“Always seems to, yes. Thanks to Mystra. Truth be known, his so-called triumphs often make things worse for us all. He’s Mystra’s doomsman, her destroyer. Her herald, showing us the darkness before she rides in to rescue us all with her divine benevolence and light. He doesn’t even see how badly he’s being used. Or worse, perhaps he does see it, and is too insane to care about the damage he does.”
Mirt nodded calmly. “Did it never occur to you that Mystra might be using you just as she does Elminster? Herald and dark herald?”
Manshoon gave the old man a coldly level look. “I see Lords of Waterdeep regard heralds in rather a different light than the rest of us.”
“ ‘Rest of us’? There are more of you? I seem to recall hearing about a war of many Manshoons that … took care of that.”
The vampire sneered. “Believe what you want to believe, Mirt. The truth is seldom so tidy.”
Mirt raised his glass. “At last, something we can agree on. I’ll drink to that.”
Mockingly his guest toasted him, and they sipped in unison.
Mirt sighed gusty appreciation of the vintage, set down his glass, and observed, “I’m sure you’ll eventually get around to telling me your reason for troubling to seek me out-here in the less than publicly prominent Dusty Knight.”
Manshoon smiled. “Soon.”
“Shall I save you the dallying? You think I’m working with Elminster, and want to know what he’s up to right now.”
“My, old wolves retain sharp wits.”
Mirt shrugged. “That may or may not be, but this particular Old Wolf isn’t working with Elminster, and hasn’t the faintest where he’s gone or what he’s busy with. He’s meddling, of course, but as for where and why …” He shrugged again.
“Spells to compel truth are things even young apprentices can master,” Manshoon remarked idly.
“If you want to waste one just to learn I’m speaking truth, be my guest.” Mirt combed his beard with calm fingers, found a fragment of garlic hardbread crust from his last meal, and ate it with gusto. “Isn’t it a trifle … dangerous, being this candid with me?”
The vampire smiled again. “You’re no fool, Old Wolf. You know prudence. I, too, am no fool-and have more than enough magic to fry the brains of any lord or aging rogue who crosses me.”
Mirt matched his guest’s cold smile. “You mean you have more than enough magic to try.”
Manshoon set down his glass. “And there you take the inevitable step too far, old man. A bold stride into foolishness, to be sure. Wise men know better than to push the likes of me. We push back.”
The spell came across the table without warning, a boiling darkness that flared up and lashed out at Mirt’s face like a wide-fanged snake.
Only to rebound with a bright flash, parried by an unseen mantle spell that turned it back entirely upon Manshoon, whose startled grunt soared into a shriek of pain before-
The chair across the table from Mirt held only silence, and a thick tendril of rising, drifting mingled smoke and mist.
“Contingencies,” the Old Wolf muttered disgustedly. “Wizards never do taste the full consequences of their folly.”
He reached for the decanter. Once he’d raised it, clearing his field of view, he could see that the blackened seat of the smoldering chair across from him was now cracked right across.
“Still as overconfident as ever, I see,” he observed to the empty air. “Did it never occur to you, Lord of the Zhentarim, that someone who’s survived as long as I have might-just might-have fallen into the habit of anticipating rather obvious danger, and preparing for it?”
The rising, fading mist offered no reply, but then, Mirt hadn’t expected it to. He filled and promptly drained his glass, in one long gulp.
And then shrugged, reached across the table to pluck up Manshoon’s abandoned tallglass, and drained it, too.
CHAPTER 5
Elminster settled on a larger but quieter chamber as his preferred study area, and had returned Archemusk to the shelves in favor of Traethur’s frankly speculative The Art in the Ages Ahead. Amusing reading, some of it, to one who knew more than most.
More than he should, some would say.
Yet never enough, he and his Alassra had always agreed. He felt the familiar stirring ache of grief as she came to mind, and set it aside with cold deliberation.
Not now, he thought. I have a fresh and more pressing disaster on my platter.
By which he did not mean the monastery meals. They were better than he recalled them being.
Aye, after three days of settling in, Candlekeep was both the same as he remembered it, and different. The same deep but somehow listening silence, the same unseen-in-darkness high ceilings in some chambers and low stone vaultings in others. Bare stone floors worn smooth by the passage of many, many soft slippers down the centuries, every wall-even those lining the short flights of stairs-covered with crammed-full bookshelves.
Physically, it was the same great fortress of learning. What was different was the mood.
The serene patience was gone. Silent acceptance had become silent tension.
The monks were wary. Not just troubled by news of the fresh disasters and devastations of a world in tumult beyond their walls, but disquieted by what had befallen within them.
Disquieted enough to talk about it all. So without any mind touching, El had readily been able to learn what had happened in Candlekeep during the past year.
Some monks had disappeared, just slipping away from the monastery on errands, strolls to take in the air, and so forth, never to return. Others just … weren’t there at chant or meal or prayer. Gone, with no one having seen them depart, and not to be found when they were searched for. Others had fallen out of view for a time and later returned without tenable explanation, sometimes refusing to say anything at all.
Some of those latter had come back changed. Fearful and withdrawn, furtive and looking ever over their shoulders.
The nights had grown increasingly longer, with no explanations to be found in any tome-but hundreds of dire hints and cryptic possible references. As day after day, war and cataclysm wracked the lands outside Candlekeep’s walls. The monastery had been besieged several times by frightened wealthy folk at the gates pleading for refuge and offering vast sums to pay for it. Even more frequent arrivals had been the envoys of many rulers, guilds, costers, and trading alliances, and even dwarf clans demanding the Avowed of Candlekeep share what they knew of battle magic, warding, and mending magic, in this time of ever-increasing troubles. Then had come an actual invasion, by a force of devils led by a wizard who commanded them in the name of Asmodeus, who’d gotten inside the walls to maraud through the fortress itself.
It had all been too much. The world outside seemed to be trying repeatedly to plunge these halls of learning into the strife and tumult raging through the lands.
The senior monks had come to a decision with a speed that in Candlekeep verged on the obscene, and hastened to raise the Great Shield, that seldom-raised heart of the wards that let only sound, light, and air pass, and to all else was like a great dome of force, a mighty wall to keep the world out.
And so the Avowed had physically and magically barricaded themselves inside their ancient fortress, seeking to keep the outside world at bay.
They were frightened and upset, for it was not a matter of simply ignoring the surrounding lands in favor of prayer to Oghma and pursuing intensive study and writing. The world kept knocking at the gates.
Even the Great Shield had been tested. Someone had taken to lobbing boulders over the high walls, and although these had been easily turned back by the wards, what sort of wanton destroyer would do such a thing?