Elminster Enraged sos-3

by Ed Greenwood

  The empty coach was bumping and rattling enough to jar anyone’s back teeth loose, but Mirt was in no mood to slow down. Boots hooked under the safety rail, reins wound around one arm and the driving whip in his other hand, he was making good time, by the gods, and-

  Naed, farruk, and hrast it, a road patrol!

  On the road ahead, the Purple Dragons were already hauling at their reins, getting themselves and their horses out of the way-but they were also flinging up their arms and bellowing sternly at him to halt.

  Mirt roared right back at them, giving them the password Durncaskyn had furnished him with, and not slowing in the slightest. He repeated it thrice, just to make sure-but as the bouncing, swaying coach plunged through them without incident and managed the next turn, the wheels on its left side squealing in protest, Mirt looked back over his right shoulder and saw that yes, by Beshaba, they were following him!

  And unless they’d mistreated their horses, Purple Dragons could certainly ride faster than he could lash these already straining nags to drag a coach along, even if it was empty-er, except for one over-padded Lord of Waterdeep …

  They were spurring their mounts, all right. Hrast them.

  Well, wondergods, what the Hells good was a password, if-oh, tluin!

  Across the road right ahead, as he came around a tight bend, were a dozen or so riders, all in a clump, riding together. Liveried men-at-arms, a banner, overdressed highnose in the center of it all … a noble, with a retinue. Filling the road, and not giving way.

  Mirt stood up and bellowed curses at them, waving his whip around and around above his head and making it clear he wasn’t going to swerve or slow.

  Now they were yielding way, the dolts, but-

  No! The lordling was pointing at the coach, and yelling in anger. Now he was shouting orders, and hrast it if they weren’t obeying like trained cavalry, swiftly forming a curve …

  If Mirt veered so as not to plow into them, their configuration would squeeze him by narrowing the clear road ahead, forcing him at a gentle angle off the road into an overturning crash in the ditch … or to a stop, to face their blades and disputations.

  With a sigh, Mirt hauled hard on the reins, and started making the whistlings and chirrupings that all horses in Cormyr seemed to know meant, “Stop. Now.”

  Dust flew, the coach groaned and bounced and landed with a crash and bounced again, reins flew amid rearings and loud, complaining neighings … and the snorting, blowing horses finally brought the shuddering conveyance to a halt. With the traveling lord and his armsmen ranged alongside it and in front of it, just as the farruking highnose had intended.

  “Get out of the road!” Mirt roared at him. “I’m on urgent Crown business!”

  “In Lady Dawningdown’s coach?” the noble shouted back. “I very much doubt it, thief!”

  He spurred his horse forward, to come up right beside Mirt. “Get down from there, or I’ll have my men drag you down!”

  “Get out of the way!” Mirt snarled, “or the king’ll have yer guts for his next garderobe seat!”

  Those words seemed to ignite the noble to screaming fury. He erupted in an inarticulate series of shrieks, that soon became a gabble of, “I care naught for the king!” and “How dare you speak thus, to your better!” and “I’ll have your tongue out by the roots for such rudeness, sirrah!” and other things Mirt didn’t wait to hear.

  Right out of patience, he unhooked the unlit but full coachlamp from its bracket beside him, and emptied it down into the noble’s shouting and oh-so-handy face, wishing he had flint and steel handy, or a ready flame.

  To the accompaniment of highborn retching and choking sounds, he tried to get the coach moving again, but several armsmen had firm hold of the beasts’ bridles and the harness, so with an exasperated growl Mirt swung himself down over the front of the coach, lurched along the trail and then into the saddles of his poor horses-and launched himself from standing on the foremost saddle right into the armsman holding that lead horse.

  The crash was satisfactorily bone jarring, and the armsman he’d landed on swayed in his own saddle, dazed and winded. The arms-man’s horse reared.

  Then everyone was shouting, and horses were plunging and rearing everywhere. Those fools of Purple Dragons had ridden headlong into the stopped coach and the noble’s men. In the heart of all the tumult and shouting, Mirt kept hold of the neck of the arms-man’s horse, kicked the man out of the saddle, fell back heavily into that vacated seat-and managed his loudest shout of the day, right into the horse’s ear.

  It reared again, bucked in the air, and came down running hard, on along the open road to Suzail, thank all the gods, with Mirt clinging grimly to the saddle.

  As the horse gathered speed in a lengthening gallop, he crouched low and murmured encouragement to it. Looking back, he could see some of the noble’s armsmen and a few Purple Dragons belatedly beginning to pursue him.

  Well, guts and garters, this just got better and better …

  It was almost too easy.

  Half a dozen eyeball beholderkin, unleashed to drift around young Ondrath Everwood, snared his attention long enough for him to curse, snatch out a wand to deal with them-and mumble a few frantic unheard words into the cloth Manshoon had slipped over his face from behind, before he went limp.

  The cloth was soaked with tincture of thardflower; the nigh-instant senselessness it brought on wouldn’t last long, but then, Manshoon didn’t need it to.

  He calmly teleported them both back to Sraunter’s cellar, where he bound the young war wizard into a chair. The alchemist didn’t have much call for cord, but the eyestalks of his death tyrants, and the long tentacles he’d augmented some of them with, would suffice. Besides, the fearsome decaying creatures looming silently above his captive would probably have a salutary effect on Everwood’s powers of agreement. As in: to anything, hastily.

  Those augmentations were going to be very useful in the near future, when he needed loyal courtiers around him. Not this rabble of double-dealing, self-interested slyjaws and malingerers that currently afflicted the palace. Yes, augmentations. Spending all that time farscrying those deluded cultists in the sewers of Waterdeep had been wearying indeed-but in the end, time not entirely wasted.

  Manshoon amused himself by magically purloining a grand meal from the tables and kitchens of a club on the Promenade, complete with wine, while he waited for the young man to revive.

  Ondrath Everwood was going to trace the Unseen Slayer.

  And then enter Manshoon’s service, either willingly-or as Manshoon’s new host body. It was time for Sraunter to once more become Sraunter. The soon-to-be emperor of Cormyr was becoming more than a little tired of dispensing little vials of lust dust to Suzailans hungry for a night’s conquest, or wrinkled wives desperate to reclaim the affectionate attentions of their husbands.

  A desolate Duth Gulkanun was on his knees in the spreading blood. The heap of sliced and diced meat in front of him was scarcely recognizable as his friend and colleague-but he’d watched Longclaws being murdered, right … hrast it … here. There in the gore, close enough to touch, some sucker-tentacle-things moved, one last time, turning … back into human fingers.

  “No,” he muttered, his lips trembling. “No, Imbrult. No.”

  Rune put a comforting hand on his shoulder. As if that had been a signal he’d been waiting for, the kneeling wizard burst into tears.

  “El,” Arclath murmured, as they stood over him, “what do we do now?”

  The dark elf’s eyes glittered with anger. She pointed at the two halves of the dead man who’d come rushing out at them. “That was a war wizard. See the ring, the robes? Which means there was at least one person-him-hiding in Irlingstar. Our Unseen Slayer might be another. It’s high time to really search this place, from top to bottom, accounting for everyone.”

  “And then?”

  “And then we’ll go into every last mind, until we find the killer.”

  “You shall be aveng
ed,” Gulkanun told the remains of his friend fiercely. He got up slowly, and turned to Elminster. “You were talking of a search?”

  “Aye,” the drow told him. “Let it begin.”

  “Let it begin,” Gulkanun echoed grimly, and they set off to scour out Irlingstar.

  It had been easy, after all.

  Ondrath Everwood was busily and painstakingly farscrying Irlingstar. Which meant it was time to take care of a certain loose end by the name of Malver Tulbard.

  Manshoon went to his scrying spheres. The duties of Wizard of War Malver Tulbard included random inspections of certain Suzailan shops-including that of the alchemist Sraunter. Foiling him was easy enough, but an incipient emperor was apt to be very busy for the next little while, and it would be unfortunate if the man came blundering in and found Everwood, or discovered the death tyrants. So it was time to take care of thorough, diligent Malver Tulbard. Permanently.

  He’d long since discovered Tulbard’s weakness: buttered snails. Buttered snails served in spiced wine, to be specific. As prepared by either Gocklin’s or The Bright Sammaer, rival exclusive upstairs dining clubs along the Promenade. So if Tulbard wasn’t out prying into someone else’s business, he was likely to be at either Gocklin’s, or …

  There. Gocklin’s. The scrying image showed Tulbard clearly, alone at a back corner table, belching politely behind his hand as he applied himself to a second heaped platter of steaming hot snails.

  Manshoon teleported himself there, to a bare stretch of elegantly tiled floor beside an unoccupied table at the far side of the back alcove the haughty club staff had relegated the war wizard to-and fed Tulbard a generously fatal amount of stabbing lightning. It crackled all around the war wizard, clawing at a suddenly visible shielding around the astonished man … that collapsed to the floor but drank the last winking sparks of the lightning as it did so.

  Manshoon struck again, using the swiftest and most unobtrusive spell he had ready. A forcedagger, that struck invisibly wherever he pointed his finger. If Tulbard wasn’t wearing any protection over his heart …

  Ah, but Tulbard was. A molded, silk-sheathed throat- and chest-plate. Evidently other upstanding citizens had been annoyed by Tulbard’s diligence in the past. Or the man feared the entire world was out to get him.

  Manshoon settled for slicing the war wizard’s fingers to ribbons, and ruining the spell the man was desperately trying to cast.

  Snails finally forgotten, the man surged to his feet, so Manshoon obligingly hamstrung him.

  Tulbard crashed onto the table, then to his knees, trying to sob out something. Probably a spell.

  “Just die, annoyingly persistent Crown mage,” Manshoon murmured, advancing out of his corner.

  It was perhaps a dozen strides to where Tulbard struggled on the tiles, but before the future emperor of Cormyr had taken two of them, a noble who’d been dining at a table not far away had lifted his fingers from his fingerbowl, dried them, taken a scepter from his belt-and walked across the room to shield the stricken war wizard.

  Manshoon now faced a stern-looking lord who was going gray and running to fat. Lord … Tauntshaw, wasn’t it? One of the wealthy city lords, an investor and landowner. Who was aiming that scepter as if he knew how to use it.

  With a sigh of disgust, Manshoon sent a spell at him that should have him shrieking in fear, wetting himself, and fleeing headlong through the club. A noisier frill than most archmages sought, when indulging in murder, but-

  Hrast it if the meddling lord wasn’t protected by a shielding spell, too! Was everyone in Suzail a dabbler in the Art, or did they all just have spare coins enough to buy small arsenals of magics they fancied they might just need someday?

  Lord Tauntshaw’s scepter spat howling death at Manshoon.

  Who sneered, as his many-layered shieldings easily foiled it, and kept walking. He’d have that scepter, and leave two victims rather than one …

  Men hastened nearer from all over the club, and Manshoon saw wands in the hands of several house wizards, and nobles brandishing all manner of toys.

  No. Another time. Sraunter’s cellar beckoned.

  The unknown mage who’d been stalking toward Lord Tauntshaw-and the moaning, weeping wizard of war on the floor behind him-vanished in mid-step.

  A house wizard cast a swift spell. It made a soft white radiance blossom where the man had been, a glow that roved around hastily, then faded away.

  “He’s gone,” its caster announced. “Not lurking and invisible. Nor will he or anyone else soon be able to teleport back into where I just searched.”

  Many crowded around the wounded man, and around Lord Tauntshaw, offering congratulations. Lord Phaelam gave Tauntshaw a friendly pat on the arm. “Deadly little toy you have there. Well done. I didn’t think you even liked war wizards.”

  “I don’t,” Lord Tauntshaw said shortly. “Yet I like even less attacks upon the institutions of our kingdom. To attack a wizard of war is to assault Cormyr-and if we don’t defend our fair realm, it will fall, and we shall have nothing.”

  He turned back to his own table, and the dressed roast that would be cold by now, and added over his shoulder, “Fittingly, for we shall deserve nothing.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  UNTIL YOU CAN REST FOREVER

  Unnh,” Mirt told the whirling-past world, wincing as his thighs started to really ache. “I’m getting too old for this. Hrast that interfering noble! I want that coach back!”

  The world offered no reply.

  ’Twas being just as helpful as it usually was. Underneath him, his borrowed horse merely tossed its head and relieved itself one more time, not slowing in the slightest.

  Not that he wanted it to. Mirt turned for another cautious look back. Aye, they were still right behind him, still hot for his blood.

  He’d ridden far and fast, and that had to be Halfhap ahead, just over the rise.

  Ah, so it was-but, hrast and damn, there was a mounted Purple Dragon patrol, outbound from Halfhap, on the road beyond the rise.

  They moved to stop him, of course. Mirt bellowed at them and waved wildly at them to move aside, but his spent horse was slowing and shying already, he wasn’t going to manage it-

  “Curse you!” he shouted at the Dragon officers who closed in to intercept him. “Don’t you let folk use the roads you build?”

  “Hold!” they both commanded sternly, rather than answering him.

  Mirt looked back over his shoulder. The pursuit was thundering right along, and he could see Purple Dragons among them. Naed.

  “I’m holding,” he growled at the patrol blade who’d just taken hold of his horse’s bridle, “but I need you to listen.”

  The thunder of hooves behind him grew, and some of the riders were shouting to the patrol, to catch and hold this “dangerous thief, this noble slayer!”

  Noble slayer? Oh, aye, the coach …

  Mirt shouted Durncaskyn’s message into the faces of the frowning Dragons who were surrounding him.

  Some of them at least were listening. He could tell that from their faces-in the last few moments before his pursuers, riding hard, crashed right into the midst of the patrol.

  Horses reared, kicked, screamed, and bucked, men fell off everywhere, other men cursed or shouted orders, someone blew a war horn, someone else drew his sword and started hacking, a dozen Purple Dragon blades sang out of their scabbards, and-

  “Bugger this,” Mirt growled to himself, somersaulting forward out of his saddle into the ditch. If he could roll and manage not to break anything, come up and relieve one of these stoneheads of his horse, and get past …

  The spell that struck him made everything seem to hush, so it was in an eerie peace that Mirt noticed that everything-shouting men pointing at him, rearing horses, swords being swung-was happening slowly. Very slowly.

  Then his gaze was caught and held by the dark, level eyes of a man riding with the Halfhap patrol, who had to be a war wizard. The young, severe-looking man who’d e
nspelled him.

  “Listen to me,” Mirt tried to call to him. “I need you to … to …”

  The silent, slowing world went away, except for those severe and disapproving eyes. The mouth beneath them wasn’t smiling, not at all …

  “You have a visitor, saer,” the Purple Dragon murmured, unlocking Mirt’s manacles. “He’s been searched thoroughly, but beware-some of these nobles have poison hidden away in right sly places.”

  “Nobles?” Mirt asked, with a frown. He remembered many stern questions, stern and then dumbfounded Purple Dragon faces ringing him as they heard his answers, and Halfhap abruptly erupting in a flood of shouting, hurrying men. It seemed Durncaskyn would be getting the help he needed, at full gallop.

  Then he’d been chained to the wall in a cell for “later questioning,” his tales of the king and Lady Glathra and Rensharra seeming to strain credulity more than a bit too much.

  When the spell that made the world seem faint and far away wore off, he intended to get himself out, somehow. He’d been chained with his wrists well away from his belt, so the little lockpicks there and in his boots might as well have been back in Waterdeep … but unless they were going to spoon-feed him, they’d have to unshackle him sometime.

  The cell door opened again, and the same Purple Dragon looked in and then turned and announced expressionlessly over his shoulder, “I’ll be down the passage, beyond where I can hear anything less than a shout. With your four bodyguards, lord.” He turned his head again and gave Mirt a distinct but stonefaced wink.

  Ah, nobles. Specifically, his visitor was the one who’d deprived him of his coach on the road. Striding into the cell looking spitting angry, too.

  “Coach thief!” Mirt roared at him.

  The noble’s eyes bulged, he went from red to dark crimson, and cords stood out in his neck. All in the instant before he whirled around and caught hold of the departing guard’s elbow. “Introduce me to the prisoner,” he snapped.

  The Dragon looked startled. “Uh, ah … lord, this man calls himself Mirt, Lord of Waterdeep. Mirt, this is Lord Austrus Flambrant, uh, head of House Flambrant of, ah, Cormyr.” He fled.