by Ed Greenwood
“Now that fashion I like, lady. Are ye succumbing to my charms at last?”
“No,” she replied fondly, “I was finally getting some sleep. And unlike some old rogues around here, I like to occasionally get out of garments I’ve been living in for days. It gives the lice a little excitement.”
Mirt started scratching himself.
“Never saw the point of exciting lice, myself,” he growled. “Maggots, now …”
“Maggots? I thought I heard someone discussing morningfeast!” Elminster put in, from the doorway behind Storm. “Yet I smell nothing sizzling.”
“Oh, no?” Mirt leered at them both. “I’ll wager something was, in yon bedchamber last night.”
Storm rolled her eyes. “How often do you lose your last coin in foolish wagers, I wonder? Where is your cook, anyhail?”
She strode into the kitchen—and stopped dead.
The cook’s severed head was staring in terror at her from where it sat, beneath a handful of eager flies, in a skillet on a cold and unlit hearth. That end of the room was drenched with blood, but the rest of the cook was nowhere to be seen.
“Someone’s sent us a warning,” she told the others over her shoulder.
There was a rush to look—and Amarune recoiled, Arclath winced, and El and Mirt looked grim.
“It’s more than time for Lord Helderstone to disappear,” El muttered. “He had other old foes among the nobles, I’d say.” He looked at Mirt. “Sorry, old friend.”
Mirt shrugged and grinned.
“Where’s the rest of her?” Arclath asked, peering around the blood-spattered kitchen.
“Carried off into undeath,” Storm replied crisply, “or left somewhere to make trouble for us in the eyes of the Crown. Let’s move.”
Every now and then, when walking the haunted wing of the royal palace, one came to a high window whose shroudings had fallen to let in the bright sunlight.
Radiance that fell in shafts down into the gloom of the deserted galleries, illuminating thick dust that hung in the air like lazily swirling snow.
Targrael liked the haunted wing. It was more home to her than the cleaner, busier, noisy chambers where the courtiers worked, walked, and talked.
Yet, she wasn’t here in this particular corner of the shunned part of the palace this day for a pleasure-stroll.
For years she’d heard rumors of this or that hidden royal cache of enchanted weapons. Most of the tales were overblown, over time transforming a glowing dagger or ring hidden in a hollow bedpost into a small armory boasting many flying suits of armor and figurines that became snarling lions or flying dragon steeds, but she’d found a few palace treasures herself, and learned enough to know that there were larger ones. Or had been, once.
Of particular interest was a “marcher in blue flame” mentioned in a long-ago scribe’s description of items Salember the Rebel Prince had once publicly gloated over, that had apparently never been seen again since. She’d been hoping the five sages who’d been closeted secretly combing palace records for years now would turn something up … and it seemed they finally had.
It wasn’t much, just a line at the end of a Jorunhast note: “The three pillars safeguard the most perilous.” One more cryptic taunt, most might well term it, but to this lady Highknight, it meant something more.
There was just one pillar in this whole reach of the palace sculpted into the semblance of a triangular cluster of three fused pillars.
A pillar that stood like a prow where a little three-room-long side wing branched off the main block of the palace, rooms that on all five floors had once housed senior war wizards, the spell-crafters and researchers too old to ride in hard country and take to battlefields.
The young Palaghard, while still a prince, had once written a note to a young lady who’d caught his eye that “If you need to hide, Druth’s pillar swings wide.” Now, a wizard of war hight Jereth Ardruth had once dwelt in one of those rooms, and the triple pillar would have formed the endpost at the back of Ardruth’s—Druth’s—closet.
A stretch, but worth investigating. Blueflame ghosts could be used to bring down House Obarskyr and plunge the realm into years of thronestrife—but blueflame ghosts under her command could keep Cormyr strong, the Dragon Throne better guarded than ever before.
The wizards of war had sunk beyond untrustworthiness; the current royals were weak; and the highest-ranking courtiers a more corrupt and venal band of pompous greed-heads than she would have thought tolerable, even to a weak king.
No, it was all up to her.
And with the blueflame ghosts hers, she could at last …
This one. This was the door.
Closed and locked, but that meant little to a death knight. Drawing her sword, she positioned herself just so, aiming her blade so it would plunge down the crack where door met frame, and swung it high.
Before bringing it down with all her might, straight and true, to slash through the forged locking mechanism in one great shriek of metal.
Then she gently pulled on the door ring, let the great door swing wide, and went in.
The room beyond was a mess, of course. The windows had broken long ago, and generations of pigeons and whir-wings had nested on the desk, shelves, and bed, winter snows and winds had scattered parchments across the floor and set about rotting them into the moldering ruin of carpet, and the closet was right over—there.
Its curtain fallen, its—
The door she’d just forced slammed shut behind her, and a doorbar thudded into place. Targrael whirled around with a snarl, sword up.
A woman was facing her, leaning indolently on a sword of her own. Someone she knew. The ghost of the Princess Alusair Nacacia Obarskyr. The Steel Princess. The Steel Regent.
“Well met,” Alusair said dryly. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
Targrael wasted no time in words. She sprang at her hated foe with a snarl, bright blade singing.
“You traitor and stealer of Obarskyr secrets,” Alusair added almost gently, flying up into the air to parry and draw Targrael out into the room.
The death knight charged, trying to pounce and hack the ghost down to the floor in a flurry of slashing swings.
Though the princess might be insubstantial as a wraith, she was solid enough to hold and swing the weight of a sword—even a sword made of her own ghostly self, sharpened momentarily to the strength and keen edge of warsteel. So she could be hurt.
Alusair laughed amid the clang and skirl of steel. “Is that your best, kitchen-cleaver-maid? How many beds did you have to warm to get made a Highknight?”
“I never!” Targrael shrieked, stung to speech at last. “You bitch! You evil, reckless-of-the-realm, rutting slut of a—”
Her blade crashed home, right through Alusair’s ghostly sword—and right through the ghostly breast beyond, pinning it to the floor.
She crowed in triumph, as Alusair arched and writhed in soundless agony beneath her.
“Ha ha! Not so insolent now, are you, failed regent! Disgrace to the realm! Overmatched fool of an incompetent warrior!”
Through her open-mouthed, gasping pain, Alusair spat out the words, “Fly, Fang.” And then she smiled.
As up through her, up from the moldering heap of rubble she’d been lying on, sprang a glowing blue dagger.
Point first, it sped through Targrael, up through her leathers into her breast and inwards, through ribs, slicing upward like icy fire.
“Meet the Fang of Baerovus,” Alusair whispered. “The blueflame treasure you sought … the only one we Obarskyrs have. I wish you joy of it, would-be tyrant!” She faded into darkness, a wisp that drifted slowly across the floor, toward the door.
Targrael lashed out sideways with her sword, seeking vainly to slice that whispering shadow as it flew this way and then that, wriggling snakelike out under the door.
But the Fang of Baerovus was caught in her throat and sliding higher …
Desperately she dropped her sword, reached up with b
oth hands, and broke her own neck, thrusting her head grotesquely to one side to hang limply down her back.
Just in time. The Fang burst up to the ceiling, trailing one of her ears, and struck sparks off the stone there.
Before it arrowed to the door, out through the gap she’d made by chopping through the lock, and away.
She knew by the utter agony, that her wounds would be mortal for one with lifeblood to spill. She felt too weak to do anything more than slump down atop the rubble and whimper.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-TWO
OLD GAMES AND OLDER SECRETS
We Highknights, like many another ruler’s dark agents
Go armed in the shadows, and break laws by royal consent
An army of thieves and slayers devoting ourselves
To new threats, old games, and older secrets.
Baerend “Blackblade” Blakshar
Loyal Forever: A Highknight’s Tale, a suppressed
chapbook first seen in the Year of the Talking Skull
The oldest, grandest Delcastle coach had thickly cushioned seats, but nothing else to soften rides. Wherefore Amarune was clinging to Arclath to keep upright, with her booted feet wedged against Mirt’s knees where he sat facing the noble and the dancer. Loose cobbles on this particular lane were making the coach rattle almost deafeningly as it rushed toward Delcastle Manor, where it had been agreed they’d tarry until Storm or El appeared to fetch Mirt to different lodgings under a new face and name.
“So who did kill the cook?” Rune was asking.
“Almost anyone may have,” Arclath said bleakly.
“Not so, lad,” Mirt rumbled. “The slayers were working for a noble.”
“Likely, yes,” Arclath granted, “but tell me why you say so. Is it merely one more ‘dastardly nobles are behind everything’ thought?”
“Nay. They carried off Lady Greatgaunt with no mess or noise. No ransom demands, no snatching all her gowns or the jewels off ’em, no blood or tussle. Following clear an’ detailed orders—carefully.” Mirt waved a hand. “Therefore, working for nobles, hey?”
“Hey,” Arclath agreed with a grin.
“I—” Amarune hesitated, then continued, “I learned much from Elminster’s mind, while he was in mine. It’s only right you should know as much as we do about all of this. The ghosts, I mean.”
Arclath nodded, and Mirt made a beckoning “out with it!” gesture.
“At the Council,” Rune began, “a blueflame ghost appeared briefly during the fighting and felled several nobles, specific ones, but then vanished. So, obviously someone in the room was controlling it.”
Mirt nodded. “A noble who attended yer Council has a blueflame item.”
“A mystery for Elminster, or his old foe Manshoon, not to mention half the ambitious nobles in Suzail, now, to solve, as they all scramble to get that item and control the ghost,” Arclath added.
Rune nodded. “Elminster wants it to try to restore The Simbul—you know about her?”
Mirt chuckled. “I do. More’n I want to, but that’s another tale.”
Rune shook her head. “Not now, I pray you! Manshoon presumably wants the ghost to have another slayer he can send forth, in case he ever runs out of mind-slaves or beholders.”
Mirt nodded. “I remember him, too. That one will never be able to resist seeking such power.”
“Yes, but he mustn’t yet have it, or he’d be using it, not faring forth himself or sending agents. The blueflame ghosts frighten and therefore dominate—and Manshoon lives to control and dominate.”
Mirt nodded again. “Over the years,” he growled, “some things change very little. Names and faces, aye, but the games, nay.” He flexed his hands—and a dagger suddenly gleamed in one of them.
He held it up, smiled at it, and told Amarune and Arclath, “Fortunately, I always did enjoy playing these particular games.”
In a place as sprawling, tall, and deep as the royal palace of Suzail, there are forgotten places.
There are also “almost forgotten” spots. One of them was a neglected corner deep in the palace cellars where ancient and mighty interwoven ward spells foil detection magics and hide magical auras, very much as a thick fog conceals small scuttling things.
Targrael thought she just might be the last rememberer of that spot, judging by the condition of a particular ill-mended wall that had been getting worse for centuries. It had two dark recesses, cavities where stones had collapsed out to leave behind holes like missing teeth in an old warrior’s jawbone.
One of them was large enough to hold a death knight, one who had managed to unbar the door, escape Druth’s room, and make her slow and painful way to the doors of the royal crypt after several long and agonizing hours of crawling. Only her incredible force of will kept her going,
There, as she’d expected, the Fang of Baerovus glowed, as it protruded from the heart of a warding-rune that had kept it from entering the crypt.
She had it with her now.
Oh, this was going to hurt.
Stepping into the little cavern behind the wall, she bent over, choosing where she would fall, making certain she had space enough to lie. The slow, cold drops of water seeping through the stone above her chilled her back as she brushed against them. Yes, this place would do. It would have to.
She undid her leathers above her belt, laying bare her midriff, chose the spot with one careful finger—and slowly thrust the Fang of Baerovus into herself, driving the blade up under her ribs.
Every inch tore a fresh gasp of pain out of her, and she shuddered helplessly.
“I,” she hissed at the unhearing stone around, “am a Highknight of Cormyr. The Highknight of Cormyr!”
Then the agony overwhelmed her, and she sank down with a moan, trembling …
This was her doom, or her last slender hope.
Would her undeath slowly drink the magic of the dagger, healing and strengthening her, despite the agony she now felt?
She dared not move around the palace—where Alusair might find and finish her, or foolish war wizards destroy her. Not as weak as she’d become, even before tasting the Fang.
She would be a long time healing, if this worked at all … a very long time.
But then—she smiled coldly—that was the one thing she did have left. Time.
“What was that?” a Dragon snapped, his sword hissing out.
“A stone tumbling out of a water-soaked wall,” Glathra replied briskly, not slowing in the slightest. “It’s why we no longer use this part of the cellars much. Too many springs seeping out of the stones. Walls were built to seal off the worst parts, but that was centuries back, and they fall, stone by tumbling stone, with no one here to care or rebuild. Don’t worry, there’s quite enough solid rock left to hold the palace in place up above our heads. All four cellar levels and six floors of it, just here.”
“I thought I heard someone moan,” the soldier muttered, looking behind them. Glathra sighed.
“Lord Warder,” she commanded, “you have the right wand handy; are there undead behind us?”
Vainrence smiled, used the wand, and reported, “No.”
Glathra turned to the Dragon, the Highknight with her, and the other three Dragons carefully avoiding her eyes. “Happier?” she asked the soldier briskly.
“Yes, lady,” he replied, managing to convey not even a hint of a sigh. Or a curse.
“Good.” She swept on. “We have much larger worries.”
“Loyal blades,” Vainrence spoke up, “I presume you’ve heard the names Garendor, Argrant, Orkrash, Wyshbryn, and Loagranboydar?”
“The sages who’ve spent years digging through ancient court records, down here somewhere?” the Highknight asked.
Glathra gave him a sharp look, but he added stoutly, “The entire palace knows as much. What we don’t know, any of us, is what they’re looking for. Tidying up and organizing doesn’t take years.”
“Well,” Glathra said tartly, “it can, but yes, those
five have spent most of their waking hours in certain deep palace cellars doing rather more than putting records in order. They’ve been tracing royal and noble lineages.”
The Highknight snorted, which earned him another sharp look.
“Yes, clever Sir Hawkmantle, they’re, as you so subtly hint, not merely reading records any commoner can consult in the right royal court offices, any day they choose to. We’re hoping these sages can, by referencing recorded incidents from the past, identify nobles who have, or are likely to have, any inherited personal talent for the Art.”
“You’re hunting the noble who commands a blueflame ghost,” one of the Dragons said quietly.
Glathra stopped dead, so swiftly that they almost ran into her, and gave the man a flat, expressionless look. “I see there’s nothing at all wrong with your wits, Sir Jephford.”
“For years,” the lord warder told the ceiling, “our wizards of war have scorned using such methods to learn more about our nobles’ mastery of magic, trusting instead to scrying and to subversion of—even placing our own mages among—the House wizards hired by all nobles who can afford to do so. Yet this long-practiced vigilance has thus far failed to identify who controls the ghost who slew nobles at the Council, so …”
“You’re willing to try other methods,” Sir Hawkmantle finished the sentence. He did not add “at last,” but his tone of voice made doing so unnecessary.
If the Lady Glathra’s glare could have melted manhoods, he would have suffered such a fate on the spot.
The lord warder flung out an arm to bar Glathra’s way. “I will go first.”
“Lord Vainrence,” Glathra began, “there’s no need—”
“Oh, but there is,” he said firmly. “The little tellsong I cast across the passage here is gone. Meaning powerful magic has been cast, very close by.”
“A tellsong? You never—”
“No, I did not. A secret is something one person knows. Once two know it, that ‘secret’ is better termed ‘realm-wide gossip.’ Wait here.”
Glathra stayed where she was, a little shocked. Vainrence had never been so curt with her before.
