Free Spellstorm by Ed Greenwood Page A

Vainrence handle nobles. So just four from Suzail had appeared in a deserted cellar of the mansion, through a temporary portal El had conjured. Very shortly thereafter, Lord Halaunt had rather gruffly and stiffly ordered his servants to hasten away from Oldspires for a paid holiday, seen them get ready for travel, put heavy bags of coins in their astonished hands, and packed them off to Suzail through the same humming and flickering temporary cellar portal. El had created it with Mystra’s aid, linking to one of the mansion’s many existing gates to bypass the spellstorm. She’d assured him that no such aid would be forthcoming to any of the guest wizards trying the same way of getting in, and El’s gate was now closed.
    The four had made the brief trip through it from Suzail with Alusair wrapped chillingly around El to keep from being torn at by the gate’s writhing magical energies. The cold she’d visited upon the Sage of Shadowdale had been more than bone chilling. Now, El could breathe again, but he was still rubbing his cold limbs and flexing numbed fingersafter unwrapping them from around the battered copper chamberpot he’d insisted on bringing along, which he’d stuffed full of the new Sembian innovation that was now sweeping Cormyr and racing west along the trade roads: darvorr, or chamberpot wiping cloths. Which had met with Myrmeen’s firm approval.
    “Sorry, Old Mage,” the ghost princess apologized, her own voice coming incongruously out of Lord Halaunt’s lips.
    “Lass, lass, the day I can’t enjoy the embrace of a spirited woman …” El started to say, but at that moment Mirt and Myrmeen finished their separate surveys of the gloomy hall, turned back to face their companions from different directions, and announced in almost perfect unison, “This is not going to go well.”
    Elminster shrugged. “Ye’re quite likely right, yet it’s worth a try. Mystra wants us to try this, and if it succeeds, we can achieve much of lasting worth.”
    “You sound like a Waterdhavian noble trying to cozen investors,” Mirt growled. “So where’s the wine cellar?”
    El chuckled. “Not quite so fast, Old Wolf. Mystra has just sent me a … smell.”
    “A smell ?”
    “That would seem the act of an odd sort of goddess, I’d say,” Myrmeen agreed.
    Elminster rolled his eyes. “It’s a wordless warning. A sharp smell in my mind. She knows I’ve secured the Lost Spell, and—”
    Mirt gaped. “You have?”
    “Ye should watch sly old men a mite more closely. We’re apt to be dangerous, ye know. Yes, I found it; his lordship isn’t—wasn’t—a very imaginative man. Under his pillow, for the love of Mystra! A pillow embroidered “Here rests a Talking Skull, nightly,” no less! At least Halaunt could poke fun at himself. And the spell is now safe. Mystra knows that, and I’d say she’s therefore ready to let our, ah, guests in.”
    He closed his eyes, frowned in concentration, and twisted the nearest threads of the Weave over, pulling light through them and then fine-tuning and drawing them together so … he could share what he could see through it with the others, riding its shimmering flows of force—Myrmeen gasped in throaty pleasure as they became visible all around her, and Mirt threw back his head in amazement—out through the solid walls of the mansionand the thick, swirling fog of the spellstorm, to the clear and breezy air above the fields beyond.
    Where quite a few haughty and confident men and women stood, none too close to each other, facing the spellstorm.
    Most of them were shifting restlessly from foot to foot, obviously unaccustomed to being kept waiting. One of them, robes swirling, had struck a grand pose and was working a mighty magic that caused an intricate tracery of glowing lines to appear in the air above and in front of him, and hang there as immobile as a castle wall—but infinitely prettier.
    “Alammath druawh ilbrue taraunt-tal,” he intoned, his hands