Elminster in Hell

[mind slap, red pain flaring like flames in the vaulted darkness]

If ye refrain from that, Nergal, 'twill unfold faster!

[diabolic growl of warning]

[fresh images flaring]

Between great paintings and tapestries, sheets of polished copper striped the palace walls. Lamplight reflected from the metal, throwing a warm glow onto its face and flashing back onto carefully motionless, watching guards. Standing in pairs along the walls, the guards kept their faces expressionless as the Royal Magician escorted his scribe past them to the door of her chambers.

"Get some sleep," he told her grimly, his voice low enough to reach her ears alone. "There'll be plenty of time to worry about Bolifar's fate in the morning. Set your spell shield."

Sardyl nodded and bowed to him. She looked pale and on the verge of tears, her eyes large and dark.

After another wordless moment, Vangerdahast put a comforting hand on her shoulder.

Lady Crownsilver slid gently out from under it and went into her room.

The Royal Magician stood like a statue, listening as his scribe closed and bolted her door. It was barely a breath later before he heard the tiny singing sound that meant she'd set her spell shield within.

Vangerdahast nodded grimly at the closed door and cast a spell of his own. As he turned away for the long trudge to his own chambers, the guards were startled to see a fist-sized eye hovering behind the wizard's back, keeping a lookout for him.

The conjured eye saw nothing suspicious on the journey, nor was there anything amiss as the Royal Magician entered his familiar rooms, set his own wards, passed into an i

The mighty magic collapsed into darkness, failing utterly.

Vangerdahast frowned down at the fading ashes and wisps of smoke that had been his spell. He sighed for perhaps the hundredth time that night and headed for a closet he rarely opened. A hooded thing waited there.

The spell on the closet door gave him enough dim red radiance to drag the hood off and toss it aside. The revealed speaking-stone atop its pedestal was a chipped, sloping mass of rock, not the polished crystal sphere favored by the fashionable mages of Sembia and Cal-imshan. Just now, Vangerdahast couldn't have cared less what it looked like. Six guards whose minds were free of magic had agreed that Bolifar had gone up those stairs- and not come down.

Wherefore the answer to his whereabouts lay somewhere in that little turret-top room, almost certainly hidden by a magic older and greater than his own. To find out what that might be, the Royal Magician of Cormyr needed to talk to someone who'd remember Amedahast alive- how she talked, how she'd thought, how she'd lived.

The wizard sighed again and ran his fingers through his beard. Like it or not, he could think of only one person yet alive who, if the gods smiled, might have known her well enough....

A rug in the comer flickered, rippled, and reared up from the floor like some sort of menacing monster. Vangerdahast blinked wearily at it for a moment, whirled away from the speaking-stone, snatched up a wand from his workbench, and aimed it grimly at die rippling pillar of cloth.

The rug blinked back at him reproachfully, and then fell away to reveal a tall, gaunt, white-bearded man in worn robes. With one hand on his hip and an eyebrow raised, he regarded Vangerdahast. Even a slate-cutter in the westernmost reaches of Cormyr could have identified the visitor: the Old Mage of Shadowdale, Elminster.

"Thy wards need a little work," Vangerdahast's onetime tutor observed in a dry voice. "I could reach through them without difficulty, having so used this rug before."

Vangerdahast's eyes narrowed. "You did? Why?"

Elminster raised his other eyebrow. "To visit Amedahast, if ye must know," he said, with what was almost a grin. "Yon nig lay beside her bed."

The Master of the War Wizards rolled his eyes, "I might have known," he snapped, starting to pace. He brought himself to a halt, drew in a deep breath, wrestled down the anger that always gripped him when he faced Elminster's easy smile, and said abruptly, "We-I-need your aid. There's been a disappearance."

"Heir? Crown jewels? Azoun's second-best codpiece? Or is it serving maids again?"

Vangerdahast gave Elminster a dark look. "A War Wizard," he said quietly. "A good man. Come." Without a backward glance at the rug or the speaking-stone, he set off toward the doors, striding hard. Elminster shrugged and followed.

A long time to the magic, little wizard. What are you up to?

Trying to call up memories for ye, devil. There are many, buried deep. But there's magic enough in this one. Watch and see.

On his second circuit of the little room, El bent over, sniffing. He dropped to his hands and knees and prowled, like a boy playing at being a stalking wolf. His snuffling became constant, his beard trailed along the floor, and his eyes narrowed. "D'ye have much trouble with rats?" he asked the stones.

"Ru

"Rotten meat. Decay. Very faint." El sprang to his feet, his prowling done, and asked sharply. "The lass said the rug was different?"

Vangerdahast nodded.

El nodded back at him, the barest grim begi

The Cormyrean wizard's eyes narrowed. "What do you know, or suspect'"

"A trapper on the floor, who ate the rug atop it along with your War Wizard and his papers. His bones, ink bottles, and such will pass through it soon. Lurker-beasts give off such stinks at will."

"A trapper? I'd have found it," the Royal Magician of Cormyr said sourly, waving at the floor, "and it's not there now. I took care to make sure that nig was just a nig. Spin another dream, Old Mage."

"The murderer put it in here before your Bolifar arrived, and took it out again after the lass ran out of here to come looking for ye."

"Someone who can carry lurker-beasts around like carpets or bid them follow like pets? You strain credul-"

Vangerdahast stopped speaking in midsnap, and left his mouth hanging open. The color drained slowly out of his face.

"Kaulgetharr Drell," he said, very slowly. "Master of the King's Beasts. He has a trapper; I've seen it devour butcher scraps and the like. When he casts the right spells, it follows him about like a hunting hound."

El smiled and spread his hands. "Well then," he said briskly, "I've work of my own waiting, back in Sh-"

Even as he raised one long-fingered hand, Vangerdahast barked, "Wait!"

The Old Mage raised an eyebrow again, and the Cormyrean wizard said hastily, "My scribe Sardyl spell-locked this door! Drell couldn't have just-"

The rest of the color left his face. Vangerdahast looked suddenly very old, as yellow and as brittle as crumbling parchment.

"Sardyl," he murmured. "Is she in it too?"

Elminster shrugged. "Mayhap... but she needn't be. That's not the way the trapper and its handler came in."

He waved at the map on the wall. "That's one of Amedahast's portals. All of her maps are. Have ye never known?"

Vangerdahast gaped at him.

"Ye can also see and hear through them," Elminster added with a tight smile. Turning to look at the map, he drew his fingers inward like a crone's grasping claw. He seemed to beckon or to pull something unseen toward him.

The map shimmered. Out of it stumbled a man in a rich, open-front shirt and tasseled leather boots and breeches. The newcomer's face was twisted in a snarl, and he lunged atop Elminster. One arm-the one that held a gleaming dagger-rose and fell in a blur. Blows thudded as hard as galloping hooves as he stabbed the Old Mage repeatedly.