by Ed Greenwood
“So you presume to sit in judgment of the Dragon Throne? To decide for yourself if you’ll obey us?”
El faced him squarely. “I do. Most folk, even if they see a looming danger, do nothing. A problem for someone else to deal with, they tell themselves. They make excuses or shut it out of their minds or keep busy with the everyday things in their lives. So they do nothing. I don’t.”
“Making you, in my eyes, a rebel or at the very least an outlaw.”
“Ah, another of those lawkeepers who decides on guilt without bothering with the little inconvenience of a trial or looking beyond first impressions or any of that. So tiresome, aye?”
“You mock me, old man. I say again, you stand in Cormyr and are subject to my authority, and I—”
“Nay. Not even the lowliest Cormyrean is subject to thine authority. If ye’d said ‘our authority,’ bothering to include the good knight who stands beside ye—”
“Enough bandying words. You dare not use your magic, I’m told, so you’ll surrender to us now or we’ll kill you.”
“And how ‘lawful’ is that, young Ironstone?”
The war wizard smiled thinly. “You can stand where you are; you can advance, and so fall within reach of Sir Hawkblade’s sword; or you can flee, giving me the right to kill a fugitive seeking to escape our custody.”
“I see. Victory at all costs.”
Ironstone shrugged. “Nothing matters in a fight—except winning.”
Elminster’s eyes were cold and steady on him, blue blazing up among the gray. “Oh? If nothing matters, lad, there’s nothing worth fighting for.”
“I tire of this,” the war wizard snapped. “Hawkblade, take him!”
El promptly flung the something in his right hand into Ironstone’s face. It exploded in a little burst of black powder that sent the mage sobbing to the floor in a frenzy of agonized helplessness, clawing at his face as he tried to gargle and shriek through his weeping.
“Black pepper!” the highknight snarled, snatching out and hurling a dagger at Elminster’s throat. “You won’t catch me with old Harper tricks!”
He sprang forward, his sword singing out of its scabbard—as Elminster plucked the thrown knife out of the air, whirled, and flung it hard into the throat of a second wizard of war, who was stealing cautiously up behind the Old Mage with a wand held ready. It struck pommel first, stunning the young newcomer into a wheezing inability to breathe. He toppled to the passage floor, clutching his throat.
Elminster kept on turning, coming round to face Hawkblade again in time to duck his left hand just under the sweep of the knight’s reaching sword—and almost delicately lob the something in his left hand up into the highknight’s face.
It burst with the same instantaneous ease as the pepper bomb, but its effects were very different. A sudden, blinding blaze made Hawkblade shriek and warmed Elminster’s face as he ducked aside, eyes shut tight against the short but brilliant explosion. He kept on going until he fetched up against the passage wall. Then he turned and opened his eyes to survey the ruin he’d caused.
Two young fools of wizards of war writhed on the floor, fighting just to breathe, Ironstone’s blinded face wet with streaming tears. Hawkblade—just as blind and in far more pain from the dazzle powder, to boot—was slashing the air with desperate, brutal savagery. He was also turning toward the sounds El had made coming up against the wall, so Elminster lost no time in ducking down to pluck Ironstone’s handy dagger from its belt sheath in case he needed something to parry with.
It was a nice toy—enchanted to glow upon command, and so could buy him one hurled spell this side of insanity—and he smiled at it as he hastened on into the palace.
Behind him, Hawkblade tripped over the third member of the foreguard, the wizard who’d held the wand—ah, and that useful thing should be retrieved, too!—and crashed headlong to the floor, hacking so hard behind himself as he went down that sparks rang from the stones.
Elminster turned to look for the wand—and another dagger came whirling out of the darkness to strike and rebound off the one he’d just purloined, so hard that it numbed his fingers and made a sound like a bell.
“Hold, intruder!”
That new voice belonged to another highknight—or at least a knight—at the head of four or five heavily armored fellows. They had another wizard of war with them, too. Safely at the back of the group, of course.
Elminster sighed. If he turned back, they’d have the gods alone knew what sort of guards and traps and wards waiting to greet him, the next time he tried.
The knights rushed forward, swords out and spreading out as they came. A telltale glow moved with them, a starlight sheen in the darkness that warned any mage they were magically protected.
El sighed again. If, that is, there was a next time.
One spell would have to do it, then he’d be scrabbling in his pouches for the last few Harper tricks. If he was still alive enough to do anything.
“Hold, men of Cormyr! Down steel, all! Wizards of war, stay your spells! This is a royal command!”
That voice was as hard as swung steel and as cold as the winter wind, and it came from behind the highknights, who swung their heads around to see whence those orders had come.
A pale glow lit the darkness of the cellars, a cold and flickering halo around a striding woman in full plate armor. Helmless and wild-haired she came, with eyes like two dark flames and arms flung wide.
The Steel Regent, looking for all the realm like her huge portrait in the Hall of Approach before the Throne Chamber; Princess Alusair Obarskyr, as she’d been in the prime of her life, long before.
She was dead, of course—must be—and a moment later the knights realized they could see through her in places, as she strode toward them.
“ ’Tis a trick!” one of them snarled. “A false seeming, cast by yon villain!” He pointed one gauntleted finger at Elminster and turned to resume his charge at the old man.
“Highknight Morlen Askalan,” the princess snapped, still striding hard and fast, “are you loyal to the Dragon Throne or not? You heard me! Throw down your weapon, and stand where you are!”
“You’re a ghost or a spell cast by this enemy mage!” the knight growled, waving his sword at her. “My oath is to the king!”
“Do none of you know me?” the apparition demanded, striding among them. A highknight swung his sword through her; it passed through her arm and breast as if through empty air, earning him only her scowl.
“You’re Alusair, you are,” another knight muttered. “Bedder of nobles, war-leader of the realm, fiery daughter of the Purple Dragon himself.”
“And you’re a ghost,” Highknight Askalan repeated. “You wander the haunted wing of the palace, and moan how the realm has fallen since your day!”
Alusair strode right up to him, a bitter smile twisting her lips. Despite himself, Askalan flinched back from her dark gaze.
“My, my,” she remarked. “Overheard and spied upon, as usual—what must a girl do to get a little privacy around here?”
And she strode right through him. In her wake he toppled to the passage floor with a crash, numbed and helpless, sword skittering away across the stones.
Alusair never slowed but stepped right through the weakly struggling Lorton Ironstone—who collapsed onto his face with a sigh and lay still—and walked on to Hawkblade. His struggles, too, ceased, and she dealt with the war wizard who’d come at Elminster from behind, ere she turned back to the thoroughly cowed highknights and said quietly, “I gave an order. Swords down, men. Now.”
One highknight hesitated, and another burst forward to swing his blade at Elminster.
Alusair became a rushing wind that met him half a pace away from the Old Mage and sent him face-first to the floor, white-faced and shivering uncontrollably.
Stepping away from his twitching limbs, she faced the few knights who were left and gave them a glare that lasted until sword after sword was dropped.
When the
clatter of the last one had died, she said, “Sit down here and await the recovery of your fellows. Do not follow the Sage of Shadowdale as he enters Our home, for it is also his home. He is always welcome here.”
She bent her stare upon them until the last knight had sat himself down, then gave Elminster a wry smile.
“Thank ye, lass,” he said quietly, bowing low to her. She held out her hand, and he bent and kissed it, never flinching from the cold that made the nearby watching highknights wince.
Then he rose, waved a hand at her in salute, and turned to trudge on into the undercellars.
“You’re welcome,” Alusair told his back. “Many have defended Cormyr. You, Elminster—more than me; more than my father; more than Vangey, damn him; more than anyone—are the one who’s defended Cormyr against itself.”
CHAPTER
SIX
A CHALICE, MUCH BLOOD, AND A MASKED PRINCESS
I know not why the Open Feast’s held on the score-and-sixth night of Mirtul, lass,” Lord Parespur Bloodbright said testily, jerking at her arm to drag her attention back to him.
Amarune blinked at him, turning only reluctantly away from staring up at the magnificent gilded statues guarding the double doors of Dragontriumph Hall. They were, if she hadn’t lost count of grand staircases, three floors above the street and just about at the south wall of the royal palace.
“It just is,” snarled the young nobleman who’d hired her for the night, “and always has been, since the king was young. So stop asking tomfool questions, and start acting smitten with me. All I want to hear out of you is moans of desire for my manly charms and murmured thanks when I offer you something! You’re being very well paid for this, remember?”
Amarune nodded hastily, gave him a smile, and moaned as requested, lips parted to let every nearby eye in the palace see her tongue. Dropping her eyelids half over her eyes, she purred like a cat, as she often did when leaning forward from the edge of the Dragonriders’ Club stage—and Bloodbright brightened visibly.
“That’s the way of it!” he said delightedly. “Oh, they’ll be so jealous! I can’t wait to see their faces—Delcastle’s, most of all!”
“By my sword!” a splendidly dressed young noble exclaimed delightedly from behind them, striding around to stand in front of Bloodbright and adjusting his monocle as a deft excuse to thrust his nose practically into Amarune’s bosom. “Who is this enchanting creature, Bloodbright? Where’ve you been hiding her?”
“Heh heh,” her patron for the evening replied jovially, swelling up almost visibly as he started to preen. “Now, Reinlake, I can’t be giving away all my secrets. Ladies of taste know what they like, of course, and can’t help but cast their eyes at the most rampant stags, eh, what?”
The two young lords roared out almost identical dirty laughs and dug each other in the ribs like two drunken drovers, as Amarune smiled prettily up into Bloodbright’s face and kept her own countenance serene—and her eyes steady, not rolling—through extreme effort.
She was well aware of many other eyes on her, drinking in her dark beauty. She’d been receiving such stares since back at the palace gates. Not that she wasn’t used to avid looks, and more, throughout most evenings. Amarune knew she had a magnificent figure—more the result of a wasp-thin waist and a sleekly muscled body than the overly lush curves possessed by some of her fellow dancers at the Dragonriders’—and a strikingly beautiful face, thanks to eyes that were larger and darker than most. Add to that her long, swirling fall of dark hair and the graceful, flowing movements she’d worked so hard to make her unwavering habit, and she drew gazes wherever she went.
Even if Bloodbright proved to be a clumsy lover when he inevitably bedded her at the end of this long night, there were far worse ways to earn coin than to spend an evening as the hired arm-adornment of a young noble attending a palace feast. There’d be good food and better wine in her near future, as well as much to see and hear. Not just the splendors of the palace and its new-to-her gossip, but possible clients among the ambitious nobility who’d be attending. A chance to put names to faces, at least, and judge which lords she should “work” for, and which she’d probably prefer to avoid, when they sent their messengers. Only a bold few, such as Bloodbright, made it as far as the Dragonriders’ while out on their evening revelries; most preferred haughtier and more exclusive establishments, and only sent envoys into more common places to do their looking for them.
Still guffawing, Lord Reinlake swept past them into the hall, and Amarune found herself being whirled along in his wake, on Bloodbright’s arm through a chicane of hanging lamps and tapestries into the bright and noisy gaiety of Dragontriumph Hall during an evening court feast.
The Open Feast, she’d been curtly told before Bloodbright had run out of patience, was called that because—out of a tradition so venerable its origins had been forgotten—no royalty attended, so the feasters could speak more freely.
They were certainly doing that. And enthusiastically shouting, singing, and making rude noises and impersonations, too. Not that Bloodbright was going to stand for her stopping long enough to really see or hear any of it yet; he was thirsty and was heading with swift urgency around the long table that dominated the room to a dimly lit archway where a cellarer was shooing servers with platters of tallglasses out into the great chamber like bees leaving a hive. Thirsty guests in the royal palace were not to be kept waiting.
The din in the hall was deafening. A chapbook scribbler like Flarm “Mouth of Suzail” would have described the scene around Amarune right now something like: “Over splendid food in luxurious surroundings, bright young ambitious things mingle with jaded nobles and urbane courtiers, fluted wineglasses in hand, discussing the morrow of Cormyr—and jockeying for power in that future.” Amarune knew that, because those were the very words Flarm had used to describe last year’s Open Feast. Tress had kept that yellowing chapbook and had produced it triumphantly for Amarune’s perusal upon hearing of this night’s work.
What—if Flarm could be trusted—was evidently the usual long feasting table ran like a lance down the length of Dragontriumph Hall, lined with chairs for a formal dinner. That night, however, it was set for “catch table,” where diners helped themselves to platters and moved freely about. She’d talked to some of the girls who’d been to other feasts, and knew that later, once many guests had become weary of drinking and nibbling—or drowsy thanks to overindulgence—the few who preferred to sit and eat more than circulate and talk would be joined by many more in the chairs, but at the moment almost everyone was standing and talking.
And talking.
By the gods, she’d heard shrieking children’s fights that were quieter!
Bloodbright stopped with a smile in front of an elder servant he obviously knew, who was pouring wine from a decanter into tallglasses deftly plucked from a server’s platter and offering them wordlessly to feaster after feaster, accepting dregs and empties in return with practiced and politely silent elegance.
“Fair evening, my lord!” the cellarer smiled and extended that smile with a nod in Amarune’s direction, without making it a leer. “Lady!”
She smiled back at him then looked swiftly and—she hoped—longingly up at her patron, who flushed with pleasure as he took a tallglass and replied. “ ’Tis indeed, Jamaldro! Charsalace, is it? Ah, good, good! A glass for my lady!”
One was put into Amarune’s fingers with a deft flourish, and Bloodbright smilingly propelled her away along the dim rear expanse of the hall, where knots of nobles were standing, drinks in hand, talking excitedly.
He strolled a winding way through them, obviously showing her off. Amarune kept her eyes firmly on him, an expression of ardent worship on her face, but listened hard to the snatches of converse they were passing.
“… oh, it’s haunted, all right! An entire wing of the palace! That’s why they built this new one we’re standing in, see?”
“I heard it was magic raging through it that they couldn’t
stop, that made them shutter yon wing and leave it abandoned—for years, now! Surely we’ve priests enough to end the hauntings in all that time, no matter how many there are!”
“Essard, Essard, you should find one of your servants with kin working at the palace and ply them with drink some night—your worst wine will do—and hear the real tales told around here! They’ve tried priests in plenty! They’ve even reclaimed rooms here and there, for a few months … but again and again they find courtiers and war wizards lying dead in its passages!”
Despite herself, despite having heard wilder rumors about the haunted wing of the palace scores of times, Amarune trembled in delicious fear.
The whole palace knew the Princess Alusair rode the halls of the haunted wing on a spectral horse. In utter silence and in full armor she went, wild-eyed and with a bloody sword in her hand, passing through walls, floors, ceilings—and foolish courtiers—freely. The touch of her sword slew, and her ghostly hand passing through you chilled you to the bone and left you shivering for days. Those she just glared at were haunted by her eyes, seeing her cold gaze again and again in their waking hours thereafter. Why—
Amarune felt a sharp pain just under her ribs. Lord Bloodbright had noticed her head turning away and had pinched her, hard. She looked swiftly back up at him—and found herself meeting an almost murderous glare.
She grimaced a swift and silent apology and hastened to move against him like a roused wanton, grinding against his hip. That restored his smile, but Amarune found herself right beside some old blowhard of a fat merchant in wine-stained velvet who’d evidently decided that this chatter about the Ghost Regent was sorely in need of some supercilious correction.
“You would do well to remember,” he brayed, “that the Princess Alusair is what is popularly known as a tormenting ghost, and shares those shadowed halls with risen-from-their-graves courtiers who now walk as skeletons, decrepit skeletons, and shambling horrors—these last being the same walking dead known in less refined cities, such as Waterdeep, as ‘zombie rotters.’ ”