“They could build palaces, in those days,” he observed brightly, or thought he did, before lightning stabbed him in thousands of places and took all Suzail away.
The blast smote Fentable’s ears like a hard-swung kitchen skillet, its bright flare slashing the night as if the darkness were a smooth-stretched cloak that could be sliced with a knife.
Cringing in the doorway with hands clapped to his ears, Fentable blinked at the sudden brightness, but clearly saw the old and massive palace door blown high into the air and flung across the Promenade to smash hard into the stone front of a grand shop-below-and-clubs-above building, then crash to the ground in splintered ruin, raising dust.
Right behind the whirling door tumbled a figure wreathed in flickering blue flames.
It struck the shop front lower down, on a central pillar flanked by the shuttered shop windows, and slid limply down the unyielding stone to the ground.
Fentable might have been terrified, but Manshoon was merely astonished.
He stared at the felled host, then at the gaping doorway whence the door had come.
Framed in it was the mask dancer, Amarune Whitewave, reeling unsteadily as she stared out into the street, arms raised and flung wide, lightning playing angrily around her hands.
She’d just blasted down a blueflame ghost?
Just what had happened to this hitherto unskilled-at-Art young mask dancer, descendant of Elminster, to make her an archwizard in… what, days?
Manshoon’s eyes narrowed.
The very cobbles underfoot shook as the door burst out of its frame and went flying.
Pressed hard against the Promenade side of the palace wall right beside that door, a blueflame ghost watched another blueflame ghost hurtle past.
Then, not even looking to see what befell that fellow slayer, and caring less, it ducked through the gaping doorway into the palace.
Right past a reeling, drooling, empty-eyed lass in the grip of snarling lightning it raced, and a groaning, also-reeling, silver-haired woman beyond, to pursue a fat man stumbling along a narrow passage that led deeper into the palace, trailing a muttered sea of curses.
The ghost smiled gleefully as it ran and raised its sword.
Mirt saw the blue reflections of its flames looming up close behind him and turned grimly to give battle.
The ghost’s grin widened. One slash at most this might take, two for sport, and then A sword that was more ghostly shadow than steel slashed at blue flames-and sliced them into dark nothingness.
The running ghost faltered in sheer astonishment.
And found itself staring into a smile as full of grim glee as its own, adorning the floating face of a ghostly woman in leather half-armor, her helmless hair flowing free as she stood in midair like a shield, barring the way to the panting, wheezing old lord.
“Dare to come into my palace to slay a man, against my laws, in my kingdom?” the ghost of Alusair Obarskyr whispered, that terrible smile still on her lips. “Prepare to pay my price.”
Amarune staggered out of the palace and started to topple into the street-but silver tresses caught her, and a strong, shapely arm swept her upright again.
“Easy, El!” Storm murmured, embracing the dazed dancer from behind and holding her upright. “Easy!”
El?
Manshoon stared in disbelief at the two women across the street for one moment.
In the next moment, riding a soundless shriek of fear and rage, he departed Corleth Fentable in reckless haste, leaving the understeward drooling and staggering as badly as the mask dancer. With no Storm Silverhand to catch him, Fentable promptly collapsed on his face on the cobbles.
An instant after, a beholder the size of a child’s head burst out of his robes and darted off into the night.
Jaws dropped, and men shouted at that, and Manshoon had the vague recollection that some Purple Dragons hastened along the street to investigate the blast.
Bah! Right now, he cared not if all the world knew that the palace understeward carried a beholderkin in his armpit.
Elminster of Shadowdale was alive!
It took him surprisingly little time to race across streets lined with mansions, past spires, towers, and domes, to a particular open-for-breezes window of Truesilver House.
The Lady Deleira Truesilver caught sight of the hovering beholderkin before her maids did, and abruptly ordered everyone from the room. If any of them saw her pluck a particular pendant up out of the open coffer on her sidetable, or draw a dagger from a sheath affixed to the underside of that same table, they gave no sign of it.
In the space of two quick breaths, the room was empty and its door closed in their wake.
Manshoon ignored dagger and pendant and wasted no time in niceties. “Talane,” he ordered, “find the wizard Elminster, who is alive and using bodies not his own. Slay anybody he inhabits-destroy him utterly. Make very sure he is dead, then call on me to make certain. Hurry!”
“How will I know him?” she asked, tossing down both pendant and dagger.
The beholderkin darted at her like an oversized wasp, its eyestalks writhing.
She almost managed not to flinch as eyestalks slid greasily into her nostrils and ears, clinging for the fleeting moment Manshoon needed.
He thrust an image of Amarune Whitewave-reeling unsteadily in a doorway, staring at nothing with lightning playing around her upflung hands-into Talane’s mind, then stripped away the lightning from that vision.
“This is the guise he’s hiding in right now.”
The beholderkin drew back far enough to give the Lady Deleira Truesilver a menacing glare. “Find Storm Silverhand, and force her to reveal who is Elminster and who is not. Don’t slay her until you are certain. Kill her, too, but after. Foremost and above all, your task is to bury Elminster deep!”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
S torm staggered, sobbing in pain. Magic was surging out of the body in her arms, clashing snarlingly with the palace wards.
Where Elminster’s magic struck at the wards and the wards struck back, energies were loosed. They swirled around Storm and Amarune, feeling first like fire and acid, then more like a slaver’s salted lash she’d felt long ago… or the whirling, ruthlessly slicing edges of a priest’s conjured barrier of many blades…
To keep them both alive, she shoved Amarune out into the night, away from the wards. Back into the Promenade, both of them seared and hurting, where she fell heavily to her knees, Amarune a limp weight in her arms.
Suddenly swords ringed her, their deadly tips pointed down in a glittering circle.
“Surrender!” a Purple Dragon barked. “Show us empty hands, and declare yourselves.”
Storm looked up at him, panting, and forced down pain enough to gasp, “We’re wizards of war, soldier! Burning inside from wild magic! For your own safety, keep back from us and from yon doorway, all of you!”
Soldiers went pale and gave ground. Wincing, Storm wrapped her arms around Rune and rolled, taking them both farther out into the street. Two Dragons stalked suspiciously alongside them but were called away by their swordcaptain.
Gritting her teeth, Storm stood up, hauling the still-blind, dazed Amarune with her, and walked the dancer slowly away into the night.
“El?” she hissed, as they reached the mouth of a side street on the far side of the Promenade.
The only reply she got was a wordless, feeble moan.
Far down the side street she caught sight of a hunched-over, stumbling man fleeing away from her. He was wreathed in dim, feebly flickering blue flames.
“Ghost brought low,” Storm hissed aloud.
As she said that, the distant figure turned a corner and was gone.
Unimpressed by her eager smile, the blueflame ghost attacked fearlessly, a sneer on its face and confidence in its almost careless slash.