“Almost,” Glathra echoed bitterly, shaking her head. “Is Elminster’s life one long succession of such cruelties and misjudgments?”
Storm gave her a calm look that was somehow more a challenge than any glare could have been. “Yes. As are the lives of Manshoon, and Vangerdahast, and any wizard who seeks to rule, or dominate, or defend a throne. As you may yet live long enough to have to admit, Glathra Barcantle.”
Glathra flashed a glare. “I need no lessons—”
Catching the stern eyes of her king, she stopped in mid-snap, and asked more gently, “So are we rid of your meddlings at court and among our nobles, now? Or have you still unfinished work here in Cormyr?”
Storm’s smile was friendly. “We do, so you’re not rid of us yet. Forgive me, Foril, but Mystra commands us in this. She sees the wizards of war as vital to a bright future for all the Realms. Wherefore the corrupt among them—and in the ranks of your courtiers, too—must be uncovered and scoured out. Without causing too much of an uproar amid all the nobles seeking power, who will of course sense weakness and division, and rush to exploit it.”
Instead of uproar and anger among the three guests, there was a silent exchange of meaningful glances.
“Good,” the king said heavily, lifting a hand to forestall anything Ganrahast or Glathra might have said. “Not a moment too soon. Let that scouring begin.”
He looked at Arclath. “With Lord Elminster and Lady Storm serving a higher authority than the Dragon Throne, I find myself still in need of a champion whose loyalty is to me. A personal agent, an untitled hand of my royal will who’s no highknight, and who stands alone. Arclath Delcastle, will you—”
“I will,” Arclath said flatly. “I’ll be your agent, Majesty.”
“The work will be dangerous,” the king warned.
“That is my expectation,” Arclath replied, in identically grave tones. That earned him a genuine royal smile.
Amarune caught the king’s eye. “You are not keeping me out of this,” she announced firmly. “Where Arclath goes, I go.”
King Foril smiled again. “Of course. I was, as it happens, intending to hire you into my service, to be Lord Delcastle’s Crown liaison. At, ah, four hundred lions a month?”
Amarune blinked in astonishment. Across the table, Lady Marantine hid a smile rather unsuccessfully, but beside the king, Glathra frowned, stirred as if to say something, caught another swift royal look—and kept silent.
Rune found herself swallowing, her mouth suddenly dry. She bowed her head. “Majesty, I accept. I hope you’re not—we’re both not—making a mistake, but I will take your service.
Gladly.”
“Good,” the king replied firmly, parting his nightcloak. Unclasping a massive money belt from around his waist, he set it on the table, and gave the Royal Magician a glance.
Wordlessly Ganrahast divested himself of no less than seven such belts, one after another. As they clanked down in front of Amarune, the king told her, “Fifty lions per belt; your first month’s pay. Can you start work immediately?”
“Y-yes, Your Majesty,” the overwhelmed tavern dancer managed to reply.
“Good. Go straight to bed and get a proper sleep. By highsun tomorrow, I need you both well on the way to Castle Irlingstar, on our eastern border. Our worst problem just now, it seems, is there. Sembia—or someone reaching out of Sembia—has decided to take advantage of the current tumult among the nobility to take over that fortress and free the worst malcontents imprisoned there to work treason against Cormyr. I need that attempt stopped. I’m reinforcing the wizards of war there, too, but find myself in need of loyal, capable hands inside that keep that aren’t attached to a Crown mage all nobles mistrust and are guarded against on sight.”
Arclath frowned. “Hmm. I know some of the nobles you’ve—ahem, that have decided to dwell there. There may be deaths.”
“Yes,” the king agreed, meeting his gaze directly. “Unfortunate, but these things happen when a young noble newly sent to Irlingstar due to the displeasure of the Crown rubs up against old rivals and other hotheads, in a confined and remote keep.”
“Ah,” Arclath replied gravely. “I see.”
The Dragon of Cormyr reached within his nightcloak again, and set two tiny metal flasks on the table in front of Arclath and Amarune. “Sovereign remedy. Effective against most known poisons. Given what some nobles are said to dip their daggers in, you may, I fear, have need of it.”
“Foril,” Lady Delcastle spoke up, sounding less than pleased, “it seems to me you intend to stain House Delcastle’s good name. We’ll suffer the disgrace of a public accusation of treason against my son and heir. No, more than accusation—confinement. And as a traitor to the Crown. This annoys me.”
King Foril bowed to her. “Lady, I’m afraid this will be so. Pray accept my apologies. I might point out that given the current mood in Cormyr, the esteem of the Delcastles in the eyes of the populace—the nobility and those who aspire to nobility, at least—will undoubtedly rise. Moreover, I promise to apologize publicly and profusely, later, for the mistaken injustice I enacted upon your son, when I was led astray by the lying testimony of false nobles. I’ll make amends by giving him a Crown office, too—title, salary, a coach and riding horses; the usual.”
“Spoken royal promises,” Lady Marantine said crisply, “are worth the proclamations they’re not written on.”
The king grinned like a young lad enjoying himself hugely, and turned to Ganrahast. The stone-faced Royal Magician reached under his nightcloak and produced a scroll, which he unrolled with a flourish to display to those at the table.
It was an already-written, signed, and sealed royal proclamation, outlining all that the king had just promised.
Amarune looked at the large, uncrumpled parchment, and then at Ganrahast’s chest, and shook her head. “How did you carry all that?”
“Magic,” he assured her solemnly. “It’s all done by magic.”
The drow who was now Elminster stopped thinking of how she might train young Rune—and the difficulties that would undoubtedly attend her appearing to Amarune Whitewave in the body of a dark elf, albeit a beautiful female drow—and stepped to one side, sinking down among the stalagmites and rubble nigh the tunnel wall.
I heard it, too, Symrustar said. A weapon being readied.
El nodded silently. Thanks to El’s very recent work with silver fire and the spellbooks in the ruined drow citadel, ironguard was one of the spells she could now call on at will, without incantation, gesture, or components. She now did so. But it afforded no protection at all against enchanted darts or other weapons, or against poison. If need be she could use the silver fire—of which she still had a leaking overabundance, thanks to what the drow of the citadel had done to Symrustar, but she did not want to spend it in such a manner if she could avoid it.
She heard another tiny sound, the most fleeting of clinks. Metal, touching stone or other metal as it was moved; probably a blade being stealthily drawn, in another spot from the first noise that had alerted her. So more than one steel-armed foe awaited, just ahead. Drow, most likely, given the largely successful stealth, but they could be dwarves or gnomes or even humans. Now, which of those foes would show the most patience?
El had been making good time along a tunnel deserted in the wake of the glaragh, and had walked far from the riven citadel, moving faster than any wary pursuer not using wings or scuttling along the passage ceiling. She’d kept close watch on the ceiling, both before and behind, and seen nothing more than occasional small bats, beetles, and spiders. The glaragh had evidently devoured or frightened away anything larger and more intelligent.
Yet she’d passed through several caverns where the great worm could have taken a different route. She’d kept following the breeze, because the tunnel, though far from straight, was tending onward in the general direction she desired to head. The glaragh might not have taken this particular tunnel, this far. Fair fortune, even for the most favored of T
ymora, only lasted so long … and the luck of Elminster of Shadowdale, it seemed, had now turned.
Her ears caught the faintest of hisses, sibilants of words she couldn’t quite make out. Someone whispering in Undercommon into the ear of someone else; someone with a high-pitched, light, soft speaking voice. Drow, or she was a real arachnomancer.
Not that this new body would protect her in the slightest. Priestesses of Lolth were not loved at the best of times, and if caught alone were likely to be …
You have been caught alone, El, Symrustar reminded her tartly. So, now?
Now, of course, it was spell hurling time.
For an archmage with mustered spells ready, this would have been a mere moment’s concern. For a prepared and unharmed Chosen of Mystra, with Mystra and the Weave to call upon at will, even less of a challenge. But for what was left of this particular Chosen, right now …
El backed away around a buttress of joined stone pillars—fused stalactites and stalagmites—surrounded by a small forest of lesser stone fangs, and sank down again.
Was that movement, across the tunnel?
Aye, someone seeking to steal forward and flank her. Over there, too, a flash of movement—not forward or back, but a raised hand flicking fingers in intricate patterns. The silent sign language used by drow. Letting a tight smile cross her face, El cast a long, careful spell that would shape stone, on the fissured roof of the tunnel ahead, directly above where most of those waiting to pounce on her were probably waiting. If a worker-of-Art forced stone into a shape that was anchored insufficiently—a large inverted mushroom, say—then sought to rapidly flatten it out …
With a sharp crack and roar, a lot of stone ceiling plummeted down, to crash amid shouts and shrieks, shatter, and hurl shards in all directions.
El spared no time watching or gloating. She was already snatching out knives and turning to face—
Her stealthy outflanker. The dark elf sprang up over rubble along the far wall and raced toward her, firing a handbow as he came.
El’s first flung knife met the bow’s dart in midair, sending both missiles skittering wildly aside. El’s second snarled across a bracer on the charging drow’s raised forearm. And El’s third found one of the drow warrior’s eyes, and made the last moments of his charge collapse from a hard sprint into a wavering, dying stagger.
El danced back down the tunnel, turning to face the area where she’d brought the ceiling down. More drow warriors rushed her from there, some bleeding from jagged cuts made by flying shards of stone. Males, every one, a scarred and ragtag bunch clad in all mismatched manner of salvaged, patched, and no doubt stolen armor. Outcasts, seven strong—no, there were nine or more. None of whom would revere or obey a lone priestess, no matter how tall and menacing she seemed.
A scrape of sword on stone behind El made her spin around and leap for the tunnel wall at the same time.
Five more drow males were coming at her from behind, grinning unpleasantly.
Surrounded, greatly outnumbered, and—
Doomed?
“Symrustar,” El told her gently, “ye’re not helping.’
Drow rushed in from all sides.
CHAPTER
SEVEN
MURDER IN IRLINGSTAR
Royal Magicians and the senior courtiers they most trusted have been many things down the long years of Obarskyr rule over the Forest Kingdom, but one thing they were not—often—was fools.
Wherefore it had long been the practice in Cormyr to order matters such that one official or soldier watched over another, as part of daily duty. So it was that in Castle Irlingstar, Lord Constable Gelnur Farland was warden of Irlingstar’s prisoners, commander of those who guarded them and responsible for that guarding, but did not have command of the keep itself. Above Farland was the seneschal of Irlingstar, Marthin Avathnar, who gave direction to the lord constable and was in charge of the physical upkeep of the castle, but in truth had the most essential task of being a watchdog over any lord constable who might get too friendly with such urbane and wealthy noble prisoners.
Avathnar was a pompous little man, short and stout but proud of his appearance when he strode around Irlingstar in his brightly polished silvered armor. Yet he was neither dull-witted nor lax in his diligence, and had reported three lord constables in his time, all of whom had promptly been reassigned and one of whom had soon met with an unfortunate “accident” that many suspected hadn’t been accidental at all. Word of that had reached him, Avathnar knew, as a gentle reminder not to stray from the path of diligent loyalty.
He hadn’t the slightest intention of doing so. Cormyr was the fairest land in all the Realms, not to mention the best place to dwell in any hopes of enjoying a retirement to a modest country estate with a decent cellar of wine, boar and rothé enough to eat roasts every night if one wasn’t sick of them, and a fair young wife to wait upon one’s needs—even if one was short and unsteady and afflicted with bunions.
If Lord Constable Farland loved him not, too bad, and what a proud badge that dislike was, betokening his own proper fulfillment of his duties. A beloved seneschal was a lax seneschal, or even a seneschal happily and frequently bribed. And he would never be either the one or the other, by the Dragon on the Throne, oh, no, not Marthin Avath—
Someone interrupted his thoughts, just then.
Forever.
Someone reached out from a dark, yawning doorway just behind the strutting seneschal—where a door should not have stood open, a lapse Avathnar really should have noticed, though securing interior doors was more properly a constabulary duty—and briskly plucked the seneschal’s grandly plumed helm off his head. That headgear had always been a trifle too large for Avathnar, and came off easily—straight up, into midair. The same someone then stabbed a fireplace poker with brutal force, log-spike first, into the back of the seneschal’s exposed and balding head, crushing Avathnar’s overlarge skull like a raw egg.
There was just enough time, as the little man swayed onward but hadn’t yet toppled, to drop the helm back into place. A bare instant before Marthin Avathnar smacked down on his face like a large and fresh flounder being slapped down on a kitchen beating board to be flensed into mush for a fish sauce.
The wielder of the poker melted silently away, and a tomblike silence descended on the passage. It lasted for some time before the sound of distant boots arose, strolling in the right—or wrong, depending on one’s viewpoint—direction.
Marthin Avathnar had been a coldly polite, precise man. It was his duty to be so, but it was a duty that suited him and one he did all too well. Wherefore no one in Castle Irlingstar liked him. Not even his personal staff. As for the noble prisoners confined at Irlingstar, they didn’t like any of their captors much. So it was hardly to be expected two of them would grieve when they came upon Avathnar’s body. In fact, had a guard not been right behind that first pair of nobles, and hastened upon catching a glimpse of an armored form sprawled on the flagstones, they’d have swiftly plundered the dead man for weapons or keys. As it was, the two nobles merely bent to make sure the gleaming-armored seneschal of Irlingstar was dead, smirked when they saw he was, then went to lean against the nearest wall to fold their arms and enjoy the spreading tumult among their captors.
“I’m left quite desolate by this,” one noble murmured merrily.
“Oh?” another drawled. “Myself, I grieve deeply.”
“Desolated, are you? I was desolated once …” A third sneered, joining them.
“Go from this place,” the guard snapped at them. “All of you.”
None of the prisoners moved.
“Move,” the guard added. “Get you gone. Now.”
“Or?” A noble asked tauntingly, eyebrows rising in exaggerated fear.
“Or I’ll regard you as murderers, and execute you forthwith,” the guard said firmly, half-drawing his sword. “Before you can get word to your families or anyone else.”
Scowling, the three nobles pushed themselves off from the
wall as slowly as they dared, dispensing rude gestures and insults, and retreated. Not far.
Glowering at them and keeping one hand near the hilt of his ready sword, the guard unlocked a door and struck the alarm gong waiting in the closet behind it. Then he went to stand over the body, giving it a glare for good measure.
This was going to be bad.
It was bad already, and if his years of service had taught him anything at all, things were going to get worse at Irlingstar before they got better.
Much worse.
The little eyeball floated just out of reach, just as it always did, its silent stare mocking him.
Mreldrake tried not to look at it, but he could feel the weight of its regard every instant, as he struggled to wield his new magic with ease and precision and not the wild, sweating messes his last few castings had been.
It was hard, hrast it all! Holding empty air together in a sharp, slicing edge of hardened force, an edge gathered around his own awareness, so he could “see” out of it at a distance and through solid walls and other barriers he couldn’t truly see through or around. That edge could cleave stone, with enough firm will behind it.
Far more strength of will than Rorskryn Mreldrake seemed to have, even when fiercely determined or desperate. Whenever he dragged his wavering edge of force into a wall or floor, the spell broke, leaving him reeling and clutching his aching head, half-blinded by a sudden flood of tears and momentarily at a loss to recall where he was or what he’d been trying to do.
Right now, in a bare room very similar to the one he was trapped in, on the far side of what until a short time ago he’d thought was a solid wall, a chicken was roaming freely. Pecking, strutting, even fluttering … as his will-driven edge of force pursued it, seeking to decapitate it.
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