Ed Greenwood - The Herald

Before he returned in triumph to the kitchens with the sleeves of onions he’d hidden ready earlier, that is.

The passage was indeed deserted, and here was the stretch of wall he sought. Here where the everglow was strongest. He slid the hood off the old candle lamp, raised it, and started scorching and blackening the stone with care, making a certain mark-two vertical lines bracketing two identical ovals -thus .

And it was done, that swiftly. He spun around and strode back to the stair that had brought him there; standing back and taking time to admire your handiwork was an apt-to-be-fatal mistake of the rash and inexperienced.

He knew it stood out dark, fresh, and clear behind him. The symbol that would alert other monks who’d been subverted by the Shadovar long ago that it was at last time to rise, and act.

“Act” as in eliminating all other monks and seizing control of the monastery. With no monks left to try to wield the wards against foes-such as revealed Shadovar, when the time came-the wards would hum unaltered, and could be drained all the more easily. And that time would be soon.

So, now, take the next step closer.

Maerandor smiled as he went to fetch his onions.

Time to loose the prowling beast.

Its lack of wrinkles had told him that Andannas Dalkur’s face seldom wore a scowl, to say nothing of a frown, so Elminster took care not to let his inward frown reach the borrowed face he was wearing.

It was the twelfth day of Marpenoth today. Which meant he couldn’t deny that it was taking him a very long time to uncover which tomes Khelben had secretly taken a hand in crafting, or written outright, without being overly obvious about it.

It was taking him even longer to find any of them.

Might even take him forever.

Thus far, he’d laid eyes or hands on not a single one.

In room after room, he’d found the titles he knew to look for were missing. Even The Beneficial Flows and Their Mastery , a book the monks often copied for various rulers and civic officials because it was so exhaustively practical a work on sewers, drainage, and fertilizer. The keep had owned more than thirty copies of that particular tome … yet he could find none of them.

Obviously someone who’d arrived in Candlekeep before him shared his conclusions about Khelben-that the Blackstaff had hidden clues within his works here at the keep. Possibly in the form of invisible-under-normal-circumstances magical writing, or more likely by means of a skip spell that-once triggered by the utterance of the right word or phrase, or the touching of the right sequence of separated words on a particular early page of the book-would illuminate specific words of the text throughout the book, in a particular sequence, to form different sentences than met the eyes of any casual reader.

He had come to this hunt too late. Someone, or someones, had struck first, removing the books he sought.

Still carefully not frowning, El did not turn away from the shelf that hadn’t held the Arunsun-penned tome that should have been there, but instead peered along it, as if interested in the nicely bound dross that filled out its run. He could feel the weight of suspicious scrutiny from behind him, like a spear boring through his back between his shoulder blades, and from his left, like the searing flame of a too-close fire. There were multiple monks in both directions, apparently lost in their own silent, contemplative study of various tomes he’d already noticed weren’t by Khelben.

He had taken great care, of course, not to obviously search for any book, least of all title after title by one author, and had broken off seeking Blackstaff books to peruse all manner of unrelated tomes whenever he thought he was in the presence of a monk who was the double of any of the bodies he’d found … yet some time ago he’d become aware that certain of the monks were covertly watching him.

Regarding him with increasing suspicion.

So now he feigned finding something that delighted him. He reached out and seized a tome with a loud and pleased, “Aha!”

His find wasn’t entirely a random book; he’d pounced on a volume that had nothing to do with Khelben, but that was old enough, and written by someone who dwelled in the right location in the Realms, to have possibly had something to do with Khelben. The Blackstaff’s publicly known offices, residences, and concerns, that is.

Tucking the tome under his arm, El scurried out of the room and down a back passage, departing the busier areas of that part of Candlekeep.

His find happened to be something that should be required reading for all practitioners of the Art, and that thieving guilds and cabals often stole on sight: Shield and Sentinel: Observations on Warding Magic , by Alais Maeraphym. Not a spellbook, but a workbook of half-spells and incantations that could augment the well-known castings. Useful and well written; Alais had been a warm, affectionate woman, and her prose was too. A book any novice wizard would lust after.

He hurried along dimly lit back passages and down worn but little-used stairs, heading deeper into the rocky roots of the monastery, where the spellcasting caverns were. And that very haste caused someone behind him to hurry, and so make a few little noises-scuffs and scrapes of soft leather soles on stone. There, again. Yes, someone was following him, he was sure of it.

Skulking, taking care not to make overmuch noise or show a light, but stalking him, to be sure.

El smiled tightly, and kept on going, slowing now so as not to lose his shadow.

“I thought I’d be done saving the world by now,” he murmured to himself, closing and barring the one door he could so fasten behind him, to force his foe to take a longer way around. “Saving, heh. No shortage of overweening arrogance here … yet that is what I do, and know it. I strive for the better, albeit all too oft by lawless or ruthless means. Yet I can’t stop, not until my oblivion comes.”

He descended another stair, and added, “Because what I do must be done, and aside from the bare handful of my fellow tested and true Chosen, I can trust no one else to do it. No one.”

Through another door, down a long, sloping passage, the air growing noticeably cooler, and around a bend into the first of the caverns.

“Aye, it must be done, and I am the only one I can trust to do it. As many a tyrant has believed, of course.”

The cavern was empty. He crossed it in haste, hearing the first distant echoes of his follower, thwarted by the door he’d fastened closed, pelting down a distant stone stair. “So carve the headstone: ‘Elminster Aumar, Better Tyrant Than Most.’ ”

Another passage, with another, larger cavern, loomed ahead.

“Or should that be: ‘More Deluded Than Most’?”

This cavern too was deserted, its usual amber radiance shining down on the silent emptiness. El strode across it to the leftmost of the two doors set into its far wall, and found it locked. Murmuring a cantrip he’d learned more than a thousand years earlier, he went through it as swiftly as if he’d had a key.

And passed into another passage, which sloped gently, with three caverns opening off it before it hooked around and descended into a fourth.

The second cavern, with its natural pillars of fused stalactites and stalagmites, would be best for his needs. Its door proved to be locked too, but no matter save the dark thought: when had the monks of Candlekeep taken to locking the deep spellcasting caverns?

El selected where he’d take his stand, shelved the workbook in a crevice clear across the cavern, returned to his chosen spot, and calmly sat down on a rock to wait, holding his hands up as if he was cradling a tome.