Ed Greenwood - The Herald

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?

High time to think about such things, or at least about how he should best proceed to learn more about them, indeed. Without, of course, seeming to do so.

El turned pages as if seeking something. He stopped when he found one of the casting arrays drawn out, with its triangles and radiating lines and encircled runes of power, and peered at it, pretending to study it intently.

While he really stared right through it, and let himself feel the Weave. It was bright and many knotted around him, of course, yet he saw it through ale-brown smoke of varying thickness: the wards.

Here in the old fortress that was the heart of Candlekeep, the wards shaped and constrained the Weave, binding it into walls and floors and the many-layered domes of surrounding force.

Making it hard for him to send unseen spying arms of his awareness anywhere within its bounds without having to fight the Weave-and making his presence and intent obvious to anyone attuned to the wards. As all of the older and higher-ranking monks were.

Which meant he’d have to do things the old way. Use spells only when absolutely necessary, and otherwise use his feet, his eyes, and his thinking.

Hmph. All of his failing faculties.

The chant was much nearer now. It was lesser than it had usually been during his visits, with fewer voices raised in the chanting. He knew the prophecies of Alaundo as well as any monk here did, and it was surprising how few of them had come to pass, and so had been dropped from the chant, since his last stay at Candlekeep.

The chanted words were clearly audible now.

“One shall rise out of thorns and fire, and seven shall be the swords that cleave to him, seven the crowns he binds together. One shall fall from the skies, and free dragons from their dungeon, and they shall scour the lands for their imprisoner. One shall-”

“Pray excuse, Brother,” a voice murmured from the next table, a man’s hand, palm down, moved gently into Elminster’s field of vision and stopped, hovering as was the custom, waiting for a response.

El put his finger down on an inscription in the upper right of the casting array as if to tamp the spot down in his mind, stiffened his oldest and least detectable mantle spell to shield himself from an attack, and looked up-into a kindly, anxious face. “Yes?”

It was a monk he’d met only once before, when the man had been much younger. Myndlar. Of Athkatla. Ah, yes, this was the monk who believed dragons sought to steer human thought by writing books, purporting to be human women, and by sending dreams to humans who’d established reputations as writers.

“Archemusk, yes?” Myndlar asked eagerly, yet timidly. “The page before that array … does he mention Aravril as having claimed that several Netherese archmages hid by taking wyvern shape? Or was it the half-elf Talastaril who made that claim?”

“Neither,” El replied from memory, turning back a page, and adding hastily, “I think .” What he knew to be true might well not be what Archemusk had written … but in this case, it was. The book mentioned Moranveril of Myth Drannor as having seen archmages take the shape of wyverns, in ruins deep in Raurin-Moranveril who shortly thereafter vanished, and “was seen no more by anyone.”

Myndlar studied that passage for a long moment, then nodded, thanked Dalkur, and returned eagerly to his own reading, flipping the pages of three open books until he found several passages to compare, in light of what he’d just learned.

Typical behavior of a monk of Candlekeep, when not dealing with a monk of exalted rank or one known to be difficult. And not a word, look, or hesitation that might suggest he viewed Dalkur with the slightest suspicion.

El turned back to the casting array, found the inscription he’d put his finger on, and went back to thinking.

If the old stiffneck hid anything coherent anywhere for others to find, it will have been here. And I know he wrote everything down, in flowery full-know it as sure as I know my own name. His pride would demand nothing less.

Aye, he had known Khelben Arunsun through and through, just as Khelben had known him. Which is why they’d never stopped arguing with each other, or going about things in very different ways, yet never stopped working for the same cause. Even if not always together, or without deliberately getting in each other’s way.

Now, the question was, had Mystra imparted secrets of the Weave to Khelben greater than the understanding of its great tapestry one Elminster Aumar had reached?

And if she had, had anyone else suspected as much, and come here looking for them?

A bell so deep throated as to be felt more than heard tolled then, just once.

In response, more than one stomach in the small chamber rumbled.

El hid his amusement at how swiftly his fellow monks set aside their books and departed the room.

Food for thought seldom triumphed long over food for the belly.

“So, Old Wolf, we meet again,” purred a voice Mirt hadn’t expected to hear in a place such as this. Here in one of the dimmest and farthest of the discreet upper rooms of the Dusty Knight, an establishment of far less than savory reputation that graced a dirty back street halfway across Suzail from the Queen Fee.

Manshoon stood in the doorway, tall, thin, and as darkly handsome as ever, his cloak swirling as he drew one gloved hand along his belt to rest on … something Mirt didn’t recognize, that looked both magical and menacing.

Mirt gave the women seated around him silent looks that suggested it would be safest if they left the room, right now. Experienced night-coin takers all, they melted out of the room by the three side doors in a few swift and quiet moments, leaving the onetime Lord of Waterdeep alone with the cloaked vampire who’d ruled both Zhentil Keep and Westgate in his time.

Under the table, Mirt readied some handy magic of his own. “You our first patron?” he inquired gruffly.

“ ‘Our’? You co-own the Dusty Knight now? My, you do move swiftly!”

“Not that quickly. The ladies and I have just formed a go-to-patrons venture. To cater to citizens and visitors who’d rather not be seen coming here.”

Manshoon strolled into the room and shut the door. “Promising-if you can get word to the right ears in the right manner-a warm, safe haven in these times of tumult.”

Mirt fixed his unexpected guest with a suspicious eye. “Aye. And would a safe haven be the subject of your current hunt?”

Manshoon lowered himself into one of the vacated chairs across the table from Mirt, took up the decanter from the table and an unused tallglass, and drawled, “Not particularly. Say rather, I prefer to move from good vantage point to good vantage point-the better to watch unfolding doom-for entertainment’s sake. Rather than plunging into the fray.”

“Until?” Mirt asked, interpreting the pitch of his guest’s last few words.

“Until the Shadovar, at least, have made their move.”