by Ed Greenwood
Shandril gasped in horror-and then let her hands fall to her sides as the band of darkness came to a halt an arm's stretch away, right above the still-struggling form of Delg.
"On your knees, wench-or he dies!" The Zhentarim's voice was coldly triumphant.
Shandril looked both ways along the band. It fenced her in against the rocky remnant of an ancient wall, and from only feet away, a dozen or more Zhentilar warriors grinned at her, clubs raised.
She sank down, bitter despair flooding her mouth. The wizard snapped his fingers, and hurled clubs were suddenly crashing in on her from all sides, even before the magical darkness winked out and was gone…
Six
Finding The True Way
Finding one's true way in life can sometimes take an entire lifetime, for it is often the hardest task one faces-after finding out where the next meal is coming from, how to keep from freezing every winter night, where there's a sleepingplace safe from enemies, and just who one can trust to share it with, that is. Oh, aye-and finding the time to do all of these things…
Mirt the Moneylender Wanderings, With Quill and Sword, Year of Rising Mist
"It worked! Hah-ha!" Fimril, mage of the Zhentarim, laughed in glee as the Zhentilar hastened to truss their senseless captives. They were careful not to do the three any further damage-the orders they had been so coldly given about this came from much higher up than this capering wizard, and had been most menacingly specific.
Fimril had spent a long and hard year in private, hurling spells and modifying his castings until he'd fashioned a shieldlike band of magical annihilation: a deadly magic that sucked in light, warmth-even campfires and braziers of fire-and solid things, like stools and unfortunate captives, too.
All the way here, through the forest, a tiny voice inside him wailed that his shield wouldn't absorb spellfire after all, that he was marching to his doom. If the spell failed him, he was doomed… even if he escaped the girl's blazing spelIfire, any of the warriors who got away would see that he paid for his folly-painfully and permanently. Magelings were not well loved among the Zhentilar fighting men.
But it had worked-and now not a one of them dared betray him; their orders had been very clear about that. Fimril chortled and gloated, watching the warriors securely truss their unconscious quarry. Ah, but this was sweet! At last, he, Fimril of Westgate, would get what he deserved, rising in the ranks of the Zhentarim… perhaps even all the way.
He cast quick glances around, checking his bodyguard. Yes, they were ready-four burly, well-armed Zhentarim standing in a crescent at his back, making sure that no harm would come to him until he was safely back in Zhentil Keep.
Fimril laughed aloud and shouted down to the man who was busily checking the knots at Shandril's throat, "Ho! Lyrkon! How are our losses this night?"
The Zhentilar finished his task, controlling his exasperation. The knots seemed tight enough: if she struggled, she'd strangle herself. Aye, good enough. Slowly the Zhentilar stood. "A moment, Lord Wizard; I'll see." Gods, but this mage was going to be insufferable now…
He dusted his hands and looked around. Four-no, five; he'd forgotten Duthspurn until his eyes fell on the poor bastard's legs lying motionless on the ground. And that should be all… Wait, wasn't there a sixth, over there? — Lyrkon took a stride down the ruined wall-in time to see another of his men fall as silently as a gentle breeze glides through leafless trees. He stared at the hand that had appeared over Glondar's mouth-and as the soldier slumped, the face that came into view behind it: a fat, grinning face adorned with fierce gray-white brows and mustaches. Its blue-gray eyes met his own-and winked. Gods!
"Out swords!" he bellowed, pointing at where Glondar was being killed. "We're under attack!"
Along the wall, his men looked up at him, snatching up their clubs or drawing swords-and the one next to Glondar promptly collapsed, a sword through his armpit. The warrior next to him turned at the muffled groan-in time to get the blade of the fat, mustachioed stranger right through his throat.
"Where?" Fimril shouted, peering down at Lyrkon. "Who's attacking us?"
Lyrkon pointed along the wall with his blade. "He is, wizard!" he snarled, making an insult of the last word. Fimril's nostrils flared in anger, and he felt his face going red. That was one soldier he could do without when this was over. Right now, though, he'd show them all.
Drawing himself up, Fimril pointed at the stranger, who was now battling his way along the wall. Turning his finger to keeping it aimed at the moving man, the Zhentarim thumbed open a finger-pouch in the breast pocket of his robe and spilled into his hand a dark powder that had once been a large black pearl. He cast it into the air in front of hip lips as he spoke the echoing, awesome words that would bring death to the man-and to the nearest soldiers, but that was the luck the gods gave and drew himself up in cruel triumph to watch the slaughter.
Light that was somehow dark flashed between wizard and fat man-and back again!
The eyes of Fimril, would-be ruler of the Zhentarim, and those of his bodyguard darkened as one. The mage and his men toppled to the ground like emptied husks, dead upon the instant.
The fat, puffing stranger sighed and shook the smoking remnants of a ring from his finger, saying regretfully, "Watchful Order make… they just don't enchant these gewgaws the way they used to, when I was a lad…"
The last few Zhents, white to the lips, fell back before his lumbering advance, and as he crossed blades with the first and disarmed the man in a skirl- of circling steel, they all turned and ran.
Mirt watched the man he'd disarmed scamper after the rest, and he sighed. When they were gone, he raised his voice in an eerie, singing, wordless call. It echoed mournfully off the tumbled stones of ruined Tethgard, and a long moment later, a soft reply came to him.
Mirt strode toward the origin of the sound. From a pile of rubble before him, a phantom lady slowly rose. She had long, swirling white hair and a beautiful face; her dark eyes stared into his with such sadness that Mirt found himself, as always, on the sudden edge of tears. Buried somewhere far beneath the debris, Mirt knew, lay the crypt where she had been entombed. Lady Duskreene of Tethgard, its door would say. Mirt silently added two words to the inscription he envisioned: Unquiet Spirit.
"Mirt," she said, in that soft, sad voice. "It has been long since you called me."
"Grandlady," Mirt said huskily. "I have need of yer powers."
The translucent, dead-white watch-ghost frowned, emerging in a smooth, silent flight from the rubble, revealing her skeletal, legless torso. She floated in the air before him.
"Name your desire, son of my blood."
"There are soldiers fleeing this place-Zhentilar. They must be destroyed."
Duskreene smiled. "And your girth makes catching them all a doubtful prospect for you? Will you wait for me? I have been so lonely."
Mirt went heavily to one knee and bowed. "I will," he said formally.
She swirled over his head and arrowed off into the trees. After a moment, a terrified scream-suddenly cut off-came to Mirt's ears. A few breaths later, there was another, fainter and farther away.
Mirt got to his feet, grunting at the effort, and went over to Shandril. Checking that she was still breathing, he cut the knots at her throat with his dagger, and set about unbinding her.
A few breaths later, as he was carrying the freed Narm over to the wall, he heard another scream.
Groggily, Shandril roused. "Whaa-"
"Peace, maid. Lie still while I free Delg, here. He's got more nets on him than several boatloads o' Moonsea fish." When the ghostly lady at last returned, Mirt and his companions were all awake and were nursing splitting headaches, rubbing at rope burns, and sipping cautiously at firewine from Mirt's belt flask. Mirt had apologized to them for scouting in the wrong direction, and was telling Shandril what he guessed-not much-about magic that could swallow spellfire.
As the glowing apparition flew into view, Delg choked, grabbing Mirt's arm and pointing. "H
ast any spellfire left, lass? L-"
"Relax, Delg," Mirt said, pushing him back against the wall with one large and firm hand. "This is a friend-an ancestor of mine-and a lady of high breeding, too. I'd like ye all to meet Duskreene, Lady of Tethgard."
The three stared up at the translucent lady as she smiled and drifted slowly nearer. Long hair swirled about her bare shoulders and breast and but for the white pallor and translucence of her form, she might have been still a living woman. Below her breasts, however, bare ribs curved from a spine that dwindled away into wisps of glowing radiance.
"Well met, friends of the son of my blood. Be welcome here, in what is left of my home." Her voice was soft, almost a whisper, and her eyes were kind. She looked around at the crumbling ruins and shook her head. "It was once so grand-and now, so little is left."
Then she turned and smiled at Mirt. "For once, you've missed the best accommodation." She pointed. "There's a door, the other side of that pile of stone. Behind it, several rooms are still intact-and safe from falling in on you, I believe."
Mirt bowed. "My thanks, Lady." He turned to the others. "Lady Duskreene ruled in this castle before there was a realm of Cormyr, very long ago. She's now a watchghost-one of the few ghosts who do not always mean swift death to the living."
"Here," Duskreene added, "you sleep under my protection. Relax, and feel safe." She glanced at Mirt, and mischief danced in her eyes. "And please bear with my kin — when he gets no sleep he's apt to be as grouchy as a bear."
"'Gets no sleep,' Lady?" Narm's eyes were wide with wonder as he looked at her. He'd never seen a ghost before-and this gentle, dignified, half-beautiful and halfskeletal woman was nothing like the spectral monsters whispered of in ghost stories.
The lady who had laughed and loved a thousand years before he was born looked into his eyes sadly. "I'm very lonely here-and on the too-rare occasions when Mirt comes to call, he tells me what has befallen in the lands around since last we talked. I take a morbid interest, I'm afraid, in what the remote descendants of those I knew as friends-and rivals, and foes-are doing, and what contemporaries of mine still walk the world today."
"Such as… Elminster?" Shandril asked on a hunch, inclining her head to one side.
It was an interesting sight, seeing a watch-ghost blush. "Yes," she said, eyes far away, seeing things long ago. "He was much younger then. Yes," she said again, and laughed, "such as Elminster, indeed."
"Tell me more," Delg said eagerly. "I've got to hear this…
"How quaint," murmured one who watched from the darkness of the trees, concealed by layer upon layer of cloaking magics. It listened and spied all through the watch-ghost's long talk with Mirt, and through her silent vigil over the sleeping foursome, in the hours before dawn. All the while, it took care to keep out of her sight.
There was very little in Tethgard that night that Iliph Thraun did not see and hear.
"The trick to finding your way back out of deep woods, look ye," said Mirt to Narm, "is to glance back behind yerself often on the way in. Then ye know what to look for."
"What if you must be leaving by a different way?" Delg asked sourly, almost challengingly.
Mirt froze, and then turned and blinked at the dwarf. His face looked as if he had just been spoken to by a stone, or he'd just seen a bird smoking a pipe. He blinked again and said mildly, "Well, then ye ask the elf who guided ye in to show ye the way out, of course." And with a merry twinkle in his eye he strode on through the deepest stands of Hullack Forest in his relentless, rolling, brush-crashing way.
Delg snorted more than once as he followed. Mirt had urged them up in the chill dawn, bidding a hasty farewell to the wraithlike Duskreene. Without ceremony, he'd led them in a steady tramp through the trees. The going proved agonizing to Narm and Delg; limbs that had stiffened overnight cramped and groaned at the joints.
Mirt kept them moving along with a steady stream of jests and barbed digs directed at lazy dwarves and effete young mages. Shandril shook her head at some of his words, but she wisely kept silent and followed the bobbing axe the stout old merchant adventurer wore at the back of his belt.
Something about Mirt's name was niggling away in her memories, something fleeting that the ranger Florin Falconhand had said, and a reply that Elminster had given, in Shadowdale, at some point in the whirlwind activities of her brief stay there. She looked back at Narm, as if meeting his eyes would bring the memory to her-and it did. She smiled at Narm and turned back to stare at the broad back in front of her. Mirt was one of the Lords of Waterdeep, the not-so-secret band of powerful folk who ruled that great and splendid city.
Striding along at Delg's side, Narm returned Shandril's brief and knowing smile. Her expression had been as bright and beautiful as the rising sun, which had just
announced morning through the branches above them. Rosy lances of light struck amid the trees here and there. The sudden, broad dawn reminded Narm that the Realms were beautiful and vast, but of course safer when one walked them with friends. He chuckled his joy aloud and thus earned a sour look from Delg.
"When a lad chuckles like that," the dwarf said gloomily, "it's usually the sound of his wits escaping out his mouth. He's sure to do something wildly stupid, all too soon."
Ahead, Shandril turned, eyes flashing as she laughed. "Why, Delg! And what does a lass's chuckle warn you of?"
The dwarf's beard bristled as he clamped his mouth tightly shut and glared at her. A deep red hue slowly crept up his neck and across his face and balding head as he walked along in the general laughter. Almost thirty paces passed underfoot before a deep rumbling announced that Delg had joined in.
The morning sun was warm on the old wizard's face. Elminster stood conferring with the youngest mage of the Knights of Myth Drannor, one Illistyl. The high balcony of the Twisted Tower in Shadowdale afforded a splendid view of the lush green meadows below.
The old sage's pipe kept going out in the breeze. He tapped it on the stone parapet and said, "Mind ye watch Shaerl while I'm gone… she's apt to act 'ere prudence governs. She's young yet."
Illistyl, who had seen but nineteen winters herselfrather less than the Lady Shaerl-smiled tolerantly. "Impetuous action being the province of the very young and the very old, my lord?" she asked, eyes all too innocent.
Elminster snorted. "Now girl, grant ye I could sit here happily amid books and all and let the Realms be hurled down and laid waste around me, but 'tis not impetuous nor foolish to lift a hand to prevent such a thing. Some of thy deeds, and those of thy fellow Knights, may be hastily thought on or taken at whim, but I do consider acts ere I take them-consider them well, as all sh-"
"Aye, aye," Mistyl interrupted him smoothly. "I shall, I shall. As ever." She patted the Old Mage's arm. "I would be more at ease if most of us weren't galloping all over the Dales, distracting those hunting for spellfire… and if Dove and Jhessail could spare more time from their little ones, though I know that above all we must keep such younglings safe. Alone, I can give Mourngrym little aid if aught demanding power or influence should befall."
Elminster's eyes were briefly moist. Her softly spoken, archaic words had reminded him of a young maid he had stood with long ago, as beautiful and as skilled in Art, a lady now only ashes. Too many young lasses laughed only in his memories now, gone to dust, naught left of them but their fading writings in spellbooks and his even more faded memories. Abruptly, the Old Mage looked south toward the trees that hid the millpond and the burned flagstones of Sylune's Hut. Gods be struck down, there is another lost lady, he thought briefly, then swept aside his dark thoughts angrily. I must be getting old!
He raised his eyes to look at lazily drifting clouds and, with an effort he cared not to show, said teasingly, "Perhaps Torm will again come to thy aid."
Beside him, slim Illistyl stiffened. "You jest, I trust," she answered coldly.
The old sage's eyes twinkled merrily as he gravely replied, "Aye. Of course." He turned then, took her hand gently, and kissed it.
Illistyl shred at him, astonished. His mustache rasped across her knuckles like a bristle-brush for a moment, and she found herself staring into very blue, very keen old eyes. She shivered involuntarily; Elminster's gaze made her feel quite naked, and more than a little ashamed. It seemed that he saw into the very depths and corners of her being, parting all the shadowy curtains of old jealousies, regrets, and small deceits. And yet his voice, when it came, was both tender and approving.
"I must go, little one," he said. "I foresee a need to face the archwizards of the Zhentarim before long-and with the spells and monstrous assistance they employ in battles, I've no wish to be anywhere near Shadowdale when the fray begins. Forget not what Jhessail and I have taught thee, and follow thy good sense, and all will be well in the ending of it. Thy good reason is more important than all the power ye will ever wield."
As he released her hand, Illistyl shivered again, closed her eyes briefly as if gathering her strength, and then snorted at him, eyes flashing open. "A lot my good reason will do if Zhentil Keep's soldiers march down that road there!"
Elminster clucked, reprovingly. "Manshoon has other worries, girl, worse than ye know. Myself, for instance. He needs his armies-or thinks he does, and that's all the same to us-to face other foes." He patted her hand. "Abide here and keep the dale safe. Lhaeo will serve thee in need. Mystra shield thee."
"And comfort thee," she replied formally, and added, "mind you return speedily, Old Mage. You will be needed — and missed."
"Many have said so," he said over his shoulder as he swept down the stairs, "over the years. And when I was not there, the will of the gods unfolded anyway."