by Ed Greenwood
Tarn raised his goblet hastily to his mouth, knowing he must be flushing to the very tips of his ears, and—found his attention ensnared again.
And “ensnared” was definitely the right word. This second new arrival was coming from the direction of the Dragon’s back staircase, more favored for hasty exits than for entrances, and she was … was …
Beautiful. Sleekly, dangerously beautiful, and clad in a simple flowing ankle-length emerald-green gown that matched the emerald irises of her disconcertingly direct gaze—a gaze that met Tarn’s ere he could look away. He caught his breath in startlement; the black rimmed-with-gold pupils of her eyes were vertical slits, like those of a snake! She crossed the room with a sultry, swaying grace. Those undulations not only drew attention, they made a sensual promise to every watcher.
It was only when a scuttling Dragon platterman guided her to a nearby empty table and she slid deftly into a seat that Tarn noticed her skin. As one flaring sleeve fell away, he saw that the revealed ivory skin of her shapely forearm had faint undertones of emerald and the soft brown of butter being melted in a pastry cook’s skillet. Undertones that showed through her soft white skin in the shapes of many small, overlapping arcs.
The woman had scales.
“Mendep’s Morningdew,” she commanded flatly, before the approaching wine steward could even open his mouth. “Of the vintage laid down in the birth year of Azoun the Fourth, if you have it. As close thereafter as your cellars furnish, if you do not.”
Tarn was as surprised as the wine steward but flattered himself that he hid it slightly better. An old and expensive wine, to be sure.
And her voice … a husky purr, with just a hint of sibilance. He’d seen the tip of her very pink and slender tongue only momentarily; had it, or had it not, been forked?
He risked a look at the salt-castle and then an oh-so-casual glance around the room to see if Manshoon’s interest had been kindled. It had. The archmage—and possibly vampire, too—was carefully examining his own goblet, a-sparkle with just-poured wine, but he, too, now had the same air of watchful tension about him as Lord Halaunt.
Definitely thanks to this scaled woman.
For his part, Halaunt was carefully not looking at either new arrival, but his shoulders were hunched and his eyes were a-glitter with … was that fear?
Tarn didn’t even dare sigh. Danger was imminent; he could smell it. Powerful magic rode these two new arrivals like cloaks raging with flames, and even if he could somehow call every wizard of war in all Suzail into this room in time, he dared not try.
He just might be dooming them all.
This haughty, strikingly beautiful woman certainly had scales here and there on her skin, and seemed very well aware—though Tarn could not say how he knew this, he was certain of it nonetheless—of who around her had any sort of mastery of the Art. She was smiling now, and that wide smile reminded Tarn of the fixed grin of a giant snake he’d seen lying dead on the edge of a bog in Hultail once, transfixed by many Purple Dragon spears.
Right now, as the wine steward hurried off and a hovering platterman turned away to fetch a goblet suitable for a lady of high station, she was …
Gods above! She was calmly and quite openly casting a spell! A coercive magic, some sort of mind lock, on Lord Halaunt!
That illegal act brought Lionmantle to his feet, but he didn’t even have time to open his mouth in a formal charge and challenge before he felt magic wash over him from behind, the merest tingling touch of something aimed not at him, but at—
Tarn whirled around.
And looked straight into the gentle smile of Manshoon, who’d just finished casting something on Lord Halaunt.
Who was visibly struggling, his eyes wild and his mouth an open and quivering thing that he was fighting to control.
As Tarn stared, all sanity and self-awareness went away in the old lord’s lost gaze. Sardasper Halaunt was … no longer there behind his own eyes. He started to mew and jerk spasmodically, plucked back and forth in the tug-of-war of the two magics affecting his mind. Halaunt was helpless under the onslaught.
Cutlery clattered as diners shot to their feet here and there in the Dragon Rampant’s softly lit dining chamber. Converse stopped, lords and ladies stared, and those now standing moved their hands in intricate gestures as they murmured incantations.
Tarn had known he wasn’t the only undercover war wizard on duty in the Dragon, but only one of the spellcasters had a face he recognized.
He hastily ducked down, giving Hardcastle—half-risen, sword half-drawn—a glare that sent his dining companion back down into his chair, and then Tarn started working a swift spell-shield.
Knowing, even as he started spellweaving, that he’d be too late.
The phrase raced out of him, the simple gestures were done without looking, and the spell slammed into something unseen in the air around the scaled woman, a shielding of a sort Tarn had never seen before, a sphere of nothingness that glowed briefly under the crackling lash of the incoming spells.
Yes, spells; no less than three other diners had attacked the woman in the emerald gown. She turned, hissing like a serpent in her fury, to regard them all with eyes that were very large and dark amid gold-ringed rage, and trilled forth an incantation that left no doubt that her tongue was long, slender, pink, and forked.
“I am Shaaan the Serpent Queen,” she told the room with a cold sneer, “and you have all just made the last mistakes of your lives!”
The emerald lightning that lashed out of her then crashed into Tarn Lionmantle’s shield like the blow of a giant’s fist, almost dashing him off his feet.
Beyond and behind him, Lord Lareth Hardcastle was not so lucky. He and the table and the salt-castle and all that was left of their food tumbled away through the air, hurled clear across the dining chamber.
Nor was Hardcastle the only diner dashed down the room. The air filled with chairs, tables, and flying food.
Tarn gaped at all the tumult, and thought the very same thing that a wart-faced old lord at a nearby table roared out then: “And just who the deuce is Shayan the Serpent Queen, and by what right does she trounce and confound my dinner?”
More angry men and women were on their feet now, here and there among the tumbled tables, glows kindling around their hands as they worked magics. A dozen or more mages, many of them folk Tarn would never have suspected for an instant of being wielders of the Art.
The young wizard of war ducked low as a table glanced off his shield and past, shedding a splintered leg as it went, and found himself looking into the furious glare of the scaled woman.
As she faced Manshoon. He still wore his gentle, half-mocking smile as his eyes locked on hers—and a mighty magic was building behind his shoulders like a great gray-black ocean wave topped and lace-edged with wintry white lightnings, crackling and snarling arcs of stabbing light that … suddenly rolled across the room and seared furniture and shrieking diners alike.
Only to part in the air right in front of the Serpent Queen, as if on the invisible prow of a sleek and slender ship, to roar past her on either side.
The divided wave of ravening magic struck Tarn’s shield like the scornful slap of a dragon’s tail, driving him back a few staggering paces—and lashed the far wall of the dining chamber, sending the ornamental draperies billowing up in hungrily writhing magical flames.
“Is that the best you can do, Zhentarim?” Shaaan sneered—and threw up both her hands, unleashing ruby-hued magic Tarn didn’t recognize, to arrow back across the room, melting all it touched into greasy smoke. Diners fell in limp grotesquerie, their flesh boiling away to join the gray billows … and when the fading fingers of that ruby death touched the far wall of the Dragon’s dining chamber, the wall started to melt and sag, too.
Tarn dared to race forward and take hold of the drooling, sagging thing that had been Lord Halaunt, dragging him from his chair as the emerald-gowned woman and her dark-clad rival traded spells in seeming glee.
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br /> Then Tarn started the long crawl toward the back stair, hoping it would still be there when he and Halaunt—a mewing, limply flailing burden he had to haul along the littered floor— reached it. He could scarce believe something like this was happening in the very glittering heart of Suzail, the capital city of a realm that had its own wizards of war. Spell duels like this just didn’t happen in Cormyr.
As if to mock him, parts of the ceiling started to groan down into collapse, the walls that were holding them up having already been ruined and set afire.
All around him, the Dragon Rampant was being spectacularly destroyed.
CHAPTER 2
What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
LADY GLATHRA BARCANTLE’S EYES WERE TWO DARK FLAMES OF ANGER.
Tarn had been expecting that, but still found himself flinching.
“It’s been five days,” she snapped. “I do hope, Lord Lionmantle, that your excuse is a spectacularly sturdy one.”
Tarn Lionmantle stared back at her rather dazedly. “Ah,” he began hesitantly, “uh, that is … you, ah, do know half a building fell on me?”
The senior wizard of war nodded impatiently, then turned that nod into a dismissive shake of her head.
“Just half. Young nobles, these days,” she snarled in disgust, and spun around to stride away, impatiently beckoning him to follow.
Tarn had thought he knew the Royal Palace of Suzail rather well, but two secret doors after Glathra had led him into the Green Stateroom, he was lost.
They were descending a steep dark stair hidden in the thick wall between two staterooms, headed he knew not where. But then, he had been struck senseless while fleeing the burning Dragon Rampant, and only now, four evenings later, had recovered enough to walk and know where he was and command his wits again.
If Lady Glathra’s manner was anything to go by, he was heading to his own doom, not just to report the events at the Dragon Rampant to the Royal Magician of Cormyr. But then, he reminded himself, Glathra always seemed to be in an icy rage, and surely Ganrahast was wise and fair enough not to blame a junior spy for what outlander archmages did.
“What’s left of the Dragon?” he dared to ask Glathra’s hurrying back, but she made no reply.
He swallowed the exasperated sigh that rose in him at that, and settled for rolling his eyes instead.
Wonderful.
His head was starting to ache again. He should still be back in that bed, under the care of those soft-voiced, attentive court healers, not pounding down unending stone steps in near darkness.
Where by the Nine Hells was Glathra taking him, anyway?
Well, possibly those very same Nine Hells, by the looks of this descent. Or mayhap she was going to settle for some deadly corner of the drow-haunted Underdark this time …
Tarn snorted. This time, indeed.
Quite suddenly, as Glathra laid her hand on a door, a shielding spell flared into visibility long enough for Tarn to be impressed by its thickness and strength—and then she was bursting through it and reaching back to take hold of Tarn’s tunic just below his throat, hauling him along after her as if he was a misbehaving scullery boy.
Out in the room beyond, Tarn tore free of her, lurched to a halt, and blinked in the sudden light.
“Junior Wizard of War Tarn Lionmantle has finally consented to grace us with his report,” Glathra announced sourly. She seemed to have forgotten that Tarn was a lord.
The two men sitting at a large table littered with layers of maps and intelligence reports looked up at Glathra and nodded rather wearily.
Then they both put on smiles as they transferred their gazes to Tarn, which he took as a good sign. Not that he could entirely quell the fear rising in him.
He was, after all, reporting something bad to the Royal Magician of Cormyr and the Lord Warder of the Realm, the two highest-ranking wizards of war in the Forest Kingdom.
“You will be hemming and hawing as to where to start,” Ganrahast told Tarn gently. “So let me begin by telling you that the lord Halaunt lives, thanks to your efforts, though his mind may be shattered forever. The Dragon Rampant burned to the ground, with a dozen dead, but every last person seen working magic in the club that night got away.”
“Except you,” Glathra put in, but Ganrahast waved her words away with a dismissive hand.
“What interests us,” said Vainrence, setting aside a report he’d been reading, “is why the duel? Why such a public crossing of swords, where so many nobles—and Crown spies, for even if they knew no spy by sight, they could hardly not have known that we do watch and listen in such venues—will see? What message is being sent?”
“That we cannot guard and police our own?” Glathra suggested. “That they can do as they please, within our borders?”
“Ah, but who are ‘they’?” Ganrahast asked quietly.
“I saw the man believed to be Manshoon,” Tarn Lionmantle said carefully, “sit down alone to dine near where Lord Halaunt was eating. He was aware of my scrutiny; he winked at me. And when the woman who proclaimed herself Shaaan the Serpent Queen arrived, sent the staff away to seek an obscure vintage, and immediately cast a coercive spell on Lord Halaunt—not one I recognized—Manshoon worked a magic on him first. I can only conclude he expected her arrival and her casting, and was waiting for her to act.”
“And just why would such deadly archmages choose Lord Halaunt to be their prize, or battlefield?” the Royal Magician of Cormyr asked quietly. “I’ve heard the rumors, but would prefer to hear it from someone not excitedly embellishing what they’re passing on. So much of what we hear is colored by Raedra this, or Baerovus that, or ‘I back a better future monarch than either.’ ”
“I know not Lord Halaunt’s politics, but I do know why powerful wizards would be interested in him: the Lost Spell,” Tarn replied grimly. “If such a thing truly exists.” He looked at Glathra, who shrugged and turned to Vainrence.
“I’ve heard that same talk,” the Lord Warder said, “and have been trying to verify it, thus far without success.”
Ganrahast spread his hands in a silent question, and Vainrence obliged. “They’re saying in the streets that the reclusive noble Lord Halaunt has somehow acquired the legendary Lost Spell, and intends to auction it to the highest bidder. Or rather, that Lord Halaunt is announcing that he has this magic, in such a way as to make it clear he’s interested in hearing offers.”
Ganrahast sighed and sat back in his chair, steepling his fingers in thought. “Ah, that ‘somehow’—as in, how did the likes of Lord Halaunt get his hands on the Lost Spell, if he has? How would he even know what he had?”
“You’re really asking who put the notion into the head of a noble with no grasp of the Art that he had a spell at all,” Glathra murmured. “And somehow convinced him that it was this legendary Lost Spell that’s said to provide its caster with an endless supply of their favorite spells, to cast and recast at will. Halaunt’s history bespeaks someone more suspicious and skeptical than gullible.”
“You oversimplify the purported nature of the Lost Spell,” Vainrence pointed out gently.
“True,” Ganrahast agreed, “but that hardly matters if it’s all a fabrication. I cannot believe something so unbalancing can be real, if it does work as the tales say. Why are we not all in the thrall of an archmage employing it already?”
“There is the belief, among those who revere Savras, that we are,” Tarn pointed out mildly, but even as the Royal Magician’s face creased in disgust and he waved a firm dismissal of that remark, Glathra spoke up.
“I, too, have a hard time believing there is a Lost Spell of the sort being bruited about—but my Lords, do you not see? Whether Lord Halaunt really has the Lost Spell or not, many powerful wizards seem to think he does, and are even now converging on his country mansion, obviously bent on seizing it.”
Vainrence snorted. “Where they’ll find Halaunt a mind-blasted idiot, probably for the rest of his days. He won’t be telling them anything useful.”
The Royal Magician frowned. “Daethur’s report spoke of three hopeful hedge wizards showing up at Oldspires. Separately. What is this ‘converging’ you speak of?”
The Lord Warder sighed and started digging through the papers in front of him. “Much has happened since you read Daethur’s first message. I’ve been setting them aside for rereading, to get a feel for any unfolding pattern—ah! Here we are!”
He plucked a sheaf of parchments out of the confusion, riffled them with a practiced finger, read for a moment, and then said, “Various Purple Dragons or wizards of war set on watch have identified Manshoon, Malchor Harpell—presumably of the Harpells of Longsaddle, Shaaan the Serpent Queen, and two former Elders of Nimbral—Yusendre and Skouloun, by name—as the most powerful wielders of the Art who have shown up at Oldspires since the Dragon Rampant burned. Among, as you say, a dozen-some hopeful hedge wizards.”
“Purple Dragon forfend!” Ganrahast muttered, turning to give Vainrence a hard look. “And no one thought to tell me?”
His longtime friend and colleague said gently, “It was thought—”
Under the increasingly colder weight of Ganrahast’s glare, the Lord Warder squared his shoulders and amended firmly, “I thought—that your attention would all be taken up by the latest schemes to put Erzoured on the throne, and how they might clash with that plot to restore King Baerovus, and the bids by certain bolder nobles we’ve been watching—”
“What bids?” Glathra asked sharply.
Vainrence looked at her, then transferred his gaze meaningfully to Tarn, but Glathra gave him a look of disgust and snapped, “Lord Lionmantle here is a wizard of war. One of us. Are we keeping secrets now from our own? Really?”
Vainrence looked at Ganrahast, who seemed to quell a smile as he gestured that the Lord Warder should speak freely.
Vainrence nodded gravely, then said to Glathra, “The bids made by various overbold lords to persuade Raedra Obarskyr to marry one of them so Cormyr can have a king again.”
Glathra rolled her eyes. “And that king will be the winning bidder.”
