The Lady of Haelithtorntowers nodded, unsmiling. "They believe it will involve binding heroes to defend the realm in place of the destroyed Lords Who Sleep."

"Heroes?" Starangh echoed, with a frown. "What great magic is needful in binding a few men, even against their will? Men can be compelled. Finding them need not take long—nor the crafting of magic to do the binding. The spells must be known to him as they are to me."

Joysil shook her head. "My information suggests that these are all new spells Vangerdahast is crafting—and having great difficulties doing so."

Starangh smiled. "So ... he intends to bind more than mere heroes, then. And he's doing this where?"

"There's a forest village on the Starwater Road," Lady Joysil replied, "called Mouth o' Gargoyles. Magic goes wild when cast there. This curse has been known for centuries and is demon-strably real. Certain senior War Wizards, however, have been overheard telling particular Harpers that a hidehold cavern was long ago established in the forest near the village by a Royal Magician of the realm and used by succeeding Royal Magicians. The magics they work are concealed from those who might otherwise come looking for explanations; any radiances or blasts or strange magical effects get blamed on the curse."

Harnrim Starangh's eyes narrowed. "So dozens of War Wizards know about this cavern and what goes on there—and have truly managed to keep it secret, for all these years?"

"No. Only a very few know of it, because the various Royal Magicians normally go there alone."

"So who lurks in the woods, keeping outlaws and nosy Harpers and blundering foresters away?"

"That," the Lady Ambrur replied, leaning forward to fix Dark-spells with a very direct gaze, "is the most interesting thing about all of this. Folk who blunder too close without following exactly the right route—and no, I'm sorry, but I've not been able to learn the specifics of that trail—encounter creatures of Mystra: watchghosts and wizardly wraiths and the like, who turn them back with magic. Or they simply take one wrong step and are teleported halfway across Faerun—seemingly to a different place every time. Most War Wizards who patrol the area are under orders only to observe who approaches and report such intruders to Laspeera or her most trusted senior mages. Most of them know only that something precious is located near Mouth o' Gargoyles and that the very existence of this unknown valuable thing is a state secret."

"So presumably a select few senior War Wizards do know the correct route to this sanctum," Starangh said softly, bobbing his chin onto his steepled fingertips. He suddenly broke into a wide smile, blinked, and added, "You shall be well paid, Lady Ambrur."

He opened a belt pouch, placed twenty thumb-sized rubies on the table in front of him, and added, "Consider this but a first, trifling payment—a gift, if you will. The worth of these is not be included in our agreed-upon price, which shall be delivered to you on the morrow. For I deem that you—if you forget all you've said tonight and speak nothing of it to anyone else ever again or of the names and faces of any of us three—have more than earned payment in full."

He favored Noumea Cardellith with a long, silent, thoughtful look but said nothing to her.

Starangh rose in a single smooth motion, nodded politely to the Lady Ambrur, and asked, "Have you learned anything more of interest, pertaining to this matter?"

"Not as yet," she replied gravely.

"No matter. You have rendered me great service, Lady. I shall not intrude further upon your time."

He bowed, spun around, and made for the door. Wordlessly, the two merchants rose in his wake, sketched clumsy bows of their own, and hastened to follow.

When the doors had closed behind them, Lady Ambrur looked at her remaining guest with a smile. "Well? What think you?"

Noumea regarded her with large, dark eyes, shook her head ever so slightly, and said softly, "I do not trust that man."

"Nor should you," her hostess responded. "Are there spells upon the rubies?"

Noumea rose, went to stand over the stones, muttered something, and passed her hand over them without touching anything. "Yes," she said grimly, with no trace of surprise in her voice.

Lady Ambrur nodded. "Touch them not nor send any other magic at them. In fact, cast no more magic in this room. Were I you, I'd use spells to disguise myself this very night and lie low in some distant land for a month or so. Red Wizards tend to have very long arms and sharply honed senses of cruelty."

"But yourself?" Noumea asked, waving her other hand at the rubies. "What if he sends something deadly with his payment?"

"I can protect myself," the Lady of Haelithtorntowers said softly, acquiring a smile that was not at all dissimilar from that worn by the Red Wizard.

"Like Vangerdahast, I too have some important tasks I wish to accomplish before I die."

Eleven

A WIZARD IN EVERY SANCTUM

And so at last I was forced to put the world behind me and go and hide. I made myself a hole to hide in, pulled the hole in behind me, and there I was: nowhere.

The character Greatghalont the Archwizard

in Scene the First

of the play Endings In Innarlith

by Skamart "the Clever" Thallea

first performed in the Year of Thunder

There was a moment of blue, endlessly falling mists, then solid stone under their boots, bright morning sunlight, and a smell of burnt sausage and scorched toast.

Caladnei blinked. "I've been here before. Just once, when Van-gey was testing me—but then he cloaked it from me somehow. I've never been able to reach it again."

Myrmeen Lhal was shooting wary glances in all directions, her sword half-drawn. She gave Elminster an enthusiastically venomous look, so he smiled and blew her a kiss—which turned her glare stony.

They were standing in a flagstone-floored cellar, the cross-vaultings of its low, arched ceiling perhaps a handspan overhead. Ahead, beyond two littered tables and a hoopback chair be-draped with some rather dirty towels, was what looked like a kitchen: a scarred marble counter heaped high with dirty dishes and pans, flanking two sinks. Above the counter was a window, deep-set in a ferny bank and looking out through a few trailing vines over a pleasant deep-forest glade.

Standing at the counter with a bowl of almond butter in one hand, a fat loaf of bread under one arm, and his other hand wielding a knife that was scooping and slapping between bowl and the sliced-off, exposed end of the loaf, was an all-too-familiar man.

He was stooped and fat and wore dirty black robes and sandals. His wild gray-white beard flowed down over his chest and reached in every other direction, too. The mouth hidden somewhere in the midst of it was hard at work creating the reason he hadn't heard the ringing sound of Myrmeen half-drawing her blade, or Caladnei's softly wondering words.

Vangerdahast the wizard was singing a bawdy song about a lass from Arabel—Myrmeen's lips tightened—who'd fallen under his spell—Caladnei frowned—and was now begging for more . . . despite certain wizards growing sore . . .

Vangey's singing voice was atrocious—a flat, rough wreck of a tone cloaked in the exaggeratedly fruity stylings he'd no doubt heard the haughtiest bards offer at Court (though they'd probably kept to one key, something the former Mage Royal was in no danger of doing), and he kept breaking off his song to choke, cough, and spit enthusiastically into the sink.

His knife was layering a finger-thick and still growing deposit of almond butter onto the end of the bread-loaf. Its swirl of oily brown was already bedecked with sprinklings of parsley, chopped garlic, and dill . . . and Elminster grinned slyly as he looked sidelong at Caladnei's horrified face and watched it tighten in revolted anticipation of what her former mentor would most probably do next—which was, yes, to start to gnaw on the spread end of the loaf without bothering to slice it off or find a plate—though where a clean one might be lurking, in all the clutter, was itself a puzzling challenge—or, for that matter, make any sort of nodded offering to the gods.