Elminster Enraged sos-3

by Ed Greenwood

  Manshoon stretched and smiled. Choosing a high and distant field, he cast a teleport to take himself there. Then again, from Nuth Tammarsaer’s high east pasture to Rauntaun’s Tor. Thence to the ridge behind Lockspike Fang. Standing atop it, on wind-scoured rock in a chill breeze with a startled eagle taking wing from its favorite lookout perch away from him, he could look down on Orondstars Road.

  There. Twelve Purple Dragons riding in a ring around two mounted men not in armor: his war wizards. His prey.

  He chose the next bend in the road, so he could be standing nonchalantly waiting for them.

  His captors were back, and terror was like a cold white arm coiled through him, chill fingers tight around his heart.

  Mreldrake swallowed, then swallowed again. His throat was as dry as old bones, and he was trembling violently. He knew that they knew just how frightened of them he was … and he no longer cared.

  At least they were smiling.

  “We are pleased with your continued successes in the use of your new magic,” one said.

  “You’ve become quite adept at murder,” another added approvingly, like a tutor praising a young child.

  As he stared at them, standing facing him in the room they’d made his prison, almost close enough to touch, Mreldrake found himself suddenly longing to be back in the royal palace of Suzail. Even being under Manshoon’s hand had been better than this …

  He was quailing inwardly just as much as he was quaking outwardly. They could slay him at will. How then could he, dared he, try to delicately inform them he’d made himself essential to working the magic he’d developed, and therefore-he hoped-unexpendable?

  They were smiling at him now, almost fondly. Yet in their eyes, he could see it, yes, there was a glint of glee …

  “Your attempts to save your own hide by working yourself into your new spell have amused us greatly. Be aware that we’ve no intention of killing you.” Not yet, the tone of the captor’s voice added.

  Well of course not yet. Not when what he knew would be so useful in enabling them to swiftly and quietly conquer Cormyr.

  They came around the corner, riding easily in the brightening morning.

  Manshoon stood wide-footed, his arms folded across his chest, smiling faintly.

  “Power is mine, and I am power incarnate,” he murmured to himself as he watched the Purple Dragons frown, rein in, and bark a halt.

  One man, alone in the wild borderlands, by his pose so insolently sure of himself, either meant an archmage or the visible decoy for a hundred hidden outlaws waiting in ambush.

  “I am the ambush,” he announced politely. “All by myself. For I am an archmage, the mightiest you’ll ever meet in your lives. Which-with one exception-will be ending now.”

  Nonchalantly he released the spell he’d cast and held ready while waiting for them to ride into view.

  Twelve Purple Dragons and their mounts were suddenly shrieking, tumbling carrion, their cries dying abruptly as his whirlcone tightened around them and its unseen blades of force started dismembering them in midair. Bloody limbs bounced into the ditch behind them, where the road curved back toward civilization.

  “Ah, civilization,” Manshoon murmured, watching the two wizards survive unscathed thanks to their wards. Spent in saving them, of course, leaving them defenseless against his next spell. “We are far from it these days, aren’t we?”

  Their first frantic magics flared and burst against his shield as he calmly and unhurriedly cast another spell. When it was done, one of the war wizards stood scorched and dazed on the road, his robes aflame and his horse gone. Only the untouched Crown mage managed a second spell against Manshoon’s shield, taking it down. By then, the future emperor of Cormyr had unhurriedly worked another magic-and the scorched wizard of war had become two booted legs surrounded by ashes, standing in the middle of Orondstars Road.

  The surviving war wizard cast his strongest battle spell, rocking the road around Manshoon, whose conjured mantle absorbed the death sent so desperately to claim him. Its job done, the mantle sighed into nothingness, leaving him unguarded. By then, of course, he’d hurled a mind doom at the lone surviving Crown mage, and was inside the hapless fool’s head.

  He shattered and conquered his mind in less time than it took his victim to sigh.

  So this was enthusiastic young Wizard of War Jarlin Flamtarge. Well, well. Manshoon burned out his new minion’s war wizard ring until it had no powers left, and could no longer be traced from afar. Hultail was a remote post, neither important nor busy; Flamtarge hadn’t possessed a team ring.

  “Have a good journey,” Manshoon said politely to the horse, gentling its mind with one of the spells he was proudest of, one of the few restorative ones he’d ever mastered.

  Then he teleported back to Sraunter’s cellar in Suzail, but left his awareness mentally riding Wizard of War Jarlin Flamtarge. His newest mind pet, now riding on alone along Orondstars Road, bound for Castle Irlingstar.

  The Simbul plunged down out of a midnight sky feet first, her silver hair billowing behind her.

  Rushing up at her was a desolate, ruined keep, standing in a rugged vale deep in rocky wilderlands, a lonely riven fang.

  It was not unguarded; malgodemons and nabassu in great numbers flapped up from those crumbling dark parapets to challenge her.

  She plummeted, surrounded by a sphere of glowing blue radiance that faded into sudden visibility, a whirling open-work sphere outlined by the tightly curving orbits of many flying objects-no two alike, but all blazing with blueflame.

  The dark flying guardians came at her from all sides in a vicious storm, but she smote them from the sky with spells hurled forth from her ever-swifter-whirling cage of blueflame, a cage that seared and melted to sighing tatters every demon that blundered into it, keeping them from reaching her. The cage fell with her, to touch and melt through the keep’s stone walls as if they were but air and shadows.

  The cage descended still, drifting down, down through the heart of the ancient and riven fortress into an eerily glowing well in its depths. Yet another rift in the Realms, through which more demons were appearing, boiling forth in an endless fell stream.

  The Simbul clawed at the air around her to pull the cage in tight, and make of it the rift-rending dagger she would need.

  “As El would say,” she murmured aloud, “here we go again.”

  Dagger and all, she slid into purple-white agony.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  GIGGLING AND GUFFAWING

  Demons clawed at her, tearing at her hair and the smooth flesh of her shoulders. She heeded it not, lost in the icy fire of the rift as she fought it … quenched it … destroyed it.

  Leaving herself empty and weary, the blueflame items dulled and circling her slowly.

  Claws raked her again, more and more of them, as emboldened demons flooded in at her from all sides, erupting out of the dark recesses of the ruined fortress, trying to pounce on her, to drag her down, to rend her …

  Ducking and turning, slapping and entangling and tugging with her long silver tresses, The Simbul fought to keep from being overborne and buried under murderous demon bodies. Battling to stay on her feet, she blasted her assailants with spell after spell.

  And they died. Talons and grotesque barbed limbs and many-fanged jaws rained down on her in a grisly downpour of black and burning ichor as her magic made demon flesh boil and demon bodies burst.

  The wounds they gave her stung like fire and wept not just her blood, but licking flames of silver fire.

  She lashed them with that leaking fire, striping it across snarling faces and sting-studded tails and cruel clutching claws alike. And where silver fire touched demon hide, that darksome meat melted, collapsing into wisps of stinking smoke with astonishing speed, burning demons to nothingness as readily as the blueflame items had. And still they came.

  She spent her spells, one by one, taking down a small army but facing an endless, ever-growing one. Spending precious silve
r fire to bend a spell for opening wards into a spray of disintegration, and a magic for sending messages afar into a flesh-dicing whirlblade storm … her arsenal was almost spent.

  “El,” she cried aloud, as more and more demons fought through the sagging, slowing web of blueflame objects, now drifting darkly and trailing only the faintest blue glows, to claw at her, “where are you? I need you!”

  Despair came quickly as shrill demonic laughter was the only reply, her attackers gathering thick and deep now, crowding each other in their hunger for her destruction.

  “Elminster!” she screamed. “Oh my love, hear me!”

  “I really don’t think any true Cormyrean needs lessons in how the realm should be governed from some sly outlander Harper who can make her hair silver,” Lord Breeklar said coldly. “I’ve heard quite enough of your prattle. Begone.” He turned. “Guards, throw this woman out. No need to be gentle.”

  “If you don’t mind, Auldus,” Lord Hamnlaer snapped, “I’ll command my own guards, in my own house. I want to hear more about these new rights. If Foril’s willing to trade some of his powers over us all for new laws every citizen must follow, let’s be hearing the details.” Behind him, his guards, who’d hastened forward at Breeklar’s call, hesitated and peered around at the faces of all the seated nobles.

  “Lord Breeklar,” Storm said calmly, “Lord Hamnlaer is right. Trying to silence a messenger whenever you don’t like the sound of a message, without hearing what the message truly is, is to leave yourself forever unprepared for everything life hurls at you. That’s merely a fast trail to many bruises and a swifter grave than necessary.” She raised her glass. “And for your information, Lord Breeklar, I am the Marchioness of Immerdusk. Every whit as noble, and as ‘true Cormyrean,’ as you are, and of older lineage. The Breeklars, as I recall, came from Westgate less than four generations ago …”

  “Do you dare insult me?”

  “Do you dare try to act insulted?” Storm replied, in perfect mimicry of Breeklar’s fury. Then she fell into chuckles, shaking her head. “Apologies, my lords,” she told the table at large, “but I just can’t play the haughty overblown noble as well as Breeklar, here. I grew past that stage long, long ago.”

  “Oh,” Breeklar said nastily, “this’ll be your ‘I’m centuries upon centuries old and knew Baerauble and King Duar and the Immortal Purple Dragon personally, and I know what’s right for you’ pose. Which is either a pack of lies, or you’re some sort of foul demon or swindling elf who can put on human shape long enough to cozen us! Well, I’ll not fall for such-”

  He paled and grabbed for the ornate half-basket hilt of his sword, because Storm had stood up abruptly, upsetting her goblet of wine across the table. Nobles all around it tensed and reached for handy weapons, and Lord Hamnlaer’s household guards started forward again.

  The Lady Immerdusk seemed oblivious to them all. She was seeing things far away, her face going pale and sad, and-though her parted lips didn’t move at all-she was murmuring something soft and small, that issued from her throat with the shrill high ring of a distant scream: “Elminster! Oh my love, hear me!”

  That great, dark, warm and magnificent mind was suddenly gone from Gelnur Farland’s. Leaving him overwhelmed and … desolate.

  He was on his hands and knees, sobbing like a little lass, himself again but … abandoned, all those rich memories and loves and delights all gone, taken from him all at once.

  In a whirling trice the sweet memories had ended in a greater rising rage than he’d ever felt before, a rage not his own that had begun with a distant scream: “Elminster! Oh my love, hear me!”

  Demons overwhelmed her, tore at her, driving sharp talons deep into her, trying to tear her limb from limb by sheer strength.

  They were starting to manage it, too. Tendons and sinews began to fail, tresses were torn out by the roots, and agony kindled all over, dragging a scream out past her clenched teeth. She was going to die here, going to fail Mystra …

  Oh, no, Alassra. You fail me not. Call the blueflame to you. Will it to you.

  Mystra! The goddess had heard her!

  Hope surged in her like fresh cooling fire. The Simbul obeyed, or tried to, struggling to gather her will in the raw red heart of deepening agony. Demon talons had shifted from her limbs to the softer, easier target of her belly and torn into it. They were pulling at the edges of that wound, seeking to tear her wide open and rip her apart. Her legs and hips were drenched in her own warm blood, and her torso was one great gaping wound …

  Mind that not. Call the blueflame.

  The Simbul called, and felt the floating objects that held blueflame start to respond, curving in closer to her.

  Demon bodies were in the way, clawing and crowding and surging. This was hopeless …

  Hope, my darling daughter, is a lantern we all need, and we must never yield it up. Not even for me. Take firm hold of your hope, and keep calling the flame to you. Beautiful blueflame …

  The blueflame converged on her, the items that bore it searing holes through the demons as they came. Demons shrieked and roared as they died or were maimed, many of them falling away.

  Yet more snarlingly crowded in. Haures and rutterkin, glabrezu and nameless wormlike clutching things … no matter how much they clawed at incoming blueflame or swung weapons or worked magic at it, they could do nothing to stop or slow or strike aside the called blueflame-for touching it brought disintegration, and magic only made it blaze more brightly.

  Into your wound. Draw the blueflame into you.

  The Simbul did as Mystra commanded, and the silver fire roiling within her and leaking from her wounds snarled in hungry coils around the blueflame, merged with it … and consumed it.

  Quite suddenly, she was full of white-hot, raging power. Might that boiled up her limbs, that moaned in crackling restlessness through her hair … that was hurled out of her as she cried out in pain.

  Power shot from her eyes in beams and gouted from her nose and mouth, stabbing in all directions in a blinding-bright flood that devoured demons and the walls beyond them alike.

  Dark fragments of walls toppled ponderously away from The Simbul, down into crashing ruin, crushing more demons. Others fled in all directions, shrieking.

  Screaming loudly enough to drown them all out, in pain and exultation and sheer fury, The Simbul soared up out of the keep, shedding the ashes of broken demons in her wake, a leaping comet that soared high into the night sky.

  “Tluin,” Hawkspike gasped, trying to roll over. Plaguespew, but he was stiff!

  “Hawk?” Harbrand yawned. “You awake?”

  “No,” Hawkspike snarled firmly, though he very much was. Not that he wanted to be. He ached all over, cold and sharp stones jabbed him with every movement, he was hungry-his stomach growled, on cue-and, yes, he needed to relieve himself. Achingly.

  Overhead was dark, rough stone. They were in some cave or other they’d found. Yes, he remembered now … a big one. They’d spilled some flash oil on a branch and made a torch that’d burned long enough to search it thoroughly. One vast room, a natural cavern that came furnished in old bones and refuse … but nothing recent, and no beast smell, so it wasn’t a lair for anything at the moment. They were somewhere high in the mountain foothills near Irlingmount. And, of course, come morning, they were stiff and sore, and decidedly not well rested after an uncomfortable night spent huddled on unforgivingly hard, sharp rocks.

  “Tluin tluin tluin,” Hawkspike told the world, wincing as he rolled into a kneeling position and more unyielding stone promptly bruised his knees. He heaved himself upright to stumble unsteadily over to where he could lean against the cavern wall. His mouth tasted like he’d been licking a beast cage.

  Harbrand, of course, was already up. Hrast him.

  And stretching on the far side of the cavern, like a tavern dancer readying herself for something acrobatic. Grinning, too.

  Gods above, the bastard was going to be cheerful.

  “I,�
�� Hawkspike’s partner announced, breaking off stretching with a series of kicks and flexings of his arms like some sort of drunken wrestler, “need to ease the old bladder. And get a drink. We heard a stream, last night, didn’t we?”

  “Unnh,” Hawkspike agreed, pointing to where he vaguely thought the flowing water might be. They had heard water tinkling-a small but flash-flowing run-somewhere off that way.

  Of course, to pee or drink, they’d have to go out into that bright slice of the world waiting yonder, beyond the entrance …

  He picked his way carefully along the wall, not trusting his balance yet. Oh, but his bones were cold … The only good thing was, Har wasn’t moving much faster. Which meant he’d be saved from hearing quite a few mocking comments, at least until-

  Something blotted out the morning light. Hawkspike looked up-and froze. Clear across the cave, Harbrand had done the same thing, becoming a gaping, pale-faced trembling statue.

  The cavemouth was a descending gash as long as a grandly sprawling cottage. Completely filling it was a black snout that thrust a long way into the cave. A snout that was attached to the scaled, curving-horned head of … a black dragon.

  “Naed,” Hawkspike gasped, and he eased his own bladder right there and then, favorite codpiece and all.

  Wise and cruel draconic eyes slid across from Harbrand’s similar distress to watch him.

  “Well met,” the dragon said, parting his jaws-those fangs! — in a slow, soft smile. “I am Alorglauvenemaus, and I find myself in need of some replacement Beasts.”

  “Oh?” Harbrand managed to quaver, from across the cave. “W-what sort of beasts?”

  About then, Hawkspike decided that losing control of his bladder was an ineffective tactic. So he chose another: falling over in a dead faint.