Ed Greenwood - Bury Elminster Deep

It was to happen on the eve of the Festival of Handras, Suzail’s annual late-Mirtul reception for the senior caravan traders of the Sword Coast, when it was customary for such far traders and wagonmasters to present “fresh wonders from the Sword Coast” in dockside warehouses, where free food and drink were served to all who came to gaze on the latest goods, curios, and exotic fashions.

And the dance would take place at The Bold Blazon, an exclusive club catering to certain jaded young nobles and socially ambitious folk those nobles liked to drink, trade, and sleep with.

As it happened, the Blazon was not one of Lord Arclath Delcastle’s haunts, because the nobles who liked to frequent it included several of his longtime foes and rivals, such as Maerclorn Wintersun-the younger heir Lord Wintersun, not the patriarch-and Kathkote Dawntard.

In vain the proprietor of the Blazon, a greedy, shave-pated, many-earring-adorned snob by the name of Daerendygho Vrabrant, protested that he’d arranged no such performance for Handras Eve or any other night, had never even met the Blue Flame, and did not desire to host such “epicene diversions” at the Blazon.

Besieged with demands from half Suzail to rent stage-side tables, atop the clamorings of all his usual patrons, he hurriedly hired extra security-only to discover that dozens of nobles were outbidding him to buy the “first loyalty” of his security force to obey them first, rather than him. In other words, to let those nobles into the Blazon at will, and allow them to bring along extra friends and their own wine, weapons, and anything else they might desire.

Despairing and seeing both ruin and the palace dungeons in his nightmares, Vrabrant went to the wizards of war in secret and entreated their help in providing “unseen security.”

Not that Elminster or any of his companions knew about that entreaty until later-though Arclath slowly came to suspect the Sage of Shadowdale had anticipated it.

“Count me out,” Vainrence said with a grin, slurring the words.

The eyes of Ganrahast and Glathra met above the lord warder, and it was Glathra who said gently, “We didn’t expect you to leap up out of this bed and do anything about it, Rence. We just wanted you to know the particular disaster we were wading into, this time.”

“After all, once you asked about it,” the royal magician added, “we had to admit that, yes, all Suzail is talking about it, for you to hear about it in here.”

“So who is this Blue Flame?”

“No one knows,” Ganrahast replied.

“But,” Glathra added with wicked glee, “I suspect Elminster is behind it, that it’s an attempt to flush out the mysterious noble who commands that blueflame ghost-and it’s highly likely the Blazon will suffer greatly in the trouble that’s bound to erupt.”

“Including the trouble we will undoubtedly cause, after your scrying turns up something we absolutely must rush in to deal with?” Ganrahast asked dryly.

She widened her eyes into an innocence that fooled no one at all.

“Undoubtedly,” she said solemnly.

The Blazon was packed that warm and breezy Handras Eve. Half of fashionable Suzail had shown up, crowding the doors to get in. They stood tightly packed along the walls and between the tables. More, who’d tried in vain to get inside, were milling around in the streets and down alleyways, all around.

Inside, all eyes were locked on the stage-that is, on the small cleared space where a lone dancer was leaping and whirling, her bare body glistening with sweat and ceaseless blue flames wreathing her body.

There had been no such space a few breaths ago. A despairing Daerendygho Vrabrant had gone to the trouble of having the Blazon’s tiny stage torn down, a new floor installed where it had been, and new chairs and tables brought in to fill the space. However, to his open-mouthed horror, several patrons had suddenly put down their tankards in unison, murmured magic-and made certain chairs, tables, and the startled diners seated on or at them vanish. The revealed wizards had similarly disappeared an instant later, leaving only their tankards behind.

This had not amused Wizard of War Glathra Barcantle, who was standing on a nearby rooftop trying to oversee a team of Crown mages, a lot of Purple Dragons, and a covert force of Highknights. She was already uneasy at the dozen-some bands of bullyblades and hedge wizards loitering in the alleyways below, obviously sent by various ambitious nobles. This evening was racing toward real trouble.

The sudden appearance of some startled diners, with tankards, platters of fried bustard, the tables those were standing on, chairs, and all their belongings in the middle of one filthy, refuse-choked alleyway did not strike Glathra as particularly helpful, though it made some of the wizards on the roof with her chuckle.

“Just watch for blue flames,” Glathra snapped at them, returning her attention to the conjured scrying eye floating in the air before her.

In it, she could see the Blue Flame, whom she’d been entirely unsurprised to learn looked very like a certain Amarune Whitewave.

“Elminster,” she snarled, as she kept one eye on the sensuous dance for any sign of something suspicious, and with the other tried to survey what she could see of the crowded audience. “You’re behind this, you are…”

She could tell Amarune was dancing elsewhere, and magic-Elminster’s, for all the gold in the palace vaults-was making the dancer’s image appear in the Blazon, and providing the cold, burning-nothing blue flames wreathing it, too.

There! A man among the many along one of the club walls toppled forward, face-first into the lap of a startled drinker at the nearest table, and a blue, flaming glow could be seen behind him. Men started abruptly scrambling to flee from that spot, clawing and shoving, as a figure surrounded in flowing blue flames stepped through the wall, sword first, stabbing ruthlessly at anyone in the way.

Shouts went up in the alleys-other scrying eyes besides Glathra’s were in use-and the bullyblades started to surge forward.

Dragons looked to Glathra. “Lady?”

“Stay where you are!” she ordered. “We couldn’t get through all the flesh down there, anyhail! Wait and watch, to see where we should rush, before we do it!”

Chaos had erupted inside the Blazon. The lone blueflame ghost was stalking through the crowd, apparently seeking specific nobles to slay. Everyone was shouting or screaming, swords and daggers were out everywhere, and men were fighting viciously just to get out of the club, hacking and trampling those in their way.

As the bloodshed grew, tables overturned, and chairs were hurled, the dancer danced on.

A stretch of the Blazon’s outer wall abruptly vanished, as some hired mage or other cast a spell no one should use in crowded city streets-and the elder Lord Wintersun, surrounded by a tight knot of bullyblades, charged inside.

He was making for his white-faced and weeping son, who was about seven men distant from the pursuing ghost and vainly trying to get farther away-as behind him, one by one, those seven fled or were hewn down.

Another spell burst right behind the ghost, shooting flames in all directions and flinging the blueflame slayer into the air and halfway across the club. Howls and shrieks arose as the fire spread, and in a trice men who were aflame were staggering helplessly about, tripping over the wounded and senseless.

“Firequench!” Glathra shouted at the four war wizards who’d prepared for that duty. “Now!”

Someone else’s spell brought another section of the Blazon’s outer wall down, and patrons fled wildly, streaming out into the streets in all directions.