"Of course. When the time is right, as you say," was the silken reply.
Noumea repressed a shiver. How soft and yet sharp with menace the words of both her hostess and the Thayan. She flicked a glance at the two Marsemban merchants and saw in their faces the same tightly masked fear as she knew her own held: not knowing all that was going on here but knowing enough to be certain everything hidden was bad. And dangerous.
Darkspells spread his hands. "Have you learned what I desire to know and offered twelve thousand in gold for?"
"Twelve thousand six hundred," the Lady Ambrur told her tall-glass demurely.
"Twelve thousand six hundred, as you say," the Red Wizard agreed.
"Yes. Precisely what Vangerdahast, the retired Mage Royal of Cormyr, is 'up to' in his retirement, precisely where he is, and precisely what his magical defenses are."
Starangh smiled softly, his eyes glittering bright and hard, and purred, "If you can give me half an answer to those things, Vangerdahast will stand far closer to his doom—the doom he has so richly earned and that I shall take such delight in visiting upon him. Soon."
* * * * *
This damp, fish-stinking city wasn't Waterdeep, but at least it had walls and rooftops, and she could feel just a bit more like home.
Narnra grinned without feeling the slightest bit amused. So here she was running for her life, pursued by some sort of law-agent bent on slaying or capturing her.
Oh, yes. Just like home.
* * * * *
The Queen of Aglarond wrinkled her nose. "Ah, Marsember! Always damp cold stone, colder people, and the everpresent reek of dead fish and human waste. For entertainment, storms rage ashore and intrigues rage behind closed doors." She smiled. "Well, it serves one good purpose: to firmly remind me what I must never let my capital Velprintalar come within the full length of a large kingdom of resembling!"
Elminster stroked her bare shoulder then kissed the smooth flesh his fingers had been tracing. "Sorry," he told her. " Tis not my favorite place in all Faerun either, but it happens to be where Caladnei bides at this moment."
The Simbul sighed. "Mystra's will be done," she murmured then turned suddenly, caught hold of his beard, and brought his lips to where she could kiss them fiercely.
As she always seemed to, she moved hungrily against him, melting into him . . .
"Take care of yourself," she whispered when they were both breathless and lack of air finally forced her to draw back. "I waited so long for you—don't leave me lonely now."
Elminster blinked at her. "Lass? Ye waited for me . . . ?"
"To notice and then to love me," she replied, eyes very dark. "For myself and not as one of Mystra's daughters."
She shaped a spell that called darkness, outlined by a sprinkling of tiny stars, out of the air in front of her. "I loved your mind for centuries before you knew who I was, Old Mage. Now I love your character, too." She made a face, and added, "Your body, however: that you could have taken better care of, to be sure. Old wreck."
Elminster lifted his eyebrows, held up his hands with an airy flourish, murmured a swift incantation—and melted into the shape of a tall, broad-shouldered young man of rugged good looks and raven-black hair. He gave her a sparkling grin.
She snorted, struck a breathlessly excited hands-to-mouth pose like a young lass about to swoon—and slid back out of it to wink at him. Stepping back into her darkness, the Queen of Aglarond murmured, "My old wreck," and was gone, taking her rift with her, stars and all.
The transformed Elminster smiled fondly at where she'd been for a moment, shaking his head, then made a face of his own. "In those centuries of loving my mind, did she watch where my wandering body went and with whom, I wonder?"
He chuckled, shrugged, and strode down the cold, dark, and cobwebbed passage.
The damp made the spiderwebs thick, jeweled-with-droplets curtains. Elminster pushed through them unconcernedly, acquiring a marbled pattern of silken filth on his robes, and when he reached the remembered crossway, he turned left.
Cold blue fire flared in the emptiness in front of his nose immediately, but he strolled right through that ward-spell—and the next one, too.
By then a sleepy-eyed War Wizard, barefoot in her robes, was confronting him furiously. A rod that winked and glowed from half a dozen attached side-wands was cradled in her arms and aimed right at his face.
"Halt or be destroyed!" she snapped, as her fingers triggered a magic that sent bells chiming in a dozen chambers, near and far. Whatever befell now, this obviously not-so-secret passage would be swarming with War Wizards in a few minutes. Until then, 'twas her duty to prevent this stranger from—
He stepped forward, and she snarled and triggered three of the wands at once.
Their flash and roar almost blinded War Wizard Belantra, and sent her staggering back as the passage flagstones rippled under her feet in a great Shockwave. In the distance, behind the broad-shouldered intruder, stones fell from the passage ceiling, amid much dust, and tumbled away.
He kept coming, as if the ravening magic hadn't touched him at all.
"Back, demon!" Belantra snapped, sudden fear rising inside her. No one should be able to withstand such a blast! Even if the handsome man before her was mere illusion, the magic that presented it should have been shredded, and—
One long-fingered hand grasped the tip of one of her wands, even as she furiously triggered it again. Calmly ignoring Belantra, the intruder lifted the wand so its emerald beam of flesh-melting fury was trained not at his chest, but directly into his eyes.
Bright blue those eyes shone as they met hers for a moment, winked, and dropped to examine the wand again.
"Ah, yes. I helped Vangey enspell this. Now, after all these years, he wastes it in some sort of toy 'mightywand' gonne, such as the Lantanna fashion?" The handsome intruder shook his head. "I thought I'd taught him better than that."
He looked up again, gently pushing the wand aside with one fingertip, and asked, "What might thy name be, lass?"
"I'm a War Wizard of Cormyr," Belantra snapped, "and I'll ask the questions here, man!"
"By all means," the broad-shouldered stranger agreed easily, taking her elbow in one hand and steering her aside so he could pass. When she whirled furiously to shove him against the wall, he turned nimbly with her as if they were dancing together, ending up behind her with her wrist in a grip she could not break. Towing her, he strode in the direction she'd come from.
"I'm here to see Caladnei," he explained, "but ye're welcome to ask all ye want while we go fetch her, eh?"
"How do you kno—the Mage Royal can see no one! She's sleeping, after a very long night of defending the realm."
The handsome stranger smiled. "Long indeed. I know. I helped make it so. To squeeze our doings into a shorter night might well have left her as a corpse."
"Who are y—let go of me! Let go, stop right here, and tell me your name!" Belantra shouted, thrusting the gonne of wands and rod into the intruder's face and preparing to spend her life in the defense of the Mage Royal.
Black eyebrows lifted. "Demanding, aren't ye? War Wizards weren't quite so shrill back in the early days, I must say. I did warn Amedahast she was shaping something that was sure to get away from her—but then, who am I to deny other mages their grand schemes and toys, when such strivings have brought us all such wonder? No, lass, don't try to set them all off at once—yell blast all this cellar right up through the grand edifice above it, shattering Caladnei to bonelessness as surely as ye do the same to thyself and everyone else within reach—including all thy fellow loyal mages ye summoned!"
The intruder pointed along the passage where robed men and women were approaching at a run, wands in hand and various glows of awakening magic flaring.
Chuckling and shaking his head, he plucked Belantra and her gonne around in front of him to serve as a shield, more or less carried her the few steps down the passage to the entrance she'd emerged from, and laid a hand on the closed iron door he found there.
Deadly magic flared and crackled around his fingers. He shook his head, broke it without seeming to do anything, and reached through the still-solid metal to turn the latch-handle on the inside.
Belantra's mouth dropped open in astonishment at that. Her jaw dropped still farther as the stranger's shape shifted into that of a slender old man with a white beard, bushy eyebrows, and a hawklike nose.
His grip remained every bit as iron-strong as he towed her through the doorway into the softly glow-lit bedchamber beyond—where someone 'was sitting up in a magnificent canopied bed facing them, eyes sharp above an unwaveringly aimed wand.
"Wh—Elminster!"