by Ed Greenwood
All around where he was sitting loomed huge stone Obarskyr sarcophagi, where dead kings, queens, princes, and princesses of Cormyr crumbled slowly and silently into dust. The magic in this place lay like heavy armor, deadening his senses to all but the strongest disturbances but hiding him very effectively from any war wizard who might seek to lessen the task of all those diligent Purple Dragons by casting the right sort of seeking spell.
Someone among these latter-day wizards of war must know the right sort of seeking spell or how to look it up in an old grimoire. If they read anything at all, anymore …
It happened again, a surge in the magic within and around him that was like a great silent shout, sending him wincing and shuddering back against the nearest stone coffin.
A powerful unleashing … but what?
There had been a time when he could have walked within a day’s ride of Suzail and would have known in an instant precisely what had been done, when anything that powerful disturbed the Weave. Aye, there had been a time …
“I can’t save the Realms anymore,” he whispered into the gloom. “Not alone.”
Sudden tears made the glows around him swim and slide. “I can’t even protect Cormyr, stlarn it! The ghosts of the Nine could, aye, if properly commanded—but I need them to heal Alassra. So which will it be? The land? Or my lady?”
The silent darkness offered no answer, and Elminster was damned and blasted if he could decide on one just then.
He couldn’t sit and hide there any longer; he had to think. To do that, he needed room to walk and pretend he was still smoking his old pipe and … and to stop pretending about a lot of things.
The dead around him were dust, their days done, and so were his. He just hadn’t had the good sense to die yet and leave all his cares and causes behind, hand the endless fight on to someone else young and vigorous and having even the slightest hope of winning some new vict—
Aye, that was it, right there. Hope.
That was the rarest treasure for him, these days. Fading, forlorn hope. Hope that his Alassra could be herself again, hope that … that …
Oh, for the love of Mystra, he had to get out of there!
In a whirlwind of lurching haste he was out of the crypt and hurrying along dark and deserted passages, moving more from memory than by sight, heading for the nearest way out of the palace and into the night air.
He had to … had to … what was he going to do?
Wheezing, he climbed a stair, coming out onto another level that was thankfully dark and empty. Well, and so it should be: if he’d been commanding the wizards and soldiers of this place, he’d have had many more pressing matters to deal with than some old man who might or might not be a thief!
Mayhap they had nothing else at all to worry their heads over, but somehow he could scarce believe that. That they might choose not to see some looming crisis or other, before it lifted its fanged head in their faces and bit them, that he could believe, oh aye, and—
At the head of the next stair, he walked straight into a man rushing past.
A man in robes who staggered and cursed, turned, stared, and snarled, “You!”
Smiles of the gods, it was Wizard of War Rorskryn Mreldrake!
“My pleasure,” Elminster assured him firmly, lunging forward to where he could trip the younger man off balance.
He did so, leaving Mreldrake winded and staggering—then knocked him cold with an elbow up under his jaw before the war wizard could think of some suitably nasty spell to cast.
Elminster guided the senseless Mreldrake in a long, loose-limbed sag down the wall to the floor, relieved him of a certain formidable scepter, then hastily departed that passage, breathing hard. He was obviously out of practice at stealing out of palaces.
But then, he was out of practice at a lot of things.
“Amarune!” Arclath called, kicking, punching, and hacking at downed and furiously struggling men before they could clamber back to their feet. “To me! Back-to-back—we’ll make a stand!”
Those words were still coming out of his mouth when something long and shapely hurtled past his left shoulder. It was Amarune, feet first—slamming into Windstag’s chest and bearing him back off the stage, staring and agape, arms and legs splayed out comically.
He struck the floor below with a crash that shook the club from end to end and left Windstag stunned and winded, his limbs jouncing as limply as a cloth doll’s. Amarune sprang up from atop him and raced off down the room, leaving Arclath alone and surrounded on the stage.
He leaped after her, landing on the littered floor at a hard run, sprinting for the distant street doors with more than a dozen men after him. Bare and beautiful, the long-legged dancer vaulted the bar ahead and vanished from view behind it.
Why hadn’t she made for the doors? Was there a cellar way out? Or a strong-cellar below that she could barricade herself in? Was—
Amarune bobbed back up again, face set in a snarl of anger, and started hurling bottles hard and accurately at noble and bodyguard faces alike. Arclath ducked low, staggering but not slowing, but needn’t have bothered; none of them came spinning his way.
He saw a man go down behind a wild spray of wine, and another man’s head snap back as a hard-thrown bottle caromed off it … and then they all seemed to forget Arclath and charged at the bar, roaring for her blood.
The dancer kept right on throwing as they came, bright anger on her face. Five men down, six … then the foremost were at the bar and hacking at it wildly with their blades, trying to drive her back so they could clamber over it, and—
A door slammed open not far from the bar, and Tress came storming into the room with the mustered Dragonriders’ staff right behind her, a motley array of improvised weapons in their hands. A swift breath later, the street doors beside the bar burst open to let hard-faced Purple Dragons pour into the room with their swords drawn.
“A rescue! A rescue!” Amarune shouted, pointing straight at Dawntard and Sornstern. “Yon three nobles just felled a palace messenger and tried to kill Lord Delcastle!”
Tress brought the Dragonriders’ staff to a hasty halt. The bodyguards and hangers-on were slower to stop but soon faltered under the cold glares of advancing Purple Dragons.
Back by the stage, three bodyguards were helping a groaning, groggy Windstag to his feet, his arms about their shoulders.
“Which three nobles?” the patrol swordcaptain snapped at Amarune.
She pointed. When her finger reached Kathkote Dawntard, he sneered, “Hah! The word of some lewd dancing wench against the sworn testimony of lords of the realm?”
“I, too, am a lord of the realm,” Arclath Delcastle snapped, “and my words will support every one of hers against you.”
“Ah, but there’s just one of you, and these lying low-life riffraff who will, of course utter any falsehood against a noble, against three of us,” Dawntard jeered, pointing rather unsteadily at Delasko Sornstern and the staggering Broryn Windstag.
The Purple Dragon swordcaptain had heard enough. “Him senseless and you so drunk you can barely stand? I think we’ll be needing our wizards of war to peer into your minds before I believe you!”
Dawntard paled and raised his sword threateningly. The Dragon officer gestured disgustedly to one of his men, who had stolen around to stand behind Dawntard. The soldier obediently and efficiently used the pommel of his belt dagger to club the sneering noble to the ground.
“Saer Swordcaptain, I’m ready to freely answer all questions,” Arclath offered affably, shooting Windstag a stare of challenge.
“Uh, urh … so am I,” that noble said sullenly. “We … we were drunk, is the truth of it.” He looked around, wincing at all the blood among the sprawled bodies, and added reluctantly, “The House of Windstag will make amends for all of this, Swordcaptain. We were in the wrong.”
Then he gave Arclath a long and murderous look.
The Purple Dragon officer wagged a finger. “I saw that, O most noble heir of W
indstag. Should anything befall Lord Delcastle, I’ll know who to set the wizards to questioning.”
Windstag’s reply was short, emphatic, and extremely rude.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-TWO
HANDS CLASPED OVER A DECANTER
The two door guards were enthusiastically discussing their chances with the prettiest of the junior chambermaids when the bent old man in ragged clothes shuffled between them, gave them both a pleasant nod, and stepped out of the palace into the night.
The younger guard stiffened, but his older companion—after a swift, craning look that told him the departing man was empty-handed—nodded back and said affably, “The gods grant ye a fair night and a pleasant one.”
The reply to that was a silent, smiling wave, ere the old man trudged off, bent over and moving none too swiftly.
“You just let him go!” the younger guard hissed then. “That was this Rhauligan we’re supposed to—”
“Supposed to promptly usher out of the palace if we see him,” the older guard growled. “And that’s just what we did. Aye?”
The bent figure dwindled into the distance down the well-lit promenade.
“It … it doesn’t feel right, what we did,” the younger guard protested as the old man vanished from sight somewhere in the night gloom.
“What doesn’t feel right is some of these overly hasty and bullying orders our younger war wizards are all too fond of giving,” the older one replied heavily. “A little too eager to command, they are, and a lot too lazy to think through consequences before they open their mouths. Some of them need to get their fingers burned and learn a little wisdom. Hopefully, before this council dumps some real trouble into their laps.”
“You think it’ll go ill, then?”
The veteran Purple Dragon’s answer took the form of a long, meaningful look.
Both Dragons might have felt rather differently if they’d been able to see old Elgorn Rhauligan at that moment. He’d straightened up and was striding along far faster and more steadily than when he’d shuffled his way between them.
Elminster was in a hurry as he headed into the heart of the city.
“H-here,” Belgryn Murenstur said in a rush, turning to face the two burning men and hastily backing away, even as he indicated the carved hanging sign of the woman poised on a forest rock with bent bow above the heads of many snapping wolves. “The Bold Archer!”
“Thank ye, goodman,” the shorter of the two replied. “Strangely enough, reading plain Common is something we can manage for ourselves.”
The taller man made a swift movement toward Belgryn, but his companion shook his head. “We need to leave one witness, Treth.”
He looked back at Belgryn. “Go in and see if Huntcrown’s still in there. Warn him—or anyone—that we’re here, and ye will die. Very slowly.”
“We’ll slice off thy tongue first,” the taller man murmured almost gently. “Then thy nose. Then one thumb, and then the other …”
“Enough, Treth. He’s starting to shake,” the shorter man interrupted—and lunged forward to slap Belgryn across the face so hard that the proprietor of Murenstur’s Imported Vintages banged his head on the front wall of the club, lost his breath, and ended up blinking dazedly into the man’s wide, endless smile.
“Just go inside, see if Huntcrown’s in there, and come right back out and tell us so. Through this door, not some other way, or Treth will begin his little surgeries the moment we find ye. Which won’t be long.”
The presence inside him rose up to fill him with dark confidence, and Belgryn found himself nodding furiously and rushing almost eagerly inside the Bold Archer.
In the space of three swiftly gulped breaths, he was back out again, eyes wide with terror. All his dark confidence, wherever it had come from, was gone.
“Y-yes,” he stammered. “He’s the one in the jerkin with the horned shoulders and black musterdelvys with white luster-stars all down it. Fair hair, green eyes, sharpish nose. H-has at least six bodyguards with him.”
Those fierce smiles never wavered. “Good,” the taller man wreathed in blue flames rumbled. “I’ve never liked bodyguards.”
“There—,” Belgryn started to blurt then fell silent.
“Yes?” the shorter burning man asked silkily.
“There … there are a lot of other nobles in there, saers, and all of them have bodyguards.”
“Thy concern,” the taller man told Belgryn, “is touching. Live, then, man.”
He clapped Belgryn on the shoulder—a light, brief touch that scorched nothing but left the wine merchant chilled to the bone and shivering uncontrollably—and strode past into the Bold Archer.
The other man in flames waved to Belgryn and hastened into the club on the heels of his blazing companion.
Belgryn knew he should run away, far and fast. When he could master his trembling enough to keep his feet, he dashed as far as the other side of the street, where his reeling made him bounce hard off the wall of a shuttered-for-the-night bakery. Panting, he turned as something made him stop and turn to look back at the Archer.
Faint shouts came through the club’s doors—an inner and an outer pair, of heavy, copper-sheathed duskwood—followed by the unmistakable ring of steel, of swords crossed in anger. There came a scream, some crashes, and more clangs of clashing blades.
Then the doors banged open and richly dressed men were streaming out, white-faced and frantic, clawing at each other to find freedom enough to flee into the night. The tall, blue-flame-shrouded warrior came bounding along in their wake, lunging and slashing. Men were screaming and choking and falling on their faces as he killed them, never slowing as he raced on down the street after some of those who’d fled, as fast as a storm wind, catching men up and butchering them viciously, all the way.
By then, Belgryn Murenstur was almost too busy spewing out everything he’d downed earlier in the evening all over the nearest wall to see the sea of blood and heaped bodies that was briefly visible through the doors of the Archer, ere they swung closed again.
Almost.
Arclath and Amarune stared rather wearily at each other across the table. Around them, Tress was bustling about, firmly directing her staff in the ongoing cleanup of the Dragonriders’ Club, which by Dragons’ orders was shuttered for the rest of the night. Someone had found Amarune’s robe for her and someone else’s slippers to go with it.
Various Purple Dragons and war wizards—they’d lost track of exactly how many but retained the impression that “various” was a rather large number—had asked Arclath and Amarune many, many questions about the events of the evening and their previous experiences, if any, involving the younger Lords Windstag, Dawntard, and Sornstern. From time to time, the lord and the dancer had been separated, so their stories could be compared—and, it seemed, had matched. Those questions had all been fairly friendly and civil … but there had been a lot of them. Not to mention more than a few spells gravely cast their way, and carefully expressionless men eyeing them thoughtfully.
Wherefore the decanter that Tress had wordlessly deposited on the table between them was deeply appreciated.
In silence they’d begun to pass it back and forth across the table, taking turns to sip, and murmuring questions of their own.
Not the probing sorts of queries they’d just finished—at least, they fervently hoped they were finished—answering, but the short, simple exchanges of two people getting to know each other better.
A guarded trust, of a sort, was slowly growing between them, because they’d been through danger together and had stood up for each other … and because, it seemed, they genuinely liked each other.
“Noble lord,” Amarune murmured, “I need an ally. Not a lover. A friend.”
“I, too, have need of one of those,” the elegant lordling told her, his gaze bright and level.
Slowly, hesitantly, their hands went out … and clasped over the decanter.
The first wild-eyed man rushing past the Sa
ge of Shadowdale awakened his interest, and the second an urgent desire to get out of the way to avoid being knocked down. When a third, fourth, and fifth pounded pantingly past before he could regain his balance against a handy wall, Elminster’s interest had grown to a bright flame.
“What news? What’re ye running from?” he called to the next few running men. All of them young, all well dressed, more than a few bleeding from what looked to be sword cuts … “Where’s the war?”
“B-bold Archer,” one of them gasped in reply, stumbling and almost falling. He caromed off the wall beside Elminster, nearly taking the old man to the cobbles with him, but clawed at the stone with frantic fingertips, enough to keep upright, and ran on. “Men in flames!” he shouted back over his shoulder. “Killing everyone!”
“Men in flames?” Elminster inquired aloud, feigning more astonishment than he really felt.
“Aye,” the next pair of running men panted; El recognized one as a noble he’d recently seen peering out of a coach on the promenade, though he knew not the youngling’s House or heritage. “Blue flames!”
Ah, of course. Stormserpent had unleashed his new toys. Clearing his throat, Elminster squared his shoulders, drew in a deep breath, and set off for the Bold Archer with as much speed as he could manage, leaving the rest of the frightened nobles and their bodyguards to flee past him in peace.
If that was quite the right way to put it …
Gods, but he was getting old. Hastening for just a block or so had him limping for real, his weary old bones complaining with every lurching stride.
Luckily for the safety of the good folk of Suzail, almost all Purple Dragon patrols could move faster than he could. One of them rushed out of a side street and past him in swords-out, fearless haste.
He did not have to see the signboard to know which building up ahead they’d all vanished into. For one thing, a second patrol was hurrying up from another direction, and for another, Dragons from the first one were reemerging to take up watch by the doors, as more of their fellows reappeared to rush excitedly everywhere looking for witnesses and, no doubt, the guilty.