Elminster Enraged

“As one snarling bull to another?”

“Indeed. I will wholeheartedly extend to this good lady the dubious shelter of Immerkeep if you, Lord of Waterdeep, will go to Suzail for me, without delay. To fetch the help I so desperately need.”

A decanter of Durncaskyn’s best wine thunked down on the desk between them. “Explain,” Mirt suggested, filling glasses.

The king’s lord obliged.

Wherefore, a short time later, after kissing Rensharra thoroughly and accepting a second decanter for road thirst, Mirt of Waterdeep strode right back out of Immerkeep, patted the neck of one of the fresh horses that had been hitched to his stolen coach, and began a wild race back to Suzail.

Decisive and capable men did those sorts of things.

Clouds were everywhere, but they were the white, wispy, spun-silk sort, betokening no rain or lightning. The Sword of the Clouds was gliding along under half-sail.

No grand skyship of the Five Companies, she, but an ancient Halruaan treasure only recently salvaged from dust-shrouded, motionlessly floating neglect in a ruin by the adventurers who crewed her. And kept busy shuttling envoys, vital messages, and precious treaties to and fro above southerly realms-when they weren’t mooring briefly to various high towers and turrets to conduct daring night robberies and kidnappings, that is.

Yet Vaeren Dragonskorn had never called himself a pirate. “Pirate” was such an uncouth word. “Adventurer of the skies,” now that was an attractive phrase. Aye, adventurers of the skies are we, aboard the Sword …

A skyship much heavier than it had been when this particular voyage had begun, thanks to the treasures of the rival wizards Algaubrel and Sarlarthont, crowded into the shallow hold. Strongchests upon strongchests full of coins and gems and metal-bound grimoires, statuettes and many curious metal items that gave off weird magical glows, and things that were better undisturbed until off-loaded in a mountaintop hidehold. Thinking of which …

Dragonskorn turned and nodded to the helmsman, who could see the needle-sharp tops of the Rauntrils ahead just as well as he could. Such peaks were perils as well as landmarks, and-

There was a sudden commotion behind him. The helmsman gaped. Dragonskorn spun around-and started gaping too.

The woman standing on the deck amid his startled crew was tall and queenly, despite being barefoot and either lightly or entirely unclad. He couldn’t be sure which, through all her hair. It was silver, by the Wildwanderer, and almost as long as she was-and it was curling around her like a colony of angry snakes or hungry maggots or-or-

“Who is your captain?”

Her question brought no helpful replies, but that was hardly surprising. The crew happened to be all male and the Sword’s recent schedule had kept them long from the company of women, so their swords were out and the air rang with their responses, the politest of which was, “Who by the waiting, wanton charms of Sharess are you?”

“I am best known as The Simbul. Which one of you captains this ship?”

Before she could receive any useful reply, she caught sight of Dragonskorn, and said, “Ah! It would you!”

She strode toward him. Valkur and Baervan, she was bare skinned!

“Saer,” she said politely, “I have no quarrel with you or your crew, but I must have the blueflame in your hold.”

“Blueflame?”

“Some of the enchanted things you carry glow with an intense blue flame that looks like fire but is not hot, and ignites nothing. I require it of you.”

“You do.” Dragonskorn looked her up and down. “And you expect me to just yield them up?”

The Simbul sighed. “No,” she told him, her face grave, “I expect you to resist me. I’d rather you continued to live, instead, but … I know too much of humans, down the centuries, to expect your polite assistance. Yet I’d be grateful-delighted, even-if you’d surprise me.”

Dragonskorn smiled-and then sneered. “Oh, I’ll surprise you, all right. Take her, men! Yet remember: as your captain, I get her first!”

As the crew of the Sword roared in glee and converged on the lone woman in a rush, The Simbul regarded Dragonskorn sadly and shook her head.

Then she lifted one empty hand and gave them fire.

“Magic! She has magic!” one crewman shouted warningly as a ring of flames blazed up out of nowhere, and the closest running men to the silver-haired woman all crashed to the deck like discarded dolls. Cooked and sizzling discarded dolls.

“Well of course she has magic,” someone else snarled. “She appeared on our deck out of farruking thin air, didn’t she?” That same someone else hurled a hand axe, hard and accurately, right at the woman’s head.

The Simbul watched it come, her face calm, and made no move to duck or leap aside. By the time it flashed up close to her, the air was full of hurtling knives and cutlasses, converging on her like the men who’d hurled them. She stood motionless, and let them all rush right through her, the axe first, to bite into or clang off whoever was directly beyond her. Cries and curses rent the air.

Then there rose another roar, this one of fury-and the surviving burly crew of the Sword charged at the woman from all sides, their arms out to grapple and throttle.

In a swirl of silver hair that hooked ankles, slapped blindingly across faces, and curled tightly around necks, The Simbul moved at last, ducking and rushing and diving like a Calishite dancer.

Metal weapons flashed through her as if she were but an illusion, though her hair and feet and fists were solid enough, as she tugged one man off-balance to sprawl onto the upthrusting sword of another, then leaned unconcernedly forward into the vicious slash of a third man to jab at his eyes with two rigid fingers. Screams and grunts started to drown out the curses.

Yet the sky sailors were neither cowards nor weaklings. When at last they buried her under their combined brawn, punching and kicking, she soared up off the deck in a struggling ball of arms and legs and entwining silver hair-and let out another flash of magic that left everyone stunned and senseless, to fall like so much limp dead meat and crash onto the deck. Or rather, to fall onto the heads of their fellows, as unseen magic deflected each falling man subtly this way or that, to strike a man standing below.

A breath or two later, the deck was strewn with groaning or silent sprawled men, with barely a handful still on their feet. The Simbul descended to the littered deckboards and resumed her stroll toward Dragonskorn. “I only want the blueflame in your hold,” she reminded him calmly. “Not to take lives or harm your crew.”

Shaken, Dragonskorn drew the long, curving saber at his belt. He knew it was magical, having torn it from the dying hand of a wizard’s bodyguard who’d fired fatal lightnings from its tip at some of his crew, and having used it since to drink in bolts of lightnings in the storms the Sword sailed through. Aiming it at her, he fed her lightning.

It snarled into her, crackling through her hair and along her arms and legs, and he saw pain on her face. Snarling, he sent more lightning into her.

The Simbul kept coming at him, walking more slowly.

“Die, hrast you!” he shouted. “Die!”

Her teeth were clenched in a silent snarl, agony creasing her beauty, but still she came, trudging right into the flashing, snapping maw of what his blade could lash out.

And then, with a snap and a spitting of sparks, his lightnings died. Leaving her an arm’s length away, smiling.

“Thank you for that,” she murmured. “I feel much stronger now.”

“Do you, witch?” he shouted, infuriated, and he flung his sword down, to clang on the deck at their feet. “Do you?”

He sprang at her, clapping both hands around her throat. And squeezing, tightening his two-handed grip with all the straining strength he could muster, until his face was red and his arms quivered … and she sagged, her eyes