Ed Greenwood: Elminster Must Die

Marlin spun around. “Who-”

“Call back thy slayers,” his gaunt old visitor snapped. “Half the Dragons and war wizards in Suzail are fighting them right now-and being led here as they do.”

By way of reply, Marlin Stormserpent sneered and strode to snatch up the Flying Blade from a sidetable. “Get out! Whoever you are, get-”

“Elminster’s the name,” the old man told him cheerfully as he tossed a handful of metal vials under the noble’s boots.

Marlin slipped, smooth metal rolling under his feet. He made a wild grab for his sword, got it-and went down helplessly, dragging the table down atop himself.

A moment later, the Wyverntongue Chalice came down on his head, and Cormyr went away very suddenly.

“Satisfyingly solid,” Elminster remarked approvingly to the woman on the bed. “Ye might want to leave now, before-”

“ It’stoo late?” a coldly malicious voice said in his ear out of a sudden roiling glow, just before it claimed him in a savage roar of unleashed magic.

“I’ve business inside, look ye,” the old man in battered leathers with the sword in his hand said truculently. “Stand aside.”

The Purple Dragons stopped smiling tolerantly and lowered their spears to point at his chest.

“Saer wizard?” one of them called to alert the duty wizard of war behind them.

The response was a grunt and several swift thuds, as if something heavy had fallen. One Dragon started to turn.

Only to grunt in his turn and topple forward. His fellow soldier had just time to stare at him, before joining him.

“Mirt,” Storm Silverhand said delightedly from behind the men she’d felled. “Come in, and be welcome! It’s been years!”

Elminster opened his eyes, feeling weak and scorched.

He was in the royal palace, in a small stone room he’d seen a time or two before. A chamber with stone benches built along two walls, closed doors in the other two, and a table in the center of the room.

Storm Silverhand was lying on it, faceup, dead or senseless.

Elminster staggered to her to see which.

Her eyes opened, her gaze seeming different from Storm’s, somehow, as he bent over to murmur, “Lass?”

Needlelike pincers erupted out of her to impale him.

Spewing blood, eyes wide in disbelief and pain, Elminster staggered back-and up through the body of the woman that wasn’t Storm, bursting it apart like so much wet custard and rending the table and floor from beneath, came a gigantic beholder.

Large and dark it loomed, surrounded not just by its long, writhing forest of eyestalks, but by tentacles that ended in grasping pincers.

“No more meddling, Elminster,” it purred in a wet, gloating voice. “No more guiding your precious Forest Kingdom this way and that, sneering as you move men about like pieces on a chessboard. All your schemes and strivings end here and now.”

Two pincers snared Elminster’s hands-and snipped them off at the wrists.

Blood spurted, and the old man reeled.

“Yes, the moment of my revenge has come at last, Elminster of Shadowdale. As you die your final death-your oh-so-overdue passing. All your mantles and wards and contingencies stripped away, drained, and used, down long and patient years of watching and sending you foes, and ‘accidents,’ and unfortunate concidences. Outwitting you, arrogant Aumar. There were more of me than you thought there were-so this last one of me will outlast you. Now embrace oblivion in fitting agony, knowing it is I, Manshoon, who has slain you!”

Magic lashed out from eyestalks to blast Elminster, driving him to his knees. He fought gaspingly to find breath enough to scream, his arms seared off at the shoulder, his body aflame. And failed.

“I kill you now in the name of Symgharyl, and so many of my selves, and much of the best blood of the Brotherhood. Die, old fool!”

More eyestalks let fly, and the kneeling man was reduced to ashes-

— that slumped down into swirling ruin, even as the eye tyrant bellowed out mighty laughter and teleported away, leaving only the rolling echoes of its mirth behind.

“Stormserpent’s behind it all,” Arclath panted as they sprinted for the palace together. “The flaming men-all of it. We’ll just have to hope Glathra’s there-or someone who’ll listen to me!”

“I wonder where Elminster is,” Amarune gasped. “He’s crazed enough to step in, where our precious wizards of war won’t!”

Alusair raced like a furious whirlwind. Storm rushed after her, Mirt pounding along at her heels, into a little stone room where … human blood and innards were spattered everywhere.

And a heap of faintly glowing enchanted trinkets she recognized, amid ashes … Elminster.

Or all that was left of him.

Silver fire was winking and glowing like fireflies among a swirl of ashes on the floor, and her own body winked and glowed in response; she had no doubt she was gazing at his remains.

“No,” Storm whispered, lips trembling. “No. Damn you, El, not like this! Not without giving me a chance to bid you farewell! I loved you, Elminster Aumar! Mystra damn me, but I loved you!”

Elminster’s ashes rippled over the floor and rose into a spike that became a faltering pillar … and took on a vaguely manlike shape.

“And I love ye, too,” he whispered hollowly. “Though perhaps I should say ‘What is left of me’ loves ye.”

He’d survived! In undeath or something like it, but-Storm burst into tears and rushed to embrace him.

Causing him to be reduced to swirling ashes-which promptly streamed down her bodice and the rest of her, making her gasp in startled pleasure ere they raced down one of her legs to the floor. There they rose again into a little hump, from which lifted a headlike shape.

“Always wanted to do that,” Elminster said in satisfaction.

Behind them arose a strange chorus of mirth. Mirt the Moneylender and the ghost of Alusair were both chuckling.

S omeone felled those guards,” Arclath snarled. “Treason! Slayers seeking the king! I-”

“Save your breath for running,” Amarune puffed, “or we’ll-”

“Run right into the new ruler of Cormyr before you have any clever plan ready?” A triumphant, liquid voice bubbled from a dark open door ahead.

Out of it drifted something round and many-tentacled, some of those tentacles ending in pincers. There were eyestalks among them, too, and a huge single eye in the flying central body, above a wide, crookedly smiling fanged maw.

“Name of the Dragon!” Arclath gasped, skidding to a halt and throwing out an arm to stop Amarune. “It’s a … a beholder!”

The passage exploded.

Flung headlong, Amarune was vaguely aware of Arclath being hurled past her and a woman’s voice snapping furiously, “Not anymore, it isn’t!”

Then she slammed into something very hard, and Cormyr went away in a hurry.

“Well done, Raereene,” the manlike shape of ashes whispered as they watched a dark, wraithlike thing of tatters flee wailing from the spattered ruin of the eye tyrant’s body, with the ghost of Alusair flying in hot pursuit, teeth bared.

The beautiful young wizard of war managed not to recoil, this time. She aimed the great scepter in her hands at the new menace-before the firm hands of a silver-haired woman and an old man in floppy boots and battered leathers took it away from her.

“Yon’s a friend and defender of Cormyr,” Mirt told her. “Don’t be blasting him, now.”

Storm turned. “El, your lass! Is she-?”

“Just dazed. Her young gallant’s out cold, though.”

Cormyr came back, confusingly. Amarune blinked up into a smiling face framed in long, flowing, silver hair. Gentle hands were cradling her.