Elminster Must Die

“I wonder where Elminster is,” Amarune gasped. “He’s crazed enough to step in, where our precious wizards of war won’t!”

Alusair raced like a furious whirlwind. Storm rushed after her, Mirt pounding along at her heels, into a little stone room where … human blood and innards were spattered everywhere.

And a heap of faintly glowing enchanted trinkets she recognized, amid ashes … Elminster.

Or all that was left of him.

Silver fire was winking and glowing like fireflies among a swirl of ashes on the floor, and her own body winked and glowed in response; she had no doubt she was gazing at his remains.

“No,” Storm whispered, lips trembling. “No. Damn you, El, not like this! Not without giving me a chance to bid you farewell! I loved you, Elminster Aumar! Mystra damn me, but I loved you!”

Elminster’s ashes rippled over the floor and rose into a spike that became a faltering pillar … and took on a vaguely manlike shape.

“And I love ye, too,” he whispered hollowly. “Though perhaps I should say ‘What is left of me’ loves ye.”

He’d survived! In undeath or something like it, but-Storm burst into tears and rushed to embrace him.

Causing him to be reduced to swirling ashes-which promptly streamed down her bodice and the rest of her, making her gasp in startled pleasure ere they raced down one of her legs to the floor. There they rose again into a little hump, from which lifted a headlike shape.

“Always wanted to do that,” Elminster said in satisfaction.

Behind them arose a strange chorus of mirth. Mirt the Moneylender and the ghost of Alusair were both chuckling.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

A NEW BLADE DRAWN

Someone felled those guards,” Arclath snarled. “Treason! Slayers seeking the king! I-”

“Save your breath for running,” Amarune puffed, “or we’ll-”

“Run right into the new ruler of Cormyr before you have any clever plan ready?” A triumphant, liquid voice bubbled from a dark open door ahead.

Out of it drifted something round and many-tentacled, some of those tentacles ending in pincers. There were eyestalks among them, too, and a huge single eye in the flying central body, above a wide, crookedly smiling fanged maw.

“Name of the Dragon!” Arclath gasped, skidding to a halt and throwing out an arm to stop Amarune. “It’s a … a beholder!”

The passage exploded.

Flung headlong, Amarune was vaguely aware of Arclath being hurled past her and a woman’s voice snapping furiously, “Not anymore, it isn’t!”

Then she slammed into something very hard, and Cormyr went away in a hurry.

“Well done, Raereene,” the manlike shape of ashes whispered as they watched a dark, wraithlike thing of tatters flee wailing from the spattered ruin of the eye tyrant’s body, with the ghost of Alusair flying in hot pursuit, teeth bared.

The beautiful young wizard of war managed not to recoil, this time. She aimed the great scepter in her hands at the new menace-before the firm hands of a silver-haired woman and an old man in floppy boots and battered leathers took it away from her.

“Yon’s a friend and defender of Cormyr,” Mirt told her. “Don’t be blasting him, now.”

Storm turned. “El, your lass! Is she-?”

“Just dazed. Her young gallant’s out cold, though.”

Cormyr came back, confusingly. Amarune blinked up into a smiling face framed in long, flowing, silver hair. Gentle hands were cradling her.

“Y-you’re Storm, aren’t you? Storm Silverhand?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re thousands of years old.”

“Not yet, Amarune. I just feel thousands of years old, most days.”

“Whereas I am thousands of years old,” said an eerie whisper in Amarune’s ear. She turned her head and found herself nose to nose with a vague man-shape of ashes that was staring right back at her.

She fainted again.

“You’re sure she’s ready?” Storm asked wryly.

“I’m sure,” Elminster snapped back. “Cast the spell.”

“What spe-oh, no. El, no. You can’t do this to her.”

“No, I can’t, not when I’m reduced to this. So ye’ll have to do it.”

“No, El. No, I … no.”

“Do ye know of anyone else who can-and will-try to save the Realms? And if ye do, do ye trust them? Hey?”

Storm shook her head helplessly, looked down at Amarune-and burst into tears.

“We can’t, El. We must not.”

“There is no ‘must not,’ lass,” El told Storm. “We must do whatever we must, or this young maid ye’re trying to defend from me-and everyone else we care for-will be smashed down and slain and swept away, sooner or later-”

“Must not what?” came a soft mumble from the floor. Amarune was gazing blearily up at them. “Is … is that you, Great-Grandsire Elminster? Something made you … undead?”

“Yes, ’tis me. Though call me ‘El’; we’re family, lass, family! And I’m busy trying to convince thy great- grand-aunt-or whatever she is; I could never keep all those terms straight-to cast a spell that I can’t, now that I’m ashes.”

“What spell?”

“A spell that will let me ride thy body. Sit in thy mind and move thy limbs and voice to my bidding.”

Amarune stared up at them-the eerie mask of ash and the pain-racked, silver-haired woman. As their eyes met, Storm nodded sadly, in confirmation.

Amarune went pale. “Will it hurt?” she asked hesitantly.

“Only if I make thee fall over,” El replied.

“Will it … drive me mad?”

“No,” he said firmly. “I do not use the clumsy mindpryings of war wizards, which drive the caster mad as often as the owner of the mind they’re ruining. I promise ye, lass, that I’ll treat thee like the greatest treasure, the most exalted princess, the most precious infant in all the Realms, if ye let me ride thy mind.”

“And …” Amarune stared steadily up into the face of ash floating above her and swallowed. “And what if I have thoughts I’d rather not share with anyone? What then?”

“Those thoughts will be thine own. I’ll not listen to them,” Elminster assured her solemnly.

Beside him, Storm turned away so Amarune would not see the roll of her wise and weary eyes, but Rune’s dark stare never strayed from the shape of ash arching over her.

“How I do I know I can trust you?” she whispered.