Elminster Must Die

rise.

“Up, up, lad; I’ve servants enough to do that far too often for me as it is. I need your loyalty and your friendship, not your knees ruined on my behalf. Nobles who can be eyes and ears for me are rare and precious things in this kingdom, now as ever; we need to talk.”

“Majesty,” Arclath replied with a smile, rising, “it so happens that talking is one of my strengths.”

“I find myself strangely unsurprised,” the king told him dryly, taking up his chair and coming forward to the table.

Amarune knew The Willing Smile only by its reputation. A rundown, seedy, low-coin brothel on a formerly fashionable street in Suzail, where wrinkled old harridans and a few wide-eyed younglings desperate for quick coin entertained toothless old men desiring to deceive themselves that they were still bold lions of youth and vigor whose very names left Cormyr in awe.

She was surprised to find it a clean, quiet, and dimly lit grand house that seemed to stretch on forever, run by a matron more motherly than alluring, who obviously regarded Elminster as an old and trusted friend.

“Mother” Maraedra patted the limping graybeard on the arm when he greeted her, nodded after he murmured in her ear for a moment, and then led them through lushly carpeted halls adorned with many full-length portraits that were probably doors into the rooms of the women depicted in them, to a back room decorated like a successful but careful-with-coin family’s private parlor, where a table was set for four.

Humming to herself, she shuffled through a door and returned almost immediately to set before them bowls of cubed redruth goat cheese, biscuits, and an herbed paste of oil and crushed and roasted vegetables.

Then she slipped out again, holding up a finger as if in warning to them to say nothing until her return-and again, came back into the room swiftly, this time with tallglasses, which would have done any noble House proud, and a large decanter.

Then she bowed, smiled, and backed out of the room, waving in silent farewell, and in the same gesture, as she pulled the door closed on herself, bade them converse.

Elminster gave her a low bow, waved Amarune to a chair, and poured her wine. She peered at it critically, suddenly realizing she was ravenous and thirsty, and sipped. It was very good wine, perhaps the nicest she’d ever tasted.

Elminster spread paste on a biscuit with a small, almost circular paddle-a knife of sorts, but it could never be used to stab anyone-and handed it to her. When she took it, he thrust a cube of cheese her way.

“I’m neither a princess nor helpless,” she murmured, but gently. He seemed to mean well, and, well … many old folk had curious courtesies.

“Good,” he replied. “I’m counting on that. So-though it knows this not, yet-is this grand old world around us.”

Munching hard, Amarune settled for raising her eyebrows in a bewildered “Are you always this crazed?” look.

Elminster smiled. “Ye are by now fairly certain I’m a madwits. Ye have some doubts, though they diminish, that I am who I say I am and that we’re related, and ye want to know what I’m raving on about-without much wanting to have any part of it. Do I read ye right thus far?”

Amarune helped herself to more cheese and spread herself another biscuit. “Hard and steady into the harbor, so far,” she agreed, fixing him with her best “This had better impress me” look.

“Ye are young, agile, good-looking, and no fool. So ye have figured out that the career of a thief bids fair to be a short one, and mask dancing will win ye fair coin only so long as thy looks hold out. No noble lordling until young Delcastle has shown signs of sweeping ye off the Dragonriders’ stage and into his mansion with a title around thy throat, and ye face at least two dark foes and know not where to run. In short, thy young life is looking darker ahead, not shining and bright.”

“Still heading hard and true for the nearest wharf,” Amarune agreed grimly. “Right now, I can’t even pay for this cheese-let alone the wine-without leaving myself too short to please creditors who are quite likely to treat me far more harshly than Mother Maraedra.”

“I’m paying, lass. Considering what I’m going to be asking ye to do, filling thy boots with gold right up as high as thy throat won’t begin to be fee enough.”

“You want me to take part in one of your spells? As some sort of sacrifice? Does it involve bedding thirteen nobles at once?”

Elminster chuckled. “Nay to your last query, and ‘in a manner of speaking’ is a fair but also fairly useless answer to your first two questions. I want to train ye.”

“As some sort of wizard? Sorry, but-”

“As my successor.”

“Doing what, exactly?” Amarune eyed the old man across the table sidelong. She found him likeable but nothing near trustworthy. He probably was mad, and just how, it seemed, she was about to find out.

“I am … old. More than a thousand winters old. Yet I live still, because … I have a job to do. Ye might call it ‘Meddler On Behalf of Mystra.’ I wander the world meddling in things-the way kings rule, the way folk think, how they roast meals when they can get meat; all of that-to make the Realms better. Oh, and get no thanks for it, save many attempts to kill me.”

“So I’d expect, if you meddle with how kings rule. So Mystra has been dead for a century, and you’re giving up, is that it?”

“Almost,” he whispered.

Studying him, Amarune went on munching, astonished at how quickly the cheese and biscuits seemed to have vanished. The old man had eaten, so far as she could recall, just one of each. She frowned; were they tainted with something?

“You eat the last few,” she ordered.

Elminster smiled, shrugged, and started spreading himself a biscuit.

Watching him devour some cheese then the biscuit and wash them both down with wine, Amarune asked curiously, “Weren’t you the one who was supposed to have been Mystra’s lover, or some such?”

“Yes,” Elminster agreed simply.

“So who warms your bed these days?”

“A mad queen. Not often.”

Amarune shook her head then watched him refill her glass.

Well, this would make a good slumbertime tale, until she fell on her face and into the land of dreams …

“Tell me more,” she said, sipping. Happy dancing hobgoblins, but this wine was good!

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

TO FILL THY BRAIN WITH WEAPONS

So ye see, lass, that’s the dream I’m still living for. Imparting hope, making this little thing better and then that one, for all, not just the rulers and the rich … and doing it all in the name of Mystra.”

“To keep her memory alive.”

“Exactly. To keep her name and what she stood for firm and deep in the memories of folk, so there’s a chance-a ghost of a chance, mind, but better than none-that she’ll return.”

“So the deeds, the fireside and tavern tales … ghost stories, indeed.”

“Ah, now, forget not the faithful!”

“Oh, yes, the hidden cult of Mystra-worshipers I’d have to lead. Well, that would certainly make me feel special, if I went in for such things.”

Elminster gave her a sour look across the table. “Is that all ye’ve been hearing, in my blathering? ’Tis not about Mystra, nor thy power or benefits-’tis all about the dream of setting things right in the Realms, which I and Storm Silverhand and the Simbul and all the other Chosen devoted so much of our lives to, through the Harpers and