Spellstorm (21 page)

“T
HEY DON
’
T LIKE
Halaunt walking out on them time after time,” Mirt growled. “Nor you sitting with
them and not eating a thing. They don’t like
that
at all.”

Elminster shrugged. “I prefer their bruised feelings to our horrible, agonizing demises.
We eat only what we prepare right here, as it’s ready. Overdone and no sauces, I’m
afraid, but—”

Myrmeen shrugged. “I’ve eaten rough, with Purple Dragons riding to war. I can eat
plain and dreadful for the few days we need to. I can even try to make it palatable
for you two mighty lords.”

She and El both looked at Mirt, who sighed heavily and said, “So can I. Just let me
at the cellars. I can avoid the casks, and tell when a cork’s been tampered with.”

Morningfeast was done, and everyone had hastened back to their own rooms without a
suggestion of such prudence even having to be raised. The guests, it seemed, did not
consider Oldspires a happy house right now.

“I wonder if they’re knifing each other in the passages right now,” Myrmeen wondered,
“while we
do dishes
.” And with that disgusted comment, she handed Mirt the first dish to dry.

The Lord of Waterdeep winced as his hand closed on it; it was still hot enough that
steam was rising from it. And now from his fingers, too.

“If they are, we’ll soon hear about it,” Elminster told her. “Luse is wandering about
watching right now.”

“As she did most of the night,” Mirt grunted. “But why, El? Why did you have her just
spying? And why tell her to stay out of bedchambers and not even peer in at keyholes?
This isn’t a house full of blushing ladies; they’re mean, nasty, powerful archmages
who’ve blasted foes down many a time before! And if we
don’t
want to know what they’re up to in the wee hours, why waste Alusair’s time at all
with setting her to work skulking down passages all night?”

“She was obeying me, as it happens,” Elminster replied. “I don’t want her going into
a wizard’s bedchamber and discovering the hard way that the mage she’s visiting has
some means unknown to me of rending ghost princesses!”

Alusair promptly turned visible, leaning against the countertop in her preferred pose,
and favoring Mirt with a teasing smile. “Why, my Lord of Waterdeep,” she said sweetly,
“I didn’t know you cared.”

Mirt rolled his eyes, growled some less than polite words under his breath, then raised
his voice to normal audibility. “Well, you’re here, and it’s conclave time, so what
did you see last night?”

“Many guests were … active. First, Yusendre picked the lock of Skouloun’s empty room—or
was it? Someone could well have been waiting for her there—presumably looking for
something. She was not in there long before returning to her own chamber. This was
early on, of course, before her unfortunate demise. Then, after the spells and her
death, when you two settled down to sleep, El and I chatted for a bit and I went out
to patrol.”

“And our wizards visited back and forth like an overnight sampling tour in a brothel,”
Mirt guessed aloud.

Alusair smiled. “Drawing on your vast experience of same, I’m sure. Yes, aside from
Tabra not stirring nor being visited by anyone. First, Alastra called on Maraunth
Torr, then almost immediately the two of them went back to her room together, Torr
looking rather scorched—and his customary confidence entirely absent. Then Manshoon
visited Shaaan—”

“Oooh,” Myrmeen interrupted. “I like that not.”

“But the Zhentarim lord was rebuffed, and departed immediately, repeatedly calling
out in pain as he went. Before our oh-so-charming Serpent Queen could get her door
closed, Calathlarra—who’d somehow picked the lock and got out of the bedchamber we
locked her into—arrived on her threshold and requested admittance. She was accepted,
went in, and remained.”

“For how long?”

“Until I stopped patrolling, after you rang the gongs. I suspect she snuck back to
the room we locked her into after everyone else had headed for the feast hall, and
is playing starving imprisoned innocent in there right now.”

“Should we check on her?”

“Tabra first,” El decided, and nodded to Alusair—who raced for the kitchen door, winking
out of visibility before she got there.

“Mreen,” El commanded, “lock thyself in until we return.”

“And when you do that, the dishes will be waiting,” she warned.

“Of course. The dishes are
always
waiting.”

T
HEY STOPPED OUTSIDE
Tabra’s door.

“She’s in there. Still abed,” Alusair murmured, out of the empty air. “She locked
her door, but didn’t bolt it.”

Mirt looked at Elminster. “And if she won’t let us in?”

Elminster drew on a length of fine chain at his throat, hauling a key up into view.
“Master key,” he said, before pulling it off and using it.
Luse, stand guard over her after we depart
.

As you command
, Alusair’s impish thought came back.

El rolled his eyes and knocked at the door.

There was a whisper from within that none of them could decipher. They traded glances,
then El shrugged and swung the door wide.

The disfigured last apprentice of Ioulaum was in bed. She regarded them, managed the
wan beginnings of a smile, and whispered, “Well met.”

“Ah, but how well
are
ye, Tabra?” El kneeled beside the bed. “Forgive me?” he asked, laying a hand on her
bedcovers and raising his eyebrows in a query.

She nodded, and he gently drew back the covers.

She was naked, her ribs standing out clear all down her gaunt flanks. Intricate tattoos
covered the inside surfaces of both her forearms, and there was something—ink?—on
her fingertips.

No, just on the fingernails of the smallest end fingers of each hand, which had been
clipped or carved into sharp points.

“Poison?” El asked quietly, holding up one of her hands so it was between their faces.

“Ink. I always keep my end nails sharp, so I can dip them in ink to write letters.
It saves having to procure or carry quill pens, which are regrettably fragile, I’ve
found.”

Elminster nodded, replaced Tabra’s arm gently by her side, and looked her body up
and down closely.

She lay still, apparently unembarrassed or angered, but when he asked gently if there
was anything she wanted to share with him, or needed, she gave him that wan half smile
again, shook her head, and said, “Just let me sleep for now. And mind you lock the
door again.”

They were around the corner of the passage and in front of Alastra Hathwinter’s door
before Mirt jerked his head back over his shoulder in the direction of Tabra’s room
and said, “She’s up to something.”

El nodded. “Of course. Aren’t we all? The question is, what?”

He tried Alastra’s door, and found it locked. He knocked, but there was no reply.
A second and louder knock was also answered by utter silence. El used his master key.
No one greeted them, and he and Mirt peered around the room, looking for anything
out of place.

Alastra’s clothes had been laid out neatly across the seat that faced the fireplace.
She, too, lay abed naked—but the bedclothes were a roiled mess beneath her, and she
lay sprawled atop them, staring forever at nothing somewhere near the ceiling.

The Harper’s throat had been cut savagely—and she’d been sliced even more deeply all
down her front, laid open in a huge trench full of blood, into and out of which small
beetles were busily scurrying.

Into that trench of gore her Harper symbol had been thrust, upright and bloody, for
whoever found her to see.

Mirt stared down at it. “Murdered by someone who hates Harpers?”

El shrugged. “Or by someone who wants all to believe so.”

Mirt gave him a sidelong glance. “Surely Mystra must know who did this.”

El shot back a sharp look. “That doesn’t mean she’s going to tell me—or any of us.
The more foolish and brutish among the gods meddle openly, as they’ve always done.
The wiser ones are now trying to leave mortal troubles to mortals—for the less gods
walk among us and work openly upon us, the healthier we are and the greater we become.”

“Oh?” Mirt asked, with a frown. “Do all the priests know this?”

El shrugged. “The farmer who never stops uprooting and inspecting his cabbages nigh
kills them with his attention,” he explained, “whereas the one who plants them well
and then lets them be, grows sturdy ones, and many of them.”

“So I’m a cabbage,” Mirt said dryly. “That explains much.”

E
LMINSTER HAD CHOSEN
the lord’s study as the place for Lord Halaunt to meet with each aspirant seeking
to gain the Lost Spell. It was a small, pleasant room hard against the west wall of
Oldspires, dominated by its one window, which looked north along the west wall of
the mansion, where moss and then grass fell away from the old stone walls.

Two comfortable chairs faced each other across a central desk, and the Sage of Shadowdale’s
respect for the real Lord Halaunt had risen a trifle upon discovering that the chairs
were in every respect identical; the lord did not seat himself taller or more grandly
or comfortably than any guest in this room. A few shelves of trophies of past Halaunt
lives were let into the magnificent wood-paneled walls, and the Halaunt arms stood
proud in relief on the wall behind the desk, flanked on the side walls by expansive
and magnificently detailed maps of the Heartlands and the North on one side, and the
Shining South and the Utter East on the other.

The desk was gleamingly bare and empty.

Mirt and Myrmeen were back in the kitchens, barricaded in and preparing highsunfeast,
but Elminster assisted Lord Halaunt in entertaining one guest after another. As a
scribe and witness, so far as each spell-seeking wizard saw, but in truth, he mindtouched
Alusair as he went to fetch each one and escort them in, and in silent flashing thoughts
made her aware of what he deemed key about their pasts and characters.

“They’ll still do this, after Alastra?” Alusair asked Elminster, before he set off
to escort the first guest in.

He nodded. “They know ye’re going to be slow and careful, after what befell Alastra.
And I’m sure all of them are counting the days until the spellstorm fades away. They
have time to make good cases, and know we’ll take time to consider carefully. They’ll
do this.”

Manshoon came first, and El warned Alusair,
Even more of a snake, this one, than ye know. Utterly evil, and a barefaced expert
liar. Yet strong enough in his Art, and longsighted enough in his thinking about Toril,
for Mystra to offer him the status of Chosen
.

Was the Lady of All Mysteries drunk, or love-smitten, or so bored as to be unsane,
when making that offer?
Alusair thought back tartly, and added quickly,
You needn’t try to answer that. I’m merely acquainting you with my reaction to your
news
.

She then made Lord Halaunt smile and nod gravely at Manshoon as the vampire entered
the room, stopped to pose and tender his own smile, and then strode to the chair his
noble host was wordlessly indicating.

“So, Lord Manshoon, you seek my Lost Spell, yes? No change of mind, no second thoughts
on this matter?”

“I do seek the Lost Spell,” Manshoon confirmed smilingly, “and am prepared to pay
handsomely for it.”

“We’ll get to such details; I have concerns I’d like to discuss with you first. I
possess, as you’ll appreciate, only the one spell, yet would seem to have far more
than one suitor for it.”

“And the notion of selling copies of the spell to more than one of us sits ill with
you? You’d get much less from each purchaser, as they’d not be getting something unique,
but perhaps the aggregate of all the payments …”

“Try to swindle
wizards
, my lord? I think I’d like to live a little longer than that.”

“I was not envisaging any deception, Lord Halaunt, merely an alternative to having
to choose just one of us. However, as the choosing is entirely at your pleasure, if
the idea is not one that engages you, let it be forgotten. For I do indeed seek the
Lost Spell, and I mean to have it.”