Bury Elminster Deep Read online

  I am the fire in all things. That whisper came soft and calm, uttered only in the depths of their shared mind.

  Then Mystra seemed to shake herself and added, “More than ever, El, I need your service. You I can truly trust, where so many others have turned from me or fallen. I can coerce, of course, but I will no longer make that mistake of lesser gods. The work of slaves is nigh worthless. For deeds to have true and lasting meaning, they must done willingly. Elminster Aumar, El mine, are you still mine? Are you with me?”

  “As ever,” Elminster burst out, finding himself on the choking edge of tears in an instant. “Goddess, command me!”

  Blue fire flooded through him, leaving him gasping, overwhelmed by Mystra’s pleased satisfaction.

  “You must be my roving hands, skulking alone,” she said, eyes flashing with resolve, showing power enough to make Amarune’s mind cower. “I charge you to preserve magic wherever and whenever you can, keeping to the shadows as much as possible. Bold confrontations and invoking my name are clumsy marks of pride I would fain put behind me forever. So, El, be my—forgive me, Amarune—my Silent Shadow.”

  Amarune fought to make her lips gasp; El was too distracted to relinquish control over them. He felt amusement washing through his mind on tides of blue fire as Rune managed her gasp, then gave him a rueful mental shove as she yielded her mouth back to him. It was some moments later before he managed to reply, “Lady, I will.”

  “Employ disguises. Be the thief you once so ably were in Hastarl. Steal and copy magic, and then hide the copies so that, whatever befalls the originals, my Art will survive for those yet unborn.”

  “Lady,” Elminster repeated, “I will.”

  “Recruit new Chosen, and gather them here for me to confer with. I need many, and they must be different from my daughters and from each other, for that kinship was another misstep. Yet, we both know how rarely the needed loyalty and strength are found together—and above all, I must have those I can trust.”

  El nodded, remembering Khelben and Sammaster, Laeral, and too many elven ladies who were all so willing, yet had faded so swiftly under the ravages of too much Art. Betrayals, defiances, independence, and weaknesses. Gone, now, all of them. Gone …

  His Alassra, fled and mad somewhere, brain-burned by the roaring Blue Fire that was not Mystra, the plague of wild fury that had snuffed out the lives of thousands in a blazing instant, and many more in the days and seasons that had followed …

  “Lady,” he said huskily, “I will.”

  “Continue what you have done so well for so long: preserve and strengthen the Art—not magic bestowed by others, but magics worked by the caster’s own craft and knowledge.”

  “Lady, I’ve done that for so long,” El told her truthfully, “that I do not know if I could now refrain from doing so. It is what I do.”

  “It is. Yet the fall of Azoun heralded your newest task. It is time to do what Storm and Dove have both suggested. By any means you deem best—becoming their head or turning their leaders to my service—recruit Cormyr’s wizards of war. They must become the ready allies, helping hands, and spies for all my Chosen.”

  All my Chosen?

  Ah, Storm and Alassra, of course. If there were more, and Mystra desired him to know of them, she would reveal them …

  She was right, of course. If he was to manage any of these tasks, he sorely needed new allies—with his own body lost to him, Alassra crazed, Storm’s magic all but gone, and the work already far more than he and Storm could handle.

  “Soon enough, you’ll again have a body of your own,” Mystra murmured among El’s racing thoughts. She was reading them, of course, and—

  “In the meantime,” the goddess whispered, “I can aid the one you have. You have been sorely wounded in my service.”

  The silver-blue fires changed, and in the mind they were sharing, Amarune recoiled in fear.

  The floating eyes flared larger, brighter … and nearer.

  “Embrace me,” Mystra commanded.

  Somewhat warily, with Amarune on the verge of whimpering at the back of their shared mind—an image of her fearful staring eyes flaring to outshine Mystra’s huge orbs—Elminster stepped forward and spread his arms wide.

  The shield-sized eyes of silver-blue drifted together, merging in smooth silence right in front of him, and flaring into silver lightning that shocked through him. His arms flew apart convulsively, and then tightened again around the lightning as if it were something solid he could crush. Not that Elminster was thinking of crushing anything.

  Or thinking at all.

  He was too busy screaming in pain.

  The high, throat-stripping shriek of a young female dancer lost in agony and horror spat out of him into the night, as lightning slammed through him, his every hair standing on end like a straining dagger, snapped back out of him, then roared back into him again. It was as if a thousand spears thrust through him, tore back out, and then thrust right back in repeatedly through the same gaping wounds.

  Elminster was dimly aware of falling to his knees and shuddering helplessly. He was caught on the bright spears of lightning, unable to collapse onto his face … unable to do anything.

  Every time the lightnings snarled out of him, they took life with them, vitality that was not returned when they stormed in again.

  Amarune was sobbing, or trying to, but her body could not breathe, could no longer make a sound. Her brain was awash in roaring silver fire, flames of power that thundered through her mind and might well have destroyed it had Elminster not been grimly fighting to stay himself, to cling to what was Elminster of Shadowdale amid the hungry fires of a goddess.

  Around him, blue fire was being beaten back by silver flames, flames that circled him—and then darted into him.

  Elminster tried to scream, but all that came out was a strangled squeak.

  Mystra—if it was Mystra—had drained much energy from his borrowed body but was now at work on steadying his mind, forcing back the roiling blue fires that had lurked there for nigh a hundred years.

  “There, my champion,” Mystra whispered as tenderly as any mother. “Go forth renewed. Greater and more magic you can now work without madness coming upon you, but not an unlimited amount. I cannot do more. Go now, until next we meet.”

  Silver fire left him then, leaving only chill darkness.

  Elminster stood forlorn, blind in the darkness.

  Something soft and tender stroked his face and arm, turning him and leading him back. Out and up, stumbling over unseen things underfoot, once more into the moonlight.

  Weak and dazed, reeling, with Amarune cowering in mute terror in a corner of their shared mind, Elminster shivered in the night.

  Bare and chilled, feeling sick and empty—kiss of Mystra, half of Rune’s energy must be gone—he staggered up rises and down slopes, through countless trees. The way was not long, but he would have been lost had a tiny silver star not guided him until the dark bulk of the little lodge loomed out of the night.

  He leaned against its front wall beside the door, shuddering, until he could master his breathing enough to stand upright and square his—her—shoulders.

  Amarune was still drawn into herself, but El could put the pain and horror of the lightning firmly behind him and take satisfaction in the healing that had been done to him.

  By his goddess.

  His Mystra.

  Aye, Mystra was alive and in the realms still.

  A part of him wanted to shout that to the stars above, to bellow it until folk came awake in their beds in Suzail to sit up listening.

  And a part of him wanted to keep it so secret that not even the young nobleman inside the hut would begin to suspect it.

  Let alone Manshoon or any other wizard of power.

  Elminster threw back his head, drew in a deep breath—and smiled at the tiny silver flash of farewell that winked out in the darkness above his nose. Then he eased open the door with a fingertip and stepped inside as quietly as he co
uld.

  The hearth was dim, almost out, but someone had lit the brazier tray fixed in its spark-shield frame behind the door. Its dancing glow fell upon blankets frozen in the usual twisted chaos left behind when sleepers arise—

  And it fell upon Storm Silverhand, her shirt-clad body bent back in a graceful bow on the floor. Someone had hogtied her to a leg of the table and her hair was over her face. She lay unmoving. Dead or senseless.

  She’d been bound with Arclath’s belt.

  The door slammed behind Elminster. He spun around, managing to quell Rune’s instinctive urge to leap back and away. He might need to be close.

  As he’d expected, he faced a half-dressed Lord Arclath Delcastle, who waved his sword threateningly. Behind its bright edge—and above the burning brazier—the young nobleman held the coffer in which Storm had been carrying Elminster’s ashes.

  Arclath’s eyes, as he glared at El, were like two dagger points.

  “Luckily for my Amarune’s sake,” he snapped, “you seem unaware that even fine, upstanding nobles of Cormyr learn a few tawdry secrets of the realm—and lack scruples in exploiting them. The uses of darfly-sting essence, for instance. It brings on instant, topple-on-your-face sleep at the slightest scratch and can be found on the heads of the takedown arrows that Highknights of Cormyr hide in the same spot in every royal hunting lodge across the realm. Sleep that takes even legendary silver-haired bards blessed by the gods, it seems.”

  Elminster sighed and shook his head, and then he lunged back as the bright tip of Arclath’s sword hissed past his throat.

  Inside the mind they shared, El threw all his exasperation at Amarune, who spasmed like a speared fish, sent fury back at him, and stared at Arclath.

  “Your ashes!” the nobleman hissed, shaking the coffer. “I’ll destroy them if you don’t surrender Amarune to me.”

  He bent into a lunge that kept his sword up and menacing Elminster as he lowered the box into the flames of the brazier. They flared up and crackled, right on cue.

  “Wizard, get out of her right now! Or you die!”

  He flicked his blade so its tip pointed at Storm’s throat, where she lay with her head on the floor, silver hair fallen across her face.

  “And so does she!”

  CHAPTER

  TWO

  THE WORD OF A NOBLEMAN

  In all my long years of pomp and splendor

  Of revels and feasts and grand High Court balls,

  I’ve found little that’s worth more than a good back rub

  And nothing that’s worth less than the word of a nobleman.

  Marchioness Althea Bleth,

  One Old Crone’s Simperings: Seventy Seasons at Court

  published in the Year of Lurking Death

  Amarune found to her astonishment that Elminster sat silently idle in her mind, all of his control over her body gone. She was free to speak and act just as she pleased.

  After a moment of startlement, she burst out, “Arclath, what’re you doing? You idiot!”

  “Elminster,” the young noble snapped, glaring at her, “don’t try to trick me! I know it’s you speaking, not my Rune! Let her go! Get out of her, and stay out! Or I’ll destroy all that’s left of you!” He waved the coffer menacingly.

  Elminster took control again, so swiftly that all Rune could do was blink.

  “Oh,” he made her body reply, this time in the unmistakable drawl of the Sage of Shadowdale when he was being curious. “How?”

  “I’ll burn these ashes in the … fire.”

  Arclath’s voice fell as his anger faltered into confusion.

  “And? They’re ashes, dolt! What do they teach nobles of Cormyr these days, I wonder?” El replied, now sounding for all the world like an arch and mincing marchioness of elder years.

  “I—” Arclath’s blade wavered back and forth and then thrust toward Storm. “Well, I can still …”

  Amarune strode forward to plant herself right in front of the nobleman’s face, her hands on her hips. He winced and flushed.

  “Arclath,” she spat, her voice very much her own again and full of all the disappointment she felt, “you broke your word, didn’t you? You swore as a Delcastle, did you not?”

  “I … I did. My word is my honor and that of House Delcastle. But, my lady, I discovered something here this night. I—”

  “What could you possibly discover,” she said, eyes flaring in anger, “that excuses breaking your word?”

  Arclath reddened even more but he kept his gaze steady on hers. “I discovered,” he replied, “that when you are endangered, I will sacrifice my honor—and everything else, by all the gods—in an instant. I did this for you.”

  Amarune trembled, tears welling up, and before her voice might fail her, she rushed out the words, “You struck down one friend so you could better threaten the other? Why? Are you mad?”

  “I—perhaps I am. I know not what to do. I don’t know if I’m talking to my beloved or to Elminster holding you captive in your own head … or facing something more sinister. Shapechangers once infested the Wheloon lands, and the war wizards never got them all.”

  Amarune sighed out fresh frustration and took a step back. “I am myself, thank you, Arclath. Though I have no idea how I’ll be able to prove it to you.”

  She started to pace, and then she stopped and flung back at him over one bare shoulder, “Can you take nothing on trust?”

  The young lord gave her a crooked smile. “Evidently not.”

  She took an imploring step back toward him, reaching out—but he raised his sword again, adding in a growl, “I dare not.”

  Rune glared at him, tears spilling over, and whispered, “So what will you have me do, Arclath?”

  They stared at each other for what seemed a long time, as the brazier crackled.

  “And what,” Rune whispered, tears running down her face, “will you be able to do, to make me ever trust you again, Lord Delcastle? Answer me that!”

  The shop doorbell tinkled merrily as the heavily scented merchant’s wife sailed out, pleased with her purchase.

  The alchemist sat back with a sigh, glad to see the back of her. Sixteen vials sampled, none chosen, and an ointment that had been buried on a high back shelf beneath three seasons’ dust preferred instead. By a woman who seemed to think it was highsun and not the middle of the night when weary men must be roused from their beds to serve her. Gods-cursed highnoses …

  He set to work tidying up. “If I didn’t need so stlarned much coin just to live in this noble-infested city …”

  A sympathetic chuckle from behind the curtain over his shoulder reminded Sraunter that he wasn’t alone.

  The fear that never left him reminded him that this particular guest was never to be kept waiting. He hastened off his stool and through the curtain.

  “S-sorry, lord,” he stammered. “I—”

  “I know you are, Sraunter. No matter, and no apology needed. Commerce must come first. Not to mention the damage to your trade if Nechelseiya Sammartael thought you’d slighted her. Word of it would be all over Suzail before sunrise.”

  “Ah, indeed,” Sraunter agreed, leading the way past the man who’d conquered his mind so easily three nights back, to reveal what until then had been his greatest secret.

  Alchemists were more feared than loved, and if they desired long careers, they needed powerful secret weapons. These were to be his latest—if he ever learned some manner of commanding them. Until then, they could at least serve as a deadly trap against thieves. Or so he’d schemed, before Manshoon had stepped into his life.

  In his fearful haste, Sraunter had some trouble with the locks, fumbling with the chains and the dummy padlock. Twice he dropped the key that opened the hidden coffer that held the real key.

  Manshoon smiled an easy smile. “There’s no particular haste, diligent alchemist. Unless, of course, Goodwife Sammartael takes it into her head to return for something else.”

  That horrible thought made Sraunter
drop the padlock on his toe.

  His involuntary roar and hopping ended as swiftly as he could master himself. He was still wincing, teeth clenched, as he put his shoulder to the door and flung it wide in a loud rattle of chains.

  His guest stayed right where he was.

  “There’s no particular need to move them, is there?”

  “N-no, lord. None at all.”

  Sraunter hastened into his strongroom and across to the cage Manshoon had come to see. His guest could take his home and shop and everything in it—blackfire, his very mind!—whenever the whim took him, after all.

  Face it, he was a slave already, and slaves enjoyed better lives when their masters were content.

  Sraunter undid his special knot and drew back the nearest half of the hide cover. The five occupants of the cage flew in smooth unison to its revealed front, the better to hover there and peer out through the bars.

  Five little spheres, each the size of a blacksmith’s fist. Beholderkin, their tiny eyestalks like so many writhing worms, eager to gaze upon something and do it harm, hissing in malevolence.

  And falling silent as the smiling man just beyond the doorway thrust his mind into all of theirs at once, overwhelming them as easily as he’d humbled Sraunter.

  That terrible smile grew.

  “Acceptable, Sraunter, most acceptable. Five little flying steeds, whenever I need them. Release them.”

  “R-release them?”

  “At once. Give them the freedom of your strongroom. What with all the locks and chains, you use it seldom, do you not?”

  “Well, yes, but—”

  Sraunter found that the objection he’d been going to raise had vanished from his mind, and his astonished anger with it. A malicious glee rose in him, twisting his dour face into a grin that sought to mirror the smile on his guest’s face.

  Oh, Watching Gods Above, what will become of me? he thought.

  “The time for all ‘buts’ is long past, Sraunter,” Manshoon purred. “You’ll see the coming sunrise in as much health as you enjoy now, believe me—and you can believe me. I am no courtier of Cormyr nor yet one of its noblemen. My word means something.”