Authors: Ed Greenwood
Calathlarra came slithering after him, and he had the satisfaction of snatching up
a platter that had many handholds worked into its raised and ornamented edge all around
it, of a size and weight to make an ideal shield, before he turned back in time to
reach out with a long fireplace rake and—hook the door half-closed, pinning the undead
Runemaster against its frame.
She spat and squalled, making noise for the first time, sounding utterly enraged through
the wet burbling.
When she tried vainly to claw him, finding him out of reach, yet trying again and
again, El sprang high and came down hard with his boot heels on both of her arms,
slamming them to the floor broken—only to have her tug hard and arch back to pull
them free. He had to leap back or be toppled over, and the force of her pull, with
his weight gone, had her back out of the doorway into the passage, so he slammed the
door.
And raced across the servery to open the cupboard that had the secret panel at the
back of it. In a trice he was in the pitch-dark plate and cutlery store, a long and
narrow closet lined with shelves and drawers. It had another sliding panel right across
from him that gave into the other end of the passage, so he could come running around
to the staircase again. To reach the fast-being-hewn-down door into the feast hall,
with the open door of the butlery beside it, and Calathlarra slithering back along
the passage. She was moving more slowly now, trying to haul her slithering self along
on shattered arms. Before she got there, Mirt burst out through the butlery door to
confront her, with a triumphant roar.
He was brandishing a skewer of dripping roast braerwing like a rapier, a sack of stoppered
bottles over his other shoulder, and right behind him was Myrmeen with a bare skewer
in one hand and her preferred and smaller cleaver in the other; she bore a sack tied
around her neck like a cape, that held cheeses, sausages, and the largest kitchen
cleaver, which she’d used when defending the kitchen door.
“They’ll be through the kitchen doors in a breath or two!” she shouted to Elminster,
and he called back, “This way! Come with me!”
Mirt jabbed at Calathlarra’s face with his skewer, she reared up to menace him hissing
like a snake and drew back both arms to rake at him—and he turned and ran, following
Myrmeen around the staircase to Elminster.
As the demolished feast hall door collapsed in shards and splinters and half a dozen
warriors fell through it and onto Calathlarra with shouts and clangs and in utter
confusion.
She clawed wildly amid all the rolling armored bodies, but El didn’t tarry to see
any more. “Come,” he panted, leading the way back into the darkness of the plate and
cutlery closet, and along it—Myrmeen’s cleaver in her sack banging against the unseen
drawers on either side of her as she came—to the secret stair. It was a swift spiral
of banging and bumping and soft cursing that delivered them in a few panting instants
up into the ruined upper floor. Where the world seemed very different, with warped
and uneven boards groaning underfoot, and the pale light and chill of predawn leaking
in through scores of rents and places of mold and peeling collapse.
The doors weren’t locked up here. Most of them weren’t even closed, thanks to warpage;
El led the way in haste through a warren of small former servants’ dens and low-ceilinged
attics, out into … the roofless room, where he’d tarried earlier, with its pleasant
view of the Halaunt woods and rolling hills. Dawn was threatening behind him, where
the roofs, gables, and ornate stone chimneys of Oldspires blocked his view of all
but a tiny strip of roiling spellstorm and the trees and lawns beyond; in the other
direction, at the edge of the nearest trees below, he could see Purple Dragons and
war wizards standing amid the trunks, looking up at him.
“Send in the Dragons!” he called to them, and tried to use the Weave to take his words
to them, in rolling ripples that in normal circumstances would reach them in an instant,
easily and surely … but now were lost
and dragged down by the still-roiling spellstorm. He tried again, with the same result.
“Save your wind,” Mirt growled from behind him. “I saw a doorstop, in that room with
the wardrobes. We drag it out, we scratch “Send Dragons: Gate Invasion of Cormyr”
on it, and I hurl it high and hard, aiming for those idiot faces down there.”
“Do it,” El agreed.
“Right. Hold this. Eat some.”
And Elminster found himself holding a dripping skewer of well-roasted braerwing, with
Myrmeen grinning at him from the far side of it. “I’ll gnaw this side, while you bite
at that one,” she suggested.
“Lass, lass,
what
are we coming to? Where’s the wine, the servants to pour it, the nicely laid table,
the godsbedamned
chair
for my old backside?”
“Complaints, complaints,” Myrmeen dismissed his words serenely. “Next you’ll be complaining
again that we’re sharing Oldspires with too many murderers.”
“Well, we are. This house holds altogether too many murderers for my liking, lass.”
“For
anyone’s
liking, unless they revel in death,” Myrmeen muttered. “Now eat, for I see much fighting
and running in our near future and a distinct lack of leisure to sit at tables and
dine at ease. Oh, and I closed the secret panels behind us. Hopefully, after they’ve
finished butchering Calathlarra—and they’ll have to dismember her to stop her, and
probably find a chest or something to confine her fingers in—it’ll take them some
time to find the way we took, and where we’ve gotten to.”
“Well, not long at all,” Mirt pointed out, returning with the doorstop, “if we stay
up here bellowing to the dawn breeze.”
As he spoke, dawn broke over the roofs and chimneys behind them. “Ah,” he said in
satisfaction, kneeling down and hauling out his dagger to assault the glossy-black-painted
doorstop, “decent light to do this by.”
“And for crossbowmen to have a go at us by,” Myrmeen snapped, pointing. “Damned if
those Dragons down there aren’t readying death for us!”
“So sit ye down,” El told her, doing so and taking the skewer with him, to force her
down, “and stop giving reckless fools a target.”
“Scoot over yonder on your behinds,” Mirt suggested, “now that they can’t see you.
So if they do waste bolts on loosing blind at where we were, they’ll have no hope
of hitting us.”
“I was not,” Myrmeen reminded him, shifting across warped boards, taking the skewer
with her, and so towing Elminster with it, “born yesterday. Nor even the day before
that.”
She watched El twice try to take a bite of still-steaming braerwing and twice have
his meal move away from the reach of his jaws as she kept going.
He acquired a frown, looked up at her, and instead of uttering the complaint she was
expecting, said, “So we have three days of spellstorm left, and four wizards; Shaaan,
Tabra, Malchor, and Manshoon still flourishing—and possibly holed up in their rooms,
possibly not. Plus at least one undead on the loose that Shaaan’s probably responsible
for and was certainly animated within these walls since our arrival, rather than getting
in afterward. We also have at least a score of warriors in full plate hunting us through
Oldspires, and a gate open somewhere in the house. Moreover, Alusair is gone or enfeebled
and in hiding, and Lord Halaunt’s mindless body has been left behind in a kitchen
that said army of warriors have almost certainly taken over by now … have I missed
anything?”
“The Halaunt ghosts,” Myrmeen pointed out, “the intruders—two so far, and who knows
how many more before we’re done here—and whoever else the war wizards and Dragons
out there decide to send in through their ringwall. Oh, and the Lost Spell, wherever
it may be.” She twinkled at him. “I’m sure we’ve both missed something, but surely
that’s enough to be keeping us busy for now?”
“Done,” Mirt announced, before El could reply, and held up the doorstop. It bore the
words he’d suggested on one side, and “Orders of Ganrahast” on the other.
El grinned. “Nice touch. That’ll stop them dismissing it out of hand, at least.”
The moneylender nodded, lurched to his feet, took two slow steps while swinging the
doorstop back and forth by his side, and then hurled it underhanded, in a mighty heave
that sent it sailing high and far.
A crossbow bolt snarled past him, heading for the empty sky beyond.
And above. Mirt sank down muttering curses, and padded on hands and knees to the skewer,
to claim a meal. “Idiots,” he growled, jerking a thumb in the direction of the Cormyreans
at the edge of the trees. “Do they think bolts can turn by themselves in midair, to
plummet down at us?”
“Shall we relocate, regardless?” Myrmeen suggested. “This is a pleasant enough venue,
but someone of military competence may be down there, and prevail after the thicker
heads have failed and run out of oh-so-bright ideas.”
“Relocate where, lass?” Mirt rumbled, around mouthfuls of braerwing. “We’re fleeing
too many warriors to stand against—but may just wind up fleeing right into their arms,
so to speak.”
She shrugged.
Mirt looked to Elminster.
“I’d like to thank the cooks,” the Sage of Shadowdale announced. “Very nice. Best
I’ve eaten in ages, actually.”
“Old Mage,” Mirt growled, “you may not have noticed, being an ancient and doddering
archmage and the most gleaming Chosen of Mystra and all, but we’re in the middle of
a little private war here, and—”
“I’ve been
thinking
,” Elminster interrupted severely. “We ancient and doddering archmages sometimes need
more time to do that than we used to. Especially when we’re distracted by delicious
and much-needed food. Yum.” He swallowed, wiped his lips with one forefinger, and
said briskly, “Right. Follow me.”
“Where?” Mirt asked suspiciously.
“This way.”
Mirt sighed, rolled his eyes, and looked at Myrmeen. Who chuckled, gave him a smile,
and started after Elminster, who was crawling on hands and knees to one of the buckled
doors in the walls of the roofless room, and out through it.
Mirt sighed again, more heavily, took a good big bite out of the next braerwing on
the skewer, and crawled after them both.
The moment they were through the door and standing again, in the decaying passage
beyond, he growled at Elminster’s back, “All right, where are we headed and
why
?”
“To Malchor. Hopefully he’s in his room. Against all those warriors, I need an ally.”
“He can spellblast them while you try to wrestle the Weave so his spells blast, rather
than sprout flowers or turn them hairy,” Myrmeen offered.
El gave her a broad smile. “Ah, I
do
love companions who have wits, and use them! Yes, ye’ve stated my plan precisely.”
“Not much of a plan,” Mirt grumbled. “More warriors’ spur of the moment desperation
stuff, to my ears.”
“So ’tis, friend Mirt. Spur of the moment desperation is my specialty, and has been
for centuries now. I like to think I’m getting good at it.”
“More braerwing?” Mirt asked, offering the skewer.
“Later. Heroics now, before ’tis too late.”
They’d worked their way three rooms farther along, and through a particularly spongy
area where summer rains and winter snow and ice had not been kind to the old mansion,
when Oldspires quivered from end to end beneath them under the soundless shock of
yet another spell.
This one was particularly powerful, if the strength of the rolling shuddering underfoot
was anything to go by, but there was no way of telling who’d cast it, or if it had
accomplished its usual or intended effect.
No sooner had they recovered their footing than the air around them glowed a brief
and odd purplish blue and all three of them felt a strong tingling.
Everyone’s hair stood on end, in rigid forests of bristles, and Myrmeen looked at
El and asked calmly, “Any guesses?”
“A powerful working, by a caster unknown. It set off a large discharge or leak—the
glow we saw—from one of the closed gates, which must be up here, very close to us.”
“Not the one you felt being opened?”
El shook his head. “Nay, that would have sent us flying, in what would have been not
far different than a short-lived gale.”
He held up a hand for quiet, edged forward to peer around a door, then turned to add,
“No talking, now.”
And led the way down a steep, narrow staircase that wasn’t quite a spiral stair, but
came close—short, steep flight after short steep flight, with landings on the house
side.
Myrmeen frowned and spread her hands in a silent “Where are we?” query.
El reached a closed door on the next landing, opened it in stealthy silence, then
relaxed and waved at them to follow him.
Out into … a huge stairwell, in which a grand staircase ascended, flanked with statues,
past dark old paintings larger than the walls of many houses, and tapestries of dusty,
aged splendor.
Myrmeen frowned, cleaver at the ready. “Why build
two
stairs, cheek by jowl?”
“Old noble family,” El muttered. “Flourished back before King Duar’s time, when servants
were not to be seen moving from floor to floor
—certainly
not by way of the same steps used by the highborn. So the Halaunts, finding they
needed servants to ply them with viands and drink—mostly drink—in the Summer Room,
but not wanting their noble guests to encounter scurrying servants on their ways to
and from the look-out-over-the-lands cupola that used to grace the upper floor above
the Summer Room, built the tiny winding stair we’ve just come down. Just for the servants,
and in its own half tower built onto the walls.”
Myrmeen rolled her eyes. “Nobles,” she sighed. “I’ll never understand them.”
“Lass, lass, they’re just folk like all others—save that they’ve had wealth and power
for long enough to indulge their innate eccentricites. And to grow bored, and dabble
in various weirdnesses—or treasons—to alleviate that boredom. And gotten away with
it all for long enough to fool themselves that ’tis their right to live thus. So they’ll
do anything to protect their ‘rights’ and stay atop the social heap.”