by Ed Greenwood
“Prince,” the Red Wizard purred. “Now there’s a title to aspire to. You could, you know, if you time things right and use just the right spells to tame Alusair to your will and bed. After she delivers you an heir, there’d be no need to sit still for the searing of her tongue any longer. A little spell-blast, a lot of mourning, and you could then do as her father did: have your pick of all the women in the kingdom.”
The War Wizard’s chuckle was a weak one, this time, and he shook his head, shrugged, and said, “Lord, you’ve more boldness in you than I do.” He shook his head again, in admiration. “Wouldn’t that be something, though …”
Darkspells let him ponder for a moment or two then said gently, “To bind the trust between us, I’ll now complete that linking spell … if you’re agreed?”
“A-aye,” Rauthur replied, in a low voice. He ran a hand through the thinning hair atop his head and blurted, “Remind me, Lord Starangh, of its specifics. I’d not want to put a foot wrong, if you understand me.”
“Of course,” the Red Wizard said gravely, watching the last of the sugarnuts hastily disappearing down Rauthur’s gullet. “Things that befall one of us also befall the other, at the same time. These shared fates are drunkenness, injury, hostile—but not self-cast—enspellment, and death. We will not share thoughts, emotions, dreams, or other things I’ve not spoken of: these things and these only. The spell will fade in a year.” Starangh locked gazes with the War Wizard and added in dry tones, “Which will give you plenty of time to disappear from both Cormyrean justice and Thayan regard.”
Huldyl Rauthur smiled rather uncertainly and grunted, “My thanks, Lord. Do it.”
Starangh nodded and beckoned the War Wizard over to him, rising from his chair to hold up both hands, palms outward and fingers together. Hesitantly Rauthur set aside the scrolls and held out his own hands to match.
Palms touched. The Thayan nodded approvingly and murmured a short incantation, awakening a tingling in them both that left their forearms shuddering as they stepped back from each other.
“I’m ready to proceed when you deem the time is right. Contact me at any time of day or night. I’ll be pleased if you guide me through the defenses of Vangerdahast’s sanctum to him sooner rather than later, if you take my meaning.”
“I-I do,” Rauthur assured him hastily.
Harnrim Starangh smiled thinly. “Just one thing more, Prince-to-be Huldyl. If this linking spell between us is broken, I’ll instantly be aware of that and of your whereabouts at the time—and may well be forced, for reasons of prudent diplomacy, you understand, to strike out from afar with slaying magic to obliberate Huldyl Rauthur and whoever helped you remove the spell.”
His smile widened and stayed broad and promising as the man called Darkspells silently faded away.
Leaving Huldyl Rauthur standing alone in the Harbortower turret, shivering in fear, with The Wanton Witch Said Yes lying fallen at his feet.
Fourteen
NARNRA TAKES A TASK
Well, we all have to work at SOMEthing—even the gods. So pick up that bucket, and let’s have no more of your backtalk.
The character Farmer Juth
in Scene the Third
of the play Troubles In The Cellar
by Shanra Mereld of Murann
first performed in the Year of the Griffon
A small, bright, and airy turret thrusts up from one corner of the Palace of the Purple Dragon in Suzail: a lone chamber whose four windows are open arches that breezes blow through at will but no bird nor raindrop enters.
The door that links that turret room to a corner of the top floor of the Palace stands open—and guarded by four veteran Purple Dragons—at all times. The turret had for some years been an abandoned dovecote before the coming of Caladnei but was now a place much used by the Mage Royal to think and pace and gaze out over courtyard and gardens, and think some more.
Caladnei of Cormyr (as she pointedly preferred to be spoken of) often teleported into and out of her turret room—but she’d never been known to do so in the company of anyone else before, and the guards were quite startled to suddenly hear the deep, hearty laugh of a fearless old man from behind them.
They whirled around, spearpoints glittering, and gaped at what they saw: the Mage Royal embracing a hawk-nosed, white-bearded old man in dirty robes. Caladnei was weeping softly, and the old wizard—whom more than one of the old warriors had seen before—cradled her shoulders with a protective arm, saying softly, “There, there, lass. ’Tis overwhelming, aye, but a sight all mages should see in their lives before they’ve too much time to do foolish things unmindful of the glory we all share.”
“Uh … Lady Caladnei?” one of the guards asked uncertainly, lifting his spear to menace the old man.
“Lord Elminster!” the eldest of the guards said delightedly, clapping a hand to his breastplate in salute. The gesture was echoed by the guard beside him, as the other two Purple Dragons turned to gape at their fellows … then turned back in horrified slowness to gaze at the old man they were menacing.
Bright blue eyes gazed at them from under dark brows, and the Old Mage nodded, winked, and lifted a finger to his lips to request their silence ere gesturing down at the sobbing woman in his arms. The two guards who’d saluted him nodded and pushed aside the spears of their fellows, silently withdrawing a pace. Elminster gave them an approving nod.
“T-thank you, Lord Elm—”
“El, please, lass. Just ‘El.’ Or ‘Old Mage’ if ye want to scold me.” He took hold of the Mage Royal’s slender shoulders and stood her back a pace, to look gravely into her tear-bright face. “How do ye feel?”
Caladnei managed a smile, and then swiftly looked away … then, deliberately, back up at him.
“Sobered. Shaken. And, may I say, vastly more respectful of you and of Vangerdahast, too, damn him. I … thank you. That was … magnificent.”
“Much to think upon, eh?” Elminster reached out two long fingers to touch her forehead. “This much I can do: make sure nothing fades of this. Ye’ll remember everything we saw, vividly, whenever ye call it to mind. This shall be with ye always.”
Caladnei shook her head wonderingly. “What a … a …”
Elminster chuckled. “Storm called it a ‘whirlwind tour,’ but I’ve shown ye but a handful of highlights from all this vast and wonderful world of ours. ’Twas time for ye. Ye needed it to set in perspective this fair land ye guard and to temper thy rage with Vangey. Know ye this: When I took him to see the same things, he wept even more than ye have, begged forgiveness for his rudenesses, and told me he was shamed.”
“I—I feel I should do the same,” Caladnei said with an unsteady laugh, ducking her head and looking up at him again.
Elminster recoiled. “What? And rob thyself of the chance to get in some really good rudenesses to me, first?”
The sorceress burst into startled laughter and clung to the old man’s robes for support. He hugged her fondly then—the eyes of the watching Purple Dragons narrowed—reached down to his belt, fishing around in a pouch there for something.
Cormyrean hands clapped dagger-hilts, tightened, and … fell away unneeded, as Elminster’s hand reappeared holding a length of fine chain. He held it out where the Mage Royal could see it, waited for her to notice it, and said gruffly, “Yours, lass. An anklet. Nothing valuable, but—wear it. Now and always. If ye feel the need, and say the word ‘amulamystra’ while wearing it, I will come.”
Wondering, Caladnei closed her hand around the delicate chain. The Old Mage bent his head and bestowed a fatherly kiss on the top of hers.
Then her arms were empty and she was staggering forward off-balance across a turret room that held no Elminster of Shadowdale. Caladnei looked around wildly and beheld only the four guards, staring at her.
She gave them a rueful half-smile like a child caught doing something naughty, and the guards drew themselves to attention and saluted. The eldest said politely, “Lady Mage, we’ve been reques
ted to inform you that the Lady Laspeera, the Highknight Rhauligan, and a captive await you in the Dragonwing Chamber.”
Caladnei drew herself up, suddenly every inch the brisk Mage Royal they knew so well, and snapped, “I thank you.” She smiled like a young lass again, bent over and drew off her right boot, and clasped the chain around her ankle.
“Looks good,” a guard said gruffly—then turned as swift as any whiplash to face away from her, at stiff attention. His fellows sprang to join him in the maneuver, so when Caladnei straightened, she’d have no idea which one of them had spoken.
She grinned at all four armored backs, parted two of them with firm hands, and murmured, “Old lechers,” as she strode between them and marched off down the hall.
The guards saluted her in silent unison and went back to guarding the open door.
* * * * *
Roablar of Lantan sat back and sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose where his glasses pinched—then rubbing the eyes behind them for good measure.
The everpresent hovering monk bent over the merchant. “Is there anything you’re not finding, goodsir?”
“Ah,” Thaerabho murmured, to the Keeper of that particular reading-room in Candlekeep. “It begins. ’Tis time for an unmasking.” Silent in his soft slippers, he started to move purposefully toward the seated Lantanna.
“You can see what I’m seeking,” the disguised Lady Nouméa Cardellith told her escort.
The tall, pockmarked monk ran a hand through his unruly, strawlike hair, bent closer, and replied in a low voice, “All you can about the Red Wizards of Thay, in particular recent writings. If you’ve come to Candlekeep in search of their spells, I fear you’ve wasted your journey. We keep those secure for very good reasons.”
Without regarding them, Nouméa was well aware that several monks were silently drawing in around her. She smiled thinly.
“No, Esmer. What would a merchant of Lantan want with spells? I live and die by trade, and ’tis this new policy of establishing Thayan trade enclaves and who in the Thayan hierarchy is behind it that I seek to learn all about.”
“I realize this is overbold, and you must feel perfectly comfortable in refusing to answer,” an unfamiliar monk murmured from her other side, “but why?”
Nouméa looked up and gave him a smile.
“If we’re being so blunt: I suspect this is but the first step in an elaborate plan to economically and then—covertly—politically dominate all realms of Faerûn.”
“Of course,” two of the monks said together, and at least another three in the ring that had silently formed around her nodded.
“Wherefore my fascination with recent reports and writings,” Nouméa added, indicating the sheafs of parchment and stacked volumes on the slightly sloped reading-desk before her.
“I sense you’re both well-traveled and worldly,” a monk said from directly behind her. “Permit me, then, to mention something not to be found in these written records but only in the diaries we compile of the news and rumor that comes daily to our gates.”
“Please do,” Nouméa said politely, shifting slightly and indicating the bench beside her. The monks smiled as if she’d passed some sort of test, and the monk who’d spoken from behind her stepped forward and sat down so close beside her that his robe almost brushed her hip. A white, puckered old sword-scar adorned one of his cheeks diagonally, and his hair was as gray as a sword in need of polishing.
“I’m Thaerabho,” he said with a smile, “and my field is the doings of those who wield magic in Faerûn outside temples and priesthoods. You’ve heard of the Chosen of Mystra?”
Nouméa nodded eagerly, and Thaerabho’s smile broadened.
“Then let me share this much: Some among them have been working against the Red Wizards in a lovely manner. With spells they ‘twist’ many of the portals established by the Thayans in their enclaves so those who use such translocations can have spells stolen from their minds en route, suggestions planted, memories and information ‘read,’ and so on.”
“Sweet Mystra,” Nouméa whispered, genuinely awed.
Thaerabho nodded. “If the Thayans ever grow too strong in a particular place, if I may speak cynically, the portal in that spot—or all of them, along with, of course, whoever’s using them at the time—could explode. Or perhaps a suggestion planted in the heads of all mages who’ve ever used one of the Thayan portals could be awakened, all at once, all over Faerun … a suggestion, say, to rush to a particular Thayan city and attack Szass Tam or some other zulkir there, before he accomplishes some dread goal that will sacrifice them.”
Nouméa shook her head and asked softly, “What if I am of Thay or of the Chosen and want no one in Faerûn to suspect any of this?”
The monk whose nose was almost brushing her own replied, “No, Lady Nouméa Cardellith, you are of neither—and are not a Harper, either. You’re but a seeker after knowledge, and we arm all who come here with the weapons of fact and lore and reason-sorted rumor. What they do with such tools after they depart is not our affair. We but seek to arm those wise—or cunning—enough to come asking and looking.”
“Who are you?” a shaken Nouméa whispered.
The ring of monks smiled.
“Simple folk of Faerûn who love old books, and learning, and reading the thoughts and hopes and records of beings now dust,” Esmer replied.
Nouméa looked around at them all and shook her head. “I think you’re among the most powerful and dangerous forces on all Toril.”
The monks stopped smiling.
“That, too,” Thaerabho agreed lightly. “Knowing that, what will you do now, Lady Nouméa Cardellith, sometime mage and unhappy wife?” More monks were in the reading-room now, drifting toward her from all sides.
Nouméa stared at him for a long time, ignoring the silent assembly of monks and the rods some of them held ready then lifted her shoulders in a shrug. “I … don’t know.”
The ring-wall of monks seemed to relax, and a few drifted away again. Thaerabho’s smile returned.
“Ah, the truth. The right answer to give us, always.”
Nouméa stared into his hazel eyes for a long time then drew in a deep breath and asked, “What do you think I should do?”
“Ah,” the sword-scarred monk responded eagerly, as several of the closest monks drew in around her again, reaching in under the great reading-desk to unclip folded wooden stools from its underside, and sitting down on them. “Now you’ve done the next right thing. We’ll not tell you what to do next. We never do. We shall, however, tell you all we can to help you decide where to go from here in life.”
Lady Nouméa blinked at him. “Why didn’t I come here years ago?”
“Why indeed?”
* * * * *
As the guards swung the great doors open for her, the Mage Royal of Cormyr looked in and up at the carved stone dragons frozen forever in the act of erupting from the ceiling of the room ahead of her. The scene was as magnificent as always, all scales, surging strength, and great sweeping curves of wings, catlike and serpentine both at once.
She found herself on the verge of tears again, and almost fondly muttered, “Damn you, Old Mage,” as she entered the Dragonwing Chamber alone.
Three people stood in the center of its vast, empty polished floor awaiting her: Laspeera, Rhauligan, and the thief who’d fled from the cellars, captured at last. Narna Shalace.
Rhauligan was shrugging himself back into his vest, his belt still unbuckled at his waist. Caladnei smiled thinly. She must have led him a merry chase. The spell-thrall holding her now would be Speera’s work.
She gave Laspeera and Rhauligan nods of thanks and approached their paralyzed but unbound captive, banishing Laspeera’s magic as she came. “So we meet again, Narnra of Waterdeep,” she began pleasantly.
The thief, who’d bent over to busily rub hands and ankles, shaking out her limbs as if her body felt unfamiliar to her, did not reply.
“Narnra,” Caladnei continued, “you s
tand in the Palace of the Purple Dragon in Suzail, in the realm of Cormyr. As such, you’re utterly within my power. Should not mere prudence lead you to some measure of polite cooperation, whatever your personal feelings toward us?”
The thief straightened up to give Caladnei a cold, considering look then glanced over at Laspeera and Rhauligan. They gazed patiently back at her, faces impassive.
Narnra tossed her head and glared at Caladnei. “You have an audience for your grand speeches,” she said, nodding at the man who’d captured her and the woman whose spell had paralyzed her. “What d’you want of me?”
“Answers. A few civil, honest, and generous-with-what-you-know answers,” the Mage Royal replied.
Narnra sighed. “I can’t think what precious things I might know that could possibly be of any use to you. You’re not planning to become the terror of purses in Trades Ward, are you?”
“No,” Caladnei replied in a dry voice. “There! You see? An answer, and so easily and swiftly given, too. Try it for a short time, do well at it—and you’ll be free to go.”
“Go where?” Narnra snarled. “Out into the streets of your city, to starve? Or be pounced on by the next of your soldiers who doesn’t like the look of me? ‘Oh, sir, I’m just a thief from Waterdeep—that’s right, a thief—and I’ve just been talking with your Mage Royal, and she’—oh, aye, I’m sure they’ll believe me!”
“Do you love Waterdeep so much?”
“What? Is this one of your questions? Could you not have found a traveling merchant, and ask—”
“Do you love Waterdeep so much?”
Narnra flung up her hands. “I know Waterdeep,” she snarled. “ ’Tis my home, the only place I know, where I know how to get something to eat, where …”
She fell silent, eyes narrowing.
Caladnei was smiling. “You see? Honest answers are not so hard, once you begin. Do it twice or thrice, and you’ll have found the habit.”
Narnra gave her a dark look and hugged herself as if she were cold. “Wizards are so clever,” she muttered. “I sometimes wonder how better off we’d all be without them.”
