The Making of a Mage Read online

  “Does he still live?”

  Helm shook his head. “Most of Athalantar knows what befell; the magelords made sure we all heard. They turned him into a boar during a hunt, an’ he was slain by his own underpriests.”

  Elminster shuddered despite himself, but all he said was, “The next prince?”

  “Felodar—the one who went off to Calimshan. Gold and gems are his love; he left the realm before Uthgrael died, seeking them. Wherever he went, he fostered trade betwixt there and here, pleasing the king very much—an’ bringing Athalantar what little name an’ wealth it has in Faerûn beyond the Delimbiyr valley today. I think the king’d have been less pleased if he’d known Felodar was raking in gold coins as fast as he could close his hands on them … trading in slaves, drugs, an’ dark magic. He’s still doing that, as far as I know, at least chin deep in the intrigues of Calimshan.” Helm chuckled suddenly “He’s even hired mages an’ sent them here to work spells against Belaur’s magelords.”

  “Not one to turn thy back on, for even a quick breath?” Elminster asked wryly, and Helm grinned and nodded.

  “Last, there’s Nrymm, the youngest. A timid, frail, sullen little brat, as I recall. He was brought up by women of the court after the queen’s death, an’ may never have stepped outside the gates of Athalgard in his life. He disappeared about four summers ago.”

  “Dead?”

  Helm shrugged. “That, or held captive somewhere by the magelords so they have another blood heir of Uthgrael in their power should anything happen to Belaur.”

  Elminster reached for the flask; Helm handed it over. The youth drank carefully, sneezed once, and handed it back. He licked his lips, and said, “Ye don’t make it sound a noble thing to be a prince of Athalantar.”

  Helm shrugged. “It’s for every prince, himself, to make it a noble thing; a duty most princes these days seem to forget.”

  Elminster looked down at the Lion Sword, which had somehow found its way into his hands again. “What should I do now?”

  Helm shrugged. “Go west, to the Horn Hills, and run with the outlaws there. Learn how to live hard, an’ use a blade—an’ kill. Your revenge, lad, isn’t catching one mage in a privy an’ running a sword up his backside—the gods have set ye up against far too many princes an’ wizards an’ hired lickspittle armsmen for that. Even if they all lined up and presented their behinds, your arm’d grow tired before the job was done.”

  He sighed and added, “Ye spoke truth when ye said it’ll be your life’s work. Ye have to be less the dreamy boy an’ more the knight, an’ somehow keep well clear of magelords until ye’ve learned how to stay alive more’n one battle, when the armsmen of Athalantar come looking to kill ye. Most of ‘em aren’t much in a fight—but right now, neither are ye. Go to the hills and offer your blade to the outlaws at least two winters. In the cities, everything is under the hand—an’ the taint—of wizards. Evil rules, and good men must needs be outlaws—or corpses—if they’re to stay good. So be ye an outlaw an’ learn to be a good one.” He did not quite smile as he added, “If ye survive, travel Faerûn until ye find a weapon sharp enough to slay Neldryn—and then come back, and do it.”

  “Slay who?”

  “Neldryn Hawklyn—probably the most powerful of the magelords.”

  Elminster eyed him with sudden fire in his blue-gray eyes. “Ye said ye knew no names of magelords! Is this what a knight of Athalantar calls ‘truth’?”

  Helm spat aside, into the darkness. “Truth?” He leaned forward. “Just what is ‘truth,’ boy?”

  Elminster frowned. “It is what it is,” he said icily. “I know of no hidden meanings.”

  “ ’Truth,” Helm said, “is a weapon. Remember that.”

  Silence hung between them for a long moment, and then Elminster said, “Right, I’ve learned thy clever lesson. Tell me then, O wise knight: how much else of all ye’ve said can I trust? About my father and my uncles?”

  Helm hid a smile. When this lad’s voice grew quiet, it betokened danger. No bluster about this one. He deserved a fair answer, well enough. The knight said simply, “All of it. As best I know. If ye’re still hungry for names to work revenge on, add these to thy tally: Magelords Seldinor Stormcloak and Kadeln Olothstar—but I’d not know the faces of any of the three if I bumped noses with them in a brothel bathing pool.”

  Elminster regarded the unshaven, stinking man steadily. “Ye are not what I expected a knight of Athalantar to be.”

  Helm met his gaze squarely. “Ye thought to see shining armor, Prince? Astride a white horse as tall as a cottage? Courtly manners? Noble sacrifices? Not in this world, lad—not since the Queen of the Hunt died.”

  “Who?”

  Helm sighed and looked away. “I forget ye know naught of your own realm. Queen Syndrel Hornweather; your granddam, Uthgrael’s queen, an’ mistress of all his stag hunts.” He looked into the darkness, and added softly, “She was the most beautiful lady I’ve ever seen.”

  Elminster got up abruptly. “My thanks for this, Helm Stoneblade. I must be on my way before any of thy fellow wolves return from plundering Heldon. If the gods smile, we shall meet again.”

  Helm looked up at him. “I hope so, lad. I hope so—an’ let it be when Athalantar is free of magelords again, an’ my ‘fellow wolves,’ the true knights of Athalantar, can ride again.”

  He held out his hands. The flask was in one, and the bread in the other.

  “Go west, to the Horn Hills,” he said roughly, “an’ take care not to be seen. Move at dusk an’ dawn, and keep to fields and forest. Ware armsmen at patrol. Out there, they slay first, an’ ask thy corpse its business after. Never forget: the blades the wizards hire are not knights; today’s armsmen of Athalantar have no honor.” He spat to one side thoughtfully and added, “If ye meet with outlaws, tell them Helm sent ye, an’ ye’re to be trusted.”

  Elminster took the bread and the flask. Their eyes met, and he nodded his thanks.

  “Remember,” Helm said, “tell no one thy true name—an’ don’t ask fool questions about princes or magelords, either. Be someone else ’til ’tis time.”

  Elminster nodded. “Have my trust, Sir Knight, and my thanks.” He turned with all the gravity of his twelve winters and strode away to the mouth of the cavern.

  The knight came after, grinning. Then he said, “Wait, lad—take my sword; ye’ll need it. Best ye keep that hilt of thine out of sight.”

  The boy stopped and turned, trying not to show his excitement. A blade of his own! “What will ye use?” Elminster asked, taking the heavy, plain sword that the knight’s dirty hands put into his. Buckles clinked and leather flapped, and a scabbard followed it.

  Helm shrugged. “I’ll loot me another. I’m supposed to serve any prince of the realm with my sword, so …”

  Elminster smiled suddenly and swung the sword through the air, holding it with both hands. It felt reassuringly deadly; with it in his hands, he was powerful. He thrust at an imaginary foe, and the point of the blade lifted a little.

  Helm gave him a fierce grin. “Aye—take it, and go!”

  Elminster took a few steps out into the meadow … and then spun around and grinned back at the knight. Then he turned again to the sunlit meadow, the scabbarded blade cradled carefully in his hands, and ran.

  Helm took a dagger from his belt and a stone from the floor, shook his head, and went out to kill sheep, wondering when he’d hear of the lad’s death. Still, the first duty of a knight is to make the realm shine in the dreams of small boys—or where else will the knights of tomorrow arise, and what will become of the realm?

  At that thought, his smile faded. What will become of Athalantar, indeed?

  TWO

  WOLVES IN WINTER

  Know that the purpose of families, in the eyes of the Morninglord at least, is to make each generation a little better than the one before: stronger, perhaps, or wiser; richer, or more capable. Some folk manage one of these aims; the best and the most fortunate manage more tha
n one. That is the task of parents. The task of a ruler is to make, or keep, a realm that allows most of its subjects to see better in their striving, down the generations, than a single improvement.

  THORNDAR ERLIN, HIGH PRIEST OF LATHANDER TEACHINGS OF THE MORNING’S GLORY YEAR OF THE FALLEN FURY

  He was huddled in the icy white heart of a swirling snowstorm, in the Hammer of Winter, that cruel month when men and sheep alike were found frozen hard and the winds howled and shrieked through the Horn Hills night and day, blowing snows in blinding clouds across the barren highlands. It was the Year of the Loremasters, though Elminster cared not a whit. All he cared about was that it was another cold season, his fourth since Heldon burned—and he was growing very weary of them.

  A hand clapped him on one thick-clad shoulder. He patted it in reply. Sargeth had the keenest eyes of them all; his touch meant he’d spotted the patrol through the curtain of driving snow. El watched him reach the other way to pass on another warning. The six outlaws, bundled up in layers upon layers of stolen and corpse-stripped cloth until they looked like the fat and shuffling rag golems of fireside fear-tales, kicked their way out of the warmth of their snowbank, fumbled to draw blades with hands clad in thick-bound rags, and waddled down into the cleft.

  Wind struck hard as they came down into the narrow space between the rocks, howling billowing snow around and past them. Engarl struggled to keep his feet as the wind tugged at the long lance he bore. He’d taken it from an armsman who’d needed it no more—Engarl had brought him down with a carefully slung stone before the leaves had started to fall.

  The outlaws chose their spots, flopped down to kneel in the snows, and dug in. Snow streamed around and past them, and as they settled into stillness, it cloaked them in concealing whiteness, making them mere lumps and billows of snow in the storm.

  “Gods damn all wizards!” The voice, borne by the winds, seemed startlingly close.

  So did the reply. “None o’ that. Ye know better than such talk.”

  “I might. My frozen feet don’t. They’d much prefer to be next to a crackling fire, back in—”

  “All of our feet’d rather be there. They will be, gods willing, soon enough. Swording outlaws’ll warm ye, if ye’re sharp-eyed enough to find any. Now belt up!”

  “Perhaps,” Elminster commented calmly, knowing the wind would sweep his words behind him, away from the armsmen, “the gods have other plans.”

  He could just hear an answering chuckle from off to his left: Sargeth. A moment more … Then he heard a sharp query, crunching snow, and the high whinny of a startled horse. The brothers had attacked. Arghel struck first, and then Baerold gave the call—from behind, if he could get there.

  It came, a roar as much like the triumph-call of a wolf as Baerold could make it. Horses reared, cried out, and bucked in the deep snows on all sides. The patrol was on top of them.

  Elminster rose up out of the snow like a vengeful ghost, sword drawn. To lie still could mean being ridden over and trampled. He saw a flicker of light through the whirling whiteness, as the nearest armsman drew steel.

  A moment later, Engarl’s awkwardly bobbing lance took the armsman in the throat. He choked, sobbed wetly around blood as the horse under him plunged on, and then he fell, head flopping, taking the lance with him. Elminster wasted no time on the dying man; another armsman off to the right in the swirling storm was trying to spur past him through the cleft.

  El ran through the slithery snow as fast as he could, the way the outlaws had shown him, rocking comically from side to side to keep from slipping in the light drifts. All of the outlaws looked like drunken bears when they ran in deep snow. As slow as he was, the horse was even slower; its hooves were slipping in the potholes that marked the trail here, and it danced and stamped for footing, nearly tossing its rider.

  The armsman saw Elminster and leaned forward to hack the outlaw. Elminster ducked back, let the blade sing past, and charged in at the man’s leg, clawing with one hand as he blocked a return of the man’s blade with the edge of his own.

  The overbalanced man in armor howled in rising despair, waved his free arm wildly in a vain attempt to find a handhold in empty air—and crashed heavily from his saddle, bouncing in the snow at Elminster’s feet. El drove his blade into the man’s neck while the spray of snow still shielded the man’s face, shuddered as the man spasmed under his steel, and then flopped back into the snow, limp. Four years ago he’d discovered he had no love of killing … and it hadn’t grown much easier since.

  Yet it was slay or be slain out here in the outlaw-haunted hills; Elminster sprang away from the man, glancing about in the confusion of swirling snows and muffled tumult of churning hooves.

  There was a grunt, a roar of pain, and the heavy thudding of body and armor striking snow-cloaked ground off to the left, followed by a wail that ended abruptly. Elminster shuddered again, but kept his blade up warily. This was when outlaws who’d grown tired of their fellows sometimes decided to make a mistake, under the cloak of the storming snow, and bring down someone who was not an armsman of Athalantar.

  El expected no such treachery from his companions … but only the gods knew the hearts of men. Like most in the Horn Hills—those who revered Helm Stoneblade and hated the magelords, at least—this band made no war on common folk. Not wanting to bring down the wrath of the wizards on farmers whose stable straw sometimes served as warm beds and whose frozen and forgotten pot roots could be dug up by men near starvation, the outlaws avoided their neighbors out here in the hills. Even so, they had learned never to trust them. The armsmen of Athalantar paid fifty pieces of gold per head to folk who’d guide them to outlaws. More than one outlaw had been taken by trusting overmuch.

  The cold lesson was to trust nothing that lived, from birds and foxes whose alarmed flight could draw the eyes of patrols, to peddlers who might go after the gold and speak of fires or watching men they’d seen deep in the hills where outlaws were known to lurk.

  Sargeth strode up through the endless fall of snow, which drifted straight down now as there came a sudden lull in the winds. He was grinning through the cloud of vapor that curled about his mouth. “All dead, El: a dozen armsmen … and one of them was carrying a full pack of food!”

  Elminster, called Eladar among the outlaws, grunted. “No mages?”

  Sargeth chuckled and laid a hand on El’s arm. He left bloody marks—the gore of some armsman now lying still in the snows. “Patience,” he said. “If it’s wizards you want to kill, let us slay enough armsmen—and by all the gods, the mages will come.”

  Elminster nodded. “Anything else?” Around them, the wind screamed with fresh strength, and it was hard to see through the driven snow.

  “One horse hurt. We’ll butcher it and wrap it in their cloaks here. Haste, now; the wolves are as hungry as we. Engarl’s found a dozen daggers or more—and at least one good helm. Baerold’s collecting boots, as usual. Go you and help Nind with the cutting.”

  Elminster sniffed. “Blood work, as always.”

  Sargeth laughed and clapped him on the back. “We all have to do it to live. Look upon it as preparing yerself several good feasts, and try not to gnaw on too much raw meat as you usually do … unless you like icing yer backside in the snow and feeling kitten weak, that is.”

  Elminster grunted and headed through the snow where Sargeth pointed. A happy shout jerked his head around. It was Baerold, leading back a snorting horse by the reins. Good; it could drag their spoils some way before they would have to kill it to end the trail its hooves would leave.

  Around them, the whistle of the wind began to die, and with it the snowfall faltered. Curses came from all around; the outlaws knew they’d have to work fast indeed if it turned cold and clear—for even the weak wizards posted to the keeps out here had magic that could find them from afar when the weather was clear.

  By the favor of the gods, another squall came in soon after they left the cleft; even someone already tracking them wouldn’t be ab
le to follow. The outlaws struggled on, following Sargeth and Baerold, who knew every slope of the hills here even in blinding snows. When they came to the deep spring that never froze, a place they knew the wizards watched by magic, from afar, Baerold spoke a few soothing words to the horse—and then swung his forester’s axe with brutal strength, and leaped clear of its kicking hooves as it fell.

  The outlaws left the steaming remnants of the carcass for the wolves to find. Then they rolled in deep drifts to clean off the worst of the gore and went on. North into the driving storm, up ravines narrow and dark, to Wind Cavern, where icy breezes moaned endlessly into a lightless cleft. Each man in turn bent and ducked through the narrow opening, by memory crossed the uneven cave beyond, and found the faint glowstone rock that marked the mouth of the next passage. They walked into the hollow dark until they saw the faint light ahead of another glowstone. Sargeth tapped the wall of the passage slowly and deliberately six times, paused, and then tapped once more. There came an answering tap, and Sargeth took two steps and turned into an unseen side passage. The outlaws followed him into the narrow tunnel. It smelled of earth and damp stone, and descended steeply beneath the Horn Hills.

  Light grew somewhere ahead, ale-hued faint light from a cavernful of luminous fungi. As they came out into it, Sargeth said his name calmly to the darkness beyond, and the men who stood there set down their crossbows and replied. “All back safe?”

  “All safe—and with meat to roast,” Sargeth said triumphantly.

  “Horse,” a second voice asked sourly, “or chopped armsman?”

  They exchanged chuckles before proceeding down another passage, through a cavern where daggers of rock jutted from floor and ceiling like the frozen jaws of some great monster, to a shaft in which vivid red light glowed. A stout ladder led down the hole into a large cavern always wreathed in steam. The light and the vapor came from rocky clefts at its far end, where folk sat huddled in blankets or lay snoring. With each step, the dank air grew warmer until the weary warriors stood beside the scalding waters of the hot spring and welcoming hands reached up to pat or clasp theirs. They were home, in the place proudly called Lawless Castle.