“Hush, old goat,” Rune told him fondly, “we didn’t have time to find better in the Delcastle gardeners’ barn. We have urgent news.”
Mirt’s jaw dropped.
Then he looked at Arclath and acquired an expression of disapproval. “Ye didn’t! Already? Barely had her home a night or three, an’ ye’re thrusting-if that’s not too indelicate a word-the next generation of Delcastles out into the world! Ye might have married the lass, first!”
Rune and Arclath stared back at him, blinking.
“No, no, no, no, it’s not that news!” Arclath burst out hurriedly. “I mean, that news hasn’t happened yet! I mean-”
“Oh, this lord is very suave,” Elminster told Storm, hooking a thumb in Arclath’s direction. “Debonair, too. Keep a watch over this one. He’s smooth.”
“If all you jesters will leave off for a moment,” Rune bellowed, winning their instant silence and attention- which she rewarded with a bright, sheepish grin-“Arclath and I have something important to pass on to you about blueflame ghosts. That we just learned from his moth-from the Lady Marantine Delcastle.” She peered at the bowl Mirt had his hands in, and her voice changed. “What are you doing?”
“Learning to cook,” Mirt replied with dignity, lifting a wet and glistening handful up for display. “Behold- entrails of goat, gutted lampreys, and shucked oysters. All raw but doused in herbal oils an’ seven-some spices. As they do it in coastal Rashemen, I’m told.”
He waved in the direction of Elminster, who nodded and told Amarune a little absently, “I’m using a spell right now. And watching him learn to cook.”
“Arclath,” Storm suggested, swinging the massive squared timber that served as a door-bar back into place in its cradles amid a snarling rattle of rusty swivel-chain, “why don’t you tell us the news, before these two old rage drakes badger your poor lass into attacking them?”
“Right,” Arclath replied firmly, drawing himself up and frowning at Elminster and Mirt. His pose might have been more impressive without the pink, purple, and vomit-green petticoats. “What do you know about the Imprisoners?”
The room went quiet again, and this time the silence seemed to hold a slight tension.
“Lad,” Elminster replied quietly, “I know a lot of things. I even remember some of them. Moreover, regarding a rare few, I recall what I dare not tell others, and what will happen if I do. Ye may be young and have years to spend listening, but I’m not. So, please don’t take it amiss if I ask ye to instead tell me what ye’ve heard about the Imprisoners. Hmm?”
Arclath looked at Amarune. Who repeated, word for word and in a superb imitation of the Lady Marantine’s voice that made Arclath’s jaw drop and Mirt grin openly, what Arclath’s mother had said.
Elminster nodded. “She spoke truth. Every word. I was there.”
“What?” Arclath snapped. “So why didn’t you-”
The Sage of Shadowdale shrugged. “Mystra told me-”
“And me,” Storm put in.
“-to leave the Imprisoners be. They were necessary, she said, though she never told us why. They did a lot of ‘imprisoning,’ though I don’t think what we’re calling ‘blueflame ghosts’ were anywhere near all the results of that. I can’t tell ye much more, I’m afraid; Our Lady had me working on other matters.”
Arclath regained his temper with a visible effort. “So which of her Chosen, if it’s not blasphemous to ask, were working on the Imprisoners?”
“Alassra,” El sighed.
“The Simbul, legend calls her, or the Witch-Queen of Aglarond,” Storm added gently. “One of my sisters. Who is…”
“Dead?” Rune ventured.
“Insane. Brain-burned,” El said bleakly. “I’ve thought of how to restore her mind-a dangerous way, by no means certain-but it requires a blueflame item.”
“That will be consumed, with its prisoner and all, in that restoration,” Storm added.
“Mind ye choose the right prisoner to destroy,” Mirt growled, wagging a cook’s cleaver in her direction. “That’s why I made sure my hand axe vanished, before those two idiot lordlings could find some wizard who knew a way to force me back into it.”
“Here I sit, mad and alone,” the high, tuneless voice sang, sounding like a wistful little girl. Then its owner sighed and slumped, to circle her feet in the cold water.
Again. For about the seventy-six-millionth time.
Dabbling in the pool at the heart of the cave that was her prison.
The pool she was chained in, by the chain that was her only constant companion. Her friend.
“My friend,” she laughed, high and long and wildly, but stopped when the sound of the echoes started to sound like jeering.
Jeering meant Red Wizards, and she slew Red Wizards when she met them.
As she stirred the waters, the massive chain rising and falling with every movement of her shackled ankle, she remembered magic, dreamed of magic… and as she did, spell-glows blossomed out of the darkness around her, and rose and fell like questing tongues of flame, lighting up the wet and glistening fissured rock walls of the cave around the pool.
“I am,” she announced to no one suddenly and cheerfully, “Alassra Silverhand, once Queen of Aglarond, better known to bards, sages, and just plain folk whispering fright-tales around fires late at night as the mad Witch-Queen who slew armies of Red Wizards. I prefer to call myself The Simbul. It’s shorter. Pleased to meet you. And if you happen to be a disguised Red Wizard, prepare to die.”
She stood up and struck a pose. Then she tossed her silver hair-as wild and unruly a mane as ever; right now, it looked more like a shrub than a head of human hair-and conjured up a mirror.
A reflective oval of silver as tall as she was, floating upright in midair.
Peering into it, she regarded herself critically. She was naked and besmirched with dirt, yet still shapely. Bony around midriff and hips-the sides of her pelvis stuck up in two sharp humps-but lush and womanly everywhere else, and with those long, long arms and legs that drove men wild.
Hmmph. Had driven men wild. None came to see her now, through all the wards. Once, long ago, one or two had won through, mages with swordsmen, hoping to find great magic.
“Well, so they did,” she said aloud, petulantly. “They found me!”
Yet then, of course, they’d made demands, cast spells on her pool, threatened and laid hands on her, assaulted her.
That had been fun. And when she’d grown tired of hurling them around the cave with spells, battered and broken, she’d eaten them.
Foolish, that. They were gone now, and she had no one to talk to. No one but herself, and she was too mad to comfort herself or convince herself of anything.
Elminster.
That was who she needed.
El, her El, back again. Here. Now, with his arms around her.
“Elminster?” she called into the darkness, listening to his name echo into great distances and then come back again.
“El, are you ever coming back for me?”
Arclath and Amarune looked at each other and discovered just how pale and wide-eyed they both were. How frightened.
They put their arms around each other, because it was more comfortable that way.
They had heard tales of Elminster since their childhood, and of Fallen Mystra who, before the Coming of the Blue Fire, had been Queen of All Magic, the goddess who somehow was the Weave, though bards disagreed about that. They had heard about the Seven Sisters and the Chosen of Mystra who walked the world doing magic and undoing magic, riding dragons and sundering mountains and… and…
They knew what they were hearing now was true, yet…
Oh, the woman across the room had to be older than her young body made her appear. Her eyes and manner marked her as almost thirty summers, perhaps, rather than her shapely twenty, and wiser than many
