by Ed Greenwood
Glathra’s mouth tightened, and she took a step closer to the fat man in the window seat. “And did you witness him commanding these ghosts? Calling them forth?”
“No,” Mirt said sweetly, turning back to deliver his reply through a mouthful of half-chewed lamb. “And, no.”
Glathra took another step closer. “In Cormyr,” she informed him flatly, “most folk have the prudent sense to speak to a wizard of war with something closer to respect.”
Mirt shifted his current mouthful into one cheek, and past its bulge replied, “And in Waterdeep, I’m accustomed to interviewing angry lasses when we’re both comfortably unclad and sharing a bed, some wine, and a full meal. On my earlier visits to Cormyr, good old Azoun was in the habit of handing me a bottle or six, and sharing a good hot meal while we talked, boots on the table. But, I understand the realm may have slid a bit since his death, and all backward upcountry places cherish their own quaint customs, and so I am making allowances. Ye, too?”
Some muffled chuckles wafted up from behind Glathra. She did not turn to see whom they’d come from.
“I could imprison, slay, or enspell you to servitude right now,” she pointed out calmly.
Mirt raised a greasy finger. “Correction, lass. Ye could try.”
He swallowed the lamb in his mouth, inspected the much-reduced leg for the best site for his next assault, and added mildly, “I’m the jack who defeated two angry young noble lords of Cormyr, in the mansion o’ one of ’em—despite two blueflame ghosts and the admittedly small heaps of enchanted items they were wearing and waving about. Ye might want to remember that.”
“Oh, I will,” Glathra said softly, signaling the wizards behind her to advance.
Mirt favored her with a disgusted look. “I’m eating, lass. Where were ye raised? In a stable?”
Glathra froze for a moment and then trembled in real rage as she drew herself up tall.
Mirt eyed her with interest. Well, now, it seemed she had been reared in a stable, and was sensitive about it, too.
This should be good.
If he survived.
“You really think they won’t have someone new guarding the door by now?” Rune asked curiously.
Storm shrugged. “You have a better plan?”
Rune winced. “Your hit strikes home.”
“I take it you, ah, took care of the guard here last time?” Arclath murmured. At their nods, he added cautiously, “Things might go differently. Being as the Council is … well, not being held right now, and I’m with you, and am heir of a noble House.”
“I’d not count on a friendly welcome,” Storm warned, “given all the lords running about waving swords and snarling treason hereabouts, not so long ago. Granted, we don’t look like hairy, surly bodyguards, but …”
Despite her wary words, her stroll was the height of ease and unconcern as she approached the door of the high house behind the royal stables. It was too small a place to be deemed a mansion, unlike the three homes that flanked it, all backing onto the stables, but its front door was solid and imposing enough to deny entry if no one answered her knock.
No one did, so Storm led the way she’d taken before, around into the garden to the side door. It was closed, but it opened when she turned its ring, admitting them into the same stately, deserted quiet they’d seen before. This time there was no struck-senseless wizard decorating the floor or Mirt grinning at them over him, but the pot he’d used to fell the war wizard was sitting mutely on the table at the end of the hall.
Storm held up a hand for silence and stood still, listening hard. After a few long, patient breaths, she stepped over the threshold and stopped to listen again.
Silence. She strode briskly forward and took the stairs down, heading for the back cellar and the tunnel under the stableyard that led into the palace.
“They could still have alarm or spying spells in place,” Arclath warned, “even if we hear and see nothing amiss.”
Storm nodded. “They usually do. Which is why we’re going to start hurrying, right … now.”
Amarune and Arclath obeyed. Storm led them along dim tunnels, through doors in darkness, down stairs beyond those doors, and out into the faint glows of the palace cellars. She seemed to know exactly where she was going, and they never saw another person, though she was obviously taking detours around well-lit areas where servants and courtiers were presumably at work.
“Where are you taking us?” Arclath murmured at her shoulder as she stopped to peer around a corner.
“The royal crypt.”
Arclath frowned. “Why?”
“She knows it’ll attract my attention, that’s why,” a soft voice that wasn’t Rune’s murmured in Arclath’s other ear, from a space that should have been too narrow for anyone to stand in.
He flinched, badly startled. Clapping hand to sword, he started to turn—and stared into a ghostly face floating in the air right in front of his nose. As Arclath gaped, feeling a chill emanating from that apparition, it gained apparent substance, the suggestion of a body starting to appear below it.
“Princess Alusair Obarskyr, sometime regent of the realm,” the face told him politely. “Well met, Lord Delcastle.”
The ghost’s gaze went to Amarune. “Lady,” she greeted the dancer gravely.
Then she turned to Storm. “Well? What?”
“You know what befell at the Council,” the Harper said gently. “We’re rallying your kin and the loyal courtiers to hold the palace and help restore order before things get more out of hand.”
“ ‘We’? You three?”
“With you and Vangey and Mirt, if you can get us all together, before we try to talk to Glathra.”
“Huh,” Alusair said dismissively, “that one. She’s up in the east wing trying to sink her claws into Mirt right now.”
“Then Vangey can wait,” Storm replied, “though he’ll be far from pleased. Let’s get to Glathra before she goes too far.”
“You’re several seasons too late for that,” Alusair retorted, growing even more solid. They could see the sword at her hip, now, and the long and graceful leg below it. “This way, stalwarts of Cormyr!”
Manshoon glanced at the two death tyrants. His two sturdiest, their bodies almost entirely intact, were almost good enough to pass for being alive, and in far better shape than his worst undead beholders. “Putrid in some spots, mummified or just crumbled away and gone in others,” Sraunter had judged those lesser death tyrants a day back, and Manshoon thought that description put matters very well.
The tyrants floated like limp, sleeping things at that moment, of course, lacking any direction from him. Yet, he’d just tested them both, fleetingly, and they’d turned and lashed out with gratifying speed. No longer needing to breathe, they should take no harm from Sraunter’s poisonous smoke.
So all that remained was Sraunter himself, with concoctions in hand …
The future emperor of Cormyr yawned. For a long time he’d thought vampires never got weary, but they felt mental strain every bit as much as living humans—or at least, this one did.
Yes, it had been a tiring day, and its ever-more-crowded parade of excitements showed no signs of being anywhere near over, yet—and why did things all happen at once? Was it the whim of the gods, their way of deriving maximum entertainment from mortal desperation? Manshoon looked again into his scrying spheres.
Three of the floating glows showed him the outside of Stormserpent Towers. The Crown force thundered on the doors and loudly demanded entrance, their encirclement of the walled mansion complete. Onward—or rather, inward—brave stalwarts of Cormyr! Take that collective stride too far …
Manshoon turned to his newest sphere. In its depths, Lady Narmitra Stormserpent lay on her favorite lounge, sweets in one hand and slender flagon in the other. She was in a savage rage at the temerity of these unwelcome guests. And so she had summoned servants to hiss vicious threats about their fates if they let the “barbaric intruders” in, and to give the
m grand orders to defend the mansion and defy all who tried to gain entrance, up to and including the king himself.
Manshoon caught himself smiling. Such a she-viper! A trifle shallow and old for his tastes, but if she’d come into his life a good century ago …
But what of her son?
Manshoon looked into his oldest sphere and saw just what he’d expected to see.
Up in his tower, Marlin Stormserpent was pacing in rising fear, faster than before, almost dashing from room to deserted room. Feeling the jaws of the trap around him, no doubt, and seeing no way out.
Manshoon didn’t have to go into the lordling’s mind to know what the young fool was thinking.
No escape but a desperate fight through the house, using the ghosts and their ability to drift through solid walls to make them stealthy slayers-from-behind. Yet, they did not obey him absolutely, and he didn’t—couldn’t—trust them to keep him safe. They’d let him be captured or enspelled or even—
“I-I’m ready, Lord Manshoon,” Sraunter stammered, from behind the vampire.
The future emperor of Cormyr turned, his soft smile broadening. At last.
The alchemist was pale with fear. He stood uncertainly holding a trio of emerald-liquid-filled glass flasks in each hand.
“One from each hand broken together produces killing smoke?” Manshoon asked. “Is there a defense or cure?”
“N-no, lord. None short of powerful temple magic.”
“Good. Worry not; I’ll send you and bring you back alive. Just try to stay out of your smoke as you cause it, hmm?”
Sraunter nodded fervently. He was still bobbing his head like an idiot when Manshoon’s teleporting spell deposited him a few paces behind the frightened servants in the forehall behind the closed and barred front doors of Stormserpent Towers.
In the scrying sphere, Manshoon saw Sraunter grimace at the sight of the servants, bend down, and carefully set his flasks on the floor. Smashing one, he dashed another into its wreckage, snatched up the remaining flasks, and fled.
Smoke billowed up, and Manshoon’s second spell—the one he’d cast on the sprinting alchemist before the teleport, not that his dupe had noticed he was doing three castings rather than one—took effect, birthing a strong wind from Sraunter’s back that slowed the servants pursuing him, swept the smoke against the doors that the war wizards outside were casting spells at, then swirled around the forehall. All over the room, coughing and staggering servants fell.
The wind blew on, spreading smoke with astonishing speed. Sraunter was dashing deeper into the mansion, the flasks tucked close to his body, heading for the central feasting hall. Good man; he was too frightened to think for himself or dare to betray his mind-master.
Sraunter reached that lofty hall and broke two more flasks. A fresh cloud of smoke arose.
The alchemist stumbled on, through deserted passages. Winded now, he was moving more slowly, but he was following Manshoon’s orders, seeking the small back hall at the rear of the mansion. Where the disused towers had their roots, it was the hub of the rooms where most of the servants dwelt and worked. Every mouth silenced was one less source of talk about Stormserpent’s little conspiracy that the Crown might find useful.
Which reminded Manshoon to look back at his newest sphere. Farewell, Lady Stormserpent …
The front doors of Stormserpent Towers gave way, blasted and melted by war wizard spells, and Purple Dragons plunged headlong into the waiting smoke.
Manshoon’s smile grew. Served them right, overzealous hands of tyranny, for bursting unbidden into the private home of a respected noble family of the realm.
Sraunter shattered his last pair of flasks, and Manshoon awakened the last of the three castings on the man. The gasping alchemist was snatched away from the doom he’d been spreading, across some of the richest streets in Suzail in a trice—to arrive on the other side of yon door, in the locked cellar room where Crownrood was brooding.
He hoped the two of them would have sense enough not to kill each other while he was busy in Stormserpent Towers.
Soldiers of Cormyr were coughing and falling in the mansion forehall, and war wizards were lurching back outside, choking and cursing.
Manshoon chuckled and cast the spell that would put him into what was left of the decaying mind of the nearest death tyrant.
It took hold, and the cellar around him seemed to lurch and sway. Then he gazed out of darker, multiple eyes and watched his handsome human body stagger under the mental weight of seeing out of two bodies at once, of controlling a living host and an undead one.
Then he drew his human body upright, smiled, and cast the spell again.
Plunging himself into the mind of the second death tyrant, too.
The cellar swam around him—Bane forfend, but he was tired!—then slowly steadied.
Very slowly.
Manshoon’s human host sighed.
When things had stopped swimming and swaying, he made his human self go to a wall and slide down it to a sitting position, where he could see the scrying spheres and hope to come to no harm.
From there he cast the greater translocation that would take both undead beholders to a tower room two floors below the frantic Marlin Stormserpent.
Then he cast it again, this second incantation a delayed working that would snatch the tyrants—and their burdens—back to the cellar again when he willed it to take effect.
The cellar went away, and all of his many eyes saw swirling smoke.
Manshoon shuddered as everything swam again. He was tired.
Drifting back to clarity, he saw that all around his two floating selves, the ground floor of Stormserpent Towers was a dim and silent labyrinth of slumped servants and darkly roiling drifts of smoke.
Death tyrants couldn’t smile any more than the frozen curves of their wide and crooked maws, but Manshoon tried to smile.
Before the idiot war wizards managed to deal with this smoke, the future Emperor of Cormyr and Beyond should have more than enough time to snatch away young Lord Stormserpent and his two precious ghost-commanding items.
Lady Shout-at-Everything Glathra would be so displeased.
“Lady Glathra!” Storm shouted, seeing at a glance that there was no time at all left for politeness. Only for a swift and desperate lie. “The king wants you!”
“Not now,” Glathra started to snarl, flames of orange and purple already whirling around her raised hands as she stalked toward the fat man in the window.
Then she sighed and lowered her burning hands. “Who calls?”
Most of the war wizards and Dragons had already spun to face the door had that banged open and dashed the luckless soldier leaning against it to the floor. They all stared at a young noble, the dancer he seemed to go everywhere with, a tall and strikingly beautiful silver-haired woman … and the ghost of the Princess Alusair.
“We do,” Storm replied quietly.
Glathra glared at her. “The king wants me why? What message?”
“The king wants you to treat his guest, a visiting Lord of Waterdeep, with rather more respect and less deadly magic,” Alusair snapped, sweeping through the assembled Cormyreans like a cold breeze to float facing the war wizard.
Who let the flames fade around her hands and asked coldly, “Your Highness, is there no end to your meddling?”
Alusair’s ghostly nose was suddenly almost touching Glathra’s living one.
“When an Obarskyr engages in ruling Cormyr, dear,” she said softly, “it is anything but ‘meddling.’ Courtiers who fail to grasp this may well find themselves swiftly replaced.”
Chilled and shivering, the wizard of war drew back a step. “But you’re dead, Princess! Dead! And—”
“Glathra,” Storm interrupted sternly, “hear us! Lord Marlin Stormserpent is the master of the two blueflame ghosts who murdered young Lord Huntcrown at The Bold Archer! He holds the Wyverntongue Chalice that commands one, and a Stormserpent family treasure, the Flying Blade, that controls the ot
her. You should be accosting him, not this Lord of Waterdeep!”
Glathra stiffened. “Other loyal Crown agents are doing so, right now. As His Majesty knows full well. Why are you four getting involved?”
“We’re here to help,” Arclath spoke up.
“Help with what? Driving me madwits?”
“No, that’s been done already,” Alusair told the lady mage, flying around her in a tight spiral. “We six loyal Cormyreans are here to help you and your fellow mages and Highknights and Dragons to defend the palace and try to keep order in Suzail.”
“Are you, now?” Glathra asked cuttingly. “Six? I mark four—who else?”
“The Royal Magician Vangerdahast,” Alusair replied, “who’s not with us now, and the man you were just about to scorch.”
Glathra stared at her incredulously then swung around to favor Mirt with the same look.
He unfolded himself from the window seat with a wheeze, stamped his boots, and struck a swordsman’s pose with the greasy lamb bone.
“Well,” he grunted, with a friendly leer, “if ye’ll have me.”
CHAPTER
THIRTEEN
SOON AFTER WHENEVER
War comes soon after whenever good men stop trying to prevent it.
Getting it to depart again takes a lot more than the striving
Of good men—if any survive.
Filfaeril Selazair Obarskyr, Dowager Dragon Queen
of Cormyr, Thoughts from a Throne
first published in the Year of the Lost Keep
It took Glathra a moment or two to gather her breath and her temper. When she gained mastery over both, she let fly.
“Have you? Have you? I’ll have you chained to the wall in our deepest, dampest dungeon, I will!”
Mirt gave her a wide-eyed, innocent grin. “Is that a yes?”
Glathra shrieked out wordless rage, then dashed her hands down to her sides, drew in a deep breath, and said icily, “I have no time for this. The realm stands in peril.”
She took three swift strides away, then whirled and marched back again. “I hope all of you are loyal to the Dragon Throne, and I value your assistance. However, I really cannot welcome four or five or six self-styled heroes wandering around this palace or Suzail outside these walls doing just as they please, without any obedience to royal commands or lawfully delegated authority—such as the orders I give.”
