Suddenly someone else appeared, standing in the street in front of the Oldcoats front arch, on cobbles that had been empty a moment earlier.
The few Zhentilar who’d been standing uncertainly around a wrecked coach stepped hastily back, straightening to attention with terror on their faces. Ignoring them, the tall, darkly handsome wizard impatiently waved a hand and murmured something-banishing the cloud of dust in an instant.
Vangerdahast whirled around, black robes swirling, and the staff he raised glowed with threatening magical fire. “Begone!” he thundered. “This is Cormyr. You shall not prevail here! Get you hence, Lord of the Zhentarim!”
Manshoon merely sneered at him, causing some of the Zhentilar to chuckle-but their lord went abruptly expressionless when a long arm sent Vangerdahast staggering aside, and the owner of that arm stepped forward.
Few in Halfhap had ever seen Khelben ‘Blackstaff’ Arunsun, but there was little doubt as to who they were staring at, when they beheld a wizard as tall as a black pillar, with what could only be the Blackstaff floating upright in the air above his head, pulsing menacingly.
Khelben glanced at Vangerdahast. “Put that toy away,” he said quietly, lifting a finger to indicate the gem- headed staff.
Without waiting for a reply, he turned to Manshoon. “Well? We both know you’re a fool, but here and now you can answer a question you and I have both been pondering for some time: Just how much of a fool are you?”
Manshoon raised his right hand-and a ghostly arc of beholders appeared above his own shoulders. The watchers all gasped, though they could clearly see sky through the gently writhing tentacles and bodies of the floating eye tyrants.
“I guess,” the Master of the Black Brotherhood said silkily, “we’re just going to have to see.”
There came a sudden thunderclap of magic that shook the sky, staggered Manshoon and Khelben-and made the folk of Halfhap gasp anew. The Blackstaff, the ghostly beholders, and all the staring Zhent warriors were simply… gone.
“So it’s come to this? ” a disgusted voice asked, from just behind Manshoon. “Spell-slinging in the streets?”
The Lord of the Zhentarim hastily sprang away from that voice and spun to face it-in time to see Elminster shaking his head, and wearing the face of an elder priest saddened at discovering novices indulging in sinful foolery.
“Spell-slinging in the streets,” Elminster added sadly, “is my style, gentlesirs. Ye are all supposed to be ‘grander,’ more puissant, more mindful of the implications of what ye do, more… mature.”
“Pah! Goddess-lover!” Manshoon hissed, fear and hatred making his words spittle.
Elminster shrugged and hissed back in perfect mimicry, “Lover of none but self!”
Khelben had been gaping up at the empty air where the Blackstaff had been. He now lowered his gaze to ask Elminster in a voice more dumbfounded than angry, “How did you do that?”
Elminster acquired an impish grin. “ ’Tis called magic.”
Khelben glared at him. “Where is it? I can’t feel the link! Where’s my staff? ”
“Waiting for ye at home,” Elminster replied mildly. “Ye should join it.”
“Leave, all of you!” Vangerdahast cried, stepping forward and brandishing his staff. “ I hold sway in Cormyr, and this soil is under the protection of the Purple Dragon! Leave! Depart! This-this is not done!”
Khelben, Manshoon, and Elminster all regarded him with silent scorn, and Vangerdahast swallowed, shrank a step or two back, and cowered.
“We’ll speak of this later,” Khelben said coldly to Elminster-and vanished.
As if that had been a cue, Manshoon strode forward. “One Chosen of Mystra flees the field,” he sneered. “Does the other self-styled servant of the Goddess-such empty titles may scare children, but they are naught but words, old man, and you know it as well as I do-care to match spells with me?”
Elminster regarded the fingernails of his left hand, and said mildly, “Ye have thirty-nine spare selves in stasis, but two are damaged. If ye inhabit them, ye’ll go insane, trapped in a body that obeys ye not, and leaves mastery of any magic beyond ye.” He looked up. “Two chances, out of thirty-nine. Ah, but which two?”
Idly stroking his beard, he started to stroll closer to Manshoon. “There’s no way for ye to tell, without stepping into the abyss that awaits ye.”
He was almost within Manshoon’s reach now, and still stepping closer. “Or shall I change those odds? Damage another-or another dozen? Or all of them?”
“You bluff!” the Zhentarim snarled.
“No. I promise.” Elminster unconcernedly turned his back on the tall Master of the Black Brotherhood, and started to stroll away again. “Just as my title is not a fiction, Manshoon, neither is what I say of thy clones. It alarms ye that I even know their number. Shall I now recite exactly where each is hidden-whilst my Art carries my words to the ears of every last Zhentarim and Banite of thy Brotherhood, from the High Imperceptor to the novice Brother Thanael, who trembled through his blood-oath to join ye but two nights ago? Shall I tell Fzoul the wordings of thy pacts with the eye tyrants — all of them, even that which involved thy mating with-”
“ Enough! Speak no more! Be still!”
“Easily enough done, if ye quit this place and work no magic nor scheme directly against Cormyr, its Royal Magician, its rulers, or its territory. Seek to subvert or bring about the death of an Obarskyr, Manshoon-or do anything more in Halfhap-and I will deal with ye. Permanently.”
He turned to face the Zhentarim once more, smiling, and added softly, “Thy schemes entertain all Chosen, but we can find others to afford us such entertainment. Mystra can show us everything. So think on this calmly, and as the merchants on thy own docks say: ‘consider well, and cut thy losses.’ ”
Manshoon snarled wordless fury, spat in Elminster’s direction, and vanished.
Leaving Vangerdahast and Elminster looking at each other.
“What…” The white-faced Royal Magician of Cormyr swallowed hard, ere he managed to whisper, “What dare I say to you?”
Elminster lifted one bristling eyebrow. “Ye could try the two most appropriate words in all Faerun, lad: Thank ye.”
“Thank ye-you,” Vangerdahast whispered, so softly that his voice was almost soundless.
Elminster clapped him on the shoulder like a kindly old uncle. “Now, was that so hard? Ye’d best leave this place and get back to work: ye have a worm in thy bosom to find and slay. Ah, before ’tis too late, as the bards say.”
“A-a worm? You know who the traitor is? ”
“ ‘Traitors are,’ ” Elminster corrected kindly-and vanished.
Leaving Vangerdahast to stare at where the Old Mage of Mystra had been standing and let loose a string of heartfelt oaths that made the Purple Dragons now hastening up to him grin in admiration-and the wealthiest Halfhap merchant’s wife hurrying up behind them drop her jaw in scandalized outrage.
She was just drawing breath for her first blistering words when the Royal Magician’s gaze fell upon her.
“Later,” he snapped, before she could say a word. Then he, too, was suddenly gone.
A raging Manshoon appeared at the center of the magnificent dark star carpet in his bedchamber, strode across the room like a storm wind, and slammed his fists into the splendid wood panelling beside the door as if trying to batter it right through the stone wall behind it, out into the passage beyond.
“Entertainment?” he roared. “ I’ll show him entertainment!”
Whirling around, he stalked back across the room to his spellbooks, viciously backhanding The Shadowsil out of the way as she came hurrying through a side-door, worry on her face and a wand ready in her hand.
Snarling, Manshoon jerked down one heavy tome, and then another. They thundered down onto his polished desk, he flung them open-and stepped back in horror as a body appeared out of nowhere, sprawled faceup atop them.
Though it had the semblance of an intact corpse, The Shadowsil’s gasp told Manshoon he wasn’t imagining what he’d just noticed. The dead man’s head, torso, arms, and legs were all neatly arranged, in their proper places, but were in fact severed, separate pieces, all slowly oozing dark gore all over his most precious grimoires. He’d already recognized the face. Himself.
As Manshoon stared down at his clone, its lips moved and Elminster’s voice issued from them, saying, “Aye.
