Elminster Enraged

large and pleading. Doomed.

Vaeren Dragonskorn threw back his head and laughed in triumph. He was still laughing when her fingers closed around his elbows, broke them effortlessly, then slid down to his wrists and served them the same way.

His grip broken, he whimpered in agony-and she swung him up into the air and hurled him high and far.

Overboard, far beyond the Sword’s rail, to scream his way down and out of sight amid the clouds below.

As The Simbul walked the rest of the way to the covered companionway that led below, no one disputed her passage, or dared to come anywhere near her.

Elminster ran like a storm wind, racing along the passage with her hair streaming behind her and her eyes afire.

There! There were the two war wizards, Rune and Arclath beyond them, peering her way, calling her name.

And there, beyond them on the floor, sprawled in a dark and spreading pool of blood, was Lord Constable Farland, whose mind she’d so recently shared.

A mind now fading and … gone.

She had come too late. Once more.

“Noooooo!” El screamed, a raw shriek of anguish that soared into fresh rage.

Why could she never save the good ones?

Why?

There were, as it happened, only two blueflame items in the crowded hold. There were plenty of glows from other magics, flaring gold and copper and all the hues of the gems of Art as she reached out with the gentlest of seeking spells … but only the two sources of blueflame. A rod of office like a miniature Tymoran temple scepter, flared at both ends, and a crescentiform pectoral of beaten metal that looked like an oversized, too-low gorget.

“Mystra,” she murmured, “what powers have these? And which ghosts are bound within them?”

I know not, until you awaken them. I am … much less than I was.

“I had guessed as much,” The Simbul said quietly. “How much do you remember?”

Much and … not much. Memories mingled with memories, some my own, some from all of you Chosen and others loyal to me, those who survive and those who are … gone.

“Can you sense us now, as we move around the Realms, striving on your behalf? Steal into our minds, and see what we’re doing?”

Of course. You few. My daughters and my longest lover.

“Lover? Elminster?”

Elminster.

“Wasn’t that the Mystra before you?” The Simbul dared to ask.

Echoes in the Weave, my daughter, echoes in the Weave … we see and feel so much that happened before us, in the Weave; it becomes part of us, the memories of the Mystra who birthed you becoming part of me, so I become that Mystra …

“I … see.”

Then you see more keenly than I do, most of the time. I was mighty, once.

The Simbul could think of no reply. She was too busy, all of a sudden, shivering.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

FEAR THE UNSEEN

El,” Rune said anxiously, her eyes wide with fear, “we saw him slain! It was … a man, I think, half-seen, behind-”

“Let me,” El snapped, kissing her, flooding into her mind, seeing it all in an instant.

“… in …,” the dark elf finished her sentence in a murmur, already done. She let go of Amarune almost roughly, still afire with anger, and told them all, “We’ve a far better chance of fighting this slayer if we link our minds and stay linked, to share each other’s eyes.”

“We?” Gulkanun asked.

“All of us. Arclath, Amarune, you, Longclaws-and me. Linked, we’ll walk together, ready-armed, and approach prisoner after prisoner. We mind-touch each one and so eliminate them from suspicion, until we find the murderer.”

“Who must be in the castle,” Longclaws agreed. “That sort of sustained attack can’t be worked through the wards.”

Elminster and Gulkanun nodded in grim agreement. It was Gulkanun who reached out then, to take the dark elf’s hand.

The linkage began as a disorienting, alarming experience. It was one thing to be cradled in the dark, wise power of Elminster’s mind, and quite another to share it with four other curious, fearful, and uncertain awarenesses, colliding and getting memories tangled together …

El, Amarune asked in a trembling mind-voice, will we go mad?

Fear not. I’m been mad for centuries. It’s not that bad.

Centuries?

Mreldrake sipped more tea.

It was time to see and hear the results of the farscrying spell he’d left working while he’d made the latest adjustments to his slaying magic. Would Farland’s death leave them all despairing? Fleeing into the woods or swording each other or letting the prisoners go free? Well, of course, if he didn’t look, he wouldn’t know. He called up the spell.

“Elminster!” two voices promptly shrieked together.

Mreldrake spat out some curse or other, aghast … and discovered he’d spilled the dregs of his tea all over himself.

Were they using a spell? No, they couldn’t be; it was the clever young noble and his doxy, who almost certainly hadn’t any talent for the Art between them, beyond being able to unleash magical trinkets they bought. They were shouting, no more and no less. Which meant Elminster must be someone inside Irlingstar, someone nearby in the castle.

So Elminster must be in disguise, being as a certain imprisoned Mreldrake had already farscried every living person in Irlingstar, twice-including the two human skeletons walled up and forgotten in the foundations of the north tower-and not found Elminster.

It had to be one of the war wizards!

Rorskryn Mreldrake waited impatiently until the farscrying that the spell had preserved showed him the two war wizards-standing together, staring down in horror at what he’d done to Farland. Two of them, one with a hand that kept changing into different things-tentacles, polyps, strange nameless growths. A miscast shapechange spell … or, no, one being held always at the ready, for instant use against a foe!

The other Crown mage wasn’t powerful enough to hope to cast a shapechange magic that was more than illusory, or that would last longer than the time the casting took. So this “Longclaws” had to be Elminster.

Mreldrake stood up, carefully cast the spell that was now his crowning achievement, reached out into distant Irlingstar-and diced Imbrult Longclaws into so many ribbons of bleeding meat.