Twice more it burst, and then another merchant was spared. He fled sobbing, leaving only the mage royal of Athalantar hanging alive before the Magister. Hawklyn looked right and left at the headless things in the air around him and snarled in fear.
"I must confess that killing you will bring me satisfaction," the old man said. "Yet I"d be more pleased still if you renounced all claims to this realm here and now and agreed to serve Mystra under my direction."
Hawklyn cursed, and with trembling hands tried to shape one last spell. The Magister listened politely and then shook his head, ignoring the shadowy taloned beast that appeared in the air before him.
Its cruel claws pa.s.sed right through the old man, and then faded away as the last links of the Chain of Binding burst. Blood spattered on the stone floor far below.
Leaving the corpses hanging in grisly array, the Magister turned to regard the youth crouched watching in the surviving corner of the balcony. There was a dangerous glint in his eyes as they met Elminster"s awed gaze. "Are you a magelord, boy, or a servant of this house?"
"Neither." Tearing his gaze free with an effort, Elminster leapt from the balcony, landing hard on the blood-spattered stones below. The old man"s eyes narrowed, and he lifted a finger. A wall of flames sprang up in a ring around the thief, who spun around, the sharpened stub of an old war-sword suddenly in his hand.
Fear lent Elminster anger; his voice trembled with both as he faced the old man standing on air above him. "Can ye not see I"m no wild-spells wizard? Are ye no better than these cruel mages who rule Athalantar?" He waved his blade at the roaring flames around him. "Or are all who wield magic so twisted by its power that they become tyrants who delight in maiming, destroying, and spreading fear among honest folk?"
"Are you not-with these?" the Magister asked, spreading his hand to indicate the bodies hanging silently around him.
"With them?" Elminster spat. "I fight them whenever I dare-and hope one day to destroy them all so men can walk Athalantar free and happy again!" His face twisted at a sudden thought. "I sound a bit like a high minstrel, don"t I?" he added, more quietly.
The Magister regarded him thoughtfully. "That"s not a bad way to think," he said quietly, "if you survive the dangers of talking the same way." A sudden smile lit his face, and Elminster found himself smiling back.
Unseen by them both, down the hall, a pair of eyes appeared amid swirling points of light, in the flames flickering around the canted wreckage of the collapsed feast-table. They watched the boy and the floating mage, and looked thoughtful.
"Can ye really see all that men are, and think?" Elminster asked, awkwardly blurting out the question.
"No," the Magister replied simply. His old brown eyes looked down into unflinching blue-gray ones as he made the crackling wall of flames die away to nothing.
Elminster looked once to see what had befallen, but made no move to flee. Standing on the rubble-strewn, blood-spattered floor, he looked back up at the old wizard. "Are ye going to blast me or let me go?"
"I have no interest in destroying honest folk-and very little at all in the affairs of those who have no magic. I see you have mage-sight, lad ... why don"t you try your hand at sorcery?"
Elminster gave him a dark look. His voice was scornful as he said, "I"ve no interest in such things, or in becoming the sort of man who wields magic. Whenever I look upon mages, I see snakes who use their spells to make folk fear them-like a whip to drive others to obey. Hard, arrogant men who can take a life, or-" he raised hard eyes to look at the destruction all around; the eyes watching from the flames shrank down to avoid notice-"destroy a hall in a few breaths, and not care what they"ve done, so long as their whims are satisfied. Leave me out of the ranks of wizards, lord."
Then, staring up at the old man"s calm face, Elminster knew sudden fear. His words had been harsh, and the Magister was a mage like any other. The mild old eyes, though, seemed to hold ... approval?
"Those who don"t love hurling power make the best mages," the Magister replied. His eyes seemed suddenly to bore deep into Elminster"s soul like seeking, darting things, and sadness was in his voice again as he added, "And those who live by stealing almost always rob themselves of their own lives, in the end."
"The taking gives me no pleasure," Elminster retorted. "I do it to have enough to eat-and to strike against the magelords where and when I can."
The Magister nodded. "That"s why ye might listen," he said. "I"d not have wasted my breath otherwise."
Elminster stared up at him thoughtfully-and then stiffened as he heard the sudden, approaching thunder of running, booted feet echoing in the pa.s.sages nearby. That sound could mean only one thing: armsmen of Athalantar.
"Save thyself!" he snapped, without stopping to think what a ridiculous warning that was to the mightiest archmage in all the world, and darted toward the nearest archway that did not ring with footfalls.
He was still three running strides short of it when men with halberds and crossbows burst into the room, but the puffing merchant with them stabbed a finger up at the floating mage and bellowed, "There!"
By the time the volley of quarrels and hastily conjured flames had torn through suddenly empty air, both the running boy and the eyes in the licking flames that played about the ruin of Havilyn"s once-grand table had vanished. A breath later, the floating corpses suddenly fell from the air, striking the stone floor with wet, heavy thuds. White-faced armsmen drew back, calling aloud on Tempus to defend them and Tyche to aid them.
Elminster took one door out of the kitchen, found himself in a dead-end cl.u.s.ter of pantries, and raced frantically back to the kitchen"s other, smaller door, offering his own quieter prayer to Tyche that it not be another pantry-when he heard Havilyn"s furious voice snarl, "Find that boy! He"s no part of my household!"
Cursing aloud, Elminster s.n.a.t.c.hed open the door. Yes, this was the way the terrified cooks had fled. He took the stairs two at time until at a bend in the stair several halberds crashed down together in front of him, striking sparks. Snarling arms-men struggled to tear them free of the stair-rails and wrestle them around to stab downward-but El had already seen a third armsman lumbering along the pa.s.sage above with a ready crossbow. He leapt back down the stairs in a single bound, landed hard on his haunches, and sprang sideways into an evil-smelling alcove.
A breath later, a crossbow quarrel cracked off the wall nearby and rattled down into the kitchens. A second quarrel followed, speeding deep into the throat of the foremost armsman racing up the stairs.
Elminster didn"t spare the time to watch the man gurgle and fall; he was looking around the dark alcove for the scullery door. There! Wrenching it open, he skidded across the noisome room, through a maze of sloped boards where meat was washed and buckets where food sc.r.a.ps were thrown, hoping the house was old enough to have ... yes!
El seized the pull-ring and hauled up the trapdoor of the refuse-pit. He could hear the waters of the Run rushing past in the darkness below as he slid feetfirst down to join them.
The drop was farther than he"d thought it would be, and the waters numbingly cold. El"s heels struck a mucky bottom for a moment, and he twisted to one side to come up off to one side of the door above.
Trying to ignore the unseen slimy lumps floating in the water with him, he came up gasping for breath, in time to hear a quarrel crack off the hatch somewhere above and behind him, followed by the shout, "The sewers! He"s gone below!"
Elminster swam with the rushing river, trying not to make noise. He didn"t trust the avid armsmen not to come down after him or lower torches and try their archery along the river tunnel. The chill of the waters crept into him as they carried him around a corner and away.
It seemed the first chance he"d had in a long while to collect his wits. The mage royal and at least three other magelords had been swept away in a single night-but the hand of Elminster had done nothing to them. He hadn"t even a bite of supper or a spare coin from the house to show for his efforts.
"Elminster gives thee thanks, Tyche," he murmured into the rushing darkness. He"d managed to hang on to his head in that chamber of death; he supposed that was something . . . something even mighty wizards hadn"t managed! Prudence stifled the whoop of exultation that suddenly rose within him-but it warmed him as he was swept out of the darkness into the blue, lamplit dimness of evening beneath the docks. He turned his head to look up at the dark spires of Athalgard and grinned his defiance at them.
The feeling lasted until he"d clambered out of the water onto a disused dock and started the cold, dripping walk home. If he"d been Farl, he"d have taken his knowledge of who"d died in that chamber to swoop down on a hand"s-worth of houses this very night and seize riches their owners would never claim before relatives or lesser vultures knew man or treasure was missing, and be safely gone into the night.
"But I"m not Farl," Elminster told the night, "and not even all that good a thief-what I am is a good runner."
To prove it, he outran the armsman who came around a corner just then, halberd in hand, who with a startled shout recognized the youth he"d almost spitted in a stairway in Havilyn"s house not twenty breaths ago. Their pounding pursuit took them along a winding street lined with the walled gardens of the wealthy. As they ran under overhanging trees, a dark shadow reached down from one of them and struck the armsmen hard and accurately in the face with a cobblestone.
The man pitched to the cobbles with a clatter, and Farl dropped lightly down into the road, calling, "Eladar!"
Elminster turned at the top of the road and looked back. His friend stood with hands on hips, shaking his head.
"Can"t leave you alone for an evening, I see," Farl said as El puffed his way back down the street.
As he came up, his friend was kneeling on the guard"s neck, expertly feeling for purses, spare daggers, medallions, and other items of interest. "Something important"s happened," Farl said, not looking up. "Havilyn came running in, all out of breath, and said something to Fentarn-and we were all ordered out of the house, and the armsmen after us to be sure we were turned out into the street-while the lot of them ran somewhere-ran, El, I tell you ... I didn"t know any high-and-mighty merchants remembered how to run...."
"I was where the important thing happened," Elminster said quietly. "That"s why this one was chasing me."
Farl looked up at him, eyes alight. "Tell," was all he said.
"Later," Elminster replied. "Let me describe the dead first, and once ye"ve named them, we can visit whichever unsuspecting incipient houses of grief bid fair to have the heaviest loot lying around for the taking."
Farl grinned fiercely. "Suppose we do just that, O prince of thieves." In his excitement and the effort of lifting the guard"s body, he did not see Elminster stiffen at the word "prince."
"We"re fair out of room in there," Farl said in satisfaction when they were safely away from the boarded-up shop where their takings were cached. "Now let"s go somewhere where we can talk and not be seen."
"The burial ground again?"
"Fair enough-once we make sure it"s free of lovers."
They did so, and Elminster told Farl the tale. His friend shook his head at El"s description of the Magister. "I thought he was just a legend," he protested.
"Nay," El said quietly, "he was frightening-ah, but it was magnificent, the way he ignored their best spells, and calmly judged each and struck them down. The power!"
Farl cast a sidelong glance at his friend. Elminster was staring up at the moon, eyes bright. "To have that much power, someday," he murmured, "and never have to run from an armsman again!"
"I thought you hated wizards."
"I-I do ... magelords, at least. There"s something about seeing spells hurled, though, that-"
"Fascinates, eh? I"ve felt that." Farl nodded in the moonlight. "You"ll get over it once you"ve tried to fire a wand or speak a spell over and over again and nothing happens. You learn to admire it from a distance and keep well clear-or be swiftly slain. G.o.ds-bed.a.m.ned wizards." He yawned. "Well, a good night"s work. . .. Let"s get some slumber under Selune-or we"ll be snoring somewhere when full day comes again."
"Here?"
"Nay-two of those dead, at least, have family vaults right here-and what if their servants, sent to clean up the tombs and the brush for a burial, are fearful enough of walking dead to demand an escort of armsmen? Nay, we need to find a roof elsewhere."
A sudden thought came to Elminster, and he grinned. "Hannibur"s?"
Farl grinned back. "His snores"d wake a corpse."
"Exactly." They laughed and hastened back through the dark streets and alleys of the city, avoiding aroused bands of arms-men who were tramping aimlessly about in the night, looking for a running youth in dark leathers and an old mage strolling along in the air-and no doubt inwardly hoping they"d find neither.
As the half-light that heralds dawn stole down the river and into Hastarl, El and Farl settled down on Hannibur"s roof, wondering at the silence from below. "What"s become of his snoring?" El murmured, and Farl shrugged his own puzzlement in reply.
Then they heard the small sound from below that meant Hannibur had slid open the eye-panel on his back door. They exchanged raised eyebrows and bent to look down into the alley- in time to see Shandathe Llaerin, called "the Shadow" for her smoothly silent ways, and perhaps the most beautiful woman in all Hastarl, come lightly up the alley to Hannibur"s back door. They heard her say softly, "I"m here at last, love."
"At last," the baker rumbled as he drew the door warily open. "I thought ye"d never come. Come to the bed ye belong in, now."
Elminster and Farl exchanged delighted glances, and clasped hands with fierce joy in the night. Then, all thoughts of sleep gone, they settled down to listen to what befell in the room below.
And were fast asleep within seven breaths.
The hot sun woke the two exhausted, filthy thieves sometime late in the morning . . . and once they were awake, the smell of fresh-baked rolls and loaves wafting up from Hannibur"s shop made sure they stayed that way.
Stomachs growling, the two thieves peered carefully down at the bedroom below. They could just see Shandathe"s elbow as she slept the day peacefully away.
"Don"t seem right, that she should sleep, when we can"t," Farl complained, rubbing his eyes.
"Let her sleep," Elminster replied. "She"s doubtless earned it. Come." They climbed carefully down the crumbling back sills and cross-beams of the shop next door and went off to the silver-bit baths-only to find folk lined up.
"Whence this sudden urge for cleanliness, goodsir?" Farl asked a sausage vendor they knew by sight.
He frowned at them. "Haven"t ye heard? The mage royal and a dozen other mages were killed last night! The dirge-walk begins at highsun."
"Killed? Just who could manage to slay the mage royal?"
"Ah." The sausage seller leaned close confidentially, pretending not to see the eight or so folk who crowded or leaned out of the line to listen. "There"s some who says it was a mage they awakened from sleeping in a tomb all these years since the fall of Netheril!"
"Nay," a woman standing near put in, " "Twas-"
"And there"s some," the sausage seller went on, raising his voice to ride over her, "what says it was a poor wretch they caught an" were going to eat, alive, so they say, for some foul magic-but when they sat down at the table, he turned into a dragon, and burned "em all! Others say "twas a beholder, or a mind flayer, or summat worse!"
"Nay, nay," the woman said, pushing in, "that"s not it at all-"
"But meself," the sausage-vendor said, elbowing her back and raising his voice again, so that it echoed back off the stone wall across the alley, "I think the first tale I heard is the true one: their wickedness was punished by a visit from Mystra herself!"
"Yes! That"s it! "Twas just that as happened, I tell thee!" The woman was hopping up and down in her excitement now; her capacious bosom heaved and rolled like tied bundles on the docks in high winds. "The mage royal thought he had a spell that would bring her to heel like a dog so he could use her power to destroy all wizards but ours and conquer all the lands from here to the Great Sea beyond Elembar! But he was wrong, and she-"
"She turned them all to boars, thrust spits up their behinds, and seared "em in the hearth fires!" The gleeful voice belonged to a man nearby who stank of fish.
"Nay! I heard she plucked off all their heads-and ate "em!" an old woman said proudly, as if King Belaur personally had told her.
"Ah, get gone wi" ye. Why"d she do that, eh?" The man next to her stepped on her foot, hard.
She hopped in pain, shaking her finger under his nose. "Just you wait, clever-nose! Jus" you wait an" see-if they has carved wooden "eads when they"re borne past us, or their heads covered wi" the burial cloaks, then I"m right! An" there"s some folk in Hastarl as"ll tell you Berdeece Hettir"s never wrong! Jus" you wait!"
Farl and Elminster had been trading amused looks, but at this Farl smiled and said out of the side of his mouth, changing his voice so that it sounded gruff and distant: "I suppose as thou wouldn"t put money on it, hey?"
In an instant, the alley was a bedlam of shouting, red-faced Hastarl folk holding up fingers to indicate their wagers.
"Wait a bit, wait a bit," Elminster said-and silence fell: Eladar the Dark never talked. "It always distresses me to see ye wager," he said, looking around earnestly, "because after, there"s so much hard talk and people furious at those who didn"t pay. So if ye must wager-and ye know I don"t throw my coins about thus-I"ll write down thy claims, and all can be settled fair, after."
There was much talk ... and then a growing agreement that this was a good idea. Elminster tore the sleeve from the rotten shirt he was wearing, got some ink from the street-scribe in trade for a quill that he"d stolen out of a window a tenday ago, and was still carrying in his boot, and set to work, scratching out sums with a rough-pointed needle.
In the rush, none of the folk noticed Farl met several heavy wagers, standing always for the headless side. Elminster worked his way along the line to its head, dodged inside to continue wagering, hung the scribbled sleeve on a high nail, and plunged headlong and fully clothed into the old wine-press tub that served as the bath. The water was already gray with filth, and Elminster came out again just as fast, pursued by the furious proprietor. They dodged around the rinse-pump while Farl worked the handle, dousing them both with rather cleaner water-and then Elminster thrust four silver bits into the man"s hand, leapt to retrieve the wager sleeve, and scampered out again.
"G.o.ds blast thee! "Tis a gold piece a head this day!" the man bellowed after them.
El spun around, disgusted, and tossed a handful of silver bits in the bath-keeper"s direction. "He"s a worse thief than we"ve ever been," he muttered to Farl as they headed for a good place to hide the sleeve. It seemed fitting that the folk of Hastarl were willing to pay good gold to see the backs forever of the mage royal and a good handful of magelords besides.
"Or a better," Farl agreed. Word of what had befallen was all over the city; folk talked of nothing else around them as they walked-and something of the air of a festival hung over the city. El shook his head at the open laughter, even among the patrols of armsmen. "Well, of course they"re happy," Farl explained to his wondering partner. "It"s not every night that some helpful young thief-even if he does prefer to give all the credit to some mysterious mage who conveniently came out of thin air and just as helpfully vanished back into it again-downs the most hated and feared man in all Athalantar and many of his fellow mages ... not to mention a bunch of men that shopkeepers in this city owe a lot of coins to. Wouldn"t you be, in their place?"
"They just haven"t thought about which cruel magelord will step forward to proclaim himself mage royal, and make them even more fearful than before," Elminster replied darkly.
The wide streets along the route of the dirge-walk were filling already; folk who owned finery (and bath facilities of their own to prepare for its wearing) were pushing for the best positions- unaware of the flood of less polite and poorer neighbors who would shortly be charging in to seize the vantage points they wanted, regardless of who thought they owned it already. In most such processions, a good score of folk ended up crushed under the wheels of the carts, shoved forward by the press of leaning, shouting common folk.
"Are you thinking of what houses may be standing empty this good day, groaning with the weight of coins for the taking, while all Hastarl turns out to watch corpses paraded by?" Farl asked lightly.
"Nay," Elminster said. "I was thinking of switching the bucket that bath-keeper sits on for another-taking the one he"s filling up with coins right now, and in its place leaving a bucket of-"
"Dung?" Farl grinned. "Too risky, though, by far-half the folk in line"d see us."
"Ye think they don"t know what we do for a living, Farl? Even ye can"t be that much the idiot!" Elminster replied.
Farl drew himself up with an air of injured dignity. " "Tis not that, goodsir-"tis that we have a reputation to maintain. Everyone may know that we take, aye-but none should ever see us doing the taking. It shouldst be magic, d"you see? Like those wizards you"re so fond of."
El gave him a look. "Let"s go take things," he said, and they strolled off to arm themselves for the workday ahead.