by Ed Greenwood
Arclath rolled his eyes. “Come, now. You’re not expecting me to believe all those tales about you being thousands of years old, rearing Azoun the Great, tutoring dread Vangerdahast, and suchlike, are you?”
Storm lifted an eyebrow. Arclath rushed on.
“Oh, you’ve borrowed grand reputations from folk out of legend, I’ll grant, but there are no war wizards standing here to impress now. I’ve heard tell you’re really Stornara Rhauligan, and Elminster’s really Elgorn Rhauligan, your father? Older brother? Grandsire? The two of you are supposedly longtime lowly palace servants who were caught stealing magic items and dismissed for it. Some say you’re Harpers or spies for Westgate or Sembia. I … well, I don’t know what to think. It’s just the three of us out here, so let’s have truth, shall we?”
Storm Silverhand stopped and turned to face him, her hair stirring around her like dozens of restless snakes, and her eyes two silver flames. “I don’t expect you to believe anything at all, Lord Delcastle. I’ve noticed your opinion of us changes like the weather, but I hope you’re wise enough to arrive at shrewd judgments of folk, given enough time. So now that we’re together, you’ll watch and listen to us and draw your own conclusions accordingly.”
Arclath came to a stop, too, and faced her. On his arm, Amarune looked from one of them to the other, frowning.
“Very well,” he said calmly. “In the interest of mutual trust, let us assume that the answer you’re about to give me is utter truth and that I’ll believe it. So who are you, really? You and the cloud of slithering ashes who calls himself Elminster?”
“I am Storm Silverhand. Some ninety summers ago, I was the Bard of Shadowdale. Elminster is … Elminster. The Sage of Shadowdale, the Old Mage of legend. We were—are—both Chosen of Mystra, the goddess of magic. Her servants. Her Highknights, if you will.”
“Mystra. A dead goddess, who once ruled—corrupted, some say—all magic.”
“That Mystra,” Storm said calmly, silver tresses still playing around her shoulders like serpents. “Yes.”
“You’re not going to tell me she’s still alive? And that she has some secret, sacred mission for Rune?”
“No,” Storm replied. “I don’t have to.”
Arclath arched one eyebrow. “Oh? Why not?”
“Because I know she’s alive and can tell you myself,” Amarune interrupted firmly. “I’ve met her. And if she has some secret task for me, she’s said nothing about it.”
“Yet,” Arclath told her darkly.
Storm smiled. “Good,” she said briskly, starting to walk north again. “You know who El and I are and as much about Mystra as any mortal dare trust in. We can cover the rest whenever we’ve time to waste talking. As we trudge toward this family hunting lodge of yours, for example.”
Arclath frowned. “Lady … Immerdusk, do you prefer? I don’t believe we’ve quite finished establishing where we stand. Elminster steps into the mind of my beloved whenever he pleases, and is forcing her to …” He felt a sharp tug on his arm.
“Lord Delcastle,” Amarune said sharply, “you will refrain from making assumptions about me, and from thinking I’m some sort of cow or pet snail, docile and brainless, whom you can discuss as if I’m not here.”
“Forgive me, Rune, but that’s just it,” the young nobleman said earnestly, staring into her eyes. “I don’t know if your brain is your own, right now, or if that old wizard is inside your mind forcing you to think one way or another and even keeping you from knowing it!”
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous!” Amarune flared. “Do you think for one momen—”
“Easy, lass,” Storm murmured, reaching out a hand to the dancer. “He can’t know. He hasn’t shared his mind with Elminster or anyone, and so can’t feel what it’s like, or—”
“I’m not letting—!” Arclath roared.
Storm’s slap to his codpiece startled him into silence midsnarl, leaving him staring at her.
“No one is suggesting you’ll have to,” she told him gently. “I was merely soothing Rune by pointing out to her that you have no way of knowing what it’s like when El is in your head. Let me tell the both of you right now that I’m deeply unhappy about his entering Rune’s mind, and I would have fought him to try to prevent it had I not thought it was necessary. His … ah, invasion makes it very hard for us to trust each other … but that’s all we can do now. Plead with you, is perhaps a better way to put it. Trust us. Please. Or this is going to end badly for us all, and soon.”
Arclath was astonished to see tears glistening in her eyes.
Storm smiled wryly and added, “Lord Delcastle, you should thank us. A tenday back you were bored and wandering through the days, chafing at the meaninglessness of your existence and desperate to find some purpose in your life. We’ve taken care of all of that. Welcome to the grandest life of all. Welcome to saving the world.”
Manshoon realized he was smiling again.
The alchemist must be almost done, now. Sraunter had already nodded at one mixture, frowned and stood back, and slowly let himself smile at the second, before carefully shifting it off the heat of the small fire in his grate, Now he devoted his complete attention to the third.
Since forcing the man into nightlong brewing—if that was what alchemists called it—Manshoon had kept himself out of Sraunter’s mind, not wanting to distract him at a crucial moment, or frighten him any further.
Instead, the future emperor of Cormyr had kept back in the shadows, idly examining the alchemist’s shelves for substances that might prove useful in the future, and thinking.
The moment he had effective control over Cormyr—open and absolute command or several steps short of that—he’d set the Dragons of the realm to hunting down Storm Silverhand.
She must be taken alive, with her wits undamaged.
Interrogating her at leisure should yield to him much he desired to know. Secrets of the Chosen, where magic was hidden, and the whereabouts of The Simbul—the onetime Queen of Aglarond, whose Art had been mightier than Elminster’s own. Mad and far too magically powerful for anyone’s safety, that one must be destroyed.
Sraunter turned and nodded eagerly, sweat dripping from his chin. “Ready. All three, ready.”
Manshoon let his smile widen. “Good man. You have saved Cormyr from itself.”
Horns blew a fanfare that the cool morning breeze carried far across Suzail, summoning the invited—the nobility—to the Council of Dragons.
Mreldrake hardly needed the arrival of the hurrying palace doorjack, and Manshoon’s surge from that man’s dark and knowing eyes into his own mind, to know it was time to begin his castings.
Manshoon’s mind was already sharing a crisply clear vision of the soaked and ready hay bales that Sraunter was igniting.
Few mages could translocate fiery materials without troubles, but Mreldrake’s mind was filled, overwhelmed, and steadied by Manshoon’s own, and the hay bales were only just beginning to burn.
Mreldrake caught a glimpse—briefly, before Manshoon firmly sealed that sight away and forced him back to full concentration on the complex spells he was working—of someone else Manshoon was scrying.
It was a noblewoman, unfamiliar to Mreldrake, who had long since risen and checked her appearance in her mirrors more than once already. The fanfare had brought her out onto a balcony to peer excitedly between towers and over grand roofs and the leafy tops of trees at the soaring royal palace of Suzail.
Coaches were already rumbling along the streets, and from her highest window the lady could see some nobles on foot, too, walking in their finery.
Dressed in her best, she hurried down into the streets to join them.
Then she was gone, and Manshoon’s dark amusement was all Mreldrake could see … that and flames rising and crackling from hay bales as Sraunter carefully set each one alight with the burning brand in his hand.
Then Mreldrake could discern something else through the heavy dark weight of Manshoon’s mind. Shouting and the p
ounding of feet. A bobbing view of a grand palace passage—through the eyes of the same servant who’d brought Manshoon to him—and thick, acrid smoke, its coils a deep, menacing blue warring with a greasy, baleful green, billowing out around the closed doors of the Council chamber.
Hay bale after hay bale his spells plucked from the dim crowding of Sraunter’s back room to the smooth oval of hitherto-empty flagstones at the heart of the Hall of Justice, with its rising tiers of empty, glossy, dark wooden benches all around, until … the work was done. All the little fires had been sent.
The alchemist’s shop went away, and Mreldrake was plunged into a strange, multiple-eyes view of hurrying Purple Dragons, various guards and war wizards being overcome as they arrived to try to investigate … a confused chaos of falling, staggering, then more shouting and barked orders and booted guards scrambling. Name of the Dragon, but Manshoon must have command over the minds of a dozen courtiers or more!
One scene swam nearer, of a palace passage with an angry woman storming along it, a wizard of war he knew all too well …
“No more fanfares!” Glathra called furiously down the passage.
“Lady Glathra?”
“You heard me!”
On the heels of that furious bellow, Wizard of War Glathra Barcantle spun around to part a curtain and say in a far gentler voice, “Your Majesty, I fear the Council cannot proceed. This day, at least. Not unless you want to die—and all the senior nobility of the realm with you.”
“Understood,” came the calm reply from the alcove behind the curtain. “There are some who would welcome that particular extermination, but I can’t count myself among them. I take it you’d prefer I withdraw, bodyguards and all, to the royal wing? Right now?”
“Your wisdom is as swift and keen as ever, Majesty.”
“Would that your flattery were shining truth,” came the affectionate, rather sad murmur. “We go.”
“Good,” Glathra breathed, letting the curtain fall and spinning around again to glare at a Purple Dragon lionar who was stumbling up to her, coughing hard, his face gray. He waved a hand, fighting to speak but failing.
A swordcaptain behind the lionar tried to speak in his stead, only to be plunged into helpless coughing and retching. “I—I—”
“Fools!” Glathra snapped. “Keep clear of the smoke! Close the doors across the passages by the Hall of Victories and by Queen Alvandira’s bower—open all windows and doors hard by us, here! We must get rid of the smoke!”
Catching sight of a wizard hurrying up from the other direction, she pointed at him and ordered, “Tracegar, strip all wizards of war from their assigned guardposts and get into the Hall of Justice and get rid of whatever’s causing this!”
“B-but—”
“There’ll be no Council this day! Do it!”
She turned back the other way, saw a young mage she recognized peering anxiously out of one of the rooms along the passage, and snapped, “Tarmuth, go after the king’s bodyguard, and make sure all of them put on night helms to keep them from being traced or influenced by spells! Hurry!”
Tarmuth nodded hastily and ran, but someone else was shouting at Glathra, and his voice was not friendly.
“Glathra,” an older mage called, appearing through a door with a handful of fellow senior war wizards behind him, “I don’t recall you being named lord warder! Surely—”
“Surely someone must guard the king before all else, Raeldar! Seeking to do anything less courts treason, does it not?”
“But why call off the Council?” another of the mages growled as they hastened up to her. Courtiers were appearing now, too, fleeing the smoke or appearing out of various chambers, drawn by the shouting. “The king will be less than pleased!”
“I have spoken with the king,” Glathra roared, her voice as deep and clear as many a burly Dragon swordcaptain’s, “and he saw in a moment what you have not: that the fires are not normal—hence magic is involved—and there must therefore be a traitor among the wizards of war, unless someone read our minds and so knew how to defeat our wards without alerting us or breaking them. Now, where does that compel your thinking, Brandaeril?”
The older wizard regarded her soberly, nodding as he considered and then announced, “Glathra is right. We have no choice but to delay the Council while we investigate. To do aught else could well be to doom King Foril and imperil the peace of the realm.”
“Aye,” Raeldar agreed reluctantly. “Ganrahast and Vainrence, if they were here, could hardly act differently. We must quell the smoke, learn all we can, cleanse the room, and cast new wards around it, then cry a new time for the Council across the city.”
Manshoon tightened his grip on Mreldrake’s mind, thrusting like iron-hard talons, and the suddenly mute, helpless wizard of war felt himself torn away from the scrying that had been showing him Glathra. In bewildering haste, his limbs not his own, he threw open his chamber door and hurried to the passage where everyone was gathering around her, to offer his obedient services.
It was too much to hope she’d be careless enough to let anyone who had a hand in crafting the first set of wards also work on the second, but a loyal war wizard would eagerly make the offer, so …
As he flung open the door and stepped into the crowded passage, Manshoon abruptly left Mreldrake’s mind. Entirely.
Which could only mean Mreldrake wasn’t expected to succeed in trying to be a part of the new wards.
He could grasp that much, no matter how dazed and shaking he was. Wiping sweat from his face and gulping to calm his panting, Mreldrake tried vainly to relax.
“You thought your work was done? Ah, but no, brave master of alchemy!”
Manshoon’s smile was gentle, but Sraunter broke into helpless shivering, chilled anew by sudden sheer terror. What now?
“We’ve merely begun,” Manshoon murmured, bursting into the alchemist’s mind before the man could even whimper. “We’re going for a little ride, you and I. You’ve done so well with the hay bales that you deserve good food and better drink, not to mention some laughter and a chance to restock your sadly depleted larder, in a score or more of the best—and worst—clubs, taverns, and shops across this fair city. Places in which you’ll oh-so-slyly spread rumors of various wild and mysterious attacks upon the palace.”
“But—but I don’t know what to say!”
“Ah, as to that, lose all fear. I’ll guide your tongue, and I’ve done this a time or two before. Rulers must learn to hear and steer rumors, or they soon run out of time to learn anything at all.”
CHAPTER
FIVE
TRAITORS, TRAITORS EVERYWHERE
A Purple Dragon horn call rose into the air.
“Gods, again?” The veteran Dragon lionar was running out of profanities. He spun away from the table of drunkards he’d been about to glower down at, and strode hastily back out of the tavern. His men, some of them groaning, followed him in a weary thunder of hurrying boots.
Manshoon drifted out of the shadows to watch them, not quite smiling. Tension had been rising in the city all day; skirmishes had erupted between various nobles’ bodyguards in clubs, taverns, and then the streets, and not long past highsun the “to arms” had been sounded, calling all Dragons out of barracks to establish order.
The Council of the Dragon had been proclaimed to begin not this day but on the morrow—and Suzail was not taking the news well.
Rumors were racing from table to table and along the alleys. Of course. Some had King Foril dead, and others swore a dozen nobles had been hunted down and butchered by royal command, though no two tales seemed to agree on just which lords had met their bloody ends. Still others said tombs in the royal crypt had burst open and the dead kings of Cormyr were stalking the palace, furious at Foril for even thinking of curtailing royal powers—and rending servants, courtiers, and wizards of war alike limb from limb in their displeasure.
Vangerdahast had returned from the grave, transformed into a horrid skull-headed monster,
one particularly gruesome tale insisted, and was demanding noblewomen be brought to him “to breed a new line to warm the Dragon Throne.”
Manshoon had chuckled aloud at that one. It sounded so unlike that old fool Vangerdahast—and so much like something Elminster might have tried.
Yes, he was going to enjoy blaming things on Elminster. Why, he might be able to keep that useful line of besmirchment going for decades, and use it to cloak all manner of wayward butchery …
Not that he had overmuch time to spare for such pleasant musings just now. Not with half a dozen new blackhearted traitors to recruit from among the ambitious lesser nobility. The young Houses, those lowly highborn so hungry for more power that they’d do almost anything. They were here to gain anything they could and would listen to a certain sort of whispering.
A handful of them might be capable enough to prove useful, and Manshoon would seek out these few.
He smoothly thrust aside a curtain and stepped to the elbow of one of the useful few. “Lord Andolphyn?”
A sharp-featured man looked up with a doubtful frown from the splendid decanter he’d been about to unstopper, the twin daggers of his forked chin-beard glistening with the scented wax that kept them teased into two points. “Do I know you, sirrah? How did you get in here?”
“Your guards are … mere swordswingers, Naeryk. No match for a wizard of war.”
A gasp came from the men clustered around Andolphyn in this back tavern alcove, but Manshoon gave them all a soft smile and added, “And still less of a match for me.”
After a moment of uncertain silence, many of the men cast swift glances at their master, seeking guidance with hands hovering near blade hilts.
Lord Naeryk Andolphyn seemed to be having some sort of silent seizure; he’d gone stiffly upright in his chair and trembled violently, his eyes rolled up in his head. Then, quite suddenly, he’d relaxed. His face went smooth, his eyes reappeared, and a smile swam onto his face.