by Ed Greenwood
King Baerimgrim thrust out a hand suddenly and caught hold of Feldrin’s chin. He pulled, dragging the baron around to face him, and murmured, “I agree to these two conditions, so long as you stand steadfast and no one else dies by your hand, direction, or maneuverings. For your own good, I place one condition upon you, clever Feldrin: when you straighten up from here, look worried—not pleased.”
The king thrust the whispering baron away, and raised a voice that held a quaver of enfeeblement, yet also the snap of command: “Lord Tholone! Attend us here, for the love of Galadorna!”
There was a momentary excited stir—in some corners of the throne room, almost a shout—then breathless silence.
Out of the heart of that waiting, watching stillness Lord Tholone came striding, face a pleasant mask, eyes wary. There was a faint singing in the air around him; his mages had been busy. No doubt daggers would prove futile fangs if thrown his way now or in the near hereafter.
If—given the number of wizards and warriors ready for battle and on edge with excitement—there would be a hereafter for anyone in this room.
The silence was utter as Tholone came to a stop before the Unicorn Throne, separated from the king only by the crimson and gold expanse of the Blood Unicorn banner.
“Kneel,” Baerimgrim said hoarsely, “on the Unicorn.”
There was a collective gasp of indrawn breath; such a bidding could mean only one thing. The king reached to his own head, and slowly—very slowly—did off the crown.
His hands did not tremble in the least as he raised it over Tholone’s bent head—a head that had grown a triumphant, almost maniacal smile—and said, “Let all true Galadornans gathered here bear witness this day, that of my own free will, I name as my rightful heir thi—”
The crack of lightning that burst from the crown at that moment deafened men and hurled them back hard against the paneled walls. Baerimgrim and the Unicorn Throne were split in twain in a blackened, writhing instant, the crown ringing off the riven ceiling. As the blazing limbs of what had been the king slumped down amid the sagging wreckage of the throne, the golden unicorn’s head that surmounted it sobbed aloud.
The court mage looked astonished for the first time, and snatched out a wand as he looked sharply at the painted wooden head … but whatever enchantment had made it speak had fled, and the head was cracking and collapsing into falling splinters.
Ilgrist glanced swiftly around the room. Feldrin was lying lifeless on the floor, his arms two scorched stumps and his face burned away, and Tholone was on his back, clawing feebly at gilding from the smoldering banner that had melted onto his face.
The court mage fired over them, calling forth the fury of the wand in his hand, and a veritable cloud of magic missiles sang and snarled their blue-white death around the room. Not a few of Tholone’s magelings crumpled or slid down the wall, wisps of smoke issuing from their eyes and gaping mouths—then the air was full of curses and swords flashing in the hands of running men.
Fire leaped up in a circle around Ilgrist then, and the wand in his hand spat forth a last trio of magical bolts—they struck at mages who still stood, and one fell—before it crumbled.
The court mage let its ashes trickle from his hand as he looked calmly around the ring of angry armed men and said, “No, Galadorna is too important for me to allow such a mistake. Baerimgrim was a good king and my friend, but … one mistake is all that fells most kings. I trust the rest of you, gentlesirs, w—”
With a roar that shook the room, Belundrar the Bear launched himself through the flames, heedless of the pain, and leaped at Ilgrist.
The wizard coolly took a single step back, raising one hand. The knife in the baron’s grasp, sweeping sidelong at Ilgrist’s throat, struck something that broke it, amid sparks, and sent the Bear’s arm springing back involuntarily, to hurl the hilt into the balconies. The fire that blossomed in the wizard’s hand caught the Bear full in the face, and his roar became a gurgling for the brief instant before his blackened, flaming body crashed face first into the floor.
Ilgrist lifted a fastidious foot to let it slide, blazing, past. “Are there any more heroes here today?” he asked mildly. “I’ve plenty more death in these hands.”
As if that had been a signal, the air filled with hurled daggers and swords, spinning at the court mage from roaring men on all sides—only to ring off an invisible barrier, every last one of them, and fall away.
Ilgrist looked down at the body of Belundrar, which had broken his circle of fire and was busily being burnt in two by its flames, and murmured “Blasted to smoking ruin. A true patriot—and see how much he accomplished, in the end? Come, gentlesirs! Let us have your submission. I shall be the new king of—”
“Never!” Baron Hothal thundered. “I’ll die before I’ll allow su—”
Ilgrist’s mouth crooked. “But of course,” he said.
He made a tiny gesture with two of his fingers, and the air was suddenly full of the twang and hum of crossbows firing, from the throne guard up in the balconies, their faces white and blank, their movements mechanical.
Warriors groaned, clutched vainly at quarrels sprouting in their faces or throats, and fell. Hitherto-concealed crossbows spat an answer from many baronial armsmen around the chamber—and the helmless Hothal, his head transfixed by many bolts, staggered, then toppled onto his side.
Baron Maethor would have tasted as many flying deaths had he not possessed an unseen barrier of his own that kept both hurled daggers and crossbow bolts from him. Many of his unarmored men fell, but others surged forward to drive daggers into the faces of Hothal’s armored guardsmen or raced up balcony stairs to carve out a bloody revenge on Galadorna’s throne guard.
The chamber erupted in a flurry of hacking, stabbing steel, the thunder of armored men running, and screams—all too many screams. There was fresh commotion at two of the throne room doors, as royal soldiers with halberds in their hands elbowed ways into the room—then a bright flash and roar that shook the chamber even more than the lightning had and left dazzled men blinking.
Into the ringing echoes of the blast he’d caused, transforming a score of Baron Hothal’s best knights into so many bloody scraps of armor embedded in riven paneling, the court mage shouted, “All of you—hold! Hold, I say!”
Commoners, throne guards, and the men of Maethor who were left, with their master in their midst, all turned to look at the wizard. The ring of fire around Ilgrist was gone, and the mage was pointing across the chamber, at—
The burned and broken body of Lord Tholone, now struggling jerkily to sit upright, its legs still much-twisted ruin. It turned sightless, despairing eyes to the watching men and worked jaws that had already drooled much blood for some time before trembling lips said the horribly flat and rattling words, “Pay homage to King Ilgrist of Galadorna, as I do.”
Bonelessly the body slumped—an instant before it burst apart in a blast that spattered many of the surviving warriors. One of them snarled, “Magecraft said those words, not Tholone!”
“Oh?” Ilgrist asked softly, as the twisted, blackened crown of Galadorna flew smoothly out of the wreckage into his hand. “And if so, what will you do?”
He straightened the crown with a sudden show of strength, and unseen spell-hands lifted the mantle of court mage from his shoulders. It fell unheeded to the floor as he stepped forward, settled the battered crown upon his brow, and said loudly, “So let all Galadornans kneel before their new king. I shall rule over Galadorna as Nadrathen, a name I’ve known rather longer than ‘Ilgrist.’ Bow down!”
The shocked silence was broken by the rustlings and scrapings of several armsmen going clumsily to their knees. One or two of Maethor’s men knelt; one was promptly knifed from behind by one of his fellows and fell on his face with a gurgling cry.
King Nadrathen regarded the knot of richly garbed men with a gentle smile and said to their midst, “Well, Maethor? Shall Galadorna lose all of its barons this day?”
There
was a rustling from behind him. Nadrathen turned and stepped back in the same motion, protective magics plucking his feet from the floor, to drift gently down a good pace back—and stare in open-mouthed surprise.
The mantle of the Court Mage of Galadorna, let fall by Nadrathen scant moments ago, was rising from the floor again, to hang upright as though a rather tall man was wearing it.
As the wondering court watched, a body faded into view within the mantle—a hawk-nosed, raven-haired human wearing nondescript robes and a faint smile. “Nadrathen?” he asked. “Called the Rebel Chosen?”
“King Nadrathen of Galadorna, as it happens,” came the cool reply. “And who might you be? The shade of a court mage past?”
“I am called Elminster—and by the Hand of Azuth and the Mercy of Mystra, I challenge thee to spell duel, here and now, in a circle of my rais—”
“Oh, by all the fallen gods,” Nadrathen sighed, and black flames suddenly exploded out of his hands with a roar, racing in a thick cylinder, like a battering ram, at the newcomer.
“Die, and trouble my coronation no more,” the new king of Galadorna told the sudden inferno of black flames that erupted where his spell had struck. All over the chamber murmuring armsmen were crouching low behind pillars and railings or slipping out doorways, and away.
Black flames howled up to the ceiling—and were gone, snarling up to some lofty otherwhere. The man in the mantle of court mage stood unchanged, save that one eyebrow was now raised in derision. “Ye have some aversion to rules of combat or defensive circles? Or were ye in some haste to remodel this part of thy castle?”
Nadrathen cursed—and stone blocks were suddenly raining down all around them, plunging down from empty air to shake the chamber with their thunderous landings. Stone shards sprayed in all directions as the floor shattered; more armsmen fled, shouting in fear.
No stones struck either Nadrathen or Elminster; it was the turn of the Rebel Chosen to lift his brows in surprise.
“You come well shielded,” he granted grudgingly. “Ulmimber—or whatever your name is—do you know what I am?”
“An archmage of accomplished might,” Elminster said softly, “named by Holy Mystra herself as one of her Chosen—and now turned to evil.”
“I did not turn to evil, fool wizard. I am what I have always been; Mystra has known me for what I am from the first.” The king of Galadorna regarded his challenger bleakly, and added, “You know what the outcome of our duel must be?”
El swallowed, started to nod, and then suddenly grinned. “Ye’re going to talk me to death?”
Nadrathen snarled, “Enough! You had your chance, idiot, and now—”
The air above them was suddenly darker and full of a host of ghostly, faceless floating figures, cowled and robed, trailing away to nothingness as they swooped, thrusting cold and spectral blades at the hawk-nosed mage.
As those blades transfixed Elminster, they slid in without gore or resistance … and became dwindling smoke and sparks, taking their wielders with them.
Nadrathen gaped in astonishment. His words, when he could find them, came in a gasp. “You must be a Ch—”
Behind the self-styled king of Galadorna, unseen by either dueling mage, a long-fingered female hand had slid into view, protruding from the still-solid, upright back of the riven Unicorn Throne with blue motes of risen magic dancing around it. Those long, flexing fingers now leveled a deliberate finger at the back of the unwitting Rebel Chosen.
Nadrathen’s eyes widened, bulging for one incredulous moment before all his glistening bones burst together out the front of his body. Behind them as they bounced, a bloody, shapeless mass of flesh slumped to the floor, spattering El’s boots and the throne with gore.
El sprang back, gagging, but the bones and the horrible puddle that had been Nadrathen were already afire, blazing from within. Blue-white, wasted magic swirled above flames of bright silver as men cried out in disgust and fear all over the chamber. El watched a thread of silver rise straight up from those flames to pierce the ceiling and burn onward.
He never saw the sunlight stab down into the throne room from high above; he was staggering back to fall heavily on his knees by then, as magic that was not his own shocked into him, surging throughout his spasming, weeping body.
Baron Maethor swallowed. He dared not approach the man-high conflagration that had been “King” Nadrathen, but this challenger-mage was on his knees blindly vomiting silver flames onto the smoking floor. Galadorna could be free of over-ambitious mages yet.
“Hand me your blade,” he murmured to an aide without looking, extending his hand for it. Just one throw would be enough, if—
A tall, slender feminine figure stepped from behind that conflagration, bare thighs above high black boots flashing through slashes in midnight-black robes. “I think I shall rule Galadorna,” Dasumia said sweetly, blue motes still swirling about one of her hands. “Ascending my throne in this Year of Mistmaidens—this very hour, in fact. And you shall be my seneschal, Elminster of Galadorna. Rise, Court Mage, and bring me the fealty of yon surviving lords and barons—or an internal organ from each; whichever they prefer.”
Nine
GLAD DAYS IN GALADORNA
The wise ruler leaves time among audiences and promenades for receptions of daggers—usually in the royal back.
Ralderick Hallowshaw, Jester
from To Rule A Realm, From Turret To Midden
published circa The Year of the Bloodbird
Dark fire snarled and spat, and the slender elf in dark robes staggered back, groaning. Ilbryn Starym’s three hundredth or so encounter with the wards of dark fire around the Castle of the Lady had not gone well. Her power was still too great, even in her absence … and where by the Trees Everlasting was she, anyway?
He sighed, glared up at the dark, slender towers so high above him in the twilit sky, and—
Was sent almost sprawling by a hard and sudden impact. He whirled to do battle with whatever fell guardian had charged him and found himself staring at the receding boots of one of the two buffoon-mages who were also encamped outside the walls of Dasumia’s fortress.
Beldrune’s excited shout floated back to the furious elf. “Baerast! Hearken!”
Tabarast looked up from a fire that just wouldn’t light, shaking his scorched fingertips, and asked somewhat testily, “What is it now?”
“I was scrying Nethrar,” Beldrune of the Bent Finger panted, “as the dream bid me, and there’s news! The Lady Dasumia has just taken the throne and named the Chosen One as her seneschal. Elminster is Court Mage of Galadorna now!”
Ilbryn stared at the trotting mage’s back for a moment, then broke into a fluid dash that swiftly brought him abreast of Beldrune. He reached up, caught hold of one bobbing shoulder in its fashionable slashed and pleated claret-hued silk, and snapped, “What?”
Spun around to face blazing elven eyes by fingers that felt like talons of steel, Beldrune groaned, “Let go, longears! You’ve fingers like wolf jaws!”
Ilbryn shook him. “What did you say?”
Tabarast fumbled in a belt pouch, dropped a shower of small, sparkling items, and held one up between finger and thumb, muttering something.
A lance of shining nothingness coalesced out of the air and thrust forward, unerring and as swift as leaping lightning. It took Ilbryn right in his ribs, shattering his shielding spell in a cascade of small and wayward cracklings and snatching him off his feet.
He hit the phandar tree with brutal force; ribs snapped like dry kindling crushed in a forester’s fist. Ilbryn sobbed and choked and writhed, fighting for breath, but the spell held him pinned to the trunk. If it had been a real lance, he’d have been cut in two … but that knowledge afforded him scant consolation. Through red mists of pain he glared almost pleadingly at the two human mages.
Tabarast regarded the trapped elf mage almost sorrowfully and shook his head. “The problem with young elves is they’ve got all the arrogance of the older ones, with
nothing to back it up,” he observed. “Now, Beldrune, speak up for the hasty youngling here. What did you say?”
Curthas and Halglond stood very straight and still, their pikes just so, for they knew their master’s turret window overlooked this section of battlements … and that he liked to look out often on moonlit nights and see tranquillity, not the gleam and flash of guards fidgeting at their posts.
They stood guard over one end of the arched bridge that linked the loftiest rooms of the Master’s Tower with the encircling battlements. It was light enough duty. No thief or angry armsman for three realms distant would dare to come calling uninvited on Klandaerlas Glymril, Master of Wyverns. The dragonkin he held in spell-thrall were seldom unleashed; when they did come boiling out of their tower on swift wings, they were apt to be hungry, fearless, and savage of temper.
One guard risked a quick glance along the moonlit wall. The stout tower that imprisoned the wyverns stood, as usual, dark and silent. Like the rest of Glymril Gard, it had been raised by the Master’s spells from the tumbled stones of an ancient keep, here on the end of a ridge that overlooked six towns and the meeting of two rivers.
It was moonlit and gloriously warm this night, even up on the ever-breezy battlements of Glymril Gard, and it was easy to drift into a reverie of other moonlit nights, without armor or guard duties, and—
Curthas stiffened and turned his head. Bells? What could be chiming up here on the battlements at this time of night?
He could see at a glance that the walls were deserted. Halglond was already peering down the walls and into the yards below, in case someone was climbing the walls or coming up the guard stairs. No. Perhaps someone’s escaped falcon, still with its jesses, had perched nearby … but where?
The sound was faint, small—yet very close, not on the ground far below or in one of the towers. What by all the storm-loving gods could it be?
Now it seemed to be right under Halglond’s nose, swirling. He could see a faint, ragged line of mist coiling and snaking in the air. He swept through it with his halberd, and small glowing motes of light gathered for a moment along its curved blade before winking out—like sparks without a fire.