by Ed Greenwood
Pressed hard against the Promenade side of the palace wall right beside that door, a blueflame ghost watched another blueflame ghost hurtle past.
Then, not even looking to see what befell that fellow slayer, and caring less, it ducked through the gaping doorway into the palace.
Right past a reeling, drooling, empty-eyed lass in the grip of snarling lightning it raced, and a groaning, also-reeling, silver-haired woman beyond, to pursue a fat man stumbling along a narrow passage that led deeper into the palace, trailing a muttered sea of curses.
The ghost smiled gleefully as it ran and raised its sword.
Mirt saw the blue reflections of its flames looming up close behind him and turned grimly to give battle.
The ghost’s grin widened. One slash at most this might take, two for sport, and then—
A sword that was more ghostly shadow than steel slashed at blue flames—and sliced them into dark nothingness.
The running ghost faltered in sheer astonishment.
And found itself staring into a smile as full of grim glee as its own, adorning the floating face of a ghostly woman in leather half-armor, her helmless hair flowing free as she stood in midair like a shield, barring the way to the panting, wheezing old lord.
“Dare to come into my palace to slay a man, against my laws, in my kingdom?” the ghost of Alusair Obarskyr whispered, that terrible smile still on her lips. “Prepare to pay my price.”
Amarune staggered out of the palace and started to topple into the street—but silver tresses caught her, and a strong, shapely arm swept her upright again.
“Easy, El!” Storm murmured, embracing the dazed dancer from behind and holding her upright. “Easy!”
El?
Manshoon stared in disbelief at the two women across the street for one moment.
In the next moment, riding a soundless shriek of fear and rage, he departed Corleth Fentable in reckless haste, leaving the understeward drooling and staggering as badly as the mask dancer. With no Storm Silverhand to catch him, Fentable promptly collapsed on his face on the cobbles.
An instant after, a beholder the size of a child’s head burst out of his robes and darted off into the night.
Jaws dropped, and men shouted at that, and Manshoon had the vague recollection that some Purple Dragons hastened along the street to investigate the blast.
Bah! Right now, he cared not if all the world knew that the palace understeward carried a beholderkin in his armpit.
Elminster of Shadowdale was alive!
It took him surprisingly little time to race across streets lined with mansions, past spires, towers, and domes, to a particular open-for-breezes window of Truesilver House.
The Lady Deleira Truesilver caught sight of the hovering beholderkin before her maids did, and abruptly ordered everyone from the room. If any of them saw her pluck a particular pendant up out of the open coffer on her sidetable, or draw a dagger from a sheath affixed to the underside of that same table, they gave no sign of it.
In the space of two quick breaths, the room was empty and its door closed in their wake.
Manshoon ignored dagger and pendant and wasted no time in niceties. “Talane,” he ordered, “find the wizard Elminster, who is alive and using bodies not his own. Slay anybody he inhabits—destroy him utterly. Make very sure he is dead, then call on me to make certain. Hurry!”
“How will I know him?” she asked, tossing down both pendant and dagger.
The beholderkin darted at her like an oversized wasp, its eyestalks writhing.
She almost managed not to flinch as eyestalks slid greasily into her nostrils and ears, clinging for the fleeting moment Manshoon needed.
He thrust an image of Amarune Whitewave—reeling unsteadily in a doorway, staring at nothing with lightning playing around her upflung hands—into Talane’s mind, then stripped away the lightning from that vision.
“This is the guise he’s hiding in right now.”
The beholderkin drew back far enough to give the Lady Deleira Truesilver a menacing glare. “Find Storm Silverhand, and force her to reveal who is Elminster and who is not. Don’t slay her until you are certain. Kill her, too, but after. Foremost and above all, your task is to bury Elminster deep!”
CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN
I Go Now TO HUNT
Bother me not with treaties, embassies, delegations, grand offers
Of brides to be, or bribes in hand, the surpassing peace
of smiling gods, or eternal youth and bodily vigor!
I am grave-tired with niggling responsibilities, and go now to hunt.
said by King Olosar of Tethyr, in open court,
to his advisors
The 22nd of Mirtul in the Year of the
Wandering Wyrm
Storm staggered, sobbing in pain. Magic was surging out of the body in her arms, clashing snarlingly with the palace wards.
Where Elminster’s magic struck at the wards and the wards struck back, energies were loosed. They swirled around Storm and Amarune, feeling first like fire and acid, then more like a slaver’s salted lash she’d felt long ago … or the whirling, ruthlessly slicing edges of a priest’s conjured barrier of many blades …
To keep them both alive, she shoved Amarune out into the night, away from the wards. Back into the Promenade, both of them seared and hurting, where she fell heavily to her knees, Amarune a limp weight in her arms.
Suddenly swords ringed her, their deadly tips pointed down in a glittering circle.
“Surrender!” a Purple Dragon barked. “Show us empty hands, and declare yourselves.”
Storm looked up at him, panting, and forced down pain enough to gasp, “We’re wizards of war, soldier! Burning inside from wild magic! For your own safety, keep back from us and from yon doorway, all of you!”
Soldiers went pale and gave ground. Wincing, Storm wrapped her arms around Rune and rolled, taking them both farther out into the street. Two Dragons stalked suspiciously alongside them but were called away by their swordcaptain.
Gritting her teeth, Storm stood up, hauling the still-blind, dazed Amarune with her, and walked the dancer slowly away into the night.
“El?” she hissed, as they reached the mouth of a side street on the far side of the Promenade.
The only reply she got was a wordless, feeble moan.
Far down the side street she caught sight of a hunched-over, stumbling man fleeing away from her. He was wreathed in dim, feebly flickering blue flames.
“Ghost brought low,” Storm hissed aloud.
As she said that, the distant figure turned a corner and was gone.
Unimpressed by her eager smile, the blueflame ghost attacked fearlessly, a sneer on its face and confidence in its almost careless slash.
Alusair deftly struck its sword aside with her own ghostly blade and in the same twisting slash cut deep into its side, flying as she did so to keep herself close to the bright blue aura and her blade hitting home, slicing up and over its torso, the tip bouncing on rib after rib, heading for its throat.
Blue flames shrank from the silver-gray mist of her sword, parting and darkening, laying bare the man beneath. Alusair soared up out of reach of his frantic backswing and hacked at the back of his sword arm, just above the elbow, as she passed.
The blueflame ghost’s sword clanged to the palace floor, and Alusair whirled and came back at him in a slicing pass. She didn’t quite dare to try a hard thrust through him, or a beheading, because every touch of the ghost’s flaming aura to her sword—which was part of her, solidified by her will out of the same spectral essence that made up the rest of her—ate at her undeath.
It would be folly to slay this intruder at the cost of her own existence, and leave her beloved palace evermore unguarded.
So she contented herself with great slashes, slicing body and arms, looping around the ghost in a relentless weaving of sharp steel that reduced it to cowering in a heap around its blade, growing dimmer and dimmer.
&nbs
p; Abruptly it sprang up and fled with a wail of pain and fear, heading at a frantic run right back out of the palace, waving its sword wildly to try to shield itself against Alusair’s blade.
“Greatly weakened, at least,” the ghostly princess told the empty passage in satisfaction, halting just in front of the roiling chaos of the violated ward seeking to knit itself together again, to watch the ghost dwindle across the Promenade. It fled into the mouth of a side street and kept going, fast.
Outside, Dragons were assisting a reeling, mumbling Palace Understeward Fentable to his feet. He looked confused or drunk, and the soldiers holding him up were talking excitedly about a “beholder, like in the tales, but only the size of a child’s chamberpot!”
One of them was keeping the tip of his sword near Fentable’s throat. “Beholderkin, I think such are called. Heard one of old Dhargust’s sagely lectures about eye tyrants, two summers back. He says there’re still some of them hiding in the heart of the Hullack, just waiting their chance to conquer the realm!”
“Well, I’ve heard some have been seen right here in Suzail!” an older Dragon growled. “Never mind about distant forests we should all stay well out of, we’ve got—”
Alusair leaned forward to hear better, frowning in interest.
Which was when something hard and sharp burst right through her from behind, thrusting her forward into the seething energies of the wards.
Coldly scornful laughter accompanied that ruthless blow, and as Alusair writhed in helpless agony, torn by the full fury of the wards, she was dimly aware of a sword being pulled roughly back out of her, spinning her misty body around.
A blade that had burst right through her.
A sword that sliced ghosts as readily as the living.
Floating near the floor, awash in pain, Alusair stared up at her assailant.
Who was standing in the open doorway just beyond the roiling wards, the sword in her hand and a cruel smile on her face.
It was the death knight Targrael, the crazed Highknight. Lady Dark Armor.
Who hissed down at her, “I guard the Forest Kingdom and care for it, not you, wasted and foolish old bitch of a failed regent! I go now to hunt down a great foe of Cormyr—but when I’ve time to spare, I’ll be back to finish you! Depend upon it.”
Manshoon was gone, leaving Talane excited.
She was, yes, delighted she’d been ordered to hunt down Amarune.
So, the lass was really Elminster? If she’d known that, she’d not have been quite so bold at her first meeting with the Whitewave wench—but no matter. If he’d ever been the towering spellhurler of all those wild tales, the Sage of Shadowdale must now be a weak husk of his former self for Manshoon to entrust this slaying to her. Castles shattered and blown into the clouds, dragons tamed or slaughtered in the skies, archwizards dueled and left as smoking heaps of ash …
Grand tales, to be sure. Yet, perhaps that’s all they’d ever been.
Talane looked down at her shapely self, crisscrossed by broad belts of leather festooned with no fewer than nine scabbarded daggers—all razor sharp and finely balanced for throwing, even the one she’d hurled into a cheating Sembian merchant’s eye not all that long ago—and pronounced herself ready.
Which was a good thing, considering Manshoon’s burning desire for urgency in this matter.
She checked her hollow right boot heel for keys to certain doors in her mansion and found them right where they should be. Then she shifted her sword belt one last time to make certain it caught on none of the crisscrossing baldrics.
Good. Time to be hunting.
Talane caught up a magnificent ankle-length shimmer-weave nightcloak—the sort of frippery worn to show everyone Truesilvers could casually outspend any dozen lesser noble Houses, every bright shopping morning—and pulled it around herself to conceal her leathers from any servants who might witness her departure. Taking a last look around her bedchamber to ensure things that should be hidden were, she stepped out onto her balcony.
Where the climbing cord she kept secured behind the stone griffon carving at the east end of the balcony was waiting. One kick off the wall and a swift plunge down onto the softest mosses of her gardens later, she would be on her way to her back garden door and the night-shrouded city beyond.
“Amarune Whitewave,” she whispered to the night, as the black cord hissed past her chin, “you are one dead mage.”
“She was right there, Lady Barcantle!” a hoarse-voiced man shouted down the passage, pointing. “Right where the fat man is!”
Mirt had regained his breath, rubbed his sore feet—he was getting a mite old for running for his life on hard cobbles across far too much of a city—and restored his clothing to rights. Then, with a sinking feeling, he peered in the direction of that shout and beheld fully helmed and armored Purple Dragons. Lots of them. With more than a few wizards behind them.
They were coming toward him fast, with swords and spears out, and were looking his way in a decidedly unfriendly manner.
“Aye, right where the—naed of the Dragon! The door! The stlarning door’s gone!”
A voice Mirt knew rang out. “Mirt! Mirt of Waterdeep! Stand and surrender, you miscreant, or your very life is forfeit!” Lady Glathra sounded furious.
“Ooops,” Mirt growled, turning hastily and lurching in the direction of the doorway. Which, he thought to himself as he started to run again, gathering speed as he wheezed his way across the Promenade, was a rather grand word for “gaping hole where a good stout door recently was, and still ought to be.”
Wizards. ’Twas always wizards that brought the real trouble. Them and yer fell creatures of the night with their elder magic.
Aye. Now, feet fail me not …
Mystra, fail me not … Ohhh, the pain.
Elminster was vaguely aware that he was out under a night sky, hurrying over damp, faintly foul-smelling cobbles, with a fainter sea smell under the dung and rotting refuse, and the familiar strong, curved warmth of Storm was pressed against him and carrying him along.
“Him” meaning Amarune, of course. Who still seemed to have all her limbs and the usual manner of moving them, though her vision was a tear-filled blur and her ears rang and echoed in ceaseless cacophony.
That could have been worse, he told himself dully, through the splitting agony in his head. He’d been caught in a wild backlash he should have anticipated, standing right in the wards. Like any fumbling first-time hedge wizard …
“S-storm?” he managed to mumble. He couldn’t mindspeak her, even pressed together as they were. That part of his head was all churning, roiling dark fire.
“El,” Storm said soothingly, shifting her grip on him to something slightly more comfortable, “I’m here. I’ll heal you when we get somewhere safer. Don’t try to talk or mindspeak unless you really must.”
Good old Storm. Good lass. She knew what it was like, the roughness and pain of hurling magic.
She knew what it was like to have Mystra and then lose her.
“Storm!” Mirt called hoarsely, fighting for breath. “Silverhand! Hey, lass—here! Wait for me a breath or two!”
Storm had just ducked into an alley, dragging the limp Rune with her. She stuck her head back around the corner, saw Mirt, and grinned.
“Get in here,” she ordered. “You can stand guard.”
“What?” Mirt wheezed, joining her. “Ye have to let fly, then?”
Storm rolled her eyes. “No, I have to try to get Elminster’s mind back closer to what it should be.”
Mirt nodded and dragged out his dagger. “Glathra’s after me,” he warned, turning to plant himself in the alley. “With a whole lot of Dragons’n’magelings. Don’t they ever sleep?”
“Not if we don’t let them,” Storm replied, kneeling over the slumped Amarune and touching their foreheads together. “It’s all part of our clever plan for conquering all Cormyr.”
“Huh,” Mirt growled, “it strikes me there’s far too many folk in this city busy
hatching clever plans for conquering all Cormyr.”
A shuttered window swung open beside him, revealing the head and shoulders of a bored-looking maid. Without really looking, she tossed a basinful of dirty wash water out into the alley.
Mirt ducked. As the water-hurler reached out to close the shutter, he came up grinning into her startled face, waving his dagger. “Are ye one of them?”
Accompanied by a startled scream, the window slammed hastily shut again.
“He’s getting better,” Storm reported, “but that’s mainly due to Rune being young and strong. I need peace and quiet lasting long enough to really heal him.”
“Then let’s be up and staggering again before Glathra’s hounds get here,” Mirt growled. “If we cut through this alley to the next street south, double back the way we’ve come and up that second lane along, we’ll get to the damnably expensive inn I’ve taken a room at, and can spend the night there.”
He gave her a hopeful leer and added, “Two lasses, one a mask dancer and the other with silver hair that moves by itself? ’Twill do wonders for my reputation.”
Storm gave him a look. “Mirt, your reputation needs something a little larger. Conquering a kingdom, fathering dragons … that sort of thing.”
Mirt drew himself up and gave her his best grin. “It does? Well, now … just whereabouts in this bright realm do ye keep yer dragons?”
The most powerful-at-Art wizard in all Suzail was also the wealthiest, but had not become so by ignoring credible requests for his hire.
Even requests that came after full night had fallen.
So it was that by invoking his name, rank, and family wealth, Lord Arclath Delcastle won admittance past an expressionless porter.
Who led him along a passage lined with two dozen rows of magnificent and identical armored warriors who turned in perfect unison and utter silence to regard him after he passed—and whom he strongly suspected were recently created helmed horrors, the sort of guardians a handful of the oldest and wealthiest noble Houses boasted a single one of, each.
