Elminster Must Die

“What we excelled at. The cornerstone of the Realms that should be, a world of justice and order and refinement …”

Elminster sliced the air impatiently with the edge of his hand, as if to chop aside her words. “We start training my unwitting descendant Amarune. Right now.”

Storm shook her head slowly, wincing. “It will take some time,” she murmured.

“Time we have,” Elminster snapped, “if we start right now. Shall ye approach her first, or should Elminster the Terrible frighten and enrage her?”

Storm frowned. “I’ll try luring her a bit, first. Then you can frighten and enrage her, if it becomes needful. In the meantime, start hunting up more suitable magic for feeding Alassra. In a palace so full of decaying and forgotten magical gewgaws, even after all your foraging, there must yet be something.”

“Heh. Lass, this place holds entire war wizard armories-walled away and ward-guarded, mind ye-full of enchanted baubles. This current crew of Cormyr’s most puissant guardian mages knows not the worth or working of half of them. Yet seizing any magic of Cormyr is going to upset Alusair.”

Storm smiled tightly. “Everything upsets Alusair.”

“Aye, but lass, lass, forget this not: given what we’ve become, if she catches us at the wrong time and uses all her power, she can readily destroy us.”

Storm shrugged. “I doubt it. The gods are seldom that merciful.”

That feeble jest did not bring a chuckle from Elminster or even a smile.

After a moment, she added, “And didn’t something or someone in these halls just come close to destroying her?”

The Old Mage nodded grimly. They shared another long look, then a mutual sigh-and with one accord turned and began the long trudge back out of the haunted wing, toward one of the older secret ways out of the royal palace. One that was least likely to be guarded by current and puissant Purple Dragons or wizards of war.

Amarune Whitewave was somewhere in the city outside the palace and wasn’t likely to be invited inside anytime soon.

Not unless King Foril developed a sudden taste for skilled mask dancers.

Six passages later, El stopped in midstride, glared at a certain stone in the passage wall as if it personally offended him, then bent down to the floor, felt among the stones where wall and floor met, and drew a small block out from between its fellows with a little grunt of satisfaction.

Behind it proved to be a flat, rusty iron coffer that El persuaded to open with one firm bounce of his fist. Inside was a little pendant on a fine chain, such as a court lady might wear, a mask, and two gleaming steel vials, firmly stoppered and sealed. El passed all but the pendant to Storm. “Nightseeing mask and two healing vials; ye carry them.”

He put the pendant around his neck; it vanished entirely beneath his beard.

Storm pointed at where she knew it was. “So what does that do?”

“Read passing surface thoughts. Nothing like a mind-ream, mind, but it should help me tell how many guards are standing on the other side of a door, or the like, as we go on from here. Back when Vangerdahast was building up the wizards of war to be what he wanted them to be, they established scores of identical caches all over the palace to aid them as they rooted out disloyal courtiers.”

He straightened up and pointed at the stone that had first caught his eye. “See yon slanting chisel mark? That tells ye to look low, if ye’re in a rough-walled passage like this one.”

Storm nodded. “Harpers told me to look for an inverted T of chisel-scars.”

“Ah, those were the caches that held poison-quelling as well as healing. They were for fighting nobles,” El informed her gruffly. “Not so many of them survive, and they were fewer to begin with. I remember-”

He stiffened then and fell silent, raising a hand sharply to command silence. Storm gave it.

A moment later, from beyond the wall on the other side of the passage-a wall that must be very thin-they heard a door open and a sneering voice speak in a loud and sudden pounce of triumph.

“And how brightly doth the spark of Tarandar shine across all the watching Realms this fair evening?”

El knew that voice. He put a finger on the pendant and felt the dark, hot flood of malice in the thoughts from the other side of the wall. So the sneering and sarcastic Master of Revels really was every bit as pompous and nasty as the wagging tongues of palace servants made him out to be.

Khaladan Mallowfaer, it was said, never did a lick of work and never stopped spying on his lessers, needling them, and decrying their work, either.

Just then, all gild braid and crisply uniformed magnificence, he had stepped out of nowhere into the path of …

El frowned and fought hard to steer the pendant away from Mallowfaer’s malice toward the other nearby mind …

… a weary Halance Tarandar, just as the senior chamberjack had started the long walk from his little cubbyhole of an office toward home and bed.

All these preparations for the council-plans, revisions, and new plans to sweep away the thrice-approved, thrice-modified revisions …

Halance was anxious to get some sleep before he had to present himself at the court-too soon, by the racing moon, too soon! — all over again for the next day’s work. However, the man who stood sneeringly under his nose, wearing his usual unpleasantly mocking smile, was eleven rungs above any senior chamberjack in the exacting ladder of palace rank, so Tarandar managed a smile.

“Tired, saer.”

“What?” Mallowfaer was playfully jovial. “How so? With all the-ahem-powers at your disposal?”

“Had to use those powers in my dealings with a certain noble lord, just now, to keep the arrangements right for the big day, and Cormyr safe, saer.”

“Oh? Which certain noble lord?”

“Not at liberty to say, saer. Sorry. Standing orders of Lord Ganrahast, saer; I’m sure you understand.”

The Master of Revels flushed a deep crimson that Elminster could feel through the pendant.

The whole palace knew Mallowfaer feared the Mage Royal and all war wizards, and deeply resented them and anyone else who had the authority to keep secrets from him, or to order others to do so. Every courtier who’d worked more than a few days at court knew the Master of Revels would never dare speak to Ganrahast. So Halance could be certain his words would never be checked for falsehood.

And Mallowfaer knew the darkly handsome young courtier standing so deferentially before him, eyes carefully downcast, understood full well the depths of his cowardice.

So he stepped aside with a wordless snarl and stalked away, whirling around three paces later to see if he could catch young Tarandar smirking.

The unseen Elminster rolled his eyes.

Rather than smirking, Mallowfaer had almost caught Halance yawning.

Gods, the senior chamberjack was thinking, but Mallowfaer is predictable …

It was a measure of Halance’s weariness that his feet had taken him down a side stair before he was quite finished with that thought. He passed the door guard at the foot of the stair with a trading of silent nods and went out into the night.

Elminster stayed with the chamberjack’s mind, hoping to learn something of the council preparations.

Halance Tarandar was stumbling-tired, but smiling.

Arclath Argustagus Delcastle was an exhausting friend.

His thoughts rushed through some of the airy nonsense Arclath had declaimed to the Realms around … then, for some odd reason, Tarandar found himself in another memory. He was staring into the dark eyes of that mask dancer at the club, posed as still as a statue in front of their table. Her arms had been flung wide to display all he was supposed to stare at … yet it was her eyes he remembered.

Because they’d been watching him intently.