by Ed Greenwood
When it all got sorted out, the complaining prisoners were hustled away by most of the Purple Dragons. Many of the wizards of war and highknights, with Lord Warder Vainrence, conducted King Foril to safety elsewhere.
Leaving Lady Glathra to glean some detailed sense of what had happened at Irlingstar, so as to deliver a proper report to the king.
“Consider yourself under arrest,” she began, giving Gulkanun a glare and keeping both of her wands leveled at him. “We will decide on the future of your career in service to the Crown later. For now, I require-”
“Oh, for the sake of the Dragon Throne!” Amarune snarled in utter exasperation, plunging into a somersault that became an extended double-leg kick at the back of the war wizard’s head.
Glathra went down like a felled sapling.
Leaving Arclath, Amarune, and Elminster all gazing wearily at each other.
“My place,” Arclath suggested. “I want a feast, a bed, and most of all a bath.”
They all fervently agreed-even Gulkanun, inside the mind he was sharing with Elminster.
In a corner of the royal gardens, Lord Wenderwood reached a decision and abruptly stood up.
He’d been sitting on a bench under a sculpted felsul tree, patiently awaiting his turn to talk to the king on that day’s garden stroll.
The guard who’d been escorting Lord Wenderwood had gone running to old Foril the moment the war wizard bitch had shouted for help, and hadn’t yet returned. The guard was starting to, though, trudging back to inform his noble charge that royal audiences were unexpectedly over for the day.
So much Lord Wenderwood, with his monocle or without, could already see for himself. In truth, there was nothing at all wrong with his eyesight, and he’d readily recognized Lord Delcastle, a number of other young lords who’d recently been shut up in Irlingstar-and the flash of a translocation spell.
His master would very much want to hear about this. Accordingly, Lord Wenderwood turned his back on the approaching guard, who was still two intervening flower beds away.
It was the work of but a moment to unleash the eyeball beholderkin from inside the breast of the best Wenderwood formal jerkin, to send it back to Lord Manshoon.
This Everwood had a young, quick, useful mind. He should have done this months ago!
Manshoon stretched his new body’s arms and legs, looked down at them approvingly, and nodded. Yes, this would do very well.
Now, back to the scrying spheres. That backlash shouldn’t have done much-
One of his eyeball beholderkin swooped down the cellar stairs like a bird, hung there in front of his face, and hissed at him. Manshoon touched it with a finger. And smiled.
“Well done, Wenderwood!” he said aloud, clapping his hands in delight and reaching out to the mind of that noble.
“So, off to Delcastle Manor the conquering heroes stroll, hey?” He stroked his chin thoughtfully, as an evil smile spread slowly across his face.
“Yes,” he murmured aloud. “Magic seems to fail again and again, so let us try older, more brutal methods.”
He went to gather what he’d need to work a spell to reach out to all of his subverted nobles at once. Well, all who were still in Suzail.
He needed them to hurry to Delcastle Manor at once. With their freshest poison and favorite weapons.
“Lord Durncaskyn?”
The voice was polite, and cultured, and unfamiliar. Durncaskyn looked up from his desk.
A well-dressed man with the sort of slender walking stick only nobles and the wealthiest Sembian merchants used was standing at the door to his office, an expensive leather scroll case in his hand.
“Yes?”
“King’s Lord Lothan Durncaskyn?”
“Yes,” Durncaskyn repeated. “The king can only afford one local lord here in Immerford, let me assure you. And who might you be?”
The man strode to Durncaskyn’s desk, uncapped one end of the scroll case, and with a deft flick of his wrist spun a document out of it, flipped it up in to the air with a practiced flourish to unfurl it, and thrust it at Durncaskyn.
“I am known professionally as Rantoril, and I’m here to honor this agreement.”
Durncaskyn took the parchment, but kept his eyes on its deliverer-as the man smoothly drew something long and slender and steely out of the case, and drew it back to launch a stabbing lunge.
Durncaskyn was already hurling himself and his chair over backward, so he missed seeing whatever it was that felled Rantoril, but he heard the meaty smack of its strike. And the heavy thud of the assassin hitting the floor.
He rolled to his feet, snatching out his belt dagger, and … found himself ringed by booted feet.
He looked up.
The tall and slender woman smiling down at him had hair as silver as polished ceremonial court plate armor-hair that hung down to her knees. She was dressed like a forester, in leathers and high boots, and wore a long sword at her hip that looked like it had come from the royal armory.
“Storm Silverhand,” she introduced herself gently, reaching out a hand to help him up.
Durncaskyn took it, and he was astonished at her strength. The owners of the other boots proved to be youngish men and women who were also clad as foresters, but had normal hair. One or two of them might even have been Immerfolk. Some of them were lifting Rantoril’s limp body and bearing it away.
“Who … what …?”
“I’m the Marchioness Immerdusk, traveling the realm in the name of the king. These good people are Harpers-as am I-and your recent visitor was a Sembian who’s never been known as Rantoril before. He’ll sleep for a day or two. He was hired by Lord Leskringh.”
“Leskringh? That old-”
“-hind end of a rothe, as you were going to say, has been taken into custody and will be tried by his peers within a tenday, with Rantoril giving evidence. I’m afraid one of your clerks was badly wounded; I’ll be leaving a Harper in his place to guard you.”
She clasped Durncaskyn’s arm affably, steered a goblet of his own wine into his hand, then strode for the door.
Durncaskyn blinked. “But … where are you going?”
“To greet the relief force Mirt is bringing you, before one of them strikes down the wrong person and plunges all this end of Cormyr into civil war,” she replied sweetly, without slowing.
“No,” Arclath breathed. “Gods, no.”
A moment ago, their trudge to the gates of Delcastle Manor had been a matter of weariness. Until they’d seen the gates standing open, askew, bodies sprawled beyond them.
Arclath had rushed forward, Rune racing to stay at his side and Elminster right behind.
Arclath’s home looked like a battlefield.
There were pools of blood, buzzing with flies, inside the gates and up the drive, with forever-silent Delcastle retainers and splendidly dressed men-Great Gods, prominent noblemen of Cormyr! — lying dead everywhere.
They’d been much hacked, their lifeless staring eyes almost hidden beneath swarming flies. The fighting had been with swords and daggers, and it had been brutal.
The doors of the mansion itself yawned open, with dead men heaped on the steps. Arclath rushed inside, calling his mother’s name, with El and Rune right behind him. They found more dead Delcastle servants, and more dead nobles.
Aside from the flies, there was a terrible silence. No moaning wounded, no defiant men with blades … just the dead.
Arclath made for his mother’s bedchamber.
Lady Marantine Delcastle was sitting propped up against the end of her palatial bed, her legs pinned under three dead nobles. More slaughtered lords made a thick and bloody carpet all the way to the door.
She was covered with blood, her head slumped onto her shoulder. A slender sword, crimson and black with darkening gore, had fallen from her hand, but she still clutched a dagger, ready on her breast.
Her fine gown was slashed to ribbons, one shoulder carved open to the bone. Many blades had pierced her.
&nbs
p; “Mother!” Arclath wept, clawing dead men aside to uncover her, reaching to cradle her.
At his touch, she stiffened and whimpered. El cast a swift spell to heal, and another to banish pain.
Arclath’s look was beseeching. “Can you save her?”
El shook his head, slowly and grimly. “Too many poisons warring in her-every last one of these lords must have tainted their blades. Only the poisons struggling in her veins has kept her alive this long, but … no. ’Twould need a god, Arclath, and I’ve never been one of those.”
He reached out to cup Marantine’s cheek, to lift her head upright. “Yet the pain is gone from her now. That much I can do.”
Arclath embraced his mother fiercely, his arms trembling, and kissed her.
She opened her eyes and managed a twisted smile up at him through his tears.
“Be happy with your dancer, my son,” she gasped, blood welling out of her mouth with every word. “Live long, and win yourself a happier ending than I have …”
Then she slumped, her eyes fixed on his, going dark and endlessly staring.
Lord Delcastle collapsed in racking sobs. Amarune cradled his shoulders, holding him close.
Elminster watched them for a moment, then reached out and gently stroked Marantine Delcastle’s eyelids down over her staring eyes. One wouldn’t stay down, retreating to give her a grotesque wink.
“This is enough, and more than enough,” the Sage of Shadowdale snarled suddenly, standing bolt upright. He spun away and stalked across the heaped dead, reaching out with his mind as he went.
He was three rooms away before he found a noble, buried under three others, who wasn’t quite dead yet.
The mind was going dark, sliding inexorably into extinction, but there was still a glimmer …
Elminster plunged savagely into that dying mind, to read whys and whos and …
“Manshoon! Of course!”
He stalked through the house and out into the Delcastle gardens.
Looking up into the sky, with the bloodstained sward of the manor grounds stretching out on all sides, he threw back his head and furiously called Manshoon to battle.
He did not have to wait long.
Rising into the sky above bustling Suzail came six, seven … nine spherical hulks the size of small coaches, gaping-mawed flying spheres that looked dead and rotting, covered with snowy and sickly green furred molds-yet moving, their dangling eyestalks lifting and writhing as folk shouted and ran, on the streets below.
As one, they drifted purposefully toward Delcastle Manor.
The only man standing in the Delcastle gardens watched them come, his lip curling. Manshoon had sent his beholders rather than coming in person. Of course.
Elminster raised his hands, murmured a spell that smote undead with silver fire-and blasted them down.
In an instant, every last death tyrant burst into drifting dust, like so many puffs of smoke.
More came, rising up into the sky in slow menace. War horns sounded from the palace and the royal court, horn calls that were answered from the city gates and the harbor tower.
El waited until all the menacing eye tyrants were close enough to reach with one casting, then served them the same way he had the first wave.
Four out of this dozen did not fall into dust, but kept coming. So Manshoon did command some living beholders, after all …
El lashed them with a net of lightnings that would feed on magic sent against it, and watched the beholders shoot forth rays and beams that only strengthened the crackling bolts that seared them. One fell from the sky, another burst like a raw egg, and the last two burned as they came, spinning and shrieking in their ongoing agonies.
El greeted them with a spell of many fireballs, blasts of flame he tried to send inside their many-fanged mouths. His aim was true, and flaming gobbets of beholder hurtled across the city sky.
Men in robes appeared by the gates and past the fountain at the far end of the Delcastle gardens: war wizards, with wands in their hands, intent on Elminster.
He ignored them, reaching forth with his mind, trying to reach Manshoon. Who had to be nearby, who was probably lurking somewhere just yonder, beneath where the beholders had risen.
El had his silver fire, but there was no Weave everywhere around him that he could call on or wrap himself in or ride elsewhere on an instant’s whim. There was just him, and the dwindling spells he had ready, against a foe obviously prepared for the day.
“Saer!” a stern voice called, from the gardens behind him. “Surrender! Have done! This unlawful mage duel-”
Elminster ignored the rest. If these converging war wizards were that foolish, if they could not see the peril to their city and their kingdom-or were already subverted by Manshoon-Suzail might well be doomed. He needed their aid, not their attempts to arrest or oppose him. Another beholder came, a much smaller one, and it was trailing something that looked like a tiny cloud …
The first volley of wand blasts clawed at the mantle spell El had cast around himself, and reduced it to shimmering, snarling fury.
He translocated himself to the fountain, felled one of the war wizards there with a sharp chop to the back of the neck, snatched the wand from the fool’s failing hand, and subsumed its power to invigorate and steady his failing mantle.
All around him, shouting Crown mages hurled spells and fired wands and-
He was elsewhere again, at the gates this time, punching another wizard of war and seizing another wand.
It exploded in El’s grasp, the flash almost blinding and deafening him, even as his mantle drank it and kept his hand from destruction. Then he was caught in a barrage of twenty wand blasts, thirty …
In searing agony he took himself back to where he’d first been standing, arriving in a stagger, his mantle gone and his contingency melting spell after spell out of his mind to meet and counter what the Crown mages were hurling at him. Some of them were showing battle cunning, firing their wands even before he reappeared, anticipating where he’d …
The beholder, utterly unscathed, ignored by the war wizards in their eagerness to smite a lone man within easy reach, was close now, descending as it neared the Delcastle walls.
And here he was, magic giving out, beset by these young fools.
“Ganrahast,” he snarled, “don’t you train your wizards any more? Can’t they see? And think?”
Spells flashed down from the sky, fireballs that hurled war wizards into the air, burned and broken, and lightning bolts that stabbed across the garden, spearing Crown mage after Crown mage.
They were coming from the air behind the lone beholder … Blood of Bane, Manshoon had devised eyeball beholderkin that could unleash spells! A swarm of them!
A spell winked forth from one, then another, lashing down …
Well, at least some war wizards had finally discovered wits enough to look up and see where the slayings that sought them were coming from. They fired their wands into the sky, casting spells at the beholder, too, in a quickening inferno above El’s head that rent the sky like storm thunder.
That beholder exploded.
Wild lightning stabbed down, blazing beholderkin were flung in all directions like embers from an erupting volcano, the gardens rocked as its trees blazed up into one great bonfire, and … sudden silence fell.
The sky was empty, fires burned everywhere in the gardens as charred tree trunks spat sparks, and … bodies were everywhere.
More war wizards arrived, stalking warily forward in a slowly tightening ring around one man.
Who was on his knees, just two spells left in his weary mind and his body shrieking with silent pain. His skin crackled like brittle parchment paper and fell away as he tried to rise, the seared flesh beneath stinking like roast boar.
So this was how it was all going to end, after all these centuries. Blasted apart by young fools lashing out at the wrong target.
Fitting, somehow.
“Mystra,” he whispered. “Alassra. I loved you b
oth.”
They were moving in for the kill, somber and wary, wands aimed and fists thrust forth with awakened rings aglow on their knuckles.
“Now,” someone commanded sternly-and the barrage began.
“Idiots,” El spat, as darkness claimed him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
DOING WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE
The wizards of war fired carefully, concentrating on the mouth and hands of the man on his knees, trying to make sure there’d be no sudden flurry of spells coming back at them.
“No closer,” one warned his fellows. “Contingencies. Blast him from right where you’re standing.”
They lashed the dying man with spell after spell. Magics that raged and snarled, but seemed suddenly not to be touching their target. Instead, they were rising up around him, in a bright and climbing spiral that licked the sky like a great tongue of flame. Blue flame.
A flame that suddenly sank down into a fury of raging fire, fiery tongues of eye-searing-bright silver and of that same rich blue, that became … a tall and furious woman aglow with raging blueflame and silver fire.
“Fools! Ungrateful wretches!” she howled, her silver hair suddenly stabbing out in all directions around her. “Have your miscast magic back!” Deadly spells howled out from her in all directions across the gardens, hurling war wizards out over the walls and against the manor and its gates with shattering, splattering force. When none were left standing, she spun around, fell to her knees, and embraced her Elminster.
“My love,” she gasped, between kisses, “have me again, now-and forever!”
When their lips met, there wasn’t much left of the man in her arms except the seared and blackened head she was holding, and a mangled wisp of shoulders and torso beneath.