Spellstorm (30 page)

El nodded. “Though I don’t think they’ve all done murder, here at Oldspires. Yet.”

“But if only one wizard is left, only one can claim the Lost Spell,” Myrmeen murmured.
“And even if that prize isn’t forthcoming, they’ll have left a lot of powerful rivals
behind, forever.”

“No contingencies, in all this spell-chaos,” Mirt agreed.

Myrmeen looked at Elminster. “That’s not going to stop them trying, though, is it?”

He shook his head, and she turned and strode away with Mirt to fetch Tabra, whose
lodgings were farthest distant from Maraunth Torr’s bedchamber; Malchor and Manshoon
were much closer to hand, and could be collected on their return trip.

So, Old Mage, shall I go and camp outside the Serpent Queen’s door?

Her thought came into his mind just before the chill of her presence. Alusair could
be both invisible and utterly silent when she wished to be, and Elminster’s feel for
the Weave came in roiling waves in this place, so close to the leakages of the gates.

Aye
, he mindspoke back.
It will be very helpful to know if she stirs outside her room, or tries a working
inside it
.

Until next
, then, she thought. And a moment later, from farther away, she added,
I echo Mreen
.

Eh? How so?

I, too, hope you know what you’re doing
.

El smiled grimly.
So do I
, he told her.

If Tabra was still feeling ill, she didn’t show it. She had obviously been up and
dressed when Mirt and Myrmeen had called on her, for here she was already, limping
along with them, a wry smile on her face and her mismatched eyes alight with interest.
Or was it mischief?

Malchor looked as if he was only half-awake, roused from deep slumber and still quietly
close to toppling back into it. Manshoon looked as alert and superior and sleekly
hostile as he always did.

“Frightened by night noises, Aumar?” he asked. “In need of a little company? Missing
soft warm lasses to be your pillows?”

By way of reply, Elminster stood back and wordlessly ushered them into Maraunth Torr’s
room with a flourish worthy of any doorjack.

The three wizards looked down at Torr’s sprawled body.

Malchor looked sad, Tabra on the not-quite-smiling side of satisfied, and Manshoon
both unsurprised and annoyed.

None of them said anything.

Silence stretched.

Elminster gave them an inquiring smile.

When his eyes met Manshoon’s, the Zhent asked coldly, “Why are you showing me this?
Is this your crude attempt to frighten me?”

“Nay,” El replied. “Rather, ’tis my crude attempt to reassure thee that the murderer
has found his comeuppance.”

Manshoon shook his head. “Some day, Elminster,” he said softly, shaking his head,
“you’ll reach too far—and great will be the glee of those who bring you down. There’ll
probably be a rush to take part in
your
comeuppance.”

“I daresay,” El told him, gentle smile unruffled. “I do seem to have accumulated quite
a host of enemies down the passing years. The burden laid upon me by she whom I serve,
I deem it; the inescapable result of matters all being left up to me. Always.”

“Is that your excuse for forever
meddling
?” Manshoon snapped, then turned to Malchor and Tabra. “You’re both being very quiet;
do you approve of Elminster manipulating matters great and small, all over Faerûn,
for century after century?”

Malchor shrugged. “And you don’t? I don’t. He at least can claim to be serving the
goddess who empowers and graces us all.”

“Anyone can
claim
such service,” Manshoon said darkly. “I wonder how much of what he does for Mystra
is more self-serving than goddess-serving.”

“Whereas
I
,” Tabra said with sudden steel in her voice, “spend my time wondering about more
important things. Those who concern themselves overmuch with other people’s business
often make a mess of their own. Wouldn’t you agree, Saer No-Longer-Lord-of-Anything?”

Manshoon rounded on her with a sneer. “Grand words from a marred weakling whose largest
accomplishment is being a captive.”

Tabra smiled and flexed her fingers, as weary warriors often do in a lull in fighting,
when they’ve been gripping their weapons long and hard. “Try me, latest clone of so
many failed predecessors,” she suggested softly, without a trace of fear in her eyes.
“Try me.”

“Heh,” Mirt told the ceiling, “I
love
the peace and carefree ease of wizards’ accords, I do indeed.”

“I’ve agreed to no accord, fat man,” Tabra reminded him.

“Hah! Indeed you’ve not!” Mirt agreed jovially. “My mistake. A mere mutton-headed
man of action, me, not a clever mage who—”

“Not much action, by the looks of
that
paunch,” Tabra interrupted, but her voice was jesting and her eyes held a twinkle.

“Well, here I be,” the old moneylender leered, swiveling his hips like a dancing girl.
“Spurn not your fair chances!”

Tabra, Myrmeen, and Manshoon all rolled their eyes, as the three roused guests turned
away to head back to their rooms. El waved to Mirt and Myrmeen to accompany them,
and locked the door on what was left of Maraunth Torr.

No blatant slips, and everyone riled. So, now, could anything be salvaged of Mystra’s
hoped-for accord? The surviving mages all knew each
other better, true, and that would make them all behave differently in future toward
rivals who were no longer strangers, but this many dead was hardly what a goddess
who wanted more of the Art in the hands of nigh everyone would want …

Ah, but perhaps this Mystra was at last cleaving more to the thinking of her predecessor,
his
Mystra, that those who used magic for tyranny must occasionally be struck down to
end their hoarding of magic and oppression of others who wanted to wield it or gain
more of it. Her time in the Weave would have immersed her in the thoughts and desires
of the earlier Mystra and the many, many servants of Mystra who were now voices in
the Weave, marinating her in their views and emotions, their accumulated wisdom, their
memories of what they’d had to do in the service of Mystra …

’Twas no easy thing, being the goddess of magic. A different deity than the rest,
in a world so steeped in the Art, a divinity that had to care more for mortals, or
embrace utter tyranny. And at the same time share the Weave—the Weave that
was
Mystra, as well as being so much more—with other deities, or what remained of them,
like Eilistraee and—

“Well,
that
was fun,” Myrmeen commented, as she and Mirt returned. “They’re all back in their
rooms, and both Tabra and Malchor were yawning before they shut and bolted their doors.
No armies, by the way. So, what now?”

“Time for ye two to enjoy some slumber,” El told them, “back in the kitchen. I’ll
tend the fires and the stewpots, Luse will fly patrol, and—”

“Tomorrow’s another day, that bids fair to be very much like this one,” said Mirt,
starting the long trudge down the passage in the direction of the kitchen. “I’m getting
to know that kitchen very well.”

“Well,” El pointed out, “ye
do
need skills for thy new career, whatever it turns out to be, and a dab hand in the
kitchen is always …”

“
You
, Lord Chosen of Mystra, can go rut with two snakes blindfolded up a tree,” Mirt replied
merrily, lurching through the Halaunt trophy chamber and—

Coming to an abrupt halt as Alusair loomed up before him, glowing almost solid, tall
and stern and with her hands on the hilts of her spectral sword and dagger.

“News,” she announced crisply, as Myrmeen and Elminster came to their own halts looking
over Mirt’s shoulders at her. “I found someone
unfamiliar skulking around the passages—a masked man, in leathers, with several daggers
about his person—and did my ghost act. He was impressed.”

“Terrified,” Myrmeen interpreted.

“Indeed,” the ghost princess agreed dryly. “He fled in some haste, up into the unsafe
upper floor, and hid himself there.”

“Lock up the kitchen and food stores first,” El decided, “then let’s talk to this
skulker.”

“Talk,” Myrmeen echoed, deadpan, hefting her cleaver. “Is that what we’re calling
it these days?”

“T
HIS LOOKS NO
more prepossessing than it did earlier tonight,” Mirt grunted, ascending stairs that
creaked alarmingly under his weight. The cracking sounds were so loud that they echoed
back off the nearest trees. He winced, and turned to regard Alusair. “Did it do this
when you chased our masked marvel up here?”

“I’m lighter on my feet,” she replied dryly, drifting past him upright, with her arms
folded across her chest.

Mirt sighed heavily. “Life continues to be
so
unfair.”

“A sentiment others have voiced before ye,” Elminster told him. “And will again, after
ye’re gone.”

“And my companions continue to cheer me,” Mirt added sourly. “Now, where’s this skulker?
I want to have at him for robbing me of the last few hours of slumber I might have
managed to snatch before morning. Let me land a few good punches in someone’s face,
and I’ll feel I’ve accomplished something.”

“You grow up on the docks of Waterdeep?” Myrmeen asked.

“Near enough, lass, near enough.” Mirt started along the unevenly warped floor of
the widest passage on the upper floor—one made for lugging furniture along, where
most of the others were narrower. Many doors lined its walls. “So, Princess, whither
away?”

“Straight ahead, then follow the passage where it doglegs right,” she replied, “and—”

She stopped, in a sudden swirling flare of cold and ghostly radiance. “Hold,” she
snapped.

“Onto who?” Mirt asked, but obediently lurched to a stop.

“Four threads across our path, see?” Alusair warned. “They weren’t there when I chased
our intruder this way.”

“Taut threads says trap to me,” Mirt growled.

“Says trap to
anyone
,” Myrmeen snapped. “El, do you want to play expert again? I can shine the lantern
wherever—”

Something seemed to erupt behind them like an invisible fist, lifting them off their
feet into a forward stumble that almost pitched Mirt through the wall of threads.
It smote their ears, too, in a soundless blast that rattled teeth and thrust like
a needle through eardrums and then … passed and was gone.

“What,” Mirt rumbled, turning around and clawing the pry bar, which he’d found in
the kitchens and adopted as his weapon of choice, out of his belt, “was
that
?”

“A spell that went awry,” Elminster said grimly, looking back the way they’d come.
“Cast up our backsides while we stopped to deal with this rather obvious ‘trap.’ ”

“Our skulker’s a wizard? Or is this the work of one of our guests?”

“The latter, I’m thinking,” El replied, stretching out one hand like a priest bestowing
a blessing and holding up his other in a “stop and silence” signal. His companions
gave him both until he shook his head, sighed, and relaxed again.

“The Weave reveals nothing but the ripples of a powerful magic, just cast right here,”
he announced, “which is obvious enough. It was meant to be a smiting spell of some
sort, an unleashing to deal harm. I …”

He broke off, and then asked quietly, “Luse?”

The flickering in the air in front of the threads was dark and feeble, a mere wavering
line of radiance.

“A few more spells going awry like that,” Alusair whispered raggedly, from somewhere
near the floor, “and I’ll find my final rest at last.”

“Ye should get back to Lord Halaunt’s body and rest within it, lass,” El said gravely.

“And miss the
fun
?” Alusair’s mocking whisper was a hollow, husking echo of her usual self.

“And miss the fun,” El confirmed sadly. “Just tell us where thy skulker hid himself,
and we’ll do the rest. There’s nothing to bind him to where ye saw him hide, mind;
he could be anywhere in Oldspires by now.”

“After you deal with these threads, trap or no trap,” the ghost princess hissed, “and
take the passage on through the dogleg, it ends in a little square room with three
doors. The leftmost is another passage, much narrower, the rightmost opens into a
storage attic, and between them, the widest one—the way our skulker went—opens into
a large room crammed full of stout wooden crates stacked high. He went behind some
of them, and can force them to topple by kicking at them with his shoulders braced
against a wall, so beware!”

“Thank ye,” Elminster said. “Now
please
, lass, take thyself out of this peril and survive to haunt the morrow.”

“Not willingly,” Alusair husked, and drifted away along the floor, like a shadowy
eel that left a chill in its wake.

The Sage of Shadowdale watched her go, then flung up a hand to request immobile silence
from Mirt and Myrmeen, closed his eyes, and sank his concentration into the Weave.
An ever-rushing tangle of bright flows, wavering and trembling from time to time like
rippling reflections in disturbed water … and there she was, Alusair, a dark and tattered
retreating coalescence. He reached out with the moving brightness and fed her power,
hearing her hiss in glad pain, and grow brighter, writhing and trembling—