Spellstorm by Ed Greenwood Page A

even as it started to fade.
    Myrmeen chuckled as she went with him, murmuring, “We’re going to get along just fine,
     I’m thinking.”
    “How much can
you
use magic in here, Old Mage?” Alusair asked softly, as they went to the front doors
     together.
    El shook his head. “Reliably, not at all. The Weave vision is just that: seeing things.
     If I tried to
do
anything through the Weave …” He shook his head again.
    The front door was fitted with large cradles to hold beams so it could be barred from
     within to withstand anything short of the mightiest giant, but it was also fitted
     with stout, well-oiled iron bolts. El and the Alusair-animated lord unlatched them
     and slid them back into the walls together.
    “Look haughty,” El muttered when they were done—and pushed the doors wide.
    Eleven wizards peered suspiciously at him from outside.
    He gave them a broad and affable smile, and spread his arms wide. “Welcome to Oldspires!”
    “Elminster!” Manshoon snarled. “What’re you doing here?”
    “I,” Elminster replied mildly, “have retired from wizardry, and accepted the post
     of steward to Lord Sardasper Halaunt. Who stands here within, to welcome you into
     his home.”
    He stepped back and with a broad flourish indicated the lone figure standing in the
     gloomy hall waiting for them.
    Who, if glowering could be described as “welcoming,” was silently welcoming them into
     Oldspires.
    Laragaunt and a young mage, who looked by his robes to be a Red Wizard, both snapped
     out, “It’s a
trap
!”
    And flung a spell and leveled a staff, respectively.
    Nothing happened.
    The Red Wizard grounded the staff with both hands, crying out an incantation—and it
     flickered briefly, pulses of light racing up and down it like ripples in a pond … and
     faded to nothing.
    Laragaunt turned in a whirl of robes, rushed back to the roiling fogs of the spellstorm,
     and worked the same spell that had forced a passage through it before.
    The moment the fogs parted again to let him through, he started to run, and the Red
     Wizard was right behind him, staff flickering into fresh life.
    Some of the others started to back away from Elminster and toward the fleeing pair,
     warily trying to keep an eye on both and each other.
    Laragaunt’s voice rose in sudden fear, words rushing out of him in increasingly frantic
     haste, and more heads turned his way.
    In time to see the fog roll in to close over the wildly gesturing mage and the Red
     Wizard in his wake. That staff flashed once, and falteringly spat lightning about
     the length of a man’s forearm … and then fell from view as its owner howled in despair.
    As that howl died waveringly away, roiling fog hid both men from view.
    After a few moments of silence, the gibbering began. Wordless slobbering that rose
     into wild, shrieking laughter; high, discordant, and somehow full of despair, even
     before it turned into sobbing.
    Keening wails died away as the witless men wandered, stumbling in different directions
     through the fog.
    “Mystra
forfend
,” one of the women outside the mansion door gasped.
    “Be welcome in my home,” Lord Halaunt growled. “So come in, if you’re coming. With
     the door open, there’s a decidedly unpleasant draft. Come in, or go back out into
     the spellstorm,
I
care not. Sounds like they’re having fun out there, those two.”
    A tall, bald-headed, strikingly beautiful woman in an ankle-length gown of emerald
     green glared daggers at him, with eyes that matched her gown but had vertical, snakelike
     black-and-gold pupils. “You planned this, didn’t you?”
    “I planned nothing. I escaped with my life from a fire I still don’t recall any details
     of, and came home here to clear my lungs—only to find all sorts of strangers seem
     to want to visit me. Come for the Lost Spell, have you? Well, accusing me of things
     is a poor way to start negotiating with me, Scalyface.”
    Shaaan’s face tightened in anger,