by Ed Greenwood
“And courtiers deem we nobles ‘rude,’ ” Arclath told the ceiling.
Storm put a quelling hand on his arm, and told Glathra, “Indeed he could be. Yet I’ve spoken with him on many recent occasions, spending more time with him than any other person alive, and can tell you that Elminster very much wants to work with the wizards of war-behind the scenes, that is, neither threatening the independence of the Dragon Throne nor awakening fears among your nobility that yet another sinister wizard seeks to make them dance to his desires. He’ll contact you when he can. Service to Mystra governs him now, and has hold of him.”
“I accept that,” King Foril announced. “Let us have no more dispute as to the truth of what Lady Storm has told us. We can trust that Elminster is done with taking Cormyr’s enchanted items, and would be our ally. Good.” He nodded to Ganrahast and Glathra as if giving them a silent command, started to turn away … and then turned around again to give Storm a level look. “And you? Can we count on your loyalty?”
Storm regarded him calmly. “I am Mystra’s servant first, and a Harper second, but serving and defending Cormyr has been one of my dearest strivings for some centuries now. Ask Alusair or Vangey, and you’ll hear those words affirmed. I’ll help Cormyr in any way I can, that Mystra forbids not.”
“You speak of the Lost Goddess as though she yet lives,” Ganrahast observed thoughtfully.
“Yes,” Storm replied challengingly, “I do. Doubt not my sincerity nor sanity, Royal Magician. To do so would be a mistake.”
Glathra shook her head. “Does anyone here suppose, just suppose, that you can be induced to tell us a little of what’s been going on, this last tenday or so? Your running around the palace day and night, to the haunted wing and the royal crypt and seemingly every last broom closet we possess; the Sage of Shadowdale jauntily stealing all of our royal treasures that bear the slightest enchantments; that parade of you and the rest striding into the palace to use the Dalestride Portal … all of that?”
Storm smiled. “How much time can you spare? There’s a lot to tell …”
CHAPTER FIVE
DEADLY GOOD BREEDING
Dear tart,” Mirt growled wittily, in his best imitation of an alluring purr, “have a tart.”
The longer-limbed of the two beautiful and uninhibited ladies he’d hired for the evening gave him an impish smile and opened her mouth to receive the honey tart Mirt was offering her. The Lord of Waterdeep obligingly stuffed it in.
Then he sank back, a little light-headed. The scent of the mulled wine that filled their shared tub was getting up his nose, and beginning to slosh around in his head. Stars and sea storms, but he could get used to this!
“None for me, lord?” his other companion-aye, Lhareene, that was her name-pouted in his ear, the laughter lacing her voice reassuring him that she was jesting.
“Plenty for you, m’dear,” Mirt replied, turning to kiss her. There was already a tart in Lhareene’s mouth, and a strong thrust of her tongue shared it with him.
The Lord of Waterdeep found himself grinning through the inevitable shower of crumbs. Lhareene deftly glided up his chest, gently submerging him in wine until it started to soften the tart and sail it down his throat.
The taller pleasure lass-Arelle, aye, he must get back into the habit of remembering names, truly-reached past him to pluck some of the spiced and nut-studded sugared fruits from among the tarts on the floating platter. Mirt watched her consume them with as much hungry wanton abandon as if they’d been her lovers, and chuckled as he sank down under the wine and then surged up again, in a location and manner that evoked an explosion of mirth and a flurry of smooth limbs brushing against him.
He was really enjoying it in Suzail.
Free of the role of well-known target he’d grown all too used to in the City of Splendors, for one thing. Suzail wasn’t half as large or wealthy or raw as his beloved Deep, but it offered plenty of excitement and danger, ready pleasures-for-hire such as those he was enjoying right now, and … well, he’d been thrust right into the heart of important doings, in a realm where things were happening. All in all, he was more alive, and having more fun, than he’d been for many a year.
“Lord,” Arelle murmured, sliding over his wine-slick chest, “will you take … more?” She scooped up a handful of sugared, cinnamon-tinged icing and held it out to him.
“After I take care of this icing?” he jested, and her eyes danced.
“Of course.”
Not wanting to be left out of things, Lhareene wormed her way up his other arm … “Aye,” Mirt decided contentedly, aloud but telling himself more than either of his tubmates, “I’ll stay here a while longer, I will.”
Stay, rather than making the long, bone-jolting wagon or saddle trek to Waterdeep. Seeing as magic seemed to have become far less reliable, with fewer mages abroad who could casually teleport an aging Lord of Waterdeep across half Faerun for any sort of affordable fee with much of a chance at all he’d arrive at his intended destination alive and … unaltered.
Elminster preened.
The tall, slender mirror was undamaged, the bedchamber around it untouched by the ravages of the glaragh. It was an odd, curlicued and dagged crescentiform shape, its “glass” a sheen-smooth sheet of polished mica that had been enspelled into a single gleaming sheet of black that reflected what stood before it.
Right now, that was Elminster in his newfound body. He turned it this way and that, setting his long, lithe legs to strike pose after hip-foremost pose.
This young body looked as good as it felt. Strong, supple, shapely-if a bit sharp-featured, both about the face and below-and attractive, oh yes, by Mystra and Sharess both …
He turned and watched himself-heh, herself, now-move, in the mirror.
“Hungry goddesses, aye,” he murmured, turning again to thrust his behind at his reflection, augmenting it with an impudent flash of his tongue. “I might even fancy myself. Not that many men would dare pursue such a fancy far, given the reputation drow ah, enjoy …”
Oh, have done, old goat. I was never this bad, even at my youngest and most ardent! We’re in a hurry, remember? Portals? Spider-kissing priestesses? Perhaps a bored glaragh coming back?
“Lady,” El protested, “spare me a moment, at least. D’ye know how long I’ve been in pain, dragging around an aging carcass that failed me a mite more and a mite more with each passing day?”
Elminster, I do. Yet think on this: you’ll have that aging to do all over again, dragging yourself around the Realms for another thousand years, or if not that, still long after I’m no more than a memory. A fading memory …
“Ye’ll not be forgotten, lady,” El said swiftly. “This I swear.”
He struck another pose. “Now enjoy this with me! Regard the sleek line of flank, hip, thigh, and calf! I’ve never had that before!”
Not for lack of trying-if half I’ve heard about you is true, Symrustar said tartly. And you sound like a butcher deciding where to land his cleaver!
Elminster made a rude sound, waved one long-fingered hand in a less than polite gesture, and glided into another pose with fluid grace.
Ah, but it was good to have a body that obeyed his will again-without stiffenings and stabs of pain and ever-present aches!
El squatted deep and then sprang high, again and again, in a series of frog hops across the room, just because he could, ere joyously doing a cartwheel through the door into an antechamber that seemed to be half wardrobe and half armory.
He swept up out of it to the tinkling accompaniment of delighted laughter in his mind. Symrustar evidently approved.
Now to cover his oh-so-velvet and shapely newfound hide …
He cared not if this body strode the Realms unclad in any of the various diaphanous drapery robes-hideously hued in dunglike, glistening mauves and yellows, wherever they weren’t black or sluggish-blood russet-he’d seen on most unarmored fallen she-drow around the riven citadel, but he did fancy some of the black drow armor. Th
e lesser leather sort, rather than the fluted, pointed glass stuff. And knives, aye, he’d have himself some of those. There were wicked-sharp little obsidian daggers everywhere, their black blades upswept and beautifully balanced for throwing-and he’d always loved a good throwing knife.
Why, he’d taken down a magelord with a knife in the eye once, about twelve centuries back, and then there’d been that little duel in Cormanthor. Not to mention slicing a finger off that Zulkiir to ruin the spell the Thayan had been so proud of, and-
Is all this rolling around in past glories going to take long? In the depths of his mind, Symrustar sounded decidedly waspish. “Long” isn’t something I can spare much of, any more …
“Sorry,” El grunted, and he started to search. Hurriedly.
Despite that haste, it took him quite a while to find armor that fit properly-local dark elf fashion was skintight, which made finding the right garments rather important-but clouts and undercorsets and daggers in clip-on sheaths were plentiful. Good clouts had many uses, so El took an armful. Then he strapped daggers all over his body, not forgetting to fasten two sideways beneath his small, sleek breasts and a trio down inside the front of the corset to serve as extra armor.
“Not what a dark elf of good breeding might do,” El murmured, “but I fear I’ll never be that. Corrupt and fallen human, me.” He twirled, just to feel such a spin done without pain, and laughed aloud as a thought struck him. “I’ll be able to wear some of those splendid thigh-high boots! I’ve got the legs for it at last!”
Trying on the wrong boots can be painful, he discovered, but he was soon shod in comfortably fitting, soft lizardskin boots of a shining ebony hue. The mirror, at least, very much liked the look of them.
Deep in his mind, Symrustar snorted. Loudly.
Now a proper sword-the drow blades on hand all had wicked curves rather than a long, straight reach, but with this supple body he could dance in and out against a foe, rather than leaning and reaching as had slowly become his habit down the years, as his own aging body had gone gaunt and stiff. And he would need a staff.
Then he’d need two grapnel-ended climbing cords of the sort drow patrols hereabouts always carried; they could be tied around the trim waist he now had, riding on the largest hips he’d ever possessed. Then a shoulder sack, and food and drink-especially drink-to make that sack bulge to the last notches on its straps.
Hurry, man. You’re worse than an elf maiden primping for her first revel!
“Oh, I doubt that, lass,” El muttered, rushing along passages in search of kitchens or pantries to ransack. “I very much doubt that.”
He found both almost immediately by literally stumbling into a small dining chamber dominated by an oval table heaped with slumped, mindless drow. The food under them was almost all crushed or spilled, but archways at the back of the room led into similar feasting rooms clustered around a central kitchen-a kitchen connected to larder after larder.
Dodging collapsed or wandering drow who had no minds left to notice a boldly wayward priestess in warriors’ armor clambering among them, El ransacked the citadel’s food stores at will. The good wine was all in fluted, fragile, utterly impractical bottles and decanters, but the soldiers’ swill was in double-thickness skin belt pouches, and there was cheese, thin hard-smoked pack lizard steaks, and plentiful vallart, the dark, chewy crescentiform wayfarers’ bread favored by many near-surface drow.
He took all he could stow, along with a battered metal mug a cook had been using as a measuring cup and a wickedly sharp little carving knife as long as one of his newly gained little fingers, thrust everything into two shoulder sacks that rode one atop the other like ungainly bulging bladders, one of them half-full of someone’s huge, rock-dust-soiled, dark old cloak, and departed the ruined citadel, heading the way the glaragh had: with his face into that faint breeze that blew along the passage.
That Underdark wind just might be coming from the Realms Above, the lands he knew, and provided the only firm direction point in this endless subterranean labyrinth. Symrustar was right-
Of course.
Aye, and thank ye. Symrustar was right: he did not want to tarry overlong, and be caught there when more drow arrived and saw what had happened to their mighty fortress.
No, he wanted to be back in the surface lands, as swiftly as he could get there without blundering into death for his new body, or great delays. Not that he could call to mind any ways up that should be nearby.
He recalled the places he wanted to avoid, all right. Haunted Ooltul, with its phaerimm and beholders, and the patrols of giants that ranged out from Maerimydra. Yet if he stayed too distant from those perils, he risked walking right into the drow hunting bands that would become ever more numerous and frequent, the closer he got to Cormyr-and the drow city of Sschindylryn.
There were ways that rose-if they’d survived the initial tumult of the Spellplague, and the century or so since-up into caverns in the Stonelands, and some in the Storm Horns, too …
The Thunder Peaks routes might be best, if the dragons and dracoliches that laired in their uppermost caverns were gone, asleep, or preoccupied. Hah; if. Those ways would bring him to the surface on the easternmost border of Cormyr, where the Purple Dragon outposts were few and scattered. He had spells enough that he should be able to evade the notice of Cormyr’s soldiery and easily reach the heart of the realm, where he could begin to follow Mystra’s commands. Which he recalled precisely: “By any means you deem best-becoming their head or turning their leaders to my service-recruit Cormyr’s wizards of war. They must become the ready allies, helping hands, and spies for all my Chosen.”
If he conducted himself properly, El could do that without instantly coming to Manshoon’s attention. Oh, that malevolently twisted one would notice him soon enough, and would need dealing with sooner or later … but for now, if El could manage matters thus, let it be later. He’d seen too many men and women-and Fair Folk, too-fall into the folly of fighting a favorite rival, spending their lives seeking to thwart and eradicate a foe; ere long, that striving became all their lives held and accomplished.
And you haven’t taken that very same fall? Symrustar’s voice rang through his mind in challenge. Don’t tell me you’re such a fool that you can’t see that!
El sighed. “I see it all too clearly, lady. I’ve spent century after century being slapped across the face by such an obvious conclusion, after all.”
And so?
“And so, Elminster of Shadowdale has more important work to do than to hold hard to any one foe or task. Since I began to avenge my family by bringing down the magelords, and in doing so learned my gift for the Art, I learned I could be more than a skulking slayer, and that Divine Mystra desired my service. Since then, I have always had more important work to do.”
When we first met, I was drifting, seeing no fitting cause or reward, only corruption and decadence and a slow decline for my family and my city. That was part of my fascination with you: you had many things ahead of you; I could feel it.
El grinned. “All too often,” he told that inner voice, “I felt it, too. Usually the lash of a spell, but sometimes the kiss of a blade.”
All right, clevermouth. So, the Thunder Peaks?
“The Thunder Peaks,” he confirmed. Those routes appealed for another reason, too. They crossed and crisscrossed, and ultimately came to the surface in a dozen different caverns or more. There was always a good chance not all of those caves would be blocked, occupied, or guarded.
Aye, he’d seek them, to arrive in the borderlands of Cormyr and there, far from Suzail and the watchful eyes of Manshoon, or for that matter Vangerdahast or Glathra, seek to join the war wizards under another name. Either in this new body, explaining it away as the result of a magical mishap-a lost spell duel, perhaps-or in another one, if a human body somehow became available. Then he’d take the slower but better road, making friends among them so as to rise in respect and usefulness, and spread his influence that way.
You make it all sound so easy. I hope it proves to be.
“So do I,” El murmured, as he went cautiously on down the passage, well aware of the perils facing any lone creature on the move in the Underdark.
Surprisingly, he felt not the slightest foreboding, and his earlier rage had vanished. Now, he was almost merry; happier and more carefree than he’d felt in a long time.
Why so?
My, Symrustar was swift.
He grinned, and found himself saying, “Well, I’m back at work, serving Mystra-and that striving is what my life holds to, and accomplishes.”
He walked along humming silently to himself, utterly contented.
Though he’d been lonely and longing for someone-anyone-to visit, to speak with him, to just to say his name, Rorskryn Mreldrake was less than happy now that it had happened. He was scared.
Just one cowled man had entered Mreldrake’s prison, though he’d glimpsed-been shown-a man-high roiling darkness through the briefly half-open door that warned him his visitor was not alone.
It was one of the hooded wizards. He’d brought a sack heavy with cloth bags and small, fragile clay jars-no glass, nothing metal that could be used to cut or pierce-and set it down with the words: “The magical needs you so calmly requested.”
Mreldrake had flushed at that, remembering his own angry shouts through the locked and bolted door. He’d lacked this and that-and any measure of patience, too.
Yet any mage as excited as he was over his work would be impatient to get on with it. For the first time in his life, he was creating something useful and important. Something more than a mere clever variant of a spell crafted by someone else, centuries ago. Something … new. Something his captors were interested in, which confirmed his suspicion that they were magically spying on him.