by Ed Greenwood
Run!
Elminster’s mind-shout was almost deafening, and Arclath put his head down and pumped his arms and really ran, fetching up in Storm’s arms—as she caught him to keep him from slamming into the palace wall—a few panting instants later.
The moment Storm was holding him, it was as if a great glowing hearth of light and warmth rolled open in Arclath’s mind.
He reeled mentally and was thrust firmly to the task of regaining his balance and breath, just as fast as possible, anchoring himself with one hand on the unyielding stone of the palace wall, as Elminster and Storm communicated in a flashing dance of thoughts too fast for the Fragrant Flower of House Delcastle to follow.
A moment later, he was turning, Elminster firmly in control. Away from the palace, to look up into the night where a great looming eye tyrant was turning, rising, and rolling over to look down on the greatest number of Cormyreans at once, ready to hurl its magics again and permanently deprive the realm of as many Crown soldiers and mages as possible.
To cast a swift, deft, and unfamiliar spell that lanced up to strike the beholder and wrestle it into its true shape, in the grip of a terrible compulsion. A magic that raced around and around the floating horror in a snarling racing of blue-and-silver fire.
The Weave may have fallen, and Elminster and Storm might be Chosen of the mightiest goddess of the realms no longer, but they knew just how to force proud wizards who’d grown up praying to Mystra to obey, even if only for a moment.
The racing fire became a spellburst, a shortlived sun of silver-blue light in the sky over the Promenade, around a writhing beholder.
An eye tyrant that flickered and was a man for a moment, a man falling through the air. Then it was a beholder once more, shuddering and writhing, groaning aloud and then roaring, “I am Xarlandralath, spawn of Xorlughra—and slave of the accursed Manshoon! Deliver me! Deliver me from this!”
Then the sun winked out, hurling the beholder high into the air, spinning and writhing.
Arclath heard a gasp, and the strong, longer-fingered hands holding him stiffened—and then fell away.
He turned in time to see Storm fall on her face on the cobbles, crumpling to the street as limp as a wet cloak.
Pain exploded in his head. Elminster’s pain.
As he staggered back to the wall to keep from falling, and clawed his way feebly along it, Arclath heard the wizard say weakly, sounding both faint and far off in the echoing depths of his mind, Storm’s done Storm’s done get us inside get us away …
He bent to pick her up, or try to, lost his balance, and stumbled a few wild and swift steps back on his heels to keep from falling. They took him around to look out into the street again.
Where the Lord of House Delcastle saw the beholder descending again, wearing a murderous glare and seemingly in control of itself—or under Manshoon’s control, that is—once more.
Beyond it, Targrael had turned from trying to get to a particular building, and with a sword waving wildly in both hands, was racing back across the street, wearing a murderous glare of her own. A bared-teeth glare that was bent on the beholder.
Far more glares were being aimed at the menacingly swooping eye tyrant. Every wizard of war on the street had taken a stance and was casting a spell—every last one of them, with the Dragons drawn hastily back to give each one room.
“Now!” a long-bearded war wizard shouted.
And the air itself screamed as half a hundred spells tore through it, to converge in the onrushing beholder.
The flash was blinding and deafening and made Arclath want to fall.
So he did.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-FIVE
RESCUES AND CAPTURES
The royal palace, the Promenade, and the row of buildings facing the palace across the broadest street in Suzail all rocked and swayed. A parapet corbel broke off and plummeted to the cobbles where it shattered, the shards rolling ponderously to various halts.
Hardly anyone noticed. Everyone, even as they fell and bounced amid the shaking cobbles and swirling dust, was staring up at the beholder above—the eye tyrant at the snarling heart of more than twoscore ravening magics. They tore and thrust, seared and lashed, and sent a shrieking, fang-shedding, broken-jawed sphere spinning helplessly away, shredded eyestalks whirling away from it in a wide-hurled rain of wet ruin.
Dying, torn open, and spilling guts in a rain of purple gore, the beholder Talane now knew was Manshoon’s slowed as it reached the zenith of where the magics had hurled it, and started to fall.
Ravaged and drifting, too wounded to attack anything, but trying to slow its descent, the beholder tumbled, its central eye staring at nothing and going dim. The Cormyreans watched, not daring to cheer yet.
Targrael kept moving, following the path of the beholder, peering hard at it, watching for any sign of Manshoon working a last magic.
It was drifting sideways as it fell, away from the palace … toward the rest of the city. To the rooftop where Talane crouched.
Targrael never let her stare leave the ruined tyrant, not for an instant. Would it crash and splatter on that club rooftop, right beside Manshoon’s slinking little mind-slave?
It certainly looked as if … no … no. It was going to drift just far enough to fall past, to be dashed to wet ruin in the street behind, or across the fronts of the shops and balconies of the next building beyond.
Then Targrael’s vigilance was rewarded.
She saw the briefest of flashes in the air between the beholder and the dark figure on the edge of the rooftop. Manshoon, plunging into the mind of his Talane.
Talane, who by day was the Lady Deleira Truesilver, resident of a noble mansion that not even the founder of the Zhentarim could hide or move.
Targrael forgot all about the falling beholder. Talane was her new target.
She started to run. Dragons were running, too, and some of them were eyeing her as their swords came up, but she ignored them, sprinting all the faster, heading for the street that ran beside that club, trying to circle around behind the rooftop.
She was in time to see Talane, high above her, make the dangerous leap to the roof of the next building.
“You!” a man commanded from close behind her. “Down steel, or die!”
Targrael rolled her eyes. Did clod-headed Dragons never give up?
Still running, she looked back. Stlarn! The man had friends, about a dozen of them, and a war wizard was running with them. Looking neither winded nor afraid in the slightest, to boot. He had a tluining wand out!
She’d passed the club and was running along the side of the second building, knowing that Talane was likely several buildings along by now, making much shorter rooftop leaps and acquiring a wide choice of ways down to the street—or deeper.
More Dragons were coming at her down the sidestreets, closing in.
“Stlarn it,” she said aloud. “Enough of this! I will go to Truesilver House to hunt myself a Talane, but I need that gem from Queen Alendue’s cache first, anyhail. If I capture his mind, he can’t use his magic on me!”
Rounding a corner she knew, a good six strides ahead of the Dragon who was still commanding her to surrender or taste death, she came upon the wooden hatch she remembered. Plucking it up, she flung it back in his face without even looking and plunged feet-first down the revealed shaft.
She was half a dozen sloshing steps along a noisome sewer quite large enough for tall warriors, heading into the palace by one of the wetter ways, before the Dragon whose face she had crushed with her hurled hatch drew in his last, gurgling breath and died.
Mirt’s headlong flight through the palace had slowed to a fast, stumbling lurch, restoring wind enough to him to roar, “Help! Ho! A rescue! Beholder attack! War wizards and Dragons beset! The palace breached! Aid!”
Where were all the doorjacks and guards? Usually the stlarned pests were everywhere, like flies on fresh dung, forever stepping forward to politely bar your way, and—
He came to a lamplit meeting of passages that had to be a guardpost, and it was deserted, too. Oh, well, mayhap they were all out there in the street already, and busy dying …
An old shield hung on the wall beside the lantern, adorned with peeling paint that had once proclaimed a no-doubt-famous blazon. It was probably a precious relic of some famous old Obarskyr king, a hero of the realm storied in song.
Well, old relic, time to save Cormyr again. Reversing his daggers into a pair of improvised clubs, Mirt started hammering on the shield, belaboring it like a gong until it rebounded repeatedly off the wall, raising a terrible racket.
He could hear the echoes rolling back from six or seven rooms away, setting various distant and unseen metal trophies to ringing in sympathy. Grinning, Mirt dented the shield even harder, paint flying into dust all around him.
A door flew open, and a man staggered through it, face contorted in anger.
A war wizard.
Of course.
Seeing Mirt, he waved his hands imperiously and snarled, “Stop that, sirrah! Madwits! Old fool! Folk are trying to sleep!”
Mirt went right on ringing the shield but used one hand to point back the way he’d come, and then waved the dagger he was holding.
The Crown mage was unimpressed. “Under attack, my left elbow! Bah!”
Snatching out a wand, he marched up to Mirt, planted himself dramatically to blast this noisy nuisance—and collapsed senseless to the floor, struck on the back of his neck by something plummeting from above.
Mirt peered down at the mage with interest, then recoiled. The thing that had felled him looked a little like a wraithlike wisp of something dark, and a bit like a spider. It was unwrapping its long legs—which began to look more like human fingers—from around a ceiling tile it had obviously ridden down on. Spiderlike, it scuttled toward Mirt, who resisted the urge to stamp on the thing with both boots.
Now the wraith looked more like an old man’s face, the cloud trailing away in the suggestion of a beard. Beneath that face were definitely human fingers, a hand, rather … but the face was walking across the floor on the tips of those fingers.
Aye, the floor; it had come down off the unconscious wizard and was crawling toward Mirt. Who devoted himself to backing away warily.
“Mirt of Waterdeep,” the spiderlike thing greeted him dryly. “Well met. Vangerdahast, Royal Magician of Cormyr, at your service. Keep ringing that shield.”
Mirt bowed, nodded, and resumed striking the shield, with enthusiasm.
The din was tremendous, almost deafening when the echoes got going, and it wasn’t long before someone who looked both groggy and angry lurched around a corner and came striding along the passage toward Mirt.
Watching this second arrival closely for any signs of a wand or a spell being cast, Mirt barely noticed that the spiderlike thing had crept around to stand in the lee of his boots, hidden from the oncoming courtier.
Who shouted, “Cease your noise! Who are you, anyhail, and what do you want? I am Palace Understeward Corleth Fentable!”
The man had said his name as if he expected Mirt to be impressed, so Mirt shrugged and smiled. “I’m Mirt, and I’m ringing this shield to let all the palace know there’s a beholder out in the street blasting Dragons and war wizards—oh, and a big hole in the side of the palace, too. Well met.”
“Oh?” Fentable seemed less than impressed. “Wait right here. I’ll be back with suitable minions.”
Whirling around, he marched back the way he’d come.
“He’s going to get Dragons to come back and arrest you,” Vangerdahast said quietly, from down by Mirt’s boots. “Run after him, and smite him cold.”
Mirt smiled. This seemed the best advice he’d heard in some time. Drawing in the breath he’d need for a swift lurch down a passage, he hefted his daggers in his hands, pommels up—and did as he’d been told.
When he looked back at Vangerdahast from above the understeward’s sprawled body, one spiderlike finger was crooking to beckon him back.
Mirt bent down, grabbed a good handful of palace understeward tunic-front, and gave the royal magician a questioning look.
Vangey nodded, so Mirt dragged the man back to the lamplit shield.
“This man’s a traitor to the Crown,” the royal magician explained. “Just whom he’s working for, and to what ends, I don’t know yet—and right now, we haven’t time to try to force answers out of him. And the realm needs answers, not all this shouting and chasing about after disasters have befallen. So, I need you to take him down to the royal crypt for me.”
Mirt shrugged. “As long as the guards won’t try to inter me there, that’s fine with me.”
“Good. Hold still.” The man-headed spiderthing started to climb Mirt’s leg. “I’ll ride on your shoulder and guide you. It should be unguarded, except by the sealing spells, and I can take care of those. We have some empty coffins there, and anyone put in them is held in spell-stasis. I can think of quite a few persons in this kingdom I’d prefer to entomb there until I’m ready to deal with them, but this wretch is a start.”
Mirt chuckled. “Guide me.”
“We take this passage, to the bend there. See that square stone, right down by the floor? Kick it with your boot. Another stone should move out a bit, right in front of you. Push in on it, hard, and a hidden door will open.”
“Better and better. Is there any treasure hereabouts that no one would miss, hey?”
“No,” Vangey said flatly. “Yet the royal magician of the realm has been known to reward those who serve Cormyr well.”
Mirt followed the instructions, and a door grated open with surprisingly little noise. He dragged Fentable through it and went on, the door swinging closed the moment the understeward’s dragging boots were clear of it.
A bare breath later, just as he was opening his mouth in the pitch darkness to ask the spiderthing on his shoulder for more instructions, he heard a commotion on the other side of the wall.
Many men in boots were hurrying around the corner he’d just vacated, and at least one woman was with them. The Lady Glathra’s unmistakable voice was berating them as they went, telling all within earshot that she was simply spitting mad, and someone was going to pay for it; and that she wanted to know just who’d dared to rouse this part of the palace, and she’d ring his clanging gong for him, good and hard.
Mirt and Vangerdahast were both wily old veterans, so they waited until the sounds had died away to utter silence before they chuckled. In unison.
The King’s Forest was a cold place at this time of deepest night, shrouded in streaming wisps of mist and awake with eerie calls.
One of those sounds was coming from a shallow dell not far from the Way of the Dragon. It was the deep, loud snoring of an exhausted young lord of Cormyr.
Pillowed on a bodyguard’s cloak and lying on the layered cloaks of two more, Marlin Stormserpent was deep in his dreams, wrapped in his own cloak, while his shivering bodyguards stood grim guard over him.
“He’s not paying us near enough for this sort o’ duty,” one of them whispered hoarsely, not for the first time.
“Shut it,” came the familiar reply, made more curtly than ever.
“Hear that?” the third bullyblade hissed, sword singing out. “Something’s coming—yonder!”
They caught a glimpse of distant blue flame through the trees, and fearfully roused their lord, shaking him and nudging him with their boots in hasty unison.
The master’s blueflame ghosts were coming back, and the cursed beyond-dead things obeyed only him.
He came awake as fearful as they were, sweat-drenched and cursing, and had to scramble up to have both Blade and Chalice ready in hand when the two flaming slayers stalked up to him, dragging a hairy mass larger than both of them. It was leaving a wide, wet trail of gore through the leaves and fallen logs, which made the bodyguards look even grimmer and shuffle until they stood together, swords out and watchful.
“What is it?” Storms
erpent asked, unenthusiastically.
“You ordered us to get evenfeast. Behold. It’s a bear—everything else in the forest fled from us.”
The three bullyblades traded silent glances that all said, “That surprises me not,” as loudly as if they’d bellowed it.
Stormserpent merely nodded, held up the Chalice and the Blade, and bent his will upon the two ghosts. Who leaned forward as if in belligerent challenge but said nothing.
In eerie silence the noble strained, trembling and going pale … and slowly, very slowly, the men wreathed in cold blue flames faded away, their last wisps rising up into the two items the lord was clutching.
Stormserpent let out a deep sigh, let his hands fall to his sides, then turned and snapped at the three bullyblades, “Butcher yon bear, light the fire you laid, and start cooking it. You can wake me again when it’s done.”
Crossing Chalice and Blade across his breast as if he were a priest sleeping vigil on an altar, he laid himself down on the cloaks and closed his eyes.
The bodyguards grudgingly set about following the orders he’d just given. As they bent down around the bear with their daggers out and started sawing, the looks they sent their master’s way were almost as baleful as the ones the blueflame ghosts had been offering him, a dozen breaths before.
“Cheerful place,” Mirt commented, watching Vangerdahast’s approach to the double doors cause the expected sigils to glow into eerie visibility. Warning off tomb robbers and fools.
Well, he’d been both, in his day, and probably would be both again …
He glanced back at Fentable. The understeward looked a little the worse for being dragged down two flights of stairs and along more passages than Mirt had bothered to keep count of, to reach this cold, silent lower cellar.
The doors sighed open, and Vangerdahast said, “Thank you for looking away. Waterdeep is well lorded over, I see.”