Elminster - 08 - Elminster Enraged Read online

  E D G REENWOOD

  S AGE OF S HADOWDALE

  Elminster: The Making of a Mage

  Elminster in Myth Drannor

  The Temptation of Elminster

  Elminster in Hell

  Elminster’s Daughter

  The Annotated Eliminster

  Elminster Ascending

  Elminster Must Die

  Bury Elminster Deep

  Elminster Enraged

  S HANDRIL’S S AGA

  Book I

  Spellfire

  Book II

  Crown of Fire

  Book III

  Hand of Fire

  THE K NIGHTS OF M YTH D RANNOR

  Book I

  Swords of Eveningstar

  Book II

  Swords of Dragonfire

  Book III

  The Sword Never Sleeps

  A LSO BY E D G REENWOOD

  The City of Splendors: A Waterdeep Novel

  (with Elaine Cunningham)

  The Best of the Realms, Book II

  The Stories of Ed Greenwood

  Edited by Susan J. Morris

  Sage of Shadowdale

  ELMINSTER ENRAGED

  ©2012 Wizards of the Coast LLC

  All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. Any reproduction or unauthorized use of the material or artwork contained herein is prohibited without the express written permission of Wizards of the Coast LLC.

  Published by Wizards of the Coast LLC. Hasbro SA, represented by Hasbro Europe, Stockley Park, UB11 1AZ. UK.

  FORGOTTEN REALMS, Wizards of the Coast, and their respective logos are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast LLC in the U.S.A. and other countries.

  All Wizards of the Coast characters and their distinctive likenesses are property of Wizards of the Coast LLC.

  Cover art by: Kekai Kotaki

  eISBN: 978-0-7869-6127-6

  62039851000001 EN

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Greenwood, Ed.

  Elminster enraged : sage of Shadowdale / Ed Greenwood.

  p. cm.

  “Forgotten Realms.”

  1. Elminster (Fictitious character)–Fiction. 2. Wizards–Fiction. I. Title.

  PR9199.3.G759E56 2012

  813′.54–dc23

  2012017359

  For customer service, contact:

  U.S., Canada, Asia Pacific, & Latin America: Wizards of the Coast LLC, P.O. Box 707, Renton, WA 98057-0707, +1-800-324-6496, www.wizards.com/customerservice

  U.K., Eire, & South Africa: Wizards of the Coast LLC, c/o Hasbro UK Ltd., P.O. Box 43, Newport, NP19 4YD, UK, Tel: +08457 12 55 99, Email: [email protected]

  Europe: Wizards of the Coast p/a Hasbro Belgium NV/SA, Industrialaan 1, 1702 Groot-Bijgaarden, Belgium, Tel: +32.70.233.277, Email: [email protected]

  Visit our websites at www.wizards.com

  www.DungeonsandDragons.com

  v3.1

  tantaene animis caelestibus irae?

  For Susan Morris

  Because dreams are brighter shared.

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One: A Darker Fate For Me

  Chapter Two: I Alone Shall Conquer

  Chapter Three: A Citadel Become A Tomb

  Chapter Four: This Place Is Dangerous Enough

  Chapter Five: Deadly Good Breeding

  Chapter Six: Danger For Hire

  Chapter Seven: Murder In Irlingstar

  Chapter Eight: Rousing The Dragon

  Chapter Nine: Lord Durncaskyn Is Unhappy

  Chapter Ten: High Time For Screaming And Cursing

  Chapter Eleven: The Unseen Foe

  Chapter Twelve: The Lord Constable Is Less Than Wise

  Chapter Thirteen: Traitors Among Us

  Chapter Fourteen: A Fate Richly Earned

  Chapter Fifteen: The Penalty For Treason Is Death

  Chapter Sixteen: A Room For The Night

  Chapter Seventeen: I Am Your Gentle Reminder

  Chapter Eighteen: When I Tire Of It

  Chapter Nineteen: Bloodshed Inevitably Erupts

  Chapter Twenty: Watching The Wildness Unfold

  Chapter Twenty-One: The Sweetest Sight

  Chapter Twenty-Two: I Am The Ambush

  Chapter Twenty-Three: Giggling And Guffawing

  Chapter Twenty-Four: Something Stern And Clear

  Chapter Twenty-Five: Echoes In The Weave

  Chapter Twenty-Six: Fear The Unseen

  Chapter Twenty-Seven: Until You Can Rest Forever

  Chapter Twenty-Eight: Win Yourself A Happier Ending

  Chapter Twenty-Nine: Doing What Needs To Be Done

  Chapter Thirty: Last Things

  Welcome to Faerûn, a land of magic and intrigue, brutal violence and divine compassion, where gods have ascended and died, and mighty heroes have risen to fight terrifying monsters. Here, millennia of warfare and conquest have shaped dozens of unique cultures, raised and leveled shining kingdoms and tyrannical empires alike, and left long forgotten, horror-infested ruins in their wake.

  A LAND OF MAGIC

  When the goddess of magic was murdered, a magical plague of blue fire—the Spellplague—swept across the face of Faerûn, killing some, mutilating many, and imbuing a rare few with amazing supernatural abilities. The Spellplague forever changed the nature of magic itself, and seeded the land with hidden wonders and bloodcurdling monstrosities.

  A LAND OF DARKNESS

  The threats Faerûn faces are legion. Armies of undead mass in Thay under the brilliant but mad lich king Szass Tam. Treacherous dark elves plot in the Underdark in the service of their cruel and fickle goddess, Lolth. The Abolethic Sovereignty, a terrifying hive of inhuman slave masters, floats above the Sea of Fallen Stars, spreading chaos and destruction. And the Empire of Netheril, armed with magic of unimaginable power, prowls Faerûn in flying fortresses, sowing discord to their own incalculable ends.

  A LAND OF HEROES

  But Faerûn is not without hope. Heroes have emerged to fight the growing tide of darkness. Battle-scarred rangers bring their notched blades to bear against marauding hordes of orcs. Lowly street rats match wits with demons for the fate of cities. Inscrutable tiefling warlocks unite with fierce elf warriors to rain fire and steel upon monstrous enemies. And valiant servants of merciful gods forever struggle against the darkness.

  A LAND OF

  UNTOLD ADVENTURE

  CHAPTER

  ONE

  A DARKER FATE FOR ME

  He had been falling forever.

  Drifting. Sifting. Down, down, trickling through cold, stony darkness in a vague, half-awake state as his ashes worked their separate ways down through earth and rocks and stone dust, into … open emptiness amid the chill rock. It was a cavern of the Underdark, part of a network—Elminster knew this from the gentle but ceaseless flow of damp, mineral-scented air drifting from distant elsewheres.

  Whole once more—well, as “whole” as a swirling cloud of ashes could be—he turned to face the source of that breeze. He was back in the Underdark, and curiously safer than on all of his previous visits. To travel alone in the Underdark is to be desperate and all too often swiftly doomed, but he was now drifting along bodiless, attractive prey to nothing. He hoped.

  He drifted along seeking a body, just as so many stealthy hunters in the deep gloom all around him were no doubt doing. In the endless dance of death in the
dark, El sang silently to himself, recalling one of his favorites among Storm’s ballads. Ah, but she and he had been at this for a long time …

  Serving Mystra. Our Lady of Mysteries, the goddess of magic. Who had been swept away in the Spellplague, but had returned. “Returned” after a fashion, that is. Lessened, to be sure. Yet She was his beloved tyrant now as before, her commandments were still the map by which Elminster steered his life.

  However difficult or nonsensical that life might sometimes seem, without Her his life would have ended long, long ago, though it might have been a much easier, happier life. Still … he’d felt lost without her, the past century. Obeying Mystra had become not just habit, but what gave him purpose.

  Mystra had ordered Elminster to recruit Cormyr’s wizards of war to her service, so he would do that. She’d told him to work with Manshoon, so he’d try to do so. Though the founder of the Zhentarim was as hot as ever to destroy a certain Sage of Shadowdale, El could not—would not—seek to slay Manshoon. No matter how richly the mad fool deserved to be blasted apart … or torn asunder and left to perish in slow agony. No matter how much Elminster ached to break him, humble him, and then destroy him forever.

  He found himself staring at memories of Manshoon’s startled, furious, and pain-wracked face on the various occasions when El had humbled or slain him … and as those images rose into his mind in a long and varied flood, his flare of rage faded into satisfaction. He had dealt with the founder of the Zhentarim fittingly before, and likely would again, in time to come.

  Now, though, his orders ran along different lines. He and Manshoon were to gather blueflame, and Mystra also wanted her trusted Elminster to train his descendant Amarune Whitewave to succeed him, in time, as her Chosen.

  Her young, defiant face came to mind. Spirited, reckless, beautiful. El tried to sigh, his ashes swirling with the effort. His successor; he knew very well what sort of life that would mean for Amarune. El wanted very much to guard Rune, to hide her and watch over her very closely, to keep her from even a tiny measure of what he’d suffered … but that would be a mistake, likely a fatal error. A coddled Chosen would be weak, easily shattered. Rune was going to have to take what the likes of Manshoon would delight in hurling at her.

  Not that Elminster of Shadowdale could protect her properly just now, anyway. Here he was, bodiless again. Easily defeated by the mad, weakened dolt Manshoon had become. The powers of the Chosen of Mystra were almost all lost to him, his own Art faded far from what it had once been … and the Spellplague had shattered and twisted all magecraft. Many spells were now nigh useless, difficult at short range and impossible from afar—and dangerous to a caster’s mind, regardless. Every last spell that sought to pry into or control minds, translocate, or detect things was unreliable and fraught with peril, and most of them were beyond Elminster’s skills as long as he lacked a body to study and incant and recall magics no longer familiar.

  Aye, the shattering of the Weave—of Mystra, who was the Weave—had wrought great change in the Art. Just as the Realms themselves had been transformed, with entire lands fading away and being replaced. Yet not everything had changed. Not down in the Underdark, for instance. Where the usual dangers were still … usual.

  Elminster drifted, keeping close to the rocky floor to avoid being swept apart if the breeze strengthened. Eerie glows beckoned here and there, the barely visible amethyst hues of rock radiations and the brighter, varicolored radiances of scores of fungi—some edible, some ambulatory and semi-sentient, and all of them dangerous. That standstool was deadly to eat, and this nearer one deadly just to touch, whereas yonder scabrous green-white and brown growths stole body heat from any living creature that ventured too near … aye, being bodiless had its advantages. Thank the twisted humors of the gods for such small favors.

  Elminster drifted along, shaping his ash motes into a long, undulating line, hoping that if he were spotted—for a man who sought a body to inhabit risked such—he’d be mistaken for an errant strand of cave spiderweb. And down here, such would most likely be alert patrols of drow.

  Ah! To think of a foe is to find him, as the saying went. Hastening out of yon side passage, at full speed were sleek black bodies, a score or more, heavily armored. A drow war band, ready for battle but moving with more speed than prudence; warriors fronting spider priestesses. The shapely backs of a few of Lolth’s holy worshipers were acrawl with message spiders, and many tame blade spiders scurried alongside the patrol and across the rock ceiling above … eight such, nay, ten … twelve, other sorts of spiders among them, like an eagerly hurrying pack of war-hounds. Definitely a war band.

  El had little hope of finding whence they’d come, but wherever they were bound in such a hurry could only be … interesting. A battle meant bodies, and a drow or drow foe weakened or mind-mazed might offer the perfect new body for a down-to-ashes old archmage. Not that he’d puzzled over this decision; he was already rushing after the drow as they sped down the passage, faces into the breeze, heading along an obviously familiar route.

  He felt their destination before he saw it. Those who worked long with the Weave grew used to feeling the ebbs and flows of natural forces, and even with his might gone, El could feel a strange, unsettling pulsing, a repeated echoing, a rippling …

  Rippling, aye, that was the best word. Wave after wave of … weakness, a momentary sucking emptiness succeeded by a surge of energies, then weakness again, rolling over him repeatedly like waves heading for a beach. Ripples that grew stronger as the drow rushed on, headed for the source of the disturbance. It was something that could now be seen ahead, pulsing in time to the ripples he felt. With each sucking, reflections of purple-blue radiance flashed across the rocks, then faded as the next surge of energy came, then flashed again, over and over.

  Elminster had seen that particular hue before. That precise shade of glowing purple-blue meant a rift. The drow were rushing to a planar rift, a break where his own world and another had connected by way of a breach uncontrolled and inevitably growing or changing … seldom for the better. Hence the feeling of weakness: the very fabric of Faerûn was being tugged or sucked at nearby, somewhere up ahead.

  The drow rushed on, forcing El to hurry to keep up. Other drow war bands streamed out of side passages into the widening way ahead, all of them racing toward the rift. The passage rose, curved, then hooked around a great shoulder of rock into a large cavern where several passages converged—and a purple-blue sea was raging.

  The rift was like a great giant’s eye on its side, opening vertically to flood its purple-blue light across the cave, its pulse a deep, thunderous, inexorable heartbeat.

  And out of the dazzling heart of the rift, a nightmare menagerie was pouring out into the cavern and crashing into an outnumbered, battered line of drow who struggled to stop them, weapons flashing. This was the battle the drow war bands were rushing to join.

  The beasts from the rift surged into the drow defenders, charging and sometimes rearing above the dark elves. There were hulking, shell-armored monsters with great mandibles and long, barbed stabbing antennae—or what looked like antennae. They were the largest, but were outnumbered by tigerlike cats that savaged the drow with the snapping jaws that darted and lunged at the end of the long, eel-like tentacles that sprouted in profusion from their powerful leonine shoulders. There were stranger rift creatures, too, including pillarlike glistening things that swayed as they fought, spitting long needles with deadly aim, lances that impaled dark elves and plucked them off their booted feet and hurled them away to crash against the cavern walls.

  A great bloody fray raged in front of the rift, as the endless flood of monsters struggled over a growing heap of bodies, fallen drow mingled with a wild variety of dead or dying rift beasts. El could see great cages along the far walls of the cavern, barred enclosures rocking under the frenzied attempts of caged monsters to break out.

  So this rift had been there long enough for local drow to mount a standing guard over it, and to
establish a routine of capturing or slaying the beasts arriving through it. Aye, the creatures in that cage were probably intended as steeds, those in yonder distant cage as pack beasts, and the smaller motley heaps of squirming, crowded beasts filling that line of cages were probably intended to become food. If El knew anything at all about drow, they’d be seeking monsters they could use as weapons against Underdark foes, too.

  Aye, probably the beasts in those cages, the ones almost buried in struggling drow and newly arrived monsters. A creature that looked like a great razor-toothed lamprey, and as large as the oldest sawmill back in Shadowdale, briefly reared up out of the tumult to shed struggling drow into a rain of blood-drenched dark elf body parts … and El got a glimpse of shattered, open cages beyond it.

  Empty cages. Monsters had gotten free in the midst of the fighting, and were taking savage revenge on their captors.

  Not that any drow seemed chastened or frightened in the slightest. The war band El had followed hurled itself into the nearest fighting without hesitation, the spiders racing up rift monster bodies to where they could bite and stab, the dark elf warriors drawing blades and plunging into the slaughter, and the priestesses stopping just shy of the fray to work a flurry of spells.

  Ah, but mindless combat is always popular entertainment, El reminded himself wryly—then stopped, gaping in unthinking astonishment. Below him, priestesses gasped and cursed aloud, awed by the same sight.

  The vivid purple-blue light of the rift had momentarily darkened, occluded by something gigantic moving through it, crushing smaller beasts in its way as it came, wriggling and humping like a gigantic inchworm. It slid out into the cavern, vast and glistening and blood red, its huge maw gulping a path through struggling dark elves and monsters alike.

  Then it reared, towering. It was a worm, of a sort El had seen only once before—but that one had been a tortured captive in Avernus, an imprisoned, keeningly insane hulk cruelly enchanted to continually regrow itself as it was endlessly devoured alive by an ever-changing rabble of lesser devils. This one was no captive, and it was aroused and hungry, its great helm-shaped head almost black with rage.