He came to a lurching halt, ignoring a rat that scurried out to see if his boots might be supper, and peered around the chamber. Reeking pipes let into it. Channels carried sewage along one side of the room. The vaulted ceiling was webbed with old, tiny cracks. There was no way onward that didn't involve cold flames.
Mirt eyed the rat that fearlessly nibbled his boot, and peered at the gate again-ere his blade stabbed down.
Its curving length rose an instant later when Asper burst into the room. She spun away from his steel even as he snatched it back, and skidded to a halt within easy reach of the flames.
"You didn't have to wait," she grinned, nodding at it. "We could hardly have gotten lost with no other way on, hey?"
The Old Wolfs blade barred her way. He held up a warning finger, clipped his sword to transfix the rat, and tossed it lightly into the ring of fire.
There was a flash, a loud sizzle, and a smell that made the armored warrior entering the chamber gag and sag back. Aleena raised a disgusted hand. She winced in the sudden blazing light of the whirling wheel of flames. It flared bright, shrank, flared again… and was gone, leaving nothing but a little smoke behind, and the stink of cooked sewer rat.
"That might have been you," Aleena gasped hollowly, between gulps of nausea.
Asper tossed her head. If she was frightened, she gave no sign of it. Only anger was on her face as she glared around the room. "He could be in the lowest of the Hells by now," she said bitterly, "or in the next sewer over- and we'll never know."
Amusing, elminster. I laugh. Now snow me magic!
Somewhere in Waterdeep, a vial clattered onto a table-top. There came a sigh of satisfaction. A moment later, a gloved hand reached down to the table and took up a silver harp pin. Chuckling, the figure waved, bringing cold flames to pinwheel out of nothingness. The leather-clad form leaned through this fresh flickering and was gone.
Magic, yes, and another memory given you by mystra, but again i find not what i seek! This is ridiculous! wizard, get on with it!
The tale unfolds, Lord Devil.[bright images flying]
The time before dawn grew more difficult as he got older. Durnan stood in the cold, getting dressed for another long, long day. The Yawning Portal was his home and his life, and he loved it dearly, but sometimes- these dark fore-dawns, usually-he wanted to be somewhere else. Somewhere that did not allow innkeepers to rise before highsun, when their old aching feet and shanks were thoroughly warmed by the sun, and someone else had the cooking fires lit long ago, and a hot meal ready, and-
The high, ragged scream made Durnan jump half out of his hose. Tamsil, from the taproom downstairs! He hopped awkwardly, kicked his garments away with a curse, snatched up his sword belt by the hilts, and launched himself bruisingly through the door frame into the dimness.
In the brief whirl of his naked charge down the stairs, he shook the hilts in his hands for all he was worth until the belt fell away, roaring wildly all the while to distract whoever might be attacking his daughter. Tam was more than old and curvaceous enough to catch the eye of a" thief who might think that innkeepers are actually allowed to sleep, and-
Skidding through a doorway with sword and dagger glittering in his hands, Durnan found himself with no foe to fight.
Tamsil and her mother Mhaere both looked up at-" him with eyes large and dark with fear. His wife was;.] holding a double crossbow in her hands, its strings still thrumming enough to tell him that both quarrels had been fired. No foe lay dead or groaning on the floor before them-but it did offer the discerning naked innkeeper's eye a lavish display of broken crockery and fresh blood.
"Are you all right?" Durnan snapped. "And where is-" He gestured at the wreckage on die floor. "-he?"
Mhaere smiled thinly. "Yes, and gone. A masked man, armed with a blade. He-"
She drew in a deep, shuddering breath that told him she wasn't half as calm as she appeared to be, threw back her head to gasp for air, then resumed speaking as gently as if she'd been discussing the weather. ''In leathers, alone, not familiar to me. An oval-an upright oval, like a lady's gazing-glass-of flames that were cold white, not hot, was suddenly right there, and he stepped out of it and charged at Tamsil. Thank Tymora, she was carrying water-yon ewer you see in pieces on the floor-and flung it in his face."
Durnan turned slowly to peer around the field of battle, nodding. "Whereupon you," he replied, "took up the ready-bow from behind the bar and gave him both bolts."
— Chest and shoulder," Mhaere added, and he could hear the satisfaction in her voice. "He fled back through the hole in the flames, and they were gone, just like that, and him with them."
Durnan stalked across the room like a hairy panther and pounced on something small on the floor. "Dropping something as he left you," he growled in bafflement, as he picked it up. He was holding a silver harp pin.
"Papa," Tamsil said in her high, clear voice, "I don't ever want to see that man again. How can we stop him ever coming back'"
"The only way you can ever really stop any foe," Durnan muttered, staring at the pin in his hand. "I must find him-and he must die."
My, my, mystra's memories certainly make your toril seem an interesting place. I'm not seeing the magic i seek yet, though, am i?
Chapter Ten
The Lady Mage of Waterdeep bent over the silver harp pin on the table, lying amid the eerie, softly raging glows of her spells, and murmured, "There. In a moment, we'll see-"
Obligingly, the pin exploded, bolts of lightning snarling hungrily across the room as the world went white and Laeral's body was hurled helplessly away.
A certain Old Wolf scrambled up out of his chair as the lightning that should have slain Aleena melted and toppled a brazier instead. It was still falling across Mirt's seat when Laeral smashed into him and drove him back into the tangle. They crashed to the floor together, bouncing with tooth-jarring force. Flames flickered briefly here and there around the room and then went out.
Pinned under a brazier, splintered furniture, and a wizard sobbing in pain, Mirt glared briefly up at a blinding-bright sphere that floated near the ceiling: Laeral's safeguard.
Having absorbed most of the unleashed magic, it was slowly fading back into invisibility. The ceiling above was decorated with a collection of scorch marks that told him little disasters like this one had occurred a time or two before. He wasn't sure if that was reassuring-after all, Blackstaff Tower still stood.
"Lass?" he asked roughly, struggling to get out from under. "Are you well?"
He was answered by three sets of moans and curses, one of them from atop his breast. He took gentle but firm hold of the Lady Mage and thrust her up into the air so he could slide to freedom. "What befell?"
"There was a trap on that pin," Laeral said, panting. She rolled off his hand and found her own wincing way to her knees, "left behind deliberately to harm anyone using spells on it. No Harper would do such a thing. Someone is trying to mislead us all into thinking a Harper killed Resengar."
Mirt nodded. "This fails to surprise me," he said, turning his head to see how Asper and Aleena fared. Beside him, Laeral toppled silently over onto her face.
Flames flared up from her body as it struck the floor, writhing, and Mirt roared out a heartfelt curse and a cry for aid. As he rolled the Lady Mage over, Asper ran for the door-and the alarm-gong on the wall just outside it.
Only his smallest belt flask held water, and Mirt dashed it into Laeral's face and pawed at her nose and cheeks to try to keep the flames at bay-greenish-yellow tongues of hot fire that seemingly rose from nothing. Magical fire, of course, damned wagonloads of praise be to Mystra, and all that. It ignored all of his ineffectual attempts to douse it; though it somehow didn't spread to him, the Old Wolf was heartily glad when the room suddenly filled with stern-faced Tower apprentices.