Elminster Enraged

As the shop bell tinkled its soft chime in the wake of the departing Lord Blacksilver, Manshoon permitted himself a satisfied smile.

After all, Sraunter would have smiled on his own at that moment, if Manshoon hadn’t been riding his mind. Another profitable sale, of something so simple yet so desired. Not that he cared a whit for the weight of Sraunter’s purse. No, he was satisfied because it had gone so well. He really was schooling himself to patience and subtlety in manipulating his subverted nobles. Andolphyn, Loroun, and now Blacksilver. That left just Crownrood, of the important ones.

As “everyone” knew, most of the nobility opposed the Crown and tried all manner of minor seditious and treasonous ploys and gestures. Thus, nobles doing so under his coercion were unlikely to arouse suspicions of anyone being involved in those little ploys but the nobles themselves. Whereas if he took to meddling with the minds of courtiers, such tamperings were far more likely to be noticed by wizards of war.

The solution, to a patient man, was to slowly prune the ranks of those Crown mages, using justifiably enraged or drunken nobles to do so. He’d already subverted a handy collection of expendable lords, but it occurred to Manshoon that another handy collection of younger, demonstrably Crown-hostile nobles already existed: those relatively few captives kept in isolated cells beneath High Horn, where Purple Dragons and wizards of war were numerous, alert, and close by. And then there were the inmates of an entire prison keep out on the remote eastern border of the realm, where Dragons were few and Crown mages even fewer: Castle Irlingstar.

Well, now …

It was slow and sometimes hard work, this climb. Always avoiding the temptation, even for an instant, to use the rock that had been smoothed by the dragon’s spewings into an easy trail. In places it was a slick chute, aye, but more often the smooth-melted rock had been left a mere shell of itself, pierced by many tiny holes above hidden cavities, so a firm boot could crush it down into a bootprint that was unlikely to slip. Yet that would undoubtedly make noise, and there was a dragon waiting up above.

El was hoping to find a side cavern that would let her avoid the wyrm. If not, she had magic enough to get past a dragon … if she handled matters just right.

Aye, there was always that “if.” Hrast it, there was never just the easy way, never a time to relax. Right now, it was best to remain wary, and move very carefully, never-

There was a sudden change in the breeze from above, then an echoing, hissing roar. El shrank back into the cavern-wall cleft she was in and braced herself, thrusting knees and elbows against the rock. Even before the acrid stink hit her, the green flood close in its wake, she knew what had happened.

The dragon had breathed acid again.

CHAPTER TEN

HIGH TIME FOR SCREAMING AND CURSING

Elminster shut her stinging eyes and tried not to breathe as a fine mist of acid drifted past. The main hissing flood, gurgling like a rushing stream, was already on and down, heading for the Underdark below.

The wyrm had probably been listening for small noises that would tell it a creature was climbing toward it, and had concluded, despite the care El had taken, that such an unwanted visitor was indeed ascending its lair’s back door. Or perhaps the dragon had arranged some sort of alarm-even a spider or some other tiny cave inhabitant, as a spy-to warn against all intrusions from the Underdark. After all, Elminster certainly would, if she’d been a dragon lairing in a cave connected directly to the vast drow-infested underworld.

Down the chain of caverns the acid flowed, striking rocks into bubbling spume and drifting caustic mists, tumbling and hissing past El in her cleft. Some way below her, something screamed, shrill and sudden and very briefly, a cry that was cut off in an ugly choking.

El dared to lean out of her cleft enough to peer down, and only just caught sight of a dark, dwindling mass being swept along in the fading green glow. Dragon acid was as swift and ruthless as the wyrms that spewed it.

A dark elf? Someone or something that sounded as if it could sing and talk when it wasn’t death screaming, that-strike that, who-had been following her up from that tunnel where she’d fought the outcast drow. Possibly it had been one of them, a lurking outcast she’d never seen.

Hrast it, too much death followed her, clung to her like a rotting cloak! Even when she fought no one, and hurled not a spell, folk died around her, as if the gods had cursed her to be Walking Death.

Why?

She’d been sick of it centuries ago, yet it went on and on, showing no signs of slackening. She was so sick of it now.

But she doubted very much if how she felt would make one whit of difference. The violent deaths were going to keep happening around her. Let them not include his Rune, or her Arclath, hrast it.

Mystra forfend, Symrustar commented quietly.

“Aye,” El whispered, softly enough that her words should carry no distance at all. “Mystra forfend, indeed.”

She let silence fall, and waited a long time before daring to leave the cleft and climb on. When she did, she took great care to keep as quiet as she could, no matter how slow her progress.

After all, that brief scream from her ill-fated follower had been loud. Somewhere ahead and above, an alerted black dragon was waiting.

The lord constable of Irlingstar peered around the ready room. It did not take him long.

Despite his experience of monster scourings and battles with border raiders, Farland’s stomach heaved. He fought down his urge to spew, then worked his way around the blood to look into every bedchamber.

They were spartan rooms, and none of the mages had brought much to the castle to clutter them with. They had small, simple wardrobes, customarily left open against the ever-present damp, and all of them stood open. No one was hiding in any place he couldn’t see, because there was just nowhere to hide. A guard ward glowed faintly around a stack of shared spellbooks on a bedside table, preventing opportunistic thefts by prisoners-or anyone else.

The youngest of Irlingstar’s duty war wizards lay dead, sprawled in the middle of the ready room, headless and handless. Those severed bits of him were nowhere to be seen.

There was no trace of the other four Crown mages at all. Except for the blood.

The lone corpse was spread-eagled in a great pool of gore that filled the center of the room. It was a well- built chamber, its flagstones covered with a thin slurry of rough-pour that sloped ever so slightly away from the walls, to gather any wetness in the center of the room. Only that had enabled him to skirt the blood, for there was so much of it that the body lay in a still-slick pool that had to be two fingerwidths deep at its heart, or more.

No man could have that much blood in him; most of it must have belonged to the missing mages.

There were no bloody talon or claw prints, no fallen mage knives or signs of any struggle-and no runes chalked anywhere. No smells of spellwork, those odd scorched scents all Dragons who worked with war wizards got used to. The only reek was from the blood … and the bowels of the corpse.

Nevertheless, Lord Constable Farland gripped his sword tightly, and glared all around constantly, as he made his way back out into the passage.

Avathnar had been bad. This was worse.

And he knew-knew as surely as his name was Gelnur Farland, and all of this mess was on his platter, his to clear up-that it wasn’t over yet, not by a long bowshot.

“Tluin,” he whispered, into the gloom around him. “Naed, hrast, and farruking