by Ed Greenwood
Yes, mageling, behold my bared charms. I’m your very own Silent Shadow—mask dancer, sometime forger, and busy prostitute.
The daughter of a much-respected and trusted war wizard, too, though Beltar Whitewave had been slain decades earlier in a frontier battle by hire-spells working for Sembian smugglers. Those same smugglers had later knifed her mother and her brother, leaving Amarune kinless in the world. She’d fled Marsember across its rain-slick rooftops that very night, never to return. If she’d waited until morning, she was sure she’d have suffered the same fate.
So, drooling young war wizard, you think I’m for you? Well, if you’ve coins enough in your purse, certainly.
Yet will you ever dare take them out and proffer them? I think not.
Wormling.
As they trotted along a dark passageway, a great crashing clangor of steel striking stone arose, ahead and below, and echoed off vaulted ceilings above them.
“Stormserpent’s snakes meeting with more guards?” Storm asked, turning her shoulders and ducking to crash open a door stuck in its frame from long disuse.
It yielded, sending her staggering.
Alusair was waiting for them, glowing like a coldly amused flame.
“You could say that. They blundered into some suits of empty armor set upon pedestals as adornment, and got buried in old cracked plate for their troubles.”
“Cracked?” the Bard of Shadowdale asked, as the ghost led them out onto another balcony.
“We don’t waste still-serviceable armor in Cormyr,” Alusair replied. “Or didn’t. Things are different in the palace, these days.”
“A lot of things are different, these days,” Elminster muttered. “Is yon lordling going to be allowed to wander these halls all night, without challenge? There are still wizards of war, aren’t there? And Purple Dragons, too? Cormyr still has a few of those?”
“They seldom pay much heed to what goes on in the haunted wing, Old Mage,” the ghostly princess replied.
“So who does guard it?”
Alusair turned to face him, striking a pose that mocked the gestures preferred by flamboyantly foppish nobles. “Me.”
They had been easy coins, but Arclath’s deft rain of them was coming to an end; all three men were visibly weary. They’d downed about half a decanter each, followed by bowls of mulled broth, then sweet iced buns; even Arclath was yawning. The other two were sagging in their seats.
Abruptly they all seemed to realize they were more than half asleep and thrust themselves to their feet, clasping arms and parting. Arclath tossed a generous handful of golden lions onto the table—enough to pay for six men to enjoy five such nights, at first glance—and they were heading for the door. The lordling no doubt for his soft silk mansion bed, and the other two, by their murmured converse, back to the palace to write down some of the concerns and ideas they’d thought of across the table regarding this precious council.
Ignored, Amarune stared thoughtfully after them, holding her last pose. Saers, behold, your very own nude statue. Forgotten and discarded, like all statues, which sooner or later only incontinent birds remem—
At the door, Arclath turned on his heel and looked back.
As it happened, her pose had her standing with her arms outstretched toward him almost imploringly.
He smiled a tired smile and tossed two golden lions at her, high and hard. A good throw even for a wide-awake man.
Amarune broke her pose at the last possible instant to pluck the coins deftly out of the air. Then she bowed to him, waved thanks with the most fluid grace she could manage, whirled, and ran lightly off the stage.
She knew, without looking, that he’d stood and watched until after the swirling curtains had swallowed her.
“Stormserpent’s met with real guards, this time,” Alusair observed with some satisfaction. “Dead ones—mere bones—but they can ply blades well enough. Hearken to the fray.”
“Aye,” Elminster agreed, “They’ll not last long, but they’d probably destroy a few thieves. They’re hacking down yon lordling’s boldblades like harbor rain.”
“So what’s this war wizard trap that will hurl you skyward?” Storm murmured, peering warily ahead.
Elminster shrugged. “The feeling grows within me that we’ll find it soon enough.”
Amarune yawned again, uncontrollably. Dances as long as tonight’s were always tiring, and the hot soaking bath she liked to follow them with, to keep from stiffening up on the walk home, always made her sleepy.
Then there was the walk itself and the long climb up the stairs to her lodgings at the end of it … yes, she was more than ready for sleep.
Yet it was one of those nights—the times when she found herself prowling wearily around her few cramped, dingy, rented rooms, mind too awake and excited for slumber. The council and all those nobles descending on the city, with their bodyguards and dressers and scores of other servants—what would such visitors who found their ways to the Dragonriders’ find most alluring?
Well, the unobtainable, of course. If they were nobles, that meant coupling with a willing, hitherto-unknown Obarskyr princess, of course, but she couldn’t give them that.
Or could she?
Hugging her thick, much-patched old nightrobe around herself, Amarune stared at herself in the mirror. Dark eyes stared back in smoldering challenge.
She blew herself a kiss, stone-faced, almost insolent in her inscrutability.
She was—tell truth, lass, and shame the Dragon—the best mask dancer in Suzail.
Yes, it just might work.
She’d fool no one, of course, and it’d be death to even try any sort of Obarskyr-kin claim—but she could tease …
The Princess in the Mask, she could be, hungering after the right dragon to warm her throne. Yes …
She bent to her littered desk in sudden urgency, snatched a bit of reed-weave paper out of her heap of salvaged scraps, plucked up her quill, and started scribbling. Sometimes ideas came pelting down harder than harbor rain …
CHAPTER
ELEVEN
TEMPTATIONS FOR MANY
Elminster gave the undead Steel Regent of Cormyr a long, hard look. “I thought I knew these halls. Evidently not.”
Not surprisingly, Alusair’s answering smile was thin and ghostly. “Evidently not.”
That was all she said, so after waiting vainly for more, El sighed and asked, “So just how many whirlbone traps don’t I know about?”
Alusair shrugged. “Six, perhaps seven. I could be more precise if I knew just how many secrets of my family you know about.” She held up a hand to forestall his reply and added, “I speak now of palace architecture only, not long-hidden heirs, bastards, scandals, and proverbial skeletons in wardrobes. We’d be here a tenday or more, I’m sure, if you started in on those.”
Elminster nodded. “At least. Well, then—”
Alusair flung up both her hand and her sword in urgent unison, whirled, and was gone, leaving behind the whisper: “He’s done something. The skeletons are down and done. Our Stormserpent continues to surprise. I must see.”
“Go, then,” Elminster murmured. “My time for flying and hurrying isn’t upon us yet.”
Not for the first time, he spoke to empty air. Much to Alusair’s displeasure, Elminster trudged along no more swiftly than before Storm had been at his side.
The two former Chosen walked patiently, trusting in the young noble’s men needing some time to plunder once they found what they were seeking. That did not suit the ghost’s patience—or lack of it—at all.
The passage they were traversing ran on into unseen gloomy distances, but Elminster suddenly stopped at a stretch that looked the same as the rest of it and flung out one hand to halt Storm. Then he touched a certain stone in the wall beside him with the other.
With the briefest of stony grating sounds, a section of wall slid inward, revealing the edges of a door-sized opening. El shoved on that moving door of stones—and they pivoted aside in unison, to reveal a d
ark passage beyond.
Storm rolled her eyes. “Are you still finding them? The early Obarskyrs must have been suspicious of everyone in all the Realms!”
“Now, now, lass; they probably told Baerauble to see to the making of some secret passages, and he did his usual thoroughly overefficient job of it: thrice as many passages as needed, plus a more secret passage for exclusively royal use, not to mention an utterly secret passage for his own use—to spy on both the royal passage and the secret way that had been ordered for mere palace courtiers to trot along.”
Storm regarded him with some amusement. “So he was as devious as you? I can scarce believe it! Fancy a wizard being sly!”
“Behave, stormy one,” he told her fondly.
Startled, Storm fell silent. He hadn’t addressed her by that term for centuries.
They padded along the new passage in companionable silence for some time ere once more starting to murmur to each other—low-voiced and often, as was their wont. They rarely mentioned Alassra. Instead, El spoke of items that held blueflame ghosts, items of real power, and the possibilities of seizing them to restore shattered minds. Which of course meant just one person who mattered to them both.
When he was done recounting snatches of blueflame ghost lore, El looked to Storm, seeking her willing agreement for such hunts.
She shrugged. “Why not? We’re losing her.”
“Hardly words of ringing eagerness,” he murmured.
Storm sighed. “We’ve run out of easily snatched magic items, and those who guard what’s left are watching and waiting for us. Our luck can’t hold forever, and our skills are failing us.”
“Well, there’s always the possibility of recruiting someone suitable to do the snatching for us.”
Storm regarded him soberly, knowing what was coming. “A blood descendant,” she said flatly. “And you have at least one young, vigorous, nearby, and quite likely suitable candidate in mind: Amarune Whitewave.”
At his nod, she frowned. “Just how much does she know of her heritage?”
Elminster spread his hands. “She’s heard that her father’s father’s mother, Narnra, was said to be the daughter of the notorious Elminster, but she considers such talk mere wild legend. One claim among so many others, in the small army of women reputed to have been fathered by everyone’s favorite Old Mage.”
Storm smiled thinly. “You were busy, weren’t you?”
El sighed. “So rumor has it. Now, if rumor could just turn its mighty power to making me again a worlds-striding, peerless-in-Art Chosen of Mystra, once more young, hearty-strong, and a dallier with, say, a slim hundredth of the women I’m supposed to have, ah, entertained …”
“You’d have that army and several more besides.”
El gave her a wry grin, sighed heavily … and said no more.
In companionable silence, they walked on along lightless passages for what seemed a very long time.
Until it was Storm’s turn to sigh. “This Amarune is going to be a temptation for you.”
“Aye,” Elminster muttered. “Try not to remind me.”
“For one who knows how and has the spell, taking over bodies is so stlarning easy,” Storm added.
El nodded. “And finding more magic around these halls that Alassra can subsume is getting harder. Pretending to inspect every crumbling inch of this palace only yields so many forgotten, free-for-the-taking baubles. The Crown of Cormyr quite reasonably wants to keep its crowns and such.”
“So right now …”
“Right now,” Elminster almost snarled, “our most pressing need is to stop young Stormserpent from getting any of these ghosts of the Nine. Our second need is to get those items ourselves. Our third is to recruit Amarune—without attracting the attention of whomever has been spying on us.”
“The ever-vigilant wizards of war?”
“No, not those particular everpresent annoyances, this time. Someone else. Someone who hides behind Cormyr’s spying mages, looking our way only fleetingly. Someone whose magic is much more powerful than theirs.”
Storm stopped abruptly to stare at him.
“Someone whose magic is likely stronger than mine, too,” Elminster added grimly.
She blinked. “Do—do you have any idea who it is?”
Elminster made a rude sound. “If I did, d’ye think I’d be chasing around this palace after silly young nobles?”
Whatever reply Storm Silverhand might have made was lost then, as the spell-glow those voices were coming out of flared into wildness.
And fell silent, to hang in midair in the heart of a huge room’s chill darkness, flickering fitfully.
“Back into a ward that resists my spells yet, the pair of them,” a cold voice sighed. “Yet those wards grow steadily fewer. Soon, old foe, there will be none left to you—and the time of my triumph will come at last.”
As if in reply, the glow spat sparks. Then it faded, dwindling swiftly to … nothing.
Hmmph. Strong wards indeed.
“For centuries before I did,” the cold voice added, “others said Elminster must die. They were right, and more than right. Old foe, you should have been swept from the fair face of Faerûn long ago.”
The owner of that cold voice drifted across the vast chamber. “I should have done it myself, before you served me the same way so often. You thought you’d slain me for good, no doubt—but, as in so many other things, you were wrong. And even clever old archmages who consort with goddesses pay the price for their errors in the end. As you shall pay mine. Soon.”
A pincer-ended tentacle drew open a door, and the owner of that dark and sleekly deadly appendage drifted through the revealed archway, its eyes turning on agile stalks to peer warily this way and that into the darkness as its other tentacles arched and coiled almost lazily around it.
There were no intruders to be seen. Good.
These ancient spellcasting chambers, deep in the oldest part of the royal palace, were warded more heavily than the mightiest fortress the tentacled one had ever seen or helped enspell. They were never used these days, and no scrying but his own should be able to worm a way through all their interwoven layers of shielding—but Bane take all, the young and incompetent fools who now strutted Cormyr as its wizards of war were apt to blunder into every nook and corner out of sheer doltish curiosity …
Well, not there. Not yet.
“Soon, you’ll pay,” the floating, many-tentacled thing repeated firmly, rising up so its tentacles could hang at ease rather than trailing along the floor. “Soon. And forever.”
A glow flared ahead. The cold-voiced owner of the tentacles snarled in sudden satisfaction then departed that body for his own, slumped waiting in a grand old chair.
It shuddered all over as he returned, then it lurched to its feet and set about weaving and hurling a spell with deft speed, ending the spell with but one cruelly whispered word, “Dance.”
“Dance,” the empty air whispered—and the ghost of the Princess Alusair arched her back in midair, writhing in agony. The shriek that burst out of her was high and shrill.
Right in front of her, eerie light had flared into being without warning, magic where there had never been magic before.
It lashed through her, clawing and slicing and searing ruthlessly before it faded. In its wake, she faded toward the floor, moaning softly, little more than a flickering, shapeless wisp …
“What—what’s wrong?” Storm snapped as Elminster suddenly stumbled against the passage wall then slid limply down it.
“Alusair,” he gasped, turning a sweat-glistening face up to her. “Something ill has befallen her. She screamed.”
“Is she—?”
“Dead? As in, released from undeath? Destroyed and gone? I … think not.”
He shook his head grimly as she helped him to his feet, and muttered, “The surge of magic was very strong.”
Storm tapped her head. “In here, it’s been getting much worse,” she told him bitterly. “I rarely feel su
rges at all, anymore. For me, the Art is almost gone.”
Elminster gave her a look. It was a long time before he whispered, “For me, ’tis a warm, seething treasure within me, a waiting, beckoning pit I hunger to plunge into, as easily and as often as I used to. Power I ache to wield, no matter how witless it leaves me.”
He drew in a deep breath then blurted, “I need ye. To hold my mind together whenever I slake myself in the Art. We’re a team, the two of us together an archwizard formidable enough to face down most foes.” He put his arm around her. “Together, lass. Together we’ll guard the Realms yet.”
Storm’s eyes shone as she smiled. “And if it refuses to be guarded, El? What then?”
“Then we tame it and teach it, until ’tis willing!”
“Well, now!” snapped a harsh young voice out of the darkness. “Impressive words indeed! A pity they’ll be your last!”
Elminster and Storm had no time to roll their eyes and groan at how many times they’d heard such gloatings before.
They were too busy screaming in pain as the passage around them exploded in roaring emerald flames that flung them away like helpless scraps of rag.
“There’s no way in the world they could have survived that,” a somewhat shaken male voice offered into the smoke-reeking darkness.
Up and down the passage there was a restless din of groanings and crackings; stones cooling and complaining about it. Here and there louder crashes could be heard, as blocks of stone fell from their places to shatter on the floor below.
“Lord Ganrahast is seldom mistaken in his judgments,” the harsh young voice observed, a little smugly.
“I’d be happier if I could clearly see the Sage of Shadowdale lying dead at my feet and know there was no way he could rise again to face me. Ever,” a third voice observed.
“Oh, don’t be such a coward, Mreldrake.”
“I don’t think I much care for those words of yours, Rendarth,” Mreldrake replied stiffly. “You didn’t face him and his mad Witch-Queen out in the wilds. I did.”