Free Spellstorm by Ed Greenwood

sleep,” came the reply. “I’m sorry, Lady Alastra, I had no idea Malchor was a secret.”
    “Secret no longer, obviously. So you know where I’m heading.”
    “Oldspires, where all the other mad wizards have gone, to see that no harm comes to Malchor Harpell.”
    “That is not for passing on,” Alastra said severely, “to anyone.”
    “Lady, I obey.”
    Alastra sighed. “ Try to keep the mockery out of your voice when you say that, lad.”
    It was true. She had long secretly loved Malchor Harpell—the kindest adventuring wizard she’d ever met—and by the sounds of who was gathering at Oldspires, even he might need help.
    Moreover, the Harpers should know all about who got the Lost Spell and what they tried to use it for—and who better at the Art among the Harpers was handy?
    None but Alastra. “It’s all up to you,” she murmured to herself.
    “Pardon? Ah, you don’t have to leave until morning, do you?” Delgorn asked in a plaintive whisper, his fingertips tracing a velvet-soft path up past her right knee.
    Her fault, for changing into a gown.
    “The venison’s coming,” she warned.
    Her warning went unheeded, until she clamped her knees together with viselike firmness.
    Young Harpers, these days.

CHAPTER 5
    Very Bad, Very Soon
    T HE ROOM AROUND THEM WAS HIGH-CEILINGED, GRANDLY ORNATE , and dark. Cobwebs in the lofty corners told them that Lord Halaunt didn’t employ maids or jacks with long-pole mops, or didn’t look up much … or just didn’t care.
    Well, he was past caring about anything now, but …
    The four of them stood facing each other in a conspiratorial little group in the unwelcoming entry hall of Oldspires, listening to the one of them who wasn’t really a lord pretend to be one.
    “You haven’t got the voice quite right,” Mirt commented. “Sharper, more waspish—and more phlegmy, too. Rough, as if he needed to clear his throat but didn’t bother.”
    “Is this waspish enough?” Lord Halaunt snapped. “I’m a princess, not an actress!”
    “All princesses are actresses,” Elminster told her. “Some of them are poorer than others, I’ll grant, but—”
    “El, don’t make this any harder for me,” Alusair told him. “This old man’s body is heavy, and all the joints are stiff, and hurt. He hasn’t taken very good care of it.”
    Myrmeen Lhal chuckled. “This is going to be a long tenday, I can tell.” She turned on her heel, surveying the gloomy, dark-paneled hall all around them. Cross-vaulted ceiling with gargoyle-head bosses, so thickly festooned with cobwebs that it looked like a forest of hanging gray curtains.Well, at least it was better than the servants’ quarters on the upper floor; Lord Halaunt obviously believed in his household enjoying fresh air, given all the gaps in the roof that had been there long enough to warp and rot floors, not to mention let large colonies of birds roost and soil plentifully … “And I had no idea that the customary garb of a second cook was not only this unflattering, but scratchy. I’m starting to itch all over.”
    “Well, scratch yourself,” Mirt suggested. “Unless you’d like me to oblige.” He thrust his face forward in a leer so broad and tongue-waggingly exaggerated that the other three standing in the hall all burst into mirthful laughter.
    “I doubt it’ll be the full tenday,” El put in, when he stopped chuckling. “The spellstorm’s been in existence for five days now. It only has five days left.”
    “Before every last hedge wizard in Faerûn can come storming in here to try their luck, you mean?” Myrmeen asked dryly. “I hope Lord Halaunt pays the local farmers well, because his larders might well be empty, a few days after that.”
    She knew whereof she spoke, for they’d finished touring Oldspires, ruined upper floor and all, and were now standing conferring in its dimly cavernous entry hall.
    Vangerdahast had obeyed Ganrahast and remained behind in Suzail to help Ganrahast and