After returning to the deep back pantry, he used Chethil’s belt knife to slit the seal, slicing aside the thorns the worms found poisonous, and opened the coffer. Inside were two flesh-devouring worms of the sort that consumed vermin in Thultanthar. Both as long as his forearm, glistening black, and plump, their segments rippled with hunger. Opening the closet he’d stuffed the dead monk into, Maerandor poured the worms onto the corpse’s chest and firmly closed the door.
Shut in for long enough, they’d not just strip the skeleton bare, they’d gnaw the monk’s bones to powder, too.
All very tidy. Now, three jars of oysters and a detour to a particular cellar to collect the wine he knew Rethele and Shinthrynne liked to sip when the ovens grew hot and the sweat started to stream.
The fewer monks left, the less resistance. And the Most High wanted no magic wasted and lost in fighting when it came time to drain the wards of this place for Thultanthar. So, his own task was to eliminate any who might fight against that draining. And Maerandor had a reputation to maintain. He did swift, efficient work.
All of which meant it was high time to bring about Candlekeep’s downfall.
Elminster hadn’t visited Candlekeep often, and had never stayed long. There’d always been so many pressing tasks to do, things he couldn’t neglect or delay. Yet many times he’d wanted to tarry in this most lore-filled of monasteries, drawn to the rooms and rooms full of grimoires and spellbooks and histories and every other sort of book he’d not had the time to sit and really enjoy. Even with twelve centuries to find time enough in.
He was drawn to them now, but knew better than to wander and search shelves and so be noticed as behaving oddly. Dalkur had been an intense devourer of tomes on just one “enthusiasm” at a time, only to turn to another after a handful of years, rather than a voracious reader who enjoyed variety.
Though he had no idea just what Andannas Dalkur’s current enthusiasm was, El knew his best course would be to casually select a book, take it to a quiet corner table somewhere near where it had been shelved, and peruse it with care. While listening and watching what was going on around him among his fellow Avowed, without appearing to do so. He had to know what the current tenor of daily life was like among the monks, and to spot any sign of an impostor, or collusion, or some swiftly approaching planned violence.
Besides, it was high time for a little reflection. His mind had been swimming in the Weave and concentrating on repairing and augmenting it for so long that he needed to think again of daily life in Faerûn, and what he needed to watch of that to be warned of trouble in time. If, that is, he might possibly snatch time enough to deal with all the troubles he should do battle with.
He knew better than to seek one of the inner rooms that housed books of powerful magic or inestimable value, which could only be examined with the permission of the most senior and highest-ranking monks, and in their presence.
If fate, the conspiracies of others, and the whims and striving of the gods were going to allow him time enough to accomplish what he sought to do here at all, then there would be time enough in the days ahead to seek out and read through everything his longtime colleague the Blackstaff had written, that had found its way here or been placed here deliberately by Khelben. Just now, something less precious would arouse less suspicion in any impostor seeking the same lore he was, and so would do just fine …
He turned into one of the smaller chambers that opened off the Everwinding Stair with an open archway rather than a door, gently ignored several monks who were deep in books at the study tables with the same eyes-down silence with which they ignored him, and selected Archemusk’s Trends in Approaches to the Art, its thousand-odd well-worn pages shedding their crumbling edges with the same enthusiasm he remembered from when the book had sat in a wizard’s tower in upland Amn more than six hundred summers ago.
It was large and heavy, bound with ironroot panels clad in black peryton hide, and El cradled it in both hands as he shuffled to the vacant back corner table, sat himself down, and relaxed into the gloomy, dusty patience of Candlekeep. There was a glowing globe hanging dark and motionless in midair beside one of the older bookcases, whose graceful serpentine side pillars differentiated it from its later neighbors. The globe detected El’s arrival and drifted gently over to hang behind his right shoulder, a gentle radiance kindling within it. When it was bright enough, El glanced up at it, and it stopped brightening and held to a steady level of glow.
Archemusk was a beautiful calligrapher, his hand fluid and flowing, generous with ornamental swashes-which more than atoned for the utter lack of limning. There were no illustrations, beyond depictions of runes, sigils, and the drawn arrays of the complicated castings that were popular after Netheril had fallen, and then again in the earlier 1100s. Everything in black atharnscale ink that never faded, so it all sprang out at his eyes fresh, dark, and crisp even though the pages he turned were mottled brown with age.
El-Dalkur, he must think of himself only as Dalkur-passed over the early sections of the book, having little taste for reading again the utterly fantastical admiration Archemusk had held for the magelords of Athalantar and the early self-styled “emperor wizards” who’d left ravaged Netheril behind them to conquer this or that corner of Faerûn.
Once Archemusk had reached the founding of Thay and the earliest squabbles over what magic was of which school, things grew interesting, and El settled in to read-with half his mind, anyway. The rest of him pondered what little he’d heard and seen of Candlekeep thus far.
The Endless Chant was just rising into audibility, still far off in a distant tower, and the chambers around him held the usual number of monks and books, in the usual near silence.
What was different was the atmosphere of the place: tension.
A tension he’d never felt in Candlekeep before.
He turned a page of Archemusk’s writings, hearing again from memory the dry and superior voice of the man, though Orold Archemusk had been dust for two centuries now, and listened to the chant draw slowly nearer. It sounded smaller than he remembered, as if there were fewer novices marching behind the Chanter, chanting in plainsong unison as they traversed the long, familiar, smooth-worn circuit through the great monastery.
As the chant swelled, El thought of all the rooms around him, both the walled-off towers and those in use and lined with books. Monks shuffling silently from chamber to chamber, cowls shading their faces, lost in thought. Inevitably, he found himself wondering how many foes were among them, lurking within these thick and ancient stone walls.
Intruders like he was, wearing the faces of monks they’d slain.
Waiting for … what?
The chance to steal or seize the mighty spells of centuries past? Or the magic of the monks of Candlekeep? Come to think of it, he’d not seen any magical rods thrust through the belts of the Avowed since his arrival, though that habit had once been usual. On the other hand, he’d not yet laid eyes on any highranking monks …
Or were the disguised intruders just hiding from the war and tumult outside the fortress, judging the ancient monastery to be the best refuge they could think of to ride out worse things that might well be coming?
Or were they here to try to harness the wards of Candlekeep for some fell purpose? Or find the same secrets of the Weave he himself sought?