Elminster Must Die

CHAPTER EIGHT
MUCH BRAZEN CREEPING ABOUT

Where are they heading, d’ye think?” Elminster gasped, as he fetched up against a doorframe and clung to it, fighting for breath.

Where the ghostly princess could fly, he had to walk. Even when he sprinted, he couldn’t move nearly as fast as Alusair.

She’d long since taken to repeatedly racing off to check on Stormserpent’s band and then returning to the Old Mage, as he panted his way along dark palace passages, hoping he’d not meet anyone.

If he did, he planned to pose as old Elgorn-with the aid of strips torn from some linens he’d purloined in the undercellars and had just wound around most of his face in a false bandage-and tell some tale or other about discovering how long it had been since certain footings had been checked. “Mustn’t let this grand place fall down about our ears, look ye!” he’d growl.

For years around the palace, he’d been old Elgorn Rhauligan, “repairer and restorer of the ever-crumbling stone, plaster, tapestries, and wood of these great buildings.” Not to mention a descendant of the famous Glarasteer Rhauligan. Who didn’t usually work alone, of course; Elgorn trusted in his scarcely younger sister, Stornara, to remember things and calculate stresses for him. Hardly anyone ever told her she looked like the old portrait of the Lady Bard of Shadowdale anymore, with Elminster’s masking magics to make her appear as old as he.

Not that Elgorn Rhauligan was in any better shape to go rushing around the palace than Storm would be if she wore herself out racing back there from her farm kitchen in distant Shadowdale.

“Dragonskull, for all the gold in the upper treasury,” Alusair answered him disgustedly. “Unless their thoughts are captivated by old and broken furniture.”

Then she stiffened and lifted her head like a hound sniffing the wind. “Ganrahast and Vainrence, coming through the palace by different ways, both in a howling hurry! Both bound for the north turret … and Vainrence will get there first.”

Elminster peered at her. “Ye can track anyone moving about the palace?”

“Of course not. Just these two, usually; I can feel all the magic they load themselves down with,” Alusair snapped. “They often meet in a room right at the top of the north turret, where I can’t go, presumably for discussions they want to keep very private. Want to listen in on this one? I’ve never seen them in such wild haste before!”

Elminster nodded thoughtfully, a fire kindling in his eyes. “I believe I do.”

The eyes of the palace maid, staring ardently into his over their hungrily joined mouths, widened in sudden fear, and Lord Arclath Delcastle felt her stiffen all over.

He listened hard.

A man who was muttering to himself was trudging up the last few turns of the north turret steps before the topmost bedchamber.

Arclath left off kissing and cuddling the lass in his arms long enough to clap a swift hand over her mouth before she could so much as squeak, drag her around behind the wardrobe, and then silently-but fiercely-curse.

Last time, he’d distinctly heard the two wizards growl agreement that they were never going to climb all those stairs again, as they set off back down them.

Yet here they were again.

With furious energy, Arclath indulged himself in snarling the most flowery and fervent oaths he knew, but his profanities were utterly silent, blazing only in his mind.

Over his hand, the maid was staring at Arclath in stark terror as the wizard on the other side of the wardrobe went from murmuring to saying the clear-and distinctly irritated-words, “Come on, Gan. Let the courtiers see to their own tasks for once. We’ve important matters on our platters.”

Arclath tried to give the chambermaid a reassuring look, but it didn’t seem to work. And no wonder; they’d both recognized the voice of the wizard Vainrence, one of the most feared spellhurlers in the kingdom. The enforcer among the war wizards, the mage who could-and had-shattered the walls of a castle keep to get at traitors within.

“I heard you,” another voice replied sourly from farther down the steps. The maid recognized it as well as Arclath; her eyes promptly rolled up in her head as she fell into a dead faint, sagging heavily in Arclath’s arms.

On the other side of the wardrobe, the Royal Magician Ganrahast came into the bedchamber, breathing hard. The top of the north turret was a long climb.

“Yes?” he gasped.

“ ’Tis urgent,” Vainrence replied flatly, wasting no time on greetings.

“Always is.” Gasp. “Urgent what?” Gasp.

“One of our informants just told me the nobles Rothglar Illance, Harmond Hawklin, and Seszgar Huntcrown are plotting treason. They plan to unleash what they refer to as a ‘ball of spellplague’ that they have locked in a small coffer, to flood the room with harmful wild magic at the Council of the Dragon.”

Ganrahast didn’t spend breath on a curse or a sigh. “Presumably the three are immune to its effects,” he gasped, “and believe it will do harm-instantly debilitating harm-to their fellow nobles and the royal family, we mages, and courtiers.”

“We war wizards, at the least,” Vainrence agreed. “I can’t see them as self-sacrifices to any cause. They intend to survive this unleashing.”

Finding that that particular noble trio harbored treason was no news at all, but it was the first Delcastle had heard of a flying ball of spellplague. Was such a thing even possible?

“If this information is anywhere near truth,” Ganrahast pointed out.

Vainrence shrugged. “Like you, I suspect the veracity of anything I’m freely told. Yet can we dare not take this seriously?”

“When we could be dooming the king? And most of the senior nobles of the realm with him? Hardly.”

Vainrence spared himself enough time to curse. After a moment, Ganrahast joined him.

“I’ll put the hilt in my mouth,” Elminster whispered, settling himself on his side on the cold stone floor, “and share what my mind sees with thine, for as long as the magic holds out.”

Alusair nodded and put out her hand to him.

Her touch was no more solid than a whisper, but her chill was deep, plunging him into uncontrollable shiverings in an instant.

Yet his word was his word, and she’d led him to a hidden Obarskyr dagger and offered him its magic without hesitation, so …

There was an instant of whirling nausea as El unleashed the spell and found it caught up in strong new wards that tore and twisted …

Until he could ride them, become one with them, and melt through them.

Typically unsubtle, brute force magework.

Wizards, these days …

Ganrahast started to pace. The windowless room near the top of the north turret held only an empty wardrobe, plain wooden bench, and a table along the wall beside it where a row of storm lanterns were kept ready, so he had plenty of room to stride.

That, the cloaking spells they’d cast on the chamber long before, and the room’s deserted remoteness were why the two men liked to use it.

Vainrence was right, of course. They couldn’t ignore the tip, even if it had come from someone quite likely paid to pass it on by a disguised someone else who likely intended it as misdirection. There was very little they could do about that; since the Spellplague, the mind-reaming that had once made Cormyr’s wizards of war so feared-and effective-was useless.

The Crown’s decreed death penalty for trying a mind-reaming was quite beside the point. Attempts by any wizard to use the reaming spells always resulted in that mage being driven to idiocy or instantly and severely spell-scarred. So regardless of Foril’s laws and the longtime refuge of no war wizard facing trial for what no king or courtier learned about, not a single war wizard dared mind-ream anyone-unless the mage was already dying and did it as a “last loyalty.”

If things had been otherwise, a lot of sneering noble heads would probably long since have left their shoulders … but things weren’t otherwise, and all Cormyr knew it.

“My turn,” Ganrahast said quietly. “I overheard something interesting at the feast. Rumors about some nobles trying, sometime in the near future, a little foray into the haunted wing. What I could not learn-because the gossipers didn’t know-was whether this was to be a lark, some sort of dare or rite of passage, or yet another attempt to get at all the treasure and prisoners and chained pleasure maidens we’re supposed to keep hidden away there.”

“You mean there aren’t any pleasure maidens?” Vainrence joked. “Years I’ve been serving the Crown, years, man, in hopes of …”

“Har har har, Rence. Think about it. We’ll double the guards on all ways in, of course. Who’s behind it, that’s what I’d like to know.”

As everyone in the palace and most who worked in the royal court knew very well, the haunted wing of the palace really was haunted. Even war wizards avoided it as much as they could. The Blue Fire had twisted layers upon layers of wards cast down the centuries into dangerous magics no war wizard dared tamper with.

The Spellplague had wrought one good thing in the royal quarter of Suzail, and one thing only. No portal or any other sort of translocation magic worked properly anywhere within, into, or out of the palace, court, or royal gardens anymore, so the Crown was spared one worry. No one could magically whisk marauding monsters, would-be assassins, or small armies into the haunted wing or anywhere else near where the council would be held.

Ganrahast, Vainrence, and the most senior courtiers had already talked about raising spells to seal off the haunted wing during the council. The war wizards would have done so without wasting breath on a single word of discussion if they’d quite dared to cast wards that powerful inside the palace or had known the best web of spells to try to construct.

“The Shadovar, perhaps?”

With that quiet murmur, Vainrence voiced the longtime fear of both men: that Shadovar wizards had killed and were now impersonating the heads of many powerful noble families of Cormyr, and doing the same with courtiers, so they’d soon gain control of the realm by stealth, without a sword being drawn or a spell hurled.

These dark thoughts had already made them suspicious of certain efforts, promoted by the War Wizard Baerold, to collect items of magic said to house the trapped essences of the Nine.

After all, Baerold just might be a Shadovar trying to use-and use up-the war wizards as his agents to get his hands on what three now-dead wizards had written of as the “blueflame ghosts” the Nine had become, which could be commanded by one who held the items that contained them, and who knew how to compel them.

Might be, but might not be, either. Ganrahast and Vainrence were the most powerful of the current wizards of war, and their spells-that fell far short of the mind-reaming of old-could find no hint of Baerold being anything more than a young, ambitious, rather romantic mage of middling skills and training. So they watched him very closely and were careful not to advance his training with any sort of alacrity.

Like most Cormyreans with ears, Ganrahast and Vainrence had heard legends of the Nine, the legendary band of adventurers destroyed more than twoscore-and-a-hundred summers earlier, when Laeral Silverhand-later famous as the Lady Mage of Waterdeep, and consort of the Blackstaff, Khelben Arunsun-was possessed by the fell Crown of Horns.

Being war wizards, they knew a little more about the Nine. Most nobles of Cormyr had heard rumors that some of the Nine still existed, trapped in magic items, and could be summoned forth from those items by those who held them-and knew how-to fight as the item-bearer’s slaves.

Unless those three wizards, whose writings had been proven true in all other respects, had told the exact same lie, Ganrahast and Vainrence also knew the rumors of “blueflame ghosts that could be commanded as deadly slaves” were true.

With two men trying to pace back and forth in it, the room near the top of the north turret suddenly seemed small and crowded.

Elminster was suddenly back in darkness, the only radiance a faint glow from the ghostly face bending over him. The dagger had melted away entirely, its magic spent; his mouth held only the taste of old iron, a tang like long-shed blood.

He was cold, damnably cold …

The ghost of Alusair drew back from him. “Still alive, El?”

“Still alive,” he mumbled through chattering teeth. “At least they’re not plotting against the king, those two.” Shaking his numbed arms to try to get some feeling back into them, he rolled over. “What of our greedy young robber noble and his merry band?”

“I’m going after them,” Alusair announced, her eyes two dark holes in what was little more than a woman-shaped wisp of gray, a glow so faint it was barely there at all. “I won’t slay them-yet. I, too, want to know what they’re up to, here in my home. Yet there is something I must know, Old Mage.”

She drifted closer to Elminster, her eyes darker still.

“Are you on Cormyr’s side in this? Or still playing your larger games across the Realms, using us all like pawns on a chessboard?”

Elminster regarded her gravely. “I have always been on Cormyr’s side, Princess. Yet, aye, I’ve always played those larger games, as ye put it, too. I must. There is no one else who can save the Realms.”

“No one else you trust, you mean.”

Elminster stared at her, and there was a tired look in his eyes. Silence stretched.

“Yes,” he whispered at last. “Ye’ve said it true. There’s no one else I can trust to save the Realms. That’s my doom, lass.”

As if in comment on his words, there came a faint metallic crash from behind them. It sounded as if an armored man had been hurled violently to the stone floor, two or three rooms back along the way they’d come.

Without a word Alusair whirled around and sped away, heading for the sound like a streaking arrow.

“There was a time,” Elminster muttered a little testily, “when the Weave let me send eyes wherever I desired …”

Aye, there had been a time.

Long gone, so he stood mute, one more pillar in dim silence, and waited.

Only to blink in genuine surprise at who appeared around the corner, walking beside the flickering shadow of Alusair like an old friend, to reach out long and shapely arms to him and offer her mouth for a kiss.

Elminster obliged, feeling as elated as he was surprised.

“I trust,” he said, when his lips were free to speak again, “ye’ll find time and will enough to tell me thy reasons for returning so swiftly, hey? I thought we’d agreed on a strategy.”

“We had,” Storm agreed, “but matters changed.” Her smile died swiftly, and she held out something small and round. “Behold one of the latest toys of the wizards of war.”

Elminster peered at it. “An orb. Tell.”

“Upon command, it captures speech and can later be made to emit what it has, ah, recorded as often as desired, for the hearing of others. The mages use it when questioning those they’re suspicious of.”

Elminster arched an eyebrow in the manner that meant it was a substitute for a mirthless smile. “Some war wizard is now missing this, I presume?”

“He will be when he wakes up,” Storm replied, “but that may be a day or so from now. I’m afraid I hit him rather hard.”

The look he went on giving her was both a silent question and the message that he wasn’t in the mood for waiting much longer for answers, so she added, “I dislike being surprised by someone I am unaware of, who has obviously been following me for some time. I dislike even more men who wait until I’m sitting relieving myself to attack me.”

Alusair’s glow grew a little brighter. “I fear our current Crown magelings share the poor manners of much of their generation,” she commented wryly.

“I doubt not thy justification for hitting a mage, nor decry thy wisdom in latching onto magic whenever possible,” Elminster said. “I’m merely curious as to why ye’re now back here, rather than a lot closer to Shadowdale.”

“I overheard something you should hear, too,” Storm replied, folding herself gracefully down onto the floor and murmuring something over the orb as she touched it. “The awakening word’s graven on its underside,” she announced. “You’ll hear two wizards of war who were unaware of my presence.”

The orb shook itself a little, and voices arose from it.

“Oho! Scared of the infamous Lady Dark Armor, are we?” A jovial, teasing man’s voice.

“No, not her. If she still exists-if she ever did-I’ve not seen her.” A younger, grimmer male voice.

“The Princess Alusair, then? Worth being scared of, that one, let me tell you!”

“No, it’s the one called Elminster.”

“Ah, the infamous Elminster! He’s been living in the haunted wing for some time, you know, hiding among its many ghosts-and posing with some old hag or other as the brother and sister Rhauligan.”

“Yes, yes. That’s not what worries me. It’s this trap they’re talking about, that they’ve set up for him when next he shows his face in the palace. If we blunder into any part of it, it’ll kill us, they’re saying!”

“So don’t go atrysting in the haunted wing, dolt! Huh. Elminster. Some ‘Great Old Mage,’ that one! A doddering old fool, sharp-tongued and scared of using magic, by the Dragon! At least watching him has been a bit of a diversion. Just what he’s seeking, I haven’t an earthly idea, but if the old fool is witless enough to think he can find royal treasure and get out of the palace with it undetected, he is an utter dunderhead.”

“They … the word is he just killed a lot of us, and they’re right out of patience with him. If he steps into the trap, it’ll kill him-and it might hurl a good bit of the palace into the sky, just to make sure!”

The orb quivered again and fell silent.

Storm looked up at Elminster. “El, Alassra will be no more mad tomorrow than she is right now,” she whispered. “But if you fall, neither she nor I have any hope, nor any reason to carry on. You need this, right now, more than she does-and the Realms needs you more than it does her. It can muster many Red Wizard slayers, but only a handful of men who can and have saved it time and again. And of those men, you are the only one I trust.”

She took the orb and held it up to him. “Yours, El.”

He took it with a wry grin. “More magic to guard my mind while I take a turn at hurling a good bit of this palace into the sky?”

“Hey, now,” the ghostly princess put in sharply. “This is my home you’re speaking of. A little less talk of hurling skyward, if you don’t mind.”