Elminster's Daughter

by Ed Greenwood

  Her eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”

  “Ammaratha, hear this: For his new guardians of the realm, Vangerdahast intends to bind—dragons.”

  “What?” The air shuddered with a furiously rising thunder, and Roldro Tattershar winced then scrambled back to the foot of the couch.

  Silver blue scales flashed and shone, mighty wings spread and flapped heedless of the cracking, groaning ceiling, and the glare of those piercing turquoise eyes froze the cowering Harper where he crouched.

  The great tail lashed, long legs sprang—and the ceiling was crashing and falling in huge chunks of plaster, riven wood, dust and tumbling stone all around Roldro. The room rocked, and its pretty oval skylight vanished forever into tinkling shards. A much larger window was left behind in its place: The entire top of the chamber gaped open to the misty Marsemban sky.

  The song dragon was soaring up into the blueness above the city-stink and heading northward, flying fast and furiously.

  Roldro stopped holding his breath, gasped for air—and promptly started coughing furiously. He was covered in thick dust and could hear faint shouts from below as guards and servants wondered aloud of the gods what had happened.

  Ammaratha Cyndusk was already no more than a tiny, dwindling dot. Roldro struggled across the room, scooped up one of her jewel-coffers as the first installment of his payment, and started searching for the way into the secret passage he knew departed this room from the westernmost closet. Crooked stewards he could handle—but crooked stewards commanding a dozen or more furious and well-armed guards might well be another matter.

  “May you find fair fortune, Ammaratha,” he whispered, between coughs. “If I could turn into a dragon, I’d not go roaring openly down on Vangerdahast unless I was seeking my own swift death.”

  There was a decanter of wine on a shelf in the closet, and the last of the Tattershars decided to take it with him and banish his coughing the enjoyable way. The panel gave him some trouble, for the wall above it was buckled and sagging … but he got it closed behind him a good two hearty swigs before the furious pounding on the retiring-room door began.

  “How dare he!” the song dragon roared into the wind of her own furious flight. “How dare he!”

  She ducked one shoulder and turned a little westward without slowing, cleaving the air so fast that breathing was hard and her wings hummed and hissed in their battle with the air.

  “Such an insult to all dragonkind! Such colossal arrogance! Even if some wyrms submit willingly to ages-long slumber and eventual perilous service, the wizard’s plan endangers us all! Once Vangerdahast has developed binding spells that work on dragons, anyone who steals them or acquires them after his passing can use them against any dragon!”

  Her voice was ear-splitting, but the heedless skies made no reply. With a snarl of seething fury she ducked her head and beat her wings in earnest, darting furiously on toward the green vastness of the King’s Forest.

  On to the sanctum where the villain Vangerdahast was lurking.

  Nineteen

  DRAGONRAGE AND DECEPTION

  Deceit and falsehood wound me more deeply than mere daggers—poisoned or not. Thy tolerance may, of course, differ.

  Selemvarr of Pyarados,

  “The Old Red Wizard”

  My Century of Might and Folly:

  A Career In Robes of Red

  Year of the Gauntlet

  Outside the kitchen there was a mighty crash, and someone screamed. The ground shook, setting the lanterns to swinging, and Myrmeen started for the window in a wary crouch, blade drawn.

  Vangerdahast did not look up from his spell. “Not now,” he snapped. “How am I ever goin—”

  “Vangerdahast,” the Lady Lord of Arabel snapped, “get over here! There’s a dragon digging out your sanctum like a dog hunting for bones!”

  “Eh? A wyrm? Excellent! I can try my—”

  “I doubt either of the two War Wizards it’s just flung away over the trees would agree with that ‘excellent’ of yours,” Myrmeen interrupted crisply. “And I doubt this sword of mine will do much more than amuse our unexpected guest! I’ve never seen this sort of dragon—silver blue, but with the shape of a copper wyrm.…”

  Vangerdahast made a small sound of exasperated annoyance, abandoned his spell with a dismissive wave of his hands, and strode to the window.

  “A song dragon! Well, now!” He rubbed his hands together. “I wonder how her human form strikes the eye?”

  Myrmeen gave him a strange look at about the same time as the massive tail outside swung toward the window in a suddenly looming slap. The windows crashed in, riven spells bursting into crawling fingers of lightning that wrestled with the glass, splinters of frame, and dislodged stone blocks—then stabbed out in all directions. The Lady Lord shrieked as one bolt found her armor and writhed briefly up and down her, and Vangerdahast grunted as another made one of his rings burst apart without triggering its magics, almost casually flinging him across the room as it did so. The north end of the kitchen groaned as unseen pantries beyond it collapsed, the chambers beyond them dug open and flung apart.

  “Wizard!” a great, roaring voice hammered at them. “Where are you, wizard?”

  Vangerdahast’s answer was three carefully enunciated words that called up the defenses of the sanctum.

  The shields all around him flared white and flowed forward, in a gathering charge that flung the song dragon back across the glade. Helmed horrors came racing through the shattered trees like arrows, converging on the thrashing wyrm. A pale green radiance began to gather around Vangerdahast, leaking out of the empty air like so many humming sparks to settle around him, cloaking him in rising power.

  “Lass,” he growled, in obvious discomfort, “see yon stone? The one with the rune on it?”

  Myrmeen looked up at him from where she lay sprawled and gasping on the floor, face white and hair scorched … then turned her head to look where he was pointing.

  “Pluck it up, and drink all you need of the healing potions beneath,” the former Royal Magician of Cormyr grunted, striding past her with green radiance surging and building around him. “For once have a little sense and crawl away somewhere to lie quiet and keep out of the way. In all that battle-steel, you’re nothing but dragonbait: Yon wyrm breathes lightning-gas!”

  The Lady Lord of Arabel stared after him … and with trembling hands, as she lay on the floor, tried to unbuckle and shake off her armor. Vangerdahast cast a glance back at her, shook his head in disgust, and flexed his hands.

  Green radiances flashed, and all over the sanctum wands, rods, rings, and odd diadems and orbs flashed, quivered, and grew green haloes of their own.

  Outside, the helmed horrors were hacking and stabbing at the rolling, tail-lashing dragon, unaffected by the cloud of gas that gouted from its jaws. Scaled claws snatched and flung them often, and from time to time tore one apart in a flare of white radiances, the pieces of armor tumbling separately to earth.

  Vangerdahast calmly watched the song dragon writhe and roll its way through the forest, toppling trees in all directions. If it started working magic, he’d smite it with the whelmed power of the sanctum, but until then, as long as his horrors held out …

  These guardians didn’t last very long, anyway. The flight enchantments he gave them gnawed endlessly at the magics that animated and bound them together, so they were a loss he could bear. The imprisoned criminals who’d elected to be put into dreamsleep so their sentiences could be used for these horrors would have sudden awakenings and probably an unpleasant burst of nightmares, scaring their jailers and adding to the meal preparation burden in the few remote keeps of the realm that had been turned into jails … but they’d be there again when new horrors were needed.

  The horrors were swarming like angry hornets around the coiling and rolling wyrm, smashed away in their dozens when it slashed out with wings or tail, only to dart right back in and jab, jab, and hack again. There came a brief shimmering in the h
eart of that fray, and Vangerdahast lifted a hand, eyes narrowing.

  In the next instant, the dragon collapsed, that great sleek scaled body in the heart of the darting, armored cloud suddenly falling away to being … not there.

  And a staggering, panting woman clad in a few tatters of rose-pink gown suddenly stood before the shattered windows, calling, “Vangerdahast? Wizard? Where are you? We must have words together!”

  “I am here,” Vangerdahast replied calmly, the green radiance rising up in front of him like a wall. “Had I known you were coming, I might have been more welcoming. As it is, I’d prefer that your next words to me be your name and your business. Unless, of course, you’d like them to be your last words.”

  The woman put a hand on the shattered window-frame and ducked gracefully to climb down into the kitchen. Her state of dress made her lack of weapons plain to any eye, but Myrmeen, still sprawled on the floor, laid down the potion vial she’d just emptied and reached for her blade again.

  “My name, Lord Vangerdahast, is Ammaratha Cyndusk,” the woman replied, stepping down onto the counter between two plate-racks in a catlike crouch. She was tall, well-built, and wise-eyed. “In human shape I dwell in Marsember, and folk there know me as Lady Joysil Ambrur.”

  “Ah, the lass who likes to know all secrets,” the wizard replied, nodding. “And must now have learned this one of mine. Who told you, may I ask?”

  “A Harper whose name you’ll not learn from me—who told me a War Wizard spoke of it to another War Wizard. Before I throw my life away trying to end yours, I’d like to make sure I understand correctly: You’re developing spells to hunt, lure, and control dragons, intending to accumulate a collection of dragons whom you’ll bind—with other spells you’re also working on—as sleeping defenders of Cormyr, in much the same way as the Lords Who Sleep formerly guarded the realm?”

  “That is correct, yes.”

  “And you’ll not be swayed from this scheme? Into using, say, willing War Wizards or Purple Dragons or other humans of Cormyr?”

  “Human participation is likely, but I firmly intend to use dragons for most of the realm’s defenders. Are you interested?”

  The woman suddenly vanished from the countertop—and reappeared with her legs scissored around Vangerdahast’s head. She twisted them sideways in an attempt to break his neck as her body arched over backwards down his front, and slapped both her arms out behind her to strike down his own and ruin any castings he might try.

  “In your death, wizard!” she gasped as they crashed together, her back slamming into his ankles.

  Vangerdahast still stood upright, his neck unmoved, so she threw herself from side to side, whipping her legs back and forth—but she seemed to be pivoting on something rigid, immobile, and as hard as stone. Something shrouded in more brightly pulsing green radiance.

  “Interesting view,” the wizard managed to say, in the moments before Myrmeen Lhal crashed into Joysil, tore her free from Vangerdahast, and bore her to the kitchen floor.

  They skidded along together as Vangerdahast frowned down at them both. “Lass, I can fight my own battles, thank you. See this field around me, this green glow? It both protects my neck and keeps this song dragon from regaining its real shape and crushing the both of us against the walls and floor. It should also prevent her from teleporting again, now that she’s this close. Get clear, now. I want to talk to her.”

  Myrmeen gave him an ‘are you sure?’ look, and he nodded. She rose off Joysil, springing clear to keep from being tripped or having any of her daggers stripped from her, and Vangerdahast laid a hand on her arm and said gruffly, “Oh, and lass, thank you.”

  Myrmeen gave him another strange look and backed away to the sink.

  “You might as well kill me,” Joysil panted, from where she lay bruised and winded on the floor. “Unless you renounce this plan of yours—and I can somehow believe you—I’ll just keep trying to slay you. No dragon in all Faerûn is safe once those spells of yours work and are written down.”

  Vangerdahast nodded, and green radiance flowed from his fingers. In a room far away across the sanctum, two wands flickered and flashed. “I fear you’ll now discover that you can’t move, Lady Cyndusk—or Ambrur, if you prefer. I’d rather not be slain, thank you very much … and yet there’s truth in what you say. These spells shall be my legacy to Cormyr. Others must be able to cast them after I am gone to augment the ranks of defenders or replace those fallen in battle. Some wizards may well use them less … judiciously than I shall. So, yes, I am a danger to dragonkind.”

  He sighed. “I’ve spent my life wrestling down my own desires—and dreams, and sympathies—to cleave always to one guiding and supreme pursuit: the betterment and defense of Cormyr. I will do anything to keep this realm strong—and its character much as it is now and has always been. I believe it to be among the best achievements of my kind, dragon, and want to keep it so … whatever the cost to anyone.”

  He went to a drawer, pulled forth a clean tablecloth, and laid it carefully over Joysil’s frozen form. “I’ve no robes your size, but if you don’t mind some of my winter weathercloaks … the moths always get at them, but …”

  “Wizard,” the helpless song dragon on the floor hissed, “you promote the worst sort of slavery for dragons. Even if you find some willing slaves to be your guards, these spells will get out, and there’ll come a day when the only wyrms not under the command of someone will be those who die fighting after your other spells find them, lure them, and hook them!”

  Vangerdahast nodded a little sadly. “I had foreseen this consequence, yes. Have you any bright solutions for me that I’ve thus far missed?”

  “You—you monster!” Joysil stormed, trembling against the paralyzing magics that held her. “Youuu—”

  She tried to turn her head away as he bent near, and when she found she could not, she shut her eyes and screamed—a cry that soon faded, warbled, and died away.

  “Sleep,” the old wizard told her gently. “If Mystra smiles on me for once, I’ll have thought of something before I have to wake you.”

  He turned away with a sigh and added bitterly, “Or more likely not.”

  Myrmeen Lhal regarded him gravely. Her sword was sheathed, and there was a strange look in her eyes, a different strange look than before. “You could have slain her—easily—and did not. Why so?”

  Vangerdahast regarded her a little sourly. “I’ve seen too many problems in life to enjoy disposing of them by working murder any longer, lass. I need some time to decide what best to do to calm and heal her.”

  The Lady Lord of Arabel nodded, folded her arms across her chest, and said, “Yet the ruthless defender of the realm might say the best thing for Cormyr would be to eliminate this dragon now—mercifully, while she sleeps, helpless. One less foe, one danger gone, the realm thus that small measure stronger.”

  “This is not the Devil Dragon,” the former Royal Magician sighed, “and truth to tell, lass, I’ve seen and done more than enough killing.”

  He shook out another tablecloth, spread it on the floor, and did something that made the green radiance brighten all around them and raise Joysil’s rigid body into the air. Unseen forces lifted the tablecloth up to her from beneath. Thus sandwiched in cloth, the body floated toward the kitchen door.

  “I believe,” Vangerdahast added as he started after it, “I’ve finally grown up enough to hold the view that folk whose views differ from mine are not necessarily foes I should slay.”

  There was clear respect in Myrmeen’s eyes as she looked at him, smiled, and suddenly reached out to take his arm.

  He patted her hand with his own, suddenly conscious of her hip brushing against his, and looked back at her. As their eyes met, Vangerdahast felt—with no small surprise—long-suppressed feelings stirring within him once more.

  * * * * *

  Narnra rolled her eyes as she dropped down from yet another window. Gods, what a lot of petty little bickering, arrogance, and rivalries! T
hese War Wizards were almost as bad as Waterdhavian nobles!

  Almost. Bane come striding, if this was what the law-keepers were like, what might the nobles of Cormyr have to offer?

  “Who was that idiot who said, ‘Always more treasure beyond the next hill’?” she muttered aloud—then froze again on all fours on a potted-fern-crowded balcony as two War Wizards strolled out to stand at the rail not four paces away, laughing cynically.

  “Well, I always knew Old Thundersides wouldn’t let go his grip on the throne all that easily!”

  “Dragons! After all the blood elves shed to snatch this land away from being the private hunting-ground of various wyrms! I can’t believe it!”

  “I can. Who else sleeps for centuries, anyway? Who else can last so long and still be alive instead of undead and hating the living? Who else in Cormyr could he trust? Our nobles?”

  The two shared a bitter, derisive crow of laughter. The second robed mage shook his head and replied, “Who can truly trust a dragon? What must they think of us humans who butcher, steal from them, take their eggs, and … sweep them aside, where once they ruled all Faerûn?”

  The taller, older wizard shrugged. “ ’Twas the elves did that to them—oh, and that cult among the hobgoblins that thought eating dragonflesh would make them into a larger, stronger breed … they used to take more eggs than humans ever have.”

  “D’you think old Vangey will snatch some eggs and try to hatch wyrmlings he’s bound and brainwashed with spells?”

  “Mayhap,” the older War Wizard replied, turning away from the rail to walk back inside, “but he needs grown ones, too. Wyrmlings are like ignorant but recklessly overconfident youths—and can do about as much unintended damage to themselves, as well as to whatever they’re supposed to be protecting.”

  Miraculously, the two mages didn’t notice the rock-still thief crouched on her fingertips. Narnra let out a long, slow breath as quietly as she could, gathered in air, and sprang forward and over the balcony rail.

  Vangerdahast’s secret was out. Spellbound dragons to guard Cormyr! So she’d found Duskwinter, and that jovial trim-bearded one in the bath earlier had been Bathtar Flamegallow—more interested in floating carved little wooden ships than anything else, that one, but his jokes had certainly been amusing. Calaethe Hallowthorn was out near some place called Jester’s Green—and was being out and about in the countryside suspicious? She knew too little about these War Wizards to judge—but the other woman she was to watch over, Iymeera Juthbuck, was a bit of a wildcat when it came to strong adventurers, if the rather catty War Wizard gossip could be believed—and what did the Harpers think of all this, anyway? Had Rhauligan told any of them?