Elminster Enraged

in the depths of the chasm.

The Simbul turned in the air, tilting over until she could look down into the gulf below, moving her shaking arms to aim the rays issuing from the items she held, her body trembling with the strain. Stabbing at the rift far below.

Back and forth she moved, shifting the unfailing rays to rain down on the purple glow in the depths, seeking to obliterate it.

Slowly that radiance faded, darkening, and the shifting shadows faded with it, becoming tattered and sporadic rather than unbroken snakes.

The Simbul held her vigilance, watching and aiming intently, making certain the vivid blue fire she directed was consuming the shadows …

Suddenly those dark ribbons started to whirl around her, as if being sucked down a drain, the stream of monsters becoming a few struggling individuals, the shadows around them receding to reveal … still emptiness.

Shadows no longer shifted.

The purple glow was gone.

No wind blew up out of the chasm. It was merely a gulf of darkness and bare stones, not a rift breathing out a stream of monsters.

The Simbul floated slowly up out of the gulf, blasting the slowest of the last handful of monsters flapping toward the forests with a few fitful bursts of blue flame.

Then she flew away, slowly and wearily, hanging in the air like a dead thing.

Soon, Alassra, a soft yet mighty voice whispered out of the air all around her, the gentle words like thunder in her soul.

Soon shall come the rest you ache for. The rest you’ve richly earned.

The room was dark and small, but its furnishings were rich, and the lone chair was surprisingly comfortable for such an ornate monstrosity.

Sraunter the alchemist would have been nervous indeed, sitting alone in the dark, in a palatial Suzailan noble’s mansion where he knew he did not belong. Yet the future emperor of Cormyr was quite content to lounge in the chair in Sraunter’s body, booted feet up on a gilded side table, locked into the anteroom by his own hand.

He was not, strictly speaking, alone. He had the cowering remnant of Sraunter’s awareness for company, crushed into a dark corner of the man’s own mind, and he had several small eyeball beholderkin tucked into the bulging breast of his surcoat, in case he needed them to deliver swift messages, or warnings, or pursue anyone.

At that moment, however, he was relaxed and content, his attention several rooms away from his small, dark refuge.

In that other, brighter nearby room, a meeting was taking place. A moot he’d caused to occur with his mental meddlings. A gathering of several of his subverted nobles and as many other members of Cormyr’s nobility-men he hoped to recruit to his cause without having to invade their minds directly. For each mind he forced himself upon was one more possible gap in his armor, one more way for inquisitive wizards of war to detect him. So given the patience that the removal of Elminster afforded him, it was time to see if the unwitting could be swayed to his cause by argument and their own inclination alone, rather than coercion.

It was going well. The nobles around that table, their tongues eased by wine, were busily deciding that although the ruling Obarskyrs were utterly and historically corrupt, and should eventually be deposed for the good of the realm, in the short term the greater affront to the liberty and health of the kingdom were courtiers who deceive royalty, nobility, and commoners alike, enact Crown will to their own advantages, and (as old Lord Haeldown had just put it) “oppress all.”

It was agreed that regicide, however tempting to some, would bring open civil war and a long period of strife, despoiling the same fair realm they sought to free. So rather than take down King Foril-who was, after all, elderly and (as Lord Taseldon said) “like to die soon, anyhail”-they would instead seek to remove the worst of the courtiers.

Specific persons at court, the worst of the “jumped-up covert rulers of us all” (Lord Haeldown again) would be murdered in a series of “accidents.” Properly done, in a careful sequence, these removals should arouse a minimum of war wizard suspicion, and serve to weaken the efficiency of Crown service and promote younger, more corruptible courtiers into the forcibly created vacancies.

“The Dragon Throne, like any other throne, stands on legs-those who obey royal commands. If we remove these legs, one by one, there will come a time when the throne will fall,” Lord Blacksilver gloated.

“And though the penalty for fell treason is death,” Lord Taseldon added, “pruning the realm of corrupt, loyal- only-to-themselves courtiers is something very different. Something … patriotic!”

“So who, my lords,” the chancellor of the realm purred, “should be first courtier to be pruned?”

There was a little silence, broken by everyone starting to speak at once. This name was cast onto the table, and that one, with almost obscene enthusiasm … and when the rush of suggestions at last faltered and silence came again, one name had been mentioned far more than any other.

Rensharra Ironstave, lady clerk of the rolls. As the head of tax appraisals for Cormyr, she might be the friendliest of creatures, yet by the very nature of her office still be a thorn in the sides of all nobility and wealthy landowners. As it happened, she was not the friendliest of creatures. Stubborn and sharp-tongued, a shrewd woman who seemed able to sense deceit before it was wholly laid out before her, she steadfastly refused to be bribed or cozened-and seemed to take enthusiastic delight in revealing even the most minor deceptions of the nobility, making public examples of their attempts to evade taxes.

In his antechamber, Manshoon smiled. So it was to be self-interest foremost, after all. Well, it was good to know how truly noble the nobles of Cormyr were.

Lord Haeldown said, “I used to think our war wizards were all little Vangerdahasts-young foolhead wizards from all over the Realms he tracked down and cast mind magics on, so they became his little thralls. Mayhap they were. He certainly seemed to learn everything that befell behind closed doors all over the kingdom as fast as if he’d seen and heard it himself. Yet I doubt that outland Caladnei woman, nor this weak-nothing Ganrahast we’re saddled with now, have managed the same trick. These days, our wizards of war make mistakes, often work against each other deliberately or unwittingly, and seem no more cohesive than, say, our Purple Dragons. There’s no mighty mage lurking behind them who can flit from head to head as he pleases and move them all like strikers on a lanceboard. That’s how Vangey survived all those assassination attempts, you know. He’d leave his body to be hewn down and leap across half the realm to land in another head, then turn around and conjure up another body for himself.”

“I agree, that’s what the war wizards have been like,” Lord Taseldon agreed, “but no longer. These last few days they seem … different. Watchful, ready for trouble. Now there is a wizard linking their thoughts together-for the first time in as long as I can remember.”

Lord Loroun leaned forward in interest. “Who? Surely not that nice, sensitive fool Ganrahast?”

“Hah! If he could do so, he’d have been doing it all these years, no? It’s not his name they’re whispering around the palace. The one they are giving tongue to, courtiers and Dragons alike, is ‘Elminster.’ ”

Lord Haeldown waved that notion away with one wrinkled hand. “The legendary Mad Mage of Mystra? He’ll be thousands of years old now-if he’s still alive! You really think us all dullards enough to believe that?”

“No, I think our great-grandsires got fooled, and theirs before them. I’ve heard talk that Elminster has lasted down the centuries because he isn’t one man, but wizard after wizard that Elminster’s mind floods into and conquers. Dozens at once, so some can’t help but survive, whatever befalls. That drives them all mad, of course, but what wizard isn’t? Right now, I think he’s inside the head of every last damned wizard of war-or soon will be.”

Manshoon stiffened in his comfortable chair, his jaw dropping open. His face was suddenly hot, the mirrors all