by Ed Greenwood
Arclath looked at the spitting-with-rage death knight in her iron prison—in time to see her overbalance in her struggles and fall to the cobbles to roll helplessly, snarling curses—then started to sprint after everyone. Catching up to the odd parade all running toward the palace.
As the last of the wagons rumbled away from Sraunter’s alley door, Manshoon helped the alchemist slam and bar it, then ran for the cellar stairs.
He had to move fast; the wizards of war wouldn’t refrain from prying forever.
Not with their suspicions aroused, the city full of scheming nobles, and the sort of temper the Lady Glathra had.
A temper he would show her a match for, if it came to that. He was getting a headache already, what with having to dominate and control Sraunter and no fewer than six carters and drovers on three wagons. So soon after promising to limit himself, too. He’d picked the first three teams who’d stopped by the alchemist’s shop with supplies in closed wagons that were large enough, not the carters and drovers Manshoon might have chosen at his own leisure.
“Leisure” being something he entirely lacked, just then.
That headache was why Crownrood spellslept in his locked cellar room, and some streets away Dardulkyn was hidden in a closet in his mansion, deep in similar enspelled slumber, while Manshoon trusted—had to trust—in the explicit and detailed orders he’d given the helmed horrors to keep all intruders at bay. Including zealous Purple Dragons, war wizards, and for that matter, any Highknights who might be lurking in Suzail and aching to demonstrate their prowess.
Aching mind or not, this darkly handsome human body was strong and supple; he could descend the cellar stairs in three long strides without fear of falling or skidding into an unyielding wall.
Coming to a deft stop by the chair, he turned on his heel and sat, wasting not a moment in his haste to get to where he could stare at his scrying eyes. Three of them could be turned to cover most of the wagons’ route without need of going out and casting new scrying spells, and he’d either have to accompany a wagon himself to add the missing dogleg of streets, or risk doing without it. The beholderkin body he’d ridden back here could cast only spells worked by force of will or very simple utterances.
He stared into those three scrying eyes as he bent his will to making them leave the current array and drift to new positions, in a row floating together right in front of him, at the same time as he turned and refocused what they could see in Suzail.
Manshoon’s head throbbed with sharper pain. He clenched his teeth, pressed hard fingers against his temples, and glared at the moving scenes of the dark Suzailan night streets as they swam, drifted sideways … and then settled into the views he wanted.
He was in time to see the first of the wagons carrying his precious cargo rumble into view from beneath, and on down the street away from his scrying eye’s vantage point. It was followed by the second wagon.
It would have been subtler to send the wagons on different routes and approach the still-ringed-by-Dragons mansion singly, in something that was a little less obviously a convoy. It was proving hard enough to keep Sraunter, here at hand, and six other mens’ minds at a distance, as those six guided carthorses and steered wagons in a normal-seeming fashion, all firmly in thrall.
Hard, but necessary.
It would be less than wise to have drooling, vacantly-staring, oddly leaning men visible when the wagons approached Dardulkyn’s mansion—considering that under the tarps and behind the swing-gates of each wagon lurked the floating body of an undead beholder, bound for his new lair in Dardulkyn’s mansion.
Manshoon was trying not to think of what would have to happen when they arrived. He’d just have to put Sraunter to sleep, hope no one came banging at the doors of the closed-up shop—yes, alchemists tended to do business at all hours, but it was the darkest, coldest time of deep night—and awaken the distant Dardulkyn to cast concealing magics before he sent his will into the distant death tyrants, one after another, and made each of them move. He dared not trust even the thickest sea fog to hide something so distinctive as a larger-than-man-sized beholder from prying war wizards.
The first wagon was only two streets away from the mansion, just coming into view in his newest scrying eye, the one he’d compelled Dardulkyn to cast before sending the man into slumber.
Coming into view but slowing, as a dung wagon came rumbling out of a side street to block its way.
Manshoon silently cursed all dung wagons and the idiot dungbucketeers who drove them, even as he reminded himself that doing anything to this one was out of the question …
The battered old dung wagon stopped right across the street, and men on foot appeared around either side of it. Far too many to be dung collectors or citizens bringing their nightsoil.
Not that citizens wore chainmail and the helms of Dragons, or were accompanied by wizards of war with wands ready in their hands.
Oh, naed. Naed naed naed naed!
Manshoon slammed clenched fists down on the arms of his chair and stared into the scrying spheres with blazing eyes.
Dardulkyn would still be blamed, yes, but they were going to find his death tyrant.
This first one, at least; he was already coercing the other drovers to turn aside and head toward the docks, the first leg of a long circuit that would bring the other two wagons separately back to Sraunter’s rear door.
Dragons shouted sharp orders at the two wagonmen. To halt—which they already had—and to climb down and stand away from their wagon. Soldiers were already holding the bridles of the foremost draft horses.
Manshoon fought down his anger, tried to ignore the sharper and rising pounding in his head, called the spell he needed to the forefront of his mind, worked it but held it firmly in abeyance—“hanging,” in the old parlance—and threw his mind from the suddenly stumbling drover to what awaited in the dark depths of the wagon.
A war wizard conjured bright light, harsh and white and flooding everywhere, making all the horses snort and stamp.
Dragons warily clambered up onto the back steps of the wagon, threw the latch on its doors, and hauled them open, jumping down. Then another pair of Dragons leaped up onto the steps and flung the tarps back.
Leaving his staring, rotting, gape-mawed, and ten-eye-stalked secret floodlit, and a secret no longer.
“She’s free!” Mirt roared from behind them, obviously struggling to find breath enough to both shout and run. Inevitably he’d fallen behind in their trot to the palace. Not far ahead of him, Storm, Rune, and Arclath had burst out into the Promenade. They were swerving toward an area lit by both lanterns and conjured light around the fallen palace door that smiths and woodcarvers were examining, under the watchful eyes of Dragons.
“Try to get into the palace, or at least past as many Dragons as possible before we’re stopped,” Storm had just warned them, plucking the now-dark helm off Amarune’s head and tossing it to the cobbles behind them. “Targrael wants our blood.”
“Y-you surprise me,” Rune joked weakly.
Turn back, lad. Now we stand and fight.
The voice in Arclath’s head was firm, but no coercion came with it. Arclath nodded as if Elminster had spoken aloud, and whirled around, waving his sword. “Mirt!” he shouted. “I’ll stand rearguard! Run!”
Targrael was running hard down the street behind the lumbering Waterdhavian, overhauling him with frightening speed.
Run toward him, lad, and be ready to drop thy sword. I need to work a spell while we still can.
“We?” Arclath snapped.
We, as in ye and me. We’ll have time for only one, before there’re too many palace folk blundering around in the way. Swift, now!
Swallowing down his fear, Lord Delcastle obeyed the voice in his head, muttering, “This had better work, or …”
Or we’ll haunt each other. Aye.
Shaking his head, Arclath ran. Wheezing heavily, Mirt lurched past him in the other direction. Targrael was a balefully grinning figur
e some three wagon-lengths away, running closer fast.
Now stop. Right now. Try to go calm. Let me use thy arms.
“Yes, master,” Arclath said sarcastically but obeyed. His arms and shoulders moved seemingly of their own volition, a warm darkness that wasn’t him rising at the back of his mind, his body dropping into a lunge with sword raised.
Targrael swerved wide and then turned and lashed out with a slash from one side, of course—but Elminster had already cast Arclath’s good blade at the cobbles right in front of her racing feet. It clanged as it bounced; she stumbled over it; he sidestepped—and then, with a grace that Amarune might have envied if she hadn’t been busy screaming his name as Storm shoved her on into the alarmed Dragons—he cast a spell.
Motes of light appeared in a swift, rushing circle in the wake of his nimble fingers, rushed together into a single pulsing light that flared into a cone of what seemed to be bright sunlight, and caught Targrael full in the face.
When it struck her sword, the blade shattered with an ear-splitting shriek, bursting into deadly shards that flew in all directions. One of them spun right across Targrael’s face, and another laid open her shoulder.
She howled in anguish and staggered back.
Snatch up thy sword and run her through. Take care to keep hold of it—she won’t fall or seem to be hurt much.
Arclath obeyed and did almost lose his sword as the death knight roared and spun away from him in a frenzy of pain, lashing out blindly with the twisted stump of her sword.
Now run, lad. Don’t play hero. Get in among the Dragons.
Arclath obeyed happily this time, and pulling back his weapon, sprinted into a knot of soldiers, most of whom seemed to be glaring at him, their swords drawn.
A handful of reinforcements trudged down the street from the direction of the Eastgate—more Dragons, but not fresh ones. The new arrivals looked exhausted, travel-stained, and far less grandly armored than the palace guardsmen. Some of these new arrivals were behind Arclath, milling around between him and the snarling, shuddering Targrael.
Ahead, Arclath saw his Rune staring anxiously over Storm’s shoulder at him. Even as he gave her a reassuring smile and espied Mirt arguing with a Dragon who had grabbed hold of his shoulder, he saw a man whose stern face he remembered from around the palace. At the same time, Storm greeted the man, “Well met again, Sir Starbridge. Will you be needing to see my chest again?”
“You handed us a merry journey back from Shadowdale,” he growled. “We’ve just walked the last leg, from Jester’s Green. What’s all this? What mischief are you up to now?”
“Trying to keep from being cut down in the street,” Storm replied—a moment before Wizard of War Glathra Barcantle thrust her head out of the gap where the door had been, saw Storm and then the others, and snapped, “You! Men, arrest these people! Her, and her, and the fat man there, and Lord Delcastle yonder!”
Mirt shook off the Dragon he’d been arguing with as if the man were a straw doll, and roared, “Fat man? Who’re ye calling a fat man, Shrewjaws?”
Whatever reply the blazing-eyed Glathra might have made was lost in her sudden jaw-drop of astonishment, as a Purple Dragon far across the Promenade was flung into the air to crash down among his fellows, and another man screamed in agony.
Heads turned, men gaped—and more Purple Dragons were hurled aside, streaming blood.
Lady Targrael was back on her feet and swinging two swords whose owners wouldn’t be needing them anymore. She was really angry now, and coming through anyone in her way.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-FOUR
BATTLES INSIDE AND OUT
Tales tell of battles where banners flap, o’er hosts drawn up
In glittering lines on a broad open field, under a clear sky,
To charge together and work decisive butchery. Real war
Is seldom so clean or simple. It runs to mistaken foes, chases,
Falls, foolhead accidents, battles inside and out, and inevitably
Untidy and bloody endings.
Sarnaur the Sage, Wisdoms of One Old Fool,
a chapbook first published in the Year of the Bent Blade
Just one? We face just one?” a gruff Purple Dragon lionar demanded disbelievingly. “Well, why haven’t you jacks downed her by now? What by the Rampant Dragon is—”
He broke off to gape as a severed head flew past him to bounce off the shoulder plates of a swordcaptain nearby, drenching the man in blood ere it tumbled down to be lost to sight underfoot. It had been wearing a Dragon helm.
“Sabruin!” he gasped in disbelief. “What manner of—”
Another Dragon fell, and his slayer ran along his toppling body, swinging swords in both hands against the soldiers now crowding around her and hacking at her almost desperately.
The lionar gaped again. She looked dead, this lone woman butchering her way through palace guards who should have been able to withstand a thousand women with ease.
“Sir Eskrel Starbridge,” the lionar heard the sharp voice of the Lady Glathra rising from behind him, “attend me. You and two of your Highknights. Tell the others to arrest and imprison the four persons I identified, in our dungeons, and quell this disturbance. They may call on the services of all the wizards of war who are here—it seems whoever is attacking, yonder, bears heavy magical protections. I have far more pressing matters to attend to right now than street butchery. Our oh-so-loyal nobles are gathering forces under arms all over the city, and Larak Dardulkyn may be involved.”
“Just what else befell here, while I was out hunting a false Elminster?” Starbridge demanded.
“Later, Highknight,” Glathra replied crisply. “Later.”
Lips set in a thin and furious line, Manshoon hissed out the short incantation and sat back to watch what befell in the shifting glows of his scrying eyes.
The blast was sudden and terrible, destroying the wagon and everyone close to it. Knowing what was coming, the future emperor of Cormyr had darkened that particular sphere almost to black, to avoid being blinded; the moment the flash had passed its height, he rekindled it, and was in time to watch the dung wagon spread itself and its contents in a thin, wet layer over the walls of the buildings at the far end of the street.
Of his wagon, the eye tyrant within it, the horses and Purple Dragons and war wizards—with any luck, every last person who might have seen the smallest glimpse of what the wagon was carrying—there was no sign.
Except for a red fog in the air and bedewing the street, not to mention the wide but shallow pit that had replaced the sweep of worn cobbles where the wagon had been standing.
Manshoon watched shards of glass fall in a gentle rain out of the sky, looking for any larger movements that might mean a warrior had survived or a Crown mage had shielded himself somehow.
Nothing. He’d gazed longer, now, than a wounded man could hold his breath. Still nothing.
He’d managed it. Kept his secret, and done it far enough from the mansion that Dardulkyn couldn’t be blamed outright.
Not that he considered the reckoning even, between himself and Cormyr. A dozen-some magelings, perhaps twice that many Dragons …
The Forest Kingdom still owed him four senior war wizards, or more. Beholders didn’t come cheap.
Letting out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding, the future Emperor of Cormyr and Beyond looked one last time at the blood-drenched street, reflected that it was high time to check on the other two wagons, and—
Something caught his eye, in another glowing scene. Or rather, a lot of somethings: Purple Dragons, their swords out and gleaming back reflections from some lanterns in a Suzailan street, and a bright and steady conjured glow that showed him the familiar façade of the palace behind it.
They were gathering around a lone, embattled figure, swords rising and falling, rising and fall …
Targrael!
In the street outside the palace, taking on a good third of the Crown soldiers in Suzail who were aw
ake at this hour.
Manshoon stared at the battle for a moment more, seeing wizards of war, the hole in the palace wall where a door ought to be, and … was that Amarune Whitewave? Elminster?
He sprang from the chair, landing at a full sprint, heading for another of his beholders.
A living eye tyrant at the height of its powers should make for a dandy battle. After he made utterly stone-cold certain of his foe, this time.
Nay, lad, no more heroics. Not yet.
“So when, Old Mage?” Arclath snapped, seeing hard-faced Highknights shouldering their way through the Dragons toward him. “They’ll have Rune in a moment or two!”
Not in this fray, they won’t. Head up the street toward Eastgate a bit, then turn in toward the palace. Don’t run, or the Dragons will key on ye. Brisk and purposeful—stride like a lionar or an ornrion. That’s the way of it, aye.
Arclath held his sword low but ready, staring down soldiers rather than offering them battle, and won his way past more and more of them.
A flash of light reflected off their helms and faces, from behind his left shoulder.
Then another, amid shouts of anger and pain.
Arclath risked a look. Crown mages had tried to fell Targrael with spells, but failed to strike her down as she battled in the midst of so many Purple Dragons. Soldiers had paid the price of those magics, and were less than happy. Their comrades, around them, were angry, too.
Arclath had barely managed to sigh and take another step before he saw something that snatched away his breath and made him freeze where he stood, in one heart-fisting moment.
Out of the nightgloom over the tall buildings facing the palace across the wide Promenade, something as large as a coach was gliding.
Something spherical, with a huge fanged maw surmounted by a lone, malevolent eye the size of a table. Around the sphere curled ten long and flexible eyestalks that were moving into a staring halo of ten gleaming eyes, all of them glaring down at the mailed men in the street.
Rays of magic lanced out from those eyes, rays of ruby and ale-brown, dead white and fell, sickly yellow-green.
