by Ed Greenwood
Alusair barely had time to swing her other leg off the wizard before the Dragon Queen hauled her to het feet and started marching her back down the passage.
"Mother," Alusair said, "where are we-?"
"Yonder maid's closet. Or the one beyond. I don't share your preference for horsewhips, Daughter. The flat of my hand will serve quite well."
"You-me, a princess-a spanking? "
"Not quite the eloquence I expect in a Princess of Cormyr I had any hand in rearing," Filfaeril replied, "but you seem to have grasped the main points. In here, miss!"
A door banged.
Vangerdahast had sat up to watch and listen to the princess being dragged away. Now he slowly rolled over to his knees, wincing, used both hands to thrust himself to his feet, and staggeted off down the passage.
He did not look back and so never saw the man standing unmov-ing against the passage wall in the dark lee of a tapestry.
King Azoun IV of Cormyr was standing ready to break Vangerdahast's jaw and knock him cold, if he could. Though he'd not have tried to punch the Royal Magician at all if the wizard had not dared to tarry and watch Alusair's punishment, for his own enjoyment.
A little relieved that none of that had been necessary, he smiled at the wizard's distant, dwindling figure.
"Those who deal in pain are fated to entertain it in turn," he murmured. "It's merely a matter of when. So reap this whirlwind, Vangey. It's puny, compared to most of your others.'
"Who's there?" Aumrune of the Zhentarim asked sharply. He'd taken care that few of the Brotherhood knew where he liked to experiment with magic. It cut down on… the over-ambitious aiding "accidents."
The robed and hooded figure slowly spread empty hands in a "look, I bear nothing" gesture, and then reached up and put back his cowl to reveal a familiar face.
"Mauliykhus," the approaching wizard identified himself. "My deepest apologies for disturbing your work. There is urgent news. I thought you would want to hear it without delay."
Aumrune set his wand on the table, cast the cloak he'd brought to conceal from all eyes the array of clamps and stands and what they held, and strode to meet Mauliykhus. He awakened several of the rings he wore to glowing life.
Most Zhentarim harbored thoughts of doom befalling their superiors, and he supposed Mauliykhus was no different. "Supposed" because he'd never found the slightest whisper of a hint that the lesser mage was actually doing anything to bring such a doom down on Aumrune-and because his own deepening judgment of the character of Mauliykhus Oenren led him to believe that the man would never dare try anything beyond, perhaps, a sudden wild snatch at a bright opportunity.
And if there was one thing Aumrune Trantor was careful never to offer any potential foe-which meant everyone else in all Faerun-it was a bright opportunity.
Wherefore he came to a careful stop two paces away from Mauliykhus and held up a hand, the rings on it glowing in warning. "What news?"
"Lord Manshoon," Mauliykhus said, lowering his head and edging forward. He stopped, appearing not to see Aumrune's stern "keep back" gesture as he looked back over his shoulder. "Best whisper this," he breathed quietly, edging still closer.
Aumrune took a step back. "Is it choosing a new foremost henchwizard from among us all, again? I have an ever-decreasing appetite for idle gossip, and-"
Mauliykhus shook his head and looked nervously behind him again. "It's not that."
"If anyone's listening to us," Aumrune said, "they'll be using magic and keeping themselves safely far away from here, not tiptoeing along behind you." One of the rings blossomed from its glow into a faint singing in the air all around the two wizards.
"There," he announced. "No one can scry us now without overwhelming rhat. And if it collapses, we'll know, won't we? Now-"
He stiffened, then, as Mauliykhus put a hand on his arm.
The lesser wizard did rarher more than stiffen. He staggered back a step-and then collapsed to the floor like a falling blanket.
Aumrune looked down at the fallen wizard, watching thin threads of smoke drift up from the burnt-out holes that had held eyes a moment or two ago. Dead as last year's moths and about as useful.
Aumrune Trantor stepped around him, reeling a little as the two entities still settling into his head fumbled for precise control of their new host body's limbs, and strode away, leaving cloak, wand, and all forgotten on the table behind him.
He no longer had need of such trifles.
"Lady Ironchylde!"
The whisper was urgent-and loud almost enough to echo the entire length of this obscure, out-of-the-way, upper passage of the vast and sprawling Royal Court.
Wizard of War Tsantress Ironchylde calmly finished locking the door of her chambers ere turning to look at whoever had hailed her. She was young and capable-and much of her effectiveness thus far, she knew well, was due ro her ability to remain calm.
"I am not," she said pleasantly, "a 'Lady.' I am a war wizard, of low birth, as it happens. And you are…?"
The man who'd hailed her was the only other person in the passage. Lean and lithe, he was wearing glossy black boots, black hose of the most expensive make, a black codpiece that might have made a jester snicker, and a black cloak that entirely hid his doublet and most of his face, too. He stopped every few feet to cast exaggerated looks up and down the passage. "Are we," he whispered tersely, "alone?"
Tsantress quelled a sudden urge to giggle and assured him that they were. As she did so, she put one of her hands behind her, out of his sight, and awakened one of the rings upon ir. Jusr in case.
"I dare not speak to you," the mystetious figure whispered, scuttling nearer, "out here."
"And yer you are speaking to me," Tsantress said. "Though you have as of yet failed to answer my question."
"So I have!" the man in black agreed, ducking his head and sidling still nearer, almost turning his back on her in his eagerness to look behind him-and then whirling around and leaning over to peer past her. "Madam mage, I am a Lord of Cormyr!"
"Whose name is…?" Tsantress.
"Not out here, I pray you, madam! Not out here!"
Tsantress activated a second ring. If she was going to enter her chambers alone with an unidentified man, she was going to furnish no possibility of his successfully attacking her or snatching any of the unfinished-albeit cryptic-work she had spread out on her bed and tables.
"Very well," she said, and she unlocked her door with the deftness of long practice, keeping herself facing him all the while. "Pray enter, Unknown Lord."
The man in black winced. "I would not have you think poorly of me! I mean you no harm nor dishonor. Believe me! I desire but to aid Cormyr on a matter of utmost delicacy! Please believe me!"
"In here." Tsantress beckoned.
Her guest cast two last exaggerated looks up and down the hallway and then ducked inside, swirling his cloak away from his face with a flourish as she swung the door shut behind him.
Tsantress regarded him calmly. His face was quite handsome, and she recalled seeing it at Court a time or two. As noble as he claimed to be, but of no important family… and about the same age she was.
"Is it locked?" he asked.
"Not yet," the war wizard told him. "Its locking awaits the revelation of your name."
The man in black broke his dramatic pose long enough to spin to face her. "Lady Wizard," he said, srriking another pose, "I am Lord Rhallogant Caladanter!"
"Well met," Tsantress replied. She made her own little show of locking-and bolting-the door, then leaned back against it, folded her arms across her chest, and asked, "So you wish to speak to me regarding a matter of utmost delicacy?"
The handsome young lord looked both ways again, even in her small, dim antechamber, then sank his head low between his shoulders and murmured in a deep voice, eyes darting this way and that as if he could see watching eyes appearing in every corner, "I have overheard some disturbing things about a few Wizards of War-Vangerdahast and Laspeera, in particular-w
ho have been meeting in secret with some Sembians and Zhentarim. I fear for rhe realm, but I know not where to turn."
Tsantress stiffened, her face going pale. She was an ambitious, capable young war wizard and had been very careful to watch and learn much, for fear of putting a foot wrong as she soughr to ascend ever higher in the Royal Magician's regard. A few of the folk she had seen Vangerdahast meeting with had troubled her deeply. So this, now…
"Come," she whispered as she crossed the antechamber into her study, taking him by the sleeve. She was pleased to see that although he trembled with excitement, he showed no triumphant grin of lechery or brightening opportunism. "Sit with me, and tell me all you have seen and heard. All."
As she'd suspected, it wasn't much. Yet it was more than enough to make her shiver. She regarded the Royal Palace in a new way: as a brooding fortress of suspicions, every shadow something that peered and listened. "Den of traitors, den of thieves," she murmured, remembering the old Suzailan song deriding the Court.
"Lord Caladanter, I thank you," she said then, putting a firm hand on his knee and staring deep into his eyes. Under her palm, he seemed as excired as a puppy, his eyes glowing as he stared into hers-but again, there was no hinr of the seducer.
"Your very life is in danger," she said, telling him what she knew he wanted to hear-and knowing it was all too true. "If you breathe one word to anyone about speaking to me and anything that even hints at what you've just told me, someone-possibly several someones-will kill you."
She paused a moment to let that sink in and watched his excitement slide slowly into fear. Not as swift-witted as he'd first seemed, this one. Madwits, yes, but a slow madwits, to boot.
"You must not be seen leaving my rooms," she said. "Will you submit to a spell, if I cast a translocation upon you?"
He started to nod eagerly then frowned. "A-oh. To whisk me in an instant from here to… somewhere else?"
Tsantress nodded. "To one of the gates where the Royal Gardens lets out onto the Promenade. Whence you can easily stroll home."
"P-please!" he stammeted.
She rose, gesturing that he should, too-and the moment he did, touched him with a ring she had already awakened. In its silent flash, he vanished without another word.
"No touching farewells, young lord," she murmured, more to hear her own voice than for any other reason. She didn't want to wallow in how deeply this news had troubled her, didn't want toHold! No one had seen him depart, yes. But had anyone seen him arrive?
Tsantress marched across the room and flung the door wide to do her own sharp look up and down the passage.
She found herself meeting the startled gaze of a doorjack in the usual livery, standing formally outside the door across the passage and a few strides down.
It was a man she'd never seen before, and it was an odd door to stand upon ceremony-because it led onto a landing of an internal staircase, not into a state room or anyone's chambers.
At her scrutiny, the doorjack's expression turned cold. He was almost glaring at her as he slowly turned, opened the door, and stepped through it.
Tsantress saw a slice of landing and stair through its frame, just as she'd expected-but she also saw something more.
The doorjack had turned his head to stare at her as he strode out of sight, and just before he passed from view, his unfamiliar face slid into the featutes of someone else.
Vangerdahast.
Chapter 9
The Lost Palace Yet though I live so long, I pray you lords thrust your blades deep into me, to make sure I breathe no more if ever I begin to become the sort of king who forgets his own name, knows not lifelong friends nor foes, and loses even palaces in the fogs of his failing mind.
The door closed behind Vangerdahast. Tsantress srared at it, her mind racing. Her entire world whirled away in an insranr… what to do? What should she do?
She looked up and down the passage out of sheer habit, seeing no one, then heard the faintest of sounds in the room behind her-or thought she did-and whirled around.
Nothing. Her antechamber was dark and srill, with no grimly smiling Royal Magician or anyone else standing there. Tsantress closed the door again, strode swiftly across the room to snatch up a wedge of cheese for later consumption and took down her dagger in its thigh-sheath from its usual place on the wall. Drawing in a deep breath, she used her teleport ring again.
It was the only way out, given the wards in place over the vast Royal Court and the Royal Palace beyond that would foil any translocation cast by someone not wearing such a ring-and she had to get out.
To find time to think, if nothing else.
Wherefore she found herself standing on a ledge high on the Thunder Peaks, lashed by rain. She stared bleakly out over fog-shrouded eastern Cormyr for a few moments, called on the ring again, and teleported to where she was really bound for. An exrra "jump" should foil any tracing magic Old Thunderspells used to follow her. She hoped.
The ledge went away in the usual instant of falling endlessly through bright blue mists, and then there was solid stone under her boots again, and familiar dank gloom surrounded her amid smells of earth and old bear dung.
She was home. Or rather, she was back in a side-fissure of a wilderland cave that she'd long ago cast a spell upon to keep a bear or anything else from settling into it and lairing. The cave was nigh the Moonsea Ride near Tilverton, clear out of Cormyr, where she'd spent days and nights practicing her spell-casting when she'd been younger.
"Tluin," she whispered, taking a step to where she could perch one foot on an upthrusting rock and more easily buckle her dagger about her thigh.
She was gone from Cormyr, gone from the life she had known that had made her feel so happy, so important, so… needed.
Now what?
A lantern was unhooded, and the Knights of Myth Drannor found themselves staring down a littered srone cellar at four men. The foremost of whom was Lord Maniol Crownsilver.
Behind the noble lord were three unfamiliar men in robes, arranged in a stony-faced line. All were glaring at the Knights.
One robed man held the lantern high; the other two had their hands outstretched toward each other, and the air was flickering and pulsing between those reaching fingers-little flowerings of blue radiance rhat grew, winked out, then flashed into existence again, more strongly.
Three wizards. By the style of their sashes and rune-adorned jerkins, Sembian wizards-for-hire.
"Jhess," Florin muttered. "What magic's that?"
"A porral, I think," Jhessail murmured back as they saw the lantern set down carefully on the floor-and the flickerings form a pulsing blue-white upright oval of glowing air as tall as a man.
Belatedly, Florin bowed his head and said respectfully, "Well met, Lord Crownsilver."
The noble took a slow step closer to the Knights and swept them with a withering glare. There was no trace about him of the quavering, broken shell of a man they remembered seeing last. Crownsilver seemed alert, purposeful, and even-when one saw the fire in his eyes-frenzied.
"Slayers of my wife and daughter," he said, "taste my revenge! For Narantha! For Jalassa, damn you!"
The three Sembian mages snatched wands out of their rune-adorned jerkins and grinned in cruel triumph as they aimed-and unleashed.
The Knights shouted, sprinting desperately this way or that, but ravening wandfire roared down the cellar in a blinding white flood that drove a million tiny lances into bare skin even as it hurled and tumbled the Knights hard into the unyielding stone wall behind them.
Very hard. Faerun started to go watery and whirl away from more than one Knight, with the searing magic still roaring on and on.
Amid a splintering groan of riven support posts, the ceiling above started to collapse-and Florin, Pennae, and Islif, still struggling to move and to see, beheld the little tracer-gem Pennae had stolen bursting forth from its concealment beneath her tattered leathers. It spun and spat strange purple flames and sparks as the roaring white wandfire tor
e at it, then it surged down the cellar toward Lord Crownsilver.
Only to explode in its own burst of blinding white light, a blast that-laced with Pennae's shriek and srartled shouts from the Sembians-drove its own burning rays into everyone…
Aumrune Trantor stopped midstep, teetering awkwardly with one foot raised-and then brought it down, lurched against a passage wall, and stayed there, leaning like a drunkard.
Old Ghost had found something.
Something in Aumrune's mind made him seethe with excitement and glee-so bright and fierce that Horaundoon, sharing that mind with him, cowered.
Aumrune's pet project, kept secret from all except Manshoon and Hesperdan, who seemed to approve of it, was adding magics to an ancient, flying magic sword: Armaukran, the Sword That Never Sleeps. Aumrune had already infused the blade with new powers to make it obey him.
Surging in bright exultation, Old Ghost uncovered the way into the sword from Aumrune's mind.
The body of Aumrune Trantor thrust itself away from the wall so briskly it almost fell. It hurried off down that gloomy, deserted passage in Zhentil Keep, headed for where a certain hidden sword awaited.
This was going to be good. Very good.
Two flights down a deserted staircase in the Royal Court, while passing his forry-third faded tapestry, Vangerdahast stopped and murmured, "Far enough. Best alter things before we run into the real Vangerdahast."
The features more than a thousand courtiers and servants knew and feared rippled and flowed, melting down off a quite different face as the hargaunt sought the chin of Telgarth Boarblade, and points below.
As he held open the front of his doorjack's jerkin to let the hargaunt flow down out of sight, Telgarth Boarblade smiled. Lord Rhallogant Caladanter was a buffoon of the most childish sort, aye, but he must have done well enough in telling War Wizard Ironchylde the tale Boarblade had so carefully concocted. She'd been white with fright and seeing foes in every shadow. Well delivered, indeed.