by Ed Greenwood
“Good,” Wizard of War Yarjack Blamreld replied curtly. “So, who’s been found?”
He had Dragon officers trotting up to keep him apprised of that throughout the cautious search of Stormserpent Towers, but he was interested to see if Raventree was a “do my job and pay no attention to anything else” sort, like the last eager youngling he’d been saddled with … or someone who just might turn out, after some firm training, to be halfway useful.
“Names, I know not, but I saw the Lady Stormserpent and twoscore others, all of them garbed as house servants. I’ve heard nothing of Lord Marlin Stormserpent being found, yet.”
“How many dead?”
“Six or seven, but the priests say more may die. There’s much coughing among the revived, and none can walk yet.”
Absently Blamreld caught hold of his scraggly beard, tore a fistful of loose hair out of it, and flung it away into the breeze. He always did, when thinking hard.
So, who got into a noble mansion undetected—through a cordon of Dragons and Crown mages, himself among them, yet—and caused poisoned smoke to rise from smashed vials throughout the place, before vanishing again? Sending a beholder, or perhaps the illusion of one?
“You can entrust the questioning of the pris … er, survivors, to me,” said Raventree. “Ah, overseeing it, that is. Of course, all of our fellow Crown mages will be—”
“Of course they will. And so long as they remember as well as you do that these good Stormserpent folk are blameless citizens and not prisoners, I have every confidence I can leave this in your hands. The count of the dead is now—?”
“Ah, still seven, Yar—ah, Saer Blamreld.”
“Just ‘Blamreld,’ Raventree. We’re all wizards of war here!”
“Uh, yes, sae … er, Blamreld.”
Blamreld scratched his bulbous, unlovely nose. “Search the place again. Loose floorboards, bookcases that move, any wall that looks thick enough to hold a hidden passage … seek not just young Stormserpent but every last sword and chalice, goblet, flagon, or loft-stemmed metal bowl. Oh, and any concealed coin, gems, or weapons. Bring them all here to me. Our fox has probably fled, but if he has a den here, I want it found.”
Raventree managed to hide his sigh of exasperation with a curt nod before he raced off into the mansion again.
Yarjack Blamreld strode away, passing the steady stream of underpriests arriving to help tend the still-coughing folk of Stormserpent Towers. Lady Stormserpent had been safely whisked to the palace, apparently healthy, and safely away from the clumsy interrogations of young Raventree. That was what mattered.
That, and the beholders, of course. If those terrors were real and not illusory. Glathra and all the veterans had to hear about them, at once.
Out on the Promenade, an air of worry and excitement prevailed—and everyone was talking, in a din that made Blamreld wince more than once. Many commoners with hastily loaded carts seemed to be in a hurry to leave the city, and servants in a riot of liveries seldom all seen at once under the open sky in Suzail were milling about trading gossip about the war at Council.
Interestingly, although watchful Dragons were much in evidence, there was no sign at all of nobles or their bodyguards, nor any fighting in the streets.
The talk around Blamreld as he strode purposefully back to the palace was in agreement on one matter, though: Cormyr was heading for civil war. Fast.
“I’m getting too old for this,” he muttered to himself, tearing out another generous handful of beard.
Wizard of War Welwyn Tracegar shook his head grimly. “They’re saying Foulweather was killed, and Briarbroke, too. Not that either’s much loss, but if the realm is plunged into war …”
“Barelder and Tantorn, I heard,” his fellow Crown mage Joreld Nurennanthur replied, as they strode along Battlebanners Passage paying no attention at all to its familiar and seemingly endless succession of faded trophies. They were headed for a moot with the Lady Glathra that neither was eager to attend. “Not worth anyone fighting for, wouldn’t you say?”
“Huh. I’m thinking some lords’ll fight over anything at all, right now, and that’s what Glathra and the rest are so worried about. I just hope her worry doesn’t mean she gets to screeching and cuts our pay or sets us to guarding dung heaps in the stables, or some such. She’s a right battlebrand when she gets going!”
“I wish she would get going, somewhere far from here! Then the rest of us could sit down over wine and good cheeses and the best palace cooking, king and every last lord, and sort it all out. Or just sit feasting and arguing for a year or more, while we go on living our lives with nary a hint of war! Why—”
Someone burst out of a door and raced across the long passage, far ahead. One person. A man with a sword.
Tracegar and Nurennanthur traded looks, then shrugged in unison. Such a sight would be cause for full and instant alarm at any other time, but since the disaster at Council, the palace seemed bursting with scurrying servants and messengers, and clanking Purple Dragons, too.
Those Dragons waved shields and spears wherever they went, and though this hadn’t been a Dragon in armor, and he’d had a sword and not a spear, it was just one man.
They strode on and looked left and right when they reached the spot where the running man had crossed the passage. The door he’d come through and the one he’d left by both stood ajar. The narrow passages beyond both were empty and dimly lit. As usual.
They exchanged glances again, then hastened on their way. Being tardy in appearing before Glathra would not be wise.
“So which lord was trying hardest to slice up the king, anyhail?” Tracegar asked. “I came to the west doors, staring straight into twoscore brawling lords, and couldn’t see a thing befalling the royals!”
Nurennanthur snorted. “Well, that’s a matter of some dispute, as old Hallowdant is fond of saying. I got there too late to—”
Engrossed in this exciting discussion, both men entirely missed the beautiful young woman who sprinted across the passage right behind them, her hair streaming behind her, following the same route the man with the sword had taken.
An ambitious young wizard of war, whom both Tracegar and Nurennanthur held a low opinion of, could hardly miss her, however—being as she ran into and right over him as he stepped out of a room with his head down, intent on the scroll he’d just selected.
The scroll went flying; he crashed to the flagstones fighting for breath and feeling decidedly bruised; and his assailant raced on without a moment’s hesitation.
Toward the well-lit Loyal Maid’s Hall, as it happened, so Wizard of War Surgol Velard could watch her gale-swift sprint.
To his mind, an unfamiliar young woman running through the palace could only mean trouble. She must be a thief—or worse.
Having regained his feet and his breath, Surgol Velard raised his hands grandly, aimed his wand with his usual unnecessary but satisfying flourish—and sent her to sleep.
Velard walked over and blinked down at the fallen woman. Crown and Throne, but she was beautiful! Not much older than he was, if that. This was one interrogation he’d handle himself.
His first, and overdue. Veteran war wizards seemed to think him unready for such duties, but thankfully—during this brief reign of chaos—there were no older Crown mages around to order him about, finding fault with what he said and did, or to step in and sweep him aside.
“Guards!” he called hopefully, excitement rising in him. “Guards!”
Two duty Dragons were always stationed in Loyal Maid’s Hall, and he was pleased when they came trotting, respectful frowns on their faces just as if he were the lord warder, or Lady Glathra in full roar.
“Manacle this captive,” he ordered sternly, “and secure her by the throat to a wall ring in the Mages’ Dutychamber off the Long Passage. The keys here in my hand, the moment you’re done.”
“Of course, saer,” they murmured, plucking up the limp woman as if she were a rag doll. A beautiful rag doll that needed
handling as gentle as it was thorough.
“What’re you doing to her?” Velard snapped.
“Orders, saer. All captives to be searched for weapons, saer.”
“Unless I countermand such standing orders, loyal blades! Stop pawing her, and get her to the dutychamber!”
“Yes, saer.”
Was that unison reply sullen? Well, no matter. As long as they obeyed.
“Bear up, Lord Stormserpent,” Illance said sternly. “You can’t expect to prod the sleeping lion and then quail when it awakens with a roar.”
“B-but they’ve been waiting for this,” Marlin hissed at him, eyes wild. “The man with the beholders, the one who takes over minds! He’s of the palace!”
“A courtier?” Illance asked sharply. “How do you know this?”
“He’s been in my head,” came the snarled reply, accompanied by a trembling grab for the nearest decanter.
After a long, deep swig—amid the gasps that greeted his latest words—Stormserpent added, “I know not his name or face, but he’s someone of rank who gives orders. Not a maid or cook or doorjack—someone who matters.”
“These beholders,” Lord Illance snapped. “Were they alive—or did they look dead or wounded, perhaps rotting? Think hard, now. Try to remember how they looked.”
Marlin stared at him then blinked. Frowned, and blinked again.
“They did look rotten, here and there,” he said slowly. “Yes …”
Lord Illance nodded and sat back, looking around the table. “Some of the older, more madwits wizards of war were working with such foul things. Your mindworm must be one of them. If they’re after you now, these Crown renegades, we’ve no time to waste.”
Three lordlings started to speak at once, but Illance held up a hand, and silence fell in an instant. He leaned forward to peer into Marlin’s eyes.
“Hear me well, Lord Stormserpent,” he said, in a voice that was soft yet had a hard, sharp edge to it. “The only way to avoid being hunted down and butchered as a traitor is to use your pair of blueflame ghosts—”
A sudden tension filled the air, a bristling around the table. Illance held up his other hand to quell it and continued.
“Oh yes, lord, your mastery of them has been noticed by more than a few lords of this land, believe me. No courtiers yet, I hope, save perhaps this traitor with the death tyrants—but your only hope is to trust that he dare not reveal himself yet. Use your ghosts, just as soon as you can, to seize King Foril.”
The tension this time came with amazed oaths, but Lord Illance had run out of hands with which to quell.
“Then,” he continued, his eyes still locked on Marlin Stormserpent’s, “you must deceive our aging Obarskyr into thinking you are daringly rescuing him from the ghosts, in a staged battle. Which all of us around this table must help you plan, without delay.”
Marlin stared at him, eyes brightening as he saw the way out of certain doom before him.
“Yes!” he shouted, bringing an eager fist down on the table, which made the decanters dance. “By all the gods, yes! Brilliant, Lord Illance! Simply brilliant!”
For so it was. Most nobles knew King Foril Obarskyr was a lot less than the kindly and just man the commoners thought him to be. He was a deluded, out-of-touch old fool.
So this “rescue” of him from fell ghosts was almost certain to succeed.
Storm paused at the open door, seeing the door opposite standing open as well. Then she strode across the grand passage as if she were a queen.
A queen managing very regally to utterly ignore the fat, wheezing old man in floppy boots who was following her.
What she saw three steps down the next stretch of narrow passage made her stiffen, then glide to one wall and freeze there, waving at Mirt to do the same.
With a sigh that should have been soundless but wasn’t, he obeyed. Not that he could see past Storm’s curves to learn what had alarmed her.
Storm cared not; she was too busy intently watching two Purple Dragons carrying a limp, senseless Amarune Whitewave off in the direction of the Long Passage, with a self-important young war wizard preening in their wake.
“Can you proceed very, very quietly from here on?” she whispered over her shoulder.
“I believe so,” Mirt growled amiably, not much louder than a husky whisper.
Storm nodded and stalked forward in utter silence.
He followed, just a trifle more noisily.
Which meant the two curtly dismissed Dragons, returning to their posts in Loyal Maid’s Hall with mingled regret and resentment, didn’t hear either of them.
Storm hoped that the door she chose to bypass the guards and reach the Long Passage unnoticed would lead to a deserted chamber.
She and her wheezing shadow reached one door of what she knew was a war wizards’ dutychamber, in time to hear a faint rattle of chain.
Unashamedly, she put her ear to that door.
“They didn’t find any weapons,” a nasal young voice mused, “but I stopped their search, didn’t I? Which means it’s only prudent, before I awaken this intruder, to search her myself. Now how does this undo, I wonder?”
Storm turned, met Mirt’s questioning gaze, and moved back to where she could whisper into his ear. “Go along the passage to the other side of this room, and very noisily bang open its far door. Take care to keep behind the door, in case he casts a spell.”
Mirt grinned, nodded, and lurched off to obey.
The moment she heard that far door bang, Storm wrenched open the door in front of her and launched herself at the back of the young wizard’s neck.
He heard her and was starting to turn—
But “starting” was more than a breath too late.
To the floor he went, struck senseless, keys rattling out of his hand.
Storm closed the door she’d come through, then went to the other door and looked out. There was no sign of Mirt. After peering up and down a deserted passage, she frowned, shrugged, and closed the door.
The young mage had a wand at his belt, a slender coin purse, and a knife so small and blunt it could only see practical use spreading pastes and jams. She took the wand, knowing the symbols painted at its ends; this end gave sleep, and that one awakened.
She touched Amarune with “that” end, then slid the lone ring from the wizard’s finger. By its design, it had to be one of the spell-reflecting bands Caladnei had enchanted, and betimes loaned to certain Harpers.
Donning it, Storm caught up the keys and freed Amarune. Ankles in a walking chain, wrists to a chain passed around her back, and a throat collar chained to a wall-ring with a length of links short enough to keep her standing—or she’d strangle. Such restraints might prove useful later, but she had no place to hide them and no quiet way to carry them, so she let them be.
“S-storm?” Rune asked quietly, staring around the room and feeling her throat. “What happened to me? One moment I was running, starting to lose my breath, and then—”
“This bright young wizard cast a spell of sleep on you,” Storm told her. “Which means time enough has passed—being as I’ve heard no great tumult in that direction—that Arclath must have got out of the palace without dispute or alarm, and clean away into the city.”
“Meaning?”
“There’s no use chasing him. We’ll seek him at Delcastle Manor later, but right now I’m hungry, and by the rumblings your innards have been making, you are, too. So, kitchens first. Then we’d best have a little talk with Lady Glathra, if we don’t want wizards chasing us every time we turn a corner in this palace.”
Rune opened her mouth to protest, then sighed and shut it again. She was hungry. And weary, too.
Once again, the wisest thing Amarune Whitewave could do was give in.
Thank the gods, the Sammartael woman had gone away again without daring the dimness of Sraunter’s back room—let alone the darkness of his cellar.
The alchemist was back at work in his shop, having slipped Crownrood a fe
w sips of wine tainted with something harmless that had sent him to sleep. Manshoon, sitting alone on the alchemist’s best chair—which didn’t say much for the man’s taste in comfortable furniture—felt much better.
He would just have to be mindful from now on that he did have limits. No more than two minds at once, and only one if it was strong and hostile.
His scrying globes had all burst or faded while he’d been fighting to stay conscious, leaving the cellar very dark.
As he needed no light, he didn’t bother seeking any. Instead, he worked a spell to reach out to the mind of Wizard of War Rorskryn Mreldrake.
And waited, sitting in the darkness, a very long time as surprise gave way to irritation, then anger … and then resignation.
His spell had failed.
Mreldrake was well shielded, dead, or his own newfound limitations were greater than he’d thought.
Manshoon cast the spell again, this time seeking the mind of Lady Highknight Targrael.
Again, a long time later, he was forced to admit failure.
Future emperor or not, he had limitations, all right. Which meant he should behave accordingly.
Time to think again as a mortal, living man. Wary, prepared for battle, and hunted by alert foes.
His beholders would be better scattered. One death tyrant and a beholderkin hidden—separately—in the palace, another pair in Sraunter’s attic, and the rest elsewhere, in some more defensible stronghold than this shop …
Was it time to reawaken Talane? Probably, but given the happy reign of chaos at the palace, he had to know what was going on there. So, Fentable first …
“There’s always soup, hot biscuits, garlic butter, and sausages in the end kitchen,” Storm explained, “for servants who must eat at full scurry. These covered tankards aren’t for ale; they’re for soup.”
“I’ll try to bear that in mind,” Amarune replied, feeling full and much better for it, “the next time I storm the palace.”
