Elminster Must Die

leave you to your pleasure.”

He glanced at the playpretty, who was standing to one side listening to them rather fearfully.

“A few carefully chosen words, on my part,” Arclath hinted.

“Well?” Marlin asked curtly.

“Why? Why all the secret meetings, the hunts for hand axes, the men in flames?”

“I … I seek a better Cormyr. I deserve a better Cormyr.”

Arclath nodded. “As do I. Unfortunately for friendly accord between us now, that does not mean we agree on what ‘better’ is. You desire a Cormyr that is better for you. Yet you lack the vision-and honesty-to even admit this.”

Marlin Stormserpent flourished his sword, snarling an insult.

Arclath sighed. “Ah, the besetting fault of the nobility-having temper tantrums whenever someone disagrees with them. Such shining leadership for the realm.”

“And you think House Delcastle is better than House Stormserpent, I suppose?” Marlin sneered.

“I think nothing of the sort. I know I’m a wastrel, and freely admit it. Would such candor cost you so much? Oh, wait, I was forgetting. Candor is your greatest foe, given the laws of the realm and the presence of war wizards in it.”

“How did you learn so much?” Marlin hissed.

Arclath regarded his fingertips idly and told them, “In conspiracies, someone always talks.”

“Do you mind,” Marlin asked coldly, “leaving my home, so I can enjoy my hired company?”

“Not at all,” Arclath replied with a smile. “I have the answers I came for. You need not fear the dawn on my account.”

“Good,” Marlin snapped, ringing the bell for Whelandrin.

Arclath did not wait to be escorted. When the trusty appeared, Marlin snarled, “Make very sure the man you brought in is gone from our house and grounds, and the gates locked against him and all others. Be swift.”

Whelandrin bowed and hastened away, and Marlin shot a look at the chalice and blade, wondering if he should send his slayers after Arclath.

No. Not with the lass there; no one must see him calling them forth.

With a shrug he turned to her charms, pouring his anger into being brutal to her. “Strip!” he ordered harshly.

She promptly doffed cloak and gown and started on her boots, but he grabbed her elbow in an iron-hard grip and snapped, “Leave them on, and get you to yon bed!”

She gasped in pain but managed to murmur, “My lord, be gentler!”

By way of reply he backhanded her across her chest with all his strength and snarled, “Get on that bed! Think of twenty golden lions, and keep your mouth shut.”

“Yes, Lord,” she whimpered, hurrying to obey.

“A moment, lad,” an unfamiliar man’s voice said sharply from the far end of the room.

Marlin spun around. “Who-”

“Call back thy slayers,” his gaunt old visitor snapped. “Half the Dragons and war wizards in Suzail are fighting them right now-and being led here as they do.”

By way of reply, Marlin Stormserpent sneered and strode to snatch up the Flying Blade from a sidetable. “Get out! Whoever you are, get-”

“Elminster’s the name,” the old man told him cheerfully as he tossed a handful of metal vials under the noble’s boots.

Marlin slipped, smooth metal rolling under his feet. He made a wild grab for his sword, got it-and went down helplessly, dragging the table down atop himself.

A moment later, the Wyverntongue Chalice came down on his head, and Cormyr went away very suddenly.

“Satisfyingly solid,” Elminster remarked approvingly to the woman on the bed. “Ye might want to leave now, before-”

“It’stoo late?” a coldly malicious voice said in his ear out of a sudden roiling glow, just before it claimed him in a savage roar of unleashed magic.

“I’ve business inside, look ye,” the old man in battered leathers with the sword in his hand said truculently. “Stand aside.”

The Purple Dragons stopped smiling tolerantly and lowered their spears to point at his chest.

“Saer wizard?” one of them called to alert the duty wizard of war behind them.

The response was a grunt and several swift thuds, as if something heavy had fallen. One Dragon started to turn.

Only to grunt in his turn and topple forward. His fellow soldier had just time to stare at him, before joining him.

“Mirt,” Storm Silverhand said delightedly from behind the men she’d felled. “Come in, and be welcome! It’s been years!”

Elminster opened his eyes, feeling weak and scorched.

He was in the royal palace, in a small stone room he’d seen a time or two before. A chamber with stone benches built along two walls, closed doors in the other two, and a table in the center of the room.

Storm Silverhand was lying on it, faceup, dead or senseless.

Elminster staggered to her to see which.

Her eyes opened, her gaze seeming different from Storm’s, somehow, as he bent over to murmur, “Lass?”

Needlelike pincers erupted out of her to impale him.

Spewing blood, eyes wide in disbelief and pain, Elminster staggered back-and up through the body of the woman that wasn’t Storm, bursting it apart like so much wet custard and rending the table and floor from beneath, came a gigantic beholder.

Large and dark it loomed, surrounded not just by its long, writhing forest of eyestalks, but by tentacles that ended in grasping pincers.

“No more meddling, Elminster,” it purred in a wet, gloating voice. “No more guiding your precious Forest Kingdom this way and that, sneering as you move men about like pieces on a chessboard. All your schemes and strivings end here and now.”

Two pincers snared Elminster’s hands-and snipped them off at the wrists.

Blood spurted, and the old man reeled.

“Yes, the moment of my revenge has come at last, Elminster of Shadowdale. As you die your final death-your oh-so-overdue passing. All your mantles and wards and contingencies stripped away, drained, and used, down long and patient years of watching and sending you foes, and ‘accidents,’ and unfortunate concidences. Outwitting you, arrogant Aumar. There were more of me than you thought there were-so this last one of me will outlast you. Now embrace oblivion in fitting agony, knowing it is I, Manshoon, who has slain you!”

Magic lashed out from eyestalks to blast Elminster, driving him to his knees. He fought gaspingly to find breath enough to scream, his arms seared off at the shoulder, his body aflame. And failed.

“I kill you now in the name of Symgharyl, and so many of my selves, and much of the best blood of the Brotherhood. Die, old fool!”

More eyestalks let fly, and the kneeling man was reduced to ashes-

— that slumped down into swirling ruin, even as the eye tyrant bellowed out mighty laughter and teleported away, leaving only the rolling echoes of its mirth behind.

“Stormserpent’s behind it all,” Arclath panted as they sprinted for the palace together. “The flaming men-all of it. We’ll just have to hope Glathra’s there-or someone who’ll listen to me!”