Elminster Enraged

to meet them. The table, decanter, and all sprang into the air, and the whole room rocked and swayed to the tune of a deafening, growing thunder.

Dust fell in a sudden, heavy cloud, and as Arclath spun Amarune around and rushed her to the nearest wall, trying to shield her, pebbles pelted them, and larger stones could be heard crashing down here and there.

The stones around them groaned alarmingly … but as that ominous sound deepened, the thunder faded, as did the shuddering and swaying.

Long moments later, only the dust still moved, swirling chokingly, setting them both to coughing. As they hacked and shook, everything else quieted.

Then light abruptly flooded in. The door that had been locked was snatched open again, and a frowning Gulkanun was reaching through it to clutch at Arclath’s arm.

He hauled the young lord back out of the cell-Rune right behind him, hopping as she reassembled her boot and got it back on-and into Farland’s office.

Where the dust was thinner, though some cracks had made jagged paths down the walls that certainly hadn’t been there before-and Longclaws was restraining the lord constable, one hand clutching the man’s gorget and the other holding a wand warningly in Farland’s face.

“Come,” Gulkanun commanded grimly, turning his head to extend that order to his fellow mage and the lord constable, as well as Rune and Arclath. “For now, we’re keeping together.”

Longclaws released Farland and waved him toward the door. The lord constable burst through it at a grim run, the rest of them right at his heels.

Two murders, and now an explosion they were rushing off to investigate-

“Ah, adventure!” Arclath exclaimed delightedly.

Beside him, Rune rolled her eyes.

Unexpectedly, Gulkanun started to chuckle.

The mood among the duty detail of war wizards on the battlements of the naval base at the eastern end of Marsember was sour … and getting worse. A full-throated storm was rushing ashore, right over them, nigh- drowning Marsember for the ninth time that tenday. The rain had worked its way up from pelting to lashing down, then to hammering the flagstones and cobbles hard enough to bounce back up and wet chins from below. Now, as usual, it had begun to slant like the murderous down-thrust lances of aerial cavalry, driving stingingly into even the most carefully cowled face.

The Crown mages huddled in their weathercloaks, their hoods up and shoulders hunched, already drenched and getting colder. Rain-warding spells were useless up on the battlements, thanks to the old, powerful, and many- layered wards that protected the towers against hostile magics. They tried to squint through the deluge-with even less success than they managed to ignore the wet creeping into their boots and running down their necks inside their weathercloaks.

“Tluining weather,” one wizard muttered. The one beside him nodded in miserable silence. They were all eyeing, with more than a little suspicion-or trying to, in the storm, and didn’t the smugglers and slavers love these sorts of storms? — a ship running into the public trading harbor. It was bucking the wild waves down there, amid all the rocking, rising, and falling moored ships, and-

It was time. Every last one of them was intent on his work. Diligent fools.

Manshoon said the last word of the incantation, and his spell took him from dry but overcast Suzail to the naval battlements of storm-lashed Marsember in an instant.

He appeared right behind the line of war wizards. Just as he’d planned. He allowed himself the moment necessary to form a wide smile of satisfaction before he spread his hands and cast his next spell.

It dashed all the wizards of war against each other, bruising and breaking limbs and leaving some dazed or nigh-senseless, before thrusting them up into the sky in a tight, feebly struggling tangle. They hanged there in midair, stabbed at by the lightnings of the passing storm, while he cast his next spell with unhurried precision.

It struck them like a falling castle wall, and flung them high and far through the storm clouds, trailing a few ragged shouts, to rain down out in the open sea beyond the breakwaters, broken and dead.

Manshoon looked to the right, then to the left. Heads were turning far along the battlements, at the corner towers where Purple Dragon sentinels stood, in the only posts in all Cormyr where they were allowed to eschew armor and to stand without spears at the ready.

Some of those sentinels were starting to run in his direction, and to shout. What he’d done to the Crown mages had been seen.

Manshoon smiled almost fondly at the running men. “This thinning of the war wizards,” he murmured, “is going to be as easy as it is enjoyable.”

And as the fastest of the running soldiers came close enough to see the face of their future emperor, he gave them a broad smile of greeting-and vanished, leaving only bare, rain-swept flagstones for them to hack and stab at.

Dust was everywhere, though the rumbling and shaking had stopped. Farland was coughing hard but sprinting as if he didn’t need to breathe or rest, along grim stone passages and down gloomy stairs and along more passages and up yet more stairs. Panting, Arclath, Amarune, and the two war wizards kept right on his heels.

Everywhere they ran, they heard shouting. Frightened, aggrieved prisoners bellowing through the gratings in their cell doors. Demanding to be let out, or crying for aid, or shrieking and sobbing that they were hurt, by all the gods, and needed “Succor, now!”

“Anyone who can plead eloquently isn’t hurt that badly,” Longclaws commented as they rushed past entreaty after entreaty-and into a din of fresh ones, ahead.

As they hurried on through the dust-shrouded fortress, it seemed most of the noble prisoners of Irlingstar were more frightened than hurt. A few were wandering dazedly, blinking through masks of thick dust, freed by the blast as walls had cracked, and the wards around their cells had faded.

The fear serpent spells that had been prowling the corridors were gone entirely, and as Farland and the others hastened, increasingly they saw prisoners who were almost free. Cell doors yawned wide or had fallen, but the men they were meant to confine were trembling in midair, caught in stubbornly persisting wards that kept them on the verge of being held in place; they could struggle forward very slowly, if they strained and fought with all their strength.

Farland kept going. Past the steep stair where dead Vandur still lay, awaiting a proper investigation before burial-and providing meals for the rats until the blast had sent them scurrying, no doubt. Past the boarded-up shaft that had served as a “food up, chamber pots down” elevator until too many prisoners had been wedged in it head- down by cruel fellow inmates and left to die. All the way to the series of heavy doors that guarded the approach to the south tower.

The first set of doors was locked, but the lord constable of course had the keys, and barely slowed on his way through the doors. The second pair of doors was cracked but still standing, the locks twisted but holding. Farland’s stout kick served where his keys no longer could.

The third set of doors sagged half-open, locks and latches broken and the spandrels above shattered and sagging. There was daylight beyond them where the fourth pair of doors should have been, that opened into the south tower.

Lord Constable Farland skidded to an awkward halt just beyond the third doors and gaped, too shocked to spew obscenities.

The south tower was … missing.

Instead of stone rooms and ramparts ahead, they were treated to a cool breeze and a splendid view of the Thunder Peaks marching away south, on their left, with the last winding bend of Orondstars Road just below and the great dark green carpet of Hullack Forest flooding away south and west for as far as they could see.

Farland moaned, as if he were about to be sick.

Amarune frowned at the cold, then calmly pulled her jerkin up to her chin to hold it there, so she could unwind the cord she’d wound around herself, under her breasts.

Gulkanun gave her a grin and took one end of it. Longclaws and Arclath assisted, her beloved gesturing to her to spin around. She obeyed, swiftly yielding into their hands a neat coil of black cord she’d long ago prepared for