by Ed Greenwood
“Well, now,” Halston the cooper spoke up, “that’s as fair speech as I’ve heard in many a day. Something I can shake on without hesitation.”
And he reached out a long arm to clasp Durncaskyn’s hand firmly, starting a rush to do so. The king’s lord moved out from behind his desk to reach every burgher, and by slow and continuous steps forward succeeded in starting them back toward the office door.
They drifted out, talking excitedly among themselves about the good lads Risingbroke and Amflame, dastardly Owl Lords, and those right thieving bastards the Beasts. Durncaskyn moved with them, clapping backs and making promises, but keeping his gaze and manner firm until they were well and truly down the stairs.
Turning back to his office again, he permitted himself the luxury of a prolonged and heartfelt rolling of the eyes that would have made all of his sisters giggle, and rather despairingly decided to send the dregs of his local duty team of war wizards to Irlingstar. Better atrocious investigators than no investigators at all.
As he sat back down at his desk and surveyed the map gloomily, his field of view showing him that there was no one lingering who might overhear, he muttered under his breath, “They’re the last three stlarning mages I’d willingly send anywhere-except into exile, to plague someone else. And every last one of the Gods Above help us all, I’m sending them into the thick of a prison where a murderer’s on the loose.” He brightened a trifle. “Perhaps they’ll provide him with some fresh victims.”
Then his gaze strayed to the papers littering the floor, and he fell into gloom again. “Huh. And if they do, it’ll mean more paperwork.”
“Of course, my lord,” Immaero Sraunter purred. “I have just the thing.”
Lord Danthalus Blacksilver reddened a little, concluding that this alchemist would have to be silenced, and soon. Before the man’s loose tongue spread dark rumors across the city of a certain inadequacy-gods, the man’s false delicacy was revolting! — on the part of dashing Lord Blacksilver. He couldn’t have his good name-
The alchemist leaned over the counter, putting his throat within tempting reach of Blacksilver’s little nail-cleaning knife, and murmured conspiratorially, “You must be an utter lion, milord. All the other lords your age who maintain residences in Suzail came to me years ago. Not that I ever name any names, you understand. Or I’d have all the young ladies crowding in here trying to buy extra dosages, and that would be dangerous for lords less able and fit than yourself.”
Blacksilver relaxed, trying not to make his sigh of relief too gustily obvious. Something slender and cool touched his palm. He closed his fingers around it and stared down at it before the alchemist had quite straightened and drifted away. It was a tiny vial of pale blue, translucent liquid.
“Just four drops, into any trifling amount-or large quaff-of milk or water,” Sraunter murmured. “Not wine or stronger drink.”
Blacksilver closed his fingers around the vial, smiled, and plucked forth the purse that held just his “handyspending” gold coins.
A lion among lions, rumor promised.
This little foray had been worth it, after all.
“See?” Arclath said cheerfully. “Both still alive, not so much as a spell-sent ‘Boo!’ to disturb our slumbers …”
Amarune gave him a sour look and rattled the stout chains coming from the manacles that had just been locked around their wrists. “And these are nothing, I suppose?”
“Merely part of the clever deception we Crown agents are working. Four hundred lions a month, remember?”
Rune sighed. “I wish I could be as jaunty about it all as you are. How do you manage it, dear? Is it part of being brought up noble, or being well on the way to becoming an idiot?”
“Both those things,” the heir of House Delcastle agreed merrily, “and being not far off madwits helps, too. That’s probably how Elminster’s done it, all these centuries.”
His Rune winced. “Old many-times-grandsire El … I wonder where he is now?”
As the shop bell tinkled its soft chime in the wake of the departing Lord Blacksilver, Manshoon permitted himself a satisfied smile.
After all, Sraunter would have smiled on his own at that moment, if Manshoon hadn’t been riding his mind. Another profitable sale, of something so simple yet so desired. Not that he cared a whit for the weight of Sraunter’s purse. No, he was satisfied because it had gone so well. He really was schooling himself to patience and subtlety in manipulating his subverted nobles. Andolphyn, Loroun, and now Blacksilver. That left just Crownrood, of the important ones.
As “everyone” knew, most of the nobility opposed the Crown and tried all manner of minor seditious and treasonous ploys and gestures. Thus, nobles doing so under his coercion were unlikely to arouse suspicions of anyone being involved in those little ploys but the nobles themselves. Whereas if he took to meddling with the minds of courtiers, such tamperings were far more likely to be noticed by wizards of war.
The solution, to a patient man, was to slowly prune the ranks of those Crown mages, using justifiably enraged or drunken nobles to do so. He’d already subverted a handy collection of expendable lords, but it occurred to Manshoon that another handy collection of younger, demonstrably Crown-hostile nobles already existed: those relatively few captives kept in isolated cells beneath High Horn, where Purple Dragons and wizards of war were numerous, alert, and close by. And then there were the inmates of an entire prison keep out on the remote eastern border of the realm, where Dragons were few and Crown mages even fewer: Castle Irlingstar.
Well, now …
It was slow and sometimes hard work, this climb. Always avoiding the temptation, even for an instant, to use the rock that had been smoothed by the dragon’s spewings into an easy trail. In places it was a slick chute, aye, but more often the smooth-melted rock had been left a mere shell of itself, pierced by many tiny holes above hidden cavities, so a firm boot could crush it down into a bootprint that was unlikely to slip. Yet that would undoubtedly make noise, and there was a dragon waiting up above.
El was hoping to find a side cavern that would let her avoid the wyrm. If not, she had magic enough to get past a dragon … if she handled matters just right.
Aye, there was always that “if.” Hrast it, there was never just the easy way, never a time to relax. Right now, it was best to remain wary, and move very carefully, never-
There was a sudden change in the breeze from above, then an echoing, hissing roar. El shrank back into the cavern-wall cleft she was in and braced herself, thrusting knees and elbows against the rock. Even before the acrid stink hit her, the green flood close in its wake, she knew what had happened.
The dragon had breathed acid again.
CHAPTER TEN
HIGH TIME FOR SCREAMING AND CURSING
Elminster shut her stinging eyes and tried not to breathe as a fine mist of acid drifted past. The main hissing flood, gurgling like a rushing stream, was already on and down, heading for the Underdark below.
The wyrm had probably been listening for small noises that would tell it a creature was climbing toward it, and had concluded, despite the care El had taken, that such an unwanted visitor was indeed ascending its lair’s back door. Or perhaps the dragon had arranged some sort of alarm-even a spider or some other tiny cave inhabitant, as a spy-to warn against all intrusions from the Underdark. After all, Elminster certainly would, if she’d been a dragon lairing in a cave connected directly to the vast drow-infested underworld.
Down the chain of caverns the acid flowed, striking rocks into bubbling spume and drifting caustic mists, tumbling and hissing past El in her cleft. Some way below her, something screamed, shrill and sudden and very briefly, a cry that was cut off in an ugly choking.
El dared to lean out of her cleft enough to peer down, and only just caught sight of a dark, dwindling mass being swept along in the fading green glow. Dragon acid was as swift and ruthless as the wyrms that spewed it.
A dark elf? Someone or something that sounded
as if it could sing and talk when it wasn’t death screaming, that-strike that, who-had been following her up from that tunnel where she’d fought the outcast drow. Possibly it had been one of them, a lurking outcast she’d never seen.
Hrast it, too much death followed her, clung to her like a rotting cloak! Even when she fought no one, and hurled not a spell, folk died around her, as if the gods had cursed her to be Walking Death.
Why?
She’d been sick of it centuries ago, yet it went on and on, showing no signs of slackening. She was so sick of it now.
But she doubted very much if how she felt would make one whit of difference. The violent deaths were going to keep happening around her. Let them not include his Rune, or her Arclath, hrast it.
Mystra forfend, Symrustar commented quietly.
“Aye,” El whispered, softly enough that her words should carry no distance at all. “Mystra forfend, indeed.”
She let silence fall, and waited a long time before daring to leave the cleft and climb on. When she did, she took great care to keep as quiet as she could, no matter how slow her progress.
After all, that brief scream from her ill-fated follower had been loud. Somewhere ahead and above, an alerted black dragon was waiting.
The lord constable of Irlingstar peered around the ready room. It did not take him long.
Despite his experience of monster scourings and battles with border raiders, Farland’s stomach heaved. He fought down his urge to spew, then worked his way around the blood to look into every bedchamber.
They were spartan rooms, and none of the mages had brought much to the castle to clutter them with. They had small, simple wardrobes, customarily left open against the ever-present damp, and all of them stood open. No one was hiding in any place he couldn’t see, because there was just nowhere to hide. A guard ward glowed faintly around a stack of shared spellbooks on a bedside table, preventing opportunistic thefts by prisoners-or anyone else.
The youngest of Irlingstar’s duty war wizards lay dead, sprawled in the middle of the ready room, headless and handless. Those severed bits of him were nowhere to be seen.
There was no trace of the other four Crown mages at all. Except for the blood.
The lone corpse was spread-eagled in a great pool of gore that filled the center of the room. It was a well-built chamber, its flagstones covered with a thin slurry of rough-pour that sloped ever so slightly away from the walls, to gather any wetness in the center of the room. Only that had enabled him to skirt the blood, for there was so much of it that the body lay in a still-slick pool that had to be two fingerwidths deep at its heart, or more.
No man could have that much blood in him; most of it must have belonged to the missing mages.
There were no bloody talon or claw prints, no fallen mage knives or signs of any struggle-and no runes chalked anywhere. No smells of spellwork, those odd scorched scents all Dragons who worked with war wizards got used to. The only reek was from the blood … and the bowels of the corpse.
Nevertheless, Lord Constable Farland gripped his sword tightly, and glared all around constantly, as he made his way back out into the passage.
Avathnar had been bad. This was worse.
And he knew-knew as surely as his name was Gelnur Farland, and all of this mess was on his platter, his to clear up-that it wasn’t over yet, not by a long bowshot.
“Tluin,” he whispered, into the gloom around him. “Naed, hrast, and farruking tluin.”
Curses weren’t going to help in the slightest, so he repeated them all several times, as defiantly as if he’d been a young boy.
Sometimes, when the world was falling apart all around you, until you thought of something better, cursing was all you could really do.
“The mountains,” Amarune said softly, “are a lot higher than I’d thought they’d be.”
Arclath nodded, but before he could say anything the nearest Dragon told her, “Most folk we bring along this road say that. If yon peaks weren’t so tall, they’d not be the wall that keeps out Sembia.”
“Save, of course, for its gold,” Arclath murmured, causing two Dragons to lean in sharply, to try to hear.
They’d been riding the Orondstars Road, winding along the western flanks of the Thunder Peaks, for much of a day. Irlingstar couldn’t be far off now.
Rune and Arclath rode in manacles, under a heavy guard of veteran Purple Dragons riding in a tight group around them. The plate-armored, heavily armed Dragons obviously had orders to try to overhear everything a prisoner said.
To better fool everyone in the prison castle, none of their escort knew the young lord and untitled lass in chains were secret Crown agents rather than real prisoners. Officially, they were both “under the displeasure of the Crown,” which was polite court speech for “imprisoned thanks to being caught at something not quite bad enough for death or exile-or not proven well enough, yet, for you to receive the death or exile you’ve earned.”
Their escorts had been told that Lord Arclath Delcastle had spoken and plotted treason against the Crown with the commoner Amarune Whitewave. Who had now been revealed to the guards and shortly to the inhabitants of Irlingstar as both an agent of an “outland power” plotting against the realm, and the bastard offspring of no less than four noble families-and so, for the security of Cormyr, best locked up. The identities of those four high houses and of the outland power were officially “mysterious,” and Rune had been warned to keep them so.
She recalled that warning, now, as Arclath gave her a glance that concealed a reassuring grin very well. All that held his mirth was a wayward twinkle in one of his eyes. Meeting it, she widened her own eyes rather than winking, by way of reply, well aware of the steady stares of the surrounding Purple Dragons. And recalled the last time she’d received that hidden grin from him …
Amarune had been more excited than she could ever remember being.
She’d been beaming at everyone. After the king and the two wizards of war had departed the feasting room in Delcastle Manor, and Lady Marantine serenely began fetching out the sugar tarts that she’d somehow neglected to offer her unexpected court guests. Rune almost starting singing. Her heart was that high and soaring.
Even with the money belts hard and heavy in her hands, she could scarcely believe what had just happened.
“The king wanted my service-the king!”
As Lady Delcastle served Rune a dainty little plate of tarts, her little frown gave way to a rather grandmotherly smile.
“I don’t mean to be unkind, dear,” the noblewoman had said gently, “but the ranks of the loyal are rather thin, just now. When a ship is foundering, any bailing bucket will do.”
“Fornrar? Dagnan? Leave those quivers here. All but the prisoners will be in heavy armor, and I don’t want you wasting dread arrows. That poison’s expensive.”
“We heard your orders, Broadshield,” Dagnan replied sullenly. He was lowering the quiver from his shoulder very slowly.
“I know you did. I also know you,” their leader replied. “Put ’em down.”
He stayed to watch until the heavy quivers-twenty-one long-feather shafts weigh far more than most folk suspect-were down and hidden, wrapped in cloaks and with a goodly covering of the dead leaves that carpet every forest floor raked over them. Fornrar peered up to get a good look at the surrounding trees so as to be able to find the cached shafts later, then set off without a word, up and over the brow of the wooded hill, past the cluster of boulders where they’d hidden the axes.
That had been done under Broadshield’s orders, too. Otherwise, too many of the lads were apt to get overenthusiastic and start swinging axes at horses-and the dragon, who liked its prey whole and able to flee, to give it sport, wouldn’t like that.
Broadshield took care to keep his Beasts afraid of the great black wyrm. It reminded them of the perils of disloyalty toward their leader, the notorious Broadshield-the only one of them who’d befriended Alorglauvenemaus.
After all, s
ome of these lads hadn’t been part of his band the last time the dragon had swooped down and devoured the three Beasts who’d been bold enough to disagree with their leader about anything.
“Remember,” Broadshield told Dagnan, as they followed after Fornrar. “We want the prisoners unharmed, not wearing arrows. The Delcastles will have our hides if we harm their heir.”
Dagnan grunted reluctant assent, spat on a long-fallen log, and asked sidelong, “They know about this, then?”
“No. Nor will they, until both prisoners are safe in the lodge in Sembia. They’re always happier to pay the ransom when they know their loved ones are out of Cormyr, and no appeal to Foril is going to result in any daring rescue.”
Dagnan nodded. “I wonder,” he said slowly, “if King Foril regards us as … useful.”
Beside him, Broadshield smiled in satisfaction. “Ah,” he said. “You begin to see.”
Rune found it hard to keep from laughing aloud. The expressions adorning the faces of every Dragon she glanced at were hilarious to behold.
“The Orondstars Road,” Arclath told her airily, playing the proud and effete dandy to the hilt, “began as a mining and settlement road in the latter days of the reign of King Duar Obarskyr. It departs the Thunder Way-forgive the repetition in the local nomenclature, but imagination is always in short supply among officialdom, and once they seize upon a halfway grand or decent name, in this case ‘Thunder,’ they simply cannot resist doing it to death-in Thunderstone, hard by the bridge over the Thunderflow, and winds its way north, clinging as closely to the westernmost Thunder Peaks as it can. The Orondstars themselves-just “Oronds” to most locals-are a stand of smallish mountains that resemble nothing so much as a handful of knife-edged serving platters, sunk half-deep in the ground, still more or less in the stack they started out in. Which is to say, they all stand parallel to each other, and are much thinner and sharper than your average mountain. The rest of the Thunder Peaks, for example.”