Spellstorm (36 page)

Mirt chuckled. “Best summation of nobility I’ve heard in a long while.”

El put a warning finger to his lips. “To get from this side of Oldspires over to Malchor’s
room, our best way is through the cellars—so we go
down
yon grand stair,” he almost whispered, “as quietly as we can.” He gave Myrmeen a
smile, and added, “And before ye ask, Mreen, we couldn’t just proceed on down there
by the servants’ stair, because the wall’s collapsed down there—frost heave from a
too-close underground spring, by the looks of it—and blocked the door at the bottom.”

She nodded. “Wouldn’t that make a good place to hide the antidotes, so we don’t have
to carry them everywhere?”

“Indeed
—if
ye can make it certain that we don’t ever need them, in the space of a breath or
so, except when we’re down at the damp and rubble-filled bottom of that stair rather
than clear across Oldspires, on another floor.”

“Ah,” Myrmeen replied, and waved at him to lead on.

Like three silent shadows they stepped out into the soaring and splendid stairwell
and descended into … darkness.

“We forgot the lantern,” Myrmeen muttered.

Elminster whirled around and put his finger to her lips.

“Foes ahead,” he whispered in her ear, feeling Mirt thrust his head close to hear.
“At the bottom of these steps—slide thy heels to feel their edges of each one, so
ye don’t fall—set down the sacks
to one side
, out of the path of anyone using the stair, and keep weapons ready. See that glow?”

“No,” Myrmeen whispered back.

“Very faint, very deep blue,” he breathed. “Wait, and thine eyes will …”

“Yes. I see it now.”

“That blue means gate—open, active, and almost certainly guarded. We want to take
down the guards swiftly but quietly, before they can raise any sort of alarm.”

“You’ve done this before,” Mirt grinned.

“A time or two,” El replied. “A time or two.”

Weapons ready—Elminster commandeered the skewer, which still had an intact braerwing
and a somewhat nibbled one impaled on it, well up it near his hand—they warily approached
the distant blue glow, which awaited several cellars away from where they’d set down
the sacks.

Slow and silent, slow and silent …

The Sage of Shadowdale came to a stop on one side of the last archway before the room
that contained the floating upright oval of cold blue fire—flames that flowed endlessly
while burning nothing. The oval was wider back and forth than top to bottom, and within
it was utter darkness.

And standing in front of it, strolling and chatting and looking bored, were seven
plate-armored warriors identically equipped to those they’d fled from earlier.

Myrmeen put her lips right into Elminster’s ear and breathed, “Can you make the glow
go dark, so we can rush them?”

Nay
, he thought into her mind.
Not as I am now—and the Weave is, here
.

Suddenly there was a new mind speaking into theirs. It was old and cold and surprised—but
gleeful. And there were other old, cold minds linked with it.

Elminster Aumar?

Something like a striking snake, but of purple-black fire and impossibly long, burst
out of the darkness of the gate in a great arc that raced across the cellar and through
the archway, curving in the air as it came, to try to curl around the edge of the
arch, reaching for the Sage of Shadowdale.

As Myrmeen, already wrapped around El, flung herself sideways and hauled him along
with her.

They struck cold and grimy cellar floor together and rolled, his skewer skittering
along before their noses amid the strong reek of disturbed mildew—as they were pursued
by a horrid stink of scorched stone.

When they came to a stop, they turned in each other’s arms to look back.

The purple-black flames had spattered the bare bedrock behind them and melted into
it with a hungry, seething snarl.

It was dissolving the solid stone—down a foot deep already, and melting deeper with
frightening speed.

H
OLY
M
OTHER
M
YSTRA!
” M
IRT CURSED, GAPING DOWN AT THE MELTING
stone. Then he added in a mutter, “Well, at least it missed. This time.”

The astonished warriors flung uncertain and fearful glances over their shoulders,
cursing fervently—and then looked at where the flames had headed. Then they came running
for the archway in a general rush, swords raised and looking for foes.

And Mirt, standing in darkness and taking a step back and to one side to be in even
deeper gloom, smiled like a wolf, hefted his cleaver, and waited for them.

The foremost warrior was still six running strides or so away when the purple-black
flames arced out of the gate again—and seared right through the running men.

By the time a new section of stone floor was melting away into its own pit, four sets
of legs were stumbling and falling, the bodies they’d been attached to a moment earlier
gone into empty air.

“Someone doesn’t like you, Old Mage,” Myrmeen panted, as they broke apart and hastily
found their feet, keeping well back.

“So it certainly seems,” Elminster replied grimly, hefting the skewer. The partly
eaten braerwing fell off it with a plop. Minds that cold … he’d felt such minds before,
but were these—

The three remaining warriors, eyes wild with terror, pelted through the archway and
veered toward his voice. Ignored on his side of the arch, Mirt snarled in irritation,
took a step after them—and then drew hastily back.

The third gout of magical flames kissed the bare bedrock floor of the cellar beyond
the first two melted—and still slowly spreading—pits, and devoured only stone.

As Mirt hurled himself across the stretch of cellar visible through the archway from
the glowing gate, and caught up to the hindmost warrior.

Who’d glimpsed him when turning to look at the latest flaming spume, and now turned
to hack at him with a snarl to match his own.

Mirt ducked backward so that the slash would miss—and overbalanced, falling hard onto
his behind. And drove his right boot up between the man’s legs hard enough to send
the warrior hurtling over his head, face-first into the first and largest pit.

The man’s scream became a sob and then a wet bubbling, all in less time than it took
Mirt to wheeze once and roll sideways.

So the second warrior, turning to rush at him and hack, found the fat old man just
out of reach.

By then Myrmeen had driven her cleaver up under the first warrior’s chin, twisted
it free in a spray of blood, and was one swift leap from that second gate guard.

She sprang, landed hard with both boots on the back of the man’s hindmost foot, and
sent him crashing face-first into the floor. He was dazed, broken nose gushing blood,
when she rolled him over and laid open his throat.

In the sudden stillness, she and Mirt stared at each other, panting, and then at Elminster.
There was a clear question in Myrmeen’s eyes.

El could see she wanted something from him. He strode to her, put a hand on her arm,
and asked in her mind, Aye, lass?

What now?
She asked.
Can you close the gate?

Nay. Not as things stand now
.

And if the floor there keeps melting? Will all of Oldspires eventually collapse into
it, and melt away?

Nay. I’ve seen such spells before, long ago. They will melt a little more, then be
spent
.

Myrmeen stared into Elminster’s eyes, unsmiling. So, the most patient of women asked
the Old Mage:
What now?

Mirt was lurching up to them, rubbing his backside and wincing, aware from their faces
and Myrmeen’s intent, forward-thrusting chin that they were conversing. Myrmeen reached
out her free hand to him, he clasped it—and could hear their thoughts.

Whoa! This could be the death of many a marriage!
He thought, blinking in amazement.

Not
now,
Mirt
, Myrmeen ordered crisply.
I want to stay alive a little longer!

And then Elminster’s memory—old, vast, deep, dark, and failing though it was—delivered
up what he’d been trying to recall.

The minds on the other side of the gate were liches, of course. He’d known that much
right away. Yet it had been only fleetingly that he’d mindtouched this particular
sort of lich, and most of those meetings had been long, long ago.

These were thralls of Larloch. A handful of the many, many liches who served the Shadow
King.

Or perhaps
former
thralls, now, but somehow he doubted Larloch had been destroyed. Burned and lessened,
aye, perhaps nigh as badly as Lord Halaunt, and hurled out of Toril into an unknown
otherwhere …

Yet for now, gone. So these liches could dare to act for themselves for the first
time in a long, long while. Their minds bore their master’s dark yoke—that was what
made them feel different than the minds of other liches—but Larloch was not there
to curb or guide them.

So why were they opening an old gate in the cellars of a noble’s country mansion in
the deep countryside of Cormyr?

His own presence had obviously been a surprise to them, so they hadn’t been seeking
him, nor scrying beforehand …

Liches? Larloch?
Myrmeen was awed. El winced. Usually he veiled his innermost thoughts from those
he was mindtouching, but either his strength was failing or he subconsciously trusted
Mreen enough to share …

Liches
, Mirt thought in disgust.
Always want to rule the world, always making trouble. We have entirely too many of
them back in Waterdeep
.

Right
, Elminster thought firmly.
First, I very much doubt these liches will dare to come through the gate—not with
the Weave chaos they can easily detect reigning here right now, and the leakage from
the other gates. I can feel it even when trying to ignore the Weave rather than sensing
by means of it. So they are not our foremost problem. This army of warriors they sent
is, followed by Shaaan, followed by our other murderous guests—Manshoon and Tabra.
And who knows, perhaps Malchor will surprise me! So for now, we salvage swords and
daggers and axes from these two here, unless ye really
prefer the cleavers, and turn back. If we turn south in that first cellar, at the
bottom of the stair, and grope our way to the door I know is there, we’ll find a servants’
storeroom on the far side of it. A lantern each, get them filled and lit, then I’ll
lead the way
.

Lead the way where?
Myrmeen asked gently.

Around this cellar where the gate is, and on to the bottom of the grand staircase—which
will take us upstairs very near Malchor’s room. And let me, if I’m careful, examine
this gate from its backside
.

Can’t they see you just the same from all sides of the gate?

Some gates, aye, but not this sort. This one’s old; the Imaskari used to call these
‘shuttered’ gates. We can’t see into it from outside, and they can only see out of
one face of it
.

I’m getting older
, Mirt thought.
Let’s gather weapons and go
.

They shared the last braerwing in the darkness, exchanged their cleavers for swords
and as many daggers as they could comfortably carry—the warriors had borne four each,
and Mirt could drop three sheathed daggers down the insides of his floppy old boots—and
went.

T
HE CELLARS CLOSEST
to the base of the grand staircase were given over to the mansion’s bulk food storage—there
was a distinct smell of moldering carrots—and Oldspire’s furniture-repair workshop.

Elminster left Mirt and Myrmeen waiting there with all three shuttered lanterns and
groped his way slowly and carefully the length of what his nose told him was the apple-storage
cellar, to a door that thankfully didn’t creak when he lifted its peg latch and eased
it open.

Far away, down a cluttered pathway of old broken furniture and rotting chairs and
tables now so out of fashion that they betrayed the cruder tastes and lesser wealth
of the Forest Kingdom’s nobility back then, was the endless deep blue glow of the
gate. From the back, its upright ring gave off less light than the front, but still
enclosed utter darkness.

El walked cautiously closer, then stopped, closed his eyes, and reached out with slow,
careful stealth, to let the Weave tell him what he needed to know.

He learned what he’d expected.

What he’d feared.

He wanted to close the gate again, but even if there’d been no spellstorm nor leaking
gates nearby, and the Art had been reliable and he’d been standing before it ready
for battle wrapped in his full gathered power, it was a trap.

The five liches behind the one peering through the gate and keeping it open were linked
to all the other liches who’d served Larloch, whenever they wanted to be, mindspeaking
through the mental yoke they all shared. They visualized it as a dark skullcap crowning
their heads and running down the backs of their necks and curving over their cheeks
like the ramhorn leather caps some monks favored, and it was always with them.