the face of Elminster.

  “Well met again, Tabra,” he said politely. “Isn’t it about time ye abandoned the profession of murderer?”

  Tabra stared back at him, eyes blazing—and then sighed, slumped in dejection, and turned away, heading across the bedchamber for the vacant chair Alusair had just brought Halaunt up out of, to stand and bar the way to Manshoon.

  El followed the limping archmage, hearing Mirt and Myrmeen hurrying in through the door behind him. He didn’t order them back to go on guarding Malchor.

  They all ended up standing around the seated Tabra in a watchful ring.

  As El asked her calmly, “So, Lady Tabra … ye slew Skouloun, then Yusendre, and finally Calathlarra. So tell me now: why do ye want to destroy Malchor and Manshoon?”

  The look in Tabra’s mismatched eyes could have set parchment ablaze.

  “With power comes responsibility,” she replied flatly, “and that goes for power in the Art as much as it does for crowns and thrones and grand titles. You should know that, Elminster Aumar, better than almost all mortals! You should stand with me on this! You threw down the Most High, who’d so overreached himself and who treated those not of his city like cattle—and it was you who made sure all of us were penned in here in Oldspires together. Wasn’t this why? So you could purge our battered old world of one lot of foul villains of wizardry? I burn to exterminate Thultanthans, for they are a blight on the rest of us foolhardy, power-hungry tyrants who despoil whatever they seek to rule. Is that judgment of them not truth?”