Spellstorm (28 page)

Revealing no traps, but a narrow gap between two stacks of crates, large enough for a man to sidle through.

“Light, in there,” El murmured. Myrmeen obliged, illuminating … a tiny room or space amid towering stacks of crates.

It held a small, delicately carved jet-black wooden table rather like a dressing table, with a kneeling mat on the floor in front of it. Rather than having a central mirror behind the tabletop, it had an empty circular frame that might once have held a mirror—and spaced at intervals around this frame were seven metal stars painted blue-white, the blue vivid but flat, and the white a faintly-luminescent enspelled paint that made the stars glow softly and steadily. On either end of the tabletop stood black metal candlesticks, with unlit candles in them that had been lit—and then extinguished—several times before.

El looked around the little room and saw a stool, a piece of parchment bearing rather untidy writing atop the stool, and a small metal box on the floor beneath it. The box was the sort carried to light fires; it probably contained candles, paper spills, and a rushlight stand, a flint, a steel striker, and a shallow metal bowl to hold tinder.

Holding up a warding hand to keep Myrmeen and Mirt back, El walked cautiously to the stool, bent to peer at the parchment without touching it, and read what was written on it.

“A hidden shrine to Mystra,” Mirt said, “but why was it hidden? Or rather, from whom?”

“This is Lord Halaunt’s fist,” Elminster replied, “so it wasn’t hidden from him; it was hidden
by
him. To keep his servants from knowing?” He shrugged. “A mere guess, mind ye, with nothing to support it.” He pointed down at the parchment. “This is a script for a prayer he’s composed; he was praying to the goddess to gift him with the ability to work magic.”

“So his offer of the Lost Spell was no bluff? He might have used it himself, or tried to?” Myrmeen asked. When he made no reply, she asked another question, slightly more loudly and sharply. “Did you know this was here?”

El looked up from peering intently at the tabletop—the altar, in front of the circle of stars and between the two candlesticks. “I knew it existed, somewhere in Oldspires.”

“Oh? How?”

“Mystra hears prayers sent her way, ye know. And that, in turn, is how I first learned of what Lord Halaunt was up to. Despite what Ganrahast and the other wizards of war may think, I’m
not
in the habit of magically eavesdropping on their every belch and scratch. Don’t tell them that, though; believing as much keeps Glathra behaving far better than she would otherwise. But setting that aside, Lord Halaunt informed Mystra he’d found the Lost Spell and wanted to be shown how to use it, but she thought otherwise and informed me.” El bent and peered very intently at the altar, then frowned.

“Ah,” he said, “
that’s
why.” He pointed at the black wood. Myrmeen peered hard, ducking her head from side to side to see if the spot where he was pointing caught the lanternlight differently than the rest of the tabletop.

She glanced over at Mirt, to make sure he wasn’t doing the same thing and might be on the verge of ducking his head right into a painful meeting with hers. He wasn’t. Instead, he was nodding grimly, as if he’d seen whatever El had spotted before.

Sensing her scrutiny, he looked at her and growled, “Some tiny stains; traces someone cleaning up missed.”

“Blood,” Elminster put in. “Human blood. Human sacrifice to Mystra.” He straightened up from his examination, looking grimmer than Mirt. “She wouldn’t like that,” he muttered. “She wouldn’t like that at all.”

He looked around the little shrine. “I wonder what lives Lord Halaunt spent to get the attention of Our Lady? Or if he stopped short of murder, and just paid the families of dying commoners to, ah,
borrow
their doomed kin?” He shook his head in distaste, picturing the old lord on his knees here, and asked aloud, “And why Mystra? Why not Tempus, or Malar, or—?” He shook his head again, turned to depart the shrine, and added, “Well, that leaves just the cold cellar.”

“The place bodies go missing from,” Myrmeen commented.

“That’s why we’re going to look in on it, one more time,” the Sage of Shadowdale told her. “Though it’s none too comfortable, what better place to try to hide when ye hear searchers coming?”

“Aye, our intruder of the chute,” Mirt growled. “What with the ghost and this shrine, I’d almost forgotten him. Not that I’ve left off looking behind me, expecting someone to rush me, blade in hand, all the time we’ve been down here. Let’s look in on our dead and be done with it.”

“Long time ahead before we’ll be done,” El reminded him. “Upper level to do yet.”

As it happened, there’d been no new departures from the cold cellar—but then, there’d been no new arrivals, either.

“Well, that’s something,” Myrmeen said, as they closed the doors on the chill once more, and turned away.

Mirt gave her a look, and she countered it with the words, “Small victories. Small victories.”

Elminster led the way back across the cellars to the south stairs, a grand staircase that ascended through the Halaunt family quarters on up into the upper floor. There’d been an upper study at its top, once, but its large windows had yielded to winter snows and howling gales years back, and been crudely boarded over. Birds roosting for the night shifted uneasily on rafter perches as the wizard, the moneylender, and the warrior passed them, peering everywhere and expecting trouble. The floor was bowed and spongy, uneven thanks to one board warping faster than its neighbor. The decaying wood creaked and groaned loudly underfoot in places and was silent and solid in others—but those others were increasingly rare as they went on and saw more moonlight and stars twinkling through gaps in the roofs and walls, and saw more puddles.

“So much space gone to ruin,” Myrmeen murmured. “Even with no staff needing housing, this could have been given over to a granary.”

Mirt grinned. “There speaks the warrior. We could face a siege at any time.”

“Well, we could. Cormyr today is no secure and peaceful realm. Not anymore.”

“I doubt it ever really was, from all I’ve heard,” the moneylender said.

Elminster turned, laid a hand on each of them, and mindspoke:
Every word warns anyone up here of our approach. To reap your life only takes one arrow
.

“True,” Mirt granted, as Myrmeen nodded. They proceeded in wary silence.

Through room after room, and eventually out into a chamber that had utterly collapsed and stood open to the sky, its walls—studded with warped and buckled doors—resembling the battlements of a turret top.

Here Elminster stopped and turned slowly to survey the moonlit lands around, breathing in the night air and peering down at the gently roiling fog of the spellstorm—and the wall of force beyond, catching the moonlight here and there. He could see a few of the less careful war wizards standing watch; some of them were looking back at him.

So the barrier stood.

Had their mysterious intruder slipped in through a gate?

Or was it someone already in Oldspires, a person they knew? Even masked, that face at the window hadn’t
looked
like any of the guests, living or dead. Yet a spell or two had worked within the mansion walls, after a fashion, and a spell that affected the caster without reaching out to others had a better chance of going right, in this chaos, than …

Hmmm.

Mystra be with us
.

The prayer had become a habit to him, almost a curse, over the years. Save in the worst moments for the Weave or what passed for balance on Toril, the Mother of Magic tended to leave her Chosen to their own devices, providing more guidance and manifestations to convey her approval rather than divine smiting. Her Chosen were her fists, her thunderbolts, her shows of force. Her disapproval came as nightmares, and spells simply not working at all. Mystra was with her servant here in Oldspires in the form of a shield defending the mind of the ghost princess, so no unscrupulous wizard—and El had a dark notion that in Mystra’s regard, the ranks of such mages might even include him—could take over the mindless husk of Lord Halaunt and use his voice to set mage against mage, and confer the Lost Spell upon themselves.

Or was the intruder—a spy only, from what they’d seen, and one in great haste not to be caught by Elminster and his companions—a Highknight or some other agent of the Crown of Cormyr? Sent to try to watch over what was going on inside Oldspires?

Was Ganrahast
that
anxious?

Well, now, the lad certainly could be. Tight as a drum and breathing out tension that simply grew and grew, having none of the ease with which his father had defended the Throne and manipulated its nobles
and high society in his later years … aye, this could be a watcher sent by the Royal Magician.

Or Vangey, for that matter. He’d always been one to make fallback scheme within fallback scheme, until his every endeavor had more layers to peel than an onion—even all those years ago, when he’d been El’s apprentice. And during his time as Court Wizard and Royal Magician both, he’d run his own private network of spies to watch over the Highknights and wizards of war he’d also commanded.

It was no secret that his restoration by Mystra had brought back his old confidence until he swelled up like a bustard courting hens in mating season, and he’d made little effort to hide his dismay at the state of the realm during his time as a twisted spider-thing. Aye. ’Twould be like Vangey to begin assembling his own spies, so he need not trust what he heard from the reports made to Vainrence, or chafe at what little Ganrahast and his Lord Warder chose to share. He’d justify it very much the same way Elminster himself would have, had he stood in Vangerdahast’s boots: for the sake of the realm, I dare not trust even these our most loyal agents, for are they not the greatest danger to the Dragon Throne, if they turn traitor? Or even prove false in small ways?

Yet perhaps he was overthinking this. Most likely it was a warrior hired by one of the archmages to follow along in case of trouble—or to ensure victory in the winning of the Lost Spell. Perhaps it was just a thief, something as simple as a former servant sneaking back to see what could be stolen with the rest of the staff gone. And perhaps it was a spy hired by an ambitious war wizard down there in the trees, desiring to impress Ganrahast or merely to “do a Vangey” and further his private warehouse of “what I know and no others do, so that I am wiser and more powerful thereby.”

Mystra be with us, indeed!

Entertaining such thoughts was a swift road to madness, conjuring up perils and shadows and lurking menaces where there were none, and building minor deceits and the dealings of self-interested nobles into rampant realm-wide treason …

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Myrmeen murmured softly, beside his ear. El turned to meet her gaze, realizing how long he’d stood here. All around them were the gables and ridgelines of the complicated roofs of Oldspires; above them was the moon and the great glittering vault of stars, and below and
around them were the woods and rolling hills of the Halaunt lands, with the barest ghost of a breeze gliding past them now, and Mirt sitting like a patient gargoyle on a heap of fallen roof slates.

“ ’Tis indeed, lass,” El muttered. “We’ve been so much on the run since getting here, and ye and Mirt have slaved so much in the kitchen, that ’twas more than good to stop and breathe and think for a moment, in a spot where we can fool ourselves that we’re out and away from Halaunt rooms and Halaunt gloom and Halaunt stale air—’twas necessary.”

And he waved merrily to the growing cluster of war wizards at the edge of the woods below, who had gathered to get a good look at whoever was out atop Oldspires in the moonlight.

Then he drew in a deep breath, shook himself, announced briskly, “I’m getting
old
,” and strode across the ruined floor to one of the doors on the north side of the bared-to-the-skies room.

“I’m waiting for the room where we get threescore and more bats flying into our faces when we open the door,” Mirt remarked, as El tugged at the warped and stuck door.

El shook his head. “Not at this time of night; they’re already out and winging it down there, nigh trees’ edge, where the bugs will be most plentiful. Keeping those war wizards from getting quite so bitten as they would otherwise. Now, if we were doing this search by
day
 …”

“Ah. Sorry. Indeed. Forgot bats start hunting at dusk; I’ve been too long a dweller in Waterdeep,” Mirt growled, losing patience and stumping past Elminster to haul hard on the door until it shrieked, groaned, and squealed all at once and came open with a wall-shaking shudder.

He grinned, bowed like a courtier, and with a flourish indicated the way was now clear to proceed.

Myrmeen rolled her eyes, stepped past him, and unhooded the lantern, holding it out at arm’s length beside her rather than standing behind it. If there was an archer ahead, he could at least
work
for his kill.

They found only roosting birds and their droppings
—lots
of their droppings—and the hanging, peeling decay of much water getting in, over many seasons. For room after room, many of them with old shields and canvas wagon shrouds nailed down underfoot as improvised patches where the weatherfall in ground-floor rooms below had become unacceptable.

As they advanced cautiously on, the patches of pitch applied in more thorough attempts at stopping leaks became more frequent and larger.

“I wonder how many country mansions across the Forest Kingdom look like this, up high where no one but the owners and their servants see,” Myrmeen commented.

“Most of ’em, if Cormyr’s anything like Waterdeep,” Mirt said, trying to peer through a gap where two floorboards had warped in different directions. “I wonder if we’ll meet with any ghosts up here?”

El shrugged. “In my experience, servants less seldom haunt houses than their masters—and ’twas all servants up here.”

“Too busy working when alive to want to tarry a moment longer at the place of their wearying toil, once dead,” Myrmeen commented, tugging on yet another door. “This one’s locked.”