Hotheads doom themselves. Hot rage burns the rager. Be as the patient ice and stone, biding in silence until the right moment of thunderous fall.
The trite sayings brought just about as much comfort as he'd expected them to, and Manshoon kept right on striding along the dark passages of Zhentil Keep, knowing he should feel relief if he let himself feel anything at all. Still he burned with fury.
"Black, black temper," he murmured the words of a currently popular ditty, seeking to divert himself. And failing.
He was in a black temper. He'd done a mastetful job of impersonating Vangerdahast. He'd brought the Unbinding to the proverbial brink of being complete. He'd brought about the destruction of many of the liches he'd had to work so hard to escape or pacify on his earlier visits to the Lost Palace. And he'd caused many potential foes-those adventurers, a few Harpers, some war wizards, perhaps even Vangerdahast himself-to be wounded, weakened, or even slain.
Yet he could find no pleasure or satisfaction or even just some scrap of comfort in any of that.
He was furious at those who'd brought him so close to death and more furious at himself for being afraid to return to the Lost Palace to destroy them all.
"Blackfire," he snarled. "Talar and blackfire!"
Mild oaths, but he seldom cursed at all-and almost never aloud. Commanders had no need to curse, and that was the image he'd chosen to armor himself in-especially among all of these sly, murderously ambitious Brothers in his Zhentarim.
Murderous, yes. That's what it was time to be, now. For the greater glory of Bane and the greater exaltation of a certain Manshoon, too. He knew now what he had to do.
Accordingly, he took the side way out of the next grand chamber, turning in the echoing darkness to head for a certain vault.
It was not a short journey. Keeping his face impassive, he strode past guardpost after guardpost, crisply answering challenge after challenge.
Ahead, beyond yet more guarded doors, was a table. It stood alone in a dark room, four straight legs and a smooth top upon which rested an open-ended wooden cradle. On that cradle lay the greatest magical treasure he'd managed to craft thus far: a Staff of Doom.
Not quite a match for the doomstaves of old yet. In fact, something of a one-joke jester's act. Aside from allowing a wielder to fall slowly from a cliff or high place, and altering light in a small area about itself, it could do just one thing: emit death tyrants. That is, its globular ends, upon command, became portals that spat out an undead beholder each from a stasis-space he'd filled with four-and-ten undead beholders thus far.
He'd been saving this secret for a pressing need, in hopes that such a need would come after he had mastered ways of augmenting the staff with other battle powers.
Yet death comes for those who wait too long for rheir needs to seem pressing.
He could-should-use it now.
He'd whisk himself back to the Lost Palace, plant the staff in a suitable spot, trigger it to unleash two death tyrants to destroy all life and unlife in the place, and depart. A few tendays later, upon his return, the death tyrants should be the only sentiences left. He'd command them back into the staff for later use and plunder the place at leisure. Or leave them drifting around to do battle with Vangerdahast or any war wizards who came blundering along while he was stripping the Lost Palace of all the magic he wanted.
He had passed the last human guards long ago, and the monsters held in stasis-except for the venomous spider that waited in the vault itself. He had passed the last pair of sword-wielding automatons, too, and he was just stepping through the opening his mutmurings had made in the spell-confined curtain of crawling, flesh-eating ooze. Which left only his own wards: shimmering curtains of interlaced magical spells that could be destroyed by a sufficiently powerful onslaught of magic but couldn't be restored exactly as he'd left them by anyone except him.
In front of him, they glimmered untouched. Of course.
He walked on, parting each one as he reached ir and letting it seal again behind him. Carelessness kills more mages than anything else, and being careless among the Brotherhood was like dancing blindfolded and naked in a pit of angry, hungry vipers.
The last ward parted at his word and gesrure, and he strode into the vault, speaking the words that would keep the spider frozen above him.
He stopped, gasping in disbelief.
The cradle on the table was empty.
He shot glances all around the room, even as he strode over to the cradle. "Whiteblood!" he whispered slowly, aghast.
The staff-his work, his unfinished masterpiece-was gone.
Manshoon raced around the table, knowing his search was futile. He could already see every corner of the vault and the floor behind the table. He looked up, seeing only the soft, steady glow of the radiance spell he'd cast long ago to give him light in this place. The ceiling, just like the floor and the walls, was bare. He went to his knees and peered at the underside of the table, even though the staff was far too long to be hidden there. Nothing, of course.
Rage rising in him, Manshoon of the Zhentarim cast a tracing spell on the cradle, in hopes that some too-small-to-see dust mote or fragment had crumbled off the staff and been left behind there that he could use to try ro trace the vanished staff. If the magic did its utmost, he'd be able to identify who'd taken it and where.
His spell flared, wild hope leaping in him as it found something and began to work.
The spell died, leaving Manshoon staring at something small and white lying in the cradle, that hadn't been been there-or visible there, at least-before. It was…
A tiny stone carving of a human left hand, in a fist but with its forefinger pointing straight out or up. Smooth-carved of some white stone.
A tiny holy symbol of Azuth.
Manshoon really cursed this time, his face going as white as bleached bone.
He drew back from the little carving as if burned-and then warily approached it again to stare at it intently. His rage slowly left him, and he wrapped himself in cold calm.
Traveling back through all the guardposts, he consoled himself with a sudden thought.
Manshoon of the Zhentarim. He had become important enough for gods to notice.
"An agteement, Friend Procurer, is an agreement," the plump, ragged-robed priest of Tymora said with dignity, "and I took care that this one would be a bond before the gods-or at least the gods that most govern us both. Tymora answered my prayers with holy visions both vivid and specific. Did ye not assure me that Mask did the same for ye?"
"Y-yes," Torm said reluctantly, hefting the staff in his hands: 'Tis just that I… I've never stolen anything quite this powerful or well-guarded before. I…" He waved one hand to indicate the strength of his struggle for the right words, his usual wit failing him, then burst out, "My hands don't want to let it go out of their grasp.
I hunger to hold it, to stroke it-not like a woman, mind, but yes, stroke it-often. Whenever I feel the need. Something inside me doesn't want to let it out of my presence, lest I never get the chance to hold it again. Haularake, this seems fool-headed, even when I'm just saying it to you, but… 'tis so, I tell you!"
Rathan nodded sympathetically. "We consecrated holy ones feel the same way when we first touch holy altars and relics of our gods. We cannot bear to be parted from them. 'Tis why some temple altats are surrounded of nights by sleeping priests with their hand or cheek or some part of their skin pressed against the holy stone. They end up heaped in a great snoring ring around an altar!"
"That must hamper morning devotions a trifle," the young thief said, folding his arms around the staff as if it were an overlarge child he was holding tenderly to his breast. "I-no, I can't do this!"