by Ed Greenwood
“My hero!” she gasped over the tangled barrier of furniture, her eyes alight. “No one ever fought to the death for me before!”
She tossed aside the splintered chair leg she’d been ready to club the wrong intruder with, and started flinging aside elements of barricade with furious energy and a fine disregard for dated styles of furniture, to welcome her right intruder.
“You deserve a reward,” she panted, when she’d cleared enough for her to drag Mirt into the room. “Come and claim it.”
A moment later, she demonstrated those words had been a command, not mere suggestion or entreaty, by taking hold of his blood-soaked belt and hauling, hard.
They fell into the waiting tent together.
“He’s shaking,” the drow murmured warningly to Gulkanun, nodding her head at Longclaws as the spell-cursed war wizard staggered wearily into his room and slammed its door.
“Means he’s exhausted,” Gulkanun said tersely. “He did most of my ward work, knowing I had to last the night awake standing watch. With you.”
The dark elf nodded. Longclaws had been the last of their colleagues to retire to a room. All of her suggested alterations of the wards were done, and everyone was beyond tired. She and Gulkanun regarded each other, neither of them smiling. Silence fell. In it, the curvaceous dark elf strolled slowly toward Gulkanun.
“I would prefer you kept your distance,” he muttered.
“You still don’t trust me,” she murmured accusingly, still advancing.
“Back,” he ordered her sharply.
Not slowing her same leisurely pace, she came right up to him, and reached out with one slender, long-fingered hand. Those fingers were reaching for … his wrist-of the hand he was using to grasp the butt of a still-sheathed wand.
Out from behind Gulkanun’s back, snake-swift, came his other hand, with a long needle in it, to jab that dusky drow hand.
“I suspected you’d try something, drow!” he said grimly. “I’ll-”
Her arms were closing around him, needle-transfixed hand and all, as he snarled and snatched out that wand, to feed her-
Nothing at all, as he stiffened and went silent. Frozen and helpless.
Elminster had flowed through feebly and vainly clawing dark elf fingers into Gulkanun-and overwhelmed the war wizard’s mind.
It took Manshoon some time to find any wizards at all in Hultail. Farmers taking slowly creaking carts to market could be seen everywhere, filling the muddy streets, but were well outnumbered by unhappily bawling rothe, goats, lambs, and oxen penned outside the fleshers’ and butcher’s yard. There was even activity at the wagon sheds, where a Moonsea-run wagon needed a new wheel and rails yestereve at the latest.
Yet there was no sign of the modest keep he’d expected to find. It wasn’t until he caught sight of a small tile-roofed stone cottage half-hidden under some sprawling old trees at the back of the moat-and-palisade-surrounded Watch yard that he saw what he was looking for-a line of wizards’ robes hung out on a washline.
Real dusk was drawing down, and a lamp was lit in that cottage, but only one man emerged to take in that washing before dewfall. A lone, unconcerned man, who waved cheerfully at the various members of the Watch who were-with their armor off, down to their breeches and shoulder braces-dumping out kitchen wash water into a pit ere returning to their barracks. So the duty war wizards in Hultail were sadly depleted in numbers, it seemed. Three down to one, without anyone seeming alarmed in the slightest. Which meant they were on duty nearby or out on a mission.
Manshoon fetched himself another decanter from what he’d been able to salvage from Dardulkyn’s cellar, sat back at his ease, and farscried around Hultail anew. Finding a continued distinct lack of wizards.
So, as real darkness came down, he peered along the Wyvernwater banks and up and down the Thunderflow, seeking blazing torches or activity. And still found nothing. The roads, then, the one to Thunderstone first.
There! Winking, bobbing lights … lanterns on lancepoles, held by mounted Purple Dragons. Armed and equipped for rough country, and riding in a ring around, yes, two wizards of war. Crown mages making speed through the night in wild country, which meant great urgency. They were heading for Thunderstone-and almost certainly, beyond Thunderstone, Castle Irlingstar. Well, now …
Yes, well now, indeed. Manshoon allowed himself a gleefully ruthless smile.
“So, my lords?” Young Lord Raegl Halgohar was handsome and charming and seldom had to pay to fill his bed. His dalliances of the early evening had been with two sisters from Suzail who’d clawed scratches he was quite proud of all down his back, before he’d left them to the hungry mercies of his groom and his page. He himself had proceeded to this gathering of noble wagerers with just his bodyguards-who were happily gossiping with the bullyblades of fellow wagering nobles in the outermost chamber, over the very best spiced eel fest bites. “Your faithful spell hurlers were yawning like bored cats on my way in, so I know you’ve been spell-watching the fun. How went the slaying of Rensharra Ironstave?”
Someone cursed feelingly, by way of reply.
“It did not go,” Lord Haeldown explained rather smugly. “As in, she did not die. Again.”
“Thanks to our fat and aging champion of a Lord of Waterdeep?”
“Indeed,” Lord Loroun said shortly. “That old rogue is costing me a fortune.”
“Whose?”
They all laughed politely at the old joke. It was an open secret among the Suzailan nobility that Loroun had moved from slavery and buying and selling city buildings into targeted moneylending that involved slaying his debtors and seizing all he could of their holdings before kin or other creditors arrived.
Lord Taseldon and Lord Haeldown wore satisfied smiles.
“Ah,” Halgohar interpreted, sitting down across from them. “You wagered against, again?”
“We did,” Taseldon confirmed, pushing a decanter and a tallglass across the table. “Join us in a drink to our continued success?”
“Gladly.” Halgohar looked down the table. “Loroun, where are you finding all these incompetent assassins? Accomplished killers can’t be in that short supply.”
“After all the attempted settling of scores between rival lords gathered here in Suzail for the council, you’d be surprised,” came the dark reply. “So many bodies were dumped in the harbor a few nights back that they blocked two main sewer grates. The Dragons were so gleeful when they started recognizing faces that they hushed it all up.”
“Hmm,” Halgohar commented, as a darker thought struck him. “I wonder how often that sort of hushing happens?”
Loroun’s smile held no mirth at all. “You’d be surprised.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
I AM THE AMBUSH
A h, ye used carrion crawler brain fluid. Good. The paralysis will soon pass, leaving this body as usable as before.
The voice inside Gulkanun’s head felt human, and male, and … old. Ancient and mighty, a mind of depth and power, accomplished in both worldly experience and in the Art. A mind that had seen much, done much, shaped magic for centuries …
You knew King Berost? Berost the Bold? You’re that old? Gulkanun thought.
I am. My name is Elminster. Aye, that Elminster. Best known these days as the Sage of Shadowdale. Widely rumored to be a madwits old mage who deludes himself into claiming to have been a Chosen of Mystra. I am mad, and old, and a mage-and that claim is true.
I … I … Gulkanun thought.
Be neither awed nor alarmed, Duth Gulkanun. Ye serve a worthy cause, and command respectable Art, and greater than that, good morals. Kindness, fairness, diligence; ye’d be surprised to know how truly rare these are, and ye have them all. Which is why I need ye-and Longclaws, and all the other worthy wizards of war of Cormyr, from Royal Magician Ganrahast to the rawest novices.
Need me? Need us? Gulkanun thought.
Aye. A door seemed to slowly swing wide in Gulkanun’s mind, spilling out bright glory … glory that rolle
d forward to embrace Duth Gulkanun, sweeping him along in a bright, rising flood that shared the goddess Mystra’s commandment to recruit the wizards of war to work for a better future for Cormyr and all the Realms, a commandment laced with Elminster’s own excitement.
Gulkanun found himself ecstatic, moved by a greater joy than he’d ever felt before, a gleeful plunge into glorious certainty. He could believe this invader in his mind, trust this powerful intellect touching him, because he could see that it was all true. There truly was a goddess of magic come back from oblivion, a good and true and wonderful Mystra, and she had indeed commanded Elminster, her once and again servant, to find blueflame and seal rifts to guard the Realms, to recruit the wizards of war and bring new glory to Cormyr, and …
I have never been able to so clearly know I’m being given truth, before. It is … wonderful, beyond all wonder I’ve ever felt before. This is trust. Gulkanun thought.
It is. Now, will ye stop being suspicious of this beautiful dark elf? She was a fell and evil servant of Lolth before, though young and of little accomplishment, but she has no mind but mine, now. We should waste no more time, but work together henceforth.
Yes, oh yes! Starting how? What should we do right now? I-Gulkanun thought.
Rough hands were suddenly clawing at Gulkanun, pulling him away from the drow he dimly realized he’d been embracing like a lover.
He turned, mind a-tumble with Elminster and the glory he’d brought shining in it, to look into the angrily frowning face of Imbrult Longclaws.
Who’d silently opened his door and charged forth to haul his friend Gulkanun out of a dark and fell embrace, one hand outflung to shove the drow back and away with a fine disregard for feminine anatomy. “I thought she’d seduce you, the first farruking moment she got the cha …”
Imbrult’s rush of words faded into awed silence as the glory-and Elminster-flooded into his mind, too.
Under the lash of Vandur’s tongue and arrogance, he and Gulkanun had begun as fellow sufferers and silent allies, but become fast friends. They’d worked together for four long years, and liked and respected each other more than anyone else in either’s life. They were … El was showing them their gratitude and friendship for each other, how they truly felt. Their joined minds reeled. Duth’s thoughts and memories plunged into Imbrult’s, and vice versa, in a happy maelstrom of mingling and discovery.
Their faces were wet with tears, their arms were around each other, and they were making excited, inarticulate noises they only dimly noticed as the thoughts flashed back and forth among the two of them and Elminster. Around them and through them and cradling them, the great and glory-filled mind of Elminster …
We must do this! Oh, Cormyr! To banish hunger and want and treachery forever, and …, Imbrult thought.
Abruptly, their excited sharing was rudely interrupted again. This time it was Farland breaking the link. Gulkanun and Longclaws staggered, half-dazed.
The lord constable had torn the dark elf back and away from the two men, and held her with a dagger to her throat.
“I’ve heard all the tales about drow,” he growled, “and didn’t quite believe they were the seductresses some have said, but I guess …”
“It’s not what you think,” Gulkanun snapped.
Farland’s sneer was savage. “I guess not, hey, Saer Hurlspells?”
Then his face changed and he stiffened, trying to scream and failing. Something was flooding into his mind …
It was time to go adventuring again.
Oh, not in an overbold way that would alert the wizards of war and the entire court to his presence and ambitions. Not something even a nearby Harper would notice, unless one was actually standing by the roadside when he intercepted those two Crown mages who’d ridden out from Hultail.
No, this time he could revert to the way he’d fought in the early days, when the Zhentarim were a bright new idea and rising power, rather than rulers of anywhere or anyone. And he could do it with an assist from his own later days-and Chancsozbur’s tomb. It had been years since he’d even thought of that reckless fool. A man so steeped in his own overconfident stupidity as to think he could get away with swindling Manshoon. Breaking all his joints and leaving him with two worms to slide up his nose and devour him slowly from within had been a fitting fate for the dolt, but his service to Manshoon hadn’t ended there. Oh, no.
Lord Chess had been sent to seize Chancsozbur’s holdings and sell them off before his kin could arrive to claim them, and to use the coin to construct the elaborate tomb-a modest stone mausoleum on a wooded hillside near Masoner’s Bridge. The fool’s bones still lay in a great stone block of a coffin, its lid adorned with Chancsozbur’s effigy-and the floor concealing a stone-block-locked turntable that could be used to swivel the coffin aside and reveal a stair down to a lower chamber.
The men Chess had brought with him had made short bladework of Chancsozbur’s arriving kin, leaving no one to command the keys to the mausoleum save the Brotherhood. So for decades the Zhentarim had used the upper room as a smuggling way den, while in the room below their First Lord Manshoon had carefully stored several of his clones to await future needs. His other selves were all gone now, of course, awakened after deaths or taken elsewhere to more secure hideholds.
Yet all of that had left Manshoon knowing the tomb very well. Which made it a safe teleport destination. From there, he could readily translocate from landmark to landmark he could see ahead in the desired direction, to intercept those two war wizards. So the tomb awaited, only a teleport casting away …
Ah, but wait. Chores first. Banishing the scrying spheres, Manshoon cast the spell that hid most of Sraunter’s cellar-death tyrants and all-behind a false, conjured stone wall. Someone might blunder down here, a thief or busy-nosed Crown inspector or Watchman; everyone was suspicious of alchemists, after all. So let them find Sraunter’s noisome cesspit and the usual refuse of old broken furniture and the like, not a waiting row of undead beholders.
If an intruder broke his spell and saw what was behind it … well, they were on their own. He’d left his tyrants awake and under commandment to slay and pursue all life. If someone did unleash them, they’d probably still be hard at it when he got back. There was a lot of life in Suzail.
Gelnur Farland was drowning in shame and disgust and anguish. Mind-raped by a dark elf whose throat was right there under his blade, that he should have killed before she … What was this, by Crown and-?
The mind flooding into his was male, and human, and old, dark with the weight of many, many memories. A wizard’s mind, a-oh, no, no, was this a war wizard trying a mind-ream? Were they both going to be driven mad? Was it starting already? Was-
The intruding mind was as powerful as a looming castle, if he’d been a small toy cottage. An overwhelming dark and warm flood, it raced through his thoughts, his own memories, looking hard for something. Seeking … any evidence of disloyalty to the Crown, or that Gelnur Farland had anything to do with the murders in Irlingstar. And finding none, and smiling inside Gelnur’s head with such a flood of pleasure that Farland moaned aloud.
Who was this, by …
An old bearded mage walking alone, long of Shadowdale. Old Mage, Old Sage, he of all the tales about the Doombringer of Mystra, the man who’d been a maid and a …
He could see more and more of the intruder’s mind, and was being shown ever more of it, memories splendid and terrible, devils and dragons in the sky and the City of Song and terrible battlefields beyond counting …
Elminster am I. Aye, ye know me. I am the one of thy grandsire’s tales, and one of the stories told in the taverns about the Chosen of Mystra.
“By the fabled kisses of Alusair!” the lord constable gasped aloud.
Oh, a fitting oath, for they were sweet, they were indeed …
Whimsically, Elminster shared two vivid memories, thrusting the scenes into Farland’s mind like two turning, winking gems, one after the other.
The first … a fires
ide, by night, in the open forested wilds of northern Cormyr, among many laughing men in armor, making camp and hobbling mounts-splendid horses. Then walking among these merry noblemen in their bright armor to a tall woman who was unstrapping and tossing aside her own gleaming, firelit plates of armor, plate of the finest make, curved and molded to fit her sleek body … bared in the firelight. She turned to him with a bright smile and embraced him to take a kiss, not grant it … Alusair, young and warrior strong and proud, the spirited, wanton, wild princess …
The fireside faded, and in the darkness beyond it the second gem rushed up and swallowed Farland, plunging him into the dark stillness of an empty, cobwebbed, echoing high hall: the royal palace of Suzail, in the infamous haunted wing. And out of the gloom came a gliding shadow with the gleam of spectral armor and the same tumbling fall of hair and the same face, but older and etched by sadness and loss and fury after driving fury. It stole up swiftly, in a rush that embraced to take a kiss, but at the last moment hesitated to plead wordlessly for it … and cried what were but ghost shadows of tears when a kiss was granted. Followed by lips that hungered and brought icy searing pain as they stole the warmth of life from Elminster as he kissed her, Alusair the life-stealing ghost.
There ye go. Now ye know what ye swear by: Alusair’s fabled kisses, indeed.
Farland cursed then, shaken-and the oaths he used were far fouler and more colorful than the splendor he’d been shown.
He flung away his dagger and started to weep.
The tomb was far colder than he remembered.
Especially on this chill sort of morning. Ground mists were rising and streaming knee deep through the trees as Manshoon strolled out of the tomb and went looking for a distant spot in the right direction, to teleport to across the Wyvernwater, and from there east and north, from high place to high place. The Crown mages might have been foolish enough to ride all night, but more likely they’d made camp beside the road, slept just long enough to rest the horses, and would be journeying again about now.