Elminster Enraged

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

I … I did not know dragons took such an interest in the doings of humans,” Harbrand said feebly. “Aren’t we just, uh, food, to you?”

“Belt up, idiot,” Hawkspike suggested, beside him.

The dragon chuckled again, with a deep thunder that shook the cavern-and their back teeth.

“I did not begin life as a black dragon,” it told them. “I call myself Alorglauvenemaus now, but in truth I’m a man-a wizard, transformed by my own Art. Once, I was feared within the Brotherhood and unknown outside it.”

“The Brotherhood? The Zhentarim?” Harbrand asked.

“Yes. I am Hesperdan of the Zhentarim. I took dragon shape nigh a century back to keep watch over the mage Vangerdahast, the self-styled guardian of Cormyr. He had been the kingdom’s Royal Magician and its court wizard and its true ruler, all at once-and when he deemed the time right, he retired from it all to take dragon shape. I was suspicious of him then, and I am suspicious of him now.”

“Oh?” Harbrand asked, starting to become genuinely interested. He’d begun talking just to try to buy a few more breaths of life, but …

“Oh, indeed. Despite being lesser in Art, he’d quietly become the most dangerous tyrant mage of us all, his reach even greater than Manshoon’s thanks to the wizards of war he commanded. I believed curbing his schemes was the most important life work any mage could concern himself with. I still believe that.”

“And so?”

“And so, along came the Spellplague and changed everything. The gods laugh at us all.”

“So how did it change you? Are you trapped in dragon shape?”

“No, but the blue fire did me ill. It afflicted me with long periods of being Alorglauvenemaus-by which I mean, long periods of not remembering I was Hesperdan at all.”

Harbrand and Hawkspike looked at each other. Neither of them had to say a word to tell each other what they’d both realized instantly. If the dragon-or Hesperdan, or whoever he really was-had told them this, it meant he had no intention of their surviving long enough to pass this information on to anyone.

Some days, Immerkeep felt like a prison stuffed with mad inmates, all intent on making him join their ranks.

Yes, King’s Lord Lothan Durncaskyn was in a bad temper, he admitted to himself-and it was getting worse.

Immerfolk were a testy lot at the best of times, given their ever-lengthening list of just grievances, and now he wasn’t merely saddled with Harklur and Mrauksoun and Faerrad-he had Lord Tornkresk to deal with.

King Foril was a worthy monarch, kinder and wiser than most and less cruel than many, but the trouble with men like that was that they admired the decisive and capable. Which meant they sometimes ennobled the wrong capable men. Tornkresk had been a lord for what, nine years? Ten? And already, in the guise of “being loyal to what Cormyr should be,” he and his band of well-armed hireswords were busy here, there, and everywhere around Immerford, goading folk into angry attacks on Crown servants, inspectors, and even Purple Dragon patrols.

So here the king’s lord was, with no war wizards left to contact Suzail or Arabel for him, and a desperate need for swift help. He needed reinforcements to blunt Tornkresk’s goad, but not just Purple Dragons ready to swing their swords and become Tornkresk’s handy targets. He needed enough war wizards to enspell everyone into the ground, and some smooth-tongued courtiers with placating coins to toss-and he needed all of them right now!

A door banged in the outer office, and there were voices. Raised voices. One was his duty bodyguard, denying passage. The other was gruff, wheezing, and accepting no such refusal.

Durncaskyn slapped a hand to his dagger, murmured the word that awakened its ironguard enchantment to protect him from hurled knives and crossbow bolts and the like, and went to his office door. Who wanted to harangue the ever-helpful king’s lord now?

He opened the door a crack, his foot behind it to keep it that way, and peered out. He was in time to see a fat old man whose seaboots flapped and flopped at every step hurling the duty bodyguard bodily out the office door, then turning to steady an exhausted looking, disheveled woman. And lead her right to Durncaskyn’s door.

Well, time to be decisive and capable. Durncaskyn flung the door wide and stood in it. “Yes?”

“Yer Foril’s local lord, here?” the old man growled, looking Durncaskyn up and down, but not slowing his determined lurch forward.

“I am.” Durncaskyn stood his ground. “Who are you?”

“Mirt, Lord of Waterdeep. This is Rensharra Ironstave, Lady Clerk of the Rolls. Yes, the highest-ranking tax collector in the realm. She needs the most secure guarded shelter you can provide. Right now.”

Durncaskyn blinked. “What?”

He gave the woman a look, but she was out on her feet, reeling, her gaze directed at the floor. Mirt swung her to one side so she’d not be caught between them as he advanced-and kept on tramping straight forward. “You’d be Durncaskyn?”

“I-” They collided, chest to chest, and Mirt kept right on striding.

Exasperated, Durncaskyn shoved him. “Get back! And get out of here! I’m-”

“Terribly busy just now, saving the realm? That I can well believe, but right now I need you to see that protecting this fair lady is the most important-”

“No. Did you not hear me? No.”

Durncaskyn thought of himself as a solid man, still strong despite far too many hours spent sitting behind desks or standing around talking and listening. So he was a little astonished to be taken by a fistful of doublet, hoisted off his feet, and rushed backward into his own office.

The lurching and shuffling old man even dragged the woman in with them, as he snarled into Durncaskyn’s face, “I’ve been getting the distinct impression since my arrival in this fair kingdom that its local lords are a pompous, lazy, useless lot. Prove me wrong. Please prove me wrong.”

“I don’t take kindly to being bullied in my own office,” Durncaskyn snarled back, “and I decide what constitutes-”

“Being an utter slubberdegullion? Well, decide faster!”

“Why? Why the great rush?”

“If I have to lock you in yer own dungeon and start emptying yer coffers to hire bullyblades enough to keep this fair lady-the king’s head tax collector, let me remind you-safe, it’s going to take me some time to let everyone hereabouts know I’m the new king’s lord. That’s why the rush, loyal Lothan.”

“And if I agree to protect her?”

“Then where are yer guards? She stands in peril right now-and in need of a bed and a garderobe, not to mention a light hot meal and a little good wine. And see if you can resist the temptation to lock her in any sort of cell, too-it might keep me from removing yer head and locking it away, instead! I ask again: where are yer guards? The likes of that bumbling idiot I tossed aside out there couldn’t keep away a lad with a slingshot!”

“As to that,” Durncaskyn replied dryly, bringing up both hands to try to wrench himself free of Mirt’s hairy fist, “they’re right behind you.”

Purple Dragons crowded into the outer office, their swords drawn. The angry bodyguard Mirt had thrown out of that room was with them, pointing at the fat old intruder and spitting a stream of curses and commands.

Mirt looked profoundly unimpressed. “Them? They look like a mob of untrained dolts, to me. Where’re their scouts? The man with the ready crossbow and some sleep syrup on his loaded quarrel? The backup bowman, for when the first one misses? Hey?”

“Hey,” Durncaskyn agreed wearily. “At ease!” he barked over Mirt’s shoulder at the Dragons. “Wait out in the passage, all of you!”

They eyed him doubtfully.

“All of you!” Durncaskyn roared with sudden fire. “And close the door after you go out!”

He added a glare, and kept it on them until they’d all reluctantly retreated and shut the door. By then, he was unsurprised to find the lady slumped in his own desk chair, and Mirt rummaging in his cabinets for decent wine to give her.

“Bottom drawer,” Durncaskyn told him. “The swill on display is for visiting complainants-such as yourself.”

That earned him a grin from Mirt. Durncaskyn fetched one of the chairs kept for visitors, drew it up to the wrong side of his own desk, sat down, and said, “You seem a forceful man, but decisive enough, possibly even capable. Perhaps we can make a deal.”

“As one snarling bull to another?”

“Indeed. I will wholeheartedly extend to this good lady the dubious shelter of Immerkeep if you, Lord of Waterdeep, will go to Suzail for me, without delay. To fetch the help I so desperately need.”

A decanter of Durncaskyn’s best wine thunked down on the desk between them. “Explain,” Mirt suggested, filling glasses.

The king’s lord obliged.

Wherefore, a short time later, after kissing Rensharra thoroughly and accepting a second decanter for road thirst, Mirt of Waterdeep strode right back out of Immerkeep, patted the neck of one of the fresh horses that had been hitched to his stolen coach, and began a wild race back to Suzail.

Decisive and capable men did those sorts of things.

Clouds were everywhere, but they were the white, wispy, spun-silk sort, betokening no rain or lightning. The Sword of the Clouds was gliding along under half-sail.

No grand skyship of the Five Companies, she, but an ancient Halruaan treasure only recently salvaged from dust-shrouded, motionlessly floating neglect in a ruin by the adventurers who crewed her. And kept busy shuttling envoys, vital messages, and precious treaties to and fro above southerly realms-when they weren’t mooring briefly to various high towers and turrets to conduct daring night robberies and kidnappings, that is.

Yet Vaeren Dragonskorn had never called himself a pirate. “Pirate” was such an uncouth word. “Adventurer of the skies,” now that was an attractive phrase. Aye, adventurers of the skies are we, aboard the Sword …

A skyship much heavier than it had been when this particular voyage had begun, thanks to the treasures of the rival wizards Algaubrel and Sarlarthont, crowded into the shallow hold. Strongchests upon strongchests full of coins and gems and metal-bound grimoires, statuettes and many curious metal items that gave off weird magical glows, and things that were better undisturbed until off-loaded in a mountaintop hidehold. Thinking of which …

Dragonskorn turned and nodded to the helmsman, who could see the needle-sharp tops of the Rauntrils ahead just as well as he could. Such peaks were perils as well as landmarks, and-

There was a sudden commotion behind him. The helmsman gaped. Dragonskorn spun around-and started gaping too.

The woman standing on the deck amid his startled crew was tall and queenly, despite being barefoot and either lightly or entirely unclad. He couldn’t be sure which, through all her hair. It was silver, by the Wildwanderer, and almost as long as she was-and it was curling around her like a colony of angry snakes or hungry maggots or-or-

“Who is your captain?”

Her question brought no helpful replies, but that was hardly surprising. The crew happened to be all male and the Sword’s recent schedule had kept them long from the company of women, so their swords were out and the air rang with their responses, the politest of which was, “Who by the waiting, wanton charms of Sharess are you?”

“I am best known as The Simbul. Which one of you captains this ship?”

Before she could receive any useful reply, she caught sight of Dragonskorn, and said, “Ah! It would you!”

She strode toward him. Valkur and Baervan, she was bare skinned!

“Saer,” she said politely, “I have no quarrel with you or your crew, but I must have the blueflame in your hold.”

“Blueflame?”

“Some of the enchanted things you carry glow with an intense blue flame that looks like fire but is not hot, and ignites nothing. I require it of you.”

“You do.” Dragonskorn looked her up and down. “And you expect me to just yield them up?”

The Simbul sighed. “No,” she told him, her face grave, “I expect you to resist me. I’d rather you continued to live, instead, but … I know too much of humans, down the centuries, to expect your polite assistance. Yet I’d be grateful-delighted, even-if you’d surprise me.”

Dragonskorn smiled-and then sneered. “Oh, I’ll surprise you, all right. Take her, men! Yet remember: as your captain, I get her first!”

As the crew of the Sword roared in glee and converged on the lone woman in a rush, The Simbul regarded Dragonskorn sadly and shook her head.

Then she lifted one empty hand and gave them fire.

“Magic! She has magic!” one crewman shouted warningly as a ring of flames blazed up out of nowhere, and the closest running men to the silver-haired woman all crashed to the deck like discarded dolls. Cooked and sizzling discarded dolls.

“Well of course she has magic,” someone else snarled. “She appeared on our deck out of farruking thin air, didn’t she?” That same someone else hurled a hand axe, hard and accurately, right at the woman’s head.

The Simbul watched it come, her face calm, and made no move to duck or leap aside. By the time it flashed up close to her, the air was full of hurtling knives and cutlasses, converging on her like the men who’d hurled them. She stood motionless, and let them all rush right through her, the axe first, to bite into or clang off whoever was directly beyond her. Cries and curses rent the air.

Then there rose another roar, this one of fury-and the surviving burly crew of the Sword charged at the woman from all sides, their arms out to grapple and throttle.

In a swirl of silver hair that hooked ankles, slapped blindingly across faces, and curled tightly around necks, The Simbul moved at last, ducking and rushing and diving like a Calishite dancer.

Metal weapons flashed through her as if she were but an illusion, though her hair and feet and fists were solid enough, as she tugged one man off-balance to sprawl onto the upthrusting sword of another, then leaned unconcernedly forward into the vicious slash of a third man to jab at his eyes with two rigid fingers. Screams and grunts started to drown out the curses.

Yet the sky sailors were neither cowards nor weaklings. When at last they buried her under their combined brawn, punching and kicking, she soared up off the deck in a struggling ball of arms and legs and entwining silver hair-and let out another flash of magic that left everyone stunned and senseless, to fall like so much limp dead meat and crash onto the deck. Or rather, to fall onto the heads of their fellows, as unseen magic deflected each falling man subtly this way or that, to strike a man standing below.

A breath or two later, the deck was strewn with groaning or silent sprawled men, with barely a handful still on their feet. The Simbul descended to the littered deckboards and resumed her stroll toward Dragonskorn. “I only want the blueflame in your hold,” she reminded him calmly. “Not to take lives or harm your crew.”

Shaken, Dragonskorn drew the long, curving saber at his belt. He knew it was magical, having torn it from the dying hand of a wizard’s bodyguard who’d fired fatal lightnings from its tip at some of his crew, and having used it since to drink in bolts of lightnings in the storms the Sword sailed through. Aiming it at her, he fed her lightning.

It snarled into her, crackling through her hair and along her arms and legs, and he saw pain on her face. Snarling, he sent more lightning into her.

The Simbul kept coming at him, walking more slowly.

“Die, hrast you!” he shouted. “Die!”

Her teeth were clenched in a silent snarl, agony creasing her beauty, but still she came, trudging right into the flashing, snapping maw of what his blade could lash out.

And then, with a snap and a spitting of sparks, his lightnings died. Leaving her an arm’s length away, smiling.

“Thank you for that,” she murmured. “I feel much stronger now.”

“Do you, witch?” he shouted, infuriated, and he flung his sword down, to clang on the deck at their feet. “Do you?”

He sprang at her, clapping both hands around her throat. And squeezing, tightening his two-handed grip with all the straining strength he could muster, until his face was red and his arms quivered … and she sagged, her eyes large and pleading. Doomed.

Vaeren Dragonskorn threw back his head and laughed in triumph. He was still laughing when her fingers closed around his elbows, broke them effortlessly, then slid down to his wrists and served them the same way.

His grip broken, he whimpered in agony-and she swung him up into the air and hurled him high and far.

Overboard, far beyond the Sword’s rail, to scream his way down and out of sight amid the clouds below.

As The Simbul walked the rest of the way to the covered companionway that led below, no one disputed her passage, or dared to come anywhere near her.

Elminster ran like a storm wind, racing along the passage with her hair streaming behind her and her eyes afire.

There! There were the two war wizards, Rune and Arclath beyond them, peering her way, calling her name.

And there, beyond them on the floor, sprawled in a dark and spreading pool of blood, was Lord Constable Farland, whose mind she’d so recently shared.

A mind now fading and … gone.

She had come too late. Once more.

“Noooooo!” El screamed, a raw shriek of anguish that soared into fresh rage.

Why could she never save the good ones?

Why?

There were, as it happened, only two blueflame items in the crowded hold. There were plenty of glows from other magics, flaring gold and copper and all the hues of the gems of Art as she reached out with the gentlest of seeking spells … but only the two sources of blueflame. A rod of office like a miniature Tymoran temple scepter, flared at both ends, and a crescentiform pectoral of beaten metal that looked like an oversized, too-low gorget.

“Mystra,” she murmured, “what powers have these? And which ghosts are bound within them?”

I know not, until you awaken them. I am … much less than I was.

“I had guessed as much,” The Simbul said quietly. “How much do you remember?”

Much and … not much. Memories mingled with memories, some my own, some from all of you Chosen and others loyal to me, those who survive and those who are … gone.

“Can you sense us now, as we move around the Realms, striving on your behalf? Steal into our minds, and see what we’re doing?”

Of course. You few. My daughters and my longest lover.

“Lover? Elminster?”

Elminster.

“Wasn’t that the Mystra before you?” The Simbul dared to ask.

Echoes in the Weave, my daughter, echoes in the Weave … we see and feel so much that happened before us, in the Weave; it becomes part of us, the memories of the Mystra who birthed you becoming part of me, so I become that Mystra …

“I … see.”

Then you see more keenly than I do, most of the time. I was mighty, once.

The Simbul could think of no reply. She was too busy, all of a sudden, shivering.