by Ed Greenwood
Vandur did something with a ring on his finger that made Farland stagger back with a curse, fat blue sparks leaping among his spasming fingers. Farland dropped blade, which clanged off the desk to the floor. “Brusque?” he supplied helpfully. “Arrogant?”
“Yes, Dragon take you!” Farland snarled, wringing his hands together, his face creased in pain. “No true wizard of war would behave like this!”
“He’s never met Vangerdahast,” Arclath told Amarune merrily. “And obviously doesn’t remember Glathra all that well, either.”
Farland rounded on him. “Will you belt up, lord, right now, or will you-”
Words failed him, but his fists came up. Before Arclath could do more than wag a reproving finger and say, “Now, now-” Vandur rapped out, “Touch no one, insubordinate man! Or I’ll discipline you here and now!”
He raised a hand into view over the edge of the desk. A hand that had a wand in it.
“You will listen to me, Lord Constable,” he said crisply, aiming the wand right at Farland’s nose, “or I’ll strike you motionless until I’m done speaking and force you to hear me that way! As a senior wizard of war, I outrank any mere Purple Dragon and almost all Crown officers, barring a handful of the most high-ranking courtiers of the realm! I will have your obedience, and I am in command of this castle!”
At that moment, two men garbed like Vandur but weighed down by various bulging packs, pouches, and satchels came trotting rather breathlessly into the room.
“Sorry,” one said to the man behind the desk. “We had a little trouble with the guards-”
“Later,” Vandur said curtly. “Their suitable punishments can wait. Right now, it’s past time to begin our investigation. This room must be in the north tower, so you, Gulkanun, get yourself quickly to the south tower and confirm its layout and our authority to all garrison personnel there. Longclaws, you are to find and secure all exits and entrances to the castle, just as fast as that can be done!”
The two men nodded, turned on their heels, and ran out.
Vandur rose from behind the desk, thrust his wand back into his belt, and raised a hand meaningfully toward Farland as he twisted one of several rings on it. That ring glowed as it was awakened.
“You,” he ordered, “will remain here until my return. I won’t be long. You might as well continue interrogating these prisoners.”
He strode out, closing the door behind him. A moment later, it glowed all around its edges, a brief pulsing radiance of blue, white, and purple that faded as swiftly as it had appeared.
“A wizard lock,” Arclath murmured. “I’ve seen many cast before.”
Farland gestured savagely for silence as he headed for the door. He did not storm through it, however. He halted just before it and bent to listen intently. Arclath and Rune gave him the silence he wanted.
Whereupon, through the door, they could all clearly hear Vandur give a command, then repeat the same order in an imperious bark … and then start shouting.
“Seal me inside my own office,” Farland hissed in grim satisfaction, “and see where it gets you, Saer Imperious.”
The shouting was going on and on, rising in tone.
“The guards are defying him?” Rune asked. “Even when he waves that wand?”
“To avoid any prisoner succeeding in a bribe, there are strict standing orders,” Arclath explained. “The Dragons serving here will obey only their known superiors, the lord constable, and those he personally tells them to take direction from.”
Farland had turned his head to hear what the young lord was whispering. When Arclath was done, he nodded silent confirmation.
The shouting was getting farther away, too distant to make out any words. The war wizard had evidently stormed off, still venting over his shoulder at guards he’d left at their posts in his wake. Then the shouting broke off, as the distant Vandur said something startled and incredulous.
Then he screamed, a long and fearful cry that went raw and shrill-then ended abruptly.
“Stay here,” Farland ordered Arclath and Amarune curtly, and he rushed to the door. It refused to open, of course, flaring into bright glows when he tried to force it.
The lord constable struggled with it, cords of muscle standing proud in his neck and wrists, then in a hoarse spitting of curses, he flung himself away and rushed across the room.
In one corner behind his desk, he clawed open a hitherto-hidden secret door and was gone.
Arclath turned to Amarune and murmured, “Now.”
Obediently she bowed her head so he could comb through her hair to find the tiny chain around the base of her left ear, recover the lockpick dangling from it, and free them both from their manacles.
Click, clack, clink, ten times over, and all the iron fell away.
Arclath looked down at Rune to see if she was ready to rise-and discovered she was already past him and vaulting the desk to get to the lord constable’s secret door.
The passage they found themselves in was narrow and many-branched, obviously running through the hearts of various thick stone partition walls, but Rune kept turning right, to a blind end that of course had a large, easily felt catch in it, that opened a door and plunged them out into a long, wide passage.
A guard stood tensely at his post, looking away from them down the passage. Obviously staring after where the lord constable had just gone.
“Must catch up to Farland,” Arclath told the man brightly, as the Dragon’s head snapped around and his halberd swung out. Rune had already ducked under it and was racing on. “Lord Constable’s orders!”
The Dragon stared back at him for a moment, then nodded and pulled his halberd aside. The heir of House Delcastle ducked his head and devoted himself to running hard, to catch up to his lady and to stay with her.
The passage was longer than it looked, the torches few and dim, the black-painted cell doors many, unnumbered, and more or less identical. Arclath and Amarune were halfway down it before they saw Farland, grimly staring down at something they couldn’t see.
There was a cross passage before they got to him, then another. Farland turned to watch them pelt the last little stretch up to him. His sword was drawn, but he didn’t lift it to menace them.
The lord constable stood at the end of the passage. Two stairs descended from either side of the passage just before the open gate he was standing at-a stout gate door of metal bars as thick around as Arclath’s wrists. Beyond that gate the passage ended at a precipitous flight of stone steps that descended down into darkness. There was a dank, rotting smell in the air.
“How did you get free?” Farland grunted, as they arrived beside him. He was out of breath, probably from rushing down that long flight of steps and then clambering back up them.
“You should believe some claims,” Arclath replied calmly. “You’ve found everyone’s friend, the suddenly silent war wizard?”
Farland pointed down the main flight of stairs. They were of unadorned stone, unforgivingly hard, and very steep. Fresh blood glistened on some steps.
It was a long, long way down, and they could only just make out a huddled form far down it.
“Pushed,” Rune guessed grimly. “By someone he was surprised to see.”
Farland nodded, face dark. “He’s dead. Another murder. But by someone who was waiting for him to arrive here, or someone he was just a bit too rude to?” His upper lip lifted in a mirthless smile. “Which could be any one of our noble guests.”
“Would any of your noble guests have a key to this gate?” Arclath asked.
Farland shook his head silently.
“It’s almost always closed and locked, isn’t it?”
Maintaining silence, the Lord Constable shifted from shaking his head to nodding it.
Which was when they all heard fast, light panting coming from one of the side stairs, coming closer. Farland’s sword came up, and he strode to block the head of that stair. The climber was alone, and ascending fast. It was one of the two lesser wi
zards of war, his cloak clutched around him like a well-dressed matron hastening through a downpour. He came to an abrupt halt when he saw the lord constable barring his way.
After they’d stared at each other in mutual silence for a long moment, the Crown mage said urgently, “I must report to Saer Vandur.”
Farland stepped back two paces and grimly pointed down the main stair.
The war wizard gave him a troubled look, then went to head of the stair, keeping an eye out for the lord constable rushing forward to give him a push, and cautiously peered down the long flight.
Then he backed away, blinking in astonishment.
No exclamation. No prayer. Nothing at all.
“So where were you,” Farland barked, loud and sudden, “when your superior was being shoved down a killing-fall flight of stairs?”
The Crown mage’s face was calm, and his answer prompt. “Checking the ways in and out, as he’d ordered me to. I rushed back here to report that the kitchen door-that offers access to the midden heap-stands open and unguarded. There’s no one in the kitchens.”
Farland exploded in a stream of heartfelt curses.
In the midst of it, he didn’t fail to notice something shifting shape-the wizard’s hand, he’d thought it must be-under the clasped cloak. Viciously he slashed the edge of the cloak aside with his sword. The hands, always try for a wizard’s hands, unless you’ve a bow and can use it well enough to send a shaft into his mouth or throat …
“Try magic on me, would you?” he roared, starting the backswing that would slice hand and fingers and whatever foul magic they were readying with them.
He’d been going to go right on bellowing warmer pleasantries, but stopped with a startled gasp.
The mage’s revealed hand was a grey and scaly ball of tentacles, seven or more writhing, wormlike things that curled and quested in all directions.
The war wizard spun away from Farland’s slicing steel-but not before everyone saw the tentacles beginning to change. Erupting and blooming into toadstool-headed growths of slimy brown …
With a groan of disgust, Farland snatched a mace from his belt to try to smash the monster down.
A spell came flashing out of nowhere to send it spinning from his numbed fingers.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
TRAITORS AMONG US
The last of the three newly arrived wizards of war stood at the head of the other side stair. The last sparkling lights of his spell winked out, one by one, as they drifted away from his raised hands.
“Even for lord constables,” he told Farland, “there are penalties for killing wizards of war. Imbrult means you no menace. What you saw is the curse he lives with daily, not any sort of attack.”
The lord constable regarded him for a long, measuring moment, then turned to look more closely at the wizard with the tentacles-or whatever they now were.
“A magical curse,” Wizard of War Imbrult Longclaws explained quietly, holding forth his left hand. At the moment, it looked like a misshapen root dug up from a garden … a lump that was rapidly growing long, spiky hair. “Afflicting only my left hand. It changes continually. All manner of scaled, tentacled, or fungilike forms. Even after years, the forms it conjures still surprise me from time to time.”
“A spell-cursed war wizard? I’ve never heard of such a thing! Why don’t you have Ganrahast or one of the other senior mages rid you of it?”
“The curse holds far worse magics in check,” Longclaws said patiently; he’d evidently had to give this explanation many times. “Hanging spells we know too little about to dare tampering-but we know enough about to leave them alone. Unleashed, they’d harm far more than just one Crown mage.”
Farland looked from one war wizard to the other again, then said curtly, “My apologies, saer mages. We share more than one problem.”
He waved down the stair. “This one is the freshest, and the most pressing. Well?”
The mage who’d spell-struck the lord constable’s mace away-a tall, slab-faced man-joined Farland at the head of the stairs.
“Well met,” he said wryly, nodding to the lord constable as an equal. “Duth Gulkanun,” he added, tapping his own chest. Then he looked down the stair. His face went as expressionless as Imbrult’s had, and stayed that way. Neither of them had loved their superior. “Vandur. Pushed, I take it?”
Farland nodded.
Gulkanun shrugged. “I’ll thank whoever did this for their valuable service to Cormyr and to the two of us, after we imprison them and worm the ‘why’ of their deed out of them. Did anyone see it happen?” He looked sharply at Arclath and Amarune.
Who both shook their heads, keeping silent. It seemed safest.
“The murderer, presumably,” Longclaws said dryly, pulling off his cloak and draping it over his still-shapeshifting left hand with the deft ease of long practice.
“Well, now, I’d never have thought of that. I knew I was right to call in some brilliant wizards of war when things started to go wrong,” Farland said sarcastically.
“Lord Constable,” Arclath asked soothingly, “have you anything strong to drink in your office, or some other location where we could all sit down together in relative privacy?”
“Away from my other noble guests, you mean?” Farland asked with a tight smile, closing the gate across the head of the stair and locking it with a rattle of keys. He turned back in the direction of his distant office. “Come.”
As they fell into step around him, Longclaws taking the rear and Gulkanun the fore without any discussion or signal, Amarune asked, “Lord Constable, where are all the-ah, ‘guests’? I expected they’d be gathered here to gawk and smirk.”
“As per standing orders,” the tall war wizard told her, “we cast fear serpents down the passages when we set about the tasks Vandur gave us.”
“Fear serpents?”
“Spells that move on from where they’re cast, as far as they can drift without encountering a large and unyielding obstacle-like a wall or door. They make folk move away by radiating magic that makes anything that can smell or hear feel fearful and sick. They drove the nobles out of the passages, into their cells. Fear serpents fade fast; the effects will be gone soon.”
“So the murderer was immune to this spell?”
“Bore a Purple Dragon badge or the Crown ring most wizards of war wear, more likely,” Gulkanun replied, “or just fought through the magic. It can be done.”
“So we might be looking for a traitor among us,” Arclath said softly. “The guards, I mean.”
“We always look for traitors among us,” Farland told him grimly. “Day in and day out. Sometimes we even find them.”
Elminster sank back down amid the rocks, his eyes and throat stinging from the caustic reek of years upon years’ worth of dragon dung.
There were no side caverns. Everything narrowed to clefts and then mere cracks in the solid rock, all running in the wrong directions to reach the surface without passing through the dragon’s great cavern. She could abandon her drow body, of course, and easily drift up to the Realms Above as a trail of ashes. But, no. She’d fought in this body, reveled in its agility and freedom from ever-present pains, and did not want to relinquish it soon. She loved it. Nor did she want any part of the cruelty that would be leaving the ruined echo of Symrustar Auglamyr trapped to slowly die alone, in a body the fading Chosen was far too diminished to control.
And the dragon was awake.
Worse yet, it was a wyrm she knew. Wherefore it also knew her, albeit as a man with a different smell, and those memories-and most dragons had very good recall of the memories they chose to retain, remembrances they polished brightly and kept sharp-would make it eagerly hungry for vengeance.
Alorglauvenemaus had once, some seven centuries back …
But no, what mattered now wasn’t long gone days and the deeds done in them. The dragon was awake, malice glittering in its eyes as it fixed its glare on the dark hole it usually backed up to void into, awaiting an intruder.
It knew something alive was lurking nearby, beyond that opening, and it had risen and recurled itself atop its great hoard, settling itself amid the clinkings and slitherings of great drifts of collapsing coins into a new position that put its head chin-down amid its heaped loot, facing the back cleft in which it had smelled and heard life moving.
Movements that had continued, albeit with great stealth and patience, after it had twice spat gouts of slaying acid down the hole.
Something was down there, something that wanted to come up. And it would come while Alorglauvenemaus yet waited, for there was nothing more patient than a dragon.
El could have conjured a spying eye to peer at the wyrm, perhaps even goading it into spewing more acid-but doing so would tell it what it faced, and some dragons had mastered or collected enough magic to do great harm to wizards. Moreover, she didn’t need to see the dragon move into a new pose of vigilance to know what it was doing; she’d heard enough dragons, even taken a dragon’s shape herself in the past, to know it was ready and waiting for her.
No, she knew better magic to employ. In some ways, dragons could be as easily goaded as dwarves lost in gold lust. Threaten their hoard, move and handle treasures they deemed theirs, and the wyrms had to fight hard to resist the rages that awakened in them.
Alorglauvenemaus would have to fight harder than some, for it had begun to settle into the sedentary, stay-at-home life of the dragon that no longer boldly fared forth to forge respect and fear, making a place for itself forcibly in the life of the part of the Realms it chose as its dominion. It made bargains with humans and other lesser beings to work for it, to be its arms and jaws and bearers of influence, while it increasingly sat and pondered and slept. Alorglauvenemaus would feel more threatened than a young dragon, yet more angry and eager for a fray than a wyrm sliding from ancient into its twilight.
El rolled over to face the unseen dark stone ceiling overhead, biting her own lip to get the trace of blood she’d need to make the magic properly powerful, spread her arms wide, and began to cast the spell.