by Ed Greenwood
“What was that?” Farland roared, rushing to pinion Hawkspike’s arms. “Sirrah, if you’ve-”
From the passage outside there came a sudden roar. A roar that burst back into the room like a hurtling dragon, filling it with force and fire.
Royal Magician Ganrahast suddenly clutched his head, shrieked, and crashed down face-first onto the table, thudding against its polished top senseless and staring, blood streaming from his eyes and nose.
“Here we go again,” Glathra snapped, rushing to his aid. Vangey had already scuttled along the table to the stricken Royal Magician. Vainrence and Storm crowded around Ganrahast, too.
“Don’t touch him!” Glathra warned the silver-haired Harper, but she was ignored. Storm stared at her own finger, used that stare to make blood well up out of it somehow, and thrust that bloodied finger up Ganrahast’s bleeding nose.
After a moment, she reported calmly, “He was working with the mindlink. Something struck at him through it.”
“Well, lady?” Vangerdahast demanded gruffly, dancing impatiently on his spider legs. “Can you heal him?”
“I’m healing him right now,” Storm replied, “but Vainrence, if you can fetch in some real healers-priests, Wizard of War Sanneth …”
Without a word the lord warder bowed his head and hurried out.
“What are you doing to him, exactly?” Glathra asked, sounding more apprehensive than suspicious.
“Holding his mind. Like something frozen in ice, I’m keeping it as it is right now, so it can’t get any worse. Shielding the rest of it against the damage.”
“I didn’t know you could …” Glathra let her words trail off, not knowing what to say next.
Storm gave her a gentle smile. “We should get to know each other better, Lady Glathra. If you knew more about me, you might just begin to trust me.”
“Might,” Glathra echoed, managing a wan smile.
“Then,” Storm added dryly, “we could even start to work on liking each other.”
Glathra winced. “I deserved that,” she whispered. Vangerdahast walked away down the table, carefully not looking in her direction or saying a word. Storm merely smiled.
Then many priests and war wizards were crowding into the room, Vainrence with them.
“Sanneth,” Storm said as firmly as any king, “cast your spell-you know the one-and link to me. Holy ones, please heal this man, as gently as your prayers can. Sanneth and I will guide what the gods give you.”
She was obeyed without query or hesitation, but it seemed a long, tensely silent time before Ganrahast groaned, his arms jerking around for a few moments. Then he tried to sit up, closing his staring eyes so he could start blinking wildly.
“Ganrahast?” Glathra asked. “Royal Magician?”
One of the priests wiped away the blood. Ganrahast sniffled, shook his head, groaned again, then gasped, “Y-yes, it’s me. I’m … back.”
He looked at Storm, and Sannath beside her, and added fervently, “Thank you.”
Both the Harper and the war wizard merely nodded gravely. Without a word Sannath stood up and quietly ushered the priests out of the room.
“Well?” Vangerdahast rasped the moment Vainrence had closed the door on them. “What by all Nine of the Hells happened?”
Ganrahast smiled wanly. “I, ah, felt the scrutiny or at least the reaching out to me of a team ring. Its wearer was seeking me. I in turn reached out to the mind wearing it-a mind I don’t think I know, which suggests that the ring wasn’t being worn by anyone who’s supposed to have one. Yet I can’t be certain of that; I didn’t have long enough to, to …”
“Taste that mind, and identify it,” Storm murmured helpfully, earning herself a surprised look from Glathra.
“Taste, yes. What I did manage to feel was that the mind of the ring wearer was of tremendous power. It sensed me, sought to block me-and then, everything seemed to … explode.”
“Whereabouts was that mind?” Vangey asked sharply.
“In the northeast of the realm, somewhere remote,” Ganrahast murmured slowly, grimacing as his attempt to remember brought on throbbing mental pain.
“Irlingstar,” Glathra said grimly. “Of course.”
Sraunter’s cellar was again aglow with Manshoon’s scrying spheres. The incipient emperor of Cormyr sat at his ease in their midst, intent on only one sphere. In its depths, he was watching a black dragon he’d spotted flying among the Thunder Peaks while seeking isolated war wizards at work in the eastern borders of the realm. If he could destroy them, he would awaken fears of a Sembian incursion, so as to draw more wizards out for easy slaying.
There was something intriguing about this ancient black wyrm. It wasn’t one he’d ever ridden or conversed with, to be sure-but it seemed familiar, somehow …
In his sphere, the dragon was swooping closer to the prison keep, Castle Irlingstar-and an explosion promptly erupted from an upper room of the castle, blowing out windows amid gouts of flame and tumbling stone dust.
Manshoon blinked in startlement, and from its hasty back-flapping, followed by angry circling rather than fearful flight, the dragon seemed startled too.
It glided very close to the castle walls, passing the keep and peering in … then, though Manshoon saw no attack upon it, nor any reaction at all from inside Irlingstar, it flapped away in frantic haste, as if pursued by its bane, fleeing into the mountains.
Something powerful must be in there, to cause explosion after explosion. Something unusual and powerful, if it could frighten an experienced and powerful dragon …
Manshoon waited to see if more of the castle would blow up, in case the dragon had fled an explosion it could see was imminent.
Yet time passed, and no second blast occurred.
So, now … a fresh problem. How to scry past or through the castle wards, to see inside Irlingstar …
CHAPTER TWENTY
WATCHING THE WILDNESS UNFOLD
F aster, hrast you! Faster!” Harbrand snarled.
Hawkspike was panting too hard to answer.
They pelted down the narrow stone stair, crashed bruisingly off the walls of what was hopefully the last landing, stumbled and almost fell down the last flight of steps, and nearly ran onto the points of the spears two guards were holding-guards who stood in front of a very solid-looking metal door.
“Hold!” one of the guards snapped. “Prisoners are not to be-”
“We’re not prisoners!” Harbrand roared-as Hawkspike grabbed both spears and fell to the floor, swinging himself forward and kicking at the guards’ ankles.
They fell atop him, cursing and struggling. Harbrand promptly clubbed the backs of both their necks with his fists, then tore one guard’s belt dagger from its sheath and battered their heads energetically with its pommel, smiting them both senseless.
Hawkspike struggled to get out from under the senseless guards and trampled the sagging Dragons in his haste to follow Harbrand. Harbrand had snatched the rings of keys from the belts of both guards and was feverishly trying every key that looked remotely likely to be right in the three locks that secured the door-head-high, ankle-low, and in the middle.
A few gasping moments later, the door banged open and Danger For Hire burst back out into the waiting wilderness and then sprinted for the welcome cover of the trees. They were a good long way into the leaf-littered gloom before Harbrand found breath enough to rather grimly suggest to his colleague that Hawkspike forthwith provide some explanations. “What just almost killed us? And what by the Dragon Unseen did you throw, anyhail? Since when did we own any Gondar bombs?”
Hawkspike went right on crashing and struggling through the forest, making no reply but violently and repeatedly shaking his head, in negation or denial.
Harbrand caught up to him and shoulder-slammed him, snarling, “Not deeper in! Do you want to get eaten by wolves-or worse? Back to the verges, where we can follow the road and not get lost!”
Hawkspike’s shakes became a nod or two. That las
ted until he tripped on a leaf-covered root and fell headlong.
Harbrand hauled his dazed partner upright with a snarl of anger, and they both stood there panting for breath, Hawkspike’s face a mask of mud, twigs, and leaves.
When he had enough breath back to manage a deep sigh, the Doombringer plucked several ugly forest mushrooms off Hawkspike’s face, and demanded wearily, “Tell me, Hawk. Where’d you get the flashbang? And just when were you going to get around to telling me about it? How many other secrets are you keeping from me? Just what is all this about Sarl?”
Sarl Sulblade had been one of their partners in Danger For Hire, before his sudden, violent, and until now mystifying death. The drow somehow knew that Hawkspike had killed him. Harbrand needed no words from his partner to get that far, and Sulblade had been a right nasty bastard, but it would be nice to know …
Hawkspike was back to fervently shaking his head.
Harbrand sighed again. “Forget all that, Hawk. Forget what I just asked. Just tell me: what happened back there in the castle, just now?”
His much-scarred partner wiped away mud, saw a handy fallen tree, and thankfully sat down on its huge trunk. A snake, disturbed by the arrival of his behind, promptly slithered away. Hawkspike watched it go, then said slowly, “That was my fair-fortune charm. Bought it from a caravan master in Suzail, who said it was real magic, came from a temple of Tymora, and would bring luck. Just a little everbright-treated silver image of the goddess, smiling, that’s all. I’ve had it for years. Make the girls kiss it, when they find it … the few girls I get.”
“That caravan master tricked you into carrying a bomb?”
Hawkspike shrugged. “I know not, Har. It’s been riding with me for three years, now, winter and summer, day and night. I’ve dropped it, fallen on it … it’s baked in the sun, gotten wet, nigh-froze with my breeches on the cold stone floors of winter nights … just a good-luck charm.”
“Until?”
“Until just then, back in those rooms where the dark elf bitch was letting on she knew all about us. All of a sudden, I felt fingers-solid fingers, cold but solid, where no fingers should be able to reach. Fingers, Har! Fumbling with the thing, turning it around. Which is when I remember, Har-the only seams on the charm are around her little backside and chest. Which means they can be pressed in. And I get scared, real scared. So, to be rid of it, I flung it away-as far away as I could get it. You know the rest.”
Hawkspike was panting out of fear, sweat glistening on his unlovely face, his eyes large and haunted. “Those fingers …”
“Never mind them. You got rid of them, didn’t you?”
Hawkspike nodded. “Went with the thing. Don’t think the blast killed anyone, do you?”
Harbrand shook his head. “Too small, too distant. Flung us all down the rooms-good thing the walls weren’t closer, or we’d have been smashed like flung eggs. Stunned everyone good and proper, ’cept maybe the drow and Lord Constable Mightyroar.”
“And us,” his scarred partner grunted, heaving himself back up off the green, moldy tree trunk. “I’m thinking we were shielded from the worst of it by everyone else’s bodies.”
“Ah, but our luck continues to be simply glorious,” Harbrand replied bitterly, taking him by the shoulder to hasten him on through the verges of the Hullack, away from Irlingstar.
“A bright new morning,” Vangerdahast rasped in Glathra’s ear.
She winced. The mere thought of a man-headed, oversized spider riding on her shoulder gave her-no, enough, she was not going to think about it again. She was going to get over this, going to-
“Relax, lass. I’m not going to bite you,” what was left of the most infamous Royal Magician in all of the kingdom’s history that most living Cormyreans knew said rather gruffly, shifting on her shoulder. “Not on our first dalliance, anyhail.”
Glathra stiffened. “Lord Vangerdahast,” she said warningly, “I …”
“You what? You’ve realized your blusterings don’t frighten me, and you’re not sure of my powers, so you don’t know what to threaten to do? Is that it?”
“You tluining old bastard,” she whispered feelingly. “You-you-”
“Ah, the young,” the spiderlike thing on her shoulder said almost merrily, “such eloquence they command. Call me ‘Vangey,’ lass; it trips off the tongue swiftly, so you can get to the swearing faster.”
“You sound just like Elminster,” she muttered. “Will I start to sound like that in a century or two, I wonder?”
“You’re highly unlikely to live that long, lass, given your temper and inability to hold your tongue. You might learn to curb both those things, but I see no sign of that.”
Glathra sighed and retreated from battle into silence. It was bad enough she had to stand and watch Storm Silverhand ride out of the palace on one of the best horses in the stables-one of King Foril’s personal mounts, hrast it! — to travel the realm soothing angry nobles and contacting potential Harpers. It was worse that Ganrahast and Vainrence had both ordered her to serve as Lord Vangerdahast’s steed and viewing platform; she suspected they’d done it so that she was forced to accept his presence, and he could keep her from doing anything to thwart Storm or warn fellow war wizards of her impending arrival in their particular corner of the kingdom. She settled for telling Vangerdahast-Vangey? That made him sound like a toy, or a pet! — grimly, “We must get a look into Irlingstar-or at what’s left of it, if that blast was as powerful as I fear it was.”
They could trace Arclath magically, and had, but that merely confirmed he was in or near Irlingstar, yielding them nothing about his condition or circumstances at the castle. Moreover, there were no safe or “familiar” teleport destinations, to anyone currently in the palace, near Irlingstar. Given its proximity to the Hullack and the Thunder Peaks, and the generally shaky reliability of teleportations thereabouts since the Spellplague … portals might be faster and more reliable than a series of translocation jumps, or teleporting to Immerkeep and faring overland from there. The closest reliably functioning portal linking the palace with anywhere near Irlingstar had its near terminus in an always-guarded room in Vangerdahast’s tower, a short stroll east of where she stood. Its far end was inside Castle Crag, three hard days of riding on good, fast horses west of Immerford.
“Hmmph,” Glathra commented, as Vangerdahast raised one of his spider legs to wave to the departing Storm. She did not join in; his farewell could do for the both of them. “Given how wildly busy the Thunderstone-based wizards of war are just now, it’ll be faster to farcall the three Crown mages in Hultail, and send two of them on horseback up along Orondstars Road and around most of Hullack Forest to Irlingstar.”
“Indeed,” Vangerdahast surprised her by agreeing. “So why, most decisive leader of war wizards, didn’t you farcall them the moment after Ganrahast told us about the blast?”
“I suppose,” Glathra replied icily, “my mind was elsewhere.”
She hastened back into the palace, not caring if he fell off her shoulder or not, to farspeak Hultail and issue crisp orders that two of the duty wizards of war stationed there were to depart for Castle Irlingstar in all haste and report back what they found immediately-including the fates of all inmates, Lord Delcastle and his fellow prisoner Amarune Whitewave, in particular.
The Hultail war wizards scrambled to obey.
Well, that was one thing that had gone the way it was supposed to, this day. Would that there might be more before sunset …
Manshoon smiled. Problems, always problems. People, he could take great delight in slaughtering fittingly. When the problems didn’t involve people, some devious thinking was always involved … and over the years, he’d grown to enjoy such scheming. So, now …
Irlingstar wasn’t that old a prison. Oh, a keep had crowned that ridge for a fair while, but hadn’t it been some robber baron’s hold, way back when? Then the fortress of a border baron of Cormyr, as the reach of the realm widened … well, whether he remembered a-right or
not, the wards in place had to be new; no older than the reign of the current king. Which meant they would be relatively puny magics he might be able not just to breach, but to destroy.
Yet was the time right for such a bold display of power? It would rouse the wizards of war in earnest, and if Foril wasn’t too gone in his dotage, he just might be able to portray it as the kingdom under magical invasion, wherefore all loyal Cormyreans must rally to king and banner, or Cormyr itself might well be swept away …
No, that sort of tumult and armed alertness would make his own work far harder, and a lot less fun. So, no great hurling down of the wards.
Which left him facing the same challenge: with the wards up, how was he to spy into Irlingstar? If there was to be no breach, then slyness must suffice … corruption … just which Crown mages were nearby, that he might coerce or cozen? For wizards of war could pass through the wards magically, if they bore the right tokens-rings, usually-or else be admitted into the castle if they showed up at its gates and convinced the guards to admit them. If a future emperor of Cormyr happened to be riding the mind of such a supplicant at the gates, that patient and clever mindrider could see inside the prison fortress that way, without any need to attract unwanted notice by forcing a way through its wards or bringing them down at all.
Now, there should be war wizards stationed at Immerford, Hultail, and Thunderstone … they accompanied border patrols, didn’t they? Yes, especially since Sembia had begun using griffon riders. So he’d best start looking for handy wizards of war …
Manshoon’s smile widened. These matters were really so simple.
The lady clerk of the rolls leaned across the table and snared the thick and hairy wrist of her dining partner before it could lift and drain a flaring flagon that was as large as her head.
“Lord Mirt,” she said gently, “there’s something I must say to you.”
Mirt fixed her with a fond smile and rumbled, “Hmmmm?”
“Last night, you were kind gallantry itself to me. After playing the swashbuckling hero and saving my life-and I’ll never forget that. You took me home and fed me, then bundled me into bed and told me old nursery tales until I fell asleep. I’ve never before had a breakfast of half warm broth and half warmed wine, but-just the once, and because of the delightful company-it, too, was splendid. I … I’ve never before been treated so kindly by any man, in all my life. And you … spurred no charge against me.”