by Ed Greenwood
Dardulkyn leaned forward. “And just what have you seen him do?”
“Well,” Arclath began, “I … uh …”
Dardulkyn made a grimace that might have been meant as a smile. “Precisely. Lord Delcastle, it seems to me that you are wasting my time. Yet, you are determined to try to hire me?”
Arclath sighed. “Yes. I must say you hardly seem eager to take my coin!”
“I’m not.” Dardulkyn turned one of the rings adorning his fingers, and there was a sudden singing in the air between them. “Come no closer to me, or you will be harmed.”
“What? Saer mage, I assure you—”
“No, Lord Delcastle, I will assure you of something, now. You are my prisoner and will remain so until it suits my purposes to let you go.”
“Whaaat?”
Arclath sprang to his feet, the chair toppling, and snatched out his sword.
“Behold the usual response of arrogant nobility to anything they dislike. Hence the shielding magic I just raised.”
“But—but why are you doing this? Are you in league with Elminster?”
“There is no such person, anymore. The real Elminster is long dead, with his goddess. Oh, there may well be any number of lackspell charlatans using that name, trusting in the Elminster of legend to frighten those they fleece. I’m not interested in such buffoons. I am, however, interested in you, Lord Delcastle.”
“Why?” Arclath snapped. “Am I an attractive prisoner?”
Dardulkyn tapped his fingertips together thoughtfully as a small, wintry smile rose onto his face. It hovered there for a moment, as if uncomfortable to find itself in such an unaccustomed spot, and swiftly faded away again.
“Not in yourself, no. Don’t flatter yourself, Delcastle—though I know most of you younger lordlings do nothing else.”
The wizard rose and strolled across the room. Arclath felt a sudden pressure in front of him, shoving him back. Dardulkyn’s shield moved with its caster.
“No,” the wizard drawled, gazing idly around at the symbols painted on the black walls, “I believe you are the leading envoy of one more faction of scheming nobles, of the various factions circling like vultures around the fading days of old Foril’s reign. This ‘Elminster’ business is just your less-than-candid way of hiring me and so binding my services to your faction. Which in turn means you can be a valuable captive in any bargains I may need or want to make with your faction. If they deem you disposable, I’ll at least have weakened your little cabal by the resources of one member—a wealthy one, at that.”
“Wizard,” Arclath asked sharply, “are you mad?”
“All wizards are mad, nobleman. Or seem so to thick-skulled clods like yourself, who see the world as a place of coins and willing wenches, swords and threats, and can never know the glories of the Art.”
“I see.” Arclath backed away. “And just whom do you work for? Yourself, I know, but what faction counts you as a member?”
“None of them. I stand apart from all this tiresome thronestrife. If representatives of other cabals visit in the days ahead, I may well capture them, too, and assemble a collection.”
“To what end? Do you think you can bargain with every noble House in the land? All of whom have House wizards and can hire more mages, so you’ll end up battling many spellhurlers at once?”
“Ah, spoken like a true noble. Power is something to be fought for and used to fight with, is it not?”
Arclath frowned. “Power is the art of getting what you want without the use of brute force.”
Dardulkyn smiled again. It looked no healthier than the first time he’d tried it. “You surprise me. That’s quite correct. I intend to fight for no one and against no one—unless someone is foolish enough to assault my home.”
He strolled forward until his shield forced Arclath to retreat again. “I’ve decided to take no sides in the increasing chaos and strife, until the time comes when all surviving factions are eager to bid huge sums and concessions for my services.” He spread his hands.
“I’ll then accept the best deal, settling for no less than a peerage and court rank, and ideally, a position of real power behind the throne comparable to that enjoyed of old by Vangerdahast. Yet, without any of the responsibilities or need to obey royalty that accompanies the title of royal magician or court wizard.”
He looked Arclath up and down and sneered. “I’ll be a lord then, Delcastle—and, I suppose, on my way to being as low and brutish as you.”
“I suppose I’m meant to feel insulted,” Arclath replied, “but I find, rather, that I feel ill, Saer Dardulkyn. I came to find aid against Elminster and was prepared to pay well for it, but it now seems Elminster is a lesser evil than I’d thought him to be.”
“Well, we all have to start learning about the world sometime.” The archwizard sneered, taking another step forward.
Arclath gave ground then suddenly turned, vaulted over the table, and rushed along the wall toward the door he’d come in by.
The wizard sprinted across the room with astonishing speed to thrust Arclath back from that exit—when Arclath was a mere stride away.
“That,” Dardulkyn said severely, breathing heavily, “was not wise. I will summon some of my guards to take you elsewhere.”
“They’re helmed horrors, aren’t they?”
“Indeed. Of my own crafting. It would be very unwise to dispute with them.”
Arclath nodded. So the door was unreachable—until the helmed horrors came through it, whereupon the wizard would step back, taking his shield with him, and leave the realm’s favorite Delcastle sharing a wedge of the room with them. The panel Dardulkyn had come in by was likewise unreachable.
But what of the other panels? He turned and dashed across the room again, vaulting the table and slamming hard into one of the panels on what he’d thought might be an outside wall.
It gave a little, so he sprang at it again, putting his shoulder into it. The panel thundered, yielding more than a little this time.
Dardulkyn was raising his hands to cast something, an angry frown on his face, by the third time Arclath struck the panel.
It gave a groan and rebounded open like a sprung door—revealing a window beyond!
A large, clear window of bubble-free glass, of the most expensive sort that it took too many golden lions to buy. Framed by frilly, feminine draperies and a matching valence!
Arclath crossed his arms in front of his face and throat, clutching the pommel of his drawn sword foremost, and launched himself at the window, hoping it bore no strange spell or other that would hurl him back.
It didn’t.
The crash was tremendous.
Arclath was vaguely aware of shards hurtling out in all directions, a strip of garden about as wide as the shoulders of a large man, a dark Suzailan street beyond it—and between garden and street, an ornate, many-curlicued, wrought-iron fence that looked quite sturdy.
It was.
He crashed into it and slid down it, trapped between stone mansion and fence. A fence that could no doubt spit lightning or extend iron claws if Dardulkyn had time enough to make it do so.
Snarling in frantic effort, Arclath leaped up, caught hold of the upper curlicues, and launched himself up and over, landing with a crash and the ringing clang of his dropped and bouncing sword.
A noise that should bring a watch patrol down on him in a trice, in a good neighborhood like this.
He rolled, snatched up his sword but didn’t waste time trying to snatch his breath, found his feet, and started to run.
No patrol, of course—why were there never any blasted Dragons when you needed them?
“A rather frosty converse,” he heard Dardulkyn announce calmly. “Late night bargainings seldom go well. However, I can’t allow an energetic and talkative young noble to escape me, knowing what he now does. So, a simple spell will hold you, Arclath Delcastle, until my horrors collect you.”
Arclath dashed to one side of the street, trying to hid
e himself from where the archwizard could see and aim. Did paralysis magic work like that? He couldn’t remember; he had only heard it talked about twice, and—
“Oh, hrast,” he cursed, feeling a sudden creeping lassitude, his limbs slowing. “Oh, no! No …” It was like trying to stride through a neck-deep pool of placid water.
He tried to fight his way onward but slowly became aware that, although his heart was pounding and his limbs were straining, his surroundings just weren’t changing any longer.
He was standing still.
Oh, naed.
“Hold!” Mirt grunted. “A man was running our way, up ahead there—and he’s just stopped.”
“Awed at the sight of the famous Mirt the Moneylender, Lord of Waterdeep, no doubt,” Storm replied from just behind him, as she towed the lolling and loose-limbed Amarune along. Rune could walk by herself, all weakness gone, but had to be led to keep her from falling.
“Nay, lass, not ‘stopped’ normal-like. Paralyzed by magic. I’ve seen it done often enough. Someone froze him midstride. An’ damn me if he doesn’t look familiar.”
“What sort of familiar?” Storm asked warily, trying to see past the fat man’s bulk.
“Arclath Delcastle sort of familiar,” Mirt replied, a few lurching strides later. “By the looks of things, he just burst out yon window. The one with the dolt in evil wizard robes standing glaring out of it.”
Storm clamped a hand on Mirt’s shoulder to bring him to a stop, then peered around him as if he were a large, concealing boulder. “Oh, he didn’t.”
“Obviously he did,” Mirt rumbled. “Didn’t what?”
“Went to see the calmly ruthless Dardulkyn, wizard-for-hire most puissant of all Suzail, to hire himself some magic,” Storm replied. “Means to ward away Elminster from certain minds, no doubt.”
“And negotiations went poorly?”
“It seems so. Rumor declares Dardulkyn has a personal army of helmed horrors, so he’s probably watching over Arclath until they can collect him.”
“So, we collect him first,” Mirt growled, lurching forward again and dragging Storm along with him, “and use Arclath as our shield against his spells, being as the lad’s already frozen, hey?”
“Hey,” Storm agreed ruefully, expecting something terrible to smite them at every step.
Mirt didn’t look toward the window or walk warily. He simply tucked Storm under one arm to keep her on his far side from the wizard’s mansion, lurched up to Arclath, thrust his free arm between two noble legs and up to catch hold of the back of Arclath’s belt, boosted the frozen lord up onto his hip, and kept on walking.
The first spell struck them about six paces later, as Mirt was busily turning Arclath to keep him between them and the window.
It dashed them all down in hard-bouncing pain and sent lightning sizzling away across the cobbles.
As those snarling little bolts faded, Storm—who was chin-down on the cobbles, tingling everywhere she wasn’t numb—looked over at Mirt, then at Amarune.
The fat merchant’s hair was all on end, his face was smudged, and smoke curled up lazily from his jerkin. Or whatever that dirty, shapeless upper garment the old Lords of Waterdeep wore was called.
Rune’s face was no longer teary and vacant. It was alert and angry.
“El?” Storm whispered.
“Who did that?” the Sage of Shadowdale’s familiar voice snapped, out of Rune’s beautiful mouth.
“Dardulkyn. The most powerful archwizard in Suzail, probably in all Cormyr. He’s standing in yonder window.”
“Is he, now? Well—”
The second spell struck then, a blast that plucked them up and hurled them like gale-driven leaves down the street, tumbling and helplessly cursing.
“Enough of this,” Elminster spat, when they were all lying on the cobbles again. “Storm, heal me!”
“He’s sending his helmed horrors after us—”
“Then start healing me now.”
Storm turned her head. “Mirt, help me. We need to get around that corner, then find a doorway or an alcove for me to use, while you gallantly hold off all helmed horrors until I’m done restoring El.”
Mirt gave her a wordless, wary “you’ll be lucky” grunt, then started crawling. “I must warn ye,” he growled as he wormed slowly past her, looking rather like a kitchen midden heap on the move, “that my vanquishing-helmed-horrors skills are a mite rusty. Piergeiron only has—er, had—two of ’em, and thought ’em too precious for us to really smite.”
“All we need is for you to delay them long enough,” Storm replied, crawling to where she could reach Arclath and roll his stiff body over. Reaching back, she tugged at Amarune to keep her crawling, too.
“Huh,” Mirt growled, reaching out a hand to help roll the frozen young noble. “The older I get, the longer ‘long enough’ seems to get.”
“I’ve noticed that, too,” Storm agreed, scrambling forward to catch and cradle Arclath’s head before it crashed down on a cobble. “I believe some call it ‘progress.’ ”
“Oh? ‘Some’? What do others call it?”
“The general decline of the realms, sliding ever faster and inevitably into the Abyss, crawling chaos, and eventual obliteration.”
“Ah. So, I should make my coins now, hey?”
“Hey,” Storm agreed, breaking into a smile.
Broryn Windstag could not remember a time before Delasko Sornstern had been grinning at his elbow. They’d done nigh everything together for years; they still did almost everything together.
And in the wake of Stormserpent’s vow to carry out Lord Illance’s bold plan, they had wasted no time hastening to their favorite “private place,” a certain shady back corner of the Sornstern family gardens, where they could talk things over without being overheard by anyone.
It would have dumbfounded them both—and plunged them into cold, despairing terror at the thought of all the treasons they’d so casually discussed—to learn their every jocular comment was being overheard and committed to memory by a Highknight of the Crown who’d been tailing Windstag for years. A certain Sir Talonar Winter, who looked very much like the better portraits of the great King Azoun, fourth of that name, and who was lounging above them on a bough of a mighty shadowtop at that moment.
A man who’d become so comfortable on that bough overhanging the bower where the two friends were wont to talk that he could arrive and depart soundlessly, even in utter darkness, tall and spike-topped Sornstern walls or no walls.
Yet the two lordlings remained blissfully unaware of their audience, and so spoke untrammeled by prudence. Just as they were discussing Marlin Stormserpent’s chances just then.
“Yes, straight through the perimeter wall of Stormserpent Towers. Solid stone feet thick, mind, not where there was a gate or hidden door. Strode without stopping, blue flames and all, leaving not so much as a scorch mark.”
“Not a secret door?” Windstag asked disbelievingly, a second time.
“Not,” Sornstern confirmed. “He swore to this, insisting he was sober and had seen it all very clearly. The two of them stepped through a wall without muttering any sort of spell. In a spot where the stones were solid—he checked, just after. And Indur would never embellish or tell us false. He knows full well his neck would pay the price.”
Windstag nodded. “So tell me about these blueflame ghosts.”
Sornstern leaned back to look up at the night stars—what few of them he could see around the great dark canopy of the shadowtop looming overhead. Even if he’d had a glowstone on a pole to peer properly by, he had no chance of seeing the Highknight who was listening so intently, because the Highknight was not in the habit of handing such chances to others, even headstrong and idiotic young noble lordlings.
Not that Delasko Sornstern was looking for anyone. He was enjoying the moment, savoring this rare time when Windstag was listening to him.
“My father, Haedro,” he began slowly, “has a hobby.”
; He paused then, just to see Broryn lean forward eagerly and acquire the first signs of impatience. Before it could flare into anger, he continued.
“He collects lore and relics of famous adventurers of the past. Years ago, he heard all about those famous adventurers, the Nine. Not the heroic tales bards and old tavern gossips like to tell, but all about the Nine. How they ended, to be specific.”
“The Silverhair Sister—Lurl or Laeral or some such—fell under a god’s curse, right? After she put on the Crown of Horns, and it ate her brain?”
Sornstern winced at Windstag’s words. “Y-yes, you could put it that way. She went evil, at least until the Lord Archmage of Waterdeep, the Blackstaff, rescued her and took her as his wife—”
“Funny how that happens, hey? Off with that gown and behold my cure!” Windstag leered.
Out of long habit, Sornstern supplied the expected nod and enthusiastic grin. “Yes, I’ve noticed that, too! What we missed by not being born mighty wizards, hey?”
“Hey, indeed. So, she went mad and bad, and the Nine scattered, never to reunite,” Windstag almost chanted. “See? I remember a little of what my tutors droned on about … see?”
Sornstern nodded and grinned again. “Well done, to have emerged from that flood of drivel with anything salvaged at all! You have it right, and some of the Nine were hired by a certain rich merchant of Athkatla. Unbeknownst to them, that merchant was under the influence of an archmage who desired to bind longevity and resilience into magic items by imprisoning the vitality of living beings within them, and—”
“Those Amnians! Sell their own left arms, they will! Can’t trust them for half a trice or the scrapings off a copper coin!”
“Ah … well said, you can’t indeed! Well, this wizard easily overcame the adventurers with spells and bound them into items of his making. Later, at least one, more likely two, of these enchanted things fell into the hands of the Stormserpents.”
For the first time, Windstag stopped looking enthusiastic. An eye-narrowing thought had struck him. “Just how is it that you know that?”
