by Ed Greenwood
Tasmurand the Slayer gaped up at the most splendid sight of his life—and his last.
Filling the great height of the hall above him was a slim, lithe dragon—if something the size of a Marsemban tall-house could be said to be slim. Most of that bulk was two great, batlike wings, spread in a great V-shape that raked sharply back to end in the curling tail they were rooted in, all down their lengths. Muscles akin to those of a great cat shifted under iridescent silver-blue scales as talons spread wide in the air, a long neck snaked down, and eyes of glowing turquoise gazed at Tasmurand the Slayer as if they could pierce his leathers and see him naked.
Above those deep, riveting eyes the dragon’s head swept back in two great horns, and below them two cheek fins flared forth. Spiky, membranous “beards” beneath these fins quivered as the great jaws parted—and a great, glowing cloud of gas gushed forth, sweeping over Tasmurand with force enough to pluck him from his feet and hurl him back against the wall. He screamed, or thought he did, but the spicy, flickering gas was alive with darting, swirling bolts of lightning, so cold and yet so fiercely hot as they stabbed through and through him … the smell of his own cooked and blackening flesh like roast boar as darkness crowded in, his eyeballs sizzled, and he realized he could move nothing … had nothing left of his limbs to move anyway, as his fading, failing vision showed him crisped fingers crumbling away …
A blackened torso fell to the balcony, trailing thin plumes of smoke, and the cause of its owner’s death towered over it.
“Tell the gods,” a great hissing voice informed the ears that were no longer there to hear anything, “that you were slain by Ammaratha Cyndusk, a foolish dragon—but one not nearly so foolish as the humans who thought to slay her.”
Thirteen
BUSINESS MEETINGS, BATHS, AND SUBVERSIONS
Looking back over all the years, I can’t decide just which memories are most important to me: the slayings, the midnight meetings of plotting treasons and rule over all the Realms, the few fumbling moments of lovemaking, or the even fewer really hot, uninterrupted, contented baths. I can still recall the little floating dragon bathtoy my aunt gifted me with, one spring.…
Thamdarl “the Wizard Unseen”
From Tyrant’s Throne to the Arms of a Goddess:
My Road To Mystra
Year of the Broken Blade
The carpet was as soft as tomb-moss under her boots. The tomb-moss of the City of the Dead … which was right where Narnra Shalace would end up, or at least in the Marsemban equivalent—one of the canals for all she knew!—if she didn’t get clean away from here.
By Mask and Tymora, of all the deadly foolish mistakes … literally leaping into this unknown mansion, full of nobles plotting treason and lady mages who spoke so casually of shattering spells laid covertly by others who’d just left … or had they really left?
Flaming fury of Mask! She had to get away from here, had to …
Narnra went down that dark and unfamiliar passage like a racing wind, as stealthily as she could at full run, trusting in its straight, uncluttered path to keep from crashing into anything. Statuettes and plants on marble pedestals occurred often on both sides, but the central rug stretched out clear and arrow-straight, on into the darkness, on to … an ending.
The wall ahead was adorned with a huge statue, pale white and gleaming. An elf female standing amid sculpted ferns like a queen—if, that is, queens went outside wearing nothing but their crowns and haughty expressions—with various naked male elves entwined around her legs and torso, long whipswords in their hands. Their faces, like hers, stared endlessly down the passage in eternal challenge. To either side of this great carved group of elvenkind was a closed door. Narnra drew in a deep breath and without hesitation opened the one to her right as quietly as she could. It opened into—darkness, and steps leading down. Thank you, gods!
As she crept down the unseen steps in a crouch, fingertips brushing one wall, Narnra shook her head. A Red Wizard conspiring against the Crown of Cormyr with this Lady Ambrur! Oh, there must be folk in Suzail who’d pay well to learn about this! Why—
Something caught hold of Narnra’s throat and slammed her back against the wall. It was a hand, reaching brutal and unseen out of the darkness below her—and a second hand dug brutal fingers into her elbows and slammed them against the wall too, one after the other, leaving her arms all fiery numbness.
She couldn’t snatch at her daggers, couldn’t … The hands were at her throat and the scruff of her neck, now, dragging her leathers up in a grip that left her whistling and struggling for air.
“You, my little hare with long teeth,” the voice of Glarasteer Rhauligan muttered in her ear, “are coming with me.”
Narnra’s head swam, and she struggled weakly as deeper darkness crept in … but the fingers never loosened.
* * * * *
The heavy, jarring fall woke her. She was hooded in something that smelled of sweaty man and jolted on Rhauligan’s shoulders. The Harper grunted under Narnra’s weight, stifled a curse then added in a curt whisper, “Sorry.”
Apologizing? To me? A bit late, you bastard!
He broke into a run, hard and swift, bouncing and bruising her but somehow keeping his balance. His boots were on cobbles, now, with the sounds of Marsember all around. More echoes, the distant rumble of cartwheels, some chatter, and a growing din.
Rhauligan carried her into somewhere quieter that stank of dung, rotting fish, and other decaying things, turned a few corners, scraped her boots once against stone, and set Narnra down on what felt—and groaned—like a rickety wooden cart.
She sat still as he fastened something around her neck then set her on her feet and kicked away the cart. Its wheels set up a protesting squeal that ended in a crash of wood against stone. Narnra heard the familiar sound of a rat scuttling through refuse.
His hands were at a buckle, and … she was unhooded and blinking in the sudden light of day, gasping as none-too-fresh air was hers once more for the taking. Rhauligan shook out the hood, which proved to be a vest. His vest.
Narnra drew in deep breaths, looking around. She was in a garbage-strewn Marsemban alley, hobbled and with her thumbs and fingers wired together behind her back … and the cord around her waist and thighs led up to—she turned, lifting her head to look, and discovered she wore a choke-leash—the underside of a rusty iron outer staircase. The leash led there, too. It looked like the back stair of a warehouse that saw little use but presented an unfriendly, rotting fortress face to Faerûn anyway.
Rhauligan, of course, stood not far away—but out of any possible reach, no matter how furiously she might try to strangle herself reaching him.
“Important folk seem very interested in you,” he said thoughtfully as their eyes met. “I wonder why.”
Narnra shrugged at him through her tangled hair. “I know not,” she snapped, “but I do know that I’m not yours nor your Mage Royal’s to take and confine like some sort of pet or bauble—just as I was not Elminster’s to give!”
“I can scarce believe, she-thief, that you’ve not yet learned that if anyone can do a thing to you, they’ve the right to do it—if they stand for law, and you do not.”
Rhauligan cast quick glances up and down the deserted, refuse-heaped alley and added, “Brutal, yes, but outlanders like you who deal with the Lady Ambrur are buyers and sellers of information … and the whereabouts and doings of Vangerdahast is information that could make you very rich and doom Cormyr at the same stroke. Had the Mage Royal not commanded your capture, I’d be slaying you now, not bandying words with you. I dislike slaying young lasses, but if I must choose between spilling the blood of just one of them and saving a bright realm full of them, my choice is clear.”
Narnra glared at him, straining against the wires until her fingers burned, and spat, “So you can sell the information yourself, no doubt, or we’d not be in this alley. I know Waterdeep, not Cormyr. I couldn’t even find my way to a gate out of this city unless you let
me search for a bit. Who’m I going to sell anything to? And how’m I supposed to know anything useful to sell to a realm full of folk I don’t even know?”
Rhauligan’s only reply was a wordless, crooked smile.
“So what’s going to happen to me now?” she snarled. “Why’m I here?”
“Business meeting,” Rhauligan said, looking up and down the alley again. “Important business.”
“With?” Narnra demanded, staring around at the deserted, garbage-heaped alley with a skeptical eyebrow arched.
A sensation broke over her then, a creeping and tingling quite unlike anything she’d ever felt before. It was energetic, swift … and magical.
Narnra tried to curse, but her tongue seemed huge and heavy, and her suddenly slack mouth not her own. She tried to toss her head and—with a sudden leap of fear—found herself still standing motionless, still gazing just where she’d been looking before.
The invisible, paralyzing force was streaming into her from off to her left, about six paces away … where a heap of trash suddenly shifted and rose up with a little grunt of effort, falling away untidily to reveal a woman in trim dark robes, a gentle but noble face, and long flowing auburn hair—one lock of which had gone white.
“With me, as it happens,” the woman said gently but firmly. “I believe we’ve seen each other recently. I’m Laspeera of the War Wizards.”
Narnra glared at her, or tried to. War Wizards again, she thought, and I can’t even move my mouth to ask, or protest, or …
Laspeera cast a smiling glance at the Harper. “I’d like to hear what’s so urgent that the smooth and urbane Glarasteer Rhauligan races across Marsember like an overeager dog, toting smart-tongued street thieves.”
“So you shall,” Rhauligan replied and began to pant rapidly, his tongue hanging out.
Laspeera gave him a look. “What’s got into you?”
“Revealing my innermost overeager dog, Lady Mage,” he replied brightly.
Laspeera sighed, waved one graceful hand, and murmured, “Get on with it, faithful hound. I grow no younger.”
* * * * *
Lord Vangerdahast of Cormyr leaned back contentedly from the table. His stomach promptly rumbled, sounding every bit as contented as he was.
The plate on the table in front of him was empty of all but a few smears of sauce, though it had been heaped high with rabbit stew not so very long ago. Good sauce, that …
The former Royal Magician of the Realm reached for the plate, leaning forward with tongue extended to lick it clean—but a grinning Myrmeen Lhal reached in under his arm with the speed of a striking adder and plucked the plate away. Vangey’s fingertips thumped down on bare tabletop, leaving him blinking … then turning with a growl.
“You can thank me whenever you remember your manners,” the Lady Lord of Arabel said impishly, heading for the washbasins beside the sink.
Vangerdahast scowled at her, which caused her to lift an eyebrow reprovingly at him, over her shoulder.
Under the force of her disapproving gaze he sighed, waved his fingers as if to banish what he’d just done, and muttered, “Have my thanks, Myrmeen Lhal. You … surprise me. I thought you were merely the best of Alusair’s mud-spattered, eager she-blades, determined to outfight and outsnap any man.”
“Oh my, and here I thought you were just a manipulative wizard driven by whimsy, a hunger for power, and a love of being mysterious and rude to everyone in sight,” Myrmeen replied merrily, hurling herself into Vangerdahast’s favorite lounge chair.
She bounced once amid its overstuffed, highbacked, and rather shabby comfort—and bent to sniff, frowning in appraisal. Then she shot him a scowl of her own. “Don’t you ever wash things? Gods’ grief, man! The lice are leaping all over me!”
She sprang up, growling in irritation, and clawed at buckles and straps, rapidly shucking armor in all directions.
It was Vangerdahast’s turn to rise hastily. “Now don’t you start throwing your skin at me! I knew—”
“You hoped,” Myrmeen replied witheringly, bared to the waist with a bundle of leather and chain and armor plate in her hands. Her dangling suspenders, Vangey noticed with some surprise, looked very much like his own.
“Now,” she asked briskly, “where do you bathe? You do bathe, don’t you?”
“Huh-hahem. Ah, down that passage,” he said, pointing. “There’s a pool. The, uh, stars above it are a spell that mirrors the real sky, not a hole in the ceiling. The, ah, floating wooden duck is mine. I—”
Myrmeen strode forward, shifting her bundle against her bosom to free one hand—and used it to grab her host by one elbow. “Come,” she ordered, starting to march him along.
“What? What’re you—?”
“My hair was filthy this morning, and ’tis worse now. You can help me wash it.”
“I don’t—”
“Oh, yes, you do. Yours has been washed sometime this month, I’m sure of it. Come.”
She half-led, half-propelled the feebly-protesting wizard down the passage.
Scarlet with embarrassment and breathless in his enforced haste, Vangerdahast vowed he would get his revenge on this ogre of a she-swordcaptain—and it would be a revenge that would last a long, long time and leave her begging for mercy.
* * * * *
The Harbortower turret was always cold and drafty, even at the muggy height of the warmest—and stinkiest—summer weather … wherefore this was not a popular duty-post among the War Wizards. When Huldyl Rauthur, a War Wizard of middling rank, had agreed to take it with slightly more eagerness than he’d ever shown before, old Rathandar had seen fit to grimly remind him that the old turret wouldn’t stand up to any really spectacular experimental castings and that he’d personally lash some lasting stripes into Huldyl’s backside if he found even the slightest sign of feminine companions teleporting or being teleported into or out of the turret during Huldyl’s shifts. Steamy chapbooks and richly bad food, on the other hand, were quite understandable …
On this bright morning, however, Huldyl seemed unable to enjoy even one of his stack of daring chapbooks and had barely touched his amber-roast butterfowl—to say nothing of his sugarnuts. However, he was quite alone and had thrown no cloak over the bare cot by the back window to make it even uncomfortably suitable for dalliance … or slumber, for that matter.
Uneasily he strolled from room to room, peering out of the windows at bustling Marsember below more than he bothered to squint into the powerful farglasses aimed out to sea. “No pirates ho,” he muttered, in mockery of the cry excited young War Wizards seemed to veritably itch to give tongue to … and restlessly went back into the room he’d just left.
Rauthur was a short, stout man who always seemed to some people to be nervous, because beneath his thinning brown hair, his temples were always beaded with sweat. Those who knew him better, however, judged him a good crafter of new spells and a sarcastic, often smug man whose green eyes would blaze wildly when he was really excited or fearful.
There was no one to take note of his eyes at this moment, however, as he stood alone in the turret, tapping fingers idly on the windowsill and listening to seabirds flap and scream. He sighed, turned, started back through the connecting archway once more—and came to a sudden halt.
The chair by the table bearing his books and food was no longer empty. A young, darkly handsome man clad in black and silver shimmerweave lounged there, an easy smile on his lips and The Wanton Witch Said Yes open in one hand.
He lifted an eyebrow and the tome together. “A coded spellbook, perhaps?”
Rauthur flushed, and glanced at the floor. His guest might look like a swaggering noble or idle merchant prince—but he’d met with Harnrim Starangh of the Red Wizards before.
“I—ah—no. Uh, to make my superiors think I lacked a woman to smuggle up here so they wouldn’t scry us and see …”
“Me? Ah, but only you can see my proper self. To the rest of the overly curious world, I am a ravishing beauty
in black silks—with the face of someone you prefer to privately refer to as the Crown Princess Wrathful, I believe.”
“Princess Alusair—?”
“Oh, don’t gabble, man! Be bold! Plenty of perfectly loyal folk of Cormyr say arch or even biting things about the royal family and live to repeat them more loudly at revels! Besides, you’ll soon not have to worry overmuch about what others think of you.”
The Red Wizard lowered the chapbook with a brittle smile to reveal a tight-rolled baton of parchment.
Huldyl Rauthur leaned forward eagerly, his eyes catching green fire, and the wizard best known in Thay as Darkspells unrolled the parchment to splay seven scrolls out in a fan array on the table. The sugarnuts were in the way, and without even looking up the Red Wizard sent them drifting smoothly through the air to hover by the War Wizard’s face. The chapbooks descended only slightly less smoothly to a soft landing on the floor.
Hesitantly Rauthur plucked a sugarnut from the air and ate it.
Darkspells looked up at him, smiled again, and spread his hand in a flourish above the parchments. “So there you are: the seven spells, as agreed. The coins you’ve had already should be more than enough to buy you a handsome abode in Athkatla, Waterdeep, Sembia, or anywhere more distant, for that matter. These magics should enable you to slay with ease any War Wizards who come hunting you. Practice their use in private to ensure yourself of their stable and complete nature, power, and worth.”
The scrolls rose in unison and drifted toward Huldyl in the wake of the sugarnuts, which the War Wizard gobbled more of hastily, wiping his sugar-coated fingers nervously on the front of his tunic.
Harnrim Starangh leaned forward over the table with an eagerness that matched his own. “I hereby reaffirm my earlier promise: the same amount of cash and seven more very useful spells will be yours when I’ve safely reached Vangerdahast and gotten away again.”
Rauthur fielded the scrolls with a chuckle, eyes alight. “I’m your man, Lord Starangh, I am indeed. This is … princely.”
