by Ed Greenwood
Who’d silently opened his door and charged forth to haul his friend Gulkanun out of a dark and fell embrace, one hand outflung to shove the drow back and away with a fine disregard for feminine anatomy. “I thought she’d seduce you, the first farruking moment she got the cha …”
Imbrult’s rush of words faded into awed silence as the glory—and Elminster—flooded into his mind, too.
Under the lash of Vandur’s tongue and arrogance, he and Gulkanun had begun as fellow sufferers and silent allies, but become fast friends. They’d worked together for four long years, and liked and respected each other more than anyone else in either’s life. They were … El was showing them their gratitude and friendship for each other, how they truly felt. Their joined minds reeled. Duth’s thoughts and memories plunged into Imbrult’s, and vice versa, in a happy maelstrom of mingling and discovery.
Their faces were wet with tears, their arms were around each other, and they were making excited, inarticulate noises they only dimly noticed as the thoughts flashed back and forth among the two of them and Elminster. Around them and through them and cradling them, the great and glory-filled mind of Elminster …
We must do this! Oh, Cormyr! To banish hunger and want and treachery forever, and …, Imbrult thought.
Abruptly, their excited sharing was rudely interrupted again. This time it was Farland breaking the link. Gulkanun and Longclaws staggered, half-dazed.
The lord constable had torn the dark elf back and away from the two men, and held her with a dagger to her throat.
“I’ve heard all the tales about drow,” he growled, “and didn’t quite believe they were the seductresses some have said, but I guess …”
“It’s not what you think,” Gulkanun snapped.
Farland’s sneer was savage. “I guess not, hey, Saer Hurlspells?”
Then his face changed and he stiffened, trying to scream and failing. Something was flooding into his mind …
It was time to go adventuring again.
Oh, not in an overbold way that would alert the wizards of war and the entire court to his presence and ambitions. Not something even a nearby Harper would notice, unless one was actually standing by the roadside when he intercepted those two Crown mages who’d ridden out from Hultail.
No, this time he could revert to the way he’d fought in the early days, when the Zhentarim were a bright new idea and rising power, rather than rulers of anywhere or anyone. And he could do it with an assist from his own later days—and Chancsozbur’s tomb. It had been years since he’d even thought of that reckless fool. A man so steeped in his own overconfident stupidity as to think he could get away with swindling Manshoon. Breaking all his joints and leaving him with two worms to slide up his nose and devour him slowly from within had been a fitting fate for the dolt, but his service to Manshoon hadn’t ended there. Oh, no.
Lord Chess had been sent to seize Chancsozbur’s holdings and sell them off before his kin could arrive to claim them, and to use the coin to construct the elaborate tomb—a modest stone mausoleum on a wooded hillside near Masoner’s Bridge. The fool’s bones still lay in a great stone block of a coffin, its lid adorned with Chancsozbur’s effigy—and the floor concealing a stone-block-locked turntable that could be used to swivel the coffin aside and reveal a stair down to a lower chamber.
The men Chess had brought with him had made short bladework of Chancsozbur’s arriving kin, leaving no one to command the keys to the mausoleum save the Brotherhood. So for decades the Zhentarim had used the upper room as a smuggling way den, while in the room below their First Lord Manshoon had carefully stored several of his clones to await future needs. His other selves were all gone now, of course, awakened after deaths or taken elsewhere to more secure hideholds.
Yet all of that had left Manshoon knowing the tomb very well. Which made it a safe teleport destination. From there, he could readily translocate from landmark to landmark he could see ahead in the desired direction, to intercept those two war wizards. So the tomb awaited, only a teleport casting away …
Ah, but wait. Chores first. Banishing the scrying spheres, Manshoon cast the spell that hid most of Sraunter’s cellar—death tyrants and all—behind a false, conjured stone wall. Someone might blunder down here, a thief or busy-nosed Crown inspector or Watchman; everyone was suspicious of alchemists, after all. So let them find Sraunter’s noisome cesspit and the usual refuse of old broken furniture and the like, not a waiting row of undead beholders.
If an intruder broke his spell and saw what was behind it … well, they were on their own. He’d left his tyrants awake and under commandment to slay and pursue all life. If someone did unleash them, they’d probably still be hard at it when he got back. There was a lot of life in Suzail.
Gelnur Farland was drowning in shame and disgust and anguish. Mind-raped by a dark elf whose throat was right there under his blade, that he should have killed before she … What was this, by Crown and—?
The mind flooding into his was male, and human, and old, dark with the weight of many, many memories. A wizard’s mind, a—oh, no, no, was this a war wizard trying a mind-ream? Were they both going to be driven mad? Was it starting already? Was—
The intruding mind was as powerful as a looming castle, if he’d been a small toy cottage. An overwhelming dark and warm flood, it raced through his thoughts, his own memories, looking hard for something. Seeking … any evidence of disloyalty to the Crown, or that Gelnur Farland had anything to do with the murders in Irlingstar. And finding none, and smiling inside Gelnur’s head with such a flood of pleasure that Farland moaned aloud.
Who was this, by …
An old bearded mage walking alone, long of Shadowdale. Old Mage, Old Sage, he of all the tales about the Doombringer of Mystra, the man who’d been a maid and a …
He could see more and more of the intruder’s mind, and was being shown ever more of it, memories splendid and terrible, devils and dragons in the sky and the City of Song and terrible battlefields beyond counting …
Elminster am I. Aye, ye know me. I am the one of thy grandsire’s tales, and one of the stories told in the taverns about the Chosen of Mystra.
“By the fabled kisses of Alusair!” the lord constable gasped aloud.
Oh, a fitting oath, for they were sweet, they were indeed …
Whimsically, Elminster shared two vivid memories, thrusting the scenes into Farland’s mind like two turning, winking gems, one after the other.
The first … a fireside, by night, in the open forested wilds of northern Cormyr, among many laughing men in armor, making camp and hobbling mounts—splendid horses. Then walking among these merry noblemen in their bright armor to a tall woman who was unstrapping and tossing aside her own gleaming, firelit plates of armor, plate of the finest make, curved and molded to fit her sleek body … bared in the firelight. She turned to him with a bright smile and embraced him to take a kiss, not grant it … Alusair, young and warrior strong and proud, the spirited, wanton, wild princess …
The fireside faded, and in the darkness beyond it the second gem rushed up and swallowed Farland, plunging him into the dark stillness of an empty, cobwebbed, echoing high hall: the royal palace of Suzail, in the infamous haunted wing. And out of the gloom came a gliding shadow with the gleam of spectral armor and the same tumbling fall of hair and the same face, but older and etched by sadness and loss and fury after driving fury. It stole up swiftly, in a rush that embraced to take a kiss, but at the last moment hesitated to plead wordlessly for it … and cried what were but ghost shadows of tears when a kiss was granted. Followed by lips that hungered and brought icy searing pain as they stole the warmth of life from Elminster as he kissed her, Alusair the life-stealing ghost.
There ye go. Now ye know what ye swear by: Alusair’s fabled kisses, indeed.
Farland cursed then, shaken—and the oaths he used were far fouler and more colorful than the splendor he’d been shown.
He flung away his dagger and started to weep.
<
br /> The tomb was far colder than he remembered.
Especially on this chill sort of morning. Ground mists were rising and streaming knee deep through the trees as Manshoon strolled out of the tomb and went looking for a distant spot in the right direction, to teleport to across the Wyvernwater, and from there east and north, from high place to high place. The Crown mages might have been foolish enough to ride all night, but more likely they’d made camp beside the road, slept just long enough to rest the horses, and would be journeying again about now.
Manshoon stretched and smiled. Choosing a high and distant field, he cast a teleport to take himself there. Then again, from Nuth Tammarsaer’s high east pasture to Rauntaun’s Tor. Thence to the ridge behind Lockspike Fang. Standing atop it, on wind-scoured rock in a chill breeze with a startled eagle taking wing from its favorite lookout perch away from him, he could look down on Orondstars Road.
There. Twelve Purple Dragons riding in a ring around two mounted men not in armor: his war wizards. His prey.
He chose the next bend in the road, so he could be standing nonchalantly waiting for them.
His captors were back, and terror was like a cold white arm coiled through him, chill fingers tight around his heart.
Mreldrake swallowed, then swallowed again. His throat was as dry as old bones, and he was trembling violently. He knew that they knew just how frightened of them he was … and he no longer cared.
At least they were smiling.
“We are pleased with your continued successes in the use of your new magic,” one said.
“You’ve become quite adept at murder,” another added approvingly, like a tutor praising a young child.
As he stared at them, standing facing him in the room they’d made his prison, almost close enough to touch, Mreldrake found himself suddenly longing to be back in the royal palace of Suzail. Even being under Manshoon’s hand had been better than this …
He was quailing inwardly just as much as he was quaking outwardly. They could slay him at will. How then could he, dared he, try to delicately inform them he’d made himself essential to working the magic he’d developed, and therefore—he hoped—unexpendable?
They were smiling at him now, almost fondly. Yet in their eyes, he could see it, yes, there was a glint of glee …
“Your attempts to save your own hide by working yourself into your new spell have amused us greatly. Be aware that we’ve no intention of killing you.” Not yet, the tone of the captor’s voice added.
Well of course not yet. Not when what he knew would be so useful in enabling them to swiftly and quietly conquer Cormyr.
They came around the corner, riding easily in the brightening morning.
Manshoon stood wide-footed, his arms folded across his chest, smiling faintly.
“Power is mine, and I am power incarnate,” he murmured to himself as he watched the Purple Dragons frown, rein in, and bark a halt.
One man, alone in the wild borderlands, by his pose so insolently sure of himself, either meant an archmage or the visible decoy for a hundred hidden outlaws waiting in ambush.
“I am the ambush,” he announced politely. “All by myself. For I am an archmage, the mightiest you’ll ever meet in your lives. Which—with one exception—will be ending now.”
Nonchalantly he released the spell he’d cast and held ready while waiting for them to ride into view.
Twelve Purple Dragons and their mounts were suddenly shrieking, tumbling carrion, their cries dying abruptly as his whirlcone tightened around them and its unseen blades of force started dismembering them in midair. Bloody limbs bounced into the ditch behind them, where the road curved back toward civilization.
“Ah, civilization,” Manshoon murmured, watching the two wizards survive unscathed thanks to their wards. Spent in saving them, of course, leaving them defenseless against his next spell. “We are far from it these days, aren’t we?”
Their first frantic magics flared and burst against his shield as he calmly and unhurriedly cast another spell. When it was done, one of the war wizards stood scorched and dazed on the road, his robes aflame and his horse gone. Only the untouched Crown mage managed a second spell against Manshoon’s shield, taking it down. By then, the future emperor of Cormyr had unhurriedly worked another magic—and the scorched wizard of war had become two booted legs surrounded by ashes, standing in the middle of Orondstars Road.
The surviving war wizard cast his strongest battle spell, rocking the road around Manshoon, whose conjured mantle absorbed the death sent so desperately to claim him. Its job done, the mantle sighed into nothingness, leaving him unguarded. By then, of course, he’d hurled a mind doom at the lone surviving Crown mage, and was inside the hapless fool’s head.
He shattered and conquered his mind in less time than it took his victim to sigh.
So this was enthusiastic young Wizard of War Jarlin Flamtarge. Well, well. Manshoon burned out his new minion’s war wizard ring until it had no powers left, and could no longer be traced from afar. Hultail was a remote post, neither important nor busy; Flamtarge hadn’t possessed a team ring.
“Have a good journey,” Manshoon said politely to the horse, gentling its mind with one of the spells he was proudest of, one of the few restorative ones he’d ever mastered.
Then he teleported back to Sraunter’s cellar in Suzail, but left his awareness mentally riding Wizard of War Jarlin Flamtarge. His newest mind pet, now riding on alone along Orondstars Road, bound for Castle Irlingstar.
The Simbul plunged down out of a midnight sky feet first, her silver hair billowing behind her.
Rushing up at her was a desolate, ruined keep, standing in a rugged vale deep in rocky wilderlands, a lonely riven fang.
It was not unguarded; malgodemons and nabassu in great numbers flapped up from those crumbling dark parapets to challenge her.
She plummeted, surrounded by a sphere of glowing blue radiance that faded into sudden visibility, a whirling open-work sphere outlined by the tightly curving orbits of many flying objects—no two alike, but all blazing with blueflame.
The dark flying guardians came at her from all sides in a vicious storm, but she smote them from the sky with spells hurled forth from her ever-swifter-whirling cage of blueflame, a cage that seared and melted to sighing tatters every demon that blundered into it, keeping them from reaching her. The cage fell with her, to touch and melt through the keep’s stone walls as if they were but air and shadows.
The cage descended still, drifting down, down through the heart of the ancient and riven fortress into an eerily glowing well in its depths. Yet another rift in the Realms, through which more demons were appearing, boiling forth in an endless fell stream.
The Simbul clawed at the air around her to pull the cage in tight, and make of it the rift-rending dagger she would need.
“As El would say,” she murmured aloud, “here we go again.”
Dagger and all, she slid into purple-white agony.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-THREE
GIGGLING AND GUFFAWING
Demons clawed at her, tearing at her hair and the smooth flesh of her shoulders. She heeded it not, lost in the icy fire of the rift as she fought it … quenched it … destroyed it.
Leaving herself empty and weary, the blueflame items dulled and circling her slowly.
Claws raked her again, more and more of them, as emboldened demons flooded in at her from all sides, erupting out of the dark recesses of the ruined fortress, trying to pounce on her, to drag her down, to rend her …
Ducking and turning, slapping and entangling and tugging with her long silver tresses, The Simbul fought to keep from being overborne and buried under murderous demon bodies. Battling to stay on her feet, she blasted her assailants with spell after spell.
And they died. Talons and grotesque barbed limbs and many-fanged jaws rained down on her in a grisly downpour of black and burning ichor as her magic made demon flesh boil and demon bodies burst.
The w
ounds they gave her stung like fire and wept not just her blood, but licking flames of silver fire.
She lashed them with that leaking fire, striping it across snarling faces and sting-studded tails and cruel clutching claws alike. And where silver fire touched demon hide, that darksome meat melted, collapsing into wisps of stinking smoke with astonishing speed, burning demons to nothingness as readily as the blueflame items had. And still they came.
She spent her spells, one by one, taking down a small army but facing an endless, ever-growing one. Spending precious silver fire to bend a spell for opening wards into a spray of disintegration, and a magic for sending messages afar into a flesh-dicing whirlblade storm … her arsenal was almost spent.
“El,” she cried aloud, as more and more demons fought through the sagging, slowing web of blueflame objects, now drifting darkly and trailing only the faintest blue glows, to claw at her, “where are you? I need you!”
Despair came quickly as shrill demonic laughter was the only reply, her attackers gathering thick and deep now, crowding each other in their hunger for her destruction.
“Elminster!” she screamed. “Oh my love, hear me!”
“I really don’t think any true Cormyrean needs lessons in how the realm should be governed from some sly outlander Harper who can make her hair silver,” Lord Breeklar said coldly. “I’ve heard quite enough of your prattle. Begone.” He turned. “Guards, throw this woman out. No need to be gentle.”
“If you don’t mind, Auldus,” Lord Hamnlaer snapped, “I’ll command my own guards, in my own house. I want to hear more about these new rights. If Foril’s willing to trade some of his powers over us all for new laws every citizen must follow, let’s be hearing the details.” Behind him, his guards, who’d hastened forward at Breeklar’s call, hesitated and peered around at the faces of all the seated nobles.