Spellstorm (33 page)

“So who sent you in here, and to do what?” Mirt growled.

The young man clenched his eyes shut and replied, “I’m forbid—
Unngh
.”

“Sorry,” Myrmeen murmured unapologetically, “but I’m afraid my knee slipped. It has
a habit of doing that. You’ll understand, I’m sure. We lady lords of the realm spend
so much time on our knees.”

“The Lord Warder ordered me to obey the commander of the wizards of war stationed
here at Oldspires, and I have,” came the grudging response.

“
Inside
Oldspires,” Mirt growled, “or d’you mean the merry band of wizards watching and maintaining
the ringwall? And it
is
still there, and they are, too, yes?”

“It is, they are, and yes, those charged to watch and guard the barrier.”

“How many are there? War wizards, Purple Dragons, and others like you?”

“That’s a state secret.”

“
How many
?”

“Bluster all you like, saer, I’ll tell you nothing of our strength!”

“Well, who commands? One of the Purple Dragon officers we’ve seen, or a wizard of
war?”

“A wizard. Of course.”

“So he sent you in to do what? Kill us?” Myrmeen asked crisply. “Spy on us, or someone
in particular? Procure something specific?”

“Lady, I cannot—”

“Nameless functionary, you
shall
answer my questions. As a lady lord of the realm—”

“
Former
lady lord of the—”

“As a champion of the Dragon Throne, appointed guardian of the realm by no less than
the Royal Magician of Cormyr
and
the Court Wizard of the Realm, too, my authority outstrips that of any mere wizard
of war commanding a force on the ground. Now answer me, without delay, or I’ll deem
you a traitor and deal with you accordingly!”

Mirt chuckled. “Is ‘deal with you’ your polite phrase, here in Cormyr, for ‘torture
the truth out of you’?”

“It could very well be,” Myrmeen said crisply. “And Nameless here has one swift way
of finding out.”

“I—” Their captive let out a gusty sigh and said, “I’m here to kill only if you three
had been slain by a wizard not of Cormyr, who’d gained control of this house and Lord
Halaunt’s magic. My foremost task is to find out what’s happened within these walls
and report that back as swiftly and fully as possible, so it reaches the Lord Warder’s
ears. Spells cast here have been detected by those on duty at the ringwall, so our
information—that magic can’t work in Oldspires—is obviously wrong or outdated, and
the Lost Spell and every one of the wizards who gathered here to gain it has been
deemed such a danger to the realm that—”

“Aye, we know the elegant phrases of courtiers’ blather,” Mirt interrupted, leaning
close to the man in Myrmeen’s grasp. “So tell me now, are you one of them Highknights?”

“You, saer, are an outlander, and as such have no authority to—”

“
Answer
him,” Myrmeen suggested into the young man’s ear, silken steel in her soft voice.

“I-I—no, I’m not. Yet.”

“Ah,” El commented over his shoulder without turning his head, the lantern steady
on the captive’s face but his eyes and attention now fixed on the dim chamber outside,
“I quite see. If ye succeeded in this, ye might just become one, eh? Well, go and
tell the wizards out there that a strong threat may yet come bursting out of Oldspires
to menace them, and the Forest Kingdom beyond them if they prove not up to their guardianship.
More than that, we cannot yet say. The situation is as, ah, murky as usual in a Cormyrean
regency.”

“You’re … letting me go?”

“Aye. Ye’re young, seem reasonably intelligent and full of promise, and the realm
always has need of the at least somewhat loyal and somewhat competent, so ’twould
be a waste to have thee end up as a corpse now. Which is, I fear, highly likely if
ye tarry in these halls much longer. We have what Ganrahast or Vainrence like to call
‘a situation’ unfolding here, even as we blather.”

“Blather?” the young less-than-Highknight repeated a little dazedly, as Myrmeen released
him and Mirt hauled him to his feet.

“Have that hearing of thine seen to by a good healer, lad, will ye?” El responded,
as they frog-marched the young man down the passage to the entry hall. “Oh, and ask
Ganrahast from me if he’s been foolish enough to try to open a gate here inside Oldspires
a short while ago, will ye?”

“A
gate
? You mean a—a portal?”

“His mind is softening under the strain,” El observed mournfully, as the young man
was freed a step inside the entry doors, which Mirt then opened with a bowing flourish
that would have done credit to any steward. El then shook his head and added, “Prospective
Highknights, these days …”

The nameless not-yet-Highknight gave him a frowning look, then squared his shoulders,
waved a farewell, put his head down, and rushed into the swirling fog of the spellstorm—now
lit by the cold gray promise of the coming dawn—with the same swift and pelting enthusiasm
as Drace Taulith had sprinted into it.

Mirt grinned at his dwindling back, secured the doors, and hastened to join Elminster
and Myrmeen in the kitchens.

“Oh, good,” Myrmeen greeted him, from where she was standing guard at the door. “There
are the trays of braerwings to roast, and here’s the first skillet of antidote base
to simmer.
Try
not to get them mixed up.”

“Your task,” El told Mirt quietly, “I’ve something pressing to do.”

He went out without waiting for a reply, and started walking the rooms and passages
of Oldspires.

As he feared, there was no sign of Alusair, though he called her name a time or six,
and sent questing thoughts out, reaching with the Weave.

Silence. Empty silence.

It lasted until he’d reached every corner of the ground floor of the mansion. Whereupon
he stopped and swallowed a bitter curse. Luse, brave Luse, tart and stalwart and … gone?
Well, she’d come along on this willingly, and gone down, if gone she was, the way
the Steel Princess would have wanted to go—in harness, fighting for Cormyr.

The way they’d all go, very soon, if they weren’t careful.

Trumpet fanfare over the graves. So, so many graves …

Enough! Back to the crisis at hand. Down to the cellars …

So, now, if Shaaan was a fan of the Mhair viper, they’d need some leaves of thrale,
ground hrath nut, and … oh, Talona, ’twould not do to forget that last ingredient—ahh!
Heart thorn! Dried whole, not the powdered muck Braelith had made his fortune selling,
in the days when the Shaar routes were …

He shook his head impatiently to leave that reverie behind before he plunged wholly
into it. Not
now
. He was indulging too often in these forays into the past.

Fresh will to go on or not, he was getting too old.

Yet Rune wasn’t
ready
. Might not be for centuries yet. And still the foes came thick and fast, scheme upon
dark plot upon sly peril.

Hah, and hadn’t they always?

Azuth had said as much, back at the death of …

No. Later. After the matter of Halaunt and the Lost Spell had been put to rest, and
Cormyr delivered from the latest threat to the Dragon Throne.

He found the right storage larder, and gathered the herbs and spices he’d thought
of, adding roumrel and astig root and demmaethur along the way. And then, of course,
found he’d accumulated too large an array of ingredients to carry, and unconcernedly
stripped off his robe to make into a carrysack to bear all he needed back to the kitchens.

Nine venoms he knew how to counter, without rummaging through the Weave for minds
that might or might not care to answer. Six of those poisons were quite likely favorites
of the Serpent Queen, though he’d not kept as close an eye on her as perhaps he should
have, down the years.

She’d been the Blackstaff’s burden, after all, and that had been back in the days
when Mystra—the first Mystra—had trusted her senior Chosen and they’d trusted each
other, so casting an eye over the work of another was seldom done.

There was, after all, always too much work to go around. And
that
had never changed.

So it was back to doing the good he must because it was pressingly needful and he
owed someone dear, and because no one else would. It was time to try to find what
was left of Luse, if he could, and bring her back, as much as he could.

He sat down on his bundle, there in the darkness of the larder, and let his attention
sink into the Weave …

Brightness rising into view, the endless silent rushing, darting, and swirling. He
descended to meet it, to join it, and be swept along, seeking … seeking the mind of
the Steel Princess. Alusair Nacacia she’d been, the little spitfire against her elder
sister’s serene urbanity, the fierce spirit, tossed head, and ready sword. The daring,
the daring … There! That was her! Or what little was left, torn and sobbing and ebbing
away. Regrets like weeping sores on her soul, lost mother, lost father, words unsaid,
too late now, the icy farewell to her nephew the fifth Azoun, the long walk away …

Ye did what ye had to do
, El told her tenderly, as he gathered what was left of her together and knit those
tatters with bright Weave strands, woven as best he could.
And what ye did was thy best, and far, far better than anyone else sought to do for
Cormyr. Ye cannot win every battle, but ye saved the realm we both love, saved it
time and again. Ye have earned peace, and deserve to be honored even more than thy
father and mother. Ye are Cormyr, lass, its heart and soul. Rise again
!

And he let slip the tiniest bit of his own vitality into the Weave cradle he’d woven,
to forge and fuse her tatters together. Just a little, lest he burn her away utterly … a
Weaveghost she was, now, and must remain.

El? Old Mage? Sly old bastard, I have had the most horrid dreams! All lost, and torn,
and weeping—and part of you in me, with Mystra’s sad eyes boring through me!

Luse, Luse, ye’re back, and look! Quite by accident, I’ve woven ye a shield, a Weave
shield! Wear it like armor, and try not to fly too close to any powerful castings,
moth to their flames! Will ye do that for me?

Elminster, I will do
anything
for you
. Anything.

Try not to remind me of that, lass. If ever I’m tempted to call on that debt, it might
destroy thee. Now fly free—out of this Weave chaos, and back to Oldspires!

And abruptly he was gone from the rushing brightness, and blinking in chill, dank
darkness, sitting on a bundle made of his own robe.

With the disbelievingly happy laughter of a Weaveghost wild in his mind.

El got up and trudged through the darkness, and returned to the kitchen in time to
claim the last clear stretch of countertop to set down his sack of ingredients. Myrmeen
looked up at him, acquired a twinkle in her eye, and said not a word.

Mirt, turning from running a skewer through the last braerwing, raised one eyebrow
and remarked, “Lean meat is becoming all the rage in rural Cormyr these days, I’m
told. Well-aged lean meat brings the highest coin, as it’s always in short supply.”

El gave him a look, put on his robe again, and started preparing and mixing ingredients.
“Shaaan won’t keep us waiting forever, lean-meat lovers,” he told the countertop he
was swiftly littering with powders, reaching for the nearest pestle.

“With what that lad saw when he was spying, and what we told him,” Mirt grunted, “she
won’t leave Oldspires unseen and unopposed.”

“Valiant deaths are still deaths,” the Sage of Shadowdale replied. “She’s been shut
up in her room so long that I’m wondering if she’s preparing something that can spread
like a plague, once she looses it.”

Myrmeen looked up sharply. “She’d destroy a realm, to end up ruling it?”

Elminster nodded. “She’s done so before.”

The former Lady Lord of Arabel stared at him for a moment, then shook her head and
said, “I don’t want to know. Not yet. Perhaps not for years to come. I don’t want
to know what crawling plagues she can loose, until she’s safely dead, and burned,
and scattered, her ashes enspelled to make sure she won’t rise and return in undeath.
Without
having let loose any more such afflictions.”

“Dead, burned, and scattered? You’re making our tasks-to-be-done list steadily longer,
lass,” Mirt complained, as he bent over to peer at the cooking fire.

“Deeper drudgework is oft the price of lasting victory,” she quoted back at him.

He winced and then wheezed his way back upright and replied, “I heard enough trite
phrases from the priests and the elder nobles of Waterdeep in my day to last several
lifetimes. I’m no longer in the speechifying business, so pray don’t add to my store
of them.”

It was Myrmeen’s turn to arch an eyebrow. “Oh? What business are you in these days?”

“The revenge business.”

“Oh? Taking your revenge upon whom, exactly?”

“Everyone. I really mean I’m in the meddling-in-everything business, like Elminster
here, but ‘revenge’ has that grander grim ring to it.”

“I’ll order the carving of your tombstone the moment we’re done in Oldspires,” Myrmeen
promised.

Mirt rolled his eyes. “You think that’ll be in this century?”