by Ed Greenwood
The silently listening figure that neither Manshoon nor Xanther knew was there decided it was time to withdraw before being discovered, with a chance to earn a reward instead of the cold, deadly weight of Manshoon’s disfavor.
Hcarla Bellwind drew his robe more tightly about himself and hastened to a dark and winding stair he knew of It descended directly to the part of the cellars where a certain noisome cavern held the cesspool.
Bellwind was in too much of a hurry to close the secret door to Xanther’s little room, once a private treasury vault, no doubt, and discovered by the Brotherhood long ago. The councillor, hurrying along soon after, felt cold fingers of fear touch his spine as he stared at the open door. Who had found his secret place and listened?
Who knew Manshoon’s orders and the truth about Elminster of Shadowdale; who was lurking somewhere near in the castle right now?
Xanther tried to look about in all directions and discovered, as others have before him, that it’s not easy … and that finding no immediate danger brings no comfort.
The hurrying Hcarla had no time for fear as his hastening feet descended stairs cold, dark, and worn smooth with age. Others might sneer, as Stormcloak had, at the Old Mage’s feeble powers and strange behavior, but Elminster had caused Manshoon himself to flee a fight at least twice. No, Hcarla Bellwind would not begrudge the power he could gain from Elminster.
Not begrudge, but not fear either. If he could take the Old Mage unawares, he could cast his most precious magic: a stealspell. It would draw the most powerful spell out of the Old Mage’s mind into his own, for Hcarla to wield. If that mind was empty of magic, the Old Mage’s magic was truly gone and he could never hope to stand against the other spells Hcarla carried.
On the way through the cellars, a thought struck Hcarla. He paused in a room where glowing mold had been left to grow undisturbed to cast its eerie light over a workbench. He took down a hatchet from where it hung over the bench and caught up a moldering old sack from a pile nearby.
With the Old Mage’s head in a sack, Hcarla could steal away to ask questions of it at leisure, using his own adaptation of the spell that Brotherhood priests used to speak with the dead. With Elminster’s lore—directions to his spellbooks and hidden magical items would be enough—Hcarla Bellwind could forget about Manshoon’s favor or disfavor and think instead about replacing him to command the Brotherhood himself. Aye, now there was a thought.
As he hurried on through the familiar darkness, Hcarla wondered briefly why Elminster had never tried to take control of the Brotherhood himself.
“Enough!” Itharr gasped. “I’m worn out … or at least my sword arm is. There can’t be more than a hand’s worth of Wolves left alive in all this castle.”
Belkram came to a reluctant halt, nodding. “You must be right,” he said. “Even the Zhentarim can’t make men out of nothing, and nothing is all we’ve found for six—seven?—rooms now.”
Itharr nodded. “That reminds me,” he panted. “One of the men … yelled after us. After Elminster … left the hall, someone … created … magical darkness, and some councillors … got away.”
Belkram groaned. “Well, you’ve just proclaimed the task left to us: rounding up a lot of scheming councillors in their various hidey-holes all over this dale.”
Itharr waved a hand. “Time for that on the morrow,” he said. “I’m more worried about archmages of Shadowdale wandering about the place.”
Belkram rolled his eyes as he opened his mouth to reply, but another, familiar voice rang out instead.
“Hail, Harpers!”
They turned. The clangor of arms had faded away in the bloodstained passages of the High Castle, and a man they knew was coming slowly toward them.
Gedaern was stumbling on a leg that was no longer sound. Blood soaked his clothes and ran down his face from a cut where hair was tangled and caught fast in gore. The blade in his hand was broken, its tip shattered by the same fierce blows that had marked its length with deep notches. His breath was a wet, whistling sighing that spoke of blood spilling inside him.
But Gedaern of the High Dale came on, eyes bright and fierce, and through the blood he was smiling. A proud, dangerous smile. A smile that Belkram would never forget, to the end of his days.
“Fair fighting, Harpers,” Gedaern said. “I thank you for this chance to hit back, at last.” And he smiled that terrible smile again.
“Gods, Old Mage,” Sharantyr choked as they felt around in the thick, foul air. “You sure know some romantic places to take a lady!”
Elminster made a harrumphing, throat-clearing noise from somewhere in the darkness nearby. “When ye’ve lived as many years as I have, Shar, ye know all the places!”
Sharantyr turned toward him. “So why come here instead?” A whiff of putrefaction set her to coughing again. “Can’t we even go for a torch?”
“In this bad air, ye’d probably set off a blast that’d bring the stone above down atop us, after separating thy limbs from thy body and spreading ye all over the nearest wall.”
The ranger Knight sniffed. “Without light, Old Mage, the alternative bids fair to be finding the cesspool before finding this gate, by the simple means of falling into it!”
Keep talking, idiots, Hcarla Bellwind thought with savage glee, coming cautiously nearer in the deep, velvety darkness. Their voices would lead him close enough. Cautiously he probed ahead of him with his foot, testing for firm footing before he committed his weight.
His foot came down on something yielding, something that squeaked and moved hastily out from under his toes. He felt the harmless pressure of teeth on his boot before whatever it was scurried away.
“Old Mage!” Sharantyr hissed, ahead. “Did you hear?”
“Aye,” Elminster replied. “Someone stepped on a rat.”
Silence fell, deep and waiting. Hcarla snarled a silent curse. Then he shrugged. No need to come within reach of the woman’s sword while he had the stealspell.
Setting down the axe and sack with slow, stealthy care, he moved his hands in the gestures he’d learned from an old Myth Drannan tome, its ever-bright metal pages still clear in his mind’s eye, and softly spoke the words that tied the magic together and hurled it on its way.
“No!” Elminster gasped roughly, a moment later. “Oh, no.”
Like someone uncorking a wineskin and squeezing it, the power pent up within him started to flow, being drawn off into the darkness. “Lass,” he snapped urgently, “close thy eyes!”
An instant later there was a blinding flash and a shattering roar that left their faces wet.
Hcarla Bellwind, with all his dreams, had been consumed in a white-hot fireball by the titanic power of Art surging into him.
In a chamber dark and warm, where soft limbs caressed his own in the flickering torchlight, Manshoon watched his favorite scrying crystal burst apart in the blue-white flame of Hcarla Bellwind’s destruction. As the ladies in the wide bed around him shrieked and scrambled away, he sat up and hissed, “I’ll have your head at last, Elminster!” His hand moved to the silken tassel of the bell cord to summon mages. Many mages.
“Dread Lord?” the best of his companions asked, standing uncertainly beside the bed. “Shall I summon the”—her voice faltered and dropped almost to a whisper—“beholders?”
Manshoon turned eyes that were very cold and dark on her. “You share my opinion of our current magelings, then? You expect them all to fail?”
Anaithe looked back at him with the eyes of a trapped animal, licked her lips, and managed to say, “Yes.”
“Perhaps they’d do better,” the High Lord of Zhentil Keep said in silken tones, “if you accompanied them in their search for Elminster. One who’s seen so much she’s not supposed to must have keen eyes indeed.”
Anaithe trembled, bit her lip, and brought her hands deliberately down to her sides, recovering her poise with an effort. “I shall do whatever my lord desires … though I cannot see how I, without any magic, can be of any
help in destroying an archmage.”
Manshoon smiled suddenly. “As always, your spirit pleases me. You may live.”
Anaithe’s skin paled to the hue of old bone, all over. “My thanks, Great Lord,” she said softly, and bowed. Manshoon heard the thread of sarcasm she couldn’t quite keep from her voice, and his smile broadened. Perhaps he should teach this one magic—after she’d been humbled by a whipping.
Sharantyr spoke first, while their ears were still ringing. “What’s this all over me?” she asked grimly.
“Droplets of ambitious Zhentarim mage, no doubt,” Elminster replied wryly. “Are ye all right?”
“I—think so. I can’t tell, in the dark.” The lady ranger sounded angry. “Look … that was a blast, Old Mage, and the air around us didn’t flame up to join it. So let us have light.”
Elminster nodded, and an instant later remembered to speak. “Aye, lass, but one problem occurs to me.”
“And it is—?”
“In this darkness, we’ll be hard put to it to find a torch.”
Sharantyr said something very rude and unladylike that made Elminster sigh and shake his head. And then, down the passage from which the attack had come, they saw the bobbing light of many torches.
“Say nothing of the gate,” Elminster muttered hastily. “We’ll seek it later.”
The sputtering torches were coming fast. A few breaths later, the two men in leathers who’d slain Longspear in the marketplace burst into the room, blades drawn and trailing a handful of armed, bloody men. “Elminster?” one of them asked, holding his torch high.
“Aye, ye’ve found him.” Elminster moved to stand beside Sharantyr’s drawn, ready blade. “Who be ye?”
“Itharr,” said Itharr simply.
“Belkram,” Belkram added. “Storm sent us.”
“So I need nursemaids now, do I?” Elminster grunted, and waved a hand. “Well met, and thanks for thy blade work outside the walls. Ye have my favor. Go and see if Mulmar needs ye for something.”
Itharr and Belkram looked at each other, shrugged, and grinned. They were four strides back up the passage they’d come from when they heard Elminster chuckle.
They halted and turned. “We were asked to bring you with us,” Itharr said rather hesitantly.
“By whom?” Elminster asked with an air of offended dignity.
“Irreph Mulmar, high constable of the High Dale.”
“Oh.” Elminster smoothed his beard with long fingers. “Well … let’s go, then.”
They went, climbing a long and winding way through empty passages, hearing excited voices echoing from here and there as they ascended through the castle, until they reached the great hall.
Irreph Mulmar sat on the high seat there, in fine clothes and with the chains struck off his limbs. Men and women of the dale stood around him with weapons in their hands. Elminster stepped through the door and nodded casually to him, and sudden silence fell across the chamber.
“Ah, Old Mage?” the high constable asked awkwardly. “We’re grateful for your help an’ all, but we’ve had a bellyful of wizards ruling things.”
Folk of the dale stood watchfully by, weapons ready.
Elminster blinked at him. “By the good gods, man, what would I want to rule anyplace for?”
There was another moment of silence, until Gedaern started to laugh. His guffaws set others off. In a moment the hall rang with laughter, the first light and general merriment that had been heard there for many a day.
Another platter of steaming fowl banged down on the table between them, and Itharr plucked a drumstick from it without looking, his eyes on Belkram and Sharantyr.
The two leaned toward each other over the table, chins almost in their wine goblets, as they strained to hear each other over the general din in the hall. All around them, dalefolk who should have been too exhausted to do more than snore were laughing, dancing, devouring with the speed of starving wolves everything that was brought in from the kitchens … and drinking as if they sat in parched desert sands instead of a mountain pass.
“Baldur’s Gate?” Shar said in pleased surprise. “Really? I was born there, too!” She grinned across the table at the tall Harper, then turned to Itharr. “So where do you hail from?”
Itharr rolled his eyes. “All the same places as him. We’ve walked together for some years now, in the service of the Harp. But as to my upbringing, well … I have the misfortune—in the eyes of Baldurians, at least—to have been born in Athkatla.”
“We forgive you,” Belkram and Sharantyr said in perfect, unplanned unison. They exchanged startled looks and started to laugh. When they had breath to talk again, Sharantyr refilled Itharr’s goblet from her third wineskin of the evening and took a drumstick of her own. “So how do two men from such prosperous cities end up Harping across the backlands?”
Belkram shrugged. “My parents were crew on the Dancing Dolphin, a nao that sailed out of the Gate. They were slain by pirates during my twelfth summer. For a youngling, alone, the Gate’s too pricey a place to fend for oneself, so I took to the roads.”
“And I,” Itharr said dryly, “grew up to hate cheating folk—”
“Commerce, my boy. Tis called commerce,” Belkram put in, setting down a goblet that seemed to have rapidly emptied itself.
Itharr gave him a look. “Aye, commerce … what folk in Amn do. So I ran away, out of Amn, seeking something to do that was a mite more noble—and adventuresome too, if possible.”
“We met at an inn … in Daggerford, wasn’t it?” Belkram peered suspiciously at the barren depths of his goblet.
Itharr shrugged. “Wherever. Some house that had guests who worshiped the dead dragons.”
Sharantyr raised an eyebrow. “The Cult of the Dragon?”
“Aye, and a witty old man with white hair and a wisp of a goatee slew them all, right there in the taproom, when they drew blades on him for being a Harper.”
“And then,” Belkram put in, “he sat down amid all the bodies and calmly played and sang for us. Osryk, his name was.”
“A Master Harper who’s been missing for a while now,” Itharr said rather sadly.
Belkram nodded. “Aye, Osryk. Impressive, he was. We were both aflame with the idea of becoming Harpers, so he sent us to Berdusk.”
“Where Obslin Minstrelwish didn’t much like the look of us,” Itharr added with a sigh of remembrance, waving a half-eaten drumstick, “and decided we needed some harsh adventuring experience before we’d be worthy of the Way of the Harp.”
“It’s the noise you made with his songhorn,” Belkram explained patiently. “You shouldn’t have claimed to be an expert horn player.”
“How was I to know it was his favorite instrument?” Itharr protested, sliding his goblet over to Sharantyr for a refill. “After all, how many halfling horn players d’you know?”
“One is all you need,” Belkram told him dryly. “And sometimes far more than you need.”
Sharantyr watched Itharr answer him with a rude gesture, and looked briefly up at the rafters. “You two must be a riotous pair to travel with,” she said, shaking her head.
“Is that an invitation?” Belkram asked eagerly, leaning even farther across the table. Shar rolled her eyes and decided she needed a refill of her own.
“I don’t think so,” she said firmly, only to start back as Itharr leaned across the table just as aggressively and asked, “So how does a beautiful lady come to swing such a deadly blade, and join the Knights of Myth Drannor, hey?”
“Ahhh,” Shar began, taken aback.
Belkram grinned at her. “Aye, it’s our turn,” he told her happily, steering a goblet she’d never seen before into her hands. It was as large as a man’s head, and it was brim full. Belkram winked at her over its lip.
After the moment it took her to sigh, she winked back.
The feast was long and loud, and went on through the night. Folk roared and cheered and sang old songs, and Sharantyr moved—accompanied by the two H
arpers—to sit with Elminster. She was soon amazed by the rapidity with which his glass became empty, was refilled, and seemed to leak its contents yet again.
Sharantyr made the huge goblet Belkram had given her last the rest of the evening, and kept eyeing the merriment around her watchfully. If someone yet lived, particularly an archer or a wizard, who wanted the Old Mage dead, this joyful chaos would allow a very good chance to kill him
About the time she loosened her blade in its sheath and pulled away from where she was pressed against Elminster to get steel out should she need it, she felt the pressing regard of a hostile gaze.
Looking up quickly, she saw the burning eyes of a councillor across the table dropping swiftly away from her. Hawklike, Sharantyr watched him, her blade a finger out of its sheath.
A long time later, amid the laughter and song and weary dancing, the man’s eyes flicked up again, almost involuntarily. Xanther. Aye, that was his name. One of those who’d been spared, thus far. His eyes flicked away again to stare at something, roved about the table, and returned to stare at the same something again.
She followed his hungry gaze as he leaned just a finger or so forward to better study whatever it was he was so intent on.
He was eyeing the wand lying on the table by Elminster’s hand.
Another wizard? Sharantyr drew a deep breath and pondered what best to do.
Feeling the sudden weight of the lady ranger’s gaze upon him, Xanther carefully didn’t look up.
He could not fail to notice, however, the sudden gleam of naked steel as the lady ranger drew her long sword and meaningfully laid it ready on the table, its shining tip resting over the wand.
21
Death Waits Past the Lich-Gate
Black flames leapt up, casting angry red and amber shadows on the wall behind, but the man in black paid them no heed.
He’d seen them time upon time before, and had in fact chosen this spot for maximum effect. Blood-red dancing shadows outlined him as a tall and sinister figure of darkness—mighty, awesome, and dark. It pleased him to think of himself thus.