“Oh?” Manshoon spat defiantly. “So who made
“Mystra. Yet I don’t right all wrongs. Even after a thousand years, I haven’t
“Forgive?” Manshoon managed a sneer. “As priests do?”
“As all of us do, or should. If ye can’t forgive a wrong, ye become its prisoner-or rather, shackled to thy own hatred, thy own thirst for revenge. I’ve grown weary of imprisonment, so I do a lot of forgiving.”
“So why not forgive me?”
“I should. Ye’re crowing-to-thyself crazed, after all, and less able to withstand it than I am-and too much of a deluded fool to see how a hidden one is manipulating thee.”
“
“Nay, I’m not going to tell thee. Let that be the little worm that gnaws at ye, as you perish. Let
“Revenge!” Manshoon spat, trying to see the potions he’d hidden among Sraunter’s useless concoctions and dyes and acids, on the shelves yonder, through eyes that wouldn’t stop streaming. “What would
“Aye,” El agreed gently. “And one of them was you.”
“Pah! I
“Ye think she didn’t know that? Just what d’ye think a goddess is, anyhail?”
“A larger shark, a larger wolf, among all the rest of us. You’re a fool if you think otherwise.”
“Can ye
“There are only wolves-and sheep. And when the sheep are gone, it’s a wolf-eat-wolf world out there.”
“Is it? Well then, we should be doing something to change that, shouldn’t we?”
“Change! Everything changes, Old Fool-but nothing truly changes. Just the names and faces of those on the thrones, until they’re hurled down by the
“Ye can change thyself, Manshoon. Ye can be better. We can
Manshoon bared his teeth in a wordless snarl of defiance, and raced across the room to the shelf.
He was half an instant away from the shelf when it vanished in a racing flood of silver fire, a flood he crashed into a moment later, rebounding off the sagging, softening remnant of what had been a solid cellar wall, and-
Staggering until he fell, his very limbs melting, caught in a ravaging he couldn’t escape, couldn’t fight, couldn’t withstand …
“I did not come here to taunt with ye and let ye escape, Manshoon. I came here to destroy thee.”
Manshoon heard that, but no longer had lips or tongue or mouth to reply. He was going … he was joining the silver roaring … he was torn away into it …
CHAPTER THIRTY
You have a visitor, lord,” the heavily armed Harper at the door murmured, as gently as any palace doorjack.
King’s Lord Lothan Durncaskyn looked up from his desk without even bothering to sigh. He was in a far better mood than usual, with things
The man who strode into the room was clad like a forester. Or rather, the rare sort of forester who liked to wear a long sword at his hip. His face seemed familiar, somehow …
He gave Durncaskyn a nod and a rather sour grin.
The king’s lord stared back at him, frowning. “
The man nodded again, and without waiting for an invitation he plucked up a chair, sat down on it, and put his boots up on Durncaskyn’s desk. “It is, Loth. And to answer you, a long and dusty ride brought me here; got anything to drink?”
“But … well, of course-here, the last of Braeven’s Best-but why aren’t you at High Horn? Keeping the realm safe against orcs and invading armies, and worse?”
Lord Sunter raised his eyebrows as he accepted a flagon. “Guard our borders? When we have all too many of our own nobles riding to war right in the heart of Cormyr-and the likes of
Durncaskyn shrugged. “I’ve heard the rumors, too, but …”
His voice trailed off as he caught sight of something on the wall and started to stare at it. His mouth dropped open.
Sunter turned his head to see what was so gripping and did the same thing. Before snarling out a curse, draining his flagon, and slamming it down on the desk with the words, “That’s it. I quit. It’s farming for me, from now on. Somewhere on sleepy back lanes, far from any of our borders. Got any sheltered sisters I can marry?”
Durncaskyn was still staring at the wall too hard to think of a reply.
That particular wall of his office sported the usual fine map of Cormyr. An official one, issued by the palace; both men had seen dozens of copies of it before. However, neither was used to seeing such a map silently burst into flames, all by itself.
Flames that were a vivid, dancing blue.
What had been Manshoon slumped, like logs crumbling in a fire, then melted and was gone. Hard-eyed, Elminster watched his old foe whirl away into silver flame that blossomed and grew.
He clawed at it with his own fire, raking as much as he could of it into himself, wresting Mystra’s power from one unworthy. One who would see other days beyond this one.
Even before an eerie wisp swirled out of that fire and raced up out of the cellar and away, El knew why destroying Manshoon was beyond him. The vampire who as a man with many bodies had ruled Westgate, and Zhentil Keep before that, and founded and led the cruel Zhentarim, had carried Mystra’s silver fire in himself for too long. It would take a god-perhaps two of them, acting together-to destroy Manshoon utterly and forever. Unless, like his Alassra had, Manshoon sacrificed himself willingly.
Hah. As if
El let the silver fire roar straight up, consuming the building above him, making the shop of Sraunter the alchemist a neat pit between the neighboring buildings, a gap in a row of dingy teeth. And then he brought it down again, taking the fire that was forever back inside him-his own, and Alassra’s, and what he’d torn out of Manshoon.
It was too much.
He’d known it would be. Yet he dared not let more leak out. Not when the likes of Manshoon were lurking, to take it and empower themselves and work worse mischief. So he drew it in, fought to hold it, and the
Up from the ravaged cellar he soared, a silver comet seeking the sky, up and over the great green sward of Jester’s Green, heading north.
“
He was diving, racing down out of the sky, startled riders on the road scrambling for the ditch. There were carts and wagons rushing up to meet him that
