by Ed Greenwood
“Done, lord,” came the flat, almost sullen reply. “The huntsman and all six lodge guards are dead.”
“Wrap the bodies in the oldest tent of those up in the rafters, and take them to the bear den up by Blackrock, right down in the rocks at its mouth, for the bruins to devour. Don’t be seen, and don’t trail blood from here to there. Leave Ghalhunt here with me.”
“As you command,” the man replied, almost insolently, and strode away.
Shaking his head in exasperation, Marlin went the other way, to where the doors of the Windstag hunting lodge-his, now, for a few nights at least-stood open and waiting.
Windstag could find another huntsman, and any lout of an armsman could be a lodge guard. It wasn’t as if House Windstag lacked coins enough…
Ghalhunt at least had sense enough to light and stoke the firewood that had been left ready in the lodge hearth, to drive the chill damp out.
With a sigh of contentment, Stormserpent settled himself in Windstag’s big lounge chair, right in front of the hearth, and kicked his boots off, the better to toast his cold and aching feet. He’d always coveted that particular chair…
He gave Ghalhunt a nod of thanks as the bullyblade rose from the hearth.
“Just going to fetch more wood in, lord, before any nosy foresters come by and want to know who all the strange faces belong to.”
Stormserpent nodded, satisfied. The shed was perhaps ten strides away; Ghalhunt would be back in no time to get a morningfeast going. At the very thought, his stomach rumbled loudly.
He heard the bullyblade chuckle at that as he went out, the door squealing ever so slightly in the man’s wake.
The next thing he knew, something had been tossed into the fire, scattering sparks. Something round, that set up an angry hiss. Something that stank of… burning hair?
Marlin Stormserpent sat up, rubbing at his eyes. He must have dozed off.
Was that-what was that, in the fire?
A log slumped, the object he was staring at rolled over, and he realized he was looking at Baert Ghalhunt’s dully staring severed head.
But who-?
He tried to look back behind him, but the high wings of the chair were in his way. Blue flames, cold and tireless, were flickering above and behind them, and he grabbed frantically for the Flying Blade. His fingers closed around the familiar, reassuring weighty curves of its hilt.
Then a man he’d never seen before strode into view around the chair, smiling down at him with sword drawn. A cruel smile on the face of a man wreathed in blue flames.
A blueflame ghost, but not one of his!
Then hard, cold hands took hold of him from the other side of the chair, holding his arms with iron strength. He strained to draw his sword, managed to get it halfway out with a sudden jerk-then felt the coldest, keenest pain that had ever blighted his life.
His hand had been hacked off.
His other arm was grabbed by the man who’d walked around the chair to smile at him, and forced down onto the chair arm. A blade wreathed in blue flames chopped down again, and Stormserpent screamed.
He was lost in pain, he was staring in disbelief at the two streaming stumps of his arms-and above them, standing side by side to smile down at him, three blueflame ghosts. Strangers, all of them.
The Flying Blade and the Wyverntongue Chalice were lost to him. He couldn’t call forth his own two blueflame slayers now, to save him.
If it wasn’t too late for any saving…
He could feel his own life flowing out of him, pumping out of him…
This couldn’t be happening! Couldn’t…
He was Lord Marlin Stormserpent! Didn’t they know that? How dare they?
Someone else was strolling unhurriedly around the three ghosts and reaching down long, shapely arms to pluck up the Blade and the Chalice. His Blade and Chalice.
Marlin stared up at her in dimming, dying disbelief. Blearily he beheld a tall, slender, beautiful human woman with a cruel face and dark, rage-filled eyes, clad all in black, with a silver weathercloak around her shoulders. He’d never seen her before, either.
As she set the sword and the cup down on a sidetable he hadn’t the means to reach, Stormserpent saw the bloody point of a dagger protruding from her black-garbed chest, thrusting out between her breasts.
He was fading fast, his lifeblood flowing out of his useless stumps with every heartbeat. He tried to raise them toward her, and his effort earned him a cold sneer.
“W-who are you?” he managed to gasp.
“The Lady of Ghosts,” came the mocking reply. “I gather blueflame ghosts. Yours are a most welcome addition to my collection.”
She strode closer. Marlin stared at the blood-drenched point standing out between her breasts in dull, dying fascination.
She smiled. “Like it? I seek the man who put it there. A well-known wizard named Manshoon. You’ve heard of him, I’m sure, but have you seen him hereabouts? Recently?”
Marlin shook his head.
“Is anyone else in Cormyr collecting blueflame ghosts?”
“One appeared… at the Council,” he replied weakly, tasting his own blood in his mouth. “No one knows who commands it.”
She bent suddenly and took hold of his throat, her grip cruelly tight.
“Do you tell me truth?” she hissed, blue flames suddenly dancing in her eyes.
Marlin shuddered and tried not to choke. “Y-yes.”
Eyes burning into his, she shook him.
Then, suddenly, she was telling him a tale, the words whispered low and fast.
“The one called Manshoon literally stabbed me in the back, years and years ago, and as you see, left his dagger in me, pommel-deep. I’m under a curse and cannot die until the spell is broken-so I live in constant agony. Worse than what you’re feeling now, worm of a noble.”
Marlin had just enough strength left to shake his head in disbelief.
“I am driven,” she hissed into his face. “Driven by my pain and hatred to seek Manshoon’s death. I dare not have his blade plucked out, because doing so will alter the enchantments on my body, and I’ll literally rot while staying alive. Undeath may be my fate, but it’s one I don’t want to choose yet.”
Straightening, she hauled the dying noble up out of the chair to stand with her, hanging from her grip on his throat and shoulders.
“I’m on Manshoon’s trail,” she whispered. “He is the collector of blueflame ghosts; he was busy gathering them all those years ago, when we first met. By assembling my own collection, I hope to lure him out of hiding. To me. Within my reach at last.”
Lord Marlin Stormserpent stared at her glassily, his eyes dark and empty.
“So,” she snarled, “is there anything you can tell me to help me find Manshoon, doomed noble? Anything at all?”
But she was shaking a dead man. While she’d hissed words at him, Stormserpent had died.
With a soft curse, she dashed his limp body to the floor.
The walls of the room, deep on the lowest level of the palace cellars, were furred with dark, sickly-looking green mold, and the air was damp and fetid.
Lord Arclath Delcastle guided the silent and empty-eyed wizard Tracegar to a stop in front of the massive stone table that was the room’s sole furnishing, looked around again at all the mold, and rolled his eyes. “Some six hundred rooms down here, and we have to meet in this one?”
His voice was Elminster’s.
Vangerdahast might be reduced to a spiderlike thing, but he could still shrug. “No one comes near it. Making it useful. You have no idea how many lovers come creeping down into the cellars for thrill-trysts by candlelight.”
“Oh, but I do,” El replied gravely. “Believe me, I do.”
He looked down at the man lying still and silent on the stone table, with Vangey poised like a protective spider by his head.
Youngish, pleasant-looking, but not overly handsome, Chondathan stock. Clad in the sort of robes favored by war wizards. Breathing very sl
owly, but senseless. No visible wounds, or for that matter, scars.
“Who’s this?”
“Wizard of War Reldyk Applecrown. Young, loyal, a minor wielder of the Art. He’s been healed of the wounds he took last night in the beholder fray, but he got caught in a spell backlash and hasn’t much of a mind left.”
“Brain-burned,” El murmured, looking up at Vangerdahast with a silent question in his eyes.
“Your new body, if you want him,” the former royal magician of Cormyr said gruffly. “The realm owes you that much. Hells, a lot more. As do I.”
Elminster looked at him gravely for a moment. “Thank you.”
He inclined Arclath’s head toward Tracegar and asked, “You need him up on the table?”
“No,” Vangey replied. “Just walk him around it-slowly, mind-as we work on him.”
So Elminster did that, as the two of them, riding Vangerdahast’s spell, drifted into Welwyn Tracegar’s mind together, fogging his memories with spell after overlapping spell so he’d forget all about how he’d helped his prisoners escape. Then they lowered him to the floor and cast simple sleep on him.
“I’ll steady you, once you’re in,” Vangey offered, nodding at the man on the table. “Can’t have you getting up and stumbling over Tracegar, and him waking up thinking he’s facing two traitor mages and a spider-monster that all need blasting.”
El shrugged. “It’s what Glathra would do.”
Vangerdahast was still chuckling ruefully at that when the young wizard on the table stirred, then started to convulse and thrash.
“Don’t try to get off the table yet,” he advised. “I have to reassure Lord Delcastle here about what we’re up to, first, or he might just decide not to catch you when you start to topple.”
Spiderlike fingers rose to point down over the edge.
“Arclath, try not to step on Tracegar, there. He’ll look a bit odd with boot-prints all over his face, when they find him sleeping in a bed he shouldn’t be in, somewhere in the palace.”
“Ah… which bed?” Arclath asked carefully.
“One of the ready rooms in the guest wing, I’m thinking, so he’ll be found before he starves. My sleep spell won’t be broken-assuming the ceiling doesn’t fall or the bed collapse-until someone not of us four touches him.”
“Four?”
“I’m counting El, dolt of a lordling. And his new body. Which isn’t really his yet, until he learns to walk and talk with it.”
Arclath gave Vangey a disbelieving frown, at about the same time as the man on the table thrust one arm stiffly into the air, tried to wriggle the fingers of that upraised hand, and worked his jaw enough to say, “A bit shaaaky, thusss fahr!”
Rolling his eyes, the noble took a swift step back so he wasn’t within reach if the body should lash out suddenly.
“Wise lad,” Vangerdahast commented solemnly-a moment before a wild sweep of Applecrown’s arm dashed him off the table.
Arclath sniggered, then let his laughter roar out of him.
“That’s right, lad,” Vangey’s voice rose, from somewhere on the floor on the other side of the table. “I like pet frogs that know how to laugh.”
Busy and brightly lit palace passages hung with shields and lined with statues weren’t Glathra’s favorite sites for important policy discussions, but Highknight Starbridge and Sir Talonar Winter had come rushing up to the royal magician while he, Vainrence, and Glathra had been heading to the kitchens for something to eat. She couldn’t remember when she’d last chewed food or swigged something more than a goblet of water snatched from a passing maid’s tray.
Someone, it seemed, had burst into Staghaven House unnoticed by any neighbors or watch patrols, and had slaughtered Lord Windstag with most of his household servants. And very recently-when they’d been found, blood had still been running out of some of the bodies. The Dragons securing the house had recognized a face among the sprawled and slain servants that shouldn’t have been there: Palace Steward Rorstil Hallowdant. Worse yet, someone had cast powerful magics on the slain; three priests and a young war wizard who’d cast spells on the corpses to try to learn more about their passing had been plunged instantly into barking, howling insanity.
“There will be no more attempts to cast anything on the slain,” Ganrahast decreed grimly. “Take the oldest palace supply wagon, convey the bodies all out to the rocks beyond the Westhill, and burn them all there, wagon and all, with guards posted to keep the curious away. I want this done in secret, as much as possible, to keep word from spreading.”
Starbridge and Winter nodded, bowed, and hurried off to see to it.
“So who did this, do you think?” Vainrence murmured, watching them hasten down the passage, distant already and dwindling fast.
“Noble slays noble,” Ganrahast sighed. “It begins.”
“Royal magician,” Glathra said darkly, “with respect, it began some time ago. It’s only going to get bloodier.”
“Blood spilled among nobles I expect,” Ganrahast replied, starting off down the passage. “Betrayals and disloyalties among Crown folk are what shake me. And more importantly, shake the Dragon Throne.”
“Every one of them,” Vainrence murmured, nodding agreement.
“Has every interment in the royal crypt now been examined?” Ganrahast asked him.
“Yes. Nothing is amiss, nothing missing, and there are no more empty coffins. New wards and alarm spells have been cast.”
“Have you found Vangerdahast?” Glathra asked sharply.
“No.”
“And why not?” Ganrahast pressed him, as if he’d been a disobedient young mageling and not her superior.
The lord warder shrugged. “He doesn’t want to be found.”
Blueflames left the lodge in an eerily silent procession, with the Lady of Ghosts stalking after them and the Flying Blade and the Wyverntongue Chalice in her hands. She spared not a glance for Marlin Stormserpent, lying dead on the floor.
The room started to fill with the smell of Baert Ghalhunt’s scorching head, but it wasn’t long before the door opened again.
A lone person came in, hooded and cowled, and made straight for the dead noble.
Murmuring half-sung lines of ballads to himself, this new arrival bent to pick up the two severed hands and put them in a pouch.
“But she had eyes, those nightdark eyes, only for meee…”
The singing broke off with a brief grunt as the cowled one bent again-and in one swift, smooth heave, lifted the limp corpse up onto his shoulder.
Then he turned and went out into the forest, ignoring the drips that fell from what had been Marlin Stormserpent as he went.
“For I walk a lonely road, a hidden road, a bright road, yes I walk a…”
The soft singing faded, and birds began to whir and call again.
By the time they broke off and the lodge door swung open again, the head in the fire was a blackened thing, more skull than Baert Ghalhunt.
The two bullyblades were hot, sweaty, and very tired. Not to mention hungry. They’d been up all night, and if their mad lord of a master wasn’t asleep, they certainly wanted to be.
“Lord Stormserpent?” one of them called, finding the chair-nay, the room, there was nowhere here to hide-empty. He glanced up into the rafters but saw only pelts and trophies, no lurking slayers.
The other bodyguard touched his arm and pointed silently down at the blood on the floor.
There was a lot of it.
“Tluin,” the first one swore and hurried to the door that led into the kitchens, to make sure Stormserpent-or anyone else-wasn’t there.
He came out shaking his head. “Circle the place.”
“Of course,” the other bullyblade replied, drawing his sword. “Are you thinking what I am?”
“If you’re thinking Lord Mightybritches Stormserpent is dead, and we’re out of hire and are likely to be hunted as murderers, then yes.”
They gave each other grim nods and hastened back outsid
e.
Never seeing or hearing the cowled one who watched their futile search from behind a distant tree, singing very softly, “Oh, there’s nothing so sad… as a bodyguard… with no body… left… to guard.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
A DIFFERENT NIGHT
It had been a long night at the Dragonriders’ Club, and Amarune was so weary her dances would soon become snoring collapses into patrons’ laps if she tried to go on.
The nights all felt long since she’d gone back to dancing.
It wasn’t the work; it was the tension.
Everyone was watching each other warily; everyone looked over his shoulder; everyone carried an extra knife or pouch of sand or pepper… in the tenday since the Council, a mask of calm had settled over Suzail that no one at all trusted.
There was general brooding, a waiting to see just how and when the fighting would erupt.
No one doubted that it would. Most of the nobles who’d come for Council were still in the city, plotting and scheming behind closed doors, but oh-so-polite to each other on the streets and in the shops.
The good merchants of Suzail-and the shadier ones, too-were making coin hand over fist, feeding and thirst-slaking the fine lords and their maids and jacks and bullyblades, but wondering how soon this windfall would end. And how bloodily.
Right now, Rune was far too yawningly bone-weary to think any more about it. Not that she hadn’t thought and thought far too much already.
Her feet hurt the most, as usual.
She rubbed them thoughtfully, curled up on her chair, then rolled out of it to find her clothes. It was astonishing how quickly her own life had settled back into its usual routines. How she’d lived before a certain Lord Delcastle had started taking a very personal interest in her.
Not to mention a crazed old man named Elminster and a sinister thief by the name of Talane.
Wincing at that latter name and wondering if she should go home this night, after all, Amarune ran her fingers through her hair to banish the worst of the tangles, yawned farewell to her mirror, blew out the little lantern, and made her way to the door, surefooted in the total darkness.
