by Ed Greenwood
The death knight who was called “Lady Dark Armor” in the dark tales whispered in back palace rooms. Targrael, whose twisted mind was already his.
Smiling, Manshoon murmured a spell and bent his will down into chill, dusty darkness.
Down, down into a certain old, seldom-visited tomb deep in the palace.
Down to where someone smiled in her endless unbreathing, unthinking oblivion, and stirred …
Targrael smiled in the darkness.
Awake again, after too long asleep. She was aware of another mind, folded around her own and watching her. Strong and dark and terrible, a mind that had mastered her before …
Abruptly her attention was forced away from that lurking presence to the point of her own nose. To the slab of smooth, unbroken stone just beyond it.
“I am the last lady highknight, and the best,” she whispered fiercely to the lid of the closed coffin above her.
There had been a time when, yes, she’d been as insane as your average gibbering wizard, but that was past; Targrael knew quite well she was beyond death, and what she’d become.
And she’d found it quite suited her coldly ruthless self.
Death was a curious thing. Neither precious Caladnei nor shiningly heroic Alusair had perished in the ways everyone thought they had-not that she’d found any trace of Caladnei, yet, around the palace. Alusair was a different matter …
Targrael found herself quivering with rage at the mere memory and forced herself once more down into cold calm.
Patience. Stately patience.
I am, after all, Cormyr. Its sole true guardian; the Forest Kingdom and everyone in it depends on me, though they know it not.
Wherefore I tirelessly-her lips curled in scornful amusement at that, for she was either lost in oblivion or awake and unsleeping-lurk in and around Suzail, slaying all who displease me. I decide who shall flourish and rule or fall in the Forest Kingdom. As the years pass and the vigilance of the realm fades and its foes grow darker and darker, I play no small part in hurling back Sembian and Shadovar interests seeking to covertly conquer the realm by their usual means: magically influencing, bribing, or blackmailing various nobles. They’d have succeeded long before, but for me-and that gives me the right, as Cormyr’s most effective protector, to decide just what Cormyr should be and will become.
Three failures, only. Three who’ve resisted me. The intruders from Shadowdale, the wizard Elminster and the wench Storm … Bah. It is to sneer.
Her one attempt to destroy them should have been ease itself but had not gone well. Alusair had suddenly been there, all fierce menace, barring her way with the announcement that the two were under her protection and Targrael would harm them at her own peril.
She’d rightfully sneered at that, of course, but Alusair had taken her by the throat and had done something that had seared her very undeath.
Targrael’s throat pained her still, months later. Her voice had become a hoarse, hissing whisper, and she burst anew into ghostly flames about her throat whenever upset.
So she took bitter care indeed when in the palace, avoiding the ghost of the princess and those two thieves from Shadowdale as much as possible, and doing more watching than slaying.
Cold flames were licking about her throat now, though, as excitement rose icy and fierce within her.
Cormyr must be defended.
Targrael thrust up the lid of the stone coffin she’d been lying in, stretched stiff arms, and drew her sword.
The room around her was dark, empty, and unguarded-nigh forgotten, even at times when the royal court offices all around were bustling. Dusty and little regarded, like too many reminders of the kingdom’s past.
She climbed out of the raised coffin and put its lid back into place.
There. The Tomb of the Loyal Dragon looked as good as new.
She’d long ago tossed out the crumbling bones of the long-dead soldier interred there, and had made it her favorite hiding place. The idiot weaklings who called themselves Purple Dragons and senior courtiers and wizards of war these days hadn’t noticed, of course.
Targrael felt her lip curling. The darkness in her head was giving her orders without speaking, sending her marching off through the darkened passages of the royal court’s upper floors. Stalking slowly at first, blade held close to her chest as she stumbled into walls and closed doors.
She was no clumsy, lurching zombie, but she was seeing much more than dark, empty passages. In her mind were unfolding scenes of a band of hireswords, plundering the royal palace!
A band she was to aid and guard, or at least the man who led it: the young noble Marlin Stormserpent.
He had seized two precious things, and she was to see he kept them and his life. So he could wreak great change upon Cormyr.
She would be part of it. She would have a hand in the destiny of Cormyr.
At last.
She’d not miss her chance again …
“The way ahead is barred, saer,” one of his two surviving hirelings muttered warningly, shifting the gore-dripping sack that rode on his shoulder.
“I am aware of that,” Marlin replied firmly. “Matters have been arranged.”
It had been a long, boring trudge through cold darkness toward a faint glimmer of light.
They were almost at that light, a lantern hanging from an overhead hook in the Old Dwarf’s deepest winecellar. On the other side of the old and massive steel gate that walled off the end of the passage, where the lantern was, stood a row of massive oak casks, each in its own cradle.
His trusted, long-serving “dirty work” accomplice, Verrin, was waiting under that lantern, smirking at him. Just where Verrin was supposed to be.
Marlin stiffened. Not enough for anyone to see, but enough that Thirsty stirred restlessly inside his jerkin. Something was very wrong.
For one thing, the spell-warded steel gate was still down and locked in place. The Spellplague had twisted its wards like so many others, and wisps of wild magic were eddying around its wide-spaced bars as they had done for years, casting eerie glows on everyone’s face.
For another thing, Verrin wasn’t alone.
That “everyone” included a tall man who was standing with Verrin: Marlazander, the head bodyguard of Marlin’s longtime rival, Rothglar Illance.
As Marlin came to an expressionless halt, the chalice in one hand and his drawn sword in the other, his two hirelings with their sacks of severed heads flanking him, Marlazander put one large hand on Verrin’s shoulder, sneered at Marlin, and said gloatingly, “The problem with trusting in hirelings is keeping them bought. Or rather, your problem. Once more it seems Rothglar Illance is more than a little less miserly than Marlin Stormserpent.”
Marlin sighed. “If no more noble.”
He sent Thirsty flying forth again, making the little trill that told his pet to fell all strangers. It swooped through the bars while Verrin and Marlazander were still staring.
The bodyguard hurriedly stepped back, shoving Verrin away to give himself room, and drew steel.
His swing, despite being aided with his startled curse, missed the stirge entirely. Yet Thirsty wasn’t heading for him. It zigged, zagged-and struck, deftly lancing Verrin’s throat.
The man started to topple, clutching at his throat in a vain and stiffening-fingered attempt to stop his lifeblood jetting everywhere. Thirsty was already whirling away, darting between two casks where Marlazander couldn’t hope to reach or follow.
The bodyguard was still cursing and turning, trying to see where the stirge would swoop, when a tall, slender figure stepped out from between another two casks to confront him.
It was female-or had been, when it was alive. The remains of a woman clad in black leather war-harness, bareheaded, her face white with death in some places and fetchingly streaked with mold in others. She held a sword almost carelessly in her hand.
“Another swaggering, foolishly arrogant noble’s pawn,” she murmured, surveying Marlazander the Mighty and letting
him feel the weight of a sneer. “They’re almost as annoying as their noble masters. Almost.”
Marlazander sprang at her, slashing at her viciously in one of the best attacks he’d ever learned. It was parried and turned aside with a flick of her blade-as was his next and his next. She danced around him, toying with him like an armsmaster-and when his first fury of increasingly frantic attacks started to falter along with his wind, she disarmed him with casual ease.
And slid her blade past his frantically snatched-out daggers and into his throat, an unruffled moment later.
Before he was finished falling and dying, she’d strolled to the limp, gory mess that was Verrin and had cut a ring of keys from his belt. Wiping her sword clean on a dry part of his breeches, she tossed the ring of keys through its bars to Marlin, saluted him with her blade-as he and his hirelings gaped at her, aghast-and stepped back between the casks again.
Who-who was that? The Silent Shadow? Some long-dead agent controlled by another noble House?
“I’ll be long gone by the time you get that gate up,” Targrael told the young noble mockingly as she continued to retreat into the shadows. “Waste no time hunting me, for you’ll not find me. Nor is there really any need to hunt me. As you can see, I’m dead already.”
It took Marlin some time to manage to swallow, find his voice, and dare to ask, “W-who are you?”
He was answered from deep darkness far away across the cellar by coldly mocking laughter.
Manshoon chuckled despite himself. Gods, but she was evil. He should be able to resist this sort of behavior, all this mocking, prancing villainy, when his mind was riding and commanding hers, but … somehow …
She enjoyed it so and made him enjoy it. More than he had in centuries.
Centuries … too many passing years, drifting past darker and darker, too many friends and lovers and useful allies gone with them …
Enough reverie. To work again.
To this little minx Targrael …
Still smiling, he bent his mind once more upon hers, in firm command, and felt her heed and obey.
Back to your tomb, Lady Dark Armor. Until just the right moment to take care of the Lords Ganrahast and Vainrence.
It would not be long in coming.
In the meantime, there were two other minds to ride and their pairs of eyes to spy through. Being a manipulative mastermind was busy work.
Work that he loved-every sinister moment of it.
The former Night King of Westgate and incipient Emperor of Cormyr-and Sembia, and the Dales, and wherever else he could conquer, once he mustered the might of the Forest Kingdom for real battle-turned to his floating, conjured scrying-scenes.
Back to the beloved work at hand. First the stirge, and then Talane …
They were thankfully deep in Stormserpent Towers now, and Thirsty had obediently soared up into the darkness of the room’s vaulted ceiling a short while before, unseen by his two hireswords.
Just a few more deeds to do, and he could relax.
Marlin stood a good many paces back from the sellswords, lounging against a doorpost. They were both keeping wary eyes on him as they obeyed his latest orders, tossing the sacks of severed heads down into the roaring flames of the main tower’s furnace.
They expected to be shoved in after the heads, of course, but he smiled sardonically at them and displayed empty hands whenever they whirled around from the flames to give him hard and suspicious glares.
His smile broadened when one of them did something to his belt that made a ward rise with the usual faint singing sound. Its glow, before it faded into invisibility, was flat gray; a steelshield ward. Stretching like a wall right across the room between Marlin and his two hirelings, it would prevent the passage of any crossbow bolts, spears, or hurled darts or axes.
“Don’t you trust me?” he asked them in his best guise of wide-eyed innocence.
“No,” one of them replied bluntly.
“Wise of you,” Marlin commented before he gave the warbling whistle that brought Thirsty swooping down to sting them both.
The paralysis hit them before they could finish cursing, but not before they both crashed to a Stormserpent rug that had seen much better days.
Marlin strolled to a handy table, leisurely divested himself of the chalice and his sword belt, then removed a few rings from his fingers, and daggers from various sheaths up his sleeves and down one boot. Kicking off the boots, he unbuckled his waist belt and let his breeches fall.
Thus metal-free, he strolled through the ward and proceeded to kick the two helpless, paralyzed men into the furnace, one after the other.
Then he turned his back on the cloud of sparks swirling up, walked back through the ward, and took up the chalice to gaze at it admiringly.
Thirsty returned to his shoulder, rubbing affectionately against his cheek and neck, and he stroked it as he smiled at the chalice.
He must remember to let the stirge drink deep before the night was out. That fat she-dumpling of a cook he’d seen helping out in the kitchens, perhaps? Or should he hire someone and quell fears about the household for a while?
Ah, decisions, decisions …
He gazed at the Wyverntongue Chalice and let himself gloat. Yes, the night had been a triumph, to be sure.
So inside this large and elegant old metal cup was all that was left of an adventurer who’d once been among the most powerful in all the Realms. A hundred and fifty summers earlier, more or less, it had all come to a sudden end for the Nine, when Laeral Silverhand-later the Lady Mage of Waterdeep, alongside the infamous Blackstaff, Khelben Arunsun-had been possessed by the Crown of Horns. A god, or what was left of one.
And the Flying Blade held another of the Nine.
Thanks to much coin spent on various adventuring bands far less accomplished than the Nine-adventurers who were all since dead, thanks to more Stormserpent coin-Marlin knew how to command a blueflame ghost.
And knew where there was a warded spellcasting chamber in which he could test his control over said ghosts, without even Ganrahast detecting what he was up to.
Moreover, until Lothrae produced two ghosts of his own, a certain Marlin Stormserpent was free to proceed with his own, ahem, “dastardly plots.”
He chuckled, watching the ward-visible again, as it died-flicker and start to fail as the belt that it was grounded in started to melt. Hot places, furnaces.
Then he turned, hefting the chalice lovingly in his hand, and started the long walk through Stormserpent Towers to get the Flying Blade.
Through one of the many tall windows that he passed, the first glimmerings of dawn were lightening the last failing gloom of the night.
A new day was coming, and it was high time for the fun to begin.
“Ambition has felled so many, young Stormserpent,” Manshoon purred. “It has even humbled Fzoul of the Too Many Gods and the strutting, preening Chosen of Mystra, Elminster of Shadowdale not least among them. I’ve tripped over my own ambitions a time or two, myself. Have a care now, King Marlin, Secret Lord of Westgate or whatever you strive to first become, that ambition not cause your swift and premature fall. Oh, no. I need you to last until I deem you expendable.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
NOTHING TO LAUGH AT, AT ALL
Amarune came awake quickly, her mind singing with alarm. There it was again, and definitely not in her dreams. Another stealthy sound. Nearby.
She’d fallen asleep at her scribbling, head down on the litter of papers on her desk. No ink all over her cheek this time; that was one good thing. All was dark. Her little candle lamp-only a stub to begin with-had guttered out.
So where-?
Ah, there it was yet again. That time, despite the pitch darkness all around, she knew where it was coming from and what it was.
Someone was using the blade of a knife to try to force open her shutters.
Very quietly.
“That won’t work,” she announced calmly, moving as soundlessly as she could from wh
ere she’d spoken to stand at one side of the closed shutters, the spear from under her bed ready in her hand.
“Got you awake, didn’t it?” a rough and familiar voice replied calmly from the night outside the window. “I’ve work for you, Rune. It’s Ruthgul, if you haven’t marked my dulcet tones yet. I’m alone.”
“What sort of work?”
Thieves in the city who weren’t careful didn’t live long enough to accumulate hard-bitten pasts.
Not that thievery didn’t run in her blood, if skill at thievery could run in the blood. Most tales insisted she’d been the daughter of the legendary Old Mage of Shadowdale, Elminster.
“Need a false contract signed,” Ruthgul growled, breaking into her thoughts-and just why had she been thinking about that, anyway? Ye gods, what nex-
“Copy a signing I’ve brought, onto it,” he added. “Match the ink close, if you can.”
Amarune made a sound that was half a sigh and half a chuckle, undid the catches on her shutters, and unhooded the faint, cracked glowstone fragment that lived on the table beside the window. Its light was barely brighter than the darkness, and no wonder; it had been broken when she’d stolen it, and that had been long, long before.
In the days when she’d had far more coins than she did at the moment, but cared nothing for how many days more she might live to spend them in.
She shook that thought aside and lifted the iron bars that held the shutters closed.
“In,” she commanded, the pull cords of her two ready crossbows in her hand. Ruthgul had always been honest with her, but his first lie might well be her last surprise, as the saying went.
The scarred and grizzled old man outside handed her his knife, hilt first, then held out empty hands for her inspection. She caught hold of one and hauled him half into the room, then stopped, pinning him across the sill, to make sure he was alone and not readying some hidden weapon.
The knotted cord he’d climbed swung freely in the night air outside; she could see there was no other weight on it. Nor, so far as she could see, was anyone lurking above-and Ruthgul always worked alone. Nearby rooftops seemed empty of lurking figures, and every window she could see was dark and tightly shuttered, as was both prudent and usual.
