Elminster Must Die

than right. Old foe, you should have been swept from the fair face of Faerun long ago.”

The owner of that cold voice drifted across the vast chamber. “I should have done it myself, before you served me the same way so often. You thought you’d slain me for good, no doubt-but, as in so many other things, you were wrong. And even clever old archmages who consort with goddesses pay the price for their errors in the end. As you shall pay mine. Soon.”

A pincer-ended tentacle drew open a door, and the owner of that dark and sleekly deadly appendage drifted through the revealed archway, its eyes turning on agile stalks to peer warily this way and that into the darkness as its other tentacles arched and coiled almost lazily around it.

There were no intruders to be seen. Good.

These ancient spellcasting chambers, deep in the oldest part of the royal palace, were warded more heavily than the mightiest fortress the tentacled one had ever seen or helped enspell. They were never used these days, and no scrying but his own should be able to worm a way through all their interwoven layers of shielding-but Bane take all, the young and incompetent fools who now strutted Cormyr as its wizards of war were apt to blunder into every nook and corner out of sheer doltish curiosity …

Well, not there. Not yet.

“Soon, you’ll pay,” the floating, many-tentacled thing repeated firmly, rising up so its tentacles could hang at ease rather than trailing along the floor. “Soon. And forever.”

A glow flared ahead. The cold-voiced owner of the tentacles snarled in sudden satisfaction then departed that body for his own, slumped waiting in a grand old chair.

It shuddered all over as he returned, then it lurched to its feet and set about weaving and hurling a spell with deft speed, ending the spell with but one cruelly whispered word, “Dance.”

“Dance,” the empty air whispered-and the ghost of the Princess Alusair arched her back in midair, writhing in agony. The shriek that burst out of her was high and shrill.

Right in front of her, eerie light had flared into being without warning, magic where there had never been magic before.

It lashed through her, clawing and slicing and searing ruthlessly before it faded. In its wake, she faded toward the floor, moaning softly, little more than a flickering, shapeless wisp …

“What-what’s wrong?” Storm snapped as Elminster suddenly stumbled against the passage wall then slid limply down it.

“Alusair,” he gasped, turning a sweat-glistening face up to her. “Something ill has befallen her. She screamed.”

“Is she-?”

“Dead? As in, released from undeath? Destroyed and gone? I … think not.”

He shook his head grimly as she helped him to his feet, and muttered, “The surge of magic was very strong.”

Storm tapped her head. “In here, it’s been getting much worse,” she told him bitterly. “I rarely feel surges at all, anymore. For me, the Art is almost gone.”

Elminster gave her a look. It was a long time before he whispered, “For me, ’tis a warm, seething treasure within me, a waiting, beckoning pit I hunger to plunge into, as easily and as often as I used to. Power I ache to wield, no matter how witless it leaves me.”

He drew in a deep breath then blurted, “I need ye. To hold my mind together whenever I slake myself in the Art. We’re a team, the two of us together an archwizard formidable enough to face down most foes.” He put his arm around her. “Together, lass. Together we’ll guard the Realms yet.”

Storm’s eyes shone as she smiled. “And if it refuses to be guarded, El? What then?”

“Then we tame it and teach it, until ’tis willing!”

“Well, now!” snapped a harsh young voice out of the darkness. “Impressive words indeed! A pity they’ll be your last!”

Elminster and Storm had no time to roll their eyes and groan at how many times they’d heard such gloatings before.

They were too busy screaming in pain as the passage around them exploded in roaring emerald flames that flung them away like helpless scraps of rag.

“There’s no way in the world they could have survived that,” a somewhat shaken male voice offered into the smoke-reeking darkness.

Up and down the passage there was a restless din of groanings and crackings; stones cooling and complaining about it. Here and there louder crashes could be heard, as blocks of stone fell from their places to shatter on the floor below.

“Lord Ganrahast is seldom mistaken in his judgments,” the harsh young voice observed, a little smugly.

“I’d be happier if I could clearly see the Sage of Shadowdale lying dead at my feet and know there was no way he could rise again to face me. Ever,” a third voice observed.

“Oh, don’t be such a coward, Mreldrake.”

“I don’t think I much care for those words of yours, Rendarth,” Mreldrake replied stiffly. “You didn’t face him and his mad Witch-Queen out in the wilds. I did.”

“And ran like a scuttling rabbit, no doubt, and so lived to tell us all the tale,” Rendarth snapped right back. “So if you’re so bold and battle-hardened as all that, mighty Rorskryn, suppose you advance down the passage and find us Elminster of Shadowdale-or what’s left of him. We’ll need his head to bring back to Ganrahast and Vainrence, mind. Or, failing that, some bit of him large enough to identify him with certainty.”

“I did in fact listen to the orders we were given, too,” Rorskryn Mreldrake replied coldly. “You go, boldest of mages.”

“As I recall,” Wizard of War Andram Rendarth said in his harsh voice, “I was placed in command of this little trio, and I am giving you, Mreldrake, a direct order. Get down that passage and start hunting. And mind you bring back lumps of Elminster, and not the other one.”

“It was a woman,” the third wizard added helpfully as Mreldrake conjured light with an angry snarl. “So if you see large breasts, you’re not looking at-”

Elminster had heard more than enough.

Storm-still breathing, thank all gods-was lying atop him, silent and heavy and bleeding copiously all over him, but he could readily reach and aim the wand he’d taken from Wizard of War Lorton Ironstone, after Alusair had obligingly won that earlier battle for him.

It was a wand that dealt short-term paralysis, the weapon Ironstone should have used back then, right away and without warning, instead of issuing his grand challenge. Yet lost chances were part of the fast-fading past, and it should ably serve a certain Sage of Shadowdale now.

He leveled the wand carefully and murmured the word that brought it to life. Ganrahast and Vainrence weren’t training these dolts well; only utter fools stand side-by-side on a battlefield, when both are mages and face a foe they know wields magic.

There was a flash, and all three wizards toppled like trees. Mreldrake, Elminster saw sourly, had been standing behind the other two, and his fall was gentler, a hand going out to shield his face. Not paralyzed, to be sure.

The other two were, and Elminster thrust the wand back into his belt to snatch out the enchanted dagger. Mreldrake or no Mreldrake, Storm must be healed before all else.

As the dagger expired in a flare of light under his murmurings and crumbled to dust in his hand, he heard the faint scuffling he’d expected from where the war wizards lay.

“Before ye quite crawl off, Rorskryn Mreldrake,” he said sharply, “suppose ye avoid my slaying ye very painfully, here and now, with a spell that will literally turn thine innards out of thy body, by answering a few questions. Truthfully, if ye know how to tell truth.”

Mreldrake drew in his breath so sharply that it was almost a faint shriek.

“The wards,” Elminster continued. “Ye called on the ancient wards of the palace, all around us, to strike at me just now, didn’t ye?”