Elminster Enraged

“Hold!” one of the guards snapped. “Prisoners are not to be-”

“We’re not prisoners!” Harbrand roared-as Hawkspike grabbed both spears and fell to the floor, swinging himself forward and kicking at the guards’ ankles.

They fell atop him, cursing and struggling. Harbrand promptly clubbed the backs of both their necks with his fists, then tore one guard’s belt dagger from its sheath and battered their heads energetically with its pommel, smiting them both senseless.

Hawkspike struggled to get out from under the senseless guards and trampled the sagging Dragons in his haste to follow Harbrand. Harbrand had snatched the rings of keys from the belts of both guards and was feverishly trying every key that looked remotely likely to be right in the three locks that secured the door-head-high, ankle-low, and in the middle.

A few gasping moments later, the door banged open and Danger For Hire burst back out into the waiting wilderness and then sprinted for the welcome cover of the trees. They were a good long way into the leaf-littered gloom before Harbrand found breath enough to rather grimly suggest to his colleague that Hawkspike forthwith provide some explanations. “What just almost killed us? And what by the Dragon Unseen did you throw, anyhail? Since when did we own any Gondar bombs?”

Hawkspike went right on crashing and struggling through the forest, making no reply but violently and repeatedly shaking his head, in negation or denial.

Harbrand caught up to him and shoulder-slammed him, snarling, “Not deeper in! Do you want to get eaten by wolves-or worse? Back to the verges, where we can follow the road and not get lost!”

Hawkspike’s shakes became a nod or two. That lasted until he tripped on a leaf-covered root and fell headlong.

Harbrand hauled his dazed partner upright with a snarl of anger, and they both stood there panting for breath, Hawkspike’s face a mask of mud, twigs, and leaves.

When he had enough breath back to manage a deep sigh, the Doombringer plucked several ugly forest mushrooms off Hawkspike’s face, and demanded wearily, “Tell me, Hawk. Where’d you get the flashbang? And just when were you going to get around to telling me about it? How many other secrets are you keeping from me? Just what is all this about Sarl?”

Sarl Sulblade had been one of their partners in Danger For Hire, before his sudden, violent, and until now mystifying death. The drow somehow knew that Hawkspike had killed him. Harbrand needed no words from his partner to get that far, and Sulblade had been a right nasty bastard, but it would be nice to know …

Hawkspike was back to fervently shaking his head.

Harbrand sighed again. “Forget all that, Hawk. Forget what I just asked. Just tell me: what happened back there in the castle, just now?”

His much-scarred partner wiped away mud, saw a handy fallen tree, and thankfully sat down on its huge trunk. A snake, disturbed by the arrival of his behind, promptly slithered away. Hawkspike watched it go, then said slowly, “That was my fair-fortune charm. Bought it from a caravan master in Suzail, who said it was real magic, came from a temple of Tymora, and would bring luck. Just a little everbright-treated silver image of the goddess, smiling, that’s all. I’ve had it for years. Make the girls kiss it, when they find it … the few girls I get.”

“That caravan master tricked you into carrying a bomb?”

Hawkspike shrugged. “I know not, Har. It’s been riding with me for three years, now, winter and summer, day and night. I’ve dropped it, fallen on it … it’s baked in the sun, gotten wet, nigh-froze with my breeches on the cold stone floors of winter nights … just a good-luck charm.”

“Until?”

“Until just then, back in those rooms where the dark elf bitch was letting on she knew all about us. All of a sudden, I felt fingers-solid fingers, cold but solid, where no fingers should be able to reach. Fingers, Har! Fumbling with the thing, turning it around. Which is when I remember, Har-the only seams on the charm are around her little backside and chest. Which means they can be pressed in. And I get scared, real scared. So, to be rid of it, I flung it away-as far away as I could get it. You know the rest.”

Hawkspike was panting out of fear, sweat glistening on his unlovely face, his eyes large and haunted. “Those fingers …”

“Never mind them. You got rid of them, didn’t you?”

Hawkspike nodded. “Went with the thing. Don’t think the blast killed anyone, do you?”

Harbrand shook his head. “Too small, too distant. Flung us all down the rooms-good thing the walls weren’t closer, or we’d have been smashed like flung eggs. Stunned everyone good and proper, ’cept maybe the drow and Lord Constable Mightyroar.”

“And us,” his scarred partner grunted, heaving himself back up off the green, moldy tree trunk. “I’m thinking we were shielded from the worst of it by everyone else’s bodies.”

“Ah, but our luck continues to be simply glorious,” Harbrand replied bitterly, taking him by the shoulder to hasten him on through the verges of the Hullack, away from Irlingstar.

“A bright new morning,” Vangerdahast rasped in Glathra’s ear.

She winced. The mere thought of a man-headed, oversized spider riding on her shoulder gave her-no, enough, she was not going to think about it again. She was going to get over this, going to-

“Relax, lass. I’m not going to bite you,” what was left of the most infamous Royal Magician in all of the kingdom’s history that most living Cormyreans knew said rather gruffly, shifting on her shoulder. “Not on our first dalliance, anyhail.”

Glathra stiffened. “Lord Vangerdahast,” she said warningly, “I …”

“You what? You’ve realized your blusterings don’t frighten me, and you’re not sure of my powers, so you don’t know what to threaten to do? Is that it?”

“You tluining old bastard,” she whispered feelingly. “You-you-”

“Ah, the young,” the spiderlike thing on her shoulder said almost merrily, “such eloquence they command. Call me ‘Vangey,’ lass; it trips off the tongue swiftly, so you can get to the swearing faster.”

“You sound just like Elminster,” she muttered. “Will I start to sound like that in a century or two, I wonder?”

“You’re highly unlikely to live that long, lass, given your temper and inability to hold your tongue. You might learn to curb both those things, but I see no sign of that.”

Glathra sighed and retreated from battle into silence. It was bad enough she had to stand and watch Storm Silverhand ride out of the palace on one of the best horses in the stables-one of King Foril’s personal mounts, hrast it! — to travel the realm soothing angry nobles and contacting potential Harpers. It was worse that Ganrahast and Vainrence had both ordered her to serve as Lord Vangerdahast’s steed and viewing platform; she suspected they’d done it so that she was forced to accept his presence, and he could keep her from doing anything to thwart Storm or warn fellow war wizards of her impending arrival in their particular corner of the kingdom. She settled for telling Vangerdahast-Vangey? That made him sound like a toy, or a pet! — grimly, “We must get a look into Irlingstar-or at what’s left of it, if that blast was as powerful as I fear it was.”

They could trace Arclath magically, and had, but that merely confirmed he was in or near Irlingstar, yielding them nothing about his condition or circumstances at the castle. Moreover, there were no safe or “familiar” teleport destinations, to anyone currently in the palace, near Irlingstar. Given its proximity to the Hullack and the Thunder Peaks, and the generally shaky reliability of teleportations thereabouts since the Spellplague … portals might be faster and more reliable than a series of translocation jumps, or teleporting to Immerkeep and faring overland from there. The closest reliably functioning portal linking the palace with anywhere near Irlingstar had its near terminus in an always-guarded room in Vangerdahast’s tower, a short stroll east of where she stood. Its far end was inside Castle Crag, three hard days of riding on good, fast horses west of Immerford.

“Hmmph,” Glathra commented, as Vangerdahast raised one of his spider legs to wave to the departing Storm. She did not join in; his farewell could do for the both of them. “Given how wildly busy the Thunderstone-