Elminster Enraged sos-3

by Ed Greenwood

  The man she’d first hit with the chair also turned, bent to tug something from his boot-and straightened up again with a short iron bar in one hand and a long, wicked looking dagger in the other. “Just who the tluin are you?” he growled, stalking back around the desk.

  “Mirt, Lord of Waterdeep,” came the reply, “and your death!”

  The man with the iron bar burst out laughing, and waved his two fellow bullyblades forward. The one who’d taken Mirt’s dagger in his shoulder was moaning in pain and cursing, but he got on his feet and headed menacingly toward Mirt.

  Rensharra got up, picked up her chair, and swung it hard.

  The man with the iron bar never saw it coming. The chair slammed into the back of his head, splintering one of its legs, and he went down, toppling on his face with a crash.

  The nearest bullyblade looked back over his shoulder, startled by the sounds. Rensharra threw her chair, as high and hard as she could.

  It hit the floor right in front of him, bounced, and crashed down onto his foot.

  He howled and hopped in pain-right onto Mirt’s blade. Who used it like a handle to swing the gutted man around into the last one, slamming them both against the wall.

  Then the stout and wheezing Lord of Waterdeep snatched up the fallen iron bar and brained both bullyblades several times, just to make sure. When they lay still in their spreading blood, he turned back to the man Rensharra had felled and battered the back of his skull, thoroughly.

  “Are you all right, lass?” he panted, straightening up from his bloody work. “Did they-?”

  “Hit me a time or two, that’s all,” the lady clerk of the rolls replied, her voice quavering just once. “But they were going to cut out my tongue, and then-and then-”

  Her voice soared into tears, and she rushed into his arms.

  “Have some fun,” Mirt grimly finished her sentence for her, holding her tight. “Pity we’ll need a priest, now, to make what’s left of them talk. I’m taking you out of here, the moment I’ve collected my steel. And this iron bar-handy, this.”

  So it was that Lady Dawningdown was very soon thereafter brusquely evicted from her own coach, where it stood in the palace foreyard waiting for her bullyblades to return with word that Rensharra Ironstave had been satisfactorily dealt with.

  She took one look at the face of the old fat man hauling her forth from her back corner as if she weighed nothing at all, and another look at Rensharra Ironstave’s stern face, and then looked away. Without a word, she took herself off across the palace yard as fast as her cane could help her scurry.

  A moment later, her coachmaster and both coachjacks all came hurtling down face-first onto the cobbles, bouncing in the dust and cursing and clutching bleeding and broken noses-and her finest day coach was rumbling away as fast as the fat old man could whip its horses, out onto the Promenade with a rising rumble.

  “Stop, thief!” she dared to call, then, shaking her cane at the dwindling conveyance. Not that anyone heeded, of course. The palace doorjacks merely gave her shrugs when she informed them what had befallen, so she crisply told them all something stern and clear, and started walking.

  By the time she reached the eastgate, to complain to the Purple Dragons on gate guard duty and demand fast riders be sent after the stolen coach, she thought better of demanding anything of them at all. The coach had almost run over those guards as it raced out of the city, and they were still muttering about arrogant nobles and telling each other they’d recognized the Dawningdown arms on the doors, oh, aye, to be sure …

  Muttering some choice curses of her own, Lady Dawningdown marched over to the nearest rental coach, to hire passage home across half of Suzail.

  Prudence, even for expendable mindslaves of the future emperor of Cormyr, was occasionally desirable.

  So it was that for the last leg of his journey, Wizard of War Jarlin Flamtarge had let his horse go and departed Orondstars Road for the concealment of the trees bordering it.

  Now, however, the walls of Irlingstar loomed above him. He stepped down into the road for the last few trudging strides uphill to the nearest gate, where he swung the great clacking knocker, identified himself to the guards, and was admitted.

  The lord constable, it seemed, was busy in an upper passage. He told the anxious guard he’d find his own way there, and set off up a stair. At its head was a long passage running the length of the fortress, or so it seemed. There was also another stair, leading higher, but for the moment, Flamtarge ignored it in favor of strolling down the long passage.

  The first cell doorway had a bored-looking noble standing in it. Who spat at the passing war wizard the moment Flamtarge was close enough.

  With a sneer, the Crown mage hurled a blasting spell into the noble’s face. It flared into harmless brilliance as it was intercepted by an unseen ward that stretched across the doorway. The noble decided it was his turn to sneer.

  Well, well. This would not do at all. Manshoon cast a spell Flamtarge did not know, burning a hole in the ward for just long enough to immolate the sneering noble.

  As smoldering bones collapsed in a heap of swirling ashes, he gave them a jaunty sneer, and proceeded on down the passage.

  Former Wizard of War Rorskryn Mreldrake tried to appear calm. He was sitting alone in his locked and spell-sealed prison, but of course his captors were watching everything he did, and listening, too.

  Their requirements had been clear. So it was that despite the successful string of Irlingstar deaths, Mreldrake was making minor adjustments to perfect a means of magically wielding his conjured, wraithlike shearing edge of force from afar. This blade could bypass wards by being willed to manifest within them, but his captors wanted it to be able to shear through wards, or at least pass through them without delay or impairment.

  Yet despite their carping, their dozens of tiny criticisms, what they’d ordered had been accomplished. The lord constable of Irlingstar was dead.

  So it was with satisfaction, albeit weary satisfaction, that Rorskryn Mreldrake took a break from dealing death in Irlingstar and making future slayings more elegant to stretch his cramping fingers and sip some tea.

  He was no traitor. What he’d done was for the good of Cormyr-and so, both just and right. Many courtiers and nobles wouldn’t see it that way, of course, but they were the villains, not he. Ah, this tea was … comforting. Yes.

  Only their families might decry his judgment that the imprisoned nobles of Irlingstar were utterly expendable. Why, he’d heard even timid backroom palace scribes describe them as wastrels and troublemakers that Cormyr-and everywhere else-would be better off without. So there was nothing at all wrong or villainous about using them as the subjects of his … experiments.

  The explosions had been unfortunate, but such things happen when one is experimenting. They were no more than the unforeseen results of trying to shape his cutting edge of force into handlike shapes, to try to wield magic items from afar. Every such attempt had been disastrous. Contact between his edge and enchanted items always made the magic items explode. And the backlashes always left him unconscious and mentally reeling for quite some time thereafter.

  Even the most stubborn of his captors seemed to have seen enough of such disasters. He’d unwillingly and unintentionally proven that it wouldn’t work-his edge couldn’t be used to work other magics from a distance. However, just using the forceblade to slice throats worked quite well. So, let the throats to be sliced henceforth belong to foes who mattered.

  Such as Manshoon, and the one called Elminster, too …

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  ECHOES IN THE WEAVE

  I … I did not know dragons took such an interest in the doings of humans,” Harbrand said feebly. “Aren’t we just, uh, food, to you?”

  “Belt up, idiot,” Hawkspike suggested, beside him.

  The dragon chuckled again, with a deep thunder that shook the cavern-and their back teeth.

  “I did not begin life as a black dragon,” it told them.
“I call myself Alorglauvenemaus now, but in truth I’m a man-a wizard, transformed by my own Art. Once, I was feared within the Brotherhood and unknown outside it.”

  “The Brotherhood? The Zhentarim?” Harbrand asked.

  “Yes. I am Hesperdan of the Zhentarim. I took dragon shape nigh a century back to keep watch over the mage Vangerdahast, the self-styled guardian of Cormyr. He had been the kingdom’s Royal Magician and its court wizard and its true ruler, all at once-and when he deemed the time right, he retired from it all to take dragon shape. I was suspicious of him then, and I am suspicious of him now.”

  “Oh?” Harbrand asked, starting to become genuinely interested. He’d begun talking just to try to buy a few more breaths of life, but …

  “Oh, indeed. Despite being lesser in Art, he’d quietly become the most dangerous tyrant mage of us all, his reach even greater than Manshoon’s thanks to the wizards of war he commanded. I believed curbing his schemes was the most important life work any mage could concern himself with. I still believe that.”

  “And so?”

  “And so, along came the Spellplague and changed everything. The gods laugh at us all.”

  “So how did it change you? Are you trapped in dragon shape?”

  “No, but the blue fire did me ill. It afflicted me with long periods of being Alorglauvenemaus-by which I mean, long periods of not remembering I was Hesperdan at all.”

  Harbrand and Hawkspike looked at each other. Neither of them had to say a word to tell each other what they’d both realized instantly. If the dragon-or Hesperdan, or whoever he really was-had told them this, it meant he had no intention of their surviving long enough to pass this information on to anyone.

  Some days, Immerkeep felt like a prison stuffed with mad inmates, all intent on making him join their ranks.

  Yes, King’s Lord Lothan Durncaskyn was in a bad temper, he admitted to himself-and it was getting worse.

  Immerfolk were a testy lot at the best of times, given their ever-lengthening list of just grievances, and now he wasn’t merely saddled with Harklur and Mrauksoun and Faerrad-he had Lord Tornkresk to deal with.

  King Foril was a worthy monarch, kinder and wiser than most and less cruel than many, but the trouble with men like that was that they admired the decisive and capable. Which meant they sometimes ennobled the wrong capable men. Tornkresk had been a lord for what, nine years? Ten? And already, in the guise of “being loyal to what Cormyr should be,” he and his band of well-armed hireswords were busy here, there, and everywhere around Immerford, goading folk into angry attacks on Crown servants, inspectors, and even Purple Dragon patrols.

  So here the king’s lord was, with no war wizards left to contact Suzail or Arabel for him, and a desperate need for swift help. He needed reinforcements to blunt Tornkresk’s goad, but not just Purple Dragons ready to swing their swords and become Tornkresk’s handy targets. He needed enough war wizards to enspell everyone into the ground, and some smooth-tongued courtiers with placating coins to toss-and he needed all of them right now!

  A door banged in the outer office, and there were voices. Raised voices. One was his duty bodyguard, denying passage. The other was gruff, wheezing, and accepting no such refusal.

  Durncaskyn slapped a hand to his dagger, murmured the word that awakened its ironguard enchantment to protect him from hurled knives and crossbow bolts and the like, and went to his office door. Who wanted to harangue the ever-helpful king’s lord now?

  He opened the door a crack, his foot behind it to keep it that way, and peered out. He was in time to see a fat old man whose seaboots flapped and flopped at every step hurling the duty bodyguard bodily out the office door, then turning to steady an exhausted looking, disheveled woman. And lead her right to Durncaskyn’s door.

  Well, time to be decisive and capable. Durncaskyn flung the door wide and stood in it. “Yes?”

  “Yer Foril’s local lord, here?” the old man growled, looking Durncaskyn up and down, but not slowing his determined lurch forward.

  “I am.” Durncaskyn stood his ground. “Who are you?”

  “Mirt, Lord of Waterdeep. This is Rensharra Ironstave, Lady Clerk of the Rolls. Yes, the highest-ranking tax collector in the realm. She needs the most secure guarded shelter you can provide. Right now.”

  Durncaskyn blinked. “What?”

  He gave the woman a look, but she was out on her feet, reeling, her gaze directed at the floor. Mirt swung her to one side so she’d not be caught between them as he advanced-and kept on tramping straight forward. “You’d be Durncaskyn?”

  “I-” They collided, chest to chest, and Mirt kept right on striding.

  Exasperated, Durncaskyn shoved him. “Get back! And get out of here! I’m-”

  “Terribly busy just now, saving the realm? That I can well believe, but right now I need you to see that protecting this fair lady is the most important-”

  “No. Did you not hear me? No.”

  Durncaskyn thought of himself as a solid man, still strong despite far too many hours spent sitting behind desks or standing around talking and listening. So he was a little astonished to be taken by a fistful of doublet, hoisted off his feet, and rushed backward into his own office.

  The lurching and shuffling old man even dragged the woman in with them, as he snarled into Durncaskyn’s face, “I’ve been getting the distinct impression since my arrival in this fair kingdom that its local lords are a pompous, lazy, useless lot. Prove me wrong. Please prove me wrong.”

  “I don’t take kindly to being bullied in my own office,” Durncaskyn snarled back, “and I decide what constitutes-”

  “Being an utter slubberdegullion? Well, decide faster!”

  “Why? Why the great rush?”

  “If I have to lock you in yer own dungeon and start emptying yer coffers to hire bullyblades enough to keep this fair lady-the king’s head tax collector, let me remind you-safe, it’s going to take me some time to let everyone hereabouts know I’m the new king’s lord. That’s why the rush, loyal Lothan.”

  “And if I agree to protect her?”

  “Then where are yer guards? She stands in peril right now-and in need of a bed and a garderobe, not to mention a light hot meal and a little good wine. And see if you can resist the temptation to lock her in any sort of cell, too-it might keep me from removing yer head and locking it away, instead! I ask again: where are yer guards? The likes of that bumbling idiot I tossed aside out there couldn’t keep away a lad with a slingshot!”

  “As to that,” Durncaskyn replied dryly, bringing up both hands to try to wrench himself free of Mirt’s hairy fist, “they’re right behind you.”

  Purple Dragons crowded into the outer office, their swords drawn. The angry bodyguard Mirt had thrown out of that room was with them, pointing at the fat old intruder and spitting a stream of curses and commands.

  Mirt looked profoundly unimpressed. “Them? They look like a mob of untrained dolts, to me. Where’re their scouts? The man with the ready crossbow and some sleep syrup on his loaded quarrel? The backup bowman, for when the first one misses? Hey?”

  “Hey,” Durncaskyn agreed wearily. “At ease!” he barked over Mirt’s shoulder at the Dragons. “Wait out in the passage, all of you!”

  They eyed him doubtfully.

  “All of you!” Durncaskyn roared with sudden fire. “And close the door after you go out!”

  He added a glare, and kept it on them until they’d all reluctantly retreated and shut the door. By then, he was unsurprised to find the lady slumped in his own desk chair, and Mirt rummaging in his cabinets for decent wine to give her.

  “Bottom drawer,” Durncaskyn told him. “The swill on display is for visiting complainants-such as yourself.”

  That earned him a grin from Mirt. Durncaskyn fetched one of the chairs kept for visitors, drew it up to the wrong side of his own desk, sat down, and said, “You seem a forceful man, but decisive enough, possibly even capable. Perhaps we can make a deal.”

  “
As one snarling bull to another?”

  “Indeed. I will wholeheartedly extend to this good lady the dubious shelter of Immerkeep if you, Lord of Waterdeep, will go to Suzail for me, without delay. To fetch the help I so desperately need.”

  A decanter of Durncaskyn’s best wine thunked down on the desk between them. “Explain,” Mirt suggested, filling glasses.

  The king’s lord obliged.

  Wherefore, a short time later, after kissing Rensharra thoroughly and accepting a second decanter for road thirst, Mirt of Waterdeep strode right back out of Immerkeep, patted the neck of one of the fresh horses that had been hitched to his stolen coach, and began a wild race back to Suzail.

  Decisive and capable men did those sorts of things.

  Clouds were everywhere, but they were the white, wispy, spun-silk sort, betokening no rain or lightning. The Sword of the Clouds was gliding along under half-sail.

  No grand skyship of the Five Companies, she, but an ancient Halruaan treasure only recently salvaged from dust-shrouded, motionlessly floating neglect in a ruin by the adventurers who crewed her. And kept busy shuttling envoys, vital messages, and precious treaties to and fro above southerly realms-when they weren’t mooring briefly to various high towers and turrets to conduct daring night robberies and kidnappings, that is.

  Yet Vaeren Dragonskorn had never called himself a pirate. “Pirate” was such an uncouth word. “Adventurer of the skies,” now that was an attractive phrase. Aye, adventurers of the skies are we, aboard the Sword …

  A skyship much heavier than it had been when this particular voyage had begun, thanks to the treasures of the rival wizards Algaubrel and Sarlarthont, crowded into the shallow hold. Strongchests upon strongchests full of coins and gems and metal-bound grimoires, statuettes and many curious metal items that gave off weird magical glows, and things that were better undisturbed until off-loaded in a mountaintop hidehold. Thinking of which …