by Ed Greenwood
“Turning me into some sort of brainless slug?”
“No. I’ll never deal pain, mind-to-mind, as Elminster did. No, if you were found wanting, I’d put you through a portal back to Waterdeep.”
Narnra almost sprang up from the wall. “You can do that?”
“Oh, yes. I must warn you that the portal I know will deliver you into a very public room of state in Peirgeiron’s Palace. Have you a swift story ready?”
“Being the daughter of Elminster ought to do,” Rhauligan murmured—earning him three glares at once.
Narnra bit her lip. “And … I’d just go back to Trades Ward? No one following me?”
Caladnei shrugged. “Not from Cormyr.”
Narnra looked at her. “This mind-ream: What will it do to me?”
“Show me your thoughts and memories as I rummage. If you’d like to reassure yourself as to your fate at my hands, I can easily make the mind-ream a two-way affair so you can judge me while I do the same to you.”
Narnra stared at the Mage Royal, awed and strangely excited—and suddenly angry again. She scrambled up, took a few stumbling steps away from Caladnei, waving at the Cormyreans to stay back from her, and leaned her head against the wall. “I … let me think.”
“Of course,” Laspeera said softly.
Breathing heavily, Narnra stared at the toes of her boots and thought hard. How did she feel?
Did she trust these folk? Laspeera seemed motherly, Rhauligan was—Rhauligan, dedicated to his task … and Caladnei had beaten her like a backstreet bully with magic—but not killed her when the slaying would have been easy and Narnra had been stupid enough to goad her. Repeatedly.
So how did she feel? Truth, now …
I’m more terrified than eager. And I’m angry. Angry at myself for being afraid, angrier still at Caladnei and Rhauligan for bringing me by force into this choice. I’m burn-the-gods furious with Elminster for siring me, just walking away, and luring me here from the streets I know.
“Truth,” Laspeera said gently from behind Narnra. “Every word utter truth.”
Gods, yes, she’s been reading my every thought …
Narnra spun around with a frightened snarl, expecting to find all three Cormyreans closing in around her—but everyone was just where they’d been before, Caladnei still kneeling.
“If I agree to this … this madness,” Narnra asked in a voice that was far from calm and steady, “when will this mind-ream take place?”
The Mage Royal of Cormyr rose slowly to her feet, smiling a little wryly. “In such matters, there’s never any better time for boldly reckless action than … right now.”
Fifteen
WHEN MARSEMBAN MERCHANTS GO WALKING
My son, it’s not the standing merchants you need fear. It’s when they get to walking somewhere that you’d best beware. It takes a heap of coming trouble for someone to get a merchant to walk anywhere.
The character Farmer Crommor
in Scene the First
of the play Troubles In The Cellar
by Shanra Mereld of Murann
first performed in the Year of the Griffon
The outermost of the ward-spells that cloaked the far corners of the room in roiling mists flared into coppery flames of warning, and a telltale chimed.
The darkly handsome young man clad all in black—open-fronted, flaring-sleeved shirt, tight leather breeches, and gleaming black boots—took his crossed feet down from the footstool, laid aside his book and his goblet, and rose from his chair.
He passed his hand over a dark sphere of crystal that shared its own upswept, teardrop-shaped duskwood plinth with an outer ring of smaller spheres. Another ring of roiling mists obediently wavered into emerald radiance and displayed an upright image in the air: a white-faced man in brown robes that matched his thinning hair was standing uncertainly in the midst of the emerald mists.
The man in black smiled and touched two of the smaller spheres. Two rings of mist fell away into nothingness, and the third took on that emerald hue. The Red Wizard then passed his hand over the largest sphere, and the scene of Huldyl Rauthur vanished.
“Enter the archway and proceed,” he told the air calmly. “The way before you is quite safe.”
The emerald mists at his feet flowed away to one wall in a purposeful flood and climbed it to outline an archway on the unbroken stone—which promptly split to reveal a long, rough tunnel through rock. A hesitant figure was advancing along it.
“Be welcome,” the Red Wizard said quietly. “Importance brings you, I trust?”
“Y-yes,” Huldyl Rauthur made reply, as he entered the chamber. “I believe ’tis time.” The War Wizard was chalk-white with worry, and his face glistened with so much sweat that it dripped from his chin.
A weak reed, Master Rauthur, Darkspells thought. And weak reeds break.
“Good,” Harnrim Starangh told the man he’d bought. “Return to the chamber you came from, and I’ll follow in a matter of moments.”
As soon as the fearful Rauthur started back down the passage, Starangh passed a hand over a crystal and sent mists billowing up between them once more. He drained his goblet in a long, unhurried quaff, plucked one of the crystals from the plinth and slipped it into his codpiece, and said words to the empty air.
Two men were promptly standing before him, blinking in startlement and alarm. They went pale when they saw who was standing facing them.
Starangh gave the merchants Bezrar and Surth a shark-like smile. “I hope you’ve eaten well. You’re going on a journey.”
“Eh? What j—” Bezrar began, but fell silent as Surth kicked his ankle savagely.
Starangh let them both see his smile turn soft and menacing and commanded, “Stand still and silent. Please.”
They did so, and he cast an intricate spell that laid a fog of forgetfulness on them. Until it expired, they’d be compelled to seek the retired Mage Royal, being drawn always in his direction—but stripped from them was all remembrance of why they were seeking Vangerdahast or who’d enspelled and sent them. Anyone trying to break the spell before it ran out would reduce the two Marsembans to quivering mindlessness.
They stood like two gaping statues, no longer seeing the man who worked a second, minor spell to place images of the animated suits of armor known as helmed horrors in their minds. “When you see such a one,” Harnrim Starangh told his two minions gently, “one of you will throw one of these at it, so as to strike it.”
The black-clad wizard took the limp hands of the two oblivious men, and posed them so those of each man were cupped together. From a basket beneath his reclining chair, Starangh scooped many small, shiny, identical objects into those waiting palms: rune-graven ovals of metal that bulged plumply at their centers but thinned to the breadth of armor plate nigh all their edges.
He smiled at his two enchanted idiots, stepped around them to lay a hand on the backs of both of their necks at once, and pronounced another word that made them both vanish.
Humming a jaunty song, Harnrim Starangh made a last adjustment of his crystals and rode a plume of mist down the passage to join Rauthur. It was time to go hunting—for Vangerdahasts were suddenly very much in season.
* * * * *
Aumun Tholant Bezrar blinked, wiped his sweating face, and looked wildly in all directions with every evidence of utter bewilderment. Trees, aye, definitely trees.
As always, standing behind him like one more tree trunk, was his companion in so many crimes, Master Malakar Surth.
Surth was clutching a handful of something that looked like oversized silver coins, and frowning in puzzlement.
Bezrar looked down and discovered that his own fat, sweaty palm was cradling another handful of the same things: ovals of gleaming metal graven with intricate runes—nothing he could read or had ever seen before, but the same things on each one. These long-as-his-fingers gewgaws bulged in their middles like snail-cakes but were flattened out all around the edges like, well, again like snail-cakes.
So where by all the cozy Nine Hells had these come from—and where was here, anyhow? And how … how had he and Surth gotten here?
“Uh, Surth?” he asked, seeking some answers. “Surth?”
“Bite your tongue til it bleeds,” Marsember’s richest dealer in scents, wines, cordials, and drugs snapped, employing the standard polite port expression for what slightly more highborn Cormyreans usually rendered as “Belt up” or (if they were priests or elders) “Be silent.”
Surth was glaring around at trees and vines and the deep damp green vista of more trees, that stretched away in all directions from the narrow trail they were standing on. His manner made it clear that he was blaming the trees themselves for being here—at least for the few moments it would take him to find someone nearby to blame.
“I don’t know either,” he muttered, as his face turned slowly to regard his longtime partner. And darkened.
“What did you do to get us here, Bez? You must have done something! You’re an idiot, you know that? An idiot! You must have fiddled with something enchanted or lit the fuse of that … that …” His face went clouded, almost frightened, and he waved a dismissive hand. “You know: that … man.”
Bezrar drew himself up like an indignant walrus, puffing and sweating, and jabbed Surth’s chest with one fat, hairy finger. “Now, you listen here, O mighty Malakar! You’re the one who’s always dabbling with Shar-magic, dark little toys and mumble-spells and all that untrustworthy idiocy! B’gads, you wound me, you do! ’Twasn’t anything I did to get us here! ’Twas that smiling … some magic word … that green glow … him … he gave us these, didn’t he?”
He thrust out his handful of shiny gewgaws and said, “He must’ve, because I sure by all the happy dancing gods haven’t seen ’em before! You’re holding some too!”
“I know that, you fat little dolt,” Surth snarled. “I can see and feel, you know!”
“Odd’s fish, but you can’t think half as clever as you think you can, now, can you—hey?”
“Oh yes, I can,” Surth snarled, reaching for the hilt of his knife.
“Well, then, use your thinking part, whatever ’tis, and tell me how we got here and what these things are and how we get back to Marsember!” the fat smuggler roared, his longknife already out and jabbing warningly at Surth’s knife-hand. “Because sure as Shar’s a dark lass, this ain’t Marsember!”
His shout echoed a little way through the damp trees, and something unseen scuttled away from beside the trail nearby, leaving a trail of quivering leaves.
Malakar Surth drew in a deep breath, wrestling down his temper, and with a firm hand pushed the point of Bezrar’s wavering knife aside. “Let me think,” he snarled.
Bezrar gave him a sour expression and flourished his hands in mimicry of a high-nosed Marsemban servant bidding a Marsemban noble to pass this way, or partake of this platter of viands, or do something.
Surth stroked at his chin as if its clean-shaven point was home to a handsome beard, stared around at the trees, and muttered, “Can’t tell where the sun is, and we mustn’t get off the trail. This forest is big.” He shivered suddenly and muttered, “Mustn’t be here when night comes.”
Bezrar nodded, eyes widening in horror at the thought of long-taloned, creeping forest monsters, slithering closer.… He fought down a cry of alarm and started looking in all directions at once, crouching and waving his longknife wildly.
Surth gave him a sour look and murmured, “Fat, useless idiot.” He held up a hand and said, “This way. I don’t know why, but I’m sure this is the right way to head. Shar must be with me—thank you for invoking her, Bez. Come on.”
The smuggler stood suspiciously looking in all directions, so Surth plucked him sharply by the elbow while passing, jerking him into a stumbling walk. No sooner had the fat wholesaler regained his balance when Surth took firm grip of his elbow once more and just as firmly propelled him into the lead.
Bezrar shot him a fearful look. Surth favored him with what was intended to be a reassuring smile and said, “Go on, but mind you go quietly. Don’t worry. I’ll be right behind you.”
Bezrar’s reply was a growl. The smuggler didn’t quite dare to say that knowing Malakar Surth was right behind you was no cause for a lack of worry.
He needed Surth to do the thinking—and to be with him in this vast and rustling wood. The mere thought of—what was that?
“Mask and Tymora love me!” he cried, as a warrior in full armor rose up from behind some bushes, visor down and drawn sword in hand. “Surth?”
“I see him,” Surth said in a strange voice. Bezrar cast a very quick glance back over his shoulder to see why his partner’s voice sounded like that—and saw that Surth had lifted one of his gewgaws in a trembling hand and was staring at it with a weird expression on his face.
“Malakar!” he snarled. “Help me here!”
His eyes back on the armored warrior, he moaned in fear as the silently menacing Purple Dragon drifted toward him. Aye, drifted—gods above, it was floating! Its feet were right off the ground, toes pointing downwards like a knight laid out for his tomb!
Yet that helmed head was turning to look at him then at Surth then back again, and the gauntleted hands were swinging that great naked sword up and back, ready to slash down and slay—
“Surth!” the smuggler almost wept, his longknife shaking in his hand. “Aid!”
Something bright flashed past his shoulder, tumbling end over end at the floating warrior. It struck that armored breast—and the world exploded in bright blue fire and ringing, tumbling shards of battle-steel that half-deafened Aumun Bezrar and flung him off his feet back past a tree or two and crashing down among bushes, very hard roots, and wet dead leaves, with pieces of riven armor pattering onto the ground all around him.
“Bezrar?” his partner cried in fear, stumbling blindly forward along the path and groping at the air. “Bez, where are you?”
Bezrar blinked at the leaf-shrouded sky overhead, deciding he was still alive and could hear things through a faint ringing in his ears and could feel all parts of his body with not much more than the usual pain. He rolled over hastily, driving his longknife into wet moss and earth as a handle, to puff his way to his knees and see … Malakar Surth stepping straight into a tree, shrieking in alarm, turning to run, and taking three wild, windmilling strides into—another tree.
Surth sat down hard, clutching at his head, and Bezrar, surveying the now-empty path, found himself laughing wildly.
His chortles died away abruptly as he felt his free hand trembling. He looked down and discovered that he was clutching one of the gewgaws like a stone ready to throw and that it was glowing slightly, a blue radiance that pulsed and faded under his astonished gaze. More than that: somehow, in the moments of fear since he’d first seen that armored head rise into view, his free hand had opened two of his pouches, tossed away the palm-flasks of wine he carried there, and thrust all of the rest of the gewgaws into the emptied pouches.
“Mystra, Lady of Magic,” he prayed hoarsely, watching the trembling in his hand grow stronger and realizing that something was urging him to return to the trail and take it ahead in that direction and to go nowhere else. “What by all your sacred mysteries is going on?”
Surth, he saw, was struggling to his feet, holding out another of the gewgaws in one hand as if it were towing him forward.
“We … we’re being led like mules,” he gasped, suddenly drenched in fear-sweat. “Oh, gods, we’re going to die!”
As if in reply to his words, another silent armored warrior floated into view along the trail. It headed purposefully for Surth, raising its blade as it came.
Surth threw the gewgaw in his hand, and Bezrar hastily buried his face in the moss and leaves.
The blast was even bigger this time.
The tug of the thing in his hand grew insistent. He struggled to his feet and stumbled toward the trail. Surth was reeling among the trees—and there was already another
gewgaw in his hand.
“Oh, Bane and black doom,” Bezrar muttered helplessly, as he found himself heading for the trail as fast as his shaking limbs could take him.
* * * * *
“Wait,” Rhauligan said suddenly. “What about that … protection?”
“The stars of Mystra did not bar me,” Laspeera said, “and nothing steered me in my reading. I think.”
“You truly think the goddess herself …?”
“I don’t know,” Caladnei said firmly. “Narnra … did you see seven stars? Blue-white fire?”
The Silken Shadow stared at the three Cormyreans, sudden hope kindling. I could play this as a shield, try to win free of this room and these three, and … and …
As she discovered she didn’t know what she’d want to do if she did win her freedom, Laspeera suddenly turned her back.
She’s still reading my thoughts! She knows this would be a ruse.
“No,” the senior War Wizard said firmly, turning around again to face Narnra. “Where the Mother of Mysteries is concerned, Narnra, none of us who work magic can be sure of anything. Your mind has already shown me that you saw seven stars go out, one by one, as the Mage Royal used spells on you. Yet Mystra’s protection may still encloak you, whether you know it or not.”
Caladnei nodded gravely. “I’d not like to proceed unless you say so, Narnra Shalace. Mystra may take note of your willingness or your refusal. So … what say you?”
My choice handed right back to me. Narnra stared at the three Cormyreans, wondering what other twists this day might hold … and what she should say now.
The three Cormyreans stared back at her, waiting.
* * * * *
“Well, Lady Joysil, I’m certain that everyone believes they have the misfortune to live in truly troubled times for Cormyr,” Lady Honthreena Ravensgar observed, triumphantly taking the largest nut-cake with one hand and reaching for her just-refilled goblet with the other. “But truly I think we do.” She waved a profusely ring-adorned hand and added, “Oh, I know that dreadful Devil Dragon no longer menaces half the realm, gulping up knights and soldiers like snacks while orcs and goblins march, but … really, are things any better now?”
