All of these perils meant damned near anyone and anything that hungered after magic could appear in these dim and dusty halls around Maerandor, and he had to be ready to defeat them. And swiftly, too, for while he was fighting one foe, he was necessarily inattentive to the plots and covert deeds of others, not to mention a trammeled, easy target for a second or third enemy-or just too preoccupied to see foes arriving, and what they might do and take.
Of more immediate concern were the known foes whose faces the Most High had shown him and informed him were here in Candlekeep, posing as monks. They had to be hunted down and destroyed, right now, before-
“Hold!”
That snarled command came from one direction, at the same moment a spell lashed out from another, catching Maerandor between them.
His wards flashed as the spell that had been meant to slay him was flung back at its caster in a shrieking spray of white sparks, leaving a monk reeling and moaning in pain. Maerandor turned a layer of his wards hard and solid, and used it to shove that man back against the nearest wall, pinning him there, gasping for breath and sobbing from the pain his own spell had caused him.
Then he ignored his attacker, to concentrate on the one who’d told him to halt.
“You hold,” he commanded coldly, “or die.”
Maerandor could see the monk who’d spoken. Who should be a fellow Shadovar, but …
“Send any magic my way, and you’ll die horribly-and without delay,” he added tersely, and lowered his wards enough to use a spell the Most High had given him.
It was a minor magic that identified persons Telamont had long ago magically marked-no guarantee of loyalty, only of identity; those the spell “found” would be arcanists of Thultanthar, no matter who or what they might now look like.
A silver flare kindled around the eyes of the man who’d challenged him, and in those of the man who’d just tried to kill him.
Which meant both were Shadovar.
“I speak with the full authority of the Most High,” Maerandor informed them, “and you will accompany me now, and obey me as you would him.”
He did not have to add “Or die.” He made certain his quiet voice held that flat promise.
“And who are you,” the one who’d challenged him asked sharply, “to claim the supremacy of the Most High? I’ve never seen you before; how do I know you’re not one of these Moonstars, up to tricks? Or Old Elminster the Meddler?”
Maerandor gave the man a brittle smile. He’d been waiting for this.
And he was ready. Telamont had made certain he would be ready. The spell he was using to identify Thultanthans had another facet to it. The Declaration. He stepped back to where he could readily meet the eyes of both men, and used it on them.
Telamont Tanthul, High Prince of Thultanthar, was not a man who often raised his voice. He didn’t need to, when his calm, cold, quiet voice carried doom enough. The Declaration was no shout, but the spell made it roll into their minds so powerfully that it might as well have been.
I am the High Prince of Thultanthar, and my word is law in Shade and all lands under the dominion of the matchless city of Thultanthar. I am Lord Shadow, and when I go to war, the mightiest arcanists of Netheril serve me, and when I am at peace, the most brilliant Netherese kneel to me and do my bidding and exalt my city. I am the ruler of the greatest city of Netheril, and I am the most powerful in Thultanthar. I am the rightful ruler of all Netherese; there is no other. Obey this my servant Maerandor, or face my wrath.
The mental echoes of that mind-voice had both men on their knees, half in awed obedience and half in dazed collapse, beaten down, by the time the last word smote them.
“Well?” Maerandor asked them, into the near silence of their labored breathing, his challenge barely more than a whisper.
They looked up at him like whipped dogs, wary and yet eager to obey. “I-whatever you command, Lord Maerandor,” the unwounded man said hastily.
“Y-yes,” the man still pinned to the wall managed, swallowing blood.
“Come,” Maerandor snapped briskly, and he strode away, loosening his ward hold over the man and returning it to full defensive mettle.
He might well need it.
They stalked through a labyrinth of dim and cluttered chambers, walled in books and roofed in hanging maps, dominated by stout wooden tables and crude wooden benches.
Everywhere underfoot there were ribbons of sticky, starting-to-dry blood-and at the end of each one there sprawled the body of a monk.
Other Shadovar joined them as they went, none needing the hammer of the Declaration. Six, eight, eleven … Maerandor smiled, feeling powerful enough to swagger at last.
Which meant, of course, he’d best gird himself against real danger.
He let go of Telamont’s recognition spell in favor of the far more widely known magic of true sight. It would go ill if he missed a real foe among the still-living monks he met.
They heard shouts, and more than one booming echo of a burst that was almost certainly a spell hurled in anger-but thus far, in room after room, they found no living monks.
So Maerandor turned and used his augmented vision on the Shadovar with him.
And with a grim and utter lack of surprise, saw that one of the purported Thultanthans was an impostor. That is, someone who must have murdered a Shadovar, impersonating a quietly slain monk.
For he could see now that this false Shadovar had a face Telamont had warned him belonged to one Saerlar Stormwyvern, a half-elf Moonstar.
Maerandor pointed and snarled, “A Moonstar! That one-kill him!”
There was a rush to do just that, as Stormwyvern’s hands flashed through a desperate incantation-but before any magic could erupt, Candlekeep around them gave a mighty shudder, the stones rumbling and groaning so violently that everyone was flung off their feet.
Bouncing bruisingly, shouting in fear, or snarling out curses, the Shadovar bounced from wall to wall, shattering lanterns.
The great shaking seemed to be welling up beneath them, the floors bulging up and then falling back.
“Earthquake!” someone cried.
“We’re doomed!” another Shadovar shouted.
“The ceiling’s falling! It falls!”
A few stones and tiles and a lot of dust did fall, pelting and bouncing down, but no general roaring collapse came down on them.
Shockingly, though, the floating, magical glowing globes that provided general overhead illumination in this room of Candlekeep as in so many others all winked out in unison, plunging the chamber into darkness, as all around Maerandor, men grunted, grappled, and screamed as they were wounded-or stabbed to death.
There had been time enough, but only just.
The shield of force Elminster had spun from the Weave was large and curved enough to keep him from being flattened-as it was slammed to the floor and battered down by a thunderous deluge of falling rock, with him beneath it.
The roaring torrent became a syncopated hammering that gave way to individual stones crashing, bouncing, and rolling … and then to echoes and swirling dust.
Out of which Elminster’s shield came whirling, hurled across the cavern with the full strength of the Old Mage’s will and the wards of Candlekeep.
To slap Alustriel and Laeral as if it was a great paddle, batting them head over heels across the echoing expanse of the cavern.
El sought to pin the sisters against the rocks of the far wall-but skidding on knees and elbows, eyes flashing, they both called on the wards too.
Wards they’d been attuned to and living with far longer than Elminster ever had, wards now very familiar to them-and responsive to their will.
The shield racing at them slowed abruptly, came to a stop … and started coming back at Elminster, ponderously at first, but then with ever-quickening speed.