Elminster Enraged

man or a “he” … no, this was an it.

She hated it as much as ever.

“I know how to do all that’s necessary to safeguard Cormyr,” she snapped, “and I’m doing so right now. Quite capably, despite whatever you may think. Kindly stop evading my question. I ask you again, thing: do you admit you are no longer the Royal Magician of the realm?”

“I will always be Royal Magician, so long as I am Vangerdahast,” came the swift reply. “Yet I grant that Ganrahast is also Royal Magician of Cormyr. You seem unable to accept that state of affairs. Tell me, are all wizards of war so inflexible these days?”

“And if we are?” Glathra spat.

“Then I must needs test every last one of you, dismiss most of you, and begin training and rebuilding until Crown mages are once more fit to serve the realm. I’ve done it before.”

“Oh? And you think we’ll just heed and obey, I suppose? Accept your judgment, you who are a monster and not a man, who could be any devil or undead horror that has plundered the memories of Vangerdahast? You who demonstrate such a flexible grasp of Cormyr’s laws and rules and chains of command? I think not.”

Snatching two wands from her belt, Glathra shook them in front of the thing on the shelf. “These are power! These can blast you back to whatever Hell you came from, if I so choose! These are very like the scores-hundreds-more, wielded by dedicated wizards of war all across this realm! Dodge mine, and you’ll be blasted down by wands aimed by the next loyal Crown mage! These make me every bit as useful to the Dragon Throne as some scuttling black thing from years gone by, who-”

“Made all of those wands, and can master them,” Vangerdahast said softly-and sprang off the shelf, right at her face.

With a shriek of rage and terror Glathra triggered both wands, frantically trying to blast the monster before it touched her. Staggering back, she tripped and fell over backward, aghast.

The wands hadn’t awakened. She was clutching two sticks of whittled wood that bore no magic at all.

Someone touched her bosom, fingers on her bared flesh. The spider-thing was walking along and up her body on its fingertips …

The black, bearded face loomed over her, staring at her nose to nose, eyes afire.

“Lady,” it said sternly, “I do not require you to like me, or be my friend-though it would be easier. I do require you to serve Cormyr, alongside me-or get out of the way. Don’t make me have to hurl you aside. Forever.”

The fingertips moved past her collarbone, drawing near her throat. Their noses were almost touching.

Vangerdahast gave her a wide, warm smile. “I can be charming, you know.”

Glathra fainted.

Mreldrake looked around at bare, yellowing walls that were by now all too boringly familiar, and couldn’t help but sigh. This was a prison, all right, a cell as secure as any deep dungeon lockhole-and he’d walked right into it. Willingly.

Yes, he himself had kicked aside the last shreds of any doubt as to what sort of fool he was. Yet it was the first trap in which he’d ever been excited to be caught.

Yes, excited. His despair had faded, and most of his bitterness at the narrowing prison his life had become was gone, too.

Swept away in the mounting thrill of the magic he was working. For once, ideas for refining and manipulating the Art flooded into his mind, his thoughts often outracing his scribbling pen. Experiment after experiment was working, or at least shaping the unfolding enchantments well enough to reveal the way onward.

For the first time in his life, he was truly excited at his own magical prowess.

In this litter of notes and runes and scribbled incantations, with these powders and jars and braziers, he was creating magic-real magic, far beyond the silly make-yon-chamber pot-glow cantrips of his youth.

Magic that could change kingdoms, change everything. Magic that could make its wielder the greatest mass murderer ever …

The glaragh was in a hurry. Elminster raced along, his ashes swirling and tumbling in their own wind of haste, just to keep it in sight. Ahead, the passage was rising, and becoming well lit by frequent patches of overhead and high-wall fungi that the great worm ignored in its relentless race onward.

What was the monstrous worm seeking? Or had it been there before, and had a destination?

El tried to shake his head ruefully, though he had no head to shake. Well over a thousand summers, and I still know so little about Faerun. All my time I’ve spent fighting, worrying, or manipulating so I need not fight and so a few more folk may live rather than die … and failing in my strivings, too often failing …

The passage hooked around a corner, and he heard sudden yells. Liquid, fluting voices-drow.

By the time El got to where he could see them, they were all dead, crushed and bloody smears on the rocks, spears and handbows splintered and strewn about.

The glaragh had burst right through a guard post and out into a great cavern beyond. It was headed straight for a dark prow of rock that jutted out into open space like the bow of some gigantic entombed ship of the gods-a wall of stone pierced by many balconies and ramparts, eerie glows of worm lamps and glow fungi showing through hundreds of windows.

A drow citadel, its arraugra-the swifter and more elegant dark elf equivalent of what most humans called ballistae-cracking forth a rain of racing lances at the oncoming glaragh.

El dodged one hissing lance instinctively, though a line of ashes really didn’t need to avoid anything, and peered at the rushing worm to see its reaction.

Lance after lance thudded home-the thing’s hide wasn’t all that tough, after all-but the glaragh didn’t even seem to notice.

The barrage ended as the drow defenders ran out of loaded and ready arraugra. El could see sleek dark bodies dashing around on balconies trying to reload, but the glaragh wasn’t waiting. It plunged straight into the midst of a hastily assembling wall of warriors in front of the citadel’s nearest gate, and kept right on going.

It swept inside, where it couldn’t help but get stuck in the narrow passages and tiny rooms, smooth though their walls undoubtedly were. Dark elf architecture might favor the sweeping curve and the smooth surface, but tight quarters were tight-

The glaragh thrust itself into a very narrow passage, thinning down like a ribbon, then suddenly surged. The rock around it groaned and shattered in countless places, falling away in a thunder of rubble from which the glaragh freed itself with two great sweeps of its tail, and surged on.

There was a crack followed by a rumbling fall, and then the same tumult repeated itself. Mined at its heart, the great citadel was falling in.

Much of the stronghold’s center-the prow itself-had been hollowed out by the glaragh in less time than it would take Elminster to get out a wand, and the glaragh was stabbing with its head into the open sides of shattered rooms, biting and sucking. Drow fought vainly against the pursuing tentacles thrusting out of the great worm’s sides-and were gone.

Whereupon the glaragh fell silent and still.

Then, the moment the echoes of its destruction had finally died and stillness had fallen, the creature suddenly rose again in one great heave. That mighty convulsion preceded a mental onslaught that smote Elminster like a tidal wave, a thunderous silent darkness that broke over his thoughts and almost swept him away, dragging him far closer to the glaragh than he’d ever intended to get.

As it happened, he’d been watching some drow mages hurriedly claw out enchanted scepters to deal with the invader, so he saw the effects of the glaragh’s mind attack all too clearly. One moment the dark elves were all frenzied agility, scrambling to undo latches and pluck out wrapped and stored scepters-and the next, they crumpled like so many discarded puppets, emptied of will and wits, toppling like mindless meat to the floor. One even heedlessly impaled himself on his own scepter.