Elminster Must Die

struck him in the back of the head.

By the time that man fell, Delcastle’s attackers were turning to see who his ally was-the person the beset lordling was already grinning at as he went right on fencing for his life.

It was the mask dancer-who wore only sparkles, sweat, and copious spatters of blood-none of it her own. She’d tossed aside her mask, her hair swirling free, and there was a blood-drenched, dripping sword in one of her hands and a clean dagger clutched pommel-foremost in the other.

She faced them, panting-and promptly sliced the face of a bodyguard who’d foolishly lowered his sword to leer at her.

“Kill her!” Windstag roared drunkenly. “I can rut with her corpse!”

Heads turned as his men stared at him in disbelief, even in the midst of furiously clanging steel.

“W-well,” the nude dancer hissed at him, “now that we all know how certain noble lords prefer to spend their dallying time …”

“Get her! Get her! Get her!” an enraged Windstag bellowed loudly enough to make the roofbeams echo. “Kill them both! Kill them all!”

He sprang onto the stage, his bodyguards hastening to follow. Windstag and his men came up from behind the men fighting Arclath Delcastle and crashed into them, shoving them helplessly forward in sprawling chaos.

For just a moment, through a gap in all the onrushing bodies, Lord Delcastle caught sight of Delnor’s senseless, staring face.

Then it was gone behind the looming brawn of men trying to kill him, and he was fighting for his life again.

And somewhere behind him, so was she, this Amarune whose name he’d only just learned.

Just in time for them both to lose their lives together, it seemed, when such trifles would no longer matter. Ever.

In the darkest back corner of the royal crypt, three levels below any part of the palace where the sun ever reached, the lone old wizard stiffened, his eyes momentarily flashing blue fire.

“Something’s happened,” Elminster said grimly. “Something’s been awakened. Strong magic, old magic. Hmmph. Like me.”

All around where he was sitting loomed huge stone Obarskyr sarcophagi, where dead kings, queens, princes, and princesses of Cormyr crumbled slowly and silently into dust. The magic in this place lay like heavy armor, deadening his senses to all but the strongest disturbances but hiding him very effectively from any war wizard who might seek to lessen the task of all those diligent Purple Dragons by casting the right sort of seeking spell.

Someone among these latter-day wizards of war must know the right sort of seeking spell or how to look it up in an old grimoire. If they read anything at all, anymore …

It happened again, a surge in the magic within and around him that was like a great silent shout, sending him wincing and shuddering back against the nearest stone coffin.

A powerful unleashing … but what?

There had been a time when he could have walked within a day’s ride of Suzail and would have known in an instant precisely what had been done, when anything that powerful disturbed the Weave. Aye, there had been a time …

“I can’t save the Realms anymore,” he whispered into the gloom. “Not alone.”

Sudden tears made the glows around him swim and slide. “I can’t even protect Cormyr, stlarn it! The ghosts of the Nine could, aye, if properly commanded-but I need them to heal Alassra. So which will it be? The land? Or my lady?”

The silent darkness offered no answer, and Elminster was damned and blasted if he could decide on one just then.

He couldn’t sit and hide there any longer; he had to think. To do that, he needed room to walk and pretend he was still smoking his old pipe and … and to stop pretending about a lot of things.

The dead around him were dust, their days done, and so were his. He just hadn’t had the good sense to die yet and leave all his cares and causes behind, hand the endless fight on to someone else young and vigorous and having even the slightest hope of winning some new vict-

Aye, that was it, right there. Hope.

That was the rarest treasure for him, these days. Fading, forlorn hope. Hope that his Alassra could be herself again, hope that … that …

Oh, for the love of Mystra, he had to get out of there!

In a whirlwind of lurching haste he was out of the crypt and hurrying along dark and deserted passages, moving more from memory than by sight, heading for the nearest way out of the palace and into the night air.

He had to … had to … what was he going to do?

Wheezing, he climbed a stair, coming out onto another level that was thankfully dark and empty. Well, and so it should be: if he’d been commanding the wizards and soldiers of this place, he’d have had many more pressing matters to deal with than some old man who might or might not be a thief!

Mayhap they had nothing else at all to worry their heads over, but somehow he could scarce believe that. That they might choose not to see some looming crisis or other, before it lifted its fanged head in their faces and bit them, that he could believe, oh aye, and-

At the head of the next stair, he walked straight into a man rushing past.

A man in robes who staggered and cursed, turned, stared, and snarled, “You!”

Smiles of the gods, it was Wizard of War Rorskryn Mreldrake!

“My pleasure,” Elminster assured him firmly, lunging forward to where he could trip the younger man off balance.

He did so, leaving Mreldrake winded and staggering-then knocked him cold with an elbow up under his jaw before the war wizard could think of some suitably nasty spell to cast.

Elminster guided the senseless Mreldrake in a long, loose-limbed sag down the wall to the floor, relieved him of a certain formidable scepter, then hastily departed that passage, breathing hard. He was obviously out of practice at stealing out of palaces.

But then, he was out of practice at a lot of things.

“Amarune!” Arclath called, kicking, punching, and hacking at downed and furiously struggling men before they could clamber back to their feet. “To me! Back-to-back-we’ll make a stand!”

Those words were still coming out of his mouth when something long and shapely hurtled past his left shoulder. It was Amarune, feet first-slamming into Windstag’s chest and bearing him back off the stage, staring and agape, arms and legs splayed out comically.

He struck the floor below with a crash that shook the club from end to end and left Windstag stunned and winded, his limbs jouncing as limply as a cloth doll’s. Amarune sprang up from atop him and raced off down the room, leaving Arclath alone and surrounded on the stage.

He leaped after her, landing on the littered floor at a hard run, sprinting for the distant street doors with more than a dozen men after him. Bare and beautiful, the long-legged dancer vaulted the bar ahead and vanished from view behind it.

Why hadn’t she made for the doors? Was there a cellar way out? Or a strong-cellar below that she could barricade herself in? Was-

Amarune bobbed back up again, face set in a snarl of anger, and started hurling bottles hard and accurately at noble and bodyguard faces alike. Arclath ducked low, staggering but not slowing, but needn’t have bothered; none of them came spinning his way.

He saw a man go down behind a wild spray of wine, and another man’s head snap back as a hard-thrown bottle caromed off it … and then they all seemed to forget Arclath and charged at the bar, roaring for her blood.

The dancer kept right on throwing as they came, bright anger on her face. Five men down, six … then the foremost were at the bar and hacking at it wildly with their blades, trying to drive her back so they could clamber over it, and-

A door slammed open not far from the bar, and Tress came storming into the room with the mustered