by Ed Greenwood
A moment later he returned and pointed to two of the Dragons. “With me. You two, guard the Lady Glathra. Swords out.”
Everyone exchanged grim looks.
A few breaths later, Glathra was summoned to join the lord warder and learned why.
The passage they’d been following ended in a large room, which in turn opened into a huge storage cellar. The cellar held the records and the room where the sages worked, in a crowded den of chairs, floating glowstones for lamps, and tables.
No longer. Not only were there no men to be seen nor any hovering glowstones, the furniture and every last record had been reduced to ashes.
Including five neat little piles, standing in a line along a great rectangle of ash that marked where a table had been.
The conflagration had raged long enough ago that all smoke and smell had fled, and everything was cold. Yet a lingering, sickly yellow-green glow played and flickered feebly here and there among the ashes, from the magic that had done this.
“Treason,” Glathra whispered. “Right here, beneath our feet. Beneath the king.”
“Stand back,” Vainrence ordered, spreading his arms. “I must try to learn what befell here.”
Glathra turned and made shooing motions, frowning at the Highknight, who seemed reluctant to move.
He and one of the Dragons obeyed as the lord warder began a long and careful incantation.
Glathra turned back to face him, to intently watch the spell’s results. It was hard for any one person to notice all the details when such a revelation took shape, because so much was revealed so quickly ere it all faded. A second casting would be only a poor echo of the first, a third a ghost of the second, and so on.
Vainrence cast the spell unhurriedly, careful and precise, finishing with a careful flourish.
And the world exploded.
Sir Eldur Hawkmantle was quick. As the blast erupted in front of him, he sprang back, trying to twist around in the air—which promptly gave him a hard shove in his ribs and in a whirling instant slammed him hard into a passage wall that had been far behind him.
He lost consciousness for a moment amid the rolling, booming echoes and swirling dust, but when he was aware again and could move, he discovered he and one wincing and groaning Purple Dragon were the only folk coming to their feet.
Vainrence had unwittingly triggered a waiting trap. A blast of some sort that had—he stared at ashen corpses, crumbling as he watched—fried the other three Dragons, because they happened to be closest.
He dimly remembered seeing Glathra and Vainrence scream, brief tongues of flame spurting from their eyes and mouths ere they’d toppled. Wincing at that memory, he went to them.
They were sprawled atop the older ashes, looking lifeless.
Not scorched, outwardly, and nothing about them seemed broken or missing. Unconscious, and quite possibly brain-burned.
“Search,” he ordered the dazed surviving Dragon, and set an example by stirring the ashes very gently with his sword.
They found nothing, but the glowstones Glathra and Vainrence were wearing began to flicker and fade, so they grimly hoisted the two stricken mages onto their shoulders and began the long, grim trudge back up to where they could find help.
Someone wanted family secrets kept. Someone who had magic to spare.
Storm came in first, with Elminster right behind her.
Mirt was standing with daggers up beside both ears, held ready to throw.
She crooked an eyebrow at him. “You hate being Heljack Thornadarr that much?”
Mirt grinned, resheathed his fangs, and turned to the table behind him, waving them toward a platter piled high with cold roast fowl and a large, lazily steaming bowl of fragrant fieldgreens soup. “Want some?”
“Do Waterdhavians love coins?”
Mirt ladled soup into tankards for them. “So, who’d ye kill tonight? Shall I expect a host of Purple Dragons to soon break down the door, even as the massed wizards of war blast the roof off?”
“No one, and I hope not,” Storm replied wearily, sipping soup and discovering she was ravenous. She waved at the food. “Where’d you get all this?”
“Arclath sent a servant with it. Suitably disguised, so no fear. Said he’ll send a man around on the morrow to teach me to cook.”
El and Storm regarded him with identical frowns of concern, then headed for their bedchamber, snatching up food and taking it with them.
Mirt roared with laughter at their reaction and headed for his own bed, decanter in hand.
After all, only six decanters already lay beside the bed, and his throat was as dry as all Anauroch.
“You should have come to me earlier, you two.” The Lady Marantine Delcastle spoke softly, even sadly. “I had no idea.”
“I’m sorry, Mother,” Arclath said gravely. “This is my fault, entirely. Rune didn’t even know my name a month back.”
He spread his hands. “I suppose every young noble thinks his—or her—concerns about what’s ahead for Cormyr, and its noble Houses in particular, are something older nobles don’t want to hear, or will challenge or dismiss out of hand. After all, you are inevitably part of whatever we want to see changed, or that we fear won’t change, or …”
Lady Delcastle nodded, the ghost of a smile rising to her lips. “I recall feeling very much as you do now, when I disagreed with my father. He hurled me into the duck pond. Which is why we no longer have a duck pond.”
Amarune and Arclath had been sitting with her in the best parlor in Delcastle Manor for hours, explaining what had been going on with the blueflame ghosts—but not their work with El and Storm, or their deepening friendship with Mirt. Lady Delcastle, in a rare friendly, talkative mood, had proven to be a free-flowing geyser of information about noble feuds and alliances and personal friendships and hatreds, from the time of Arclath’s grandsire up until last night, or so it seemed.
She was frowning, now, trying to recall something. Suddenly she flung up an imperious hand for silence and brightened. “I remember!”
Arclath thrust his head forward eagerly, squeezing Amarune’s hand in an unnecessary signal for silence. His mother noticed and grinned.
“And does that work on her, dear?”
Her son flushed to the roots of his hair, and the Lady Marantine patted his other hand affectionately and said, “Never you mind. Yet listen. The Imprisoners, they were called.”
“They?”
“No, I’ll not be rushed, dear. Let me tell this my way. I had it in hints and careless sentences here and there, mind you, from your uncles and Baelarra and Thornleia, anyhail, so it’s not much.”
She paused, tapping her chin, then said slowly, “The Imprisoners were a handful of wizards, here and along the Sword Coast—in Silverymoon in particular, I understand, and no, I know no names—who crafted the spells for blueflame items and started imprisoning particular persons within them, long ago. Before the Blue Fire came and magic went wild.”
She spread her hands. “I heard more about all the astonishment—consternation would not be too strong a word—among our local clergy of Mystra.”
Arclath nodded. “Because of Aunt Thornleia.”
Lady Marantine nodded. “They were surprised, you see, that the goddess did nothing to stop the Imprisoners, either by altar speech or through her Chosen. As if it was meant to be, or necessary for time yet to come, they said.”
She leaned forward just as her son had done, to stare hard at Amarune and Arclath. “So, has the time now come?”
The royal magician looked up when she strode into the room, and smiled in genuine pleasure. “Ah, something splendid to embrace at last! You’re well!”
Glathra blushed. “Thanks to too many healing prayers from more priests than I care to count. I was fortunate—I was merely caught in the backlash of what felled Vainrence.”
“The lord warder?” Ganrahast asked quietly.
“Remains in care. Senseless, his mind still roiling inwardly, despite all the spells
they’ve used.”
Ganrahast sighed. “And the five sages and all those old records are gone.” He waved at the scrying image he’d been intent upon when Glathra had arrived; in its glow, she could see a distant corner of the palace cellars.
“We’re scouring out the cellars now. Larandur has found a spell-locked room—supposedly an armory, sealed since Salember’s time—that has somehow acquired very recent spells on its door seals.”
“So, it’s been opened and resealed recently,” Glathra murmured, gazing into the scrying image with him. There she saw Wizard of War Naloth Larandur, as tall and expressionless as ever, calmly finishing the casting of a “long-arm” spell to open the sealed armory door from a distance.
The seals obliged and melted away, and the door swung open.
Floating just inside the chamber was a spherical creature with one large eye, a wide and crooked many-fanged maw, and ten eyestalks that glared at the six court mages outside the room as the beholder unleashed its eye-magics.
Rays flashed out, a mage staggered, and then another fell. And Larandur and the other wizards of war hurled magic at the monster, in a great roar of unleashed Art.
The result, in the instant before the scrying sphere burst, was a titanic explosion.
Ganrahast was seated, but Glathra was flung off her feet as the entire palace shook around them, the walls swaying. They could hear minor crashes from all around as various portraits, shelves, and the like fell or toppled.
A great wave of force rolled away out into Suzail, and in its wake they heard the stones groan, in a deep and terrible sound that told them, even before shouting, running mages came with the news.
Part of the palace had slumped down into ruin topped by unstable, yawing passages and chambers, as the cellars underlying them collapsed.
Killing Larandur and the others with him.
The beholder had been another trap.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-THREE
WHEN THE BLUE FLAME DANCES
Come gather round now and take all your chances
Many will rise, from dark debts win free; some’ll
Whirl fine prances, some stumble like me; bathe in
Bright unfolding glee as the Blue Flame Dances!
Maerel “Merry Minstrelress” Shael
from the ballad When The Blue Flame Dances
first performed circa the Year of the Purloined Statue
Buildings shuddered near the palace. Folk were flung off their feet on the Promenade. A wagon sideswiped an inn amid screaming horses and splintering wood; slates and tiles whirled down from roofs in a deadly rain; stones and windows and whole balconies fell from up high to crash to the cobbles in a ragged, ongoing thunder … and one wing of the palace sagged with a deep and terrible groan, settling lower into the earth amid blinding plumes of rising dust.
Manshoon sat back in his chair and allowed himself a gloating smile. He couldn’t look away from the scrying eye that was showing him the aftermath of the explosion.
“They’ll think twice before hurling spells at the next beholder they see,” he purred. “A hesitation that will doom them as surely as if they blasted it with all they have. Ah, this is good sport.”
Chuckling, the Uncrowned Incipient Emperor of Cormyr and Beyond sprang up and strode to another scrying eye to peer at certain nobles who were arguing in a gathering that they believed was private.
“No hint of the blueflame ghost reappearing yet,” Manshoon murmured to himself, “but then its minder knows full well that the wizards of war—not to mention far more formidable mages—are hunting him.”
“Storm, it’s us,” Amarune hissed, snatching off the raffish old sailor’s hat. “See?”
“Ah, but which ‘us’? Surely that fashion disaster in old petticoats with you isn’t the lord and heir of a high noble House?”
Arclath chuckled. “Surely it is! Now open that door, or I’ll start taking my clothes off to prove it.”
“Don’t tempt me, Arclath Delcastle,” Storm warned him. “You may mean that as a threat, but it sounds more like an enticement to me!” Yet, she threw back the great bolts that held the old warehouse loft door closed, and ushered the two arrivals in. “Welcome to the humble abode of Heljack Thornadarr, Sembian trader.”
“Good to be here!” Arclath said cheerfully. “Like the disguises?”
Mirt looked up from a bowl Elminster was peering into, eyed them, and said gruffly, “Well, as a way of telling everyone ye pass in this city that ye’re idiot highnoses trying to play at being lowly dockworkers, they’re splendid, aye!”
“Hush, old goat,” Rune told him fondly, “we didn’t have time to find better in the Delcastle gardeners’ barn. We have urgent news.”
Mirt’s jaw dropped.
Then he looked at Arclath and acquired an expression of disapproval. “Ye didn’t! Already? Barely had her home a night or three, an’ ye’re thrusting—if that’s not too indelicate a word—the next generation of Delcastles out into the world! Ye might have married the lass, first!”
Rune and Arclath stared back at him, blinking.
“No, no, no, no, it’s not that news!” Arclath burst out hurriedly. “I mean, that news hasn’t happened yet! I mean—”
“Oh, this lord is very suave,” Elminster told Storm, hooking a thumb in Arclath’s direction. “Debonair, too. Keep a watch over this one. He’s smooth.”
“If all you jesters will leave off for a moment,” Rune bellowed, winning their instant silence and attention—which she rewarded with a bright, sheepish grin—“Arclath and I have something important to pass on to you about blueflame ghosts. That we just learned from his moth—from the Lady Marantine Delcastle.” She peered at the bowl Mirt had his hands in, and her voice changed. “What are you doing?”
“Learning to cook,” Mirt replied with dignity, lifting a wet and glistening handful up for display. “Behold—entrails of goat, gutted lampreys, and shucked oysters. All raw but doused in herbal oils an’ seven-some spices. As they do it in coastal Rashemen, I’m told.”
He waved in the direction of Elminster, who nodded and told Amarune a little absently, “I’m using a spell right now. And watching him learn to cook.”
“Arclath,” Storm suggested, swinging the massive squared timber that served as a door-bar back into place in its cradles amid a snarling rattle of rusty swivel-chain, “why don’t you tell us the news, before these two old rage drakes badger your poor lass into attacking them?”
“Right,” Arclath replied firmly, drawing himself up and frowning at Elminster and Mirt. His pose might have been more impressive without the pink, purple, and vomit-green petticoats. “What do you know about the Imprisoners?”
The room went quiet again, and this time the silence seemed to hold a slight tension.
“Lad,” Elminster replied quietly, “I know a lot of things. I even remember some of them. Moreover, regarding a rare few, I recall what I dare not tell others, and what will happen if I do. Ye may be young and have years to spend listening, but I’m not. So, please don’t take it amiss if I ask ye to instead tell me what ye’ve heard about the Imprisoners. Hmm?”
Arclath looked at Amarune. Who repeated, word for word and in a superb imitation of the Lady Marantine’s voice that made Arclath’s jaw drop and Mirt grin openly, what Arclath’s mother had said.
Elminster nodded. “She spoke truth. Every word. I was there.”
“What?” Arclath snapped. “So why didn’t you—”
The Sage of Shadowdale shrugged. “Mystra told me—”
“And me,” Storm put in.
“—to leave the Imprisoners be. They were necessary, she said, though she never told us why. They did a lot of ‘imprisoning,’ though I don’t think what we’re calling ‘blueflame ghosts’ were anywhere near all the results of that. I can’t tell ye much more, I’m afraid; Our Lady had me working on other matters.”
Arclath regained his temper with a visible effort. “So which of her Chosen, if i
t’s not blasphemous to ask, were working on the Imprisoners?”
“Alassra,” El sighed.
“The Simbul, legend calls her, or the Witch-Queen of Aglarond,” Storm added gently. “One of my sisters. Who is …”
“Dead?” Rune ventured.
“Insane. Brain-burned,” El said bleakly. “I’ve thought of how to restore her mind—a dangerous way, by no means certain—but it requires a blueflame item.”
“That will be consumed, with its prisoner and all, in that restoration,” Storm added.
“Mind ye choose the right prisoner to destroy,” Mirt growled, wagging a cook’s cleaver in her direction. “That’s why I made sure my hand axe vanished, before those two idiot lordlings could find some wizard who knew a way to force me back into it.”
“Here I sit, mad and alone,” the high, tuneless voice sang, sounding like a wistful little girl. Then its owner sighed and slumped, to circle her feet in the cold water.
Again. For about the seventy-six-millionth time.
Dabbling in the pool at the heart of the cave that was her prison.
The pool she was chained in, by the chain that was her only constant companion. Her friend.
“My friend,” she laughed, high and long and wildly, but stopped when the sound of the echoes started to sound like jeering.
Jeering meant Red Wizards, and she slew Red Wizards when she met them.
As she stirred the waters, the massive chain rising and falling with every movement of her shackled ankle, she remembered magic, dreamed of magic … and as she did, spell-glows blossomed out of the darkness around her, and rose and fell like questing tongues of flame, lighting up the wet and glistening fissured rock walls of the cave around the pool.
“I am,” she announced to no one suddenly and cheerfully, “Alassra Silverhand, once Queen of Aglarond, better known to bards, sages, and just plain folk whispering fright-tales around fires late at night as the mad Witch-Queen who slew armies of Red Wizards. I prefer to call myself The Simbul. It’s shorter. Pleased to meet you. And if you happen to be a disguised Red Wizard, prepare to die.”
